Egyptian imperial rhetoric framed Sudan’s subordination as undifferentiable kinship

Evidence

We are the first among all peoples to colonize the Sudan, which as I said is an organ of Egypt’s. She is closer to us than any other country, her history linked to our history, her people the closest to ever have mixed with us. In fact, you can hardly tell the difference between us, our Nile is the Sudan’s Nile, and our blood has flowed there in ancient and in modern times, our money spent there in the tens of millions. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 768

Categorization

• BMF: This use of ‘we are indistinguishable from our subordinates’ as grounds to absorb another people evokes the Conde/Vidal Gore ‘Eighteen Seventy’ treatment of empire as family — though the resonance is thematic more than plot-specific.