Egyptian nationalism fused anti-imperialism with the desire to re-subjugate the Sudan

Evidence

Both the popularity of translated French, Italian, and English popular literature and increased travel to European cities reinforced this selfconsciousness, as educated Egyptians saw themselves being molded into characters for European readers, and as Egyptian society was itself displayed in well-organized exhibitions across Europe. As Egyptians’ awareness of the Sudan increased, Europeans stepped more and more often into the African landscape, making Egyptians even more sensitive to their own vulnerability to European expansionism. Isma`ïl contributed further to Egypt’s confused identify as a would-be imperialist power when, in efforts to legitimize his ambitious plans for conquering East Africa, he hired Europeans like General Charles Gordon to take charge of the administration in the Sudan and of the exploration surveys up the White Nile. Other surveys were sponsored by their own governments, as the European powers began claiming territory in Africa. European encroachment in Africa became, for many nationalists, uncomfortably linked to Egyptian interests there, evoking a powerful proprietary feeling toward the Sudan. And this sense of European menace enshrined the important contradiction of Egyptian nationalism: the fight against European imperialism that marched hand-inhand with the fight to regain imperial control of the Sudan. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 350

Categorization

• XREF: This core paradox — a colonized people striving to be colonizers — directly supports the reader’s Egypt-vs-Sudan comparative frame and echoes wider African coloniality literature on intermediary/subimperial powers.
• DEFINE: Illuminates the defining structural contradiction of Egyptian nationalism in its late-Ottoman, pre-British-occupation phase.