Egyptian nationalists drew on ancient imperial precedent to justify Sudan conquest

Evidence

The idea of Egyptian control of the Sudan also added a sense of timeless- ness to Egypt’s geography, as the movement of Egyptian armies and power southward was “the direction taken by her earliest imperial armies as far back as the Old Kingdom.” It was thus an affirmation of Egypt’s ancient identity and borders, and “the first step toward the realization of a politically unified Nile Valley.” Wendell calls this a “unified picture of Egypt’s manifest destiny in Africa.” He states that,“as one of the civilized nations of the world, Egypt takes her place alongside Europe, and the less developed peoples of the southern Sudan especially, are held up to criticism as examples of improvidence, shiftlessness, and technical and social backwardness.” So, in its passivity as the object of Egyptian imperialism, the Sudan played a crucial role in helping Egyptians define and maintain their cultural, historical, political, economic, and geographic integrity. The dreamed-of Egypt, in its active domination of the Sudan, was therefore as much an ancient state as it was a state that would be realized in the future, when it was to achieve parity with Europe. A new geography was created, based on measurements of time and development. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 237

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘new geography based on measurements of time and development’ condenses a dense, layered idea — temporality weaponized to rank peoples — that could reshape how the reader frames colonial ideology.
• XREF: Parallels how other imperial projects (US manifest destiny, European civilizing missions) anchored expansion in deep time; connects to the reader’s comparative coloniality interests.