Exiled Egyptian nationalists recast Sudanese agency as service to Egypt

Evidence

After 1878, exile further changed Sanüa's vision and his perspective on Egypt. He missed the actual rebellion of Colonel Uräbï. Unable to see firsthand the effects of the failed rebellion and the British occupation—and under the influence of the increasingly dramatic news of the Sudanese uprising from within his homeland—his writings from overseas assumed a much more idealistic tone toward Egypt and the Sudan. Sanüa recognized the importance of the Mahdïya, but he misjudged how deep a blow the Mahdïya's success was to Egyptian nationalism. And though the Mahdï's rebellion shrank Egypt's borders (both imagined and physical), Sanüa saw the Mahdï as an ally in the Egyptian struggle against the increasing British presence, a presence he considered to be a direct challenge to Egyptian political aspirations. He wrote many articles about the Sudan and Egypt joining together to defeat their common enemy, misinterpreting the message of the Mahdï’s revolution completely. … For Sanüa in exile, Egypt became a dreamed-of place, always hovering between its new position as an occupied country and the desired status of a free nation. Imagined from afar, Egypt was populated by archetypes lifted from Sanüa’s memory and nostalgia. True to these old stereotypes, the new Sudanese characters in Sanü`a’s writings never acted or spoke in their own interest; they answered to and for Egyptians. The Sudan may have seemed transformed from an Egyptian colony into a bulwark of anti-British imperialism, but the transformation never shed the imprint of the past; Muhammad the Nubian’s servitude to his Egyptian employer metamorphosed into the ferocious protectiveness shown by the Mahdï for Egypt, against the British, the new men knocking at the door. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 337

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s Egypt-vs-Sudan comparative purpose: Egyptian nationalism could not imagine Sudanese self-interest.
• SEED: Angle: how metropolitan exiles misread anticolonial revolts in their own colonies as pro-metropole alliances.