Gordon’s Sudan expansion style paired threats with a civilizing civilizing and trade rhetoric

Evidence

Then Gordon began speaking to Mtesa, scolding him for the natives’ having fled from us, leaving their land so that we couldn’t employ them to fulfill the tasks of building. Then Gordon informed him that we had come in the name of the Egyptian government, forceful in power, strong in courage, a government that didn’t want from that region any more than to spread civilization and justice throughout, and to open the lands to the benefits of trade, through which people exchanged their goods. If King Mtesa wished happiness for his land, he would then deal honestly with the Egyptian government, and would place himself under the protection of her extensive wisdom; that way, the government would not come to him with soldiers, over whom he would have no sway, to show him her might and her power that could flatten mountains and cliffs, that defied tyrants. “I am staying in Meruly,” Gordon said, “waiting to hear your intentions.” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 587

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of this reader’s inquiry: how Egypt’s colonial expansion southward into Sudan dressed coercion in a ‘civilizing mission’ and beneficial-trade discourse. — connects to: Imperial expansion is legitimized as defensive and sustained by manufactured fear.
• SEED: Gordon as a liminal imperial figure bridging Ottoman-Egyptian and British colonial idioms is a rich angle: an agent of Egypt who already speaks its civilizing language.