Following a two-year campaign that employed the latest Victorian technology, General Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army crushed the Mahdist Sudanese at the battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898. Thus, Britain ended the Islamic government of the Khalifa Abdallahi, gained control of the Nile Valley, and avenged the death of General Gordon in 1885.
This book re-examines the campaign experience of British soldiers in Africa during the period 1874-1902. It uses using a range of sources, such as letters and diaries, to allow soldiers to 'speak form themselves' about their experience of colonial.
Omdurman was one of the great desert battles of the Victorian era which concluded the conquest of the Dervish Empire, and avenged the death of General Gordon at Khartoum. This dramatic conflict witnessed hordes of native warriors set against British discipline and firepower, gunboats on the Nile, a dramatic cavalry charge and Kitchener, the Sirdar, as conqueror. This book explores the events, weaponry and leaders of both sides, and accompanying illustrations and colorful graphics bring the whole campaign vividly to life.
The British Army's campaigns in Egypt and the Sudan from 1882 to 1899 were among the most dramatic and hard-fought in British military history. In 1882, the British sent an expeditionary force to Egypt to quell the Arabic Revolt and secure British control of the Suez Canal, its lifeline to India. The enigmatic British Major General Charles G. Gordon was sent to the Sudan in 1884 to study the possibility of evacuating Egyptian garrisons threatened by Muslim fanatics, the dervishes, in the Sudan. While the dervishes defeated the British forces on a number of occasions, the British eventually learned to combat the insurrection and ultimately, largely through superior technology and firepower, vanquished the insurgents in 1898. British Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography enumerates and generally describes and annotates hundreds of contemporary, current, and hard-to-find books, journal articles, government documents, and personal papers on all aspects of British military operations in Egypt and the Sudan from 1882 to 1899. Arranged chronologically and topically, chapters cover the various campaigns, focusing on specific battles, leading military personalities, and the contributions of imperial nations as well as supporting services of the British Army. This definitive volume is an indispensable reference for researching imperialism, colonial history, and British military operations, leadership, and tactics.
This paper analyzes the Mahdist Revolution in the Sudan from 1881 to 1885. Mohammed Ahmed bin Abdallah proclaimed himself the Mahdi (the expected one or the deliverer in the Islamic faith) and fought the colonial Egyptian government of the Sudan and the British. Britain was drawn into the conflict by its interest in the Suez Canal, its heavy financial investments in Egypt, and its participation in suppressing the Arabi revolt. Mohammed Ahmed successfully defeated the Egyptian and British forces brought against him and established an Islamic state in the Sudan. He succeeded by effectively combining religious, economic, cultural, and military strategy under charismatic leadership.
The Anglo-Egyptian re-conquest of Sudan - Churchill's 'River War' - has been well chronicled from the British point of view, but we still know little about its front line troops, the Sudanese soldiers of the Egyptian Army. Making use of unpublished primary sources and published material located in the United Kingdom and Sudan, Slaves of Fortune provides an historiographic correction. It argues that nineteenth-century Sudanese slave soldiers were social beings and historical actors, shaping both European and African destinies, just as their own lives were being transformed by imperial forces. -- Jacket.
