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Alice Moore-Harell's book is a carefully researched study of one chapter in the career of General Charles Gordon, the military careerist who remains one of the most compelling figures in the history of late-19th-century British imperialism. Drawing on an extensive pool of archival sources from Europe, Egypt, and North America, the book considers the period of three years, from 1877 to 1880, when Gordon served as governor-general of Turco-Egyptian Sudan, a territory that had been conquered, incrementally expanded, and ruled by the armies of Egypt's Muhammad
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Ali dynasty beginning in 1820.
In 1877, Khedive Ismail asked Gordon to administer Sudan with a special mandate to end the slave trade (though not slavery itself) in accordance with a convention that Egypt had recently signed. Gordon accepted on condition that he be granted authority to direct all the provincial governors and to report exclusively to the khedive--thereby demanding a degree of centralized control unknown by previous governors-general in Sudan.
Gordon's governor-generalship coincided with a fascinating moment in Egyptian, British, and Sudanese history. The Turco-Egyptian empire was at its greatest geographical extent. Indeed, the Sudanese territories entrusted to Gordon included parts of what are now Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Egyptian finances were nevertheless suffering, making Egypt vulnerable to French and British economic and political encroachment. Against this context,...