Kassala founded. In 1837 the pasha himself visited the Sudan, going as far as Fazokl, where he inspected the goldfields.
In 1849 Abd-el-Latif Pasha became governor-general and attempted to remedy some of the evils which disfigured the administration. He remained in office, however, little more than a year, too short a period to effect reforms. The Sudan was costing Egypt more money than its revenue yielded, though it must not be forgotten that large sums found their way illicitly into the hands of the pashas. The successors of Mehemet Ali, in an endeavour to make the country more profitable, extended their conquests to the south, and in 1853 and subsequent years trading posts were established on the Upper Nile, the pioneer European merchant being John Petherick, British consular agent at Khartum.[1] Petherick sought for ivory only, but those who followed him soon found that slave-raiding was more profitable than elephant hunting. The viceroy Said, who made a rapid tour through the Sudan in 1857, found it in a deplorable condition. The viceroy ordered many reforms to be executed and proclaimed the abolition of slavery. The reforms were mainly inoperative and slavery continued. The project which Said also conceived of linking the Sudan to Egypt by railway remained unfulfilled. The Sudan at this time (c. 1862) is described by Sir Samuel Baker as utterly ruined by Egyptian methods of government and the retention of the country only to be accounted for by the traffic in slaves. The European merchants above Khartum had sold their posts to Arab agents, who oppressed the natives in every conceivable fashion. Ismail Pasha, who became viceroy of Egypt in 1863, gave orders for the suppression of the slave trade, and to check the operations of the Arab traders a military force was stationed at Fashoda (1865), this being the most southerly point then held by the Egyptians. Ismail's efforts to put an end to the slave trade, if sincere, were ineffective, and, moreover, south of Kordofan the authority of the government did not extend beyond the posts occupied by their troops. Ismail, however, was ambitious to extend his dominions and to develop the Sudan on the lines he had conceived for the development of Egypt. He obtained (1865) from the sultan of Turkey a firman assigning to him the administration of Suakin and Massawa; the lease which Mehemet Ali had of these ports having lapsed after the death of that pasha. Ismail subsequently (1870–1875) extended his sway over the whole coast from Suez to Cape Guardafui and garrisoned the towns of Berbera, Zaila, &c., while in 1874 the important town of Harrar, the entrepôt for southern Abyssinia, was seized by Egyptian troops. The khedive had also seized Bogos, in the hinterland of Massawa, a province claimed by Abyssinia. This action led to wars with Abyssinia, in which the Egyptians were generally beaten. Egyptian authority was withdrawn from the coast regions south of Suakin in 1884 (see below and also Abyssinia; Eritrea and Somaliland).
At the same time that Ismail annexed the seaboard he was extending his sway along the Nile valley to the equatorial lakes, and conceived the idea of annexing all the country between the Nile and the Indian Ocean. An expedition was sent (1875) to the Juba River with that object, but it was withdrawn at the request of the British government, as it infringed the rights of the sultan of Zanzibar.[2] The control of all territories south of Gondokoro had been given (April 1, 1869) to Sir Samuel Baker, who, however, only left Khartum to take up his governorship The Equatorial Regions: Darfur conquered. in February 1870. Reaching Gondokoro on the 26th of May following, he formally annexed that station, which he named Ismailia, to the khedival domains. Baker remained as governor of the Equatorial Provinces until August 1873, and in March 1874 Colonel C. G. Gordon took up the same post. Both Baker and Gordon made strenuous efforts towards crushing the slave trade, but their endeavours were largely thwarted by the inaction of the authorities at Khartum. Under Gordon the Upper Nile region as far as the borders of Uganda came effectively under Egyptian control, though the power of the government extended on the east little beyond the banks of the rivers. On the west the Bahr-el-Ghazal had been overrun by Arab or semi-Arab slave-dealers. Nominally subjects of the khedive, they acted as free agents, reducing the country over which they terrorized to a state of abject misery. The most powerful of the slave traders was Zobeir Pasha, who, having defeated a force sent from Khartum to reduce him to obedience, invaded Darfur (1874). The khedive, fearing the power of Zobeir, also sent an expedition to Darfur, and that country, after a stout resistance, was conquered. Zobeir claimed to be made governor-general of the new province; his request being refused, he went to Cairo to urge his claim. At Cairo he was detained by the Egyptian authorities.
Though spasmodic efforts were made to promote agriculture and open up communications the Sudan continued to be a constant drain on the Egyptian exchequer. The khedive Ismail revived Said's project of a railway, and a survey for a line from Wadi Halfa to Khartum was made (1871), while a branch line to Massawa was also contemplated. As with Said's project these schemes came to naught.[3] In October 1876 Gordon left the Equatorial Provinces and gave up his appointment. General Gordon Governor-general. In February 1877, under pressure from the British and Egyptian governments, he went to Cairo, where he was given the governorship of the whole of the Egyptian territories outside Egypt; namely, the Sudan provinces proper, the Equatorial Provinces, Darfur, and the Red Sea and Somali coasts. He replaced at Khartum Ismail Pasha Eyoub, a Turk made governor-general in 1873, who had thwarted as much as he dared all Gordon's efforts to reform. Gordon remained in the Sudan until August 1879. During his tenure of office he did much to give the Sudanese the benefit of a just and considerate government. In 1877 Gordon suppressed a revolt in Darfur and received the submission of Suliman Zobeir (a son of Zobeir Pasha), who was at the head of a gang of slave-traders on the Bahr-el-Ghazal frontier. In 1878 there was further trouble in Darfur and also in Kordofan, and Gordon visited both these provinces, breaking up many companies of slave-hunters. Meantime Suliman (acting on the instructions of his father, who was still at Cairo) had broken out into open revolt against the Egyptians in the Bahr-el-Ghazal. The crushing of Suliman was entrusted by Gordon to Romolo Gessi (1831–1881), an Italian who had previously served under Gordon on the Upper Nile. Gessi, after a most arduous campaign (1878–79), in which he displayed great military skill, defeated and captured Suliman, whom, with other ringleaders, he executed. The slave-raiders were completely broken up and over 10,000 captives released. A remnant of Zobeir's troops under a chief named Rabah succeeded in escaping westward (see Rabah). Having conquered the province Gessi was made governor of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and given the rank of pasha.
When Gordon left the Sudan he was succeeded at Khartum by Raouf Pasha, under whom all the old abuses of the Egyptian administration were revived. At this time the high European officials in the Sudan, besides Gessi, included Emin Pasha (q.v.)—then a bey only—governor of the Equatorial Province since 1878, and Slatin Pasha—then also a bey—governor of Darfur. Gessi, who had most successfully governed his province, found his position under Raouf intolerable, resigned his post in September 1880 and was succeeded by Frank Lupton, an Englishman, and formerly captain of a Red Sea merchant steamer, who was given the rank of bey. At this period (1880–1882) schemes for the reorganization and better administration of the Sudan were elaborated on paper, but the revolt in Egypt under Arabi (see Egypt: History) and the appearance in the Sudan of a Mahdi prevented these schemes from being put into
- ↑ The government monopoly on trade ceased after the death of Mehemet Ali in 1849.
- ↑ The Juba was quite unsuitable as a means of communication between the Indian Ocean and the Nile. The proposal made to Ismail by Gordon was to send an expedition to Mombasa and thence up the Tana River, but for some unexplained reason, or perhaps by mistake, the expedition was ordered to the Juba (see Col. Gordon in Central Africa, 4th ed., 1885, pp. 65, 66, 150 and 151, and Geog. Journ., Feb. 1, 1909, p. 150).
- ↑ Up to 1877, when the work was abandoned, some 50 m. of rails had been laid from Wadi Halfa at a cost of some £450,000.
