Sudan: from peaceful coexistence to breeding ground for conf licts

Not only people became more concerned about the future of Sudan, while creating favourable possibilities for the western world, but one also began to reflect on what had happened during the rise of the Egyptian State. Gradually conscientiousness was growing of the Turkish occupation of Sudan from 1820 (to 1881), which became in the eyes of the Western world a representation of the last venture in colonial expansion undertaken in the name of Ottoman Power on and beyond the frontiers of Islam. The term ‘Egyptian’ was not used in those days. The political power in Cairo was focused on colonizing Sudan and was exerted by a Turkish-speaking body. Hence the Sudanese, and Europeans staying in the Sudan as well, called the rulers of the country ‘Turks’. Sudan was Egyptian only in the sense that it was a province of Egypt, a dependency of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, the seat of the sultan to whom the Khedive in Egypt, in the function as a viceroy, was subordinate. The Egyptian rule which Muhammad Ali, the first viceroy, worked out for Egypt and Sudan as a general of a Turkish army was de facto the Turkish rule. At the same time, Muhammad Ali, who was of Macedonian origin, tried to free himself from the Sultan's power and establish his own rule within Egypt. This was only possible by defeating the Turkish empire in battle, which he failed to do. Nonetheless, he was able to found his own state as a kind of empire and to create a new administrative and military establishment based on the example of modern Europe.

This process of modernisation was accompanied, and indeed fostered, by an increase in the number of foreign visitors, both Europeans and Americans, to Sudan. While very few Europeans had visited the Sudan before 1820, after the Turkish conquest, foreign visitors were admitted. They came in small numbers as travellers, traders and missionaries. Frenchmen were highly esteemed by Muhammad Ali, who engaged them as technical experts, consultants and employees of the administration in his governmental service.