¹ For a useful overview of recent work that reflects this consensus, see Howe, Stephen, “Minding the Gaps: New Directions in the Study of Ireland and Empire,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37, no. 1 (March 2009): 135–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Howe, Stephen, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Townend, Paul, “Between Two Worlds: Irish Nationalists and Imperial Crisis, 1878–1880,” Past and Present 194, no. 1 (February 2007): 139–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lynch, Niamh, “Defining Irish Nationalist Anti-imperialism: Thomas Davis and John Mitchel,” Éire-Ireland 42, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring/Summer 2007): 82–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collombier-Lakeman, Pauline, “Ireland and the Empire: The Ambivalence of Irish Constitutional Nationalism,” Radical History Review, no. 104 (2009): 57–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelly, Matthew, “Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire in the 1850s and 1860s,” Past and Present 204, no. 1 (August 2009): 127–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Lynch, “Defining Irish Nationalist Anti-imperialism,” 107.

⁴ Kelly, “Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire,” 135.

⁵ Townend, “Between Two Worlds,” 172.

⁶ O’Day, Alan, The English Face of Irish Nationalism: Parnellite Involvement in British Politics, 1880–1886 (Dublin, 1977)Google Scholar. See also King, Carla, “Michael Davitt, Irish Nationalism and the British Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Victoria’s Ireland? Irishness and Britishness, 1837–1901, ed. Gray, Peter (Dublin, 2004), 116–30Google Scholar; Brasted, H. V., “Irish Nationalism and the British Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Irish Culture and Nationalism, 1750-1950, ed. MacDonagh, Oliver, Mandle, W. F., and Travers, Pauric (New York, 1983), 83–103Google Scholar; Crangle, John, “Irish Nationalist Criticism of the Imperial Administration of India (1880–1884),” Quarterly Review of Historical Studies 11, no. 4 (December 1972): 189–94Google Scholar; and Cumpston, I. M., “The Discussions of Imperial Problems in the British Parliament, 1880–1885,” Proceedings of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., no. 13 (1963): 29–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Brasted, “Irish Nationalism and the British Empire,” 85.

⁸ See King, “Michael Davitt, Irish Nationalism, and the British Empire,” 124; Brasted, “Irish Nationalism and the British Empire,” 84–85; and Fletcher, Ian, “Double Meanings: Nation and Empire in the Edwardian Era,” in After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation, ed. Burton, Antoinette (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003), 246–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ See Porter, Bernard, Absent-Minded Imperialists: What the British Really Thought about Empire (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Thompson, Andrew, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, 2005)Google Scholar, and Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics, c. 1880–1932 (Harlow, 2000)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Townend, “Between Two Worlds,” 173. An important and useful exception to this is Kinealy, Christine, “At Home with the Empire: The Example of Ireland,” in At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World, ed. Hall, Catherine and Rose, Sonya A. (Cambridge, 2006), 77–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² I am indebted to Paul Townend for this insight.

¹³ See Collombier-Lakeman, “Ireland and the Empire,” for more on the ambivalence of Irish constitutional nationalists.

¹⁴ I have opted to describe Conservative newspapers as Conservative rather than Unionist as the period under discussion preceded the first home rule bill. The vast majority, if not all, of the Conservative newspapers in Ireland opposed home rule in 1886 and began to describe themselves afterward as Unionist.

¹⁵ Regan, Jennifer M., “‘We Could Be of Service to Other Suffering People’: Representations of India in the Irish Nationalist Press, c. 1857–1887,” Victorian Periodicals Review 4, no. 1 (2008): 61–77, quotation at 62–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Potter, Simon, “Introduction: Empire, Propaganda and Public Opinion,” in Newspapers and Empire in Ireland and Britain: Reporting the British Empire, c. 1857–1921, ed. Potter, Simon (Dublin, 2004), 11–22, 12Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Potter, “Introduction,” 17.

¹⁸ For examples of Gladstone Cabinet members remarking on the influence of the press during the Egyptian and Sudanese campaigns, see Vincent, John, ed., The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–93) between 1878 and 1893 (Oxford, 2003), 748Google Scholar; Hawkins, Angus and Powell, John, eds., The Journal of John Wodehouse, First Earl of Kimberley for 1862–1902 (London, 1997), 343, 351Google Scholar; Jackson, Patrick, ed., Loulou: Selected Extracts from the Journals of Lewis Harcourt, 1880–1885 (Madison, WI, 2006), 80, 81Google Scholar; Tuckwell, Gertrude, The Life of the Rt. Hon Sir Charles Dilke, 2 vols. (London, 1917), 1:548Google Scholar; Cooke, A. B. and Vincent, J. R., eds., Lord Carlingford’s Journal: Reflections of a Cabinet Minister, 1885 (Oxford, 1971), 61, 64, 105–6Google Scholar; Ramm, Agatha, ed., The Political Correspondence of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, 1876–1886, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1962), 1 and 2 passimGoogle Scholar; and Childers, E. S., The Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon. Hugh C.E. Childers, 1827–1896, 2 vols. (London, 1901), 2 passimGoogle Scholar. See also and especially Bahlman, Dudley W. R., ed., The Diary of Sir Edward Hamilton, 1880–1885, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1972), 2 passimGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ For a study of the latter of these, see Markovits, Stefanie, “Rushing into Print: ‘Participatory Journalism’ during the Crimean War,” Victorian Studies 50, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 559–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ See, e.g., Richard J. Finlay, “The Scottish Press and Empire, 1850–1914”; Aled Jones and Bill Jones, “Empire and the Welsh Press”; and John Mackenzie, “The Press and the Dominant Ideology of Empire.” All are in Potter, ed., Newspapers and Empire, 62–74, 75–91, 23–38.

²¹ There is a very large body of scholarship on the Egyptian invasion and protectorate. Some of the more relevant to the topic of this article include Chamberlain, M. E., “British Public Opinion and the Invasion of Egypt, 1882,” Trivium no. 16 (1981): 5–28Google Scholar; Crangle, John, “The British Peace Movement and the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882,” Quarterly Review of Historical Studies 15, no. 3 (1975): 139–50Google Scholar; Newsinger, John, “Liberal Imperialism and the Occupation of Egypt in 1882,” Race and Class 49, no. 3 (2007): 54–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harrison, Robert T., Gladstone’s Imperialism in Egypt: Techniques of Domination (Westport, 1995)Google Scholar.

²² For more on the Mahdi and the Mahdiya, see Theobald, A. B., The Madhiya: A History of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1881–1899 (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Dekmejian, Richard and Wyszomirksi, Margaret, “Charismatic Leadership in Islam: The Madhi of the Sudan,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 14, no. 2 (March 1972): 193–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karsh, Inari, and Karsh, Efraim, Empires of the Sand (Boston, 1999)Google Scholar; Green, Dominic, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869–1899 (New York, 2007)Google Scholar, and Armies of God: Islam and Empire on the Nile, 1869–1899 (New York, 2008)Google Scholar; Butler, Daniel, The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam (Philadelphia, 2007)Google Scholar; and Vincent, Andrew, “Britain and the Sudan—The Making of an Image,” Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies 4, no. 2 (1998): 1–24Google Scholar.

²³ Cork Constitution, 2 July 1885. This leader actually appeared ten days after the Mahdi’s death, although eleven days before it was noted in the Constitution.

²⁴ Irishman, 15 December 1883. The Irishman was pitched at a somewhat less respectable readership than the Nation or Freeman’s Journal. Kelly describes it in the 1850s as “the newspaper of marginal men on the make” (Kelly, “Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire,” 137).

²⁵ Weekly Freeman, 23 February 1884.

²⁶ For more on Nationalist criticism of the “civilizing mission,” see Kelly, “Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire,” 138–40; Townend, “Between Two Worlds,” 149–51; and Collombier-Lakeman, “Ireland and the Empire,” 60.

²⁷ In 1892 the paper had a circulation of approximately 2,000 (Marie-Louise Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism: The Irish Provincial Press, 1850–1892 [Dublin, 1999], 127, 130).

²⁸ Cork Examiner, 12 December 1883.

²⁹ For more on Victorian conceptions of Islam, see Almond, Philip, Heretic and Hero: Muhammad and the Victorians (Wiesbaden, 1989)Google Scholar; Prasch, Thomas, “Which God for Africa? The Islamic-Christian Missionary Debate in Late-Victorian England,” Victorian Studies 33, no. 1 (Autumn 1989): 51–73Google Scholar; and Edwards, David B., “Mad Mullahs and Englishmen: Discourse in the Colonial Encounter,” in States of Violence, ed. Coronil, Fernando and Skurski, Julie (Ann Arbor, MI, 2006), 153–78Google Scholar. See also Said, Edward, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York, 1980)Google Scholar; and Rodinson, Maxime, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, trans. Veinus, Roger (London, 2002)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Belfast Morning News, 24 July 1882. In 1885 the Morning News became the primary newspaper of the home rule movement in Ulster, with an average circulation of about 7,000. In 1888, it was purchased by the Gray family, owners of the Freeman’s Journal. Like the Freeman’s Journal, the Morning News pitched itself as a moderate, pro-Parnell, middle-class family newspaper (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 182).

³¹ Daily Express, 19 February 1885. See also Dublin Evening Mail, 14 March 1884. Both the Express and the Evening Mail sought the same Protestant, upper and commercial class readers more successfully captured by the leading national Conservative daily, the Irish Times.

³² United Ireland, 26 January 1884.

³³ Waterford Daily Mail, 11 January 1884. In 1892, Dublin Castle figures listed the Mail’s circulation as only 100 (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 127).

³⁴ Connaught Telegraph, 28 February 1885. According to the authorities, it was read by shopkeepers and farmers, with an estimated circulation of 312 in 1892 (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 127, 129).

³⁵ Meath Herald, 10 May 1884.

³⁶ Cork Constitution, 29 November 1883.

³⁷ Limerick Reporter, 1 July 1884. According to the authorities the Reporter was read by clergymen, teachers, and farmers, with an estimated circulation of 800 in 1892 (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 127, 129).

³⁸ Belfast News-Letter, 14 January 1884. See also Cork Examiner, 7 February 1884. The oldest newspaper in Ireland, the News-Letter aimed as much as possible for an aristocratic and clerical audience (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 182).

³⁹ For example, see Northern Whig, 6 February 1885.

⁴⁰ Parry, Jonathan, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity, and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Thompson, Imperial Britain.

⁴¹ Irishman, 15 December 1883.

⁴² United Ireland, 26 January 1884.

⁴³ Weekly News, 14 February 1885. See also the Irishman, 15 December 1883; and United Ireland, 26 January 1884.

⁴⁴ A similar argument could be made for Nationalist newspaper commentary on the Indian Mutiny. See Regan, “We Could Be of Service”; and Jill Bender, “Mutiny or Freedom Fight? The 1857 Indian Mutiny and the Irish Press,” in Potter, Newspapers and Empire in Ireland and Britain, 92–108.

⁴⁵ For more on J. J. O’Kelly and his brother, the painter Aloysius O’Kelly, who probably crossed the battle lines and may have (or not) met the Mahdi himself, see O’Sullivan, Niamh, “Lines of Resistance: The O’Kelly Brothers in the Sudan,” Éire-Ireland 33, nos. 33/34, no. 1 (1998): 131–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For parliamentary debate on O’Kelly’s activities in the Sudan, see House of Commons Debate, 28 April 1884, vol. 287, c 756, and 2 May 1884, vol. 287, c 1165.

⁴⁶ Freeman’s Journal, 18 February 1885.

⁴⁷ This was true of the Freeman’s Journal in particular.

⁴⁸ See Prasch, “Which God for Africa?” 62–63; Almond, Heretic and Hero, 81–85; Rodinson, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, 64–66; and Porter, Andrew, “Evangelicalism, Islam, and Millennial Expectation in the Nineteenth Century,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 24, no. 3 (2000): 111–18, esp. 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ Belfast News-Letter, 24 November 1883.

⁵⁰ Limerick Reporter, 15 February 1884. See also Londonderry Standard, 24 November 1883; and Irish Times, 6 March 1884, 7 October 1884, 2 February 1885.

⁵¹ Munster News, 14 February 1885. The paper had an estimated circulation of 5,000 in 1892 (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 127).

⁵² Kilkenny Moderator, 19 March 1884.

⁵³ Western News and Weekly Examiner, 7 February 1885. The News had an estimated circulation of 960 in 1892 and was reportedly read by smaller farmers and shopkeepers (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 127, 129). See also Tipperary Advocate, 7 February 1885; Connaught Telegraph, 28 February 1885; Derry Journal, 18 February 1885; Kilkenny Journal, 25 February 1885; Sligo Champion, 21 February 1885; and McMahon, Timothy, “Dash and Daring: Imperial Violence and Irish Ambiguity,” in Shadow of the Gunman: Considerations about Violence in Irish History, ed. Farrell, Sean and Farquharson, Danine (Cork, 2008), 79–89Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Lynch, “Defining Irish Nationalist Anti-imperialism,” 93, 98–99; Kelly, “Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire,” 130–35; Townend, “Between Two Worlds,” 152–54.

⁵⁵ Tipperary Advocate, 31 January 1885. The Advocate had an estimated circulation of “20 or 30” in 1892 (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 127).

⁵⁶ People, 1 April 1885. The People had an estimated circulation of 9,000 in 1892 and was known to be read in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Dublin Castle believed it very influential among nationalists (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 127, 129, 210).

⁵⁷ See Townend, “Between Two Worlds,” 152, for examples of this rhetoric during the Zulu War.

⁵⁸ For more on the construction of British conceptions of Egyptian History, see Moser, Stephanie, Wondrous Curiosities: Ancient Egypt and the British Museum (Chicago, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ For example, see Cork Constitution, 25 March, 13 February 1884; Belfast Evening Telegraph, 7 January, 1885; Belfast News-Letter, 5 March 1885; Carlow Sentinel, 20 September 1884; Freeman’s Journal, 13 May 1884; People, 30 April 1884; Wexford Constitution, 1 March 1884, 9 July 1884; Kilkenny Journal, 18 February 1885; Kilkenny Moderator, 19 January 1884.

⁶⁰ Wexford Constitution, June 24, 1884.

⁶¹ Criticism of “Jewish bondholders” or Jews more generally as the wirepullers of the Egyptian war appeared in several Nationalist newspapers, including the Western News and the People, but it was not a major theme in the Irish or British press.

⁶² Irish Times, 12 May 1884.

⁶³ See, e.g., Lord Stanley’s diary entry for 17 March 1884 in Vincent, The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 649; and Traill, H. D., “What Is Public Opinion?” National Review 6, no. 29 (July 1885): 652–64, esp. 661Google Scholar. See also Parry, The Politics of Patriotism, 360.

⁶⁴ Limerick Reporter, 13 February 1885. See also Connaught Telegraph, 28 February 1885.

⁶⁵ Northern Whig, 10 February 1885.

⁶⁶ Londonderry Standard, 14 February 1884.

⁶⁷ The Standard later followed the majority of its middle-class readers into Liberal Unionism.

⁶⁸ Londonderry Standard, 20 March 1884.

⁶⁹ Londonderry Standard, 9 February 1885, 23 February 1885.

⁷⁰ Connaught Telegraph, 28 February 1885.

⁷¹ Sligo Chronicle, 2 February 1884. The Chronicle was a middle-class “family journal” (Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism, 213).

⁷² Belfast Evening Telegraph, 22 January 1884.

⁷³ See Parry, The Politics of Patriotism, 346, 387–93, for more on the role of European concerns in British imperial thinking.

⁷⁴ Parry, The Politics of Patriotism, 344.

⁷⁵ Irish Times, 4 February 1884. See also Wexford Constitution, 23 April 1884, 9 July, 1884; and Carlow Sentinel, 7 March 1885

⁷⁶ Belfast Evening Telegraph, 22 January 1884. See also Belfast News-Letter, 7 February 1885, 9 February 1885.

⁷⁷ Parry, The Politics of Patriotism, 27, 344. See also Mantena, Karuna, “The Crisis of Liberal Imperialism,” in Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Bell, Duncan (Cambridge, 2007), 113–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Weekly Irish Times, 12 April 1884.

⁷⁹ Tipperary People, 12 June 1884. See also Cork Examiner, 24 November 1883.

⁸⁰ Kelly, “Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire,” 152; Biagini, Eugenio, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, 2007), 166CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ Parry, The Politics of Patriotism, 372–73.

⁸² Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 166–67.

⁸³ See, e.g., Freeman’s Journal, 19 October 1882, 15 December 1883, 14 January 1884, 21 January 1884, 13 May 1884, 7 February 1998, 13 February 1885.

⁸⁴ Freeman’s Journal, 8 August 1884.

⁸⁵ See, e.g., Freeman’s Journal, 14 September 1883, 21 November 1883; Nation, 15 July 1882; Waterford Daily Mail, 16 October 1884.

⁸⁶ Parry, The Politics of Patriotism, 388. Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 354.

⁸⁷ For more on radical criticism of Gladstone’s Egyptian/Sudan policy, see Hind, R. J., Henry Labouchere and the Empire, 1880–1905 (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Crangle, John, “The British Peace Movement and the Anglo-Egyptian War,” and “The British Peace Movement and the Intervention in the Sudan, 1884–1885,” Indiana Social Studies Quarterly 30, no. 2 (1977): 22–37Google Scholar; and Newsinger, “Liberal Imperialism and the Occupation of Egypt.”

⁸⁸ Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 224–25.

⁸⁹ Western News and Weekly Examiner, 8 December 1883.

⁹⁰ Irishman, 7 February 1885. See also the Nation, 14 February 1885.

⁹¹ Cork Examiner, 24 July 1882. See also the People, 12 August 1882; and Tipperary Advocate, 7 February 1885.

⁹² Cork Examiner, 25 October 1882.

⁹³ For a comprehensive study of Irish views of the Arab world and the Orient, see Lennon, Joseph, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse, NY, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Nation, 14 February 1885.

⁹⁵ See Kelly, “Irish Nationalist Opinion and the British Empire,” 141, for examples of this tendency to destabilize “concepts like civilization and savagery” in the 1850s and 1860s.

⁹⁶ Weekly News, 26 April 1884; Freeman’s Journal, 21 March 1884.

⁹⁷ Weekly News, 21 February 1885.

⁹⁸ Cork Constitution, 9 February 1884.

⁹⁹ House of Commons Debate, 8 February 1884, vol. 284, cc. 313–6.

¹⁰⁰ Graphic, 16 February 1884.

¹⁰¹ Northern Echo, 9 February 1884. See also Liverpool Mercury, 8 February 1884; Bury and Norwich Post, 19 February 1884; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 10 February 1884; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 15 February 1884; Leeds Mercury, 15 February 1884; York Herald, 15 February 1884; and Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 16 February 1884.

¹⁰² Cork Constitution, 9 February 1884. See also Daily Express, 8 February 1884.

¹⁰³ Townend, “Between Two Worlds,” 174.

¹⁰⁴ Stead, W. T., “Government by Journalism,” Contemporary Review no. 49 (May 1886): 653–74, esp. 656Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ As did F. H. O’Donnell. See Brasted, “Irish Nationalism and the British Empire,” 91.