Background to the Mahdist revolt

[If you read the op-ed pages of the bourgeois media, you are left 
with the impression that the Islamic revolt might have something to 
do with 'globalization'. Prior to the introduction of the Internet, 
CNN, multinational corporations, McDonalds, etc., these countries 
were relatively peaceful. But now that everything is connected, there 
is no peace as atavistic zealots want to destroy all traces of 
western culture.

[In reality, this is just a superficial approach to the crisis. 
Number one, it is capitalism, not globalization, which is producing 
such wrenching changes. The other thing to keep in mind is this: 
There was an Islamic revolt once before and for many of the same 
types of reasons.

[In the 1880s, Egypt and then Sudan were sites of Islamic revolts. In 
particular, the Mahdist revolt in the Sudan had very many of the same 
features of today's. It is no accident that many of bin-Laden's 
fiercest fighters appear to come from the Sudan, the home of the 
first Islamic revolt.

[The section below consists of the better part of chapter two of 
Robin Neillands' "The Dervish Wars: Gordon and Kitchener in the Sudan 
1890-1898," which is the most probing account of this conflict that 
I've seen. Keep in the back of your mind the Byzantine partnerships 
and looming betrayals around Afghanistan today when you read 
Neillands' account. There is a lot of detail packed into a relatively 
brief passage, so let me summarize it for you.

1.      France had just built the Suez Canal.

2.      Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire and was ruled by the Khedive 
who reported to the Sultan. Prior to the Khedive, Egypt was ruled by 
an Albanian soldier of fortune named Mohammed Ali.

3.      Before the 1860s, Egypt was going through a huge financial crisis 
due to foreign debt associated with the rapid 'development' alluded 
to in the epigraph below. It would have collapsed if the North had 
not blockaded cotton shipments from the South during the American 
Civil War. Egypt and Sudan stepped in to fulfill market demands, 
staving off bankruptcy in Egypt. (Most Sudanese plantations were 
owned by Egyptians.)

4.      To create a favorable environment for capitalist investment, Great 
Britain sought to destroy slavery in the Sudan, 90 percent of whose 
economy revolved around traffic in human beings. The slaves found 
their way to Turkey and Egypt and other North African or Levantine 
markets. The men became field hands or soldiers, while the women 
ended up in harems.

5.      Although England's goals in the region were posed in moral terms, 
just as the war against the backward Taliban is posed today, the real 
goals were geopolitical and commercial. I will have more to say on 
this, but will let the following passage get you up to speed.

==================
Egypt and the Sudan

1869-1878

'Egypt suffers from the dishonesty, ignorance, waste and extravagance 
of the East, such as have brought her suzerain to the brink of ruin, 
and at the same time from the vast expense caused by hasty and 
inconsiderate endeavours to adopt the civilization of the West.'

--Mr Stephen Cave, MP, 1876

AFTER HUBRIS, NEMESIS. Even as the flags and pavilions were struck 
and cleared away along the Canal, the Khedive Ismail awoke from his 
euphoria and began to confront the two great problems of his reign: 
the colossal extent of the national debt and his so far futile 
attempts to control events in the Sudan.

The first problem grew by the hour and the bills for his latest 
extravaganza had yet to arrive. On the second count, the Khedive knew 
that the best answer to his problems in the Sudan was a dedicated, 
incorruptible man, honest enough to resist the profitable temptations 
that would be put in his way, strong enough to eliminate the slave 
trade and remove a great weight from the Khedive's shoulders.

He had failed to find such a paragon in Egypt. Now he thought he had 
met just such a man, a guest at one of the recent receptions, who had 
travelled through the Sudan and explored the wilder parts of Central 
Africa, Sir Samuel Baker - Baker of the Nile. By appointing him to 
suppress the slave trade, Ismail hoped to placate his critics and 
creditors in Europe, for Samuel Baker was a hero, a man famous 
throughout Britain and the Continent for his courage and 
resourcefulness.

Sir Samuel Baker was an explorer. Like many Victorian explorers, his 
travels had made him a great public figure in the middle decades of 
the nineteenth century, but even among that dauntless band Baker was 
exceptional. He came from a long line of naval captains and military 
men and had made his name in a series of long and difficult journeys 
into Central Africa, following Burton, Speke and Grant in the search 
for the source of the Nile.

In 1863 he had forced his way along the river past Khartoum, out of 
the Sudan into the terrible swamp of the Sudd and so to Gondokoro, 
that dreary outpost on the Upper Nile. He had even gone beyond 
Gondokoro, as far as the wild tribal country of Buganda, accompanied 
by his beautiful young wife and a small force of one hundred men. 
This was the exploit which had made him famous and his account of 
this harrowing two-year expedition, The Albert N'Yanza: Great Basin 
of the Nile, became a best-selling book.

Baker was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, 
was knighted by Queen Victoria and became a welcome guest at all the 
great houses in the land. This led to an invitation from the Khedive 
to attend the Suez Canal celebrations in 1869. It occurred to the 
Khedive that since Baker knew the Nile valley and its people well he 
would be just the man for the Sudan. Apart from his experience of the 
region such an appointment would -must - placate Ismail's more 
insistent creditors for if Baker could not do something about the 
Sudan and the slave trade, no one could.

The Khedive was never mean with money and he offered Baker the most 
generous terms. He would become a pasha, a major-general in the 
Egyptian army, and receive a salary of £10,000 a year. He would 
command a force of seventeen hundred men and have a free hand in the 
matter of weapons and equipment. His task was to annex the Upper Nile 
Valley to some point well south of Khartoum and suppress the slave 
trade. This task may not have sounded insurmountable after a few 
years absence from Central Africa - or a few glasses of champagne - 
and Baker accepted the position without undue hesitation.

With that problem set aside, at least for the moment, Ismail could 
turn his attention to the state of Egypt's finances. These, to put it 
mildly, were disastrous. Ismail had been spending money With great 
enjoyment for many years, using up all the revenue raised by 
taxation, using new loans to pay off previous ones, gradually sinking 
into an unending spiral of debt- He had increased the national debt 
by about £1 million for every year of his reign and the celebrations 
for the opening of the Suez Canal alone were estimated to cost £6 
million, even today a tidy sum.

Ismail's predecessor, Mohammed Said, had begun the headlong dive into 
debt in 1858 by issuing bills on the Egyptian Treasury offering 
interest at up to eighteen per cent. Within a year bills worth 40 
million French francs had been snapped up by foreign banks which 
thereby had obtained a lien on half of Egypt's annual revenue. In 
1860 the French government took a direct hand, loaning Said 18 
million francs charged against Egypt's customs receipts. Foreign 
powers now had a grip on Egypt's internal and external finances and 
by 1880 there were over sixty thousand Europeans living in Cairo or 
Alexandria, most of them engaged in ventures of very little value to 
Egypt and great profit to themselves; all were protected by their 
resident Consuls.

Financial collapse might have come during Said's reign but for the 
outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 when Union warships 
blockaded the coast of the Confederacy and stopped the export of 
cotton. This led to a worldwide rise in demand for Egyptian cotton, 
offering a breathing space for the embattled Said and his successor 
the Khedive Ismail. Nevertheless, the debt continued to mount. When 
Said died in 1863, Egypt was in debt to the tune of nearly 400 
million francs. Most of this was owed to French banks, partly in 
bonds attached to various parts of the Egyptian national revenue, 
some of it entirely unsecured.

This pattern of borrow and spend continued under the Khedive Ismail, 
who also began to borrow from the British; his first British loan, in 
1864, was for £5 million at seven per cent interest. By 1865, when 
the American Civil War ended and the cotton boom collapsed, Egypt's 
total debt amounted to over £100 million. These sums represented 
massive amounts at the end of the nineteenth century - the interest 
payments alone exceeded the annual revenue of the country - and these 
loans were doing Egypt no good. Most of the new loans went to service 
the debts on previous loans, and the burden of the overworked, 
overtaxed fellahin increased continually. It could not last.

Ismail used every device his Levantine advisers could think of to 
stave off bankruptcy. Taxes were collected in advance, anticipated 
payments compounded for a smaller sum paid at once, the lash applied 
to recalcitrant fellahin who might have money to spare.

By 1869 the one national asset that could still be sold off was forty 
per cent of the shares in the almost completed Suez Canal. However, 
Canal shares were of little value until the Canal was operating and 
seen to be returning a profit. When the Canal opened in 1869 Ismail's 
prospects improved a little.

Britain's unstated fear, that the Suez Canal was a stepping stone for 
France towards India, was eased in 1870 when France and Germany went 
to war. The defeat of France in 1871 and the subsequent reparations 
demanded by Germany effectively removed French influence from the 
scene, at least for a while. Britain's interest in the Canal 
continued to grow, not least because most of the ships using the 
waterway came from Britain's mercantile fleet. In 1870, the first 
full year of operation, 489 ships went through the Canal, 324 of 
which were British. Clearly, Britain had a great and growing interest 
in the security of the Canal and were nervous that the country it ran 
through was on the brink of collapse. The continuance of Egypt's 
affairs now depended on the patience of the European banks, but who 
could tell where the control of Egypt - and the Canal - might 
eventually reside?

The Canal Company then caused concern in shipping circles by raising 
the transit tolls, moving from a calculation on net tonnage to one 
based on gross tonnage, increasing the cost of Canal transit by some 
thirty per cent. In 1872 de Lesseps so far forgot where the real 
power lay as to inform the British government that those ship owners 
who refused to pay could '. . . either avail themselves of the 
Egyptian Railway or go round the Cape of Good Hope . . . those who do 
not pay the dues will not be permitted to pass ships through the 
Canal.' The matter was fully thrashed out at a conference in 
Constantinople in 1873 when the Sublime Porte, suddenly remembering 
that Egypt was Turkish territory, agreed fresh but more reasonable 
charges with the international maritime community and ordered de 
Lesseps to introduce them.

De Lesseps refused. He went on refusing until Turkey, urged on by 
Britain, ordered Ismail to send troops to occupy the Canal zone 
unless de Lesseps complied with the new tariff. This threat proved 
sufficient but the British had become alarmed, for if a mere former 
diplomat and amateur engineer could have a veto on the free passage 
of British shipping, what might some well-armed power do? Even though 
de Lesseps eventually gave in, Britain had moved another step closer 
to involvement in Egypt's affairs and the British government, now 
headed by Benjamin Disraeli, decided to add weight to their concern 
by acquiring some Canal Company shares.

This was not a new idea. At the end of 1870, a year after the Canal 
opened, the British Consul-General in Cairo reported a meeting with 
the Khedive in which Ismail had suggested that the British might care 
to gain possession of the Canal. This met with a non-committal reply 
from Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary, but by 1873, after de 
Lesseps' intransigence and when the Company was seen to be trading 
profitably, there was renewed interest. Matters came to a head in 
1875, by which time Egypt was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

The financial juggling that took place to placate Egypt's creditors 
during 1875 are too complex for inclusion here. In brief, it became 
common knowledge that the Khedive wanted - needed -to sell his forty 
per cent shareholding in the Canal and there were plenty of his 
creditors eager to urge him on. The problem was to find a buyer 
acceptable to all parties. This was not easy but one of the first in 
line was the French bank, Societe Generale. If Societe Generale 
obtained the balance of the shares the Suez Canal would be a totally 
French entity and the French Government would be both obliged - and 
delighted - to protect it.

The British made it very clear that they would oppose any French 
company acquiring control of the Canal and by now the British 
government or at least Mr Disraeli, was actively interested in 
acquiring the Khedive's shares. On 17 November 1875, the Cabinet 
Secretary sent a message to Major-General Stanton, the British 
Consul-General in Cairo, stating, 'It is vital that the interests of 
the Viceroy of Egypt [Ismail] in the Suez Canal should not fall into 
the hands of a foreign company . . . intimate that H.M. Government 
are disposed to purchase if satisfactory terms can be arranged.'

Disraeli was well aware that the Khedive needed around £5 million by 
the end of December 1875 if he was to meet the interest payments on 
the foreign debt due at that time, but Parliament was not in session 
and Disraeli needed Parliamentary approval to lay out the necessary 
funds. Lacking that approval, Disraeli sent his Private Secretary, Mr 
Corry, to the banker Baron Rothschild and asked for a loan of £4 
million.

'What is your security?' asked Rothschild.

'The British government,' replied Corry.

'Very well,' said the Baron. 'You shall have it.'

-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 10/22/2001

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