BOOKS OF THE WEEK
The British in the Sudan
British Policy in the Sudan, 1882-1902. By Mekki Shibeika. (0.U.P. 30s.) THE reluctance with which the British people were dragged into the Sudan two generations ago is only equalled by the reluctance with which they are saying good-bye to it today. The full story of this romantic association between such very dissimilar races has still to be told, and still to be explained in detail. Was it the remoteness of the Sudan which gave it such a hold, first over the imagination of the public, and then over the hearts of the people who went there? Was it the names connected with the opening up of the country— Gordon, Baker, Slatin, Gessi, Wingate, Kitchener, the Mandi, the Khalifah and Osman Digna ? Or the ideas—suppression of the slave trade, the search for the source of the Nile and the moulding of a new nation? These three books are each in their own way a tribute to the stimulus which this brief period of association has had on British and Sudanese alike.
Mr. Shibeika's book is a serious and valuable contribution to history. He traces in detail the shifting currents which led Britain step by step to assume responsibility for a vast tract of Africa, as big as the whole of western Europe including Scandinavia. It is a story which has been well told before, particularly by actors in the drama such as Cromer and Gordon, though the early part of the story is best known to British readers through the distorting mirror of Lytton Strachey. Mr. Shibeika has gone to the original archives in London, Cairo and Khartoum, and has marshalled his voluminous material with a skill that deserves the student's gratitude. Though he eschews portraits of character and allows himself the minimum of personal comment, this is probably all to the good, for the main personalties involved have no difficulty in speaking for themselves and making their motives clear. In the early stages of the story the one constant theme is British determination to avoid commitments of any sort in this "wretched province," as Lord Dufferin called it. This was the aim on which all dispatches agreed, and the history of Mr. Shibeika's book (which ends with the establishment of the Condominium) is the inevitable abandonment of the original British aim through military and political necessity, fear of French and Italian expansion, over- zealous servants, bad intelligence and the public's demand that lost face should be recovered. It was public opinion in Britain which insisted that sooner or later Gordon should be avenged, though Egyptian opinion was never comfortable at the loss of the southern dominion. It was all very well for Lord Granville to console the Khedive for the impending loss of the Sudan by pointing out that, while "it takes away somewhat of the position of a man if he has to sell his racers and hunters ... if he cannot afford to keep them, the sooner they go to Tattersalls the better." There were always some Egyptians who wanted to start hunting again. Where Mr. Shibeika leaves off Mr. Duncan and Mr. Hyslop begin. Mr. Duncan is a member of the Sudan political service, and he writes
of his adopted country with the deep affection that is always found in that remarkable body of men. But the great days are gone. It is easy, Mr. Duncan admits, to become sentimental, "to look back to, the days on a good riding camel; to the cool crisp nights under the stars when the young women sang and the young men joined in the chorus; to the talks round the wood fires with the Baggara; to the officials' club in the provincial town where we played chess and set the world good-humouredly to rights—to the days, in short, when we thought that 'good government is. better than self-government'." What does Mr. Duncan think now? It is one of the merits of this clear, concise little book that the author can see with dispassion why it was inevitable that in the end Britain should be forced to leave the Sudan just as it was inevitable that earlier she should have been forced to go into it.
Mr. Hyslop's brief sketch of the country and people of the Sudan is also marked by keen affection and by the desire that justice should be done to the achievements of the past fifty years. His book con-
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