The River War | Page 5

race of Arab invaders was unceasingly
spreading its blood, religion, customs, and language among the black

aboriginal population, and at the same time it harried and enslaved
them.
The state of society that arose out of this may be easily imagined. The
warlike Arab tribes fought and brawled among themselves in ceaseless
feud and strife. The negroes trembled in apprehension of capture, or
rose locally against their oppressors. Occasionally an important Sheikh
would effect the combination of many tribes, and a kingdom came into
existence --a community consisting of a military class armed with guns
and of multitudes of slaves, at once their servants and their
merchandise, and sometimes trained as soldiers. The dominion might
prosper viciously till it was overthrown by some more powerful league.
All this was unheeded by the outer world, from which the Soudan is
separated by the deserts, and it seemed that the slow, painful course of
development would be unaided and uninterrupted. But at last the
populations of Europe changed. Another civilisation reared itself above
the ruins of Roman triumph and Mohammedan aspiration--a
civilisation more powerful, more glorious, but no less aggressive. The
impulse of conquest which hurried the French and English to Canada
and the Indies, which sent the Dutch to the Cape and the Spaniards to
Peru, spread to Africa and led the Egyptians to the Soudan. In the year
1819 Mohammed Ali, availing himself of the disorders alike as an
excuse and an opportunity, sent his son Ismail up the Nile with a great
army. The Arab tribes, torn by dissension, exhausted by thirty years of
general war, and no longer inspired by their neglected religion, offered
a weak resistance. Their slaves, having known the worst of life, were
apathetic. The black aboriginals were silent and afraid. The whole vast
territory was conquered with very little fighting, and the victorious
army, leaving garrisons, returned in triumph to the Delta.
What enterprise that an enlightened community may attempt is more
noble and more profitable than the reclamation from barbarism of
fertile regions and large populations? To give peace to warring tribes,
to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the
slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to plant the earliest seeds of
commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities
for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain--what more beautiful
ideal or more valuable reward can inspire human effort? The act is
virtuous, the exercise invigorating, and the result often extremely

profitable. Yet as the mind turns from the wonderful cloudland of
aspiration to the ugly scaffolding of attempt and achievement, a
succession of opposite ideas arises. Industrious races are displayed
stinted and starved for the sake of an expensive Imperialism which they
can only enjoy if they are well fed. Wild peoples, ignorant of their
barbarism, callous of suffering, careless of life but tenacious of liberty,
are seen to resist with fury the philanthropic invaders, and to perish in
thousands before they are convinced of their mistake. The inevitable
gap between conquest and dominion becomes filled with the figures of
the greedy trader, the inopportune missionary, the ambitious soldier,
and the lying speculator, who disquiet the minds of the conquered and
excite the sordid appetites of the conquerors. And as the eye of thought
rests on these sinister features, it hardly seems possible for us to believe
that any fair prospect is approached by so foul a path.
From 1819 to 1883 Egypt ruled the Soudan. Her rule was not kindly,
wise, or profitable. Its aim was to exploit, not to improve the local
population. The miseries of the people were aggravated rather than
lessened: but they were concealed. For the rough injustice of the sword
there were substituted the intricacies of corruption and bribery.
Violence and plunder were more hideous, since they were cloaked with
legality and armed with authority. The land was undeveloped and poor.
It barely sustained its inhabitants. The additional burden of a
considerable foreign garrison and a crowd of rapacious officials
increased the severity of the economic conditions. Scarcity was
frequent. Famines were periodical. Corrupt and incapable
Governors-General succeeded each other at Khartoum with bewildering
rapidity. The constant changes, while they prevented the continuity of
any wise policy, did not interrupt the misrule. With hardly any
exceptions, the Pashas were consistent in oppression. The success of
their administration was measured by the Ministries in Egypt by the
amount of money they could extort from the natives; among the
officials in the Soudan, by the number of useless offices they could
create. There were a few bright examples of honest men, but these, by
providing a contrast, only increased the discontents.
The rule of Egypt was iniquitous: yet it preserved the magnificent
appearance of Imperial dominion. The Egyptian Pro-consul lived in