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.
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