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Gordon v the Mahdi: From Fighting Slavery to Fighting Fanaticism
This year is the 130th anniversary of Britain’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1877. In the second of two articles,1 James Heartfield discovers that “Anti-Slavery” turned out to be an excuse for colonisation in the struggle between Gordon of Khartoum and the Mahdi. Successful as the Anti-Slavery ethos of British policy was in rendering British domination as […]
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The Limits of Abolitionism: British Imperial Policy in Egypt
“We cannot admit rivals in the East or even the central parts of Africa . . . to a considerable extent, if not entirely, we must be prepared to apply a sort of Munro [sic] doctrine to much of Africa.” — Lord Carnarvon1 The original Monroe Doctrine initiated in 1824 prevented European interference in the […]