This crisis over internal slavery was further fueled by the unfolding events in the Sudan: by the mid-1890s, reports of escaped prisoners had made it clear to both the Egyptian and British public that the Mahdist state in the Sudan, then being run by the Mahdï's succes- sor, the khalifa Abdullah al-Taishï, was overwhelmed with famine and war. British officials waged a propaganda campaign to garner public support for the reconquest of the Sudan, brandishing the memory of General Charles Gordon like a sword. General Reginald Wingate, chief of intelligence in Egypt, spearheaded his own literary campaign for colonizing the Sudan, by translating and popularizing works by the Mahdï's escaped prisoners, con- temporaries of Ibrahïm Fawzï, such as Rudolph Slatin Pasha. His propa- ganda campaign horrified Egyptian nationalists, who wanted the Sudan returned to Egypt but not to an Egypt subdued and occupied by the British.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 690