But Admiral Baring’s question still rang: if the Sudan was really Egypt’s possession, how did the Egyptians lose it? Kämil placed responsibility for this first on the British when he spoke in Alexandria in 1896: “Why did the Sudanese keep on determinedly rebelling against Egypt? Why would they not accept any agreement with us? No one can deny that the British pres- ence in Egypt made the Sudanese behave that way.” But another quality in the Sudanese propelled them into the Mahdïya against the Egyptians (and Kämil never denies that the Mahdists rebelled against an Egyptian, and not Ottoman, authority)—a native fanaticism

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 743