Buying slaves was thus a benevolent mission of rescue, and buyers were civilizing agents for the wretched of the Sudan. The English editor of the Egyptian Gazette, a paper heavily subsidized by Lord Cromer, predictably rejected the claims of inherent mercy in the purchase of slaves and amplified the relationship of this argument to the larger issue on trial: which culture, British or Egyptian, was better equipped to control the Sudan itself? For the Gazette editor, Egyptian society was irrevocably tainted by Islamic despotism both publicly and privately, a factor that made Egyptians as incapable of gov- erning others as they were of managing their own political independence: “Surely it would not be safe to entrust persons with so slight a sense of moral and political responsibility with more power than they now have. They are clearly not yet educated up to the positions which they hold.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 712