Perhaps another reason colonialism in Egypt should be attributed to more than one source, as Mitchell presents it, is that, dur- ing much of the nineteenth century, Egypt was nominally the province or dependency of two empires, the Ottoman and the British. But Mitchell’s account neglects the fact that, for much of the nineteenth century, Egypt also attempted to establish its own empire, in the Sudan. He acknowledges that, for a brief time in the early part of the century, Egypt controlled terri- tories as far east as the Hijaz, as far west as the Morea, as far north as Syria, and as far south as the Sudan. But he dismisses this in the next sentence, writing that the empire was forcibly dismantled by local revolt and foreign intervention. It is certainly true that Egypt lost control of most of these territories by the 1840s, but the Sudan remained under Egyptian authority from 1821 until 1884. These six decades (almost the length of the British occupation of Egypt) affected the lives of many Egyptians—differently than their encounter with western Europe but in ways just as profound and com- plicated.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 83