Not all historians see Egypt's invasion of the Sudan as imperialism. In a collection of articles he edited that debate the very use of the term impe- rialism in the context of the Nile Valley, Abd al-Azim Ramadan writes that this conquest was not an example of one foreign country's raiding of another, like "England's invasion of Egypt, or France's invasion of Algeria or Tunisia or Morocco, or Italy's invasion of Libya." The conditions that characterized European imperialism were not present in the historical rela- tions between Egypt and the Sudan, or in the political culture of Egypt at this time. There was no sense of Egyptian identity—thus precluding the creation of the colonized Other in Egyptian society—nor was the Sudan a unified country (Därfür was not annexed until 1874).

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 187