These administrators were hotly pursued by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society for detailed information on slaves and slave raids. Through this network that disseminated information about the qual- ities of Egyptian government and culture, the idea spread that Muslim slaveholders used the cloak of Islamic tradition to veil the presence of the slave trade, and that this same subterfuge was employed to justify Egypt's presence in the Sudan. Egypt's attempts at empire were thus dismissed, and Britain's empire in Egypt and the Sudan justified.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 700