British Interventionism in the Red Sea Eastern Sudan and Britain’s Global Defence Strategy

Introduction

A close examination of two British military expeditions despatched to the Sudanese port of Suakin in 1884 and 1885 presents a useful case study into the role played by naval strategy in the expansion of the British Empire in the late nineteenth century. Launched ostensibly in response to the outbreak of the Mahdist rebellion in Sudan, the expeditions have largely escaped scrutiny from historians and have been overshadowed by the more well-studied clashes fought in the central Nile Valley during the Anglo–Sudanese conflict. As a result, the British government’s public narrative, that military forces deployed to the Red Sea littoral were sent as flanking operations to support Egypt’s position in Sudan, has gone largely unchallenged despite the internal inconsistencies in this account.

By contrast, the archival evidence suggests that, far from being trivial encounters confined to the margins of the Sudanese wars, the Suakin expeditions were instead prime examples of a phenomenon first noted by the imperial historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson: the annexation of territory in order to secure wider strategic aims. ¹ As G.N. Sanderson noted in a subsequent study of the partition of Africa, the collapse of friendly, established native states often preceded the extension of direct British imperial control over African territories as Britain attempted to preserve its status as the paramount regional power. ² The turmoil created in the wake of the gradual collapse of the Egyptian government between 1879 and 1882 may have originally drawn Britain into Egypt as a means of preserving London’s financial interests, ³ but in so doing Britain also inherited the wreck of Egypt’s disintegrating colonial empire in the present-day countries of Sudan, Eritrea, and Somaliland. Reluctant though the British government often was in assuming the financial and political responsibility of direct rule over territories of marginal economic importance, Britain was compelled to seize the ports in Egypt’s abandoned dependencies in order to preserve the Royal Navy’s paramountcy in the Red Sea. Suakin became the lynchpin of this policy, preceding the British assimilation of other Egyptian ports as Cairo withdrew its presence from the littoral region.

The existing literature on the partition of Africa in the late nineteenth century is extensive and it is therefore surprising that the Suakin expeditions have received scant attention from historians of the period. The first works of military history on the campaigns fought in Sudan were originally published by contemporary observers in the 1880s and 1890s, including those produced by journalists and officers accompanying detachments of troops sent to the territory, perhaps most notably, Winston Churchill’s The River War. However, a consistent theme in this early literature was the downplaying or dismissing of the coastal expeditions, portraying them as fruitless efforts organized by a vacillating or incompetent government in London. As Churchill himself wrote of the actions fought near Suakin, ‘as [the government] fought without reason, so they conquered without profit’. ⁴

More recent scholarship has failed to challenge this narrative. Attempting as they were to establish an overall theory of imperialism, Robinson and Gallagher, their contemporaries and their critics, including P.J. Cain, A.G. Hopkins, Ronald Hyam, and A.E. Atmore, tended to focus on the main centres of British imperialism in Africa – Egypt proper, South Africa, and West Africa. The Suakin expeditions rarely feature in any detail in the classic works on European imperialism in Africa. Similarly, whilst the Anglo–Sudanese wars have been studied in detail by military historians, the true significance of the Suakin expeditions is invariably overlooked. Often written as operational history, much of this work has failed to study the political context surrounding the expeditions and has repeated the British government’s official line that the intervention at Suakin was launched merely as a flanking operation. ⁵ Previous accounts have taken at face value the government’s explanation that the expeditions were intended to support rescue operations during a humanitarian emergency. In so doing, the intervention at Suakin has escaped proper scrutiny and its wider significance has been lost amidst discussions about the Mahdist Wars and theories of European imperialism in Africa.

Nevertheless, the Suakin expeditions must be studied independently because the evidence suggests that they are far more important than they might appear initially. Indeed, the British government’s internal correspondence and personal notes made by key figures within the Cabinet between 1883 and 1885 make it clear that troops were deployed to Suakin to prevent the port from falling into French or Italian hands. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the Royal Navy had relied on Egypt’s territorial claims to the African coastline of the waterway to forestall any attempts by France or Italy to challenge Britain’s maritime dominance of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. However, the capture of these ports by rebel troops would leave them vulnerable to exploitation by maritime rivals seeking to establish naval stations along the new route to the East. Given the importance which the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden had already assumed to Britain’s imperial interests due to the development of a new British grand strategy, the British government was compelled to take action to uphold the navy’s paramount status in those waters. Moreover, with other powers eager to exploit Egypt’s deteriorating position and Prime Minister William Gladstone’s personal reluctance to become involved in the area, the annexation of Egyptian ports had to be undertaken under various pretences.

This article seeks to highlight the Suakin expeditions as an example of imperial expansion driven by geopolitical considerations within the wider context of the evolving strategic balance of power in the late nineteenth century. It will begin by outlining the creation of a new strategy for preserving Britain’s status as a leading world power and its implications for areas such as the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden before discussing the state of the Egyptian empire in north-eastern Africa at the time. The article will then review the expeditions themselves before discussing their lasting significance to British imperialism in this portion of the African continent. It will then offer a concluding analysis of the Suakin expeditions and the impact of Britain’s approach to grand strategy in the late Victorian period.

Imperial Defence

As early as the 1840s, Britain’s leading intellectuals had begun to express anxiety over the nation’s future and prospects for remaining one of the leading world powers. ⁶ Works such as Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Biology suggested a growing fear over Britain’s place in the world and the prospects of maintaining the country’s pre-eminence over its rivals. ⁷ By 1883, Sir John Seeley in his acclaimed The Expansion of England could argue that Britain was facing a potentially existential crisis due to the expected rise of the United States and Russia which, in possession of far greater resources and populations than the British Isles, would eclipse British power in the twentieth century.

The solution to this looming crisis was the development of a strategy which emphasized using British sea power to both deter rivals and to weld the empire together into a federal Greater Britain. First propounded by Captain John Colomb in his 1867 book The Protection of Our Commerce and Distribution of Our Naval Forces Considered, the plan called for Britain to establish dominance over the major sea lines connecting the principle imperial territories, underpinned by regular coaling stations, fortresses at chokepoints, and permanent cruiser detachments. ⁸ Not only would this ensure the safety of the imperial telegraphic network and of British commerce, but it would also mean that the main battlefleet based in home waters would have the freedom of movement to threaten the coastline of any potential enemy. ⁹

Electric communication and naval power projection were particularly important elements in Colomb’s vision for imperial defence as the huge armies raised by the Americans during the Civil War and the Russians in Central Asia dwarfed Britain’s colonial garrisons overseas. The British government had already tacitly acknowledged this by withdrawing regular Army units from the new Dominion of Canada, pledging instead to protect the new federation by naval deterrence alone. ¹⁰ The ability to instantly communicate with distant territories was crucial to maintaining the omnipresent threat of naval retaliation which would replace the need to station large field armies to protect vulnerable colonies.

The full vision of an Imperial Federation, presented as the panacea for maintaining Britain’s leading status, was never fully achieved. ¹¹ However, plans for the military integration of the empire along similar lines were adopted in principle by the British government between 1882 and 1885. ¹² The result was to give an exaggerated sense of importance to the creation of long, unbroken chains of fortified coaling depots which were crucial for the fleet’s mobility and for the development of an ‘all-red’ undersea telegraph network. ¹³ These routes, particularly through narrow or confined seas, were thought to be particularly vulnerable, none more so than the Red Sea which until the end of the century contained the only cable between Britain and the eastern Empire. ¹⁴

Therefore, by the time of the expeditions in 1884 and 1885, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden formed an important and potentially vulnerable link in Britain’s global defence architecture. Although the sea lane around the Cape of Good Hope remained important for the navy’s deployments to the east, the opening of the Suez canal presented a new entrance into the guarded ‘British lake’ that was the Indian Ocean and invited other powers to threaten the all-important cable connection between Britain and the eastern territories. ¹⁵ Should another power achieve the ability to sever the Red Sea link, an important facet of British global strategy would be compromised.

Crisis in the Red Sea

After the Suez Canal was completed in 1869, the hereditary viceroy of Egypt, the Khedive Ismail endeavoured to capitalize on his country’s new geopolitical position by laying claim to the entire African coastline of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden from Suez to Cape Guardafui. Egypt had ruled Sudan as a colony since 1822, and in anticipation of the canal’s opening, Ismail persuaded his suzerain, the Ottoman sultan, to transfer ownership of the two ancient ports of Suakin and Massawa on the African coast to Egyptian administration, along with Berbera and Zeyla in Somaliland. ¹⁶ After some initial opposition, in 1875 London agreed to recognize Egypt’s vague claims to the coast as it insulated a sensitive region from French and Italian territorial ambitions, and in 1877 persuaded the Egyptian government to forfeit its right to cede territory to other powers without British consent. ¹⁷ France had already obtained a small foothold at the fishing village of Obokh and in 1869 Italy purchased a settlement along the Eritrean coastline. Both ports were studied in detail by the Admiralty, but naval planners concluded that neither were capable of accommodating medium or large warships and therefore if the French and Italians were confined to Obokh and Assab they could pose little risk to British interests in the waterway. ¹⁸

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Hugh Webster and Arthur White, Africa, 1885. Scale not given, Scottish Geographical Magazine, vol. 1. 1885. https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/africa_1885.jpg. (accessed 20 June 2018)

The outbreak of a religious rebellion in Sudan in 1881, which coincided with an ongoing war between Egypt and Abyssinia, threatened to upend this arrangement by weakening Egypt’s hold over the territory. Led by the charismatic cleric Muhammed Ahmed, who declared himself the Mahdi, the revolt convinced Gladstone that Egypt had no choice but to abandon Sudan, which he considered to be an expensive, illegitimate anachronism. As the Foreign Secretary Lord Granville, explained, ‘it takes away somewhat of the position of a man to sell his racers and hunters, but if he cannot afford to keep them, the sooner they go to Tattersall’s the better’. ¹⁹

Although initially concentrated in the central Kordofan region, by 1883 the Mahdist rebellion had spread to the eastern coastline and inland towns were besieged by rebel forces led by native Suakini and failed slave trader Osman Digna. Digna, who was appointed Emir of the East by the Mahdi after swearing allegiance in February 1883, was ordered to return to the eastern mountains and to cut the road between Suakin and Khartoum to isolate the colonial capital from reinforcements. By August, Digna had successfully rallied an army from amongst the indigenous Hadendowa tribes and laid siege to Sinkat, the principal town on the Suakin–Berber road. ²⁰ The attack raised considerable concern in both London and Cairo as it was noted ‘it will be a most serious matter if the road to Khartoum is blocked … this is the only practicable route to the south of the Soudan, and by it Government stores and supplies are continually going, as well as reinforcements’. ²¹

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Bennet Burleigh, General Map of Soudan. Scale not given. In Bennet Burleigh, Desert Warfare (London, 1884), p. 1

Attempts to relieve the town were unsuccessful. In October, a relief column of 160 Egyptian troops sent from Suakin was ambushed and destroyed in the mountain passes before reaching Sinkat. Digna counter-attacked by sending another force to capture Tokar, a small town and military outpost approximately 50 miles southeast of Suakin. A second detachment of 500 Egyptian troops from Suakin was sent in November to relieve the siege at Tokar, only to be surrounded by Digna’s fighters again in the desert and destroyed before reaching the town. ²² Among the dead was Lynedoch Moncrieff, the British consul at Suakin who had been ordered to accompany the force and to provide intelligence updates on the situation in the east.

The sense of urgency in Sudan was heightened still further when on 5 November, an Egyptian army of 8,000 men under the command of a British officer, William Hicks Pasha, was destroyed in Kordofan at the battle of El Obeid. The defeat highlighted the scale of the emergency in Sudan and cleared the way for the Mahdi’s advance on Khartoum itself. In an attempt to regain the initiative and to reopen communications with Khartoum via the Suakin–Berber road, the Egyptian government launched another effort to relieve Sinkat in December. The last battalion of trained infantry remaining in the Suakin garrison was ordered to advance on Sinkat, only to encounter an army of 3,000 Hadendowa at the foot of the eastern Sudanese mountains. The battalion was wiped out, a critical loss for the Suakin garrison and for Egypt’s military control along the entire littoral. ²³ Digna’s forces advanced on Suakin and the city was formally declared to be under a state of siege. ²⁴

The loss of Suakin would be a critical blow for both British naval interests as well as the Egyptian government. Having seized and fortified the deep-water port of Aden, frequently referred to as the Gibraltar of the East, in 1839, by the 1870s the British had established an effective monopoly over naval power in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as all the waterway’s other harbours were either claimed by Egypt or too small to support warships. ²⁵ For Egypt, with Sinkat and Tokar besieged by rebel forces, Suakin represented the government’s last and most important bridgehead in eastern Sudan. As long as the port could be held, Cairo could continue to ship men and material south from Suez and prevent the Mahdists from capturing the eastern terminus of the Suakin–Berber road.

On 12 November 1883, after learning about the defeat of the Tokar relief column and the death of Moncrieff, Britain’s man-on-the-spot in Egypt, Evelyn Baring, ordered two cruisers of the East Indies Station, HMS Ranger and HMS Coquette, to steam for Suakin. The ships, both armoured gunvessels designed for coastal operations, were commanded by Sir William Hewett, Commander-in-Chief of the station. Although the Cabinet in London refused to countenance reversing its policy on forcing Egypt to abandon Sudan, an exception was made in the east and Hewett was instructed to ‘maintain the authority of the Egyptian Government at Suakin, Massuah, and other ports in the Red Sea’. ²⁶ In December, following the Suakin garrison commander’s declaration of a state of siege over the town, the naval detachment in the harbour was joined by two more cruisers from Aden, the gunboat HMS Woodlark and the cruiser HMS Euryalus. ²⁷ Despite these measures, the Egyptian government issued a grave warning that if further support was not sent to the east, the Mahdists would likely storm both Suakin and Massawa. ²⁸

These warnings were echoed by Hewett, who in late December travelled south to Massawa to examine the town’s garrison and to assess its overall security situation. In his report back to London, Hewett noted that the garrison was demoralized and the perimeter defences had been neglected. With a hostile Ethiopian field army menacing the district and the anticipated advance of Mahdist forces south along the coast, Hewett cautioned that without support the town would likely fall to either the Ethiopians or the Mahdists in coming months and would become subsequently vulnerable to French capture. ²⁹ Despite these warnings, however, the British government remained reluctant to become more directly involved in the deteriorating position in the eastern Sudan. ³⁰ Hoping to persuade the Ottomans into resuming responsibility for the region, the government appointed Hewett Governor-General of the Red Sea Littoral as a temporary measure pending negotiations with Cairo and Constantinople over the future of the east following the Egyptian withdrawal from Sudan proper. ³¹ Although the British government was apparently apathetic towards the prospect of a Mahdist state in the Sudanese interior, it took the opposite view for the coastline.

In order to alleviate growing panic in Suakin and to regain the initiative, Cairo decided to launch another thrust towards Tokar to relieve the town. Denied permission to use his own army by the British officers commanding it, the Khedive Tewfik was forced instead to call on the Egyptian gendarmerie to undertake the expedition. ³² Reinforced by additional units from Egypt, the force of nearly 4,000 men was placed under the command of Valentine Baker Pasha, formerly of the British Army and appointed head of the police service in Suakin. As contemporary observers noted, although Baker had been cashiered from the British Army, the decision by the British government to permit the new expedition to Tokar likely indicated tacit approval even whilst the evacuation of the Nile Valley was underway. ³³

Indeed, further evidence to support this conclusion was an agreement brokered between Cairo and the Eastern Telegraph Company (ETC) to lay a cable between Suez and Suakin in early January 1884 to support the operation. ³⁴ As the work done by technological historian Daniel Headrick has demonstrated, during this time the ETC acted very much as a branch of the imperial government and its owner, John Pender, was a member of Britain’s governing class. ³⁵ The ETC had played an instrumental role in establishing the telegraphic connection with South Africa during the Zulu War in 1879, allowing for instant communications between the War Office and British forces in Cape Colony and Natal. By promising to do the same for the Egyptian government in its latest throw of the dice to regain control over eastern Sudan, the ETC’s cooperation with Cairo further signalled London’s approval of the enterprise.

As one of the Khedive’s most capable officers and with experience fighting in asymmetric campaigns, Baker was a natural choice to lead the counterattack for the relief of Tokar. Part of his plan was to transport his troops south to the natural harbour of Trinkitat, rather than marching through the desert from Suakin, and move inland to Tokar. Although Trinkitat was only a sandy bay with no port or settlement, the route inland from Trinkitat to Tokar was much shorter than the overland route from Suakin, and passed through the wells of El Teb, a vital oasis in what is one of the hottest and driest areas in the world. It would also be easier to resupply his troops by sea, rather than overstretching his supply lines overland back to Suakin through hostile territory.

Collecting his troops and preparing to depart Suakin in late January 1884, Baker arrived in Trinkitat on 3 February and built several small sconces on the beach. Marching inland on the following day, Baker and his force of gendarmes were ambushed by Mahdist troops at the wells of El Teb. Within eight minutes of the encounter, Digna’s irregulars broke the Egyptian square and slaughtered the routing troops as they fled back to Trinkitat. ³⁶ Displaying great personal courage attempting to rally his men, Baker barely escaped with his life and was among the handful of survivors to return to Trinkitat after the massacre. More importantly, the Egyptians abandoned their rifles and artillery pieces, giving Digna an arsenal of powerful modern weaponry.

The first battle of El Teb caused outrage in Britain, where the circumstances of the revolt in the eastern Sudan had been overshadowed by events in Kordofan and where the public had been confident that a British officer would easily defeat the motley Dervishes. ‘Baker’s Teb’ was termed ‘a disgraceful defeat for our army’, ³⁷ and it was blamed on the government’s ‘vacillating and inconsistent’ response to the situation in Sudan. ³⁸ The Conservatives demanded an explanation in Parliament, calling on the government to clarify what steps would be taken ‘to check the fanatical revolution in the Soudan which threatens the peace and Egypt’ and ‘whether the Prime Minister would state what steps Her Majesty’s Government were prepared to take to secure the safety of the garrisons at Sinkat and Tokar’. ³⁹ Even Queen Victoria wrote to the prime minister, declaring that ‘she feels very strongly about the Soudan and Egypt, and she must say she thinks a blow must be struck, or we shall never be able to convince the Mohammedans that they have not beaten us … It would be a disgrace to the British name [otherwise], and the country will not stand for it.’ ⁴⁰

The government was already in an awkward position regarding Sudan, having a month prior despatched General Charles Gordon to Khartoum to oversee the evacuation of all Egyptian personnel south of Wadi Halfa as part of the policy of withdrawal. In addition to the strategic considerations which in late 1883 had led to the deployment of ships to Suakin, the defeat at El Teb highlighted how precarious the situation along the Red Sea littoral was becoming. Under pressure, six days later the Cabinet confirmed that Hewett would be granted full emergency powers as chief military and civilian officer in Suakin, and he in turn appointed army officer Andrew Haggard governor of Massawa. ⁴¹ In London, a special meeting of the Cabinet was convened at the request of Secretary of State for War Lord Hartington in which the possibility of annexing the principal ports of the Red Sea was discussed, with the express aim of excluding both the French and Italians from the deep-water harbours then under Egyptian control. ⁴² This move would have the additional benefit of extending British influence into the interior by establishing control over the main trade routes, and all at minimal cost to the Treasury. Lord Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, declared that he fully supported this plan and even suggested, to forestall any French designs, the forcible removal of any Egyptian governors unwilling to make way for British troops and military administrators. ⁴³

Gladstone remained unwilling to authorize the formal annexation of Egyptian territory in Sudan, although additional naval forces were deployed to Zeyla and Berbera to bolster the Egyptian garrisons there. On 12 February news arrived that Sinkat had finally fallen to the Mahdists, leaving Suakin the only remaining Sudanese port in Egyptian hands. ⁴⁴ Bowing to the growing sense of crisis and upon the advice of the leading naval and military officers in Sudan and the Red Sea, Gladstone suspended his decision to withhold troops and authorized a plan devised by Sir Garnet Wolseley to send forces from Malta to mount an immediate counteroffensive against Digna. ⁴⁵

The Expeditions

The man chosen to lead the expedition was General Sir Gerald Graham. Graham was a close friend of both Wolseley and Gordon, and he had served with distinction in Crimea, China, and Egypt. ⁴⁶ Graham was trained as a Royal Engineer, and he would go on to distinguish himself during the 1884 Suakin campaign with a series of impressive logistical feats. His biographer described him as a keen if unimaginative soldier, who struggled with inner turmoil and depression but displayed great physical courage on the battlefield. ⁴⁷ When he was recommended by Wolseley to lead the expedition in the eastern Sudan, Graham had been serving in Egypt since 1882 and had been one of the last people to see Gordon before he departed for Khartoum. ⁴⁸

The expedition itself was made up of 4,000 infantry, 14 pieces of field artillery, and six machine guns manned by a naval contingent. The infantry on the expedition were drawn from units in the Regular Army, including the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Black Watch, the Hussars, the Gordon Highlanders, as well as the Royal Marines. Graham and his men arrived at Suakin on 22 February, and immediately prepared to advance on Tokar. Like Baker, he chose to transport his troops south to Trinkitat, where they would march the 18 miles inland to Tokar via El Teb rather than through the desert from Suakin.

Four days later, the force landed at Trinkitat and occupied the sand redoubt, Fort Baker, which had been left behind by the Egyptians weeks earlier. On 29 February the signal was given for all 4,000 troops to advance on El Teb in a square formation. ⁴⁹ Passing the decomposing bodies of the Egyptians who had been killed in the first battle of El Teb, the British moved towards the wells where the Hadendowa had dug in on the crest of a series of small hummocks surrounding the oasis. The British guns were unlimbered and fired into the Mahdist flank, quickly knocking out the four Krupp guns which had been captured from the Egyptians. ⁵⁰ Accompanied by bursts of machine-gun fire, the infantry charged up the slopes, gunning down and bayoneting the tribesmen who rushed down the hill towards them. The advancing British square eventually forced them from the hilltops, although it took hours to secure the area as the Hadendowa had honeycombed the hilltop with small holes from which they sprang out to spear the unsuspecting troops. ⁵¹

Following the victory at El Teb, the route to Tokar was clear, and Graham’s soldiers entered the town the next day. The Mahdist garrison had withdrawn, and were seen retreating to the mountains in the northwest. ⁵² After raiding some neighbouring villages, destroying weapons and interrogating local elders, Graham decided to quit the area, and retreated back to Suakin, bringing with him his entire force and some refugees from Tokar. By 5 March, he and the expeditionary force were based in Suakin, and he and Hewett needed to decide what steps should be taken next. ⁵³

One of the more pressing problems was relations with local Egyptian officials. As Hewett had been made commander of all military forces in Suakin, a new civil administration was created. British officers were appointed to oversee the administration and management of the town, and Egyptian officials were relieved of their posts. ⁵⁴ Although Hewett assured the local council of religious elders that Britain had ‘no desire to occupy the country’, he refused to allow French and Italian cruisers in the harbour to land marines and evacuate their own citizens. ⁵⁵ Similarly, Graham worried about spies infiltrating Suakin, and instituted a passport system for all white residents to prevent French and Italian agents from gathering intelligence on British forces. ⁵⁶ The British field force hugely outnumbered the native Egyptian garrison of 700, some of whom were flogged for cowardice and insubordination by British officers. ⁵⁷ Under Graham’s orders, the Royal Marines began constructing new earthworks around Suakin, complete with forts which were named after Royal Navy ships in the harbour, Euryalus and Carysfort. ⁵⁸

Whilst Graham’s victories were hailed back in London, his actions also raised questions about the nature and extent of Britain’s role in the eastern Sudan. Responding to criticism from the Opposition, Hartington freely admitted that ‘I consider it a matter of importance to British interests that the ports of the Red Sea should not be in a position which would tempt any other European Power to occupy them … we know very well that there are other European Powers which would not be averse to the occupation of the ports on the Red Sea.’ ⁵⁹ He was echoed by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who defended the government’s policy in Parliament, stating, ‘the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are British interests also, because they are the road to British interest. The communication between the Mediterranean and British India was a matter of interest to this country.’ ⁶⁰

Having revealed its motivation for intervening in the region to Parliament, the government subsequently ordered Hewett to journey to Ethiopia to negotiate a peace treaty between the Egyptians and Ethiopians which would stabilize the local situation and would confirm Egyptian authority over Massawa. Before leaving on his diplomatic mission, Hewett and Graham agreed that further blows must be struck against Digna to follow up on the victory at El Teb. Osman’s Hadendowa were far from defeated, and the tribes were rallying to the Mahdist cause as Egyptian authority ceased to exist outside of Suakin’s walls. On 10 March, the troops quitted Suakin and marched westward towards the mountains which separate the Red Sea from the Nile Valley. ⁶¹ Three days later, they encountered Digna’s main camp and, forming a square, they advanced onto the main body of the Mahdists. In the ensuing battle of Tamai, 10,000 Hadendowa warriors again fought with admirable courage, and at one point even broke into the British square and captured a machine gun after Graham impetuously ordered the Black Watch forward and left one side of his square open. ⁶² But the British troops rallied, closed the square, and proceeded to mow down the Hadendowa with volley fire and shrapnel shells until Osman and his fighters were forced to flee. The British suffered approximately 200 casualties, the Hadendowa, 4,000. After driving the Hadendowa from the field, the British proceeded to burn the settlement in Tamai.

Following this victory, Graham fell back to Suakin as he had no authority from London to continue advancing west. In a telegram back to the War Office, Graham made it clear that he felt that Tamai must be followed up with additional engagements to keep Digna on the back foot and to potentially reopen the Suakin–Berber road, which would offer a new route through which Gordon could retire from Khartoum. Graham felt it was particularly important to ‘follow up on [El Teb and Tamai] and bring the waverers to our side … [W]e should not proclaim our intention of leaving, but rather make a demonstration of advance towards Berber and induce a belief that we can march anywhere we please.’ ⁶³ Indeed, after consulting with Hewett but before receiving further orders from London, Graham once again left Suakin and marched into the Sudanese mountains, discovering Digna’s reserve camp on 27 March. ⁶⁴ After successfully skirmishing with the remaining Hadendowa in the area, Graham burned the camp, but finding his supply line stretched, was forced to return once again to Suakin. ⁶⁵

However, despite Graham’s appeals to permit him to advance through the mountains to the Nile, the scale of his victories shocked Gladstone who refused to sanction any further incursions into the interior. When, a year later, Gordon was beheaded after the fall of Khartoum, Graham would bitterly write in his diary of ‘the same day the battle of Tamai was fought, after which, at the price of much bloodshed, the road from Suakin to Berber was open for British or Indian troops, and the opportunity for rescuing Gordon and for saving Berber and Khartoum was actually in England’s grasp’. ⁶⁶ Despite opposition from members of his own Cabinet, Gladstone was deeply concerned that the expedition was going beyond its original remit and that it would result in ‘the substitution for an Egyptian domination [in eastern Sudan] for an English domination’. ⁶⁷ Accordingly, on 3 April the troops were recalled, although marines, engineers, and artillery were left in Suakin to bolster the Egyptian garrison and the town remained under the command of British civil and military officers. ⁶⁸

Between April 1884 and February 1885, Suakin was left in a state of limbo as negotiations between London, Cairo, and Constantinople took place over the fate of Egypt’s ports in the Red Sea. The Foreign Office attempted to persuade either the Ottoman or Egyptian government to assume responsibility for the ports of Suakin, Massawa, Zeyla, and Berbera, but by May 1884 it was clear that Cairo would withdraw all of its forces south of Wadi Halfa and the Sublime Porte was unwilling or unable to pay for replacement garrisons. ⁶⁹ Granville announced publicly that Britain retained the right to extend direct political control over the ports should neither Egypt nor Turkey be prepared to do so, and efforts were made to bolster the defences in the remaining Egyptian ports to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. The most impressive of these were erected at Suakin itself, where an elaborate system of earthworks, bastions, barbed wire, minefields, and outworks were supplemented with a new dock equipped with a narrow-gauge railway to reload the heavy guns installed on the town ramparts. ⁷⁰

The scale of these permanent defences in Suakin gave a clear signal about the British government’s intention of holding the port, as did the despatch of naval forces to Massawa and Indian troops to Berbera and Zeyla in Somaliland, over the objections of the imperial government in Constantinople. ⁷¹ As the Pall Mall Gazette explained to its readers, it was necessary to keep

the coast opposite Aden in the hands of a friendly Power, in order that we may be able to draw the supplies necessary for the supply of our garrison. Add to this the certainty that if Suakin and the Red Sea littoral were abandoned by Egypt they would soon be snapped up by France and Italy; and we have a fairly comprehensive summary of the reasons why an English expedition was despatched to reduce Osman Digna and his clansmen to obedience. ⁷²

Pre-printed treaties renouncing the right to cede territory were signed hurriedly with the local Somali tribes near Berbera and Zeyla as the Foreign and India Offices attempted to fill the legal vacuum left by the departure of Egyptian forces (extinguishing Egypt’s claim to Somaliland). ⁷³ Britain even entertained Italian requests to annex Massawa without notifying the Porte, the nominal suzerain, and in early 1885 consented on the understanding that the Italians would not fortify the place and would act as useful proxies in blocking French claims to the port. ⁷⁴

Uncertainty over Suakin’s future constitutional status dragged into late 1884 when the British government would attempt to rescue Gordon, who had become trapped in Khartoum by Mahdist forces. With food and ammunition in Khartoum thought to be running low and the clamour for Gordon’s rescue growing louder, Gladstone permitted the formation of a column under Wolseley to advance south along the Nile to relieve the siege and extract Gordon.

Advocates of imperial defence in the Cabinet moved swiftly to capitalize on the situation, urging Gladstone to authorize a second expedition to Suakin on the false pretence that Wolseley had requested the opening of a diversionary front against the Mahdist forces ⁷⁵ – something to which Wolseley was in reality opposed. ⁷⁶ Claiming that a second expedition would be organized merely to support the Nile column, senior figures in Cabinet, including Secretary of State for War and future advocate of Imperial Federation, Lord Hartington, smothered Wolseley’s contrary advice and demanded a second force be sent to Suakin. After news broke on 6 February 1885 that Khartoum had fallen and that Gordon was dead, sparking a wave of national outrage, Gladstone was no longer in a position to oppose a second Suakin expedition. In an attempt to fend off accusations that his government was responsible for Gordon’s death, Gladstone publicly announced that 10,000 imperial troops would be sent once again to Suakin with an aim to destroy the Mahdist rebellion. Graham was once again appointed to lead the expedition, and the Foreign Office withdrew all of its offers to return eastern Sudan to Constantinople. ⁷⁷

The second expedition to Suakin departed on 17 February 1885, and included troops from India and New South Wales, making it one of the first truly imperial field forces deployed by the British Empire. With the ostensible aim of laying a railway line between Suakin and Berber in order to form a continuous logistical link to support the movement of armies south towards Khartoum, the reality of the expedition was apparent to those who accompanied it. As one of the 10,000 soldiers landed at Suakin, Emilius De Cosson remarked that ‘it seems like employing a Nasmyth’s hammer to crack a nut – this mighty display of strength put forward by a powerful nation to subdue a few thousand lean-shanked savages armed with spears and shields’. ⁷⁸ Furthermore, De Cosson was frank in his views on the proposed railway and the permanence of Britain’s occupation of eastern Sudan which it signified:

By opening a great trade route to equatorial Africa, shall we not be laying the foundation of civilization which will spread over the length and breadth of that vast Continent, destined, one of these days, to be the granary of Europe? Will not the slave-trade, with all of its unspeakable horrors, vanish before the establishment of European commerce; and may not unborn generations hereafter, learn to bless the memory of the sturdy English soldiers who carried the iron road to the banks of the Nile, and opened the heart of Africa to the missionary and the colonist? ⁷⁹

Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald in New South Wales, in its article expressing support for the participation of Australian troops in the expedition asked its readers, ‘what higher mission is there ahead of Anglo-Saxondom, as represented by the British Empire, than to answer the cry of the savagedom of the world – take me, conquer me if necessary, but govern and instruct me?’ ⁸⁰

Judged by the publicly stated parameters of its mission, the second Suakin expedition was a failure. Several skirmishes were fought in the surrounding countryside, and only a few kilometres of track were laid. Neither Wolseley’s column on the Nile nor the detachment at Suakin seriously threatened the newly established Mahdist state and all British forces were withdrawn in May 1885 in response to a much more serious crisis in central Asia. Sudan was left in the hands of the rebels and would remain as an independent Islamist polity until the reconquest led by Kitchener began in 1896.

Nevertheless, the second expedition did achieve one important result, which was the transfer of Suakin to British jurisdiction. Without ceding the town directly to the British Crown, the Egyptian government did agree to continue appointing a Governor-General of the Red Sea Littoral as supreme civilian administrator in Suakin and to reserve that post exclusively for British officers. Moreover, Cairo also agreed to pay for a permanent garrison of British and Indian troops to safeguard the town against further attacks from Digna and his Mahdist fighters. ⁸¹ With control over both the town’s civilian and military governments, the British had acquired Suakin as a colonial outpost in all but name. Although the government in London continued to insist publicly that the expeditions had been sent merely as emergency measures to protect Egyptian personnel in the east, contemporary observers were not deceived. As one of France’s leading naval theorists noted in 1884, ‘the insurrection of Arabi gave [the British] Egypt; the Mahdist uprising now gives them the Red Sea’. ⁸²

Concluding Remarks

The collapse of the Egyptian colonial empire in north-eastern Africa came at a critical moment for the British Empire. Faced with the realization that Britain would in the future come to rely on the military and political integration of the empire in order to preserve its global status, by the 1880s the government had already committed itself to a policy of imperial defence. Preserving and defending the chains of coaling stations and network of undersea telegraph cables was the key to this strategy, command upon which Britain’s future as a Great Power appeared to rest.

Along the narrow and confined waterway of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, Egyptian territorial claims in the 1870s served as a useful buffer to prevent rival maritime powers from establishing effective footholds from which naval forces could operate. The threat that Egyptian ports in the region would fall into hostile hands instigated a British campaign to ensure that neither France nor Italy would be able to challenge the Royal Navy’s dominance in the waterway. This campaign was centred on Suakin, the most important Egyptian outpost along the African coastline, and was quickly extended to Egypt’s holdings in Eritrea and Somaliland.

The Suakin expeditions of 1884 and 1885 are therefore particularly noteworthy as they were examples of an inherently aggressive form of positioning imperialism in which European maritime states jostled to exploit deteriorating indigenous polities in order to gain strategic advantage. From the British government’s perspective, the Egyptian ports of the Red Sea were merely sites of potential significance which needed to be kept in safe hands at minimal expense. Whilst, given the delicateness of Britain’s position in Egypt, it was important to maintain the government’s narrative respecting Egypt’s territorial sovereignty and the evacuation of Sudan, the true intent behind the expeditions was readily apparent to senior Cabinet figures and foreign political observers of the time.

Indeed, for this reason the expeditions must be examined as, to some degree, separate from the more familiar military history of the Mahdist Wars which has typically focused on Khartoum and the Nile Valley. Although nominally launched to support operations against the Mahdists in the territorial interior, the intervention along the Red Sea littoral was in reality driven by different political considerations. These related to the wider geopolitical challenge facing the British Empire in the late nineteenth century, and understanding these factors helps to more fully explain the apparent contradiction over the British government’s policy towards central and eastern Sudan at the time of the Mahdist rebellion.