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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY

Imperialism and
Economic Development in
Sub-Saharan Africa
An Economic and Business
History of Sudan
Simon Mollan
Palgrave Studies in Economic History

Series Editor
Kent Deng
London School of Economics
London, UK
Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and
enrich our understanding of economies and economic phenomena of the
past. The series covers a vast range of topics including financial history,
labour history, development economics, commercialisation, urbanisa-
tion, industrialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in
world economic orders.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14632
 Simon Mollan

Imperialism
and Economic
Development in
Sub-­Saharan Africa
An Economic and Business History
of Sudan
Simon Mollan
University of York
York, UK

ISSN 2662-6497     ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Economic History
ISBN 978-3-030-27635-5    ISBN 978-3-030-27636-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27636-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to the memory of Annette René Mollan,
and John and Sheila Wade.
 Summary of Book

This book examines the economic and business history of Sudan, placing
Sudan into the wider context of the impact of imperialism on economic
development in sub-Saharan Africa. From the 1870s onwards British
interest(s) in Sudan began to intensify, a consequence of the opening of
the Suez Canal in 1869 and the overseas expansion of British business
activities associated with the Scramble for Africa and the renewal of
imperial impulses in the second half of the nineteenth century. Mollan
shows the gradual economic embrace of imperialism in the years before
1899, the impact of imperialism on the economic development of colo-
nial Sudan to 1956 and then the post-colonial economic legacy of impe-
rialism into the 1970s.
This text highlights how state-centred economic activity was devel-
oped in cooperation with British international business. Founded on an
economic model that was debt driven, capital intensive, and cash-crop
oriented, the colonial economy of Sudan was centred on cotton growing.
This model locked Sudan into a particular developmental path that, in
turn, contributed to the nature and timing of decolonization, and the
consequent structures of dependency in the post-colonial era.

vii
 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for helping shape my aca-
demic understanding of history, business and economy, and for collegial
support and friendship. Thanks to Erik Benson, Alex Bentley, Mark
Billings, Emily Buchnea, Anna Clarkson, Stephanie Decker, Rodrigo
Dominguez, Gabie Durepos, Roy Edwards, Chris Elias, Jari Eloranta,
Neil Forbes, Ralf Futselaar, Bill Foster, Billy Frank, Juan Gallindo, Rick
Garside, Beverly Geesin, Dan Giedeman, Vincent Geloso, Chris Hall,
Jean Helms-Mills, Jan-Otmar Hesse, Jane Hogan, Dave Kelsey, Joe Lane,
Mitch Larson, Olly Lendrum, Cherry Leonardi, Alan McKinlay, Craig
McMahon, Garance Marechal, David Meredith, Ranald Michie, Rory
Miller, Albert Mills, Peter Miskell, Matthew Mitchell, John Moore, Tony
Moore, Don Morrison, Erin O’Brien, Andrew Popp, Michael Prestwich,
Chris Prior, Richard Reid, Kristine Saevold, John Singleton, Andrew
Smith, David Smith, Jack Southern, Jason Taylor, Tom Tomlinson, Olli
Turunen, Nicky Tynan, Chris Vaughan, Phillip Williamson, Nick White,
Justin Willis, John Wilson, Nick Wong, and Bob Wright.
A special thanks to my colleagues at the University of York, both past
and present: Kiev Ariza Garcia, Neveen Abdelrehim, Sue Bowden, Tim
Chapman, Bill Cooke, Chris Corker, Bob Doherty, Matthew Hollow,
Beatrice D’Ippolito, Jon Fanning, James Fowler, Philip Garnett, Alex
Gillett, Yoo-Jung Ha, Shane Hamilton, David Higgins, Arun Kumar,

ix
x Acknowledgements

Philip Linsley, Steve Linstead, Jo Maltby, Leo McCann, Daniel Muzio,

Katherine Newling, Linda Perriton, John Quail, Bharati Singh, Ayumu
Sugawara, Simon Sweeney, Kevin Tennent, Jacco Thijssen, and Shradda
Verma. Thanks also to Kent Deng, Ruth Noble and Laura Pacey at
Palgrave.
I finished this book while on sabbatical as a visiting fellow at the Duke
University Center for International and Global Studies in the Spring and
Summer of 2019. I am especially grateful to Giovanni Zanalda, and also
to all those who made my time in North Carolina fruitful and hospitable,
especially Erin Dillard, Amanda Frederick, Melissa Neeley and Jon
Cogliano. And, of course, a special debt is owed to my friends and family.
Thank you.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Annette René Mollan, and
John and Sheila Wade. They were instrumental in encouraging my inter-
est in history and the practice of historical research.

Carrboro, NC, and York, UK Simon Mollan

June–July 2019
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

Part I Foundations of Imperialism in Sudan  19

2 British Business and Sudan During the Mahdiya 21

3 The Beginnings of Imperial Development, 1899–1919 51

Part II Business and Imperialism in Sudan  81

4 The Sudan Plantations Syndicate, 1904–1919 83

5 The Sudan Plantations Syndicate, 1919–1939107

Part III The Political-Economy of Imperialism in Sudan 143

6 The Economy of Sudan, 1919–1939145

xi
xii Contents

7 The Relationship Between Business and Government

to 1945165

8 War, Decolonization and After201

Part IV Conclusion 241

9 Conclusion: Business, Imperialism and the Organization

of Economic Development in Sudan243

Appendices267

List of Primary Sources293

Index301
 About the Author

Simon Mollan is a Senior lecturer/Associate Professor in the

Management School at the University of York (UK), where he was Head
of the International Business, Strategy, and Management Group between
2012 and 2016. He is currently Director of the Sustainable Growth,
Management, and Economic Productivity Pathway at the ESRC White
Rose Doctoral Training Partnership and previously held academic posts
at York St John University, Durham University and the University of
Liverpool. He is Associate Editor of the journal Essays in Economic and
Business History and has published widely in the field of international
economic history, financial history and business history.

xiii
 List of Charts

Chart 3.1 Sudan exports by product (%), 1901–1914 53

Chart 3.2 Sudan exports by product (£E) 1901–1914 54
Chart 3.3 Total value of external trade (£E, nominal and inflation
adjusted), 1909–1920 70
Chart 3.4 The visible balance of trade (£E000s, inflation adjusted),
1909–192072
Chart 3.5 Comparative colonial revenue (£000s), 1899–1914 74
Chart 3.6 Comparative colonial revenue (as % of 1899 value),
1899–191475
Chart 4.1 Sudan Plantations Syndicate total capital (£, nominal and
inflation adjusted), 1906–1919 94
Chart 5.1 Allocation of revenue from the Gezira Scheme (£) 125
Chart 5.2 Sudan Plantations Syndicate return on capital employed,
1926–1950126
Chart 6.1 Comparative cotton prices, 1922–1938 (£/ton) 148
Chart 8.1 Sudan imports and exports, 1939–1955 (£E) 203
Chart 8.2 Sudan exports, 1919–1946 (nominal and inflation adjusted
to 1901 prices, £E) 203
Chart 8.3 Sudan exports 1939–1955 (nominal and inflation adjusted
to 1901 prices, £E) 204
Chart 8.4 Sudan imports and exports, 1939–1955 (£E, nominal and
inflation adjusted) 205
Chart 8.5 Sudan export destinations, 1939–1959 (%) 205

xv
xvi List of Charts

Chart 8.6 Sudan import origins, 1939–1956 (%) 206

Chart 8.7 Sudan government revenue and expenditure, 1939–1956
(£E, inflation adjusted) 221
Chart A1 Imports (£000s, inflation adjusted), 1909–1947 268
Chart A2 Exports (£000s, inflation adjusted), 1909–1947 269
Chart A3 Export percentage change on the previous year, 1912–1947 272
Chart A4 Sudan government revenue and expenditure; Sudan exports,
1909–1955 (£000s, inflation adjusted) 273
Chart A5 Government revenue (£000, inflation adjusted) various
colonies, 1899–1955 274
Chart A6 Government revenue (£000, inflation adjusted) various
colonies, 1939–1939 275
Chart A7 Government expenditure (£000s inflation adjusted) various
colonies, 1899–1955 275
Chart A8 Government expenditure (£000s inflation adjusted) various
colonies, 1919–1939 276
Chart B1 Sudan colonial debt (£), 1930–1973 279
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Sudan Plantations Syndicate directors and links to other

companies, 1914 91
Fig. 5.1 The managerial structure of the Gezira Scheme 110

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Sudan’s international trading partners: imports and exports

(%) 1908–1913 66
Table 3.2 Imports, 1908–1913 (£E) 68
Table 3.3 Gum exports, 1912–1918 (tons) 71
Table 3.4 Average price of millet at Omdurman, 1909–1920
(Per 100 Kilos in m/ms) 72
Table 5.1 Directors shareholding in the Sudan Plantations Syndicate,
30 June 1923 116
Table 5.2 Top-ten shareholdings in the Sudan Plantations Syndicate,
31 October 1923 116
Table 5.3 Directors of the Sudan Plantations Syndicate, 1920, 1930,
1939, 1945 and 1950 119
Table 5.4 Running hours of the main engines of the Sudan Plantations
Syndicate Factories (No. 1–No. 7), 1924/1925 to 1934/1935 121
Table 5.5 Sudan Plantations Syndicate data, 1926–1939 (£ unless
stated otherwise) 124
Table 6.1 Sudan cotton exports, 1920–1938 147
Table 6.2 Average yield and average sale price for Sudan cotton,
1925/1926–1936/1937147

xix
xx List of Tables

Table 6.3 ‘Adbel Hakim Tafteesh. Actual average profits paid

per annual crop tenancy through the years to tenants who
have remained throughout’ 150
Table 6.4 Cotton, dura and lubia cultivation with cotton yield and
rainfall, 1925–1937 153
Table 6.5 Sudan government revenue, 1926–1934 154
Table 6.6 Financial reserves and assets of the government of the Sudan,
1926–1938155
Table 6.7 Government imports and total imports, 1920–1928 156
Table 8.1 Sudan export destinations, 1944–1947, 1960 (%) 207
Table 8.2 Inflation indicators, December 1939–June 1945 209
Table 8.3 Sudanization and the Second World War: the effect on the
Sudan Civil Service Composition, 1936–1945 209
Table 8.4 Sudan Plantations Syndicate data, 1940–1950 (£E unless
stated otherwise) 218
Table 8.5 Sudan’s export trade, 1950–1965 (£m) 222
Table 9.1 Ratio of average debt outstanding to average annual exports,
1928–1938247
Table A1 Total and mean average annual exports (1901 prices),
1909–1947270
Table A2 Average annual export levels for decades, 1909–1918,
1938–1947 and 1946–1955 (£000s at 1901 prices) with
estimates of annual growth rates 271
Table B1 Sudan Government Treasury-guaranteed loan debt,
1930–1973280
Table B2 Public debt, various African colonies, 1928–1938 (£m) 281
Table C1 Sudan’s international trading partners: imports and exports
(£E/%) 1908–1913 282
Table C2 Imports by international origin and type, 1908–1913 (£E) 284
Table C3 Exports by product and destination, 1908–1913 288
 1
Introduction

For the subversion of a territory, a people, a nation or a state to an exter-

nal alien power to be imperial requires there to be dynamic processes that
draw in, bind, subvert and control, over time. The extent of this must be
sufficient to sustain the extra-territorial supremacy of the imperial power.
If this process reverses, or collapses, albeit gradually, the imperial power
goes into decline, either locally or generally. This is what this book is
ultimately about: how imperial processes—specifically those of an eco-
nomic nature—wax and wane, in this case in Sudan.
What are imperial processes and what agencies and institutions exert
power in such a way to make a relationship imperial are complex ques-
tions that relate to notions of where power is embedded and from where
it acts. Military force and violence are clearly one fairly obvious way in
which imperial power is exerted.1 However, from an economic perspec-
tive, with reference to how imperial power operated systemically, it is
necessary to think of structural forces capable of embedding people, ter-
ritory and resources within imperial relationships—that is, within an
empire. These forces of coercion that were capable of such imperial
embedding were found in a wide variety of institutions, organizations
and activities. Ports, railways and other forms of transport, mail services,

© The Author(s) 2020 1

S. Mollan, Imperialism and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, Palgrave
Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27636-2_1
2 S. Mollan

telegraphs and telephones, businesses, farms and plantations, universities

and schools, hospitals, armies, dams and canals, and so on, from a
notional list of functional structures and that could (re-)order space and
place, people and animals, water and other physical resources, technology
and knowledge, in such a way as to colonize, subjugate and control. The
combination and mobilization of these resources—their organization
and management—formed power relationships that allowed, ordered
and sustained imperialism—or at least had the potential to do so. These
same processes and institutions of imperialism also ‘developed’ territo-
ries, countries, societies and states, often in ways that destroyed and dis-
possessed individuals and communities, creating distorted institutions
and social relationships.2 These became ‘death worlds,’ to use Banerjee’s
captivating description of the relationship between corporate capitalism
and development in colonial contexts.3
British imperialism—the most impactful of the imperial systems of the
last 400 years—was part of the modernity created by industrial capital-
ism. Though, it can also be said that British imperialism helped create the
modernity of industrial capitalism by opening territories and markets,
providing labour and capital, consumers and consumption. As such, col-
onies became sites of activity to exploit (i.e., ‘develop’) resources.4 In
managing and organizing such spaces (such sites) imperial agencies
‘developed’ territories.5 In so doing, the colony was economically inte-
grated into the broader imperial economic system. One purpose of this
book is therefore to trace how Sudan was subjected to imperialism in this
way—how its resources were organized and managed to sustain the impe-
rial power relationships between Sudan and Britain, and how this endured
over time.
Generally, the colonial era in Sudan is applied to rigid dates associated
with the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899–1956).6 Yet Sudan was
gradually drawn into the imperial system for years before the invasion of
1898, as the tendrils of political and economic interest reached inwards
to the interior of Africa in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This
is more generally known, of course, as the ‘scramble for Africa.’ Though
the invasion in 1898 probably can be described in the quickening action
of a ‘scramble,’ the preceding years were a more gradual ‘slide,’ as British
interests—both political and economic—became more interested in
 1 Introduction 3

Sudan over time. In the nineteenth century Sudan was a province of

Egypt, itself a peripheral part of the Ottoman Empire. Increasing British
influence in Egypt from the century’s mid-point culminated in direct
intervention in 1882. At the same time a separatist movement sought to
wrench Sudan from Egypt and then to govern the country according to
Islamic principles. The effort to retain Sudan for Egypt led the British to
become militarily involved. This campaign ended in a rare and humiliat-
ing reverse for British military power when General Gordon was defeated
in Khartoum, in 1884.7 From 1884 Sudan was autonomous and inde-
pendent of both British and Egyptian controls, the Islamic state that was
created being referred to as the Mahdiya. The invasion of Sudan in 1898
reversed the defeat of Gordon and ended the Mahdist period of Sudan’s
history. Sudan was thus incorporated within the British imperial system
in the region, administered by the British until independence in 1956.
During the Condominium, economic development was focused on large-­
scale cotton-growing in the Gezira Scheme (the Gezira being the area of
land between the confluences of the Blue and White Niles, south of
Khartoum). This was the central imperial economic activity that bound
Sudan’s economy to the political-economy of the wider empire.
Decolonization occurred in the 1950s. Yet even through this process of
separation, the disengagement of the binding ties, networks and circuits
of power was not synchronous with juridical independence and mutual
recognition in the international states system that independence is meant
to achieve (the theoretical characterization of an independent state).8 At
an economic level these processes of power associated with imperial sub-
ordination were—as we shall see—as much marked by aspects of conti-
nuity as by change.
The chronological periodization used here reflects this sense of provid-
ing prior context and the longer-term aftermath. The book begins around
1880 and ends after the formal moment of decolonization, in the 1970s.
An alternative way of thinking about this periodological choice would be
to imagine the process of (British) imperialism intersecting with Sudan
for a time. Initially, this contact was slight, but gradually more pressing.
Eventually the processes became strong enough to form structures that
came to imprint, re-order and, at least to an extent, define Sudan, espe-
cially as state. Then, after some time, the force of the processes receded,
4 S. Mollan

slackened and weakened; decolonization occurred. The imperial imprint

dissolved somewhat. Decolonization, then, is part of the imperial process
as well, and processes are not easily guillotined, at least at the scale of
empires. Here decolonization, as with imperialism, is seen, described and
analysed as an incomplete temporal process, just as imperialism is itself
an incomplete temporal process. It is these fundamental, secular and
deep processes that are the primary object of research in this book.
The centre of the analysis presented here is to assess the importance of
business to the processes of imperialism and its role in the history of the
Sudan economy. As such the book is primarily a work of business and
economic history, and is chiefly concerned with political-economy: it
examines the power and agency formed between business organizations,
state institutions and markets. In so doing, the book will address three
historiographical issues. First, in relation to the nature of the develop-
ment of a cash-crop economy in Sudan during the colonial period (in this
case large-scale cotton-growing)—how did Sudan compare with other
colonies in sub-Saharan Africa? Second, were the operation of business
and the nature of capital accumulation a case of ‘business imperialism’ as
discussed by D.C.M. Platt and Charles Jones, among others?9 And, third,
were the operation of business and the nature of capital accumulation in
Sudan a case of Gentlemanly Capitalist imperialism, as suggested by the
work of Cain and Hopkins?10
The argument presented is, in summary, as follows. Sudan was locked
into an economic path dominated by a cash-crop—cotton, and as such
shared relative similarity with comparable colonial states.11 This experi-
ence of imperialism helped create and institutionalize a modern state
where the various sources of military, economic and political powers were
increasingly gathered together and that this institution was the crucial
determinant of the political-economy of imperial Sudan.12 These institu-
tions and concentrations of power were to survive decolonization and
form the basis of the post-colonial state, and shape its position within the
international political-economy that emerged in the period after decolo-
nization during the Cold War.13
 1 Introduction 5

Historiography
In 1945, reflecting on the establishment of the Condominium in 1899,
The Economist expressed the assumed exceptionality and atypicality of
Sudan as a British colonial possession, something that has come to influ-
ence the subsequent historiography. ‘Egypt supplied the title deed,’ the
magazine wrote, ‘that gave the expedition according to those days, its
legal justification. Britain’s contribution was the organisation and leader-
ship of the whole venture.’14 In 1910 the British Cotton Growing
Association—an important industry pressure group, with interests in
Sudan—described the colony of Sudan as being ‘not entirely British.’15
Sudan’s status as a Condominium—with political control nominally
shared by Britain and Egypt—has reinforced this sense of difference.
Sudan, unlike most other sub-Saharan African colonies, was governed
from the Foreign Office rather than Colonial Office. And this did seem
to have facilitated governmental autonomy and during the
Condominium.16 As such, then, Sudan has been considered ‘an awkward
child, historiographically as well as historically.’17
Perhaps because of this, the existent literature specifically focusing on
Sudan tends to focus on administrative and domestic political history
without placing the colony in a comparative context. Notable among
these are the contributions of Daly.18 His coverage of Sudan’s economic
history is a useful introduction to factors relevant to the difficulty of eco-
nomic development, notably the cultural, social and political divisions
between the north and south of the country, the problems of governing
such a large and environmentally challenging territory with limited
resources, and the uneasy relationships between Sudan and the countries
on her borders, in particular, Egypt. Distance, communications and scar-
city are themes that recur.19 Sudan’s political and to a certain extent eco-
nomic and financial relationships with Egypt are tackled by Warburg,
Daly and Mekki.20 For these authors, the history of Sudan is the story of
developing statehood, something also developed by Sharkey.21 Externally,
developing statehood created tensions with countries for whom Sudan
held an actual or notional ‘border,’ legal or otherwise. An ongoing point
of friction for Sudan and Egypt, and a factor for development and
6 S. Mollan

economic growth, was access to and the use of the Nile waters.22 A fur-
ther important recent work is that of Serels.23 His argument is that the
Sudan grain market became the critical site for political-economic inter-
action, in particular in mediating the relationships between different
groups in Sudanese society. He observes that those ‘outside the unified
grain market developed different relationships with the modern Sudanese
state than those within,’ and that famine (or the threat of famine, and the
potential for its relief ) became an important controlling factor within the
Sudanese state.24 The historiographical argument with respect to the
grain market as made by Serels is outside the scope of this study, though
it is worth observing that here—in counter point to Serels—it is the
cotton-economy that is the central driver of the colonial political-
economy in Sudan. However, a common theme that emerges is that the
colonial state saw economic issues in political terms, and sought to con-
trol the economy and shape its structure in the interests of the colonial
state itself.
Building on that theme, and of critical importance in the more recent
historiography has been the work of Young, whose book takes up the
developmental and decolonization story of Sudan’s political-economy,
especially covering from 1945 to 1966. One of the most important obser-
vations made by Young (and echoing Serels) is that there is a difference
between the wider economy (including all of the economistic activities of
a people in a place) and the ‘national economy’ which was the object of
policy and so, politics.25 Young observes that the conceptions of the econ-
omy—particularly, the cash-crop economy based on cotton in Sudan—
had become epistemological, something that was known about, could be
measured, and so could be controlled. This, in turn, formed the ‘cogni-
tive infrastructure’ of the policy-makers in the later period of the
Condominium, so shaping and limiting what was possible in economic
policy. Young’s work is the definitive text on economic development pol-
icy in Sudan during the period of decolonization. Its focus is on policy-­
making elites and the impact of development policy. In this book, the
unit of analysis—the political-economy formed by the intersection of
business, state/government and markets—is somewhat different but
broadly complementary. The political-economic analysis developed here
 1 Introduction 7

explores the long-run causes and impacts of the structural constraints

within which policy-makers operated.
Sudan has largely escaped the full attention of imperial historians. For
example, Gallagher and Robinson in their classic work Africa and the
Victorians deal with Sudan briefly, limited to the invasion of 1898/1899.
Darwin points to the strategic imperatives for the acquisition of the ter-
ritory, but goes no further. The historiographical interpretation that has
dominated economic explanations of British imperialism since the 1990s
has been the theory of Gentlemanly Capitalism. In British Imperialism
where Cain and Hopkins develop that thesis, Sudan is subsumed into
their analysis of Egypt.26 One contribution of this book is therefore to
interrogate more thoroughly whether the more general aspects of the
theory of Gentlemanly Capitalism might apply to Sudan, and—more
generally—to locate the history of Sudan with reference to the debates
about the economic character of British imperialism.
The Gentlemanly Capitalist interpretation of British imperialism links
the growth, governance, maintenance and exploitation of the British
Empire to a gentlemanly elite centred in the metropole (particularly in
the City of London) that through networks and contacts extended across
the entire globe. Cain and Hopkins argue that the gentlemen capitalists
used their financial might, social connection, and economic and political
influence to give themselves an advantageous position within the bur-
geoning British Empire and, moreover, that this expansion was driven by
the economic needs of this group.27 In order to apply this interpretation
to the whole British Empire, they developed variations of Gentlemanly
Capitalism to fit specific contexts. In one such variation, Cain and
Hopkins argue that in Africa, the North and the South of the continent
followed their orthodox interpretation, which resembles Hobson’s ‘eco-
nomic taproot of imperialism’; that is, where imperial expansion is closely
connected with the needs of finance capital. This contrasts with East and
West Africa where, Cain and Hopkins argue, the interests of British man-
ufacturing, not finance, led the imperialist process.28 They link this, first
(in the metropolitan context), to the perception of financial and indus-
trial division in the British economy (which while favoured by some eco-
nomic historians has been attacked by others29) and, second (in the
peripheral context), to the cash-crop economies of the countries in the
8 S. Mollan

tropical East-West band of Africa. However, Cain and Hopkins subsume

their analysis of Sudan into that of Egypt.30 This is a common feature of
imperial history where Sudan is regarded, by and large, as an ‘outwork for
the strategic defence of Egypt.’31 Egypt is placed firmly into the North-­
South category of possession by Cain and Hopkins, which leaves Sudan,
with a cash-crop economy, between the two interpretations.
The Gentlemanly Capitalist interpretation of British imperialism
raises issues connected to the social fabric and financial architecture of
the imperial world. Dumett considers that the Gentlemanly Capitalist
thesis rests on three axioms. The first is the existence of a ‘Gentlemanly
Order’ of interrelated hegemonic (or near hegemonic) interests, created
via a fusion of the landed gentry and the financial elites of the south-east
of England in the nineteenth century. The second is the dynamism of
the City of London and the power of capital markets to drive the process
of imperialism, and the third leg of the tripod is what Dumett describes
as ‘the periphery of the imperial and quasi-imperial structures—the
outer regions of political control and commercial penetration which
Cain and Hopkins dub “the wider world.”’32 Cain and Hopkins largely
reject eccentric causes of British imperialism in favour of metropolitan
impulses. This helps frame some of the questions relating to the interface
of business, finance and government in Sudan. Simply put: how and
from where did business in Sudan obtain capital, who obtained the capi-
tal, how were businessmen in Sudan socially integrated with the imperial
elites, both in Sudan and in the metropole, and how did this configure
the business-government relationship? Gentlemanly Capitalism implies
a large degree of co-operation and complicity; recent research drawing
on business history also suggests that friction, tension and compromise
play a significant role in shaping the bargains made between government
and business.33
Studies in informal imperialism highlight that the institutions of ter-
ritorial empire do not have to be present as a necessary or sufficient con-
dition to create an imperial relationship. From the perspective of informal
imperialism, businesses can be sovereignty-subjugating agencies and
imperialistic in their own right. The bargains struck between business
and the state are important regardless of whether that state was not—or
in this case was—a colonial state. It should not be assumed that business
 1 Introduction 9

was supportive of the imperial project. This is a fundamental question of

the fabric of the imperial system—how do business and capital imperial-
ize a territory; how do they subvert sovereignty separate from—though
perhaps complementary to—the colonial state? Or, alternatively, do they
act as an agency of imperialism? Is business responsible for imperialism in
‘formal’ settings?
The innovation in the concept of informal imperialism identified as
business imperialism can be seen most clearly reflected in the work of
D.C.M. Platt.34 Platt’s ‘business imperialism,’ as a variant of informal
imperialism, did not involve ‘antagonism between native and foreigner.’
Indeed, ‘in most cases … business would have been controlled and con-
ducted irrespective of nationality.’ Platt concludes that ‘it might fairly be
said that although returns derived from a political relationship may be
grossly unequal, any economic relationship, unless enforced politically,
must offer at least some appearance of mutual benefit.’ This is backed up
by a considerable amount of evidence that British business in Latin
America did not rely on preferential consular intervention, which in any
case was not a common occurrence.35 Platt did not deny that the British
had influence in Latin America; instead, he proposed that the influence
manifested itself through the businesses that were active in that region.
This also suggested that the power relationship did not have to be one of
simple one-way domination or subordination as under the territorial
model of formal imperialism. Platt’s contribution was, therefore, to recast
of the nature of agency. A succinct expression of this is given, not by
Platt, but by one of his contributors, W.M. Mathew. Mathew argues that
there are three ways in which business/capital could influence the over-
seas state: first, directly through contact with officials; second, indirectly
by officials finding policies of mutual self-interest with business; and,
third, where control or influence ‘manifests itself in mercantile authority
and initiative in the fields of activity vital to the government’s well being,
the government itself lacking the power to restrain merchant and exercise
a jurisdiction of its own.’36 This could, for example, manifest itself
through the terms under which credit was offered between city financiers
and a foreign government, or that control over public utilities in Latin
America in some cases was in foreign hands. None of these forms of influ-
ence relied or needed to be closely associated with British state
10 S. Mollan

institutions, but the reality was effective British influence. These types of
relationships will be explored here.
The questions of colonial development policy relevant to this book
framed by the classic writers in this field: Brett, Kesner, and Havinden
and Meredith.37 Kesner’s work is particularly relevant in describing the
mechanics of colonial development policies, in particular, the facility to
raise Treasury-guaranteed debt to finance a variety of staple/cash-crop
schemes designed to pay for the cost of colonial administration.38 The
impact of colonial development on tropical colonies in that period is
taken up by Brett, and in a comparative context by Havinden and
Meredith. The history of colonial development in Sudan suffers in a simi-
lar way to its imperial history—as mentioned earlier, Sudan is by and
large omitted. Sudan does not fit within Kesner’s analytical framework,
for example, because it was a condominium and because it was adminis-
tered from the Foreign Office rather than the Colonial Office. Havinden
and Meredith make a similar distinction: they ‘decided that more than
enough material was available for [their] purposes from the large number
of colonies that were under the control of the Colonial Office.’39 The
broad outline traced by Havinden and Meredith, Brett and Kesner, and
to a certain extent by Kenwood and Lougheed also, is that states that
adopted the cash-crop development model suffered both long-term eco-
nomic difficulties and accompanying political problems related to the
lack of development and the difficulty of escaping the confines of a nar-
row economic base, a problem compounded by significant debt.40 I argue
that this was Sudan’s experience also.
Finally, then, the impact of decolonization on business and the econ-
omy of Sudan will be discussed in the final chapter of the book. After the
trauma of colonialism itself, there is little doubt that the process of decol-
onization has dramatically shaped the political-economic landscape of
the ex-colonies. The manner in which both economic and political pow-
ers were redistributed in the run up to and then during decolonization is
a central question. Fieldhouse argues that economic decolonization was
not simply a process that ended when the British left a territory, or when
a significant period of time had elapsed from the end of formal control,
but rather should be seen as a process which sculpted African economies
and polities, and defined the architecture of various governments,
 1 Introduction 11

agencies, institutions and frameworks within which African states and

politicians continue to operate.41 Tignor argues that foreign business
operating in Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya did not thrive during decoloniza-
tion.42 In Egypt, for example, the systematic sequestration of overseas
assets is attributed to the antagonism of Egyptian nationalists towards
foreign influence within the country. A feature of this study will be to
examine the key bargains struck between business and government in the
years immediately before decolonization. Decolonization will be exam-
ined as a process in terms of how it shaped the short- and medium-term
political-economy of Sudan, especially, of course, with regard to business;
and how the process of decolonization was shaped itself by the bargains
struck and the relationship between government, business and economy.

Structure of the Book

This book is divided into three substantive parts. Part I looks at the foun-
dations of imperialism in Sudan. Part II examines the role of business and
imperialism in Sudan. Part III explores the political-economy of imperi-
alism in Sudan. Part IV concludes. The chapters are as follows.

Part I: Foundations of Imperialism in Sudan

Chapter 2 (‘British Business and Sudan During the Mahdiya’) explores

the early commercial and economic interactions between Britain and
Sudan before the invasion of Sudan in 1898, and how these were bound
up in Victorian notions of moral economy and a ‘gothic’ sensibility of
empire. Ultimately, these interventions were failures, but they reveal how
an economic mythos arose relating to Sudan that was to influence policy-­
makers, entrepreneurs, and the business history of the country during the
colonial period.
Chapter 3 (‘The Beginnings of Imperial Development, 1899–1919’)
establishes the context of economic activity in Sudan during the
Condominium by examining the economic geography of the territory.
From there economic growth, the development of transport and services,
12 S. Mollan

and the expansion of international trade are discussed. The conclusion

drawn is that Sudan’s mainly agricultural economy enjoyed modest suc-
cess in this period. The transport infrastructure of the country was built
up and the extent of a monetized economy engaged in trade was expanded.

Part II: Business and Imperialism in Sudan

Chapter 4 (‘The Sudan Plantations Syndicate, 1904–1919’) examines

how cotton-growing was developed by business in Sudan, and how this
was linked to metropolitan finance and wider corporate and commercial
networks. The Sudan Plantations Syndicate came to be central to the
plans to develop Sudan’s economy via a large-scale cotton-plantation in
the Gezira area.
Chapter 5 (‘The Sudan Plantations Syndicate, 1919–1939’) traces and
analyses the fortunes, internal organization, and business strategy of the
Sudan Plantations Syndicate as it reached maturity as a business along-
side the Gezira Scheme, and how it dealt with the challenges of the
Depression era.

Part III: The Political-economy of Imperialism in Sudan

Chapter 6 (‘The Economy of Sudan, 1919–1939’) examines how the

Gezira Scheme finally came into production in the mid-1920s, only to
then be adversely affected by the Great Depression, and the slump in
global commodities markets, including cotton. The negative impact that
this had on the Sudan government finances is also examined, as it fore-
grounds the move towards decolonization that followed in the 1940s.
Chapter 7 (‘The Relationship Between Business and Government to
1945’) charts the changing nature of the relationship between the Sudan
Plantations Syndicate and the Sudan government between c.1907 and
1945. Specifically, it examines changes to arrangement of the agreements
that governed the Gezira Scheme, and allocated both costs and profits.
This analysis shows how the bargain between the two parties, and which
 1 Introduction 13

of the two was in ascendency, with the primacy of the state solidifying
over time.
Chapter 8 (‘War, Decolonization and After’) examines the trajectory
of the economy from the Second World War until the 1970s. A critical
event of this period was the decision of the Sudan government to effec-
tively nationalize the Gezira Scheme. This brought to an end the
Syndicate’s involvement in the economy of Sudan, and moved Sudan
closer to independence in 1956. The chapter then turns to the impacts of
colonialism on the Sudan economy after decolonization, exploring how
increased indebtedness and the involvement of the World Bank re-­
organized Sudan’s external economic relations, but left it still as a cash-­
crop economy, dependent and peripheral to the core of the world
economy centre on the already industrial economies.

Part IV: Conclusion

Finally, Chap. 9 (‘Conclusion: Business, Imperialism and the Organization

of Economic Development in Sudan’) concludes by exploring the details
the historiographical questions identified in this introduction, placing
Sudan in a comparative context, relating history of Sudan to the idea of
‘business imperialism’ and examining the applicability of the theory of
‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’ to the Sudanese context. The book ends by
discussing ‘imperial organization’ as a problematique for future scholar-
ship in the field.

Notes
1. See, for example, Justin Willis, “Violence, Authority, and the State in the
Nuba Mountains of Condominium Sudan.” The Historical Journal 46,
no. 1 (2003): 89–114; Edward Spiers, “Wars of Intervention: A Case
Study—The Reconquest of the Sudan, 1896–99.” Occasional Paper,
1998; Robert Kubicek, “British Expansion, Empire, and Technological
Change.” The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume 3 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 247–269.
14 S. Mollan

2. These impacts are discussed in the literature on coloniality and post-­

colonialism. For an outline see: Simon Mollan, “Imperialism and
Coloniality in Management and Organization History.” Management &
Organizational History (2019) 14 (1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.108
0/17449359.2019.1587969. See also: Ann Laura Stoler, Duress: Imperial
Durabilities in Our Times. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).
Ann Laura Stoler, “Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and
Ruination.” Cultural Anthropology (2008) 23 (2): 191–219; Aníbal
Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies
(2007) 21 (2–3): 168–178.
Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos Jáuregui, Coloniality at
Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate. (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2008).
3. Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, “Necrocapitalism,” Organization Studies
29, no. 12 (1 December 2008): 1548. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0170840607096386.
4. Marshal Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of
Modernity. (New York: Verso, 1983).
5. Notions of ‘development’ are highly contested. See Simon Mollan.
“Economic Development and the British Empire.” In The British Empire:
A Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Mark Doyle, (Santa Barbara, CA:
ABC-CLIO, 2018), 86–88.
6. Martin Daly, Empire on the Nile: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898–1934.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Martin Daly, Imperial
Sudan: The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, 1934–56. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
7. Harold MacMichael, ‘A summary of events in the Sudan from
1819–1899’, in J.A. de C. Hamilton (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
from Within (London: Faber and Faber 1935), 61–72.
8. For definitions of sovereignty and independence see: Stephen D. Krasner,
“Rethinking the Sovereign State Model.” Review of International Studies
27 (2001): 17–42; Stephen D. Krasner. “Abiding Sovereignty.”
International Political Science Review 22, no. 3 (2001): 229–251.
9. Charles Jones, ‘Business Imperialism and Argentina, 1875–1900: A
Theoretical Note’, Journal of Latin American Studies 12, 2, (1980),
437–444; D.C.M. Platt, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some
Reservations’, Economic History Review, 1968, 296–306; Finance, Trade
and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914, (Oxford: Oxford
 1 Introduction 15

University Press, 1968); (ed.) Business Imperialism, 1840–1930: An

inquiry based on the British experience in Latin America (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977).
10. Peter J. Cain and Anthony G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000
(Longman: London, 2002).
11. Simon Mollan, “Business, State and Economy: Cotton and the Anglo-­
Egyptian Sudan, 1919–1939,” African Economic History 36
(2008): 95–124.
12. Heather J Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in
the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (University of California Press, 2003). In par-
ticular chapter 4: ‘The Mechanics of Colonial Rule’, 67–94.
13. Again, a good guide is Sharkey, Living with Colonialism. See chapter 6:
‘The Nation after the Colony’, 120–136.
14. ‘The World Overseas: Egypt and Sudan’, The Economist, 11 August 1945,
192–193.
15. SudA PK 1569 2 BRI, British Cotton Growing Association, ‘Memo on
the Development of Cotton Growing in the Sudan’, November 1910, 2.
16. Wm Roger Louis, “The Dissolution of the British Empire,” The Oxford
History of the British Empire 4 (1999): 340–341.
17. Justin Willis, “Violence, Authority, and the State in the Nuba Mountains
of Condominium Sudan,” The Historical Journal 46, no. 1 (2003): 90.
18. Daly, Empire on the Nile and Imperial Sudan; see also Peter M. Holt and
Martin Daly, A history of the Sudan from the coming of Islam to the present
day (London: Routledge, 1988).
19. Daly, Empire, chapter 5, 192–239; chapter 11, 420–450; and Imperial,
chapter 5, 84–126; chapter 7, 172–205; chapter 10, 302–351.
20. Gaby R. Warburg, Egypt and the Sudan—studies in history and politics
(London: Routledge, 1985); also noteworthy on this topic is material
contained within Martin Daly, ‘The Development of the Governor
General of the Sudan, 1899–1934’, Journal of African History, 24, 1,
1983, 77–96; Abbas Mekki, The Sudan Question (London: Faber and
Faber, e1953).
21. Heather J. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in
the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (London: University of California Press,
2003). See also Heather J. Sharkey, ‘Colonialism and the culture of
nationalism in the northern Sudan, 1898–1956’ (unpublished PhD the-
sis, Princeton University, 1998); Heather Bell, Frontiers of medicine in the
16 S. Mollan

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1899–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1999).
22. Robert O. Collins, The Waters of the Nile (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1990); see also Terje Tvedt, The River Nile in the Age of the British
(London: I.B. Taurus, 2004); Ertsen, Maurits. Improvising Planned
Development on the Gezira Plain, Sudan, 1900–1980 (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2015).
23. Steven Serels. Starvation and the State: Famine, Slavery and Power in
Sudan, 1883–1956. (London: Palgrave, 2013).
24. Steven Serels. Starvation and the State, 10, 151–154.
25. Alden Young, Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic
Development, and State Formation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2017), 27.
26. Ronald Robinson, Jack Gallagher, and Alice Denny, Africa and the
Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1961),
351–78; Peter J. Cain and Anthony G. Hopkins, British Imperialism:
1688–2000 (London: Pearson Education, 2002), 317; John Darwin,
“Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion,”
The English Historical Review 112, no. 447 (1997): 635.
27. For more detail see Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism; R.E. Dumett
(ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism—The New Debate
on Empire (London, 1999); S. Akita (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism,
Imperialism and Global History (London: Longman, 2002).
28. J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A study (London: James Nisbet and Co. Ltd,
1902); Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, Ch. 11, 303–339.
29. See respectively: M.H. Best and J. Humphries, ‘The City-Industry
Divide’ in B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick (eds.), The decline of the British
economy (Oxford, 1986), 223–239; G. Ingham, Capitalism Divided?:
The City and Industry in British Development (London, 1984), and
M. Daunton, ‘ “Gentlemanly Capitalism” and British Industry’, Past and
Present, 1989, 119–158.
30. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 317.
31. John Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians: the dynamics of expan-
sion’, English Historical Review, June 1997, p. 635; see also J. Gallagher,
and R. Robinson, with A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians—the Official
Mind of Imperialism (London, 1967), esp. 351–378.
32. Raymond Dumett, ‘Introduction’ in Raymond Dumett (ed.),
Gentlemanly Capitalism, 4–5.
 1 Introduction 17

33. Jean Boddewyn, “International Business-Government Relations

Research 1945–2015: Concepts, Typologies, Theories and
Methodologies.” Journal of World Business 51, no. 1 (2016): 10–22.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2015.08.009; Neveen Abdelrehim, and
Steven Toms. “The Obsolescing Bargain Model and Oil: The Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company 1933–1951.” Business History 59, no. 4 (2017):
554–571; Geoffrey Jones, “The State and Economic Development in
India 1890—1947: The Case of Oil.” Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 3
(1979): 353–375.
Shraddha Verma and Neveen Abdelrehim. “Oil Multinationals and
Governments in Post-Colonial Transitions: Burmah Shell, the Burmah
Oil Company and the Indian State 1947–70.” Business History 59, no. 3
(2017): 342–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2016.1193158.
34. Platt, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’; Platt, Finance, Trade and Politics;
Platt, Business.
35. Platt, Business Imperialism, 6–11; Platt, Finance, Trade and Politics, passim.
36. W.M. Mathew, ‘Antony Gibbs & Son, the Guano Trade and the Peruvian
Government, 1842–1861’, in Platt, Business, 337.
37. Edwin Brett, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa (London:
Heinemann, 1973); Richard Kesner, Economic Control and Colonial
Development: Crown Colony Management in the Age of Joseph Chamberlain
(Oxford: Clio Press, 1981); Michael Havinden and David Meredith,
Colonialism and Development: Britain and its tropical colonies, 1850–1960
(London: Routledge, 1993).
38. Kesner, Economic Control, p. 5; See also Meredith and Havinden,
Colonialism and Development, p. 45; C. Ehrlich, ‘The Uganda Economy,
1903–1945’, in Vincent Harlow & E.M. Chilver (eds.), History of East
Africa, Vol. III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 400.
39. Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, p. 3.
40. George Kenwood and Alan Lougheed, The Growth of the International
Economy, 1820–2000 (New York: Routledge, 1999).
41. David Fieldhouse, Black Africa: 1945–80—Economic Decolonization and
Arrested Development (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986).
42. Robert Tignor, Capitalism and Nationalism at the end of Empire
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
 Part I
Foundations of Imperialism
in Sudan
 2
British Business and Sudan During
the Mahdiya

The main purpose of this chapter is to explore British business and eco-
nomic engagement with Sudan in the period before the Reconquest of
1898/1899, as a precursor to the period of business-centred colonial eco-
nomic development that followed. Economic and commercial interac-
tions between Britain and Sudan were limited in this period, however,
because Sudan was largely closed to external trade and investment.
Nevertheless, Sudan was part of a British sense of moral and political
economy in the region in relation to slavery and the slave trade, and the
politics and anxieties of an imperial power that had suffered a significant
psychological reversal at the hand of Sudanese military forces with the
death of Gordon in 1885. Following this, and until the (re)conquest by
the British in 1898/1899, Sudan was without the ruling oversight of for-
eign powers, be they Ottoman, Egyptian or British. The one geographical
exception to this was the port of Suakin on Sudan’s Red Sea coast. Suakin
had long been a significant trading port, connecting the interior of Sudan
with Egypt, the Levant to the North, Arabia to the West, and through the
Gulf of Aden and across the Arabian Sea, to India and beyond.
This chapter is structured as follows. The first section considers some
of the geo-political and cultural reasons that Britain as an imperial power

© The Author(s) 2020 21

S. Mollan, Imperialism and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, Palgrave
Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27636-2_2
22 S. Mollan

became interested in Sudan, and how this then translated into economic
interest. The second section examines the importance of the port of
Suakin to that economic interest. The third and fourth sections are
focused on ambitions—economic, entrepreneurial and to some extent
moral—of three imperial protagonists: Francis William Fox, Verney
Lovett Cameron and Augustus Blandy Wylde. These men’s persistent
interest in Sudan helped to shape the nature of British interaction with
Sudan in the period covered here. The third section explores how they
sought to harness business enterprise to wider imperial policy; the fourth
section explores their failure to do so.

Geo-politics and Imperial Culture

There were two interlinked geo-political reasons why Britain developed a
strategic interest in the Eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century.
The first, probably primary reason, was that the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869 gave Britain a direct interest in the passage to India and
the Far East, and the imperial possessions there. Related then were the
politics of the Near East region in that same period. The nineteenth-­
century decline of the Ottoman Empire (the ‘Eastern Question’) was
intimately connected to both European rivalry and its proxy, the Scramble
for Africa. The slow collapse of the Ottoman Empire had direct effect on
Egypt, which was part of the broader political structures of the Sublime
Porte. Egypt was financially distressed. As is well known, both France and
Britain became creditors, resulting in the famous 1882 takeover of the
country in all but name. This, in turn, brought Sudan into the edges of
British policy and Egyptian policy. Sudan had been in effect a province of
Egypt, but one which was at a considerable distance. As Moore-­Harrell
writes in her study of General Gordon’s governor-generalship of Sudan
under Egyptian rule (1877–1880), ‘[s]ervice in Sudan was widely viewed
as a death sentence. Few prominent Egyptians had visited the country, or
wished to do so.’1 This in part explains why Gordon had been able to
become Governor General, following a short period as Governor of the
Equatoria province in Sudan. Gordon was also in Sudan as an extension
of British soft power, occupying a role that might now be described as
 2 British Business and Sudan During the Mahdiya 23

providing ‘technical assistance’ to the regime in Cairo. His role, in line

with broader British policy, was to obliterate the slave trade, as well as
attempting to run the then province to contribute (or at any rate not
detract) from Egypt’s strained finances.
The Mahdist rebellion of the early 1880s led the British to abandon
Sudan in late 1883, after ‘a futile attempt to crush the Sudanese insur-
gency.’2 After resigning as Governor General in 1880 and wandering vari-
ous marginal areas of British power—from China to Syria—Gordon
returned to Sudan to evacuate the British and Egyptian officials who were
still there. Khartoum was laid siege. In January 1885 it was sacked and
Gordon killed.3
The period that followed under Mahdist rule—the Mahdiya,
1884–1898—has been characterized as being highly chaotic.4 Mahdism
was an Islamic and to a large extent nationalist political movement
which sought to (re)establish a caliphate and Islamic polity in Sudan.
The religiously inspired nature of the Mahdist regime has arguably
obscured its nature and motivations. In the British narrative—stereo-
typically, that is—prior to the invasion of 1898/1899, Sudan was in
‘disorder,’ conceived of as a kind of anarchic chaos, borne of the suppos-
edly inhumane instincts of the Mahdi and his followers.5 Winston
Churchill in My Early Life, for example, described that the purpose of
invasion of Sudan was to ‘liberate these immense regions from its with-
ering tyranny.’6 Historians of Mahdist Sudan have been more even-
handed, and the period and the regime have also been conceptualized as
a short-lived African empire that was highly organized.7 It was nonethe-
less considered as being a rogue entity by the British at that time. Sudan
was placed under a militarily led trade embargo, what would be described
in contemporary terms as being under trade sanctions. Suakin, however,
was declared a British protectorate in February 1884 and remained a
British possession.8
The outpouring of public grief at the death of Gordon perhaps indi-
cates something of the loss of prestige, and the significance of that defeat
and what it had come to mean in 1885. Gordon was a revered figure of
his day, his supposedly daring adventures reflecting the popular myths of
Victorian empire. Sudan, then, became symbolical of a tragic mythos—
the fallen hero, especially for those who cleaved to the Victorian ideals to
24 S. Mollan

which Gordon was associated. The desire to avenge the loss and reclaim
the country was bound up with a gothic sensibility—of dangerous inte-
rior territories and people, whirling dervishes, exotic places, strange cus-
toms, heathen religions, untold riches, and abundant resources. This
latter belief—of the economic possibilities of Sudan—was connected to
a spirit of romantic entrepreneurialism, which was simultaneously desir-
ous, fearful, imaginative, and ignorant. This is not the entrepreneurship
of contemporary post-industrial modernity, of supposed calculation and
rational organization, but an entrepreneurialism of dreams, and preju-
dice. In this sense, it is connected to the imperial visions and the gothic
sensibilities of the Victorian British, and how they considered their empire.
Brantlinger calls this the ‘imperial gothic’, ‘the seemingly scientific,
progressive, often Darwinian ideology of imperialism with an antithetical
interest in the occult [that is] especially symptomatic of the anxieties that
attended the climax of the British Empire.’9 The imperial gothic usually
refers to ‘fiction set in the British Empire that employs and adapts ele-
ments drawn from Gothic novels such as a gloomy, forbidding atmo-
sphere; brutal, tyrannical men; spectacular forms of violence or
punishment; and the presence of the occult or the supernatural,’ but it
can also be seen in the imaginary vision (i.e., a type of fiction) of what
kind of place Sudan was, and what kind of place it might be if colo-
nized.10 Of interpretive value here is the notion of anxiety accompanying
the moment of climax, in particular in respect to General Gordon, and
the ‘moral’ developmentalism connected to anti-slavery campaigns and
notions of peace-bringing trade and commerce. In this historically located
understanding, colonialism takes on an opaque transformational quality,
to re-make a colony and to fix or address the moral and religious anxieties
of Victorian Britain in respect of peoples in lands not yet conquered. This
is then to partly reject wholly rational notions of the processes of entre-
preneurship, organization and economic action that are based on specific
contemporary experiences. This can help us problematize imperialism as
a vision of ‘progress’ and a practice of violence; it was supposedly ‘moral’;
it combined notions of ‘civilization’, with cruelty, and technological
rationalism with ‘rationalized’ racism. It faced both forwards and back,
displayed notions of ‘progress’ suffused with existential anxiety, and was
based on temporally and culturally limited knowledge. Developing a
 2 British Business and Sudan During the Mahdiya 25

cultural and aesthetic sense of how Sudan was viewed in terms of busi-
ness, trade and politics is essential in order to chart the changing ideas
that relate to imperialism and development as intertwined processes.
How the British viewed Sudan prior to the invasion of 1898 is a substan-
tial part of their imperial ambitions for the country, and how they imag-
ined opportunities, and what might be called ‘development’. The
assumptions made about Sudan were paradigmatic and often fantastical,
inhabiting a different cultural and business sensibility to later bureau-
cratic and technocratic notions of colonial management that were more
heavily embedded in scientistic and managerialist models ‘progress’. As
we will see, this is a history of repeated failed attempts to build an empire
in Sudan through the operations of business ventures. This failure also
marks the end—if it ever existed—of an autonomic, organic, emergent
and entrepreneurial process of imperialism at the level of primary interac-
tion involving business; thereafter (during the Condominium years)
business became locked into an imperial system where the colonial state
was of significant structural influence.
The grand politics of the era were largely about the problems of secur-
ing British interests in Egypt and the Red Sea, into which context Sudan
was merely a subsidiary element, but one where the British had no prima
facie imperial ambitions, at least in the late 1880s and early 1890s.11 This,
however, did not apply to three men—Francis William Fox, Verney
Lovett Cameron, and Augustus Blandy Wylde—who sought to avenge
Gordon and make Sudan into a British colony via the mechanisms of
trade, commerce, and business. This pre-colonial business history of
Sudan is important for two reasons. First, it expresses something of the
ways in which those with imperial ambitions conceived of the role of
business in that process, as well as how the imperial system could be
made to serve other (supposedly loftier) purposes, such as the campaign
for anti-slavery, though as we shall see, from a critical perspective, many
of the efforts at developing business in Sudan looked a great deal like
rent-seeking and desiring monopoly advantage. The second element of
this was that it reflected a developmental vision which was different to
the more technocratic and schematic attempts at development which fol-
lowed, but within which we can see traces of both Victorian imperialism,
and also precursors of the economic development that was to follow.
26 S. Mollan

Suakin
From 1885 the British, albeit in the partial guise of British officers serv-
ing in the Egyptian Army, continued to run Suakin, which had become
their one remaining toe-hold in what had become, briefly, a decolonized
country. Suakin played a role in furthering British interests in the region
during these years, one of which was to prepare for the eventual recon-
quest of the country. It also continued to act as an entrepôt for trade and
commerce, linking together various different spheres of interest, cultures
and peoples: Sudanese, British, Egyptian, Arabian, Levantine, Greek and
Indian. Suakin was, furthermore, the gateway to Sudan for the British,
both physical and imaginative. The importance of Suakin was for its stra-
tegic value to the interior of Sudan and also in respect of the changes in
the importance of the Red Sea after the opening of the Suez Canal. A
company prospectus for the Soudan Syndicate Limited in 1888
observed that:

Soon after the opening of the Suez Canal the value of the Soudan as a field
of British enterprise began to take shape, and gradually an improved sys-
tem of commerce, more in accordance with civilised ideas, began to sup-
plant the methods employed by Moslem traders. … Souakim being the
only port allowed for the use of Christian traders with the Soudan, quickly
attracted a goodly portion of the Cairo trade. It was soon discovered that
any commercial transaction which required more than a year to conclude
before the war via Cairo, could be completed in seven weeks between the
departure of the goods from Manchester and their delivery in Khartoum.12

Suakin was then a connective point between the Red Sea zone, and the
wider world beyond it, and the interior of Sudan. It acted as a gateway
between the exterior and the interior, between the spheres of influence of
the European powers including Britain, with its desire to find markets
and open up trade, and the lands and people within. In this sense it was
positioned between sea and land, between nascent colonial powers and
the non-colonial Mahdist-dominated Sudan, and—for the British—
between the known and the exotic unknown. In 1937 one Sudanese
 2 British Business and Sudan During the Mahdiya 27

administrator described the centrality of Suakin to the commerce of the

region in the pre-Condominium period:

As the only port of the Sudan, Suakin was of great value to Egypt. In addi-
tion, it was centrally placed for trade coming to Egypt from India,
Abyssinia, Arabia, and the Yemen, and it was the main port for Sudanese
and West African pilgrims. Egyptian enterprise therefore developed the
resources of the port as far as it was able and during the next fifty years it
rose to the zenith of its glory.13

A telegraph was installed that linked Cairo with Suakin in 1885.

Egyptian and British troops were based at Suakin, sometimes numbering
as many as 18,000 men.14 There was also a British naval presence.15 A
series of Governor Generals served between 1885 and 1898, some of
whom—such as Kitchener, Holled-Smith and Wingate—were to have
lasting ties to Sudan after the Reconquest.16 Suakin was, then, the con-
nective anchor that led to further colonial ambitions in the region.

 he Imperial Ambition of Francis William Fox,

T
Verney Lovett Cameron and Augustus
Blandy Wylde
Attempts to develop British business in Sudan during the Mahdist period
were chiefly connected to three men—Francis William Fox, Verney
Lovett Cameron and Augustus Blandy Wylde—who were largely moti-
vated by a vision of moral economy where free-trade and commerce
would develop peaceful political and social relations that would in turn
achieve their primary moral, political and ideological aim: to end slavery
and the slave trade in Sudan. There were concrete links between all three
men and General Gordon via the Anti-slavery Society, which in the
1880s and 1890s acted as the institutional backing and—through the
society’s newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Reporter—the chief mouthpiece
supporting the schemes the three men helped to organize.17
Francis William Fox (c.1841–1918) was active in anti-slavery politics
for much of his adult life, including being the Vice-Chairman of the
28 S. Mollan

Anti-slavery Society. He was a Quaker and also supported the temper-

ance movement.18 Varney Lovett Cameron (1844–1894) was a relatively
famous Victorian explorer, who was supposedly the first European to
cross Africa from the east to the west, going from Zanzibar to the Congo
between 1872 and 1875. On his eventual settlement in Britain in the
1880s until his death in 1894, he was involved in a number of businesses
the purpose of which was to commercially develop the interior of Africa.19
Augustus Blandy Wylde (c.1850–1909) was the son of Major General
William Wylde, who served as an equerry to the British Royal Family.
Augustus Blandy was most famous for the publication of ‘83 to ‘87 in the
Soudan, his account of campaigns in the era of Gordon. Wylde served as
the Vice Consul at Jeddah in the 1870s, before serving in various capaci-
ties in Suakin in the 1880s.20 Both Wyldes were ardent anti-slavery cam-
paigners.21 Indeed, the Anti-slavery Society thought very highly of
Augustus Wylde, observing that he would ‘always demand the support of
the Anti-slavery Society, because that society has been and always will be
opposed to any military conquest of that country [Sudan].’22
Fox first came into contact with Sudan directly as a result of Gordon.
When Gordon returned to Sudan in 1884, he initially attempted to
appoint Zobeir Pasha—also known as Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur—as
leader in Sudan. Zobeir had come to prominence as an exotic figure in
the British imperial imagination. He was powerful slave-trading poten-
tate, who had by the 1870s ‘had built up an extensive empire in the
Western Bahr al-Ghazal region of Sudan.’ By 1873 he had been appointed
Governor. This brought Zobeir into conflict with Gordon when he was
in his first stint as Governor General and led to his eventual exile in
Cairo. Gordon reportedly regarded Zobeir with a ‘ “mystic feeling” [that]
enabled him to trust this dusky descendent of the Khalifs.’23 By the time
that Gordon was under siege in Khartoum in 1884, Fox travelled to
Cairo in a forlorn personal mission to intervene. His biographer wrote
that it was Fox’s ‘imagination rather than his knowledge of Egyptian and
Sudanese affairs that dominated him.’24 Fox met with Zobeir, and at his
behest Zobeir wrote to the Mahdist government to intercede on behalf of
Gordon, but to no avail. Gordon was a popular figure within the Anti-­
slavery movement, and from this initial engagement, Fox became pecu-
liarly interested in Sudan over the next decade. In a number of phases,
 2 British Business and Sudan During the Mahdiya 29

Fox and his associates repeatedly proposed business schemes designed to

bring Sudan within the British imperial system.
Underpinning this was an ideological and cultural vision, not only of
Sudan and its people, but also of the role that trade, commerce and busi-
ness should play in shaping the relationships between the British Empire
and the peripheries into which the imperial system came into contact. All
of the schemes proposed relied on significant government support, while
in many cases also seeking to establish a chartered company, somewhat
along the lines of the East India Company. William Fox was evidently
very impressed by the prior success of the East India Company, some-
thing that had ‘greatly influenced him and his friends’ in proposing
something similar for Sudan: ‘Mr Fox considers that trade may be best
developed by the creation of a Company endowed with very extensive
powers of government.’25 Sir Evelyn Baring—the British Controller-­
General of Egypt—was highly critical of this, writing that ‘there appear
to me but a very slight analogy between the condition of India at the time
when the rule of the East India Company was established and the present
condition of the Soudan.’ He added that it ‘did not appear to me, in
conversation with Mr Fox, that he was well acquainted with the main
political features of the situation with which the East India Company had
to deal.’26 It is also clear that Fox believed that trade and commerce would
‘pacify’ Sudan by inducing the local populace into mutually beneficial
exchange that would obviate conflict and cause them to turn away from
Mahdism.27 Fox’s belief in the chartered company model was rooted in
mercantilism. While this might be seen as a contradiction of sorts, it
instead reflects a widespread belief that free-trade was as much about
opening consumer markets for goods from Manchester and Birmingham,
rather than free-trade in the opposite direction, where some degree of
monopoly production and state was assumed. Further, Fox considered
that business could step in when the official authorities refused or were
unable to become involved. Commercial enterprise ‘under the control
and guidance of an independent association of British subjects would …
relieve the Egyptian Treasury of the present heavy expenditure to admin-
ister Suakin and the Red Sea Littoral.’28 This view was also held by the
Anti-slavery Society, which supported the work of Fox and associates,
arguing that ‘the task of opening up the Soudan to trade should be
30 S. Mollan

undertaken by a company.’29 The case of the charter given to the British

East Africa Company in 1886 may have also served as more recent model,
to which ‘every Englishman will feel proud of the success of an undertak-
ing so distinctly characteristic of British enterprise.’30

The Failures of Fox, Cameron and Wylde

In December 1885 Fox wrote to the Prime Minister of England, the
Marquis of Salisbury, to both admonish British military power and pro-
pose a business opportunity. This was the first in rather unusual corre-
spondence between Fox and the leader of the world’s leading imperial
power. Fox wrote:

The military operations which have already, taken place, although they
have conclusively proved the superiority of our soldiers to the Soudanese,
have done next to nothing in causing the natives to cease from aggressive
action. We have therefore the honour to submit to your Lordship that a
solution of the question may be found in handing the country over to a
powerful chartered Company, which should devote its whole energies to
the important task of the pacification and development of the Sounds and
of its future government.31

Fox sought government approval and ‘a subsidy or subvention, to

enable it to cope with the difficulties it would primarily have to encoun-
ter’ but that ‘the commercial prospects of the Soudan are of the highest
class, and that such a Company would not only prove of use to the world
in a political sense, but also in a few years become self-supporting, and
repay those who invested their capital in the undertaking.’32 He claimed
that interested various members of the aristocracy as potential investors,
including Rt. Hon. W.E. Forster, the Earl of Northbrook, the Marquis of
Lorne, and Henry Villiers-Stuart, who would be ‘willing to join the
undertaking if they were assured of such a guarantee as would be afforded
by a Government subvention and approval.’ This subvention would be,
they argued, ‘a mere fraction of the sums which would have to be
expended in the military operations which now seem imminent.’33 The
Another random document with
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Een half uur later had hij zijn woning in het Willemsparkkwartier bereikt.

„En dat, Charly,” sprak John C. Raffles en hij plaatste met een breed
gebaar den gouden doodshoofdbeker op tafel, „dàt voorwerp en deze
kopjes en die lepel zijn nu de kleinigheden, die samen een millioentje
vertegenwoordigen en waarvoor jij en ik dat loodgieterskarweitje op ons
hebben genomen.”

„Allemachtig!” viel Charly uit, „wat een griezelig ding is dat, Edward. Zul
je later mijn schedel ook in goud laten vatten?”

„Neen, koester geen illusies daaromtrent, beste jongen. Ik houd niet van
doodshoofden en bovenal niet als ze tot drinkbekers zijn vervormd. Zelfs
niet als ze bovendien nog in goud zijn gevat en bezaaid met
edelgesteenten.

„Maar de vader van onzen jongen vriend Willy Harringa schijnt er anders
over te denken, want buiten de geldelijke waarde hechtte de man zeer
veel aan dezen beker en zijn droefheid, toen hij het doodshoofd miste,
moet inderdaad heel groot zijn geweest.”

Toen vertelde Lord Lister zijn jongen vriend de geschiedenis van de

geheimzinnige diefstallen, van het verhaal, dat hem eerst door Willy
Harringa en later door diens vader in den breede was verhaald; van de
vermoedens, die door hem waren gerezen tegen den stillen, vreemden,
oudsten zoon uit het huis; van de bevestiging van die vermoedens, toen
hij de geheime gang had ontdekt, nadat hem bekend was geworden dat
Oswald Harringa er de eigenaardigheid op nahield om op het dak te
gaan „rooken”; van den tocht naar het grijze huis in de dwarsstraat en
van alles wat hij daar had gezien.

Charly vond dat allemaal even interessant en in gespannen aandacht

luisterde hij naar wat de Groote Onbekende hem meedeelde.
„En hoe zul je nu doen, Edward?” vroeg hij ten slotte. „Zul je den vader
nu gaan vertellen, dat zijn zoon een dief en een opiumschuiver is?”

„Dat is het eenige, waarover ik het nog niet met mij zelf eens ben,”
bekende Lord Lister. „Ik zal er eens een nacht over slapen. Ik wensch je
wel te rusten, boy! Droom maar niet te veel van gouden doodshoofden
en opiumschuivers.”

[Inhoud]
ZEVENDE HOOFDSTUK.
 Het einde van den Opium-Schuiver.

Den volgenden morgen, toen Lord Lister en zijn vriend nog in de

ontbijtkamer zaten, waar zij beiden verdiept waren in het lezen der
ochtendbladen, kondigde oude James reeds het bezoek aan van
mijnheer Mollen.

Charly wierp een blik op de pendule en sprak:

„Het is waar ook! Ik had bijna vergeten, dat Pim me zou komen halen
om het nieuwe tennisveld van onze club te gaan bekijken. Maar zóó
vroeg had ik hem niet verwacht.

„Laat mijnheer Mollen maar hier binnen,” verzocht Charly den

huisknecht en toen deze, na beleefd gebogen te hebben, de deur weer
achter zich had gesloten, vervolgde Charly tot zijn ouderen vriend:

„Dikke Pim heeft immers een wit voetje bij jou?”

Raffles knikte glimlachend en Charly vervolgde:

„Je begrijpt, dat ik het anders niet gewaagd zou hebben, gestrenge
meester, om een mijner kennissen, wien dan ook, in jouw ongenaakbare
tegenwoordigheid te brengen.”

Raffles had geen gelegenheid om zijn jongen secretaris hierop te

antwoorden, want reeds opende James de kamerdeur om den vroegen
bezoeker binnen te laten. [26]

Reeds bij den eersten oogopslag zagen de beide vrienden, dat Pim iets
bijzonders had. Op zijn dik, rood, niet heel intelligent gelaat, dat echter
een goedige uitdrukking had, stond duidelijk te lezen, dat hem iets op
het hart lag en daar het Pim’s gewoonte niet was, om zijn
mededeelingen lang vóór zich te houden, begon hij al dadelijk, nadat hij
zijn beide kennissen had begroet:

„Eigenlijk heb ik niet veel lust om te gaan tennissen vanmorgen. Maar ik

had met je afgesproken, Brand, dus ik wou je niet laten wachten.”

„Wat is er gebeurd?” vroeg Charly. „Toch geen onaangename dingen,

hoop ik?”

„Jawel en al betreft het mij niet rechtstreeks, ik ben er toch heelemaal

kapot van. Toen ik, nu zoowat een half uur geleden, van huis kwam en
langs de woning van Harringa wandelde, waren daar alle gordijnen
neergelaten. Natuurlijk keek ik verbaasd en ik was nieuwsgierig, wat
daarvan de reden kon zijn. Och, een sterfgeval wekt altijd je
belangstelling, nietwaar? Vooral als je de lui goed kent. Nou, ik trof het,
want juist toen ik passeerde, kwam een van de meiden naar buiten en
die vertelde me, dat de oudste zoon, Oswald, heel vroeg vanmorgen
dood was thuis gebracht.”

„Da’s treurig!” riep Charly uit. „Wat naar voor die oude mijnheer en
mevrouw!” en even keek hij naar zijn vriend Edward.

Raffles echter zei niets.

Bij de laatste woorden van Richard Mollen hadden de oogen van den
Grooten Onbekende een gansch eigenaardige uitdrukking gekregen,
doch toen goedige Pim hem aankeek, om te zien, welke uitwerking zijn
nieuwsbericht op jonker Van Leeuwen maakte, was hiervan niets meer
te bespeuren.

„Weet je geen verdere bijzonderheden?” vroeg Charly.

„Ja,” klonk het van Pim’s dikke, roode lippen, terwijl hij zich heel
gewichtig voelde, nu hij zooveel nieuws wist mede te deelen: „Het
dienstmeisje vertelde mij, dat de jonge meneer op zijn club een soort
van beroerte had gehad, een hartaandoening, zei ze.”
„Van welke club was Oswald Harringa lid?” vroeg Raffles.

„Precies weet ik het niet,” antwoordde Richard Mollen, „maar ik geloof,

een kaartclub, een besloten gezelschap van een stuk of tien, twaalf
jongelui.”

„Het is zeker een heel droevig sterfgeval, voornamelijk voor de ouders?”

sprak nu Lord Lister weer. Toen wisselde hij een korten blik met Charly,
welken door dezen onmiddellijk werd begrepen en vervolgde tot dezen:

„Kan ik erop rekenen, dat je thuis komt lunchen?”

„Zeker!” sprak Charly.

De jonge secretaris stond op, vulde uit een geopend kistje zijn
sigarenkoker met Havanna’s en zei tot Pim, terwijl hij hem op den
schouder klopte:

„Kom, kerel, ga mee de lucht in. Tob nou niet over dat sterfgeval,
daaraan kan je toch niets veranderen!”

Met een handdruk nam Pim afscheid van jonker Van Leeuwen en de
beide jonge mannen wandelden samen naar de nieuwe tennisbaan, op
korten afstand van Lord Lister’s woning.

Peinzend bleef de Groote Onbekende in zijn gemakkelijken stoel

achterover leunen. Weer liet hij de gebeurtenissen der laatste dagen
aan zijn geest passeeren en toen hij terugdacht aan het geheimzinnige
clublokaal waar de twaalf opiumschuivers bijeenkwamen, om zich over
te geven aan de bedwelming, die de uitwerking was van dat verderfelijke
vergift, dat zooveel onheil en ellende teweegbrengt, sprak hij tot zich
zelf:

„Dat plotseling einde was misschien de beste oplossing! Een beroerte …

een hartaandoening … Hij was wél een vreemde en eigenaardige
verschijning, deze jonge man, die het slachtoffer is geworden van zijn
hartstocht en ik ben er van overtuigd, dat hij zijn vader niet heeft
bestolen om geld te maken voor de waardevolle voorwerpen; hij
handelde uit een buitengewone beweegreden. Het was geen gemeene
diefstal, dat begreep ik onmiddellijk, en gelukkig ben ik erin geslaagd,
een duidelijk bewijs voor mijn overtuiging te krijgen.

„De oudste zoon van Albert Harringa, de leider der opiumschuivers,

moet dezen diefstal zonder twijfel hebben gepleegd, omdat hij van
meening was, dat de doodshoofdenbeker en de andere zeldzame
kostbaarheden nutteloos waren in zijn vaders „schatkamer” en veel
zouden toebrengen tot de versiering der tafel in de „Droomersclub”,
waarvan hij voorzitter was …”

Toen richtte de Groote Onbekende zich met een energieke beweging op

uit zijn fauteuil, liep een paar maal met de handen in de zakken door de
kamer heen en weer en sprak toen op halfluiden toon, als legde hij
zichzelf in dit oogenblik een gelofte af:

„Dit geheim zal ik bewaren; nimmer zal de vader van den aan opium
verslaafden zoon vernemen, op welke wijze ik zijn gestolen
kostbaarheden terugvond!”

Nu begaf Lord Lister zich naar zijn studeerkamer, waar hij een donker-
eikenhouten kast, die in een der [27]hoeken van het vertrek stond, met
een fijnbewerkten sleutel opende.

Deze kast was van binnen geheel voorzien van stevige stalen platen en
bevatte verschillende binnenkastjes, van hetzelfde staal vervaardigd, elk
afzonderlijk afgesloten.

De grootste dezer veilige bergplaatsen opende lord Lister met een

sleuteltje, dat nauwelijks groot genoeg scheen om een horloge op te
winden, en uit de ruimte, die nu voor hem lag, haalde hij het gouden
doodshoofd, den Indischen lepel en de twaalf zilveren kopjes te
voorschijn.
De waardevolle voorwerpen pakte hij in een stevig handvalies van
donkerbruin leer, dat hij daarna sloot.

Het sleuteltje van het valies schoof hij in een kleinen, witten enveloppe
en hierop zette hij met duidelijke letters het adres van Albert Harringa.

Het middaguur had nauwelijks geslagen, toen Charly Brand de

studeerkamer van lord Edward Lister binnentrad.

Het was hem aan te zien, dat hij eenige uren in de buitenlucht beweging
had genomen, want zijn gelaat zag er blozend uit en een uitdrukking van
gezonde levenslust lag in de helderblauwe oogen van den jongeman.

„Voldoet de nieuwe tennisbaan aan de eischen?” vroeg lord Lister, terwijl

hij het laatste overblijfsel van zijn sigaret in een fijn, Japansch aschbakje
legde.

„De baan is onberispelijk en er werd uitstekend gespeeld vanmorgen.

Alleen Pim heeft geen goeden bal gemaakt, zoodat hij weer leelijk
geplaagd werd. De goeie jongen schijnt erg onder den indruk van het
sterfgeval te zijn.”

En toen Raffles hierop, tot Charly’s teleurstelling niets antwoordde,

vervolgde de jonge secretaris:

„Heb je al besloten, hoe je in deze zaak verder zult handelen, Edward?

Je gelooft zeker, evenmin als ik, aan een beroerte of hartverlamming
van Oswald Harringa?”

„Neen,” antwoordde Lord Lister, en zijn donkere oogen keken den

blonden secretaris met een ernstige uitdrukking aan. „Neen, Charly, ook
ik geloof daaraan niet. Maar ik wensch dit geheim te eerbiedigen, al was
het alleen ter wille van de ouders van den ongelukkigen jongen man.”

„En de kostbaarheden?”
„Daarover spreken we straks, na den lunch!”

De begrafenis van Oswald Harringa, de oudste zoon van den schatrijken

Indischen suikerlord, had veel belangstelling getrokken.

Twee landauers waren noodig geweest om den bloemenschat mee te

dragen naar het kerkhof, waar de overledene een laatste rustplaats zou
vinden.

Een kostbare krans van lila bloemen, waaraan breede, purperkleurige

linten hingen, en die ter rechterzijde van de lijkkoets was opgehangen,
trok vooral de aandacht der voorbijgangers, die nieuwsgierig bleven
staan, als de stoet passeerde.

„Aan onzen leider,” waren de woorden die in gouden letters op een der
linten prijkten, terwijl op het andere lint, eveneens in gouden letters,
maar veel kleiner, stond:

„d. i. l. d. w. o. i. s.”

Geen kaartje, geen boodschap zelfs was er bij geweest, toen deze
krans werd bezorgd en zonder te weten, wien zij te danken hadden voor
dezen laatsten groet, aan hun zoon gebracht, hadden de ouders den
grooten krans van bedwelmend geurende bloemen in paarsen tint in
ontvangst genomen.

Op verzoek van Oswalds vader werd aan het graf geen woord
gesproken en toen de oude heer, nadat de plechtigheid was afgeloopen,
in huis was teruggekeerd, nam hij zwijgend de kleine hand van zijn
vrouw in de zijne, terwijl hij haar een kus op het voorhoofd drukte.

Zij zeiden het elkaar niet in woorden, deze beide ouders, wat er op dat
oogenblik in hen omging, maar welsprekender dan iets was de blik,
waarmee zij elkaar aankeken en de tranen, die langs hun wangen
vloeiden.
Doch bij beiden was, sinds hun oudste zoon levenloos thuis was
gebracht, geen oogenblik de gedachte uit het hoofd geweest, hoe de
voorspelling van den Radjah van Mooltan was bewaarheid geworden:

„Indien de beker verloren gaat, of gestolen wordt, zal het ongeluk u

achtervolgen!”

Doch geen van beiden vermoedden zij het, deze bedroefde ouders, hoe
hij, die hun nu voor altijd was ontvallen, zelf den noodlottigen beker het
huis had uitgedragen.

Dien namiddag wachtte voor het bordes van de mooie villa in het
Willemsparkkwartier, bewoond door jonker Van Leeuwen en diens
vriend, een gewone taxi, een huurauto zooals men die dagelijks
honderden door Amsterdam ziet vliegen.

Een jonge man, gekleed in de keurige livrei der deftige families,

verscheen op den drempel.

Hij had een kortgeknipte, blonde baard en onder de [28]met goud

gegallonneerde pet kwam het dikke, blonde krulhaar te voorschijn. In de
rechterhand droeg hij een handtasch van bruin leer, die vrij zwaar
scheen te zijn en die hij, in de atax gezeten, zorgvuldig op zijn knieën
hield.

Tien minuten later hield het voertuig stil voor de woning van den heer
Albert Harringa.

De blonde livreibediende stapte uit en overhandigde met een paar korte

woorden het valiesje en de witte enveloppe aan Egbert.

Toen begaf hij zich weer terug naar de wachtende huurauto, die een
oogenblik later uit het gezicht verdwenen was.…..

……………………………………………
„Aan wien heb je het taschje afgegeven?” vroeg dien middag aan het
diner lord Lister zijn vriend en helper, Charly Brand.

„Aan den ouden huisknecht, Edward. Hij zou het zijn meester
onmiddellijk overhandigen.”

„All right, boy!” klonk het antwoord en toen werd er door de beide
vrienden geen woord verder over dat onderwerp gewisseld.

Den volgenden dag, toen lord Lister alleen in zijn studeerkamer zat,
bezig een brief van een zijner Engelsche vrienden te beantwoorden,
terwijl Charly een zeiltocht op de Zuiderzee maakte, met de leden van
zijn tennisclub, bracht oude James op een zilveren blad een visitekaartje
binnen.

„Willy Harringa”

las Raffles en, hij verzocht den huisknecht, den bezoeker binnen te
laten.

Eenige oogenblikken later had Willy tegenover lord Lister plaats

genomen.

Nadat het gesprek eenigen tijd had geloopen over het verlies, dat de
familie Harringa had getroffen, sprak Willy:

„De eigenlijke reden van mijn komst zal u misschien zeer verbazen,
jonker Van Leeuwen.”

En toen vervolgde hij, na eenige aarzeling, terwijl hij Raffles aankeek

met zijn eerlijke, oprechte oogen, die op dat oogenblik hun gewone
overmoedige uitdrukking echter misten:

„Misschien verbaast ze u ook in het geheel niet en weet u al van te

voren, wat ik u te vertellen heb.”
Kalm hield Raffles de donkere oogen op het gelaat van den bezoeker
gevestigd, toen hij sprak:

„Ja, mijnheer Harringa, ik weet het, uw vader ontving een leeren valies
met inhoud. Het verheugt me, dat deze duistere zaak tot zulk een goed
einde is gebracht.”

En toen hij zag, hoe Willy met een trek van blijde verrassing op het
gelaat beide handen uitstak, om zijn dankbaarheid te betuigen, maakte
de Groote Onbekende een afwerend gebaar en zei:

„Dat is in orde, mijnheer Harringa. De éénige dank, die ik van u vraag,

is, dat u niet meer op deze zaak terugkomt.”

De jonge Harringa liet de uitgestrekte handen weer zakken en een wolk

van teleurstelling trok over zijn gelaat.

„Ik eerbiedig uw wensen, jonker Van Leeuwen,” sprak hij.

„Maar dan is er nog iets,” vervolgde Willy, „wat bijna even geheimzinnig
is, als die diefstallen waren.”

Hij schoof zijn stoel een beetje dichter naar dien van Raffles en sprak op
schier fluisterenden toon, als vreesde hij, dat onbescheiden ooren
mochten meeluisteren:

„In de portefeuille, die mijn gestorven broer bij zich droeg, heb ik een
drietal briefjes gevonden van onverklaarbaren inhoud en nog
onverklaarbaarder onderteekening. Misschien zoudt u ook in dezen
opheldering kunnen geven.”

Al sprekende haalde hij uit zijn borstzak een zakportefeuille van wit
slangenleer te voorschijn en vervolgde:

„Deze portefeuille was het eigendom van mijn broer Oswald en dit zijn
de briefjes, die zich erin bevonden.”
Toen overhandigde hij den Grooten Onbekende drie gele velletjes
papier, beschreven met violetkleurige inkt.

En Raffles las de korte mededeelingen één voor één langzaam door:

„Broeder!

Hedenavond elf uur! Hindoe-vrouw heeft de sleutels!

Opiophaag.”

In den linker-benedenhoek van het papier stonden, in een kring gedrukt,

de volgende letters:

„d. i. l. d. w. o. i. s.”

Nu opende lord Lister het tweede briefje, dat op hetzelfde papier, met
dezelfde violette inkt geschreven was en onderaan dezelfde in het rond
gedrukte letters.

Hij las:

„Broeder!

Twee uur vóór middernacht. Purperen zaal zal geopend zijn.

Opiophaag.”

[29]

Ten derden male ontvouwde hij een der gele papieren, waarvan de
inhoud luidde:

„Broeder leider!

De broeders wenschen u te danken voor de aanwinst! Kom heden op

gewonen tijd tot ons.
 Opiophaag.”

„En wat alles nog eigenaardiger en geheimzinniger maakte,” vervolgde

Willy, toen Raffles zwijgend de briefjes op tafel legde, „is, dat
gistermorgen, een uur vóór de begrafenis van Oswald, een krans werd
thuisbezorgd, op welker violetkleurige linten deze zelfde onverklaarbare
letters stonden gedrukt. De naam van de zenders, want het schijnen
leden van een club of vereeniging te zijn, werd er niet bij vermeld.”

„Begrijpt uw vader ook niet, wie de personen geweest kunnen zijn, met
wie uw broeder deze geheimzinnige correspondentie voerde?”

„Voor papa is alles even duister als voor mij. Trouwens, vader spreekt
weinig sinds Oswalds dood en houdt zich meestal in zijn eigen kamer
op. De reis naar Egypte is nu natuurlijk uitgesteld voor eenigen tijd.”

„Mijnheer Harringa,” sprak Raffles, terwijl hij den jongen man, die
tegenover hem zat, recht in de oogen keek, „veel is mij duidelijk, van wat
voor u en uw vader altijd een gesloten boek zal blijven. Vraag er niet
naar—het is beter, dat die geheimen mèt uw broeder in het graf zijn
gegaan.

„Slechts dit wil ik u en ook u alleen—in vertrouwen mededeelen: uw

broeder Oswald is het slachtoffer geworden van het opium, het opium,
dat reeds zooveel ellende om zich heen heeft verspreid en dat den prooi
welke het eenmaal in zijn scherpe klauwen heeft, niet meer loslaat. En
laat het u tot troost zijn, dat zijn onverwachte en plotselinge dood hem
heeft gespaard voor een lang, duldeloos lijden.”

Toen nam de Groote Onbekende de drie, op geel papier geschreven

briefjes van de tafel, gaf ze den jongen man terug en vervolgde:

„Ik geef u den raad, deze briefjes te vernietigen. En, spreek tegen
niemand, ook niet tegen uw vader, over ons onderhoud.”
Acht dagen na het bezoek, dat Willy had gebracht in de villa van jonker
Van Leeuwen, ontving de heer Albert Harringa een brief van den
volgenden inhoud:

„Uit betrouwbare bron heb ik vernomen, dat het gouden doodshoofd, dat voor
u van zoo groote waarde schijnt te zijn, de Indische lepel en de zilveren
kopjes, weer in uw bezit zijn teruggekomen. En dit verheugt mij om uwentwil.

Het was zeer juist van u gezien, om in deze duistere zaak niet de hulp in te
roepen van rechercheurs of politie. Immers—hoe dikwijls niet is het reeds
gebleken, dat deze personen minder geschikt zijn om dergelijke opsporingen
met succes ten uitvoer te brengen.

„Onoplosbare raadsels” kunnen beter worden opgelost door iemand die het
gewend is, zulke zaakjes op te knappen.

Ondergeteekende was zoo vrij, u, nu ruim een week geleden, uw

eigendommen weder te doen toekomen, nadat hij ze had teruggehaald van de
plaats, waar ze niet behoorden.

Hoe en waar hij ze heeft gevonden zal zijn geheim blijven!

Moge de gouden doodshoofdbeker voortaan alle onheil verre van u houden!

De Groote Onbekende,
John C. Raffles”.

[Inhoud]

De volgende aflevering (No. 120) bevat:

„Een onaangename ontmoeting in

Zandvoort”. [30]
[Inhoud]
 Vijf-en-dertig minuten.

Het liep tegen het einde van Mei en ik zocht in de omstreken van Parijs,
op eenig frisch en vredig plaatsje, naar een klein huisje, om daar den
zomer door te brengen. Ik ging op goed geluk aan het zoeken, na reeds,
zonder iets naar mijn smaak gevonden te hebben, de oevers der Seine
te hebben afgeloopen, die door de kroegjes en de publieke danslocalen
onteerd worden; daarna had ik het heerlijke landschap doorkruist, dat
zich om Versailles uitstrekt, maar waarvan de wegen, het hout en de
heldere rivieren eenigszins de hinderlijke majestueusiteit van deze stad
hebben. Ook had ik de heerlijke vallei van Chevreuse bezocht, die door
de spoorlijn van Scaux van de hoofdstad is afgescheiden. Eindelijk werd
ik op een goeden dag verleid door het schilderachtig aanzien van een
station op de Westerlijn, tusschen Lagny en Meaux, waar men den
breeden loop der Marne overzag. Ik stapte daar uit den trein en vroeg
aan een stationsbeambte, of hij ook wist, welke woningen er in deze
streek te huur stonden.

„Niet veel bijzonders, mijnheer,” antwoordde hij.

Hij scheen na te denken.

„Ja, een is er, die u misschien wel zou lijken. Het is het huis van vader
Perrin te Chigny, dat verleden jaar aan Parijzenaars is verhuurd
geweest. Ik geloof, dat het dit jaar leeg staat.”

„Is dat dicht bij de rivier?”

„Het staat op de hoogte, maar als men naar beneden gaat, is men direct
aan de Marne.”

Ik dacht: „dat is misschien wat ik zoek.”

„En hoever is Chigny van het station af?”

„Het zal dertig à veertig, minuten gaans zijn … vijf en dertig minuten …
ja, het is bepaald niet verder dan vijf en dertig minuten.”

Ik bedankte hem.

„Het is heel gemakkelijk te vinden,” voegde hij er bij. „Ge hebt slechts
dezen weg, die voor u ligt, te volgen, daarna gaat ge door het boschje,
dat ge ginds ziet en u zult dan van zelf Chigny wel zien. De eerste de
beste zal u daar het huis van vader Perrin aanwijzen.”

Ik begaf mij op weg. Er is niets zoo bedriegelijk op het land, als een
boschje aan het eind van een weg en ik liep al een kwartier lang, toen
het boschje mij nog altijd voorkwam een goed einde verder te zijn. Ik
wierp een blik in het rond om te zien, of ik mij ook vergiste met een
ander boschje, dat dichterbij was. Maar het was het eenige; overigens
liep de weg er recht op af, en was er geen vergissing mogelijk. Ik bracht
mij de woorden van den spoorwegbeambte te binnen. Als ik het bosch
uitkwam, moest ik Chigny zien, dat er niet ver vandaan kon zijn, omdat
men van het station in vijf-en-dertig minuten aan het dorp kwam.

Ik bereikte de eerste boomen eenige minuten na deze redeneering te

hebben gehouden. Doch daar verschillende wegen in verschillende
richtingen door het bosch leidden, was ik eerst in de war. Gelukkig
bemerkte ik een kar, die stapvoets naderde. Op een teeken, dat ik
maakte, hield de karrevoerder zijn paard in. Ik vroeg hem welke weg
naar Chigny leidde.

„Daar kom ik net vandaan,” zeide hij. „U behoeft slechts denzelfden weg
te nemen als ik afgekomen ben, kijk, die daar, links.”

„Leidt die regelrecht naar het dorp?”

„U kunt je onmogelijk vergissen. Als de weg buiten het bosch is, zijt ge
te Chigny.”

„Op de hoogte, niet?”

Hij glimlachte even.

„Ja, op de hoogte. U kent dus de streek al?”

„Een beetje … ik heb inlichtingen ingewonnen.”

En mijn horloge raadplegende, vervolgde ik:

„Het is hier niet ver meer vandaan, wel, Chigny?”

„Chigny,” herhaalde hij, de schouders ophalende, [31]„het is zoo goed

alsof u er reeds waart.…. U hebt heelemaal een vijf-en-dertig minuten te
loopen, op zijn hoogst.…”

Ik bedankte hem; hij legde de zweep over zijn paard en vervolgde zijn
weg. Ik dacht, dat ik den spoorwegbeambte verkeerd verstaan had en
dat hij had willen zeggen, dat het vijf-en-dertig minuten loopen was tot
aan het boschje en dan nog eens vijf-en-dertig minuten naar Chigny. Dat
was zoo’n heel erge vergissing niet; overigens is het ook een feit, dat de
beambten der kleine spoorwegstations in den regel niet veel
topografische kennis hebben van het omliggende land. Ik had op mijn
uitstapjes al meermalen de gelegenheid gehad deze opmerking te
maken. Deze man kon mij dus heel goed den afstand zoo’n beetje op
goed geluk hebben genoemd. In allen gevalle was het pas drie uur in
den middag en had ik ruim den tijd om den trein van zeven uur te halen,
na het huis van vader Perrin bezocht te hebben. Ik ging het bosch in, en
wandelde langzaam voort om de frischheid op te snuiven van een
windje, dat ternauwernood de bladeren deed ritselen.

Het was een lang bosch; de laan, die ik volgde, liep uit op een groote
uitgestrektheid land, dat met koren en haver bezaaid was, groen en vlak
zoover het oog reikte. Geen enkele heuvel brak er de eentonigheid van
af; men ontdekte niet het geringste van een dorp. Alleen verhief zich op
enkele passen afstand van mij, aan het begin van deze vlakte, een
stulp, bestemd om gereedschappen in te bergen, die potdicht was.
Het was nu al minstens een uur, dat ik aan het loopen was. Ik rustte een
oogenblikje uit, mij voornemende daarna eenvoudig weer naar het
station terug te keeren, toen ik uit een boschje een boerin te voorschijn
zag treden, die gras in haar boezelaar droeg. Zij werd gevolgd door
twee kinderen, die lentebloemen in de hand droegen. Dit landelijk
tooneeltje ontnam mij het voornemen om te vertrekken en ik trad, met
de hoed in de hand, op de boerin toe.

„Waar ligt toch Chigny? Men had mij gezegd, dat ik, als ik uit het bosch
kwam, Chigny zou zien. Ben ik soms verdwaald?”

„Wel neen, mijnheer, Chigny is daar”… en zij wees naar den linkerkant
van het bosch. „U hebt u alleen vergist in den weg, denk ik. Bij den
kruisweg is u recht doorgeloopen, maar u had het voetpad moeten
nemen.”

„Maar hoe kan ik dan nu naar Chigny komen?”

„U volgt dit pad hier langs het bosch, slaat dan links af en steekt de rivier
over. Chigny ligt aan de overzijde.”

„Is er een brug over de rivier?” vroeg ik wantrouwend.

„Van drie bogen, mijnheer.”

„En in hoeveel tijd kan ik in Chigny zijn?”

Zij keek mij aan, als om de snelheid mijner beenen te berekenen, en

antwoordde:

„O, het is niet ver. Vijf-en-dertig minuten.”

Ik stond versteld. Dit cijfer begon mij al heel wonderlijk toe te schijnen,
en die drie afstanden, elk van vijf-en-dertig minuten, waren een
inderdaad zeer vreemd verschijnsel. Ik begon te vermoeden, dat ieder
een loopje met mij nam. Maar hoe kon de boerin weten, dat zoowel de
spoorwegbeambte als de karrevoerder mij eveneens hadden verzekerd,