The Story
The Egyptian Red Book, which is collected in the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA), serves as a kind of supplement to the sad story of the demise of General Charles Gordon in Khartoum, Sudan in 1885. The "Red Book" brings together satirical cartoons with a chronological presentation of quotations--primarily from debates in the British Parliament, but also articles from newspapers, letters and dispatches from the field and other related materials. The work is in effect a case against Britain's Gladstone Government, which, in the opinion of the authors, failed to provide Gordon with adequate support in the task he was sent to perform as military officer in Sudan.* In this module, we will explore how to uncover the full story behind seemingly mysterious document. Before we begin with our analysis of some divergent accounts of these historical events, we would like to provide you with the basic story so that our discussion of how to perform historical research will make more sense.
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*We would like to note here that our spelling of Sudan differs from that used by the publishers of the Egyptian Red Book. Their use of "Soudan" seems to have been derived from the nineteenth-century French spelling of the word. |
Historical Background
In the 1820's, Egyptian and British forces invaded Sudan, the African region lying just south of Egypt, designating it a subject state of Egypt. By the mid-nineteennth- century, the British interest in Sudan had increased markedly due to its strategic location for their trade routes to India and the threat of a growing French influence in Africa. The combination of increasing Egyptian and European control over Sudan sparked the emergence in 1882 of a man known as the Mahdi, meaning "the expected one" in local tradition. The Mahdi, a man named Mohammad Ahmed, was expected to liberate the Islamic world from the oppression of foreign occupation. Ahmed called upon all of the true believers of Islam to stand up and resist foreign oppression, who then rose up and engaged the local authorities throughout the region. Although the British had not officially colonized Egypt or taken possession of the region, they were in occupation of it and all but controlled the Egyptian government at this time. Bloody battles ensued and the Mahdi was victorious against both the British and Egyptian armies sent to defeat him. In light of their failures, British and Egyptian officials decided to abandon the region and evacuate the remaining civilians living there. In January of 1884, General Gordon was assigned this task and sent to the city of Khartoum for the purpose of facilitating the evacuation of some fifteen-thousand Egyptians and Europeans remaining in, but wishing to leave, the region of Sudan.
Upon his arrival in Khartoum in January of 1884, General Gordon took upon himself the additional duty of attempting to establish a stable government in Sudan rather than simply rounding up the evacuees and departing, apparently counter to his military orders. Unable to establish a such stability or to convince the Mahdi to accept a position of administrative power, General Gordon was faced with the choice of defending his position at Khartoum or surrendering the city entirely to the Mahdi. Gordon chose to fight it out. The Mahdists began the siege on Khartoum in early March of 1884; it ended in January of 1885.
As the siege continued through the spring, Gordon regularly notified his Government of his situation and his needs. Gordon wrote that with a few thousand troops the Mahdi could be easily crushed, but no troops were sent. The General maintained his defensive position at Khartoum through the summer and fall, receiving supplies by steam ships sent down the Nile fro Egypt. It is believed that public opinion in Sudan began to sway toward sympathy with the Mahdi over the many months of the siege. Gordon repeatedly wrote that he feared the treason of those he had been protecting from the Mahdi as much as the man himself. In the end it was from the inside that the gates of the city were opened to the Mahdi in January of 1885, only a few days before the long-awaited arrival of the regiment of relief finally sent by the British Government to save Gordon. The British troops were greeted at the gates of Khartoum by the declaration of the Mahdi's victory: the head of their General hoisted upon a pike at the city's gates. Some in Britain viewed Gordon as a marty; others contended that he disobeyed superiors and brought his fate on himself in the vain quest for glory.
Introduction
It is never possible to know everything about any historical event, no matter how extensive your research . However, it is possible to develop a balanced perspective on those events if we are thorough in gathering our information and use a variety of reliable sources. In this module we will attempt to recreate the story represented in the "Egyptian Red Book," that of General Gordon and his trials in the Sudan. We will demonstrate how to use different types of resources available at the typical academic library (as an example, we will use Rice University's Fondren Library). We will examine primary source materials--original documents such as letters, government reports, newspaper articles, books, videos, recordings and other sources that reveal how observers viewed an event. We will also look at secondary sources, accounts by people who were not first-hand witnesses to events, but which describe and analyze events based on primary source materials and other secondary works. By analyzing a range of sources, we hope to gain a perspective on the political views represented by our work and how they relate to the actual historical events they represent, and to come to a more complete, objective understanding of the events depicted in the "Red Book." We will use the following process:
- Examine the original source. Our first step will be to gather enough information from our primary source, the digitized copy of the original Egyptian Red Book, to provide a basis for our research.
- Search for a variety of sources. To get a sense of the research landscape, we will gather information about the primary characters by searching the library catalog for resources that present different sides of the story.
- Compare primary source materials. Once we have a practical understanding of the people, places and events in the work, we will be able to compare contemporary perspectives on them. At this point we will peruse primary sources in addition to "The Egyptian Red Book," such as parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, dispatches and letters.
Excavating the Story from the Red Book
Our first cartoon, entitled "The Egyptian Puzzle," makes a bold statement and provides a few clues for us.
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The preface elaborates the meaning of these terms a bit.
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If the first cartoon in our work represents the Liberal government as "too late," then we may assume that Gordon met a sad fate. Our story would appear to center on Gordon and his adventures in Egypt. But we don't know Gordon's first name, and it's not immediately clear what this pamphlet is all about. The essential terms for a search for materials on this subject will be "Gordon" and "Egypt". Let's take a look at what the library catalog can locate with these terms alone.
Searching the Library Catalog
When you begin a research project, the library catalog is often the first place to turn. (Other key tools include periodical indexes, which index the contents of journals and newspapers, and reference tools such as dictionaries and encyclopedias.) We will use Fondren Library's WebCat, but a similar process will work for other library catalogs. For a more in-depth tutorial, visit our WebCat module.
Once you pull up the basic search page for the catalog, enter "gordon" and "egypt" into the text box, check the keyword option and select "Search Everything." You will find several entries; one in particular seems very promising.
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We find several relevant terms here, including "English occupation of Egypt." Select the view option to see the entire entry. Scroll down a bit and you will find a very helpful link to a subject heading that seems to describe Gordon.
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Among the entries we find the terms Mahdi, Egypt, Eminent Victorians (Gordon's death took place during the Victorian period in Britain), and great deaths, among other related terms. Although we cannot absolutely guarantee that this is the Gordon referred to in our work, it certainly seems to be a promising avenue for further research.
It should be noted that building a bibliography is usually not as simple as entering two terms into a subject search. The point we would like to make here is that carefully considering the information you have, even if it is very scant, can be rewarding.
Among these entries we have enough of a variety to put together a reasonably balanced bibliography of the events we are considering.
Evaluating sources and assembling a balanced bibliography
The goal here will be to collect a number of works on our subject that approach it from different perspectives so that we can produce the most well-informed, insightful research. In this way we will will be exposed to more sides of the story than, say, that represented by The Egyptian Red Book itself. To begin with, let's take a look at the subject headings of the books we found through our subject search for "gordon" and "egypt". Here is a look at the subject headings of the first listing, "Sword of the prophet : the Mahdi of Sudan and the death of General Gordon" by Fergus Nicoll.
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Titles can also be illuminating in our sorting through material. Consider "Gordon: martyr and misfit" by Anthony Nutting.
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Lastly, we find an entry that offers a very different kind of perspective on our story.
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Except for Wilfrid Scawen Blunt's Gordon at Khartoum, all of the above books are secondary source materials. Once you have identified potentially relevant books, locate them in the stacks and scan their tables of contents and indices to determine how useful they will be. You will likely find other relevant books close by. The methods we are describing here are only a few of the techniques that you will need in selecting works to include in your bibliography, but they should assist you in working more efficiently. As we hope that the remainder of this module will demonstrate, the story is never complete and always told from a particular perspective of the authors of the sources we choose. At the very least, the above practice can be used in any number of research situations to familiarize yourself with the events in question so that you may better understand the variety of perspectives of them.
Looking for the Story in the London Times
Newspaper provide a key source of primary source materials, since they offer a day-to-day account of history from the journalistic perspective of those who experienced it. The London Times has been the daily newspaper of record in England since the 1780s. Here we will be performing a basic search of the Times archives so that we might gain the perspective of the average British citizen while the events themselves were unfolding. In order to use the Times archive, your institution must have a subscription to it and you must either be on campus or connected to your network via VPN or proxy server. (See Accessing Networked Resources" for more information.) For instance, from the home page for Fondren Library select the Online News option under the Collections heading, then select the Europe option and scroll down to the entry you see below. You will see that a large number of newspapers are listed from all over the world.
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To begin, select the option that searches the entire content of the article just below the text box.
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We will be asking the search engine to locate articles that contain all of the keywords that we enter into the text box. By simply entering "Gordon" we are offered 243,551 articles. We would like to cast a wide net, but not that wide. We are going to have to limit our search to get what we are after. Let's look again at "The Egyptian Red Book" to hone our research strategy.
On page 7 we see that the first entry is dated September 1882, the month "Mr. Gladstone's Government invade[d] Egypt." The last entry is dated 26th January, 1885, the day of General Gordon's death. Let us say, then, that the type of story we are looking for would not have been published before 1882 and, being a daily paper, not for too many years after the death of Gordon in 1885. We can narrow our search results, then, by restricting our search to 1880-1890.
We notice on the first page of "The Egyptian Red Book" that Sudan is spelled "Soudan." If that is the common spelling of the region at the time, our search will turn up very little if we enter today's spelling. "Khartoum," the capital of Sudan, can also be spelled Khartum. We may find more results if we use the spelling preferred by the writers of the late nineteenth century in searching their daily papers.
Notice that we can either search for all the words together by including the word "and" between each of our keywords, or look for every article that contains at least one of our keywords by entering the word "or" between each keyword. We will use "and" to limit our results and make sure that all of our words are in every article. (Most search engines default to "and" if no specific parameters are given.)
Let's begin where "The Egyptian Red Book" begins and look for a Times response to the invasion of Egypt in September 1882. As a keyword, "egypt" alone will be too broad. We will include the term "mahdi," the person or group the British seem to be going to Egypt to fight. We are offered 934 articles. Notice, however, that we can choose what sort of articles we want to look at.
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Our list begins in the 1880's. The first article to jump right out is entitled "Egypt," written in February of 1882.
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In the same way we just explored news articles for our story we could also peruse editorials and commentary to find out what the editors were expressing about these events. These articles are only one resource among many for historians who wish to investigate the impact of historical events on the people who lived through them.
Placing the Quotes in the "Red Book" in Context
Taken out of context, even the most innocuous of statements can be read as slanderous, vulgar, obnoxious, hysterically funny or deeply offensive. It is always important to understand the context of a speaker's statements before assuming their intended meaning. When dealing with a work with both a political and comedic agenda, such as the Red Book, it is especially important. The editors of the Red Book openly invite their readers to check up on their quotes and even offer a few resources on page five, advising that "The entries in 'The Egyptian Red Book' can be authenticated by reference to the Official Blue Books and Hansard's Parliamentary Debates." Why would a work of satire provide references for its quotations?
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Hansard's Parliamentary Debates
Records of British parliamentary debates are commonly known as Hansard's, after the name of the company which produced the publication in the nineteenth century. Early records of the debates are not exact transcripts of the speeches, but are still valuable sources for historical research. For a more complete treatment of this resource, please visit our Parliamentary Papers module. When we search the library catalog, we find that Hansard's Parliamentary Debatesis available both in the stacks and on microform.
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We have a particularly contestable quote from Mr. Gladstone on page sixteen of the Red Book: "The G. O. M. says:—“It is not a fact that General Gordon has requested Her Majesty's Consular Agent to leave Khartoum. It is not a fact that that measure was essential to their safety, and it is not a fact that General Gordon stated that the only means of leaving Khartoum would be by Equatorial Africa and the Congo. [It is a fact that the G. O. M.'s fact's were not facts.]"
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As you compare different sources, consider questions such as:
- What kind of language is used? For instance, The Egyptian Red Book says that Gordon was "assassinated", while The London Times uses words such as "stabbed" and "killed" (Red Book 28).
- What is the tone? Note the acerbic side comments in The Egyptian Red Book, such as "Hicks whole army destroyed. 13,000 massacred. [The Do-Nothing Government slumber on, as their Chief has a cold in his head.]" (6).
- How might contemporary readers have viewed these sources? We can glean the attitudes of some commentators towards the satirists who produced the "Red Book" by examining the reviews of the Gladstone Almanack printed on the back cover of the "Red Book". We can also search for published reviews of the pamphlet, look for annotations in margins, and attempt to find journals and other private documents that might contain commentary on this work.
The important thing to remember here is that every quote has a context. Political satire often benefits from the wide range of applicability of someone's statement once it is taken out of its context. As historians, it is crucial to our work that we discover and maintain the intended meaning of each statement we include in our descriptions. It can be as tempting for the historian as it is for the satirist to allow a statement to stand out of its context if it fits with our desired narrative. Locating the context of the quotes in a work such as the Red Book can be as illuminating of our own responsibilities as for the necessity of the rigors of our methodology.
