Gordon Judged Out Of His Own Mouth

General Gordons death in Khartoum on 26 January 1885 and the fall of the besieged city to the forces of the Mahdi was a crucial episode in British imperial history. It was deeply controversial at the time, and it still is today. Gordon has routinely been depicted as the hero of the story, in contrast to Prime Minister Gladstone who is often portrayed as the villain of the piece, responsible for a policy of drift in Sudan.Fergus Nicolls radical reappraisal, which is based on eyewitness accounts and previously unpublished archive material, refutes the conventional image of both men. Presenting an inside view of Gladstones thinking and decision-making, Nicoll gives the prime minister credit for his steadfast insistence that Britain should have minimal engagement in and zero responsibility for Sudan. Gordon, who succumbed to a lasting mania that skewed his decision-making and undermined his military capacity, is cast in a more sceptical light. This fascinating insight into British policy in Africa exposes the inner workings of government, the influence of the press and public opinion and the power of a book to change a government.Each stage in the rapid sequence of events is reconsidered Gladstones steely determination to avoid involvement, Gordons partial evacuation of Khartoum, the siege, the despatch of the relief expedition that arrived too late, the abandonment of Sudan, and the subsequent political battle over responsibility. The personal cost to both men was great: Gordon lost his life and Gladstone saw his reputation gravely tarnished.

The British Army's campaigns in Egypt and the Sudan from 1882 to 1899 were among the most dramatic and hard-fought in British military history. In 1882, the British sent an expeditionary force to Egypt to quell the Arabic Revolt and secure British control of the Suez Canal, its lifeline to India. The enigmatic British Major General Charles G. Gordon was sent to the Sudan in 1884 to study the possibility of evacuating Egyptian garrisons threatened by Muslim fanatics, the dervishes, in the Sudan. While the dervishes defeated the British forces on a number of occasions, the British eventually learned to combat the insurrection and ultimately, largely through superior technology and firepower, vanquished the insurgents in 1898. British Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography enumerates and generally describes and annotates hundreds of contemporary, current, and hard-to-find books, journal articles, government documents, and personal papers on all aspects of British military operations in Egypt and the Sudan from 1882 to 1899. Arranged chronologically and topically, chapters cover the various campaigns, focusing on specific battles, leading military personalities, and the contributions of imperial nations as well as supporting services of the British Army. This definitive volume is an indispensable reference for researching imperialism, colonial history, and British military operations, leadership, and tactics.

The senior British generals of the Victorian era - men like Wolseley, Roberts, Gordon and Kitchener - were heroes of their time. As soldiers, administrators and battlefield commanders they represented the empire at the height of its power. But they were a disparate, sometimes fractious group of men. They exhibited many of the failings as well as the strengths of the British army of the late nineteenth-century. And now, when the Victorian period is being looked at more critically than before, the moment is right to reassess them as individuals and as soldiers. This balanced and perceptive study of these eminent military men gives a fascinating insight into their careers, into the British army of their day and into a now-remote period when Britain was a world power.

Imperial Sceptics provides a highly original analysis of the emergence of opposition to the British Empire from 1850–1920. Departing from existing accounts, which have focused upon the Boer War and the writings of John Hobson, Gregory Claeys proposes a new chronology for the contours of resistance to imperial expansion. Claeys locates the impetus for such opposition in the late 1850s with the British followers of Auguste Comte. Tracing critical strands of anti-imperial thought through to the First World War, Claeys then scrutinises the full spectrum of socialist writings from the early 1880s onwards, revealing a fundamental division over whether a new conception of 'socialist imperialism' could appeal to the electorate and satisfy economic demands. Based upon extensive archival research, and utilising rare printed sources, Imperial Sceptics will prove a major contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century political thought, shedding new light on theories of nationalism, patriotism, the state and religion.

Having already published a bibliography on Annie Besant, Theodore Besterman in this book continued with the story of her life. She was a prominent British Theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator who lived between 1847 and 1933. Originally published in 1934, this work is fascinating for anyone with an interest in Annie Besant's life specifically or in any of the areas in which she became a household name.