Contributions from African Sources to the History of European Competition in the Upper Valley of the Nile

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Abstract
Of the African states with which European Powers were in contact during the period of active competition on the Upper Nile, two in particular, the Empire of Ethiopia and the Mahdist State, were sufficiently sophisticated to transact their political and administrative business in writing and to maintain more or less systematic records. Thanks to the work of P. M. Holt, the nature and scope of the Mahdist archives are now well known, and it is evident that they can be expected to furnish a very detailed picture of the fiscal and military organization of the Mahdist State. The documentation of external affairs is necessarily much less abundant; in principle, theMahdiacould not entertain diplomatic relations with ‘the corruptions of this world ’—the existing political organisms which, whether frankly infidel or officially Muslim, had been rendered obsolete by the new dispensation. But this principle was gradually eroded by the exigencies of practical politics. The foreign correspondence of the early Mahdia is simply a series of minatory admonitions to the ‘enemies of God,’ summoning them to submit to the Mahdi; but as the universal aspirations of Mahdism were tacitly abandoned under the Khalifa, its external relations reverted to a more conventional form. Certain uncommitted Muslim states of the western (Nigerian) Sudan began to be considered as potential friends rather than as a part of the Mahdistdar al-harb.

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