Customer Reviews

Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure

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Mr. Asher has an eye for detail, and he has collected all the facts about the 19th century British Sudan campaigns in this one book. The larger story describes the failure of the British Army to reach General Gordon in time, and the meticulously organized campaign by Kitchener to even the score with the Mahdist forces some years later. It is an epic adventure, and it succeeds overall. Unfortunately there are flaws in the exposition.

Still, it is an admittedly good book, and deserves some attention by readers who may be unfamiliar as I was with the Gordon/Kitchener/Sudan story. The sticking point is that some of the infuriating sloppiness in the writing makes me wonder if the book had been hurried to press. For example, at my Kindle location 5453 the author writes, "In that brief moment no less [sic] than a dozen Baggarra fell dead in the sand. Stunned, they retreated." That's a neat trick. In the description of the Battle of Atbara we read of the British artillery barrage opening the battle, followed by an interval of 30 minutes before the infantry attack begins (0740 hours until 0810 hours, see location 6229-6236). But then after the battle at location 6374 we read that only 15 minutes had passed: "Those that had watches glanced at them, and could not believe that only fifteen minutes had passed since the first shell had been fired." In location 6513 we read of troops moving "down the western bank of the Nile on a broad front," but is this correct? If they are moving southward along the river then they are moving upriver, so should we not say they are moving up the western bank of the Nile? It is likely my geographic conventions and terminology are wrong but this seems entirely too confusing on its face. Then there is the occasional contradiction within supposition: Kitchener at location 6592 is said to have feared night attacks, but then at location 6602 we see the phrase, "If Kitchener feared a night attack, though, he did not show it." This may seem a semantic quibble--perhaps I take the word "if" too literally--but isn't there a more graceful way to make the point? Such as this: "Though K feared a night attack, he did not show it." And finally, the piece de resistance in this ham-handed writing style is the cliché at location 7043. The expression "bit the dust" was almost too much for me to take, and after being drubbed with this I wondered how it could have passed through both the author's pen and the editor's censure.

But on to the good aspects. What those of us who read military epic storytelling want to see--the strategy, the tactics, the human endeavor, the mistakes, the epic struggles, the back and forth of battle details, and the aftermath and political ramifications--are all in this book. And even with the imperfections of exposition, this is an exciting story as told. I could feel the mens' and animals' thirst in the desert, understand Kitchener's anxiety about the supply problems, witness the courage of both foes, and stare down the barrel of numerous guns as if I were there. This experience is what readers of military history thrive on. So in that light the book is an undoubted success.

Descriptions of natural surroundings are the author's strong suit. The descriptions of the natural beauty and isolation of the desert as seen through the eyes of the historical characters were masterfully done. An example at location 5410: ". . . looking south, the Nile scintillated like mercury between the arms of serrated dark ridges that closed in from either side." This is very nice indeed. Had this literary flair been more fully extended to the treatment of the historical characters and events, then the storytelling would have been nearly perfect, as we see in the writings of Byron Farwell, and to some extent, of Julian Spilsbury.

As it was, the book was almost good enough to reach that point, but deserved a better critical eye in editing.

This book is an excellent read. Brings the Sudan wars to life in a gripping manner that puts the reader in the front line with the Brit soldiers trying to hold the square under the onslaught of fanatical warriors carrying razor-bladed spears. His end chapters, bringing the reader up to date on aspects of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda are very informative.

To understand the troubles that sprang from the deserts in the last decade, one might trace Osama Bin Laden's journey to Sudan between 1994 and 1998. The al-Qaeda we now know is in many ways the spiritual inheritor of the philosophy and traditions of the Mahdist uprising in the Sudan of the 1880's.

Between than and now, little seems to have changed, but the names of the actors and the colours of the uniforms.

The reader is drawn with precise detail into the era, and advanced through the stages of the campaign. The politics and heroism of both sides is shown in balance, and the collision between two very different worlds made real.

This incredibly readable book makes me think of George Santayana who commented 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

I served in the Brit.army with this guy he was good then hes even better as a researcher, biographer and author buy all his books and learn about the desert and its peoples.

Michael Asher, ex-Parachute regiment and SAS, has written a vivid account of the Sudan campaigns of 1883-98. In 1883, at Shaykan, Sudanese forces killed 11,000 Egyptian troops under British command. Asher calls this defeat a massacre.

The victory meant that the Mahdist state in Sudan became `the first modern Islamic realm, and the only African nation ever to win independence from a colonial power by force of arms'. It lasted just 14 years.

In 1884, the government sent General Charles Gordon to Sudan. He had been part of the 1859 Anglo-French expedition to Peking to impose the Treaty of Tientsin, forcing China to buy opium from British traders, hence his media nickname of `Chinese' Gordon. He had arrived too late for the fighting, but in time to help destroy Peking's beautiful Summer Palace.

When the government sent Gordon to Sudan, his orders were to withdraw from Sudan. But the ruling class wanted to keep Sudan, whether the government wanted to or not. Gordon lied to his political masters that he accepted the policy of withdrawal. He decided to stay in Khartoum, trying to make the government change its policy.

In 1884, British-led forces killed 2,000 Sudanese in each of the battles of Tamaai and et-Teb. In the 1885 battle of Kirkbekan, they killed another 2,000 Sudanese. Asher accurately sums up these campaigns, "10,000 men, British and Sudanese, had died in vain."

In 1896, the government ordered Herbert Kitchener, Sirdar of the Egyptian army, to reconquer Sudan. At the battle of Nukhayla, 558 British soldiers were killed and 8,000 Sudanese. At Omdurman, in 1898, Kitchener used heavy artillery and the new Maxim machine-guns against the Sudanese: none got within three hundred yards of the British guns. 11,000 Sudanese were killed and 16,000 wounded.

Asher does not call this a massacre. In fact he describes this 15-year war, the bloodiest of all the Empire's colonial wars, as `the last great romantic adventure of the imperial age'.