The African soldiers who fought so gallantly in Mexico were, in one sense, pawns in a Euro-American imperial conflict. But they were not demeaned by it. Their story not only highlights some of the differing perceptions that prevailed about the institution of slavery—Egyptian, French, American—it also shows how the men themselves transcended their narrow lot. In Mexico, and in their later service in Africa, they took pride in all they did. They had been converted to and shared the faith of Islam, but their origins were African.

In the 1860s, what is now called the Sudan was a...

The French provided one of their smaller troopships, the frigateLa Seine(plate 2) commanded by Frigate Captain Jaurès.¹ The Sudanese force, detached from the 19th Regiment of the Line, were embarked on the night of 7-8 January 1863 at Dar al-Maks, the old customs house, in a secluded spot just outside the Alexandria harbor entrance. They had come by the new railway from Sa’id Pasha’s Barrage fortress, the Qal’a al-Sa’īdiyya, on the Nile 24 kilometers downstream of Cairo. Private ‘Ali Jifun, the Sudanese chronicler, was serving there with a mountain gun (howitzer) battery when, “one day, an order arrived...

Veracruz in 1863 was a city of about 13,000 inhabitants cramped behind an already obsolete defensive wall—barely 2,000 meters long on the sea side and 700 meters at its greatest width. Travelers remarked that the place looked much like a small city of Andalusia, more Spanish than colonial Spanish. The war had introduced a lively scene of military activity everywhere. The streets were alive with soldiers and sailors of many countries whose tented camps outside the wall received overflow from the city barracks. But the town had a dried-up appearance; the public square was devoid of vegetation, something abhorrent...

The establishment of the Mexican monarchy gave illusory confidence to the international business world that an era of financial stability was approaching. A British company registered in London in 1864 as La Compania Limitada del Ferrocarril Imperial Mexicano (The Imperial Mexican Railway Co., Ltd.) acquired the perpetual concession to build and operate a railway between Mexico City and Veracruz from Don Agostino Escandón’s firm.

Political stability was still deceptively far away. Veracruz and the railway were in a continual state of alert. The countryside around the port and on each side of the railway track was infested with guerilla bands,...

The year began with constant pin-pricks by an audacious enemy leader named Garcia, “a clever miscreant” in the eyes of the French command. Had they known, he was not the unsavouryguerrilleroof this name but Colonel Antonio Garcia, commander of a force of regular Republican troops. Comandante Campos, who was no flatterer, described him as “calm and calculating, skilled in the military arts.”

The command at Veracruz mobilized a punitive patrol to “chase Garcia and his band with instructions to kill every enemy armed bandit they found.” The force was commanded by Lieutenant Chesneau of the Foreign Regiment, the...

On 3 December 1864 the British ambassador at Istanbul cabled his prime minister, Lord John Russell, to the effect that the French government had applied to Isma‘il Pasha for reinforcements to replace casualties among the Sudanese sent to Mexico two years earlier. On hearing of this the Ottoman government, in a mood of reproof, advised Isma‘il Pasha to refer the French government to Istanbul.

There was no unusual delay on Isma‘il’s part. On 6 March 1865 he ordered the governor-general of the Sudan, Ja‘far Pasha Sadiq, to send to Egypt a battalion of Sudanese infantry at full strength under the...

In the preceding chapter we attributed the mutiny of the relief battalion at Kasala primarily to weaknesses in the Ottoman officer corps. There was also an element of color prejudice or racism, long evident in the Nile Valley. However, in the Ottoman world at large, there was no scruple about slavery itself or slave enlistment of soldiers beingwrong.In the United States the attitudes were very different; a civil war had just been fought in part over this very issue. We now turn to the involvement of the United States in the aftermath of the Kasala mutiny.

A confrontation...

In the new Sudanese cavalry detachment was Trooper ‘Ali Jifun who describes his adventures as a mounted man on a dangerous mission:

Fifty of us under an Egyptian officer, by name ‘Abd al-Rahman Efendi Musa, were now formed into a troop of cavalry for patrolling and general duty on the lines of communication .... While I was [based] at Veracruz employed as a trooper I used to carry the mail between the railhead at Paso del Macho and Cordoba, and, being awakil ombashi,¹ usually had charge of a small party of men. Originally the mail had been entrusted to...

The last and most colorful impression of the Sudanese on the eve of their departure from Mexico came from Colonel Henri Blanchot, the staff officer whose reminiscences gave generous scope for a romantic pen. Veracruz had been in French hands for six years and had changed beyond recognition. The disease-laden, ruined buildings in which lived a sordid populace, the festering hearths of misery and material and moral putrescence, had disappeared, he wrote. The French military had taken the town in hand, transformed the Paseo into a fine public garden and the parade ground into a delightful square planted with sweet-smelling...

On 12 March 1867,La Seine,with Frigate Captain Pagel¹ in command, left the foreshore at Veracruz to join the concentration of French troopships at anchor nearby: on the 16th of March she steamed out into the Gulf of Mexico. On board were the remaining 299 officers and men of the Sudanese battalion, with Algerian and French troops and 18 civilians including several women and children.

The homeward passage in the spring was a happier experience for the black Egyptian contingent than the grim outward voyage into the unknown in 1863. This time no Sudanese died en route. Passengers, civilian...

The climax of four years of fighting a clever army in Mexico was the battalion’s triumphal reception in Paris as the Emperor’s guests, followed by a hero’s welcome and double promotion for most of them in Alexandria. This was the sweet foretaste of the bitter years ahead.

The disbandment of the battalion¹ and the dispersal of its personnel throughout the Sudanese regiments brusquely ended four years of discipline and shared hardship. All but a few veterans from Mexico lived on in a condition of statistical and biographical oblivion. A few, but not all, depended on rank. Of the 321 officers...