A review by doel7
Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869-1899 by Dominic Green

1.0

If I drank (which I don't) and there was a drinking game with this book, to take a shot every time there was an orientalist trope, I would need 7 livers to survive. I thought after reading the book Prisoners of the Mahdi, written in 1956, that one written in 2007 would be a bit more balanced and enlightened. Not at all. Green almost exclusively draws on European sources and the book reads like something written by Kitchener himself. The book castigates any and all who would stand against British imperialism: the Mahdi, Afghani, 'Urabi and Abdu (all great men in my view). Not satisfied by condemning a 19th century anti-imperial movement that thoroughly embarrassed the British Empire, Green, in his conclusion moves into the late century, writing about the American bombing of a pharmaceutical plant but fails to mention that there was no nerve gas being created there but only a factory making medicine. Green should have remained a jazz guitarist instead of writing this apologist screed for empire.