While the Canadian Voyageurs on the Nile in 1884–85 have been explained at length in books by Colonel C.P. Stacey and by Roy MacLaren, in Mohawks on the Nile: Natives among the Canadian Voyageurs in Egypt, 1884–1885, Carl Benn has focused on the approximately 60 Mohawks in the contingent, confirming their value to the British expedition to save General Gordon and enriching our understanding of Canada’s First Nations in the late 19th century.
Like other forms of behaviour, imperialism tends to repeat itself. Benn’s readers will slide easily into drawing parallels with our engagement in Afghanistan. Having invested heavily in the Suez Canal as a shortcut to their Asian empires, Britain and France felt entitled to seize power in an Egypt driven toward bankruptcy by its wildly extravagant Khedive. Since the British played the major role in managing Egypt, they inherited Egypt’s problems with its own colonial acquisition, the Sudan. There, the son of a Nile boat...
Desmond Morton, author of 40 books on Canadian military, political and labour history, was the founding director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
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