The Four Feathers and British Military Action in Sudan

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Sultan Bhargash

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Tonight I saw this vastly underrated film, the Four Feathers, which is in fact a retelling of a story first put on film in 1915, then three times in the 20's/30's including a turn with Fay Wray, then again as a TV miniseries in the late 1970s with Jane Seymour and Beau Bridges in the lead roles.

What I was impressed with in the Kate Hudson Heath Ledger 2002 film was the portrayals of British colonial military action in the Sudan... the camels, the cavalry, cannons, formations, the trickery of the Mahdist enemies, etc.

Anyone else see this film, care to agree or dispute the probable accuracy of those sequences?
 
I've read about the "Mad Mahdi." He was one crazy Mullah Fakir! Lots of stories about him and little boys. :eek:

He was definitely the forerunner of bin Laden and Mullah Omar, with his attempts to establish a purely Islamic state.
 
The British army's march and formations were interesting (and totally unsuited to the terrain/climate). The filming was fantastic, by midway through the battle you had all the dust kicked up and it was hard to tell what was going on.

I wonder if the Mahdist tactic they show was one thought up by the original filmmaker or had basis in historical reality--- sending a few Arabs forward as though they were being chased, then following with a cavalry in british uniforms taken from the dead after a fort was captured, so that the regiment thought the cavalry was coming to save them and they sent their own skirmishers out to meet a nasty surprise (also mahdists hidden in the sand with huge sickle swords to cut up the advancing horses of the british).

All very cool.

In the film, Napoleon, we never see the Mahdi. I don't know too much about that chapter in African history although I sit on a couple of firsthand accounts of the "Emin Pasha relief expedition"...
 
I once read that the Mahdi had a couple of machine-guns (the type needing a few people to man and rather cumbersome) in his arsenal but never gotten around to use them against the British, 'cause he disdained modern Western weopanry...

Also that the Mahdists believed they're imbued with God's blessing and immune to bullets...
 
That happens a lot in African warfare. Bullet immunity was invoked during Zimbabwe's revolution. Kind of like the missile shield on a personal level- can't be tested till it's too late...
 
Not just in Africa. And not just in colonial times.

E.g. The Boxers in China at the turn of the century believed so too. They invoked the powers of Chinese gods and thought themselves impervious to Western weopanry, incl bullets.

And even today or just awhile back, deviationist Islamic groups in Malaysia and the region trained their people to believe they're immune to bullets too.

I believe all these had to do with the mentality of unwilling to simply believe or accept the West can produce such a superior weopan or item. Or trying to reject the icon of the West - modern Western weopanry.

A dangerous form of escapism or something.
 
Yeah, well its like mind over matter- the Matrix sort of thing. If you think you won't get shot maybe you won't. Watching the British tactics in the 1800s, they must have been thinking something similar. Just line up and shoot!

Also it comes down to trying to have courage to fight when you are overpowered. If mystical mumbo jumbo works, that's the way to go.
 
But the thing is mostimes these people had access to modern weopans. They had a choice.

The Mahdi had those Browning (? - I think) machine-guns. They didn't even touch them, when attking the Brits.

But the easy times didn't last long anyways; once the non-Westerners accepted Western-style militaries, training, weopanry and so on; their armies did as well in the field vs Western units.
 
I'll have to look into the browning thing. There are million reasons that you might not use a machine gun in the sahara (sand clogging up the works before you even deploy it being one of them).

The Zimbabwe deal- they had guns, they just didn't have any protective armor other than the "magic water" which protected them from bullets. Same with the Maji Maji uprising in Tanzania.
 
It's something I vaguely remember fr reading somewhere, the machine guns stuff - I may be wrong. ;)

I don't think there's any effective 'armor' against bullets... My point is - rather than these natives charging blindly into the British or whatever line, trusting in their magical immunity; they could have developed tactics that better utilised their advantages (e.g. local geographical knowledge, numbers etc).
 
The British involvement in Sudan was a complete fiasco.

1) Britain had no interest in Sudan; a very poor country; full of foreigners, not in a strategic postion and with no useful assets.

2) There was a revolt in Upper Egypt so General Hicks was sent to crush it; he screwed up and his Egyptian army was defeated.

3) General Gordon was sent to restore control. Despite being told to stay in Egypt; he decided to invade Sudan.

4) He was instructed by Britain to withdraw to Egypt but he refused. The Mahdi surrounded him; and offered him safe passage out. He refused.

5) A relief army was sent out with General Kitchener.
This proceeded very slowly giving Gordon plenty of time to withdraw.

6) General Gordon's army were wiped out at Khartoun a few days before the relief army arrived.

7) Britain was so annoyed, it told the relief army to restore order.

8) The Mahdi adopted mobile cavalry guerilla tactics quite successfully.

9) The British were not acclimitised to or equipped for the country.

10) They adopted a policy of punitive raids against settlement thought to be supporting the guerrillas.

11.) This consisted of amongst other things levelling Sudanese villages; killing the old people and raping the women to force the Mahdis to fight.

12.) The villagers demanded that the guerrillas defend them.

13.) When the guerillas fought a fixed battle; they were machined gunned and wiped out.

Britain therefore invaded a country it did not want to invade; to revenge an insubordinate general who should have been executed, occupied a country that did not want to be occupied; lost a lot of troops in the process, slaughtered a whole lot more of the natives and lost money in the process.

Virtually everybody involved was dissatisfied.


In the list of British fiascos: Sudan is send to Afghanistan.


Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem in which he stated that the dervishers (known as "fuzzy-wuzzies") were the best warriors the British had ever fought.
 
Excellent post, Edwartking...

The only thing I can respond to at this point (soon launching into a reading about the whole thing) is the strategic interest in the Sudan. For centuries right up into the late 20th century, there is a perception that whoever controls the upper Nile can dictate terms to countries downstream to the North. Sudan controls almost the whole of Egypt's water supply. (Just as Uganda and Ethiopia control the deeper sources). Now realistically it wasn't an actual threat, but during the time of colonization of Africa by Europe, the control of the headwaters of the Nile was a strategic goal of several nations.
 
She did a good job with a British accent and she looked good.
 
Yes; people certainly thought that discovering and controlling the source of the Nile might be useful (hence explorers Livingston, Speke & Burton); but the Nile doesn't have any single source to be switched on and off like a tap; so it was a bit of a wild goose chase.

Furthermore during the 19 C, the French had some idea about extending from West Africa all the way east to the East African coast; and some British dreamed about a Cape to Cairo railway; so at one time people thought that there might be a potential strategic clash in Sudan; but nobody could ever make a business case that would add up; so some sort of understanding was worked out between France and Britain.
 
1889- the Berlin conference; laid out the colonial partitioning of Africa in precise terms that would guide the construction of every border still existant today. The only administrative changes have been after WW1, when Germany's east African possessions went over to British control, and some skirmishing in WW2, and independance.

- The source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia is at lake Tana- I spent time at a hydroelectric dam project there. As of now, the Ethiopians can effectively turn the river off. The white nile is a bit trickier, but the construction of the Aswan High Dam and the creation of Lake Nasser proved, rather late in history, that the whole of the river could indeed be tamed. A Sudan as beligerent and well armed as Saddam 1980s Saddam could sweep north, grab hold of that dam, and 1)cut off Egypt's fresh water or 2)destroy the dam and devastatingly flood the major Nile axis cities. Needless to say, that is one reason Sudan is kept powerless as 1990s Afghanistan...
 
I've also been in Egypt and at the Aswan dam... Egypt is a luxury showcase compared to Ethiopia.

I would like to say I had a good time Ethiopia but I did not. I went just after the last war with Eritrea was over and there was a famine in the SE and Addis was full of hungry/postwar refugees and no tourists at all.

I bought an air pass to visit Bahir Dar and Gonder. Bahir Dar is at Lake Tana and the Blue Nile Falls, it was my great fortune to meet a group of British and Yugoslav engineers who let me stay at their fully modern camp where they were building the dam, and I got to walk a trail up to the falls, etc. Gonder, the historic old capital with lots of Medeival buildings, I didn't get to see. My hotel had no running water and a previously used toilet and only eggs and toast to eat. I got a fever and changed my flight back to Addis for the next day.

Addis, which has a very nice government run hotel where I stayed, plus Haille Sellasie's palace, plus the history museum has the bones of Lucy, plus a Lion zoo filled with super hairy lions captured by their army in exercises, is an interesting city... of anywhere I've ever been in the world which is a fair number of places, Ethiopia was the most foreign to me.

They go by the Julian calendar and are seven years behind us, their orthodox Church hold hour long bullhorn prayers three times a day including about 4 am, much more irritating than the mosque call which you can also hear in the big cities. The people are friendly like everywhere and the women are beautiful, but it isn't a place to go backpacking solo...
 
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