A Black Corps d'Elite: An Egyptian Sudanese Conscript Battalion with the French Army in Mexico, 1863-1867, and its Survivors in...
- ISBN-10
- 0870139266
- ISBN-13
- 9780870139260
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 200
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1995-05-31
- Publisher
- MSU Press
- Authors
- Richard Hill, Peter Hogg
Description
For several years, the armies of Napoleon III deployed some 450 Muslim Sudanese slave soldiers in Veracruz, the port of Mexico City. As in the other case of Western hemisphere military slavery (the West India Regiments, a British unit in existence 1795-1815), the Sudanese were imported from Africa in the hopes that they would better survive the tropical diseases that so terribly afflicted European soldiers. In both cases, the Africans did indeed fulfill these expectations. The mixture of cultures embodied by this event has piqued the interest of several historians, so it is by no means unknown. Hill and Hogg provide a particularly thorough account of this exotic interlude, explaining its background, looking in detail at the battle record in Mexico, and figuring out who exactly made up the battalion. Much in their account is odd and interesting, for example, the Sudanese superiority to Austrian troops and their festive nine-day spree in Paris on the emperor's tab. The authors also assess the episode's longer-term impact on the Sudan, showing that the veterans of Mexico, having learnt much from their extended exposure to French military practices, rose quickly in the ranks, then taught these methods to others.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 1995-05-31
- 214 pages
- Paperback
- Michigan State University Press
Similar books
-
Khedive Ismail's Army
By John P. Dunn150 ; Richard F. Burton , First Footsteps in East Africa ( 1894 rept . , New York , 1987 ) , pp . 31–33 ; Cassenelli , op . cit . , p . 112 , n . 92 ; James , op . cit . , pp . 47 , 118 , 166 , 324–325 ; J. R. Wellsted , Travels in ...
-
Wanderings: Sudanese Migrants and Exiles in North America
By Rogaia Mustafa AbusharafAs Richard Hill and Peter Hogg describe The Black Corps D'Elite, Secretly, on the night of 7–8 January 1863, an under-strength battalion of 446 officers and men with one civilian interpreter sailed from Alexandria, Egypt in a French ...
-
Slaves of Fortune: Sudanese Soldiers and the River War, 1896-1898
By Ronald M. Lamothe82 Hill and Hogg, A Black Corps d'Elite, 12. One travelogue from a decade following the conclusion of the Nile Campaign referred to the fact that during an enquiry into a Sudanese soldier's death, amongst the soldiers questioned “there ...
-
Blacks in the American West and Beyond--America, Canada, and Mexico: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography
By George H. Junne... Fonda M. 371 Lockhart , W. E. 529 Lockley , Fred 459 Lockwood , Lee 265 Lodge , Michelle 609 Loewenstein , Gaither 480 Logan , Rayford Whittingham 98 , 552 Logue , Barbara J 108 , 433 Lohse , Stefanie 182 Lomax , Almena 230 Lomax ...
-
The Cambridge History of Egypt
By Carl F. Petry, M. W. Daly27 Although hardly a year passed until 1838 without at least one ghazwa for blacks in the Nuba mountains and beyond ... 30 Richard Hill and Peter Hogg , A Black Corps d'elite ( East Lansing , 1995 ) ; Umar Tusun , Butalah al - urtah al ...
-
Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean
By Terence Walz, Kenneth M. CunoUmar Tusun, Butulat al-urta; Hill and Hogg, A Black Corps d'Elite; Johnson, “The Structure of a Legacy,” 72–88, and his “Sudanese Military Slavery from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century,” 142–56; Prunier, “Military Slavery in the ...
-
Soldiers of Revolution: The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune
By Mark LauseThe new corps included slaves bought from West African owners as well as prisoners of war . ... at revues.org ; and Richard L. Hill and Peter C. Hogg , A Black Corps d'Élite : An Egyptian Sudanese Conscript Battalion with the French ...
-
The Shadow Emperor: A Biography of Napoleon III
By Alan Strauss-SchomHill, Richard, and Peter Hogg, A Black Corps d'Elite, An Egyptian Sudanese Battalion with the French Army in Mexico, 1863–1867(Michigan State University Press, 1995). Hortense de Beauharnais, Mémoires de la Reine Hortense (Paris: ...
-
Mexico at War: From the Struggle for Independence to the 21st-Century Drug Wars
By David F. MarleyIn 1889, John M. Browning of Utah had conceived of the first “gas-operated” machine gun, whose muzzle flashes were designed to activate a lever so as to instantly chamber succeeding rounds. Improved and patented by 1892, Browning ...
-
Kordafan Invaded: Peripherial Incorporation and Social Transformation in Islamic Africa
By Michael Kevane, Endre StiansenLondon : Oxford University Press . Hill , Richard and Peter Hogg . 1995. A Black Corps d'Elite : An Egyptian Sudanese Conscript Battalion with the French Army in Mexico , 1863–1867 , and its Survivors in Subsequent African History .