Wingate, General Sir Francis Reginald

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Introduction

	Contents
	Arrangement
	Bibliography

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Catalogue

	1. Sudan material
	(a) Egyptian Army
	(b) Wingate's Sudan career, 1899-1916
	(c) Irrigation
	(d) The Darfur Campaign, 1916
	(e) Boundary Commissions
	2. Foreign material
	(a) High Commissioner for Egypt, 1916-1919
	(b) Papers relating to the Egyptian Capitulations Commission
	(c) Arab Affairs (Arab Revolt), 1906-1920
	(d) Abyssinia, 1897-1899
	(e) Aden, 1906-1934
	(f) Somaliland, 1902-1918
	(g) Sanūsīyah, 1889-1919
	(h) Papers relating to Egyptian Rulers, 1886-1918
	(i) Ecclesiastical Affairs
	3. Personal Material
	(i) Personal Papers
	(a) General correspondence
	(b) Telegrams
	(c) Slatin-Wingate correspondence
	(d) Decorations
	(e) Publications
	Sir Reginald Wingate, Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan: being an account of the rise and progress of Mahdiism, and of subsequent events in the Sudan to the present time., (London : Macmillan and Co., 1891)
	Joseph Ohrwalder, Ten years' captivity in the Mahdi's camp / from the original manuscripts of J. Ohrwalder , [ed.] by F.R. Wingate. (London : Sampson Low, Marston, 1892)
	Rudolf Carl von Slatin, Fire and sword in the Sudan: a personal narrative of fighting and serving the Dervishes, 1879-1895, tr. by F.R. Wingate. (London : Arnold, 1896)
	H.C. Jackson, Osman Digna, with an introduction by Sir Reginald Wingate, Bt. (London : Methuen, 1926)
	Assorted publications
	(f) Papers of H.M.L. Rundle (1856-1934)
	(g) Papers of Baron de Malortie (1838-1899)
	(ii) Diaries
	(iii) Articles, Lectures and Speeches
	(a) Articles by F.R. Wingate
	(b) Articles by others
	(c) Speeches by Wingate
	(d) Speeches by others
	(iv) Manuscripts of published works
	The Book of Devotion (al-Ratib) of the Mahdi
	(v) Photographic Material
	(a) Photograph Albums
	(b) Loose Photographs
	(vi) Maps and Plans, 1879-1947
	(a) Topographical Maps
	(b) Political Maps
	(c) Military Maps
	(vii) Newspaper Cuttings
	(viii) Printed Material
	Separated printed material now in Durham University Library

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General Sir (Francis) Reginald Wingate

An historical introduction, by M.W. Daly
Francis Reginald Wingate was born on 25 June 1861, the last of eleven children of Bessie Turner and Andrew Wingate, a textile merchant of Glasgow. Upon his father's death in 1862 Bessie Wingate, in straitened circumstances, settled with her children in Jersey, where she died in 1877. At least three sons predeceased her. In January 1879 Reginald (he seems never to have been known as Francis) entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and in July 1880 was commissioned a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. In March 1881 he left England for his first posting, in India (see Wingate 1955; Daly 1997).

Wingate's Indian experience was brief, and there is little evidence that it made a lasting impression. He was stationed at Kolaba, visited Kumta, Kanara, Deolali, and Chittore, and studied Hindustani (Urdu) and Arabic. Sent to Aden in March 1882, he angled for a transfer. After initial disappointment and a brief return to India, Wingate was offered in April 1883 an appointment in the Egyptian Army, which he delightedly accepted.

Whereas a junior officer of Wingate's background could be lost in the crowd in imperial India, Egypt was brimming with possibility. Britain had occupied the country only in 1881, and was still in the early stages of reorganization. The old army of the khedive had been disbanded and Sir Evelyn Wood was building a new one, under a few British officers. From the moment of his arrival in June 1883 therefore, Wingate held responsible positions and mixed regularly with both senior officers and the local elite. Britain's temporary occupation of Ottoman Egypt became permanent, and secondments of British officers became careers.

Except for holidays, special missions, and one brief attempt to make a career at home, Wingate spent the next thirty-seven years in Egypt and the Sudan. His advancement appears to have been typical, but in fact was fraught with uncertainty. He was ambitious and full of energy, but hard work alone did not bring rapid promotion. Wingate would later believe that he had earned more than he had ever received, and that he had to fight for everything he got.

One reason for Britain's continuing occupation of Egypt was the threat posed by the revolutionary Mahdist regime in the Sudan; Mahdist ideology was universalist, and Egypt was its next target (see Holt 1970). In 1889 the Mahdists invaded and were crushed at the battle of Tushki. But while Wingate and the other soldiers wished to turn the tables and reoccupy the Egyptian Sudan, their civilian chiefs in Cairo and London demurred. Years of raiding followed, mostly in the eastern Sudan, where Egypt held the port of Suakin. Wingate's successive roles as deputy adjutant general for recruitment, and as officer in charge of military intelligence involved him in many areas of policy, in Egypt, in the Sudan, and indeed in Africa and the Near East generally. But it was the Sudan that would make his name.

The period of standoff between the British in Egypt and the Mahdist State was one of intense activity for Wingate. After the battle of Tushki he and a colleague, E. A. Floyer of the Telegraphs Department, collaborated on a book about the Sudan campaigns. Political objections arose, the authors fell out, and the book was finally published by Macmillan in 1891, under Wingate's name alone, as Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan. Sales were disappointing, but the book brought Wingate attention in England. The book was long, expensive, and turgid, and taught Wingate a lesson: there followed two more-saleable ' personal narratives' of Europeans who had escaped from the Sudan. In 1892 Father Josef Ohrwalder's notes, translated by a clerk and edited by Wingate, were published as Ten years captivity in the Mahdi's camp, under Wingate's name. Sales were brisk. And in 1895 Rudolf Slatin's Fire and sword in the Sudan appeared, with Wingate, who had again edited an English translation, credited as 'translator'. This became a best-seller.

These books served several purposes. They kept the issue of the Sudan alive in Britain, preparing - and indeed fomenting - public opinion for an eventual reconquest. They established Wingate's credentials in military and political circles. And they supplemented his income: in 1888 he had married Catherine Rundle, and in September 1889 their first child, Ronald, was born. A second child died two weeks after his birth in August 1892, and a third, Malcolm, was born in August 1893. Wingate was never frugal, and royalties helped to keep the family afloat.

In 1895 the British Government finally decided to act in the Sudan. Italy, faced with defeat of its own imperialist ventures in Abyssinia, called for British help. In March 1896, therefore, the British occupied Dongola, diverting the Mahdists' attention from the eastern Sudan. The stage was set for two confrontations, with the Mahdists at Omdurman and with the French for control of the Upper Nile. The British thus pushed south to Berber in 1897, and on 2 September 1898 Kitchener's forces destroyed the Mahdist army at Karari and occupied Omdurman. Two weeks later the famous Fashoda incident occurred, in the aftermath of which British control of the Nile was assured. Wingate had accompanied the victorious Anglo-Egyptian force in Dongola, at the battle of the Atbara in March 1898, and at Omdurman, and he played a leading role in the personal diplomacy at Fashoda. His role was recognized with a knighthood.

Wingate's career now reached a critical moment. For the Egyptian Army the future seemed to hold only the inglorious work of pacification and administration of the Sudan. But by the end of 1898 Wingate had, through seniority, neared the top. When an Anglo-Egyptian convention established a new regime for the Sudan, Kitchener accepted the position of Governor-General and Wingate stayed on as his long-suffering right-hand. He commanded the force that defeated and killed the Khalīfah `Abd Allāhi at Umm Diwaykarat in November 1899, and when Kitchener, bored and frustrated, was called to South Africa a few weeks later, Wingate succeeded him as commander-in-chief (Sirdār) of the Egyptian Army and Governor-General of the Sudan.

It is for this dual role that Wingate is largely remembered. His long tenure (1899-1916) witnessed the consolidation of British rule, the establishment of a civil administration, and the building of a modern infrastructure (see Warburg 1971 and Daly 1986). The legacies of the period may still be seen in all aspects of the Sudan's political, economic, and social life, for better or worse. While Wingate did not personally devise a comprehensive blueprint for the Sudan administration, and although in many areas he was directed by the British representative in Cairo, his personality dominated the regime.

That Wingate seems not to have made any attempt to advance his career beyond the Sudan indicates how well the situation there suited him. He established an annual routine by which he spent several weeks in Egypt on business every year, long holidays in Scotland (where he built a house at Dunbar), and 'cures' on the continent. In the Sudan he entertained European notables in the Palace built for Kitchener in Khartoum, repaired in hot weather to Erkowit in the Red Sea Hills, and travelled extensively throughout the country in viceregal style.

While Wingate enjoyed a popular reputation as virtual creator of the Sudan, historians have taken a more critical view. He was, of course, fortunate in both his predecessors and his control of contemporaries; the Mahdīyah, which he himself had portrayed and continued to depict as the nadir of barbarism and squalor, made a useful foil, and less attractive aspects of the early Condominium - its repressiveness, its discouragemant of manumission, its heavy-handed opposition to economic innovation, its violent 'pacification' of the south and allotment of it into 'spheres' for competing Christian missionaries - were hushed up or overlooked by distant authorities and an uncritical home press.

The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 confronted Wingate with new challenges and shaped the remainder of his career. Egypt remained in law a province of the Ottoman Empire. If the Turks entered the war against Britain, the Sudan's co-domini would be technically opposed. Worse, Wingate shared the fear that a call to jihād by the Ottoman sultan would fall on receptive ears in the Sudan, not least in the Egyptian Army. Through deft measures and a degree of luck the Sudan remained calm, even after Britain declared a protectorate in Egypt and the Ottomans allied with the Central Powers. Indeed, Wingate took the opportunity presented by the war of launching, in 1916, a successful campaign against the autonomous sultanate of Darfur, whose ruler, `Alī Dīnār, had shown signs of disaffection.

But it was on another front, to the east, that Wingate concentrated his attention after the Turks entered the war. The Sudan's proximity to the Hijāz made it a natural link in the chain of communication between the Sharīf of Mecca and the British. Wingate played an early, lasting, and important part in the Arab Revolt that finally broke out in 1916; fear lest Muslims resent an overt British role kept Wingate's command secret until after the war, and it has largely been forgotten.

At the end of 1916 Wingate was appointed High Commissioner in Egypt, completing a long progression that had begun in 1883. But Egypt had changed since the days of Sir Evelyn Wood and Lord Cromer, indeed since 1914. It fell to Wingate to exercise political control in the midst of a military situation that demanded strong and unpopular measures. The successes of his tenure in Cairo, and the obstacles under which he laboured, have therefore been obscured by the circumstances surrounding his departure and resignation (see Terry 1968). Nor was he spared personal misfortune, for in March 1918 his son, Malcolm, was killed on the Western Front.

With the armistice in November 1918 Egyptians immediately acted to secure the greater independence Britain had promised at the outbreak of war. Wingate urged London to receive and conciliate the nationalist leaders of the Wafd, advice the Foreign Office rigidly rejected. Tensions rose, as the legitimacy of Egyptian ministers, who had collaborated with the British throughout the war, drained away. Recalled, Wingate was blamed for the violence that broke out in Egypt after his departure. After almost a year at home as nominal High Commissioner he was finally superseded by Lord Allenby, who had been sent to Egypt to deal with the emergency.

A period of bitter disappointment ensued. Anxious to avoid responsibility for its own mistakes, the Foreign Office took advantage of Wingate's wish for another position. He declined the offer of a minor colonial governorship, and was denied the peerage he expected. Accepting a baronetcy in 1920, Wingate had also to face the fact that the British government, and those he considered his friends within it, had turned their backs on him. Without independent means, he therefore resorted to business, and accepted several company directorships. These, an active social life in London, continental 'cures', and regular holidays in Scotland fully occupied him and his wife until the end of the second world war, when they retired to Dunbar. Lady Wingate died there in 1946, and he in 1953, having spent his last few years as an invalid.

Of the Wingate's four children, Graham died in infancy, Malcolm was killed in 1918, and Ronald died in 1978, having succeeded to the baronetcy. Their daughter, Victoria, born in 1899, had married Captain Henry Dane in 1922. She had three children and died in 1989.

By its very length and the series of positions he held, Wingate's career was one of the most important in the history of the British Empire in the Near East. And it is not only for the manner of his departure in 1919 that that career has been eclipsed in historical writing about the period. For most of his career Wingate was overshadowed by powerful superiors and colourful subordinates. As an aide to successive Sirdārs - Wood, Grenfell, Kitchener - he was the essential man-behind-the-scenes; Kitchener especially was jealous of any independent credit his officers won, and deliberately kept Wingate out of the limelight. But even as Sirdār himself and Governor-General of the Sudan Wingate played an echoing second fiddle to the British maestro in Cairo; Lord Cromer treated Wingate, both publicly and privately, as a deputy. By the time of Cromer's retirement in 1907 Wingate had moreover realized that his independence of action up the Nile was directly proportional to his obscurity in Britain; from time to time he had to call on Cairo or London for help, but in general he made a personal virtue of the Sudan's obscurity. During the first world war Wingate's work was best done quietly: lest Cairo or London intervene, he planned the invasion of Darfur in secret; lest the Sharīf of Mecca acquire the taint of Christian allies, he concealed his role in the Arab Revolt. Finally, as High Commissioner in Egypt Wingate held an administrative post at a time when the world was concerned with military affairs; when Europe's attention turned to the East it was Lawrence of Arabia, not Wingate at the Residency, that captured attention.

This is not to say that Wingate had been forgotten in the Sudan. Indeed in the British press he gained an inflated reputation as an administrative genius who, by virtue of long experience and keen intuition, had developed a sixth sense in dealing with Orientals and Africans. Once this reputation was won it was easy to maintain; the slightest success in the backward Sudan was described as administrative tour de force; the grossest failure was blamed on the fanaticism of the barbaric Sudanese. Having for long years directed the intelligence department of the Egyptian Army, and indeed having himself acted as a press correspondent during the Nile campaigns, Wingate knew well how to manipulate opinion. But what had by 1914 seemed a miraculous achievement had, a year later, seemed ordinary and unremarkable: the first world war and the upheavals that attended and followed it made peacetime administration seem dull. Moreover, Wingate's success in the Sudan in some measure caused its own eclipse: the very lack of violent reactions and bloody revolts kept the Sudan out of the news.

Historians' treatment of Wingate has been largely favourable, but unbalanced. His tenure as Sirdār and Governor-General has been surveyed (see Warburg 1971, Daly 1986, Collins 1971, Hamilton 1935, Hill 1965, Holt and Daly 1988, Sanderson and Sanderson 1981, MacMichael 1934, Sandes 1937). Much less attention has been paid to his work in the Egyptain Army during the 1890s. His shadowy role as war-propagandist has been demonstrated by P.M. Holt, (Holt 1958) yet popular and other works continue to ignore it. Moreover the circumstances of his supersession as High Commissioner in 1919 have eclipsed his work in Egypt in 1917-18. His role in the planning and execution of the Arab Revolt has been amply demonstrated in the sophisticated diplomatic histories of Kedourie (Kedourie 1956, 1976 and 1984), but the very complexity of that role (and of Kedourie's analyses) perhaps accounts for the lack of attention still paid to Wingate by historians of the first world war in the Near East. Finally, the unsettled politics of the Sudan since independence in 1956, and Western historians' disdain for the Afro-Arab borderlands, has diverted attention to other fields, while popular writers (and general readers) continue to favour dark horses like Gordon and Lawrence.

Historical fashion will someday favour a return to political, administrative, even military and diplomatic history. When it does Wingate will have provided - in the papers now at Durham - all the means necessary for reassessing his career. That he saved so much indeed tells us something about the man; when in 1919-20 he tried to justify his actions during the Egyptain crisis he had a huge private archive with which to document his case: one never knew when one would need to prove a point of policy or point out a broken promise.

So the Wingate collection at Durham is much more than what is usually considered private papers. In the formative years of the Sudan Government, to be sure, the line between private and public was indistinct: the regime was staffed at the top by a few British officers, and their correspondence frequently mixed personal and political matters. Increasingly Wingate relied on stenographers who typed his letters and made multiple carbons, and some of these, as his personal copies of reports from throughout the government and army, he kept. What with diaries, financial accounts, medical and business records, and a huge private correspondence, the Durham collection thus provides the biographer with an embarrassment of riches.

As this catalogue illustrates, the collection has large amounts of material that is far from personal and indeed far from Egyptian and Sudanese. The files on Arab Affairs, especially from the period 1914-17, are a major source for the study of the Arab Revolt and subsequent diplomacy of the Arab lands. The files of material on Somaliland detail Wingate's mission in 1909. The files on Abyssinia have useful material on the Rodd Mission, which Wingate accompanied. The files on Egypt during Wingate's high commissionership are an essential source for a close study of Egyptian administration and politics during that period, as well as for the 1918-19 crisis.

Nor are Wingate's Sudan papers limited to administrative matters - or indeed limited in any way. Entire sections of this catalogue are appropriately devoted to irrigation, boundary commissions, and the Darfur campaign. Wingate routinely corresponded with even quite junior officials, and not only political and military officers but also forestry officials, agricultural inspectors, game wardens, antiquities experts, government engineers, and others, and he kept their reports. The result is that the Wingate Papers overlap but do not duplicate the collections of the National Records Office in Khartoum and the Public Record Office in London as the main sources for the study of the Sudan in 1899-1916. As the core of the Sudan Archive's still-growing collection, they today comprise a source that will ensure Wingate's stamp on history in ways he would never have imagined.

Outline of Wingate's career and chronology

	1861 Jun 25	Francis Reginald Wingate born Port Glasgow, Renfrewshire
	1878	Entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich
	1880	Appointed lieutenant in the Royal Artillery
	1881-1882	Service in India
	1882-1883	Service in Aden
	1883	Service in India
	1883	Appointed to Egyptian Army
	1883 Dec	Staff officer to Sir Evelyn Wood
	1886 Apr	ADC to Sir Evelyn Wood, G.O.C. Eastern District, Colchester
	1886 May	Assistant Military Secretary to Sir Francis Grenfell, Sirdār Egyptian Army
	1886 Aug	Assistant Adjutant General for Recruiting
	1887	A.A.G. for Intelligence
	1888	Married Catherine Leslie Rundle
	1889	Director of Military Intelligence
	1891	Publication of Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan
	1894	Temporary appointment as Governor of the Red Sea Littoral and Commandant of Suakin
	1896	Occupation of Dongola
	1897	Second-in-command to Rennell Rodd, mission to Abyssinia
	1898 Apr 8	Battle of the Atbara
	1898 Sep 2	Battle of Omdurman
	1898 Sep	Accompanied Kitchener to Fashoda
	1898 Oct	Adjutant General, Egyptian Army; K.C.M.G.
	1899 Jan 19	First Anglo-Egyptian Convention
	1899 Nov 24	Death of the Khalīfah at Umm Diwaykarat
	1899 Dec	Appointed Sirdār of the Egyptian Army and Governor-General of the Sudan
	1907	Resignation of Cromer, British Agent in Egypt; appointment of Gorst
	1909 Apr 1	Opening of Port Sudan
	1909	Mission to Somaliland
	1911 Jul	Kitchener replaced Gorst as High Commissioner for Egypt
	1914 Aug	Outbreak of war with Germany
	1914 Nov	Outbreak of war with Turkey
	1914 Dec	Deposition of `Abbās Ḥilmī II and his succession by Sultan Ḥusayn Kāmil; British Protectorate of Egypt
	1916	Darfur campaign
	1917 Jan 1	Wingate appointed High Commissioner for Egypt
	1917 Oct 9	Death of Sultan Ḥusayn Kāmil and accession of Sultan Aḥmad Fu`ād
	1918 Feb	Death of Wingate's son Malcolm
	1919 Oct	Wingate removed from office
	1920 Jul 6	Wingate awarded baronetcy
	1932 Oct 4	Death of Slatin
	1946 Jun 10	Death of Lady Wingate
	1953 Jan 29	Death of Wingate

Abbreviations

	A.A.G.	Assistant Adjutant General
	A.D.C.	Aide-de-Camp
	A.D.I.	Assistant Director of Intelligence
	A.G.	Adjutant General
	Bimb.	Bimbashi
	D.G.M.	Deputy Grand Master
	D.M.I.	Director of Military Intelligence
	E.A.	Egyptian Army
	F.O.	Foreign Office
	G.O.C.	General Officer Commanding
	H.C.	High Commissioner
	H.M.T.	His Majesty's Troopship
	Kaim.	Kaimakam
	K.A.R.	King's African Rifles
	K.C.B.	Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath
	K.C.M.G.	Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George
	M.I.	Mounted Infantry
	N.C.O.	Non Commissioned Officer
	O.C.	Officer Commanding
	O.S.	Ordnance and Supplies
	P.M.	Prime Minister
	P.W.D.	Public Works Department
	R.A.	Royal Artillery
	R.A.M.C.	Royal Army Medical Corps
	R.E.	Royal Engineers
	R.F.C.	Royal Flying Corps
	R.W.	Royal West
	S.G.	Sudan Government
	S.I.S.	Sudan Irrigation Service
	ts.	typescript
	W.O.	War Office

Glossary

	Afandi	an educated man; in general, Mister
	amān	clemency
	amīr	commander
	anṣār	followers of the Mahdī
	arḍīyah	storage/warehouse charges
	dār	land, homeland
	dhow	native sailing craft
	dhurah	millet
	faddān	unit of land measurement; 1 faddān = 1.038 acres
	faqīh	holy man or religious teacher
	ghafīr	guard, watchman
	Imām	leader; title denoting the leader of prayers in a mosque
	jihād	holy war
	khalīfah	successor, lieutenant
	khedive	title conferred on Isma`īl Pasha and his heirs by firman of 7 July 1867
	khawr	water-course, usually dry except in rains
	Liwā`	officer commanding a brigade
	maḥmal	richly decorated litter sent by Islamic rulers to Mecca as an emblem of their independence at the time of the ḥajj
	ma`mūr	district official
	markaz	office, government office
	mak	king
	mīrālāy	officer commanding a regiment
	mudīr	governor of a province
	mudīrīyah	province headquarters
	muftī	expert in Islamic law
	muḥāfiẓ	commissioner, officer commanding troops in a province or a fortress town
	nāẓir	leader of a tribe or section of a tribe
	qāḍī	judge of a religious court
	qism	administrative subdivision of a province, branch of a department
	sāqiyah	water wheel
	shaikh	tribal or religious chief or high notable
	Sirdār	title of the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army
	sudd	barrier; term denoting the region of swamps between Bor and Lake No on the Upper Nile
	sūq	market
	ṭarīqah	a sufi order or brotherhood
	ṭulbah	type of tax
	`ulamā`	learned ones, especially of Islam
	`umdah	headman of a town or group of villages
	`ushr	a tithe levied on agricultural production
	wādī	dry watercourse
	Yūzbāshī	officer commanding a company of regular troops

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Contents

Now arranged in some 200 archive boxes, the collection covers in depth Wingate's service in the Egyptian Army during the Nile campaigns from 1883-1899 and the periods in which he was Governor-General of the Sudan, 1899-1916 and High Commissioner of Egypt, 1917-1919. His diaries pre-date his service in Egypt, covering the years 1881-1883 with the Royal Artillery in India and Aden, and his personal papers stretch well beyond his enforced retirement from public service in 1919, but the bulk of the collection is concerned with the period 1883-1919. Of prime relevance to Sudanese history, it also contains a wealth of material on neighbouring countries: Egypt, naturally, because of its close association with the Sudan and because of Wingate's service there, but also the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, Aden, Somaliland, Abyssinia and Uganda. The contents are further described below in the section on arrangement

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Arrangement

For the early years of Wingate's career, up to about 1899, his papers were arranged, during his own lifetime, in 'official' and 'personal' categories and pasted into letter-books. These have now been dismounted for repair, and the papers preserved loose in files which contain incoming letters and copies of outgoing letters produced on a letter press, interfiled with relevant reports, memoranda, maps, newspaper cuttings, etc. For the central period of Wingate's life, there are three main series of official papers: 1883-1898 when he served with the Egyptian Army during the Nile campaigns; 1899-1916 when he was Governor-General of the Sudan; and 1916-1919 when he served as High Commissioner for Egypt. The documents in each of these series divide between general files which reflect a wide variety of events and official involvement in affairs of the Sudan and Egypt, and a number of subject files, created during Wingate's working life, which relate to specific topics. Some reorganisation may also have taken place during the writing of Wingate's biography by his son, Sir Ronald Wingate. A further sequence of files contains personal papers from 1883-1951 and the collection also includes diaries, drafts of articles, speeches and books and a large miscellaneous quantity of maps, photographs and printed material. Within the three main series of official papers, 'general' files and 'subject' files are not mutually exclusive in the subject matter of their contents. Hence, while papers relating to the Darfur Campaign of 1916 are grouped in subject files covering that event, there are also numerous letters and reports recording affairs in Darfur in the general files for 1916. This pattern applies to all the subject files. Similarly, the division between 'official' and 'personal' is somewhat arbitrary. Indeed Wingate's 'personal' letters are rarely personal in the sense of being concerned with family and personal matters. Addressed to a wide range of friends, former colleagues and associates, they are 'personal' only in the sense that they were not written in the course of official business, but nonetheless most refer to official matters. Even his letters to his wife, while very personal, record in some detail for example, the events leading up to the Battle of Omdurman and the Fashoda Incident. By and large, no attempt has been made to rationalise the original division of material into 'official' and 'personal' or 'general' and 'specific'. Before the current programme of cataloguing commenced, the collection had been available to readers for many years and cited widely in publications. Some refiling has occurred where items were filed incorrectly by month or year, but on the whole, it was thought advisable to meddle as little as possible with the established arrangement and renumbering of files has been avoided. The work of initial sorting and listing of the collection was carried out by Richard Hill, lecturer in modern Near Eastern history in the University's School of Oriental Studies and one of the joint founders of the Sudan Archive. Loose papers were inserted into files and boxes in chronological groupings but boxes were not arranged on the shelves and numbered in chronological order. For example, material from 1915 is found in box 194 and from 1897 in box 263. Hill provided two means of access to the collection: an alphabetical card index of persons, places and principal subjects and a card inventory in box order. Each card provided a reference, in some cases simply the box number, in others the box and file numbers, and a very brief description of the contents, e.g. '186/1 Sudan correspondence, April 1913', but gave no indication of the subject matter. Obviously the priority at this time was to make the collection accessible to readers as soon as possible, leaving more detailed listing to follow later. After Richard Hill's retirement in 1966, the collection was administered by the Oriental Section of the University Library, but no further progress in organisation or listing was made until 1977 when a grant from the British Library enabled the appointment of an archivist, Miss Elizabeth Cory, for a period of four years, to work on sorting and listing material in the Sudan Archive in general. As part of her work, a draft catalogue was produced for the Arab Affairs section of the Wingate Papers and a further grant from the British Library for conservation enabled seven letter-books to be dismounted and repaired. From 1983, thanks to the generosity of former British officials from the Sudan, a part-time archivist was employed. Two years later, one full-time and three part-time members of staff, funded by the Manpower Services Commission, were appointed for the specific purpose of producing a catalogue of the Wingate Papers. Working under Lesley Forbes, then Keeper of Oriental Books and Jane Hogan, the part-time archivist, the MSC staff sorted, foliated and stamped papers and completed a draft catalogue of the entire collection on computer. This has provided the main means of access to the Wingate Papers in recent years. In addition, an index to all correspondents, also on computer, was created. Work on editing this catalogue for publication began in 1985. Progress speeded up after 1990 when the university established a full-time archivist's post with special responsibility for the Sudan Archive. Owing to the large amount of material in the collection and the nature of its contents, the catalogue is in the form of a summary list. Some entries are for individual documents, but most describe entire files in which letters and telegrams, both incoming and outgoing are interfiled with related reports, memoranda, maps, newspaper cuttings, etc. Each catalogue entry consists of a description of the most significant letters and telegrams in the file, giving the name of the correspondent (unless otherwise stated the recipient is Wingate), subjects covered and individual document references. At the end of each entry, after the words Also includes:, are listed all items, other than letters and telegrams, which appear in the file. Obviously many letters are not individually described and while every attempt has been made to pick out the most significant items, inevitably, given the subjectivity of such judgments, some may have gone unrecorded. It is hoped that the catalogue will be seen as a working tool and that readers will supply corrections and make suggestions for improvements. The catalogue does not include an index, but an index to all correspondents on computer is available in Durham. This is arranged alphabetically and then chronologically under 'Letters from' and 'Letters to' and printouts can be provided for individual names. Similarly, subject-searching of the computer file is possible under key-words and names of persons and places mentioned in the catalogue.

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Accession details

The papers of Sir Reginald Wingate (1861-1953) were donated to the Sudan Archive, University of Durham in 1958 by Sir Reginald's son, Sir Ronald Wingate. The collection is the largest single donation ever received by the archive and historically the most significant. Coming just a year after the initial appeal to launch the archive, it did much to advance Sudanese studies at Durham. Further small gifts from Sir Ronald were added during the 1960's and a group of Mahdist documents which had formerly belonged to Sir Reginald, but which had been sold after his death, was purchased at auction by the University in 1960, mainly through the generosity of former officials of the Sudan Government, and restored to the collection.

Bibliography

Collins, R.O., Land beyond the rivers (New Haven and London, 1971)
Daly, M.W., Empire on the Nile (Cambridge, 1986)
Daly, M.W., The Sirdar: Sir Reginald Wingate and the British Empire in the Middle East (Philadelphia, 1997)
Hamilton, J.A. de C. (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from within, (London, 1935)
Hill, R., Slatin Pasha, (London, 1965)
Holt, P.M., “The source-materials of the Sudanese Mahdia”, St. Antony's Papers, Number 4: Middle Eastern Affairs, Number 1, (London, 1958)
Holt, P.M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1970)
Holt, P.M. and Daly, M.W., A history of the Sudan, 4th ed., (London 1988)
Kedourie, E., England and the Middle East, (London, 1956)
Kedourie, E., In the Anglo-Arab labyrinth, (Cambridge, 1976)
Kedourie, E., The Chatham House version and other Middle-Eastern studies, (London, 1984)
MacMichael, H.A. The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, (London, 1934)
Sanderson, L.M. and Sanderson, G.N., Education, religion and politics in Southern Sudan 1899-1964, (London and Khartoum 1981)
Sandes, E.W.C., The Royal Engineers in Egypt and the Sudan, (Chatham 1937)
Terry, Janice “Sir Reginald Wingate as high commissioner in Egypt, 1917-1919” (University of London Ph.D., 1968)
Warburg, G., The Sudan under Wingate (London, 1971)
Wingate, R., Wingate of the Sudan (London, 1955)

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Catalogue