British Major-General Charles George Gordon and His Legacies, 1885-1960 Stephanie Laffer
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2010 Gordon's Ghosts: British Major-General Charles George Gordon and His Legacies, 1885-1960 Stephanie Laffer Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES GORDON‘S GHOSTS: BRITISH MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES GEORGE GORDON AND HIS LEGACIES, 1885-1960 By STEPHANIE LAFFER A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2010 Copyright © 2010 Stephanie Laffer All Rights Reserve The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Stephanie Laffer defended on February 5, 2010. __________________________________ Charles Upchurch Professor Directing Dissertation __________________________________ Barry Faulk University Representative __________________________________ Max Paul Friedman Committee Member __________________________________ Peter Garretson Committee Member __________________________________ Jonathan Grant Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii For my parents, who always encouraged me… iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been a multi-year project, with research in multiple states and countries. It would not have been possible without the generous assistance of the libraries and archives I visited, in both the United States and the United Kingdom. However, without the support of the history department and Florida State University, I would not have been able to complete the project. My advisor, Charles Upchurch encouraged me to broaden my understanding of the British Empire, which led to my decision to study Charles Gordon. Dr. Upchurch‘s constant urging for me to push my writing and theoretical understanding of imperialism further, led to a much stronger dissertation than I could have ever produced on my own. I would also like to thank Peter Garretson for introducing me to Gordon in the first place. Without Dr. Garretson‘s enthusiasm for my seminar paper on Gordon‘s death, it is unlikely that this entire project would have come to be. In addition to Dr. Upchurch and Dr. Garretson, I would also like to thank Jonathan Grant, who provided encouragement every step of the way, Max Friedman for stepping onto my committee and challenging my analysis, and finally, Will Hanely and Barry Faulk, for reading the entire manuscript and providing me with very helpful feedback. Outside of Florida State University, I must thank the staffs of the libraries and archives I visited. Wandering into sometimes empty libraries and asking to look at all of the papers that they had regarding Charles Gordon, often led to new insights into Gordon and the people he encountered. In Boston, at the Boston Public Library and the Athenaeum, I was able to see how Gordon was perceived in the publishing world. In the United Kingdom, the staffs of the British Library, Hove Library, the Sudan Archive at Durham University and the National Archives all helped me to find every document relating to Gordon held by the institutions. Additionally, I must thank anyone who read any of the drafts, especially Amy Carney, who edited the entire dissertation, and Christopher Black, who re-edited and proof-read it, and my father, Elliott Laffer, who spent a portion of his Christmas vacation reading the entire draft, and composing the chapter titles. Finally, I need to thank my family. My parents have encouraged me to feel like I could do anything, including write a dissertation. This support has meant more to me than they could ever know, and the trip to Istanbul was a perfect way to end the project. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................ vi Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... vii 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................1 2. THE LIFE, DEATH AND ‗CULT‘ OF GORDON ..............................................................................15 3. DEATH AND ITS AFTERMATH .......................................................................................................36 4. THE ―GREAT HERO‖ MEMORIALIZED .........................................................................................56 5. PUTTING GORDON‘S MEMORY TO WORK .................................................................................76 6. BACK TO KHARTOUM .....................................................................................................................96 7. STILL A SYMBOL ............................................................................................................................116 8. FADING INTO THE BACKGROUND .............................................................................................142 APPENDICES .........................................................................................................................................167 A. THE GORDON STATUE ......................................................................................................167 B. THE GORDON STATUE—THE WREATHS.......................................................................168 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................................169 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...................................................................................................................193 v LIST OF FIGURES A.1: Contemporary Photograph of the Gordon Statue, Victoria Embankment Gardens 168 A.2: Annual Wreaths on the Gordon Pedestal, January 2008 ................................ 169 A.3: Wreath from the Gordon Foundation, Gordon School (left) and Old Gordonians (right) 169 vi ABSTRACT ―Gordon‘s Ghosts: British Major-General Charles George Gordon and his Legacies, 1885-1960,‖ examines the various ways that Gordon and his memory have been used in the British Empire following his death in Sudan in 1885. After his death, Gordon became a symbol of Britain‘s imperial project, with his name and legacy featured in debates concerning multiple aspects of the British Empire, including areas where his connection was tangential at best. My study spans a period of about seventy-five years, beginning with the height of British imperialism and concluding with decolonization. Over the course of these decades, Britain‘s imperial commitments stretched all over the globe, as did the projections of Gordon‘s legacy. In British domestic politics, Gordon‘s legacy was often synonymous with the failures of Liberal Imperialism and its strongest advocate, Prime Minister William Gladstone. As long as the Liberal Party remained committed to the ideas of Gladstone, Gordon‘s memory was employed both explicitly and implicitly by the Conservative Party as a way of reminding the British voting public of its opponent‘s shortcomings. For the Conservatives, Gordon became a political tool; he needed to be commemorated to serve as a reminder of the consequences for not following a strong imperial policy, and my work traces these politics of commemoration. Gordon‘s legacy was present in other areas of the British Empire than Britain and Sudan. My dissertation also traces how Gordon‘s memory was used in these other regions. The first area where Gordon‘s legacy was employed was not in Africa, where it may have been expected, or even in China, where he earned his nickname, ―Chinese Gordon,‖ but instead in Ireland, where his name was regularly invoked in the arguments against approving Irish Home Rule in 1886. Following the successful defeat of this proposed policy, the Conservative Party continued to invoke Gordon‘s name throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most notably in response to other imperial projects that would, in its opinion, weaken the British Empire. Fittingly, my work concludes with a discussion of how Gordon slowly becomes less important to British imperialism and how his representations changed as the needs of empire changed. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION On Saturday May 14, 1960 at 12:30 in the afternoon, a statue of Major-General Charles George Gordon was re-erected in the grounds of The Gordon Boys‘ School in Surrey, England. This statue had been sent back from now-independent Sudan to its home country and claimed by the Boys‘ School as a way to honor its namesake, General Gordon.1 This statue and one other were the only two statues ever sent back to Britain by formerly-occupied countries—and by the time it was mounted at the school, it had lost most of its importance. In fact, the re-positing of the statue only received a solitary picture in The Times of that day.2 The statue and the man whom it honored no longer had the same importance as they once did. Eighty-six years earlier, when Gordon was sent to Khartoum, the papers were full of stories of his valor, and one year later, full of his sacrifice; now they relegated his contributions and the statue that honored him to the back pages of the paper. The statue, the last tangible reminder of the British time in the Sudan, and the country where Gordon had sacrificed his life