‘Truest History, Struck Off at White Heat’: The Politics of Editing Gordon's Khartoum Journals

Abstract

The 317-day siege of Khartoum during 1884–85 was one of the most bitter in history, culminating in the deaths of thousands of inhabitants, members of the Egyptian occupying garrison and their commanding officer, Major-General Charles Gordon. Five months after his death, Gordon's surviving ‘Khartoum Journals’ were published, in carefully edited form. This article considers the highly politicised nature of the editing process, in which William Gladstone's cabinet agonised over suppressing the entire journal, censoring its contents or permitting the entire manuscript to be published, irrespective of the damage it might inflict on an already unpopular government. The article examines the nature of the elisions forced upon the editor of the journals, Egmont Hake. For the first time, it is also revealed how Hake's post-publication nationwide lecture tour, mounted amid the acrimonious 1885 election campaign, was in reality a systematic and effective Conservative Party initiative, funded by the son of Lord Salisbury, to exploit the name of Gordon to demonise and bring down the Gladstone ministry.