The Perils of Gunboat Diplomacy: The German East Asia Squadron at Manila Bay, 1898

Posted on January 27, 2026 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor

AIS Historical Perspective

January 27, 2026

When America went to war with Spain in 1898, its focus was primarily on Cuba, and secondarily on the Caribbean as a whole. While a plan existed to take the war to the Spanish mainland, it was never implemented, having little to do with America’s ultimate war aims. 9700 miles away from the Cuban theater of the war, the Philippines, a Spanish colony for over three centuries, remained a strategic afterthought in Washington. Nonetheless, it was in the Philippines that the Americans won their first great battle of the war only days after declaring war on Spain. Commodore George Dewey achieved a decisive victory at Manila Bay when his squadron of modern warships destroyed a decrepit squadron of Spanish ships manned by untrained sailors. The sudden triumph outstripped American planning; with Washington still unsure of next steps. What happened after the battle is rarely remembered today, but involved the arrival at Manila of a superior German fleet whose behavior, intentional or not, was intimidating enough that it brought the United States and Imperial Germany to the brink of war.

The Early German Naval Presence in Asian Waters

After various wars of unification and intense diplomatic negotiations, the southern German states joined the North German Confederation in 1871 to form the new Prussian-led German Empire with Otto von Bismarck and the Hohenzollern royal family at the helm. Before this time, only Brandenburg and Prussia of the German states had made small and ultimately unsuccessful attempts at establishing foreign colonies. Bismarck opposed any shift to European-style overseas colonialism; Prussia had always relied on a powerful land-based military, but had only a weak and tiny navy. Nonetheless, the new empire required an international presence, and by the 1880s Germany was fielding a number of small warships in East Asia and the Pacific as part of the new Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy).

The most prominent of these was the steam frigate SMS Elisabeth, originally commissioned into the North German Federal Navy in 1868 (SMS stands for Seiner Majestät Schiff – German: His Majesty’s Ship). The Elisabeth arrived in the Far East in 1881, where it became the flagship of a naval squadron consisting of the corvettes Stosch, Stein and Leipzig, the gunboat Wolf and its sister-ship Iltis. The squadron was disbanded in 1885, leaving only the Iltis (1878), the gunboat Nautilus (1871) and the Elisabeth, which was transferred to eastern African waters in June 1881. The squadron was reformed as the East Asia Cruiser Squadron in January 1888, but was disbanded again in May as the larger ships were sent to East Africa to support colony building there. By late 1893, only the gunboats Wolf and Iltis remained in Asian waters.

The Iltis began East Asian service in 1880, fighting pirates near Taiwan and protecting German nationals during disturbances on the Chinese coast. The Iltis toured the Philippines, including the Sulu Archipelago, in March 1881. A ship of 490 metric tons, it was armed with two 4.9-inch guns. The Iltis was sent to Korea in 1894 to secure the German embassy at Inchon during the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1896). The gunboat was also present at the Japanese destruction of the Chinese fleet at the Battle of the Yalu River. In July 1896, the Iltis was ordered to Tsingtao to investigate the suitability of the northern Chinese port for a permanent German naval station, but a powerful storm broke the ship on a reef, with the loss of 71 members of its crew.

The German East Asia Cruiser Squadron in 1898

At the beginning of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), the protected cruiser Irene was sent to Asia to become the flagship of the newly formed East Asia Cruiser Squadron (Kreuzerdivision in Ostasien) under Rear Admiral Paul Hoffman. In 1895, several older ships were sent home as the Iltis and Irene were joined by the Irene’s sister-ship Prinzess Wilhelm, the armored cruiser Kaiser (1874) and its sister-ship Deutschland (1874), the protected cruiser Kaiserin Augusta (1892) the unprotected cruiser Cormoran (1893), the gunboat Gefion (1893) and the steam corvette Arcona (1885).

Known to the German navy as “cruiser-corvettes,” the protected cruisers Irene and Prinzess Wilhelm were launched in 1887. The ships, at 4271 metric tons, were highly sea-worthy, but slow, with a typical cruising speed of only nine knots due to a design flaw. Each ship had fourteen Krupp 5.9-inch guns and three torpedo tubes. They were modernized in 1893 before the Irene was sent to East Asia in 1894, with the Prinzess Wilhelm following in 1895.

The British-built ironclad Kaiser’s rigging and sails were removed in 1883 and replaced by two heavy military masts. The ship was rebuilt in 1891-95 as an armored cruiser of 7645 metric tons. The Kaiser was armed with eight 10.2-inch guns in a central casemate battery (soon overtaken by the turret battery design used in later ships) and five torpedo tubes. Its sister-ship Deutschland, also a member of the East Asia squadron, was rebuilt at the same time. They were the last of Germany’s foreign-built capital ships.

SMS Kaiser, 1887

A protected cruiser of 6056 metric tons, the Kaiserin Augusta was launched in 1892. The only one of her class, this unique ship was designed for overseas duty (most German cruisers were designed for dual use overseas or with the home fleet). It joined the East Asia squadron in 1897, armed with 12 5.9-inch guns and five torpedo tubes after an 1896 upgrade. The cruiser’s bow was also reinforced for ramming. The Kaiserin Augusta was considered a fast ship, having crossed the Atlantic at an average speed of 21.5 knots (24.7 miles per hour).

The Gefion was an unprotected gunboat of 3746 metric tons at its launch in 1893. The ship was designed for colonial service or use as a commerce raider in times of war. Armed with ten 4.1inch guns and two torpedo tubes, the Gefion had the greatest range in the German fleet – 3500 knots (4000 miles). It joined the East Asia squadron in May, 1898.

The Cormoran was a Bussard-class unprotected cruiser of 1612 metric tons, independently stationed in the Pacific, but ready to join the East Asia squadron whenever needed. Like the Kaiserin Augusta, it was built solely for overseas duty. Launched in 1892, the ship carried a main battery of eight 10.5-centimeter (4.1 in) guns with two deck-mounted torpedo tubes.

SMS Arcona

The Arcona was a screw-corvette, one of six ships of the Carola-class equipped with steam and sail for overseas service. The 2662-ton Arcona carried ten 5.9-inch guns and two 3.4-inch guns. The corvette made two visits to the Philippines in 1895 and 1896 to help protect Europeans during local disturbances, landing German marines on its second visit.

Most of the early work of the squadron consisted of surveying, fighting pirates and protecting German nationals and interests in the Pacific and along the Chinese and Korean coasts. Visits to Nagasaki, Formosa, Port Arthur and Vladivostok were common, as well as occasional patrols of the Yangtze River.

Germany Contests Spanish Control of the Caroline Islands

The Caroline Island group is a Pacific Ocean archipelago of some 500 small coral islands. Beginning in 1525, Spain made sporadic attempts to establish sovereignty over the archipelago. When they renewed such attempts in 1885 by adding the region to the Spanish East Indies, German and British trade missions were already active on the islands. Spanish attempts to collect customs duties on German commercial activities saw the arrival of the gunboat Iltis to raise the German flag at Yap (four islands surrounded by a common coral reef) on August 2, 1885, despite the presence of two Spanish warships that ultimately did nothing. Spanish discretion proved the better part of valor; Pope Leo XIII was called on to mediate and conflict was averted when Germany accepted the Pope’s affirmation of Spanish sovereignty. This did not, however, end German interest in the archipelago.

A German Naval Base in China – 1897

The German squadron used Britain’s Hong Kong harbor as a base, but this arrangement was unsatisfactory for several reasons. Thus, a “German Hong Kong” was sought. Numerous ideas were advanced and rejected, including the Kaiser’s suggestion of a joint German/Japanese occupation of Taiwan (this would have proved interesting when the two nations became enemies in 1914). Another possibility was China’s Bay of Jiaozhou; the surrounding region of Shandong (where German missionaries were already active) was rich in coal and iron ore.

Tirpitz took over the East Asia Squadron in June 1896, tasked with finding a permanent base for his itinerant fleet on the Chinese coast. When China refused Germany’s request for a naval port, the Kaiser ordered plans to be made for a takeover of Jiaozhou Bay and the fishing village of Tsingtao (or Quindao, now a city of over 7 million people with a historical district of German colonial-era buildings). After Admiral Tirpitz returned to Germany to become the architect of the German High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte), his successor, Rear Admiral Otto von Diederich (appointed June 1897) failed in his efforts to negotiate the German Navy’s use of China’s Kiaochou Bay in June 1897.

A pretext for occupation opened up in November 1897, when two German Catholic missionaries were publicly slaughtered in Shandong. Kaiser Wilhelm styled himself as the personal protector of the mission, and immediately ordered the East Asia Cruiser Squadron into action, against the advice of Tirpitz. The Kaiser, Prinzess Wilhelm and Cormoran took part in the capture of Kiaochou Bay on November 14, 1897 (Irene was in dry-dock at the time).

The German landing party took only two hours to seize Kiaochou and drive out its commander, General Chang, who was put under house arrest. An attempt organized by General Chang from his home to retake the port two weeks later was repulsed by the guns of the Kaiser and the Prinzess Wilhelm. Chang was sent under guard to the Prinzess Wilhelm. Marines of the Seebataillon arrived in January 1898 to consolidate control.

On March 6, 1898, Germany signed a 99-year lease with China for Shandong, without rent. The region came under the authority of the Imperial Navy rather than the usual colonial administration of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

German Interest in the Philippines

In the 1860s, Prussian merchants and gunrunners became involved with the Muslim sultan of the Sulu Archipelago, which was under blockade by the Spanish, who claimed the territory in the south Philippines. After German unification in 1871, Madrid feared the newly emergent German Empire intended to take the Sulu Archipelago or even the entire Philippines and began seizing German merchant ships headed to the archipelago, some of which carried cargoes of old muskets and ammunition destined for Muslim rebels. The result of this minor crisis was twofold: a growing interest in Filipino affairs in Berlin and a realization that a growing German presence in the Asia/Pacific region required greater naval support than just the old Prussian steam corvette Nymphe, a veteran of wars against Denmark and France and Germany’s lone ship in the vast Pacific. In 1873, the Nymphe visited the sultan of the Sulu Archipelago, who asked for his realm to become a protectorate of the German Empire to free Sulu from Spanish rule. When the request reached Berlin, it was rejected by Bismarck, who replied pragmatically that the German navy was still too weak for Berlin to become involved in such projects. Despite this, some in the German foreign office would remember the sultan’s appeal over twenty years later when it suddenly became of importance.

When the Philippine Revolution broke out in August 1896, the cruiser Arcona was sent to Manila to protect German residents and interests, provoking new suspicions that Germany had designs on the Spanish colony. The Arcona was relieved by the Irene on December 25. Days later, the Spanish executed José Rizal, a German-educated Filipino revolutionary with many German connections who the Spanish believed was in favor of a German takeover of the colony. Though his family pleaded for German intervention, Tirpitz declined and the Irene left on January 3, 1897. When other revolutionaries petitioned for a German protectorate, Wilhelm became convinced there was popular demand in the Philippines for German sovereignty. The Kaiser was alarmed in March 1898 when the German consul in Hong Kong reported American preparations for an assault on Manila, which Wilhelm had already decided should belong to Germany. This attitude on the part of the emperor himself might have contributed to the decision to send an oversized naval representation to Manila at the time of the American attack. Direct action in support of the Spanish was not favored due to differences in Berlin over the power of the Americans. Nonetheless, the Kaiser believed the Philippines should not come under the control of a foreign power without Germany receiving some form of compensation.

That the Germans were serious about expansion in the Asia/Pacific was demonstrated when it was decided to double the strength of the German naval deployment in the region. The Kaiser was delighted with his new acquisition in China and sent out a second division of the East Asia Cruiser Squadron under the command of his brother, Prince Heinrich. Consisting of the flagship Deutschland, the Kaiserin Augusta and the Gefion, the squadron left for China on December 15, 1897, with the Kaiser instructing them: “Should anyone seek to hinder you in the proper exercise of our legitimate rights, go for them with a mailed fist.” The squadron arrived in Tsingtau harbor on May 5, 1898.

The German consul in Manila believed the Filipino insurgents were open to the establishment of a kingdom, possibly with a German prince at its helm. Bernhard von Bülow, the aristocratic German foreign secretary, disputed the consul’s report and informed the Kaiser that this scenario was unlikely and could create conflict with both Britain and America, something the Kaiser did not want under any circumstances. German diplomats suggested to their American counterparts that an American takeover of the Philippines might require German compensation, possibly in the form of coaling stations or harbors in the Sulu archipelago, where Germany had longstanding interests. Possible sites for German bases in the archipelago included Port Dalrymple on Jolo Island and Isabela on Basilan Island. German diplomats tried but failed to persuade Washington that Sulu had been a Prussian protectorate since 1873.

Outbreak of the Spanish-American War

Spain, once the world’s greatest imperial power, was reduced by the late 19^th century to minor possessions in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, the most valuable of which were Cuba and the Philippines. Spain’s much-diminished army struggled to hold on in the face of rebellions in all its colonies, while its overseas fleet consisted mainly of outdated, poorly maintained ships capable of colonial duty but little else. During the three centuries of Spanish rule in the Philippines, military mutinies were a regular occurrence, usually happening in response to Spanish abuses of their own locally-raised troops or Filipino civilians.

Spanish Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón

In August 1896, a fractious nationalist group called Katipunan launched the Filipino Revolution. By 1897, the movement was still unsuccessful in its independence campaign, and the revolution’s leaders (including leader Emilio Aguinaldo) came to an arrangement with the Spanish; in exchange for amnesty and a monetary indemnity, they agreed to exile in Hong Kong. Future Spanish dictator Lieutenant Colonel Miguel Primo de Rivera went with them as hostage for the indemnity payment.

The Battle of Manila Bay

Following the Maine incident in Havana and exaggerated claims of Spanish colonial atrocities repeated in the American press, Washington declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898. In a war largely engineered by imperially-minded political opportunists with the support of a jingoistic press, the United States embarked on a military campaign to seize Spain’s overseas possessions (with the exception of its African colonies).

The Battle of Manila Bay, by Ildefonso Sanz Doménech

Shortly after the declaration of war, the US Asiatic Squadron left Hong Kong for Manila to attack the Spanish squadron of decaying ships based there. The American squadron, commanded by US Civil War veteran Commodore George Dewey, had no permanent base in the East, frequenting Chinese and Japanese ports to supply itself.

The US Asiatic Squadron included four protected cruisers: the flagship Olympia (1892, 5870 tons, four 8-inch guns, 10 5-inch guns), the Baltimore (1888, 4600 tons, four 8-inch guns, six 6-inch guns), the Raleigh (1892, 3200 tons, one 6-inch gun, ten 5-inch guns) and the Boston (1884, 3200 tons, two 8-inch guns, six 6-inch guns). There were also two smaller gunboats, the Concord and Petrel, the McCulloch, a revenue cutter, and a collier and transport ship.

Spanish Cruiser Reina Cristina (1887)

The much weaker Spanish squadron was led by its flagship, the Reina Cristina (1887), an unprotected cruiser of 3,042 tons (smaller than all four American cruisers), with six 6.4-inch guns that became the main target of American fire when the battle began. The Reina Cristina was supported by the Castilla (1881), an unprotected cruiser of 3,289 tons, with a ram bow and four 5.9-inch and two 4.7-inch guns. Unfortunately, the Castilla was largely immobile due to problems with her propeller shaft and was forced to fight the battle while still at anchor until she was sunk. The Reina Cristina was destroyed by shellfire with heavy loss of life before being scuttled.

Other Spanish ships included:

The unprotected cruiser Don Antonio de Ulloa (1887), 1152 tons, with only two 4.7-inch guns on the starboard side, the port side guns having been dismantled for use in shore batteries. The Don Antonio had been sent to the Caroline Islands in 1890 to fend off German cruisers. By 1898, however, her machinery was in bad repair and the ship was unable to move during the battle, allowing it to be completely destroyed by the American guns.
Don Juan de Austria (1897) was an unprotected cruiser of 1152 metric tons, equipped with four 4.7-inch guns. She was badly damaged by American fire before being scuttled. The ship was later raised to become the USS Don Juan de Austria.
The protected cruiser Isla de Cuba (1886) displaced 1053 metric tons and carried six 4.7-inch guns. She was scuttled to prevent capture during the battle after Admiral Montojo moved his flag to her after the destruction of the Reina Cristina. The cruiser was later raised and put back to work fighting Filipino rebels as the USS Isla de Cuba before being sold to the Venezuelan Navy, where she served until 1940. The Isla de Cuba’s sister-ship, the Isla de Luzón, suffered multiple hits in the battle and was likewise scuttled and refloated to join American service.
The Marques del Duero (1875), a gunboat/despatch ship of 492 metric tons, with one 6.4-inch and two 4.7-inch guns, was the oldest ship in the Spanish squadron. Badly damaged in the battle, it was scuttled before being raised for a short career as the USS P-17.

Three small Spanish gunboats in the area did not take part in the battle, while the guns of an unprotected cruiser, the Velasco, had already been moved to shore batteries that played little part in the battle, the American ships operating mostly out of range. Many of the Spanish ships had torpedo tubes, but there were no torpedoes available.

The seven-hour battle that followed the arrival of the US squadron was so one-sided that the Americans were able to take a break for breakfast half-way through before returning to the destruction of the Spanish ships. Damage to the American ships was extremely light and only one fatality was reported. The Spanish suffered 77 dead and over 270 wounded; by the end of the encounter not a single Spanish ship remained afloat of those that had taken part in the battle.

Despite the personal valor he displayed at the head of his decrepit fleet, the Spanish squadron’s commander, Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón, was court-martialled, dismissed from the navy and briefly imprisoned on his return to Spain. A report from Admiral Dewey testifying to his gallantry in the unequal battle was of little help.

After the Battle of Manila Bay

The speed of the American naval victory in Manila had outstripped American planning, with the question of American intentions in the Philippines remaining unanswered while Dewey awaited further instructions. It was unclear what Washington intended for the Philippines – independence, American occupation, continued Spanish control with the payment of an indemnity, annexation, a US naval withdrawal, or the American sale of the islands to a third party (most likely Britain). Meanwhile, Filipino revolutionaries led by Aguinaldo continued their campaign against Spanish troops. In exile in Hong Kong since 1897, Aguinaldo had been returned by Dewey to Manila on the revenue cutter USS McCulloch on May 19. As Dewey awaited further orders, it seemed an opportune time for Germany to position naval assets to exploit this uncertainty and perhaps influence developments to Germany’s advantage. The SMS Irene and SMS Cormoran were the first German ships to arrive in Manila on May 6 and May 9, respectively.

The German consul in Manila reported that the Spanish governor general was willing to accept turning the city over to the commanders of the various European neutral warships that gathered in the harbor to observe the battle and protect their nationals and interests in the Philippines, but was unable to persuade Admiral Diederichs to take the lead in such an action without a directive from Berlin. Meanwhile, the German Foreign Office was following the Kaiser’s order to avoid unduly antagonizing the Americans and forcing them into an alliance with Britain.

The international ships at Manila were typical of the type generally used in observer situations. These included the HMS Immortalité (1887), an armored cruiser of little note, and HMS Linnet (1880), a gunboat also of little distinction despite being the sixth ship of its name in the Royal Navy. The French Bruix was an armored cruiser that would eventually be used against German forces in the Kamerun campaign of 1914-15. The Japanese Ituskushima was a French-built protected cruiser, a poorly designed ship with a single 12.6-inch gun whose recoil was too much for the vessel to handle with any ease. Despite her deficiencies, she fought in the 1894 Battle of the Yalu River against China and again in the world-changing 1905 Battle of Tsushima against the Russian fleet.

On June 2, 1898, the Kaiser issued Admiral Diederichs’ main order: “Sail to Manila [with the East Asia Squadron] in order to form a personal opinion about Spain’s situation there, the population’s mood, and the foreign influence on the political reorganization of the Philippines.” Tirpitz added that strict neutrality should be observed to protect German interests elsewhere in the Pacific. There was nothing to suggest that Diederichs was to support the Spanish, back the rebels or otherwise interfere in the American campaign, whose goals were still frustratingly unclear. Nonetheless, the presence of a strong German squadron would enable the Germans to exploit an American withdrawal should that happen.

Dewey’s ammunition was seriously depleted after the battle and the commodore’s nerves were on edge due to the intense summer heat and the absence of cable communications with his superiors – messages needed to be sent by ship to the telegraph station at Hong Kong, with the reply coming back the same way, a process of roughly one week.

The German troop transport Darmstadt arrived on June 6 with 1400 soldiers and a collier ship. The Americans, who would have no troops of their own in Manila for another six weeks, were duly shocked by what seemed a German intention to seize their prize. In reality, the German troops were headed to Tsingtau and the Darmstadt had only stopped at Manila to provide relief crews for the Irene and Cormoran. Dewey was greatly relieved when the transport left 72 hours after arriving, but alarms had once more been sounded by what appeared to be another effort to intimidate the victorious American squadron.

Rebuilt SMS Deutschland as armored cruiser in 1898 at Port Arthur. Compare with photo of sister-ship Kaiser before modernization. The Kaiser was modernized at the same time.

The rest of the German squadron arrived on June 12, the same day Aguinaldo’s rebels declared the independence of the Philippines. By this time, there were five German warships gathered at Manila, the Prinzess Wilhelm, Kaiser, Irene, Kaiserin Augusta and Cormoran (the Deutschland, Gefion, and Arcona remained in Chinese waters). The size and power of this squadron was significantly out of proportion for what was required for observation purposes. Both the Kaiser and the Kaiserin Augusta were larger than any of Dewey’s ships and rumors in Manila maintained that Diederichs, who was senior in rank to Dewey (another oddity for an observer mission), had arrived to support the Spanish.

While the Americans fretted over the size of the German squadron and its forceful commander, Diederichs was, by June 25, actually sending official reports to Berlin suggesting his squadron was far too large and that a figure of his high rank should never have been sent to deal with Dewey, a mere commodore.

The actions of the German squadron seemed to tell a different story, however, and appear to have involved some degree of intimidation, with German ships ignoring the American blockade of the bay, coming and going at will during the night, flashing powerful searchlights at random and sending a steady stream of communications by signal lamp, keeping the American squadron constantly on edge. German sailors even seized a lighthouse and various Spanish onshore facilities without explanation.

Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs

Most alarming to the Americans, however, was a visit by Diederichs to the Spanish governor general of the Philippines, Basilio Augustín y Dávila Augustín, and a return visit by the governor to the Kaiser. Though this unnerved Dewey, it emerged later that Diederichs used these talks to explain to the governor that he could not take any action in support of a Spanish proposal to mollify the rebels by establishing a looser Spanish protectorate over the Philippines guaranteed by Germany (perceived to be friendly to the Filipinos) without orders from Berlin. If Dewey had known the direction and tenor of the talks, he may have hosted them himself. Instead, Dewey called on Diederichs to have him explain the presence and activities of the German squadron, to which Diederichs replied: “I am here, sir, by order of the Kaiser.” Like many other exchanges with the Germans, this response seemed curt, unilluminating and slightly menacing.

Commodore George Dewey, USN

Diederichs also ordered the German consul and a flag-lieutenant to meet with the Filipino rebels. The admiral reported these talks in a top-secret message to Berlin. Feeling independence was near, the rebels initially informed the Germans they no longer had interest in a German protectorate. Diederichs, who believed in the inevitable collapse of a Filipino government, suggested patience until that time, while warning the rebels might be trying to play the Germans against the Americans. Further talks revealed that Aguinaldo was personally interested in close ties to Germany (possibly even as a protectorate) once independence had been achieved. The rebel government attempted to send an envoy, Antonio Regidor, to Berlin to enquire about a German protectorate, but the visit was suspended by Wilhelm until independence was achieved. However, the size of the German squadron at Manila also confused the revolutionaries, who believed it could only be there to support the Spanish occupation. Meanwhile, Admiral Diederichs was reporting that he could discern no reliable support in the Philippines for a German protectorate.

The US Revenue Cutter McCulloch

On June 27, an officer from the American revenue cutter McCulloch boarded the Irene in daytime, a provocative action that revealed Dewey’s anxiety about the German ships. Identification boardings at night when ships were difficult to identify were considered acceptable at the time, while daytime boardings were considered insulting and unnecessary. Despite this Diederichs at all times ordered his squadron to accept night-time boardings by American officers. The American press inflamed the incident by claiming the McCulloch had fired a shot across the Irene’s bows to force her to stop. Further dubious incidents involving shots being fired across the bows of German warships were cited in the American press, eventually finding their way into the historical record. Diederichs, however, reported to the Kaiser that no shots had been fired at German ships, describing such reports as inventions of the anti-German American press.

The New York Times (June 30, 1898) questioned the purpose of the oversize German squadron in Manila:

The apparatus she has provided is quite out of proportion to the object to be attained. There may be forty or fifty German subjects doing business in Manila. … A single man-of-war could accommodate the entire German population of Manila. Yet the provision that Germany has made is a squadron composed, at last accounts, of five vessels, and superior to the American squadron which destroyed the Spanish fleet and which now holds Manila under its guns. We should be very simple to believe that this force has been assembled merely to rescue German inhabitants from the fury of Auguinaldo.

There can be no doubt of the unofficial American view of the assemblage of a German squadron in Manila Bay. It is that that assemblage is unmannerly and provocative, and that it is meant not to protect existing German interests but to find new interests to protect.

German public opinion during the war was generally supportive of Spain, in contrast to the government’s official (but undeclared) neutrality. The German press began to weigh in against the Americans; these reports aggravated the situation when they were translated and reprinted in American newspapers.

SMS Irene in Chinese Waters

On July 5, the Irene was ordered south to Subic Bay (later an American naval base, but held at this time by Filipino revolutionaries) to explore its usefulness as a harbor and to evacuate noncombatants and severely wounded troops from a beleaguered Spanish garrison on Isla Grande. While off the island, the Irene encountered the Filipinas, a merchant steamer flying the insurgent flag and having every appearance of preparing to deliver an attack on Isla Grande. The Germans, who had not yet evacuated the noncombatants, ordered the insurgents to haul down their flag, still officially unrecognized by any state. After the Filipinas slipped away in the night, its captain reported to Aguinaldo and the still pro-rebel Americans that the Irene had interfered with their attack on the Spanish. Dewey, believing this to be a violation of neutrality, sent the Raleigh and Concord to investigate, but these arrived only in time to see the departure of the Irene. The German cruiser’s action, never explained to the Americans, was interpreted by the latter and by Aguinaldo’s rebel forces as naval support of the Spanish garrison.

Efforts to improve relations only made things worse. Dewey sent an officer to complain to Diederichs about blockade violations but the officer came away reassured by the admiral’s sincerity in stating his desire not to interfere with American operations. A July 10 return visit to Dewey by a German officer went well until the officer complained the Irene had been illegally stopped and boarded. Dewey exploded, threatening to stop every ship and fire at any that resisted, shouting “If Germany wants war, alright – we are ready!” When he continued in this vein, the German officer chose to leave and report to Diederichs. Though the German admiral decided not to make an issue of Dewey’s outburst, tensions between the two squadrons were now at a peak. With more anger than discretion, Dewey unwisely revealed plans to engage the German squadron to American reporters. The growing pressure was somewhat alleviated when the Americans learned Diederichs had ordered the Irene to leave the Philippines on July 9, leaving four German ships at Manila. A growing correspondence between Dewey and Diederichs also helped calm the standoff through July.

The Spanish Relief Fleet

Spain’s best ships were in its home fleet, and a plan was formed to have them steam to America and bombard cities on the US coast. As well as causing panic in the enemy’s homeland, it would also help relieve the American blockade of Cuba and allow the Spanish naval squadron trapped there to take to sea. The plan did not receive approval from the pro-American British, who regarded the Atlantic at the time as their own Mare Nostrum.

The bombardment of the American coast was abandoned and the squadron ordered on June 16 to steam to Manila to restore Spanish control of the Philippines. Known as “the Second Squadron,” the ships came under the command of Admiral Manuel de la Cámara y Livermore, a veteran of the War of the Pacific (which pitted Spain against Peru and Chile, 1865-1866), the First Cuban War (1868-1878) and the First Rif War, fought in Spanish Morocco (1893-1894). Cámara knew the way to the Philippines, having led the “Black Squadron” of three Spanish warships to Manila in 1890.

Spanish Battleship Pelayo

Cámara’s relief squadron included the battleship Pelayo (1888, partially rebuilt just before deployment) with two 12.6-inch guns and two 11-inch guns, and the brand-new armored cruiser Emperador Carlos V, with 11-inch guns. With support ships, this squadron would bring into play far more powerful weapons than the 8-inch and 6-inch guns of the four protected cruisers of the American Asiatic Squadron. With America’s most powerful ships deployed in the more important Caribbean theater of the war, a desperate admiralty sent the US monitor Monterey (1891) with two 12-inch guns, two ten-inch guns and a ram to Manila from San Francisco on June 11. It was followed by the monitor USS Monadnock (1883), with four ten-inch guns on June 23. Though the monitors, with very low freeboards, were designed for use in coastal waters or rivers, they both survived harrowing two-month crossings of the Pacific. They would remain in the Philippines until 1899.

Spanish Cruiser Emperador Carlos V in the Suez Canal

The Spanish Second Squadron passed through the Suez Canal after several days of negotiations with British authorities and reached the Red Sea by July 7, but was ordered to return home following the American destruction of the Spanish Caribbean Squadron at Santiago, Cuba on July 3, 1898. Four Spanish cruisers had stood no chance against four American battleships and two armored cruisers. This created an opening for the US to implement plans to raid the Spanish coast with the battleships Iowa and Oregon and the cruiser Brooklyn. The American attack was called off once the powerful Spanish ships turned for home, where Cámara’s squadron was disbanded on July 25, 1898.

The End of Uncertainty

American intentions in the Philippines started to become clear when US troops began to arrive. The first American ground force of 2700 men landed on July 1, 1898. Further troopships arrived at Manila on July 17 and again on July 31. Instead of aggravating the situation, their arrival confirmed that the Americans planned a military occupation, a development that would leave little room for German expansion in the islands. By the end of July, the German foreign ministry informed Washington that their ships never intended to interfere with American operations and a large squadron had only been sent in response to public pressure in Germany to defend German interests in the Philippines.

USS Monterey Crossing the Pacific, 1898

The US monitor Monterey arrived on August 4; when the monitor Monadnock sailed into Manila Bay on August 16, the American squadron was finally stronger than their German counterparts.

There was, strangely, to be one more incident that was little noted at the time but later grew in stature into an almost legendary confrontation. A secret armistice was agreed upon by the Americans and the Spanish on August 12. A mock battle was arranged for the next day to allow the Spanish to save face and avoid a potential slaughter by the Filipino insurgents by surrendering to the Americans instead.

As the American ships moved from nearby Cavite to positions off Manila to shell the city on August 13, the two British cruisers moved into a position between the Americans and the four remaining German ships. Though no-one at the time thought it was anything other than the British ships moving into a better observation point (with little regard for the view of the Germans), it was later interpreted as the pro-American British preventing an imminent attack on the American flank by the German squadron. In fact, neither the British nor German ships were cleared for action and the only German movement was to shift the Kaiser slightly after the British ships blocked the German flagship’s view of the American bombardment. With the exception of one American ship, the US squadron followed Dewey’s order to fire only on low-value or uninhabited targets.

American infantry advanced into the city, with some commanders who had not been informed of the full plan surprised by the light resistance they encountered. Aguinaldo’s rebels had been warned by the Americans to stay out of Manila during American operations there, but joined the American advance instead, ignoring Spanish flags of truce and forcing the Spanish to resist in earnest for their own survival. As a result, 19 Americans and 49 Spaniards were dead by the end of the “mock battle.”

SMS Kaiserin Augusta

Following the shelling of the city, the Kaiserin Augusta sailed away with the Spanish Governor General, though the ship’s captain later claimed he did so with American permission. Diederichs departed Manila for Batavia on August 21 aboard the Kaiser. The rest of the German squadron left for Mariveles (Bataan Province), leaving only the Prinzess Wilhelm on station to protect German nationals.

Aftermath

Dewey appears to have been more alarmed by the presence of the German squadron at Manila than Washington. Though both the German and American press contributed to the belief that a confrontation was imminent, there was little appetite for such in both Washington and Berlin. The German presence was opportunistic and designed to exploit a possible collapse of the Philippines in concert with other “sea-powers” if such a course arose. When the Spanish-American armistice was signed on August 12, German interest in a Philippines protectorate evaporated and Diederichs was ordered to the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) to celebrate the coronation of the Queen of the Netherlands. German attention quickly turned to obtaining Spain’s other possessions in the Pacific. American diplomats were informed that if the US did not object to this activity, Germany would abandon any claims to the Sulu Archipelago. This proved agreeable to both sides. Meanwhile, the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris forced Spain to sell the Philippines to the US for $20 million. On February 4, 1889, the US Senate voted for the full annexation of the Philippines.

Despite his rapprochement with Diederichs, Dewey appears to have remained angered by his confrontation with the Germans, telling an American correspondent during his trip home that America’s next war would be with Germany. He continued to express anti-German sentiments on his return, earning a reprimand from President Roosevelt. Dewey would later tell a French admiral that his biggest mistake at Manila was not sinking the German squadron, a feat that was likely beyond his ability. By April 1899, however, Dewey was ready to admit in a letter to Diederichs that their differences had been largely manufactured by the press. Diederichs was recalled to Berlin in 1899 to become the new chief of the admiralty staff.

Even after Washington betrayed the Filipino revolutionaries and decided to keep the entire Philippines as a colony, the German Colonial Society advocated a German occupation of the island of Mindoro, the seventh biggest island in the Philippines, just south of Luzon. Mindoro had fine harbors, but had never come under complete Spanish control. It took US troops over two years to crush local resistance on the island and the ambitions of the German Colonial Society eventually came to nothing.

The German Empire in the Pacific (Chrischerf).

Though Germany had missed out on the Philippines, it still benefited from the Spanish defeat through the German-Spanish Treaty of 1899, in which Spain sold the Pacific island chains of the Carolines, the Palau Islands and the Northern Marianas to Berlin for 25 million pesetas. These roughly 6000 islands were placed under the administration of German New Guinea, giving Germany vast, if relatively unproductive, holdings in the Pacific. The new gunboat SMS Jaguar was sent on a flag-raising tour of Germany’s new possessions.

After the Manila incident there would be many more operations by the German East Asian Squadron before its 1914 triumph over a British fleet at Colonel off the west coast of South America and its subsequent destruction by a second British fleet at the Battle of the Falklands. These operations included the Battle of the Taku Forts, the suppression of the Boxer Uprising and the crushing of rebellions against German rule in the Caroline Islands and German Samoa. After the outbreak of the Great War, the fleet’s German gunboats (including the Iltis and Jaguar) remained at Tsingtao to battle the 1914 Japanese/British offensive that finally expelled the Germans from China.

At a time when communications with home were impossibly slow even in tense situations that demanded immediate decisions, Diederichs had somehow managed to make a display of Germany’s new-found overseas power while at the same time showing just enough restraint and diplomatic acumen to avoid a war with the United States that no-one in Berlin wanted, despite the decision to send an entire German squadron to Manila when a lone gunboat might have sufficed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bailey, Thomas A: (1939) “Dewey and the Germans at Manila Bay,” The American Historical Review 45(1), October 1939, pp. 59-81.

Blackley, Andrew K: (2024) “Neither Cruiser nor Gunboat: The USS Monterey,” Naval History 38(4), United States Naval Institute, August 2024.

Bönker, Dirk: (2013) “Global Politics and Germany’s Destiny ‘from an East Asian Perspective’: Alfred von Tirpitz and the Making of Wilhelmine Navalism,” Central European History 46(1), March 2013, pp. 61-96.

Dewey, George: (1913) Autobiography of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.

Dodson, Aidan: (2016). The Kaiser’s Battlefleet: German Capital Ships 1871–1918. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley.

Dodson, Aidan: (2017) “After the Kaiser: The Imperial German Navy’s Light Cruisers after 1918,” In John Jordan (ed.): Warship 2017, Conway, London, pp. 140–159.

Dodson, Aidan, and Dirk Nottelmann: (2021) The Kaiser’s Cruisers 1871–1918, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

Ellicott, JM: (1955) “The Cold War Between Von Diederichs and Dewey in Manila Bay,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 85(11), November 1955, pp. 1236-1239.

Gardiner, Robert; Roger Chesneau and Eugene M Kolesnik (eds.): (1979) Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1860-1905, Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich CT.

Gottschall, Terrell D: (2003) By Order of the Kaiser, Otto von Diederichs and the Rise of the Imperial German Navy 1865–1902, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

Gröner, Erich: (1990). German Warships: 1815–1945 Vol. I: Major Surface Vessels, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

Guerrero, Leon MA: (1961) “The Kaiser and the Philippines,” Philippine Studies 9(4), October 1961, pp. 584-600.

Herwig, Holger (1980): “Luxury” Fleet: The Imperial German Navy 1888–1918, Humanity Books, Amherst.

Hezel Francis, X: (2003). Strangers in Their Own Land: A Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Hildebrand, Hans H, Albert Röhr and Hans-Otto Steinmetz: (1993) Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe: Biographien – ein Spiegel der Marinegeschichte von 1815 bis zur Gegenwart Vol. 1, Mundus Verlag, Ratingen.

Nottelmann, Dirk & Sullivan, David M: (2023). From Ironclads to Dreadnoughts: The Development of the German Battleship, 1864–1918. Warwick: Helion & Company

Sargent, Commander Nathan (ed.): (1947) Admiral Dewey and the Manila Campaign, Naval Historical Foundation, Washington DC.

Schult, Volker: (2002) “Revolutionaries and Admirals: The German East Asia Squadron in Manila Bay,” Philippine Studies 50(4), pp. 496-511.

Schult, Volker, and Karl-Heinz Wionzek (eds.): (2017) The German and Austrian Navies in the Philippines, and Their Role in the Spanish-American War of 1898: A collection of original documents, National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP).

Shippee, Lester Burrell: (1925) “Germany and the Spanish-American War,” The American Historical Review 30(4), July 1925, pp. 754-777.

Sondhaus, Lawrence” (1997) Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power Before the Tirpitz Era. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press

Van Dijk, Kees: (2015) “The Scramble for China: The Bay of Jiaozhou and Port Arthur,” in: Tak-Wing Ngo (ed.): Pacific Strife, Amsterdam University Press, pp. 295-316.

Wionzek, Karl-Heinz (ed.): (2000) Germany, the Philippines and the Spanish-American War. Four Accounts by Officers of the Imperial German Navy, National Historical Institute, Manila.

A Marine on the Nile: George Bethune English and the Conquest of the Sudan, 1820-1821

Posted on January 25, 2026 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor

Military History 37(5), January 2021

After a month’s march through the sands, ruins and palm trees that line the Nubian Nile, an invading Egyptian army of cutthroats and mercenaries drawn from across the Ottoman Empire was about to encounter their first real resistance on November 4, 1820. The much-feared horsemen of the Arab Shayqiya tribe were determined the Egyptians would never take their lands. Screaming, they fell upon the army’s Arab scouts with sword and spear, wiping them out. It was a bad start for the Egyptian leader, 25-year-old Ismail Pasha, whose artillery was still being shipped south by boat.

Ismail brought his troops into line against the Shayqiya, who were led by a young girl on a richly decorated camel. It was she who gave the order to attack, a tradition celebrating a fearless 17^th century female Shayqiya warrior. The Arabs’ horses pounded their way across the plain, smashing into the Egyptian infantry with such violence that the Egyptian line began to collapse. As disaster loomed, the Egyptians’ formidable second-in-command, the Albanian ‘Abdin Bey, led his horsemen in a series of desperate counter-charges. The Egyptian infantry rallied and began to pour fire into the Shayqiya. The invaders triumphed, only to begin what one of their number later described as “twelve months of misery and starvation.”

The Egyptian expedition to Sudanese Nubia included three American mercenaries, including former US Marines officer George Bethune English, though illness kept him from the battlefield that day. The Massachusetts native, a convert to Islam, related his experiences as an artillery commander in Sudan in his 1822 memoir, A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennar, yet 190 years after his death, English remains an enigma; was he mercenary, spy, or sincere convert to Islam?

English had taken degrees in law and divinity at Harvard College. After being exposed to a collection of 17^th century documents that questioned important aspects of Christianity, English wrote a book critical of Christian doctrines in 1813. The work elicited howls of outrage in Protestant New England and English was turfed from Harvard and excommunicated from his church. His belief that Islam was a moral system drawn from the Old and New Testaments, “modified a little, and expressed in Arabic,” proved toxic to his reputation.

John Quincy Adams in 1818 (George Stuart)

US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams made an unexplained intervention on English’s behalf by commissioning him as a second lieutenant in the US Marines in 1815. English served in the Mediterranean in 1816-17 and was promoted to First Lieutenant. He resigned and moved to Constantinople shortly afterwards in mid-1817, but was still listed on the Naval Register until 1820. Was English acting as Adams’ secret agent in the Middle East?

By 1820, English was in Egypt, where he converted to Islam, changed his name to Muhammad Effendi and used the influence of British Consul Henry Salt to join the Egyptian army as a senior officer of artillery. He was joined by two American sailors who either deserted or were reassigned from the five warships in the US Mediterranean squadron. Known only by their adopted names, New Yorker Khalil Agha and the Swiss-born Ahmad Agha converted to Islam and acted as English’s servants. By the time English enlisted he was fluent in Arabic and Turkish, the languages of the Egyptian Army.

Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha (David Wilkie)

Expanding Egypt’s borders far south into Sudanese Nubia was part of a larger effort by Egyptian ruler Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha to build a family dynasty to rival the Ottomans in Constantinople. He and his sons would eventually seize Sudan, parts of the Red Sea coast, all of Syria and Palestine and the holy cities of Arabia.

Massacre of the Mamluks at the Cairo Citadel (Horace Vernet)

The second purpose of Muhammad ‘Ali’s expedition was to eliminate the Mamluks, a military slave-caste that ruled Egypt before being treacherously slaughtered by the Pasha. The survivors fled to Nubia, where they arrogantly forced Nubian farmers to grow their food in the blazing sun while they cooled themselves on a huge raft anchored in the middle of the Nile.

Mamluk Warrior

The third purpose involved the creation of a new Egyptian army of black slaves, something Napoleon had tried only a few years earlier. The Pasha decided to seize thousands of Sudanese to fight his own wars of conquest and those he was obliged to join on behalf of his suzerain, the Ottoman Sultan.

The Egyptian invasion force consisted of 4,000 men, with 120 artillerymen serving ten field pieces, two small howitzers and one mortar. The infantry included Turks, Kurds, Albanians, Circassians, Greeks, Syrians and 700 “Maghrabis” (mercenaries from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco). Turkish cavalry and some 700 camel-mounted ‘Abbadi Arabs completed the force.

Six cataracts lie between Aswan (where Nubia begins) and the intersection of the White and Blue Niles. Each cataract consists of a series of deadly rapids and waterfalls created by granite rock. Thousands of Nubians were forced to help haul the expedition’s boats over these obstacles.

The expedition left on October 3, 1820, with 120 boats carrying the expedition’s supplies and ammunition. Within days, English was struck with severe ophthalmia, an eye affliction which caused such pain that he was unable to sleep without doses of opium. Ismail’s army went on without him.

English joined a group of French army surgeons headed south to join Ismail, but they suffered badly at the Second Cataract, where crocodiles gathered to enjoy an unexpected feast of drowning sailors.

Shayqiya Warrior (Frédéric Cailliaud)

To continue south, the expedition had to defeat the Shayqiya, whom English described as a “singular aristocracy of brigands.” They had ruled the Dongola region from their cliff-top castles for over a century, forcing the Nubians to grow their food and serve as their infantry. In battle, they carried two spears, a German-made straight-sword, and a hippopotamus-hide shield. Haughty and dismissive of death, they were not overly concerned when Ismail demanded that they abandon their weapons and till the soil.

After the victory at Kurti, Ismail thought to please his father by offering a reward for every pair of enemy ears. Once his army had exhausted the supply attached to the dead and wounded, they spread through the villages, separating women and children alike of their ears. Bags full of these grisly trophies were shipped to Cairo, where an angry Muhammad ‘Ali reminded his son that such behavior was incompatible with the modern European-style army he was trying to build. English’s narrative says nothing of these atrocities.

The Shayqiya regrouped a month later at Jabal Daiqa to face Ismail a second time. The Nubian infantry was numerous, but the experienced men had been lost at Kurti. Their replacements were encouraged by holy men who sprayed them with magic dust to make them immune from death. The infantry advanced with reckless courage against Ismail’s field artillery, which had finally joined the army (English was still absent). As they reached the blazing guns, the foot-soldiers were blasted to pieces at point-blank range. The attack faltered, the Shayqiya left for the south and the Nubian infantry were left to be slaughtered by ‘Abdin Bey’s cavalry. Defeated, the Shayqiya proposed being taken into Egyptian service as irregular cavalry rather than be forced to take up the shameful occupation of farmer. The offer was accepted.

English described the Shayqiya leader Sha’us, reputed to be the greatest warrior on the Upper Nile, as “a large stout man, pleasing of physiognomy, though black…” The American was stunned by his ability to swim his entire cavalry force across the Nile.

Even as English recovered from his ophthalmia, he was struck with bloody dysentery that left him extremely weak. As his condition improved, English visited the little-known temples, castles and pyramids that lined the Nile. Khalil inscribed the name of “Henry Salt” on various ancient monuments along the way. This was a common method to establish a claim to a certain antiquity, which would be retrieved later for shipment to Europe. Meanwhile, many of the sailors used their shore-time to beat and rob local men and rape their women. The “insolence” of villagers who refused to turn over their grain angered English, who suggested that those soldiers who pillaged and murdered “were not much to blame.”

George Waddington (Richard Say)

Two Englishmen, George Waddington and Barnard Hanbury, received permission to join the army on its way south on November 26. English was eager to meet them, but Waddington made it clear he had no respect for a man who abandoned his religion. Waddington reported that the land behind the Egyptian army was strewn with the rotting bodies of beasts and men, some still with rope around their necks. The countryside was silent and the wells fouled by decaying corpses.

Waddington’s memoirs included scathing criticism of English and his religious pretensions and/or confusion. He described English as a pale and delicate-looking man who had taken on the grave and calm demeanor of the Turks. Waddington said he later learned English was a Protestant who had adopted various strains of Christianity before becoming a Jew and an orthodox Muslim in succession. He suggested English would soon turn Hindu in his “tour of the world and its religions” and would ultimately die an atheist. English claimed Waddington later gave him an apology, but the remarks stuck.

Muhammad ‘Ali ordered Ismail to march on the Blue Nile kingdom of Sennar and its fabled riches as quickly as possible. English joined the Egyptian force on a forced march across the Bayuda Desert to Berber, a means of shortening the distance covered by the great bend of the Nile, but one that left the New Englander with severe sunburn and re-aggravated ophthalmia.

The boats were left to make their way through the two worst cataracts – the 4^th and 5^th, a punishing trip of 57 days. Khalil and Ahmad were separated from English at this point and forced to accompany the boats. Both suspected the machinations of Ismail’s personal doctor (“the Protomedico”), a Smyrniot Greek and skilled poisoner, but their skills as sailors may have prompted the decision. Without intending to, Khalil became the first Westerner to travel the entire length of the Nile from the Mediterranean coast to Sennar.

Egyptian Troops at the Pyramids of Meroë (Frédéric Cailliaud)

Ahmad Agha died at the 4th Cataract. Khalil believed he was poisoned by the Protomedico after a quarrel. The most competent physician on the expedition, the Genoese Dr. Andrea Gentile, had already met the same fate when the Protomedico decided it was easier to poison him than repay a loan. The Protomedico had sold off the contents of the expedition’s medicine chest in Cairo cover his debts and surrounded himself with Greek villains. Other Europeans feared for their lives, including French geologist Frédéric Cailliaud, who used the expedition to record the legendary pyramids of Meroë: “Death seemed to want to claim all the gentlemen around me.” The Italian Domenico Frediani died as a “chained maniac” in Sennar after a dispute with the Protomedico. Ismail was aware of the doctor’s improprieties, but found him useful as a spy and henchman.

Eventually the army reached Berber, home to a hundred fugitive Mamluks. Most fled, but the rest submitted and accepted an offer to return home or serve as Ismail’s bodyguards. In Berber, female slaves were offered to the soldiers for a dollar a night. A chief’s wife gave English the opportunity to bed both her married daughters; English claimed his sunstroke saved him from temptation, but the daughters concluded English was rajil batal, a good-for-nothing man.

Rough handling of the transport animals led to their rapid loss; to save the artillery horses for battle, English ordered the guns to be pulled by camels. The army was now joined by Malik (king) Nimr of Shendi, “very dignified in his deportment and highly respectable for his morals” according to English.

To reach the south bank of the Blue Nile, Ismail spent over two days ferrying his army across the mile-wide White Nile by boat. The Shayqiya swam their horses across the river, as did the ‘Abbadis with their camels. A Turkish officer who decided he could do the same lost 70 horses and a number of men.

The march to Sennar lasted thirteen days, with the men on the move from 2 AM to 10 AM, at which point the heat became too intense. The only food was durra, a local grain requiring much preparation.

Sultan Bady of Sennar (Frédéric Cailliaud)

The 26-year-old Sultan Bady of Sennar (recently freed from 18 years of confinement) came out to greet Ismail and escort him into the legendary city. The magnificence of the trappings and garments of the royal entourage seemed a promising sign. The troops believed they would now reap the rewards due them after a brutal 1250-mile march from Cairo and approached the city with cries of joy and volleys of musket fire. Their delight was dashed when they realized the glory days of Sennar were over. The city was little more than a heap of broken ruins, its population inhabiting some 400 squalid huts. The only buildings of any substance were the half-ruined brick palace and mosque. Of gold and riches, there were none.

The Palace of Sennar (Frédéric Cailliaud)

With no pay for eight months and only durra to eat, the soldiers began to flog their uniforms to buy food or to pilfer supplies to sell in the market. Ismail’s worsening mood was reflected in the growing numbers of headless bodies dumped in the market. Soldiers impaled anyone who showed the slightest sign of resistance. English overheard some scandalized female observers declaring such punishments were fit only for Christians.

Flying columns raided the still-defiant hinterland. Egyptian firepower cut down hundreds of armored warriors and the army shipped thousands of men, women and children north to the Cairo slave markets. English, a native of abolitionist New England, acquired a slave of his own.

English did not accompany the raids; instead, he spent his time persuading Ismail to allow him to return to Cairo on health grounds before the miserable four-month rainy season began. He was not held back by the charms of the women of Sennar, whom he described as “the ugliest I ever beheld.”

Meanwhile, Ismail ordered two captured chiefs to be impaled; the first awaited his end by reciting the Muslim profession of faith; the second cursed and insulted his executioners. When he could no longer speak, he spat at them. Other chiefs addressed the Pasha with presumptuous questions; one asked whether Egypt was so short of food that it was necessary to come all that way to take theirs!

Henry Salt (John James Halls)

After a harrowing return trip to Cairo, English went to see Muhammad ‘Ali to collect the funds he was owed for his military service, but found him in a foul temper; he had just received word of the murder of his son Ismail in Nubia by Malik Nimr, who Ismail had grievously offended. Broke and desperate, English called on Henry Salt, who provided him with funds to return home in exchange for his narrative manuscript and various artifacts. Salt published the work, which English dedicated to him, “my fatherly friend in a foreign land.” Khalil composed his own unpublished account of the expedition, only recently discovered in Salt’s Papers at the British Library. He remained in Egypt, living as a Muslim and continuing to serve Muhammad ‘Ali.

Pliny Fisk (Hoagland)

Pliny Fisk, an evangelical missionary working in Egypt, met English after hearing he was ready to “return to his country and the religion of his Fathers.” The penalty for abandoning Islam or the army was death, but English found his way to Salt’s Consulate, where a network helped smuggle remorseful converts out of Egypt. English joined Fisk on a ship bound for Malta, playing the part of his servant. Fisk, who normally recorded everything, recorded nothing of the long shipboard conversations with English that appear to have shaken his own faith in Christianity. English, apparently, had not abandoned Islam entirely.

English’s account of his adventures in Sudan went largely unremarked. It had the preoccupation of an intelligence report with topography, but revealed nothing of its author, who freely admitted he missed the main engagements of the campaign. Considering his background, it is bizarre that no religious observations were made. English assured readers of the high regard in which he was held by Ismail, but his service record suggests otherwise – he missed the two main battles of the campaign, was typically behind the main force of the army, did not accompany the slave-raiding parties operating out of Sennar, and “demanded” a return to Cairo.

English’s father and friends tried to pave the way for his return to America by writing letters to the newspapers praising his “achievements” in Sudan while casting doubt on the sincerity of his conversion to Islam.

English did not live as a Muslim on his return, but published yet another work critical of Christianity against the objections of his remaining friends. Adams continued to act as his patron and sent English on a trade mission to Constantinople in 1822, where he appears to have resumed life as a Muslim.

As president, Adams continued finding employment for English; in July 1828 he engaged him as a carrier of secret dispatches to the US Navy in the Mediterranean. Two days later, however, English was driven off in disgrace. Typically, there is no record of what happened, only an entry in Adams’ journal referring to “mortifying” misconduct by English: “Notwithstanding his eccentricities, approaching to insanity, I have continued to favor him till now. I can no longer sustain him.”

Was English working for the British, the Americans, both, or neither? Was he sincere in his conversion to Islam (prepared with enormous intellectual effort), or was this merely a means to infiltrate Muhammad ‘Ali’s expedition to Sudan, a region of growing interest to Britain? Some American Muslims maintain that English was “America’s first Muslim” and kept true to his faith until his death.

English’s death only two months after his dismissal deepens the mystery. His obituary provides no clue as to how the 41-year-old perished; suicide or illness seem possible. His memoir shed no light on his motivations and his religious works passed into obscurity with him. No portrait seems to survive of the shadowy American mercenary – fitting for a man who took so many secrets with him to the grave.

Sudan: Aftermath of al-Fashir’s Fall to the Rapid Support Forces

Posted on January 15, 2026 by McGregor

Andrew McGregor

Terrorism Monitor 24(1)

Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC

January 15, 2026

Executive Summary:

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured al-Fashir in late October after an 18-month siege, consolidating RSF control over western Sudan and providing a potential capital for a new state.
After entering al-Fashir, the RSF carried out mass looting, ethnic targeting, and killed 460 people at the al-Saudi maternity hospital in an attack that brought international outrage.
Parallel RSF sieges in Kordofan indicate a strategy to divide Sudan. The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) is struggling to maintain control, but still currently favors a military solution over diplomatic negotiations.

The capture of Khartoum by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the first months of its struggle with the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) was possibly the most shocking moment of the ongoing civil war in Sudan. While the RSF has since been driven out of the capital, the RSF’s 18-month siege and capture of al-Fashir in late October is likely to have a greater long-term impact. The collapse of resistance in the North Darfur capital consolidates the paramilitary group’s hold over its power base in western Sudan while providing a potential capital for the new state the RSF and its commander Muhammad Hamdan Daglo “Hemetti” aim to create.

Al-Fashir’s Failed Defense

Al-Fashir was defended by the SAF’s 6^th Division and its allies in the Joint Force, including former rebel movements that had signed the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement (JPA). Many were veterans of various non-Arab Darfur militias who made common cause with the former SAF enemy and the ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) to defeat the RSF, which succeeded the notorious Arab-supremacist Janjaweed. These militias include elements of two large majority-Zaghawa groups: the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), led by Finance Minister Jibril Ibrahim; and the Sudanese Liberation Army–Minni Minawi (SLA-MM), led by Darfur governor Minni Arko Minawi (see Militant Leadership Monitor, December 7, 2017). Smaller groups include the Gathering of Sudan Liberation Forces (GSLF) under Brigadier General Mubarak Bakhit and the Sudanese Liberation Movement–Tambour (SLM-Tambour) led by Mustafa Nasr al-Din Tambour, governor of central Darfur and target of repeated RSF assassination attempts.

Conflict between the western Arabs of the RSF and previously neutral JPA signatories began on April 13, 2024, after months of tensions between the armed groups, the final straw being a massive cattle raid by Zaghawa gunmen (Ayin Network, April 19, 2024). JEM, the SLA-MM, and part of the GSLF joined the SAF coalition just as the RSF began their siege of al-Fashir.

The RSF weakened resistance in al-Fashir with a siege that gradually starved the city’s 260,000 residents and the 6^th Division garrison. Artillery and drones assaulted the city daily, and a roughly 45-mile sand berm was constructed to prevent escape except through narrow corridors where RSF personnel subjected those in flight to murder, robbery, and rape (Radio Dabanga, September 30, 2025). The city’s non-Arab residents were well aware of the atrocities that befell the Masalit ethnic group after the RSF seized the West Darfur city of Geneina in June 2023 (Terrorism Monitor, June 26, 2023). The RSF targeted the overcrowded refugee camps around al-Fashir, and the main place of refuge became the town of Tawila, 43 miles away and controlled by the Fur militia, SLA-‘Abd al-Wahid (SLA-AW).

Only days before the fall of the city, Darfur governor Minni Minawi claimed the RSF was using South Sudanese mercenaries in its assaults, having “exhausted its fighters” (Sudan Tribune, October 23, 2025). Colombian mercenaries supported by the UAE are also believed to have taken part in the RSF siege, operating drones and heavy weapons (Ayin Network, October 10, 2025). By October 21, only a third of al-Fashir’s 600,000 people remained, trapped in a city without food or medical supplies and where most water sources had been destroyed by shelling (Ayin Network, October 21, 2025).

The RSF Enters al-Fashir

On October 25, the RSF launched attacks from several directions on the SAF’s 6^th Division headquarters. Tanks and drones drove off the initial attacks. The RSF resumed the assaults the next morning at dawn, however, with drones and ground units forcing their way through the base’s main gate. The RSF seized large quantities of military supplies and reported destroying “huge military vehicles” (Radio Tamazuj, October 26, 2025). Thousands of SAF troops and their allies withdrew to a strong-point at Daraja, northwest of al-Fashir, leaving behind many comrades taken prisoner or trapped inside the city by RSF fighters (Ayin Network, October 26, 2025).

Later on October 26, the RSF announced that its forces had “broken the backbone of the army and allied armed movements, inflicting heavy casualties on them, destroying massive military vehicles, and seizing all military equipment” (Ayin Network, October 26, 2025). A video of RSF fighters celebrating the capture of the 6^th Division’s base in al-Fashir was posted to social media (X/@SudanTribune_EN, October 26, 2025). According to SAF commander General ‘Abd al-Fatah al-Burhan, the military command in al-Fashir “decided to withdraw due to the systematic destruction and killing of civilians” (Radio Dabanga, October 28, 2025).

Prior to the final assault on al-Fashir, ‘Abd al-Rahim Daglo, Hemetti’s brother and second-in-command, was filmed telling RSF fighters: “I declare it here … I don’t need any prisoners at all” (X/@Sudan_tweet, October 30, 2025). The entry of the RSF was marked by looting, arson, gang-rapes, the targeting of non-Arab ethnic groups for slaughter, and the summary execution of prisoners and those suspected of supporting the SAF and its affiliates (Radio Tamazuj, November 1, 2025).

Fatah ‘Abd Allah Idris “Abu Lulu” (Ayin Network)

In the most appalling incident, incoming RSF fighters killed 460 patients, healthcare workers, and families at al-Saudi maternity hospital (Radio Tamazuj, October 29, 2025). Fighting continued in the western part of the city even after the RSF began house-to-house “combing operations” throughout the rest of al-Fashir. Besides the Saudi maternity hospital, gunmen targeted aid workers and anyone found in the university or Interior Ministry buildings. In addition, an ordinary soldier in the RSF, Fatah ‘Abd Allah Idris “Abu Lulu” discovered a murderous calling during the occupation, joyfully slaughtering civilians attempting to leave the city even as they begged for their lives. After social media videos of his activities attracted international attention, the RSF claimed to have arrested him and denied he was a formal member of the group (Ayin Network, November 10, 2025).

Hemetti’s Response

Hemetti deflected international condemnation of the atrocities, insisting that they were the work of individuals who would be investigated by an RSF committee and held responsible (Ayin Network, November 10, 2025). The atrocities captured the attention of the International Criminal Court (ICC), however, which is monitoring for evidence of war crimes (Radio Dabanga, November 3, 2025).

Sixth Division and Joint Force survivors, meanwhile, have attempted to regroup in the Wana Mountains (or Hills), northwest of al-Fashir. Without provisions, they will be forced to either regain territory formerly held by the SAF, surrender to the RSF, or attempt an escape to an uncertain welcome in Chad.

The storming of al-Fashir has been accompanied by simultaneous sieges of cities in neighboring Kordofan, part of the RSF’s strategy to form a western Sudanese state. The strategic city of Bara in North Kordofan fell to three waves of RSF attackers on October 25, followed by the now-typical door-to-door slaughter of its non-Arab civilian population and all those considered sympathetic to the SAF. The operation helps the RSF complete its encirclement of the North Kordofan capital, al-‘Ubayd (Mada Masr, October 27; Ayin Network, November 7, 2025).

In neighboring South Kordofan, the RSF has intensified its sieges of the cities of Kadugli and Dilling with the targeting of civilian homes by drones. The largely Nuba troops of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N), led by ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Hilu, have joined the RSF in these sieges (see Militant Leadership Monitor, July 31, 2011). The capture of Kadugli, in particular, would aid the RSF effort to consolidate its control of western Sudan (Ayin Network, November 6, 2025).

Conclusion

The SAF is struggling to hold parts of Kordofan that it still controls and, at present, cannot muster the strength to push back the RSF, making a division of the country possible. For now, however, the SAF is still seeking a military rather than a diplomatic solution. Pressure to retake western Sudan coming from Darfur-origin Joint Forces allies who are now stranded in central and eastern Sudan will play an important part in the SAF’s near-term operational decisions.

Sidney Langford Hinde: A Note on a Forgotten Canadian in the Scramble for Africa

Posted on January 8, 2026 by McGregor

Dr. Andrew McGregor

Research Note, Royal Canadian Military Institute, January 2026.

Dr. Sidney Langford Hinde wearing his Congo decorations.

In the histories of the great 19th century “Scramble for Africa,” Canada is rarely, if ever, mentioned. The young nation had no colonial designs on Africa, but was still part of the British Empire, which was battling its European neighbours and African resistance movements for control of vast regions of the continent. It was inevitable, then, that some Canadians would become involved in this struggle, though not all worked in British interests.

Among those Canadians who distinguished themselves in British service in Africa were Toronto’s Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Charles Denison, who commanded the Canadian voyageurs on the Nile in 1884-1885; Montreal’s Lieutenant Raymond de Montmorency, who earned a VC at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 before his death at the Battle of Stormberg in South Africa two years later; and RMC graduate Sir Édouard Percy Cranwill Girouard, of Montreal, who built a military railway across the Sudanese desert that permitted the movement of the Egyptian and British armies south to Omdurman to defeat the Mahdist forces of Khalifa ‘Abd Allahi in 1898.

Others, however, found themselves part of the international group of mercenary officers serving King Leopold II of Belgium in the king’s private African possession, the Congo Free State (1885-1908). The task of these officers, mostly Belgian, was to expand and consolidate King Leopold’s massive estate, often at the expense of British competitors. The best known of the Canadians in Leopold’s employ was Halifax’s William Grant Stairs, an RMC graduate who traveled 5000 miles across Africa in Henry Morton Stanley’s Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1887-1889). He then led his own expedition to mineral-rich Katanga (1891-1892), seizing this region for the Congo Free State by killing King Msiri, the local potentate.

A lesser known but important Canadian-born contributor to the establishment of the Congo Free State was Dr. Sidney Langford Hinde. Hinde was born somewhere in the Niagara region on July 23, 1863, the son of Irish surgeon Major-General George L. Hinde. Educated in France and Germany, Hinde followed his father’s medical career, working in London hospitals before taking service with Leopold’s Congo Free State in 1892. Fluent in French, Hinde was recommended by Irish physician and British Army officer Thomas Heazle Parke, doctor on Henry Morton Stanley’s Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1887-1889).

When Hinde joined the Free State military, Arab-led Mahdists controlled the Sudan and were pressing south into the Congo region, while Omani-origin Arabs had turned Zanzibar into a base for expansion into east and central Africa. A Spectator article of 1897 portrayed a struggle between Whites and Arabs for Africa: “The White has been fighting the Arab at Dongola, on the Congo, on the Lakes, on the East Coast, and even at Zanzibar itself.”

Britain’s Royal Navy had been active in trying to suppress the shipment of slaves from the African coast to the Middle East since 1822, with varying levels of success. Arab clove plantations in Zanzibar relied on the labor of thousands of Black slaves. In 1873 the British forced Zanzibar’s Omani rulers to abandon the slave trade, though it continued on the mainland.

The most powerful of the slavers in eastern Africa was the Arab/Swahili Tippu Tip (Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab al-Murjabi), who at one point maintained personal ownership of 10,000 slaves on his Zanzibar plantations. In the mid-1880s, Tippu Tip claimed the eastern Congo for himself and the Sultan of Zanzibar. It was Tippu’s son Sefu bin Hamad who led the Arab slavers at the time of Hinde’s service in the Congo during the Congo-Arab War (1892-1894). Sefu’s partner was Rumaliza (Muhammad bin Khalfan bin Khamis al-Barwani), a powerful Omani/Swahili trader in slaves and ivory. He was famous for inventing depraved tortures, too gruesome to be discussed here.

The conflict was touched off by a dispute between Belgians and Arabs over ivory, not slaves, but for political purposes it was quickly recast in Europe as a Christian anti-slavery crusade, though Free State columns usually included large numbers of slaves belonging to the African troops in the Force Publique (the Free State army). Force Publique regulars were mostly Zanzibaris and Hausas recruited in West Africa, and were accompanied on campaign by thousands of local “auxiliaries,” largely cannibals of fluid loyalty. Discipline was maintained through regular flogging.

Steady fighting through 1893 drove the Arabs east, resulting in the death of Sefu in October 1893. Rumaliza met defeat in the war’s final battle in January 1894, when a Belgian shell blew up his ammunition dump and set fire to his fort at Bena Kalunga. Rumaliza’s men were slaughtered as they tried to escape while 2,000 others were taken prisoner. The war shattered the power of the Arabs in eastern and central Africa, damaged the Arab trade in slaves and diverted the Congo’s trade from east African ports down the Congo River to Atlantic coast ports. Under heavy international pressure as news of the cruel nature of his rule in the Congo began to emerge, Leopold II transferred control of his personal estate in Africa to the Belgian government in 1908. Leopold never visited the land he had ruled for 23 years.

Hinde in Later Life

Hinde recounted his adventures in the Congo in The Fall of the Congo Arabs (London, 1897), translated into French the same year as La Chute de la domination des arabes du Congo (Brussels, 1897). Acting not only as a doctor, Hinde was personally involved in the vicious fighting that characterized the campaign. It should be noted that Hinde’s Congo service was nearly always in the field and there does not appear to be any evidence of his implication in the crimes for which the Free State became famous, only for his unwitting enablement of them.

Transferring to the British Foreign Office in 1895, Hinde became a provincial commissioner in the British East Africa Protectorate. While resident in Kenya, Hinde produced a second book, Last of the Masai (London, 1901), co-written by his wife, naturalist Hildegarde Beatrice Hinde. He died in Wales in 1930, age 67.

Hinde’s Grave in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

This note has its origins in the author’s search for confirmation that Hinde was indeed born in Canada, as many websites claim while failing to provide appropriate documentation. An 1891 census of England, however, records London resident Sidney Langford Hinde having been born in Canada, which would seem to confirm his Canadian origin through information he himself provided. Hinde’s Niagara origin is confirmed in the Biographie Coloniale Belge (Institut Royale Coloniale de Belge, T. 1, 1948 col. 509-513).

That Hinde and his Free State comrades have been consigned to historical obscurity is unsurprising. Their defeat of the Arab slavers might have been hailed as a triumph of Western civilization had Leopold and his henchmen not instituted their own savage form of forced labor and its trail of murder, torture and mutilation to meet the demands of the late 19th century rubber boom. The methods of the Free State mercenaries and foremen came to resemble those of the Arab slavers they had run out of the Congo.

1921 Brussels Monument to the Belgian Pioneers in the Congo. The references to “Arab” slavers have been chiseled out in recent times.(Sam Donvil)

Eventually, the role of Hinde and others came to be regarded as part of a shameful episode in European colonization, while well-funded campaigns by the Arab League have helped rehabilitate the image of the Arab slavers, portraying them as explorers and traders bringing Islam to the African interior. The appalling first-hand accounts of large-scale cannibalism by native fighters of both sides as described in detail by Hinde and others have also helped relegate memory of the Congo-Arab War to one of the darkest, least-examined corners of the “Scramble for Africa.”

Note: The careers of Canadian soldiers who served in British forces in 19th century West Africa are described in: Andrew B Godefroy, “Canadian Soldiers in West African Conflicts, 1885-1905,” Canadian Military History 17(1), 2008, pp. 21-36.

This Research Note appeared in the January 2026 issue of the Royal Canadian Military Institute’s Members’ News – https://files.constantcontact.com/e154b138001/cd18bb33-88e1-44c7-a729-d471cbfaa76f.pdf

Aberfoyle International Security

Monthly Archives: January 2026

The Perils of Gunboat Diplomacy: The German East Asia Squadron at Manila Bay, 1898

A Marine on the Nile: George Bethune English and the Conquest of the Sudan, 1820-1821

Sudan: Aftermath of al-Fashir’s Fall to the Rapid Support Forces

Sidney Langford Hinde: A Note on a Forgotten Canadian in the Scramble for Africa