ISMAILÏA

First Edition. 2 volumes. 447+588 pages, frontispiece portrait in each volume, 2 colour maps (one folding), numerous wood engraved plates, full leather with red and black labels titled gilt on the spine, armorial crests gilt on the upper covers, marbled end papers and edges, a very good set.

In 1869, at the request of the khedive Ismail, Baker led a military expedition to the equatorial regions of the Nile, with the object of suppressing the slave-trade there and opening the way to commerce and civilisation. Before starting from Cairo with a force of 1700 Egyptian troops – many of them discharged convicts – he was given the rank of pasha and major-general in the Ottoman army. Lady Baker, as before, accompanied him. The khedive appointed him Governor-General of the new territory of Equatoria for four years at a salary of £10,000 a year; and it was not until the expiration of that time that Baker returned to Cairo, leaving his work to be carried on by the new governor, Colonel Charles George Gordon.

He had to contend with innumerable difficulties – the blocking of the river in the Sudd, the hostility of officials interested in the slave-trade, the armed opposition of the natives – but he succeeded in planting in the new territory the foundations upon which others could build up an administration.

He published his narrative of the central African expedition under the title of Ismailïa (1874). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Baker