Little Known Facts from All Frontiers Are Jealous

L. Ron Hubbard did meticulous research for his stories, often living the adventures he wrote. Little known facts made his realistic fiction authentic.

These facts are inspired by the historical fiction novel All Frontiers Are Jealous.

Set in Africa, this story features a surveyor who gets caught in the middle of a diamond smuggling ring while plotting the route to connect the Uganda Railway with the Angelo-Egyptian railroad.

Our historical facts center on building the Sudan railway system.

We begin the story in 1856 in Egypt with the railway line between Alexandria and Cairo. Two years following the completion of the line, a railroad car fell into the river Nile. This accident cost the life of Prince Ahmed, the heir to the throne of Egypt.

Isma’il Pasha

Ahmed’s brother, Prince Isma’il, was therefore pronounced Monarch of Egypt.

Isma’il Pasha was not only a dreamer and builder but also a shrewd businessman.

During the American Civil War, he made a fortune by selling Egyptian cotton to Americans.

He also oversaw the Egyptian portion of the Suez Canal and planned and then financed the first railway line into Sudan.

But Isma’il Pasha never saw the railroad built before his death in 1895.

Horatio Herbert Kitchener

A year later, in 1896, Major Horatio Kitchener decided to build Isma’il Pasha’s railroad. But Kitchener’s intention for this railroad was not to bring civilization to Sudan as Isma’il had planned, but to supply his army to win the war for the British and Sudanese against the Mahdist regime—the Mahdists were part of a religious and political movement launched in 1881 and ruled Sudan till 1898.

Building the railroad in Sudan was not an easy task. To be more precise, it was an engineering nightmare due to a lack of tools, materials, and quality labor.

Cecil Rhodes

Cecil Rhodes, who founded the African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), came to Kitchener’s rescue and provided the first three locomotives and other much-needed tools and materials.

But labor was still a problem. Out of desperation, unskilled Egyptian peasants were recruited and two hundred convicts were paroled and added to the workforce.

The railway was finally completed within 3 years in 1899.

But the trouble wasn’t over yet, the new railroad built with unskilled labor made a trip more adventure than just transport.

A contemporary traveler described the railway as “a fairly bumpy ride and frequent accidents—locomotives that flew off tracks, had to be hoisted back on the rails to continue along the track as if nothing had happened.”

Even though the railroad was a nightmare to build and an adventure to travel, it was the deciding factor in winning the war in Sudan for the British and Sudanese.