Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
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THE SUDANI THE WINGATE ERA
Frontier security seemed too urgent
to
wait upon the peaceful
persuasion
of
Africans; government 'punished' those
who
opposed the passage
of
troops
by
laying waste their country.
These operations were rarely followed by settled administration.
Africans were not permanently impressed by punitive expeditions,
however severe, which almost always ended
in
'retreat'
by
government; and indiscriminate depredations, both by troops and
by
local' friendlies', often extended the area of potential resistance.
In 1906 Wingate attempted to forbid military expeditions into
unoccupied territory unless they could
be
followed
by
settled
administration.
But he
provided
no
funds
for
administrative
extension. Attempts to raise revenue locally, by officers ignorant
alike
of
southern languages and of the very existence
of
' tribes
without rulers', were sometimes disastrous.
In
1910 supposed
' chiefs'
of
the chiefless Bahr al-Ghazal Dinka failed
to
produce
the cattle due under
a
newly-imposed herd-tax. The adminis-
tration's response was
to
raid Dinka cattle indiscriminately,
by
military patrols which 'behaved as if in enemy country'.
13
British officers in the south found it hard to break the habit of
regarding administration
as
synonymous with military operations;
and some of them gained an unsavoury reputation as' bloodthirsty
medal-hunters'.
14
But the violent dynamics
of
southern politics
repeatedly created situations where administration seemed impos-
sible but military intervention unavoidable. Tax-paying groups
became disaffected
if
they were
not
protected against their
unadministered neighbours. Attempts to reduce conflict by estab-
lishing tribal frontiers between Nilotic pastoralists committed
government
to
the permanent maintenance
of
transitory situat-
ions
;
and to punitive action against groups perceived
as
aggressors
when these frontiers collapsed under the pressure of ecological
or other fluctuations. After 1910, the acquisition of firearms from
Ethiopia disrupted
for a
decade the balance
of
power among
Nilotics. The Anuak, on the Ethiopian border, used their newly-
acquired firearms to raid the Nuer. The Nuer, who had just begun
to pay
'a
light tribute'
as
insurance against this very danger,
demanded government protection;
15
but
punitive expeditions
13
S[udan] A[rchive] D[urham], zoi/io/i, C. A. Willis,
'A
brief survey
of
the policy
of the government
in
the Upper Nile", [? June] 1927.
14
SAD
298/1,
J. J.
Asser
to
Wingate, 12 October 1910: cited by
G.
Warburg, The
Sudan
under
Wingate (London, 1971), 152.
15
CRO Intel. 1/8/39, G.
S.
Symes, 'Note on the arms traffic', 28 November 1911.
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EGYPT AND THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
were ineffective against the inaccessible Anuak. In 1912 the Nuer,
now also armed with rifles, began to retaliate against the Anuak,
and to recoup their cattle losses by raiding tax-paying Dinka.
From 1913 repeated punitive expeditions against the Nuer confisc-
ated many of their cattle; but until about 1920 these losses seem
simply to have increased Nuer pressure on the Dinka, who were
not effectively protected. A rising by the administered Aliab
Dinka in 1919 was merely the most visible symptom of very
widespread Dinka discontent.
In 1920 the Aliab were punished by operations of almost
genocidal severity; and government was waging full-scale war
against the eastern Nuer, who persisted in raiding the weak
' Burun' peoples on the Ethiopian frontier. Resistance was now
on an unprecedented scale: groups which normally acted quite
independently joined forces against government, whose authority
even over administered Dinka, now often armed with rifles, had
been severely shaken. In 1920 the newly-appointed governor of
Mongalla, the least unmanageable of the three southern provinces,
found it 'in such a muck-up state [that] he doesn't know where
to start'. Other officials were no less despondent and frustrated.
One wrote, apropos of the Aliab affair, 'until we can properly
administrate, would it not be better not to attempt to do so at
all?'
Another pointed out that Khartoum had not only denied
resources for anything but punishment but had never formulated
intelligible administrative objectives: officials were 'at a loss to
know what to try for or how to proceed'.
16
In 1920 Khartoum
bluntly condemned as 'a failure' two decades of British adminis-
tration in the south." For southern Sudanese it was not merely
a failure; it was a catastrophe.
This self-criticism led to some limited improvement. But only
in 1922 did Khartoum begin to provide adequate resources for
effective and constructive administration. In 1920—1 the prophet
16
Middle East Centre, Oxford, L. Phillips (Inspector, Mongalla Province), private
letter, 24 April 1920: cited by M. W. Daly, British administration and
the
Northern Sudan,
1917-1924
(Leiden and Istanbul, 1980), 41. CRO Intel. 2/30/249, R. G. C. Brock,
Intelligence Report no. 7, May 1920, cited by R. O. Collins, 'The Aliab Dinka uprising
and its suppression',
Sudan Notes and
Records,
1967, 48, 86. CRO Equatoria 2/3/10, E.
R. Sawer to Cfivil] Secretary], 16 December 1919, quoting memorandum (? 1919) by
C.
H. Stigand, governor Mongalla Province: cited
by
C.
E.
Sevier,'
The Anglo-Egyptian
Condominium in the Southern Sudan, 1919-1939' (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University,
•975).
«*J-4-
17
CRO CivSec 1/9/31, W. Sterry (acting governor-general) to V. R. Woodland
(governor, Mongalla), 23 September 1920.
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THE SUDAN: POLITICAL TENSIONS
Ariandhit had created among the Bahr al-Ghazal Dinka an
unprecedented unity which seemed to threaten security through-
out the province. The vastly increased scale of southern
opposition now seemed a threat comparable with earlier Muslim
'fanaticism' in the north. It was no longer possible to neglect
southern administration in the simple faith that southern resistance
would always be too 'primitive' and chaotic to shake the
fundamental security of government.
POLITICAL TENSIONS AFTER 1919
Meanwhile, new tensions were arising in the northern Sudan.
Though government had been careful not to disturb social
stability, northern Sudanese society was not immune to the effects
of sharp economic fluctuations, the emergence of a Western-
educated intelligentsia and, above all, the continuing crisis in
Anglo-Egyptian relations. Moreover, government lost some of its
sureness of touch after Wingate's departure for Egypt in 1916.
His successor Lee Stack (1917-24), risen from the ranks of
officer-administrators, did not inherit Wingate's unique personal
authority; and the key administrative posts were now at last
falling to civilians, some of whom decried Wingate's methods as
unimaginative carrot-and-stick, too ready to defer to the material
interests of the Sudanese. Although Stack did not share these
views,
they were by about 1920 influential enough to provoke
Sudanese complaints that government was becoming less respon-
sive to the wishes of the governed; and resentment at a change
of attitude for which there seemed no justification.
Anglo-Sudanese relations were further soured by the financial
and economic difficulties of the early 1920s. In 1920 there was a
sharp increase, doubtless justified by inflation, in the rates of
taxation and of railway freights. But in 1921 the export boom
collapsed: in that year exports fell to £2.3m
(1918:
£4.2m), and the
balance of trade showed a £$.
5 m
deficit. In spite of the 1920 tax
increases, revenue declined by
20
per cent between 1920 and 1922.
The urban economy was severely depressed; yet, in the
metropolitan area at least, prices and especially rents remained far
above pre-war levels. Meanwhile, government was faced by
apparently insuperable problems, due partly to its own technical
mismanagement, in financing the capital works for the Gezira
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EGYPT AND THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
cotton-production project. True,
in
1922
London preferred
to
guarantee
a
further British loan rather than accept the political risk
of leaving
a
vast half-finished
dam
to
bear
all too
imperishable
witness
to
British incompetence;
but in
return
for
its bounty
the
Treasury insisted
on
rigid economy
in the
Sudan.
The main victims
of
the 1922
'economy drive' were
the
government's literate Sudanese employees. Their salaries, which
had never remotely kept pace with inflation and had been further
eroded
by
higher taxation since
1920, now
suffered
an
actual
reduction; their privileged access
to
interest-free building loans,
particularly valuable
at a
time
of
grossly inflated rents,
was
abolished. Promotion was very severely restricted; some officials
were actually demoted. Others,
on
the government's own admis-
sion efficient, were dismissed
as
redundant
on
reduced pensions.
Meanwhile,
the
British administrative establishment
was
being
rapidly expanded. Sudanese officials looked upon government not
merely
as an
employer
but
as
a
patron with
a
duty
of
generosity,
especially
in
hard times.
In
the early 1920s government forfeited
the goodwill
of
young educated Sudanese just
as
they were
emerging
as
a
coherent
and
politically conscious group.
Western-style education was no novelty
in
the northern Sudan.
It
had
been effectively introduced
as
early
as the
1860s, largely
because the traditional Sudanese Koranic school
{khalwa)
did not
normally produce leavers employable
as
government officials.
After
the
interruption
of
westernised education during
the
Mahdiyya
the new
government, anxious
to
replace expensive
Egyptian officials
by
Sudanese, hastened
to
open 'primary'
schools which selected their entrants from
khalwa
leavers. But the
khalwas were officially regarded
as
nurseries
of
ignorance
and
' superstition';
and
their teachers,
the
fikis, were suspected
of
inculcating
'the
wildest fanaticism'.'
8
It
was
as
much
to
combat
' fanaticism'
as to
provide better entrants
for
the primary schools
that
in
1905 government began
to
open Western-style elementary
vernacular schools
(kuttabs).
Kuttab education,
as an
agency
of
general enlightenment, was allowed to expand much more rapidly
than primary education.
By
1918 there were over 6,000 boys
in
kuttabs,
but
fewer than
a
thousand
in
primary schools.
The
Khartoum 'model' primary school, with
its
associated post-
18
Wingate, cited
by M. O.
Beshir, Educational
development
in
the
Sudan, iSpS-i?f6
(Oxford,
1969),
30.
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THE SUDAN: POLITICAL TENSIONS
primary training courses for teachers and specialised officials, had
been housed in the Gordon College buildings since their
completion in 1903.
By about 1920, however, government was becoming less afraid
of fanaticism than of too much enlightenment. There was also
disquiet at the proliferation of 'half-educated' kuttab leavers,
ill-qualified for official employment but likely to be radicalised by
their failure to find it. The Sudanese ^///^-schoolmaster, probably
'conceited' and possibly subversive as a result of his Gordon
College training, replaced the
khalwa
fiki as the demon-figure of
British official mythology. From 1920 the government ceased to
open new kuttabs; instead, it developed so-called 'improved
Aba/was'
which did not attempt to teach the elementary curriculum.
Policy towards primary education and the tiny secondary sector,
which were under much more direct British supervision than the
kuttabs, remained for the time being less restrictive. By 1918
Gordon College had introduced an element of academic secondary
education into its post-primary training courses. After the
Egyptian revolution of 1919 it seemed more desirable than ever
to replace Egyptian officials by Sudanese; and in 1924 Gordon
College shed its primary section and became a vocational secon-
dary school, offering two years of general education followed by
two years of specialised training.
However, by 1920-1 many British officials had become suspi-
cious of education at any level. Rather than produce more
Sudanese officials, they preferred to delegate administrative
powers to 'tribal shaykhs' as the 'natural leaders of the people'.
This school of thought was not yet completely predominant; but
in 1922 certain very limited powers were delegated to 'nomad
shaykhs'. Meanwhile, British administrative officials had long
ceased to be mere inspectors of the administration of
ma'murs.
From 1919 the British administrative cadre expanded very rapidly;
except to some extent in the southern Sudan, its members were
now no longer transient seconded officers, but permanently
appointed civilians. From 1921 they were collectively styled the
Sudan Political Service, and in 1922 the title of district commis-
sioner was introduced. These developments left no place for the
ma'mur
as a responsible administrator.
Ma'murs,
now increasingly
Sudanese, became closely supervised assistants to the DC; between
the district commissioner and the shaykh, they might soon be
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EGYPT AND THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
squeezed out completely. Sudanese military officers also feared for
their careers. Government intended, as soon as it could afford to
dispense with the Egyptian military subvention,
to
replace the
Egyptian army in the Sudan by a smaller and completely separate
force, whose commissioned officers might,
it
was feared,
be
exclusively British.
In 1920 a few young educated Sudanese, angry at the political
complaisance
of
their elders, had formed the Sudanese Union
Society,
a
clandestine nationalist group opposing continued
British tutelage. But their propaganda had little visible effect; and
the society soon became almost inactive, until in 1923 a group of
its more militant members, organised as the White Flag League,
gained Egyptian nationalist support for
a
programme
of
unity
with Egypt and open confrontation with the Sudan government.
In January 1924 Sa'ad Zaghlul
had
formed
the
first Wafd
government in Egypt; and in June the White Flag League began
a series of demonstrations in Khartoum, Omdurman and other
towns. British officials saw the League simply
as a
puppet
of
Egypt. The League's most prominent leader, the young officer
'Ali 'Abd
al-Latif,
was of Dinka extraction; government therefore
assumed that
it
was dominated by that always suspect group,
Islamised southerners who had risen through education but were
not fully integrated into northern Sudanese society.
In
fact, the
League's membership was
a
representative sample
of
young
educated Sudanese; and it included the sons of some distinguished
families. The rank-and-file of the demonstrators were however of
a different class: small shopkeepers and self-employed artisans
(fsuq
riff-raff'
to
British officials), who were
hit by
the urban
economic recession and 'stagflation' of the early 1920s. Not only
did the persistent high cost of shelter and bare subsistence increase
their own overheads;
it
also absorbed most
of
the purchasing
power
of
their potential customers. Tailors, carpenters, shoe-
makers and butchers (as retailers of a 'luxury' food) seem to have
suffered particularly severely.
The demonstrations of the League were in themselves no great
threat
to
government. They were suppressed, and
the
rather
sketchy organisation of the League destroyed, without recourse
to measures so drastic as to alienate moderate Sudanese opinion.
The notables, shocked at the usurpation by mere striplings of their
prerogative
of
leadership, publicly supported the government;
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THE SUDAN: POLITICAL TENSIONS
'Abd al-Rahman and
the
neo-Mahdists
— and not a few
others
— were totally opposed to the League's programme of unity with
Egypt. But the League's militance,
if
not always
its
programme,
gained
it the
sympathy
and
admiration
of
most young educated
Sudanese, alienated from a government that seemed to treat them
with systematic hostility. Moreover,
the
League's members
and
sympathisers included many military officers; and notable support
would avail little against mutinous troops.
In
August 1924
the
spectre of a general mutiny was raised by an armed demonstration
of
the
Sudanese officer-cadets, reputedly
the
'best-disciplined,
most contented and most loyal' unit in the army.
19
British disquiet
was increased
by
incidents
of
insubordination, among both
Sudanese and Egyptian officers, in certain outlying garrisons; and
in November there was
a
more serious incident
in
Khartoum,
during the crisis which followed the assassination of Stack in Cairo
and
the
consequent British demand
for the
evacuation
of all
ethnically Egyptian troops from
the
Sudan.
Two
Sudanese
platoons, led
by
Sudanese officers, attempted
to
join forces with
certain Egyptian units that were resisting evacuation. The mutin-
eers were promptly
—
perhaps over-promptly
—
crushed
by
British
troops,
which had been recently reinforced to two-battalion
strength.
No other Sudanese troops became involved,
and the
civilian
population remained quiet. After the final evacuation of Egyptian
troops, the Sudanese units were reorganised as the Sudan Defence
Force, whose officers held their commissions from the governor-
general,
not the
king
of
Egypt. Suspect officers were excluded;
and persistent British fears
of
dangerous disaffection among
the
rank-and-file proved quite unfounded. Civilian militancy collapsed
no less completely, and showed no sign
of
revival even when
the
imprisoned White Flag leaders were released
in
1929. British
official opinion attributed this collapse simply
to
the expulsion
of
the Egyptian organisers
of
sedition; but the League's strategy
of
using Egypt against Britain was destroyed
by the
British show
of force not only
in
Khartoum, but
in
Cairo,
at
the end
of
1924.
Moreover,
the
Sudanese militants were numerically weak,
politically very naive, and isolated from
a
rural population which
19
Director
of
Intelligence (C. A. Willis)
to
Stack, 16 August 1924: cited by G. M.
A.
Bakheit, 'British administration and Sudanese nationalism, 1919-1959' (Ph.D thesis,
Cambridge, 196;), 91.
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EGYPT AND THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
knew
no
leaders other than the religious and tribal notables. The
intelligentsia was
in
1924 still
too
thin
a
soil
to
nourish
a
robust
nationalist movement.
In the interests of Anglo-Egyptian relations, and to the disgust
of the Sudan government, London insisted
on
retaining the legal
form
of the
Condominium after 1924;
and the
Cairo embassy
remained the channel of official communication between London
and Khartoum. But control of the Sudan government by the Cairo
agency
or
embassy,
on
the wane ever since Cromer's retirement
in
1907, now
became vestigial. Cairo's financial control
had
already become more and more nominal after the cessation in 1913
of
the
Egyptian civil subvention. After
1924, no
revival
of
financial control was entailed
in the
acceptance
of
Egypt's offer
°f £l5 o>°°°
a
year for military purposes: Khartoum would accept
the money only
as an
unconditional contribution
to
general
revenue, and rendered no account of its expenditure. London now
regarded
the
Sudan, rather than Egypt,
as the
principal bastion
of British hegemony
in
the Nile valley;
and on
the affairs
of
the
Sudan
the
views
of
the governor-general now normally carried
more weight than those of the Cairo embassy. Moreover, precisely
because
the
Condominium
had
been retained, 'London' still
meant
the
Foreign Office,
not the
Colonial Office. The Foreign
Office
had no
machinery
for the
detailed supervision
of
Sudan
administration;
and so
long
as the
Sudan remained quiet
and
solvent,
it
normally intervened
as
little
as
possible.
The
Sudan
government therefore enjoyed between
the
wars
a
quite except-
ional degree
of
freedom from metropolitan supervision
and
control.
In 1921 Stack
had
prescribed
a
'dual-agency' administrative
policy which, while delegating minor powers
to
shaykhs, also
provided
for the
increased employment
of
educated Sudanese
officials.
The
events
of
1924,
and
Stack's death, completed
the
victory
of
those who saw
in
delegation
of
powers
not
merely
a
useful expedient in outlying regions but a political weapon against
'half-educated officials, students and town
riff-raff'.
20
After 1924
government systematically mobilised the rural and tribal notables
against
the
intelligentsia.
It
also attempted
to
mobilise them
against Sayyid
'Abd
al-Rahman al-Mahdi, whose rapid rise
to
20
CRO CivSec 1/9/30, note by C. P. Browne (governor, Berber), tabled at Northern
governors' meeting, 24 February 1920.
77°
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THE SUDAN: POLITICAL TENSIONS
affluence
and
major political influence
had
disconcerted
the
British. He organised his now extensive estates, and his adherents,
by an elaborate' administration' modelled on, and tacitly rivalling,
that of government. In 1924, by organising the opposition of the
'sound elements' to the White Flag League, he had constrained
government to accept him
as a
national leader rather than as
a
mere
religious notable. Unlike many religious notables, he did not keep
the intelligentsia at arm's length but actively courted them; and
some were ready listeners after the fiasco of 1924. His agents were
active among rural shaykhs, in some regions by now an integral
part of government's administrative machinery. He could, it was
thought, still raise a revolutionary army from his devotees among
the 'fighting tribes' of the western Sudan.
By 1926 'Abd al-Rahman seemed to be the one unifying force
capable
of
creating and leading
a
really formidable nationalist
movement.
In
spite of his continued professions of support for
government, some members of the Political Service believed that
the Sayyid
was
moving towards open confrontation,
and
demanded drastic action against him. When Geoffrey Archer,
Stack's successor, persisted in
a
personal policy of co-operation
with 'Abd al-Rahman, a cabal of senior officials forced him into
resignation. The scare
of
1926 was certainly excessive, perhaps
deliberately exaggerated. For all his dynamic and even flamboyant
political style, the Sayyid was essentially
a
cautious gradualist,
who sought political influence
in
order
to
make government
ultimately dependent upon his support and goodwill. After the
fall of Archer, the draconian measures apparently contemplated
against the Sayyid turned out to be comparatively minor adminis-
trative pinpricks. Quite possibly the primary target of the 1926
operation was not 'Abd al-Rahman but Archer, who was actively
opposing the preponderant influence acquired under Stack by
a
small oligarchy of very senior officials.
Indirect rule
The advocates of indirect rule sanctified their political objectives
by fulsome professions
of
respect and support for authentically
Sudanese institutions;
but
they flouted Sudanese realities
by
taking as their model the emirates of northern Nigeria. In practice,
however, between 1922 and 1926 no serious attempt was made
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EGYPT AND THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
to apply this model. By 1926 there were literally hundreds of petty
native administrations with very limited powers
21
and closely
supervised by the now ubiquitous DCs; the powers delegated had
not been those
of
DCs,
but of
ma'murs. There
was
some
speculation about the possible consolidation
of
native adminis-
trations under ' four to six great overlords'
;
22
but most political
officers were content with
a
system which checked the proliferation
of Sudanese officials without hampering close British control.
However, Archer's successor John Maffey (1926-33) saw grave
dangers in this half-hearted system of indirect rule. Maffey came
from India; and he attributed the political turbulence of British
India, as compared with the Indian Native States, to the absence
in British India
of
indigenous autocracies acting
as 'a
shield
between
the
agitator
and the
bureaucracy'.
He
proposed
to
construct such
a
shield
in
the Sudan by creating strong 'native
states',
between which the whole country would be 'parcelled out
into nicely balanced compartments, protective glands against the
septic germs'
of
nationalism. He demanded immediate action,
unhampered by the
'
fetish of efficiency', before Sudanese nation-
alism recovered from the setback
of
1924.
23
There was some initial shock among the Political Service
at
Maffey's ruthless subordination
of
administrative efficiency
to
political manipulation, and some fear that over-hasty action might
actually provoke unrest. However,
a
few senior British officials
soon became enthusiastic converts, sometimes more dogmatically
rigid than Maffey
himself.
The majority, though hardly sharing
Maffey's vision of Indian Native States
in
the Sudan, supported
his programme with the tacit proviso that
it
must
not
entail
dangerous 'loss of efficiency'. But the practical application of the
programme proved far from easy. Maffey had originally insisted
that the powers of his Sudanese autocrats should derive from '
a
true native
and
traditional basis'.
24
This implied internally
coherent, probably tribal, units. But even in Kordofan and Darfur,
21
These NAs had been set up under the 'Powers of Nomad Sheikhs Ordinance, 1922';
but they were by no means confined
to
purely nomad groups.
21
CRO CivSec 1/20/60, minute
by H. A.
MacMichael (CS 1926-34)
on
Bence-
Pembroke (governor, Darfur)
to
CS,
15
November 1926: cited
by
Daly, British
administration, 186.
21
CRO CivSec 1/9/33, memorandum by Maffey, 1 January 1927. Printed in part
by
R. O. Collins and R. L. Tignor, Egyptandtbe JWa//(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967), 127-8.
24
CRO CivSec 1/9/33, Maffey ut supra; minutes by MacMichael, 10 and 24 January
1927; by Maffey, 14 January; MacMichael, circular to governors, 27 January 1927.
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