Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
THE SUDAN IN THE I93OS
Congress as a mere British puppet, and virtually ignored it until
1940.
But 'Abd al-Rahman was once more ardently wooing the
intelligentsia, who for all their professed repudiation of' sectarian'
leadership were strongly attracted by his political activism and
'progressive' image; and discouraged by the chilly reticence and
unyielding Islamic conservatism of
his
rival 'Ali al-Mirghani. The
latter, with less than a tithe of 'Abd al-Rahman's enormous
income of some £30,000
a
year and far
less
talent
as
a public figure,
seemed quite unable to compete. 'Abd al-Rahman's influence
seemed ubiquitous, not only among the intelligentsia, but among
leaders of minor
turuq
and many secular notables; he had even
'captured' some of the native administrations. Government
feared the complete eclipse of 'Ali al-Mirghani, whom it still
regarded as its most reliable political friend. It now had to seek
friends where it could find them: perhaps the timely recognition
of Congress would make government, rather than 'Abd al-
Rahman, the patron to whom the intelligentsia would look for
favours. Gillan saw recognition, and persuaded the Political
Service to see it, almost entirely as a tactical move against the
over-mighty Sayyid; and, for good measure, against Egypt.
The ' Symes revolution' petered out, a revolution mainly on
paper. Apart from some modest educational development, very
little had actually been done to satisfy the hopes that Symes had
raised among the intelligentsia; and by 1939 Symes himself seems
to have grown weary of the struggle. He no longer talked to
educated Sudanese about the future of the Sudan, apparently
preferring bird-watching or the poetry of Wordsworth as topics
of conversation. Gillan's farewell public speech in July 1939 was
a depressing homily on the dangers of anything but the most
glacial slowness in 'nation-building'. Disillusioned young men
deserted Congress in droves: it lost half its membership between
1938 and 1940. Yet by mid-1939 Symes had pnt comparatively
early self-government irrevocably on the agenda of practical
politics. Self-government could no longer be dismissed, as in 1938
by one province governor (and not
a
particularly reactionary one),
as merely a dream which might, or might not, be realised in some
'dim future\
4S
45
CRO CivScc
5
7/2/7, W. D. C. L. Purves (governor, Northern Province), handing-over
notes,
22 January 1938, sheet 12.
783
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
EGYPT AND THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
CONCLUSION
In spite
of
the expansion
of
the northern Sudanese economy
since 1905, only in the Gezira had there been significant structural
change. Here change
had
been radical indeed, transforming
rain-cultivators into cogs in a vast incomprehensible machine, and
putting them on
a
dizzy switchback of unfamiliar affluence and
all
too
familiar poverty. Elsewhere
the
economy
had
been
stimulated, but hardly transformed,
by
the railway, the motor-lorry
(from the later 1920s), and the increasing use of diesel-powered
pumps. An industrial economy hardly existed, apart from the
railway workshops at Atbara and the harbour installations at Port
Sudan. Even non-industrial urbanisation seems
to
have been
determined largely by the railway system. Towns off the line of
rail,
even when administrative centres, showed little growth; but
El Obeid, after
it
became in 1911 the railhead for the populous
but totally unmodernised province of Kordofan, seems
to
have
grown even faster than Wad Medani, with the vast Gezira scheme
on its doorstep.
The Western-educated intelligentsia had been generated not by
the growth
of
the economy but by the administrative needs of
government. By 1939, in spite of restrictive educational policies,
this group was much stronger, both numerically and in intellectual
formation, than in 1924. Its leaders had undergone a more intense
exposure
to
Western intellectual influences through secondary
education at Gordon
College,
and often by private study thereafter.
Contrary to the hostile British stereotype, this exposure had not
usually weakened, but strengthened, their conscious loyalty to the
Sudan's Arab-Islamic
heritage.
Nor was the intelligentsia' upstart'
or ' rootless'. Many of its members were sons of notables or of
traditionally learned families; and most educated Sudanese
of
provincial origin maintained, through their extended family,
strong links with their homeland.
For most northern Sudanese, the strongest integrating force
was still allegiance
to
one
of
the great religious sayyids;
an
allegiance so powerful that it soon became the main determinant
of political alignment, including for a time that of the intelligentsia
who professed
to
have repudiated
it.
Compatible with this
allegiance was widespread membership
of
smaller
and
more
' homely'
turuq.
These, for most Muslim Sudanese, filled the role
784
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SUDAN: CONCLUSION
of the friendly societies and mutual-aid associations which have
often been important elsewhere in Africa but never became so in
the Sudan. Where the tribe did remain the dominant category of
identification, its dominance usually reflected strong ethnic and
linguistic divergencies (as with the Fur and the Beja), or the
imperatives of nomad ecology. In the south, tribalism and ethnic
exclusiveness, bolstered by 'Southern Policy', remained totally
and statically dominant, unchallenged as yet by economic devel-
opment, education, Islam or Christianity. They would probably
have been dominant even without artificial bolstering. The British
did not invent or 'manufacture' Nilotic ultra-conservatism; they
accommodated themselves to it, and used it.
In 1939 there was little obvious sign of radical change in
northern Sudanese social structure or political behaviour. This
was true even in the Gezira, where British romantic reactionaries
had greatly exaggerated the levelling effects of the scheme. Tribal
structures had hardly existed in the Gezira; and secular notables
were far less important than the leaders or agents of local or
national
turuq,
allegiance to which was unaffected by the scheme's
regimentation of its tenants. The intelligentsia, firmly rooted in
traditional society and as yet in traditional religious loyalties,
hardly constituted a new 'class'. The one genuinely revolutionary
force, militant millenarian Mahdism, had been moribund since
about 1918 and had long been dead by 1939. Yet there is also an
air of Indian summer, of calm before the storm, about the later
1930s. British administrators, like Douglas Newbold 'going on
steadily and sanely '
46
in Kordofan, or even Gillan using Congress
as a pawn in his political strategy, had no inkling of the rapidity
with which the intelligentsia were to emerge as the standard-
bearers of
a
militant and intransigent nationalism; and ultimately
as an independent force capable of challenging the political
leadership of the two great religious sayyids.
After about 1920, the British rulers of the Sudan became
intensely concerned to control its long-term socio-political devel-
opment. Wingate's administrative policy was decried as unimag-
inative and unconstructive because he had been content merely
to repress overt resistance and to promote material improvement
as the best foundation for security. Yet, ironically, it was
Wingate's success in interesting Lancashire and Whitehall in the
46
Newbold to Cottrell, 30 Match 1958: printed in Henderson, Modern Sudan, 81-2.
785
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
EGYPT AND THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN
Gezira cotton project that initiated
the one
major structural
change in the economy. And
it
was Wingate's bargain with 'Abd
al-Rahman al-Mahdi which enabled the Sayyid
to
embark upon
the restructuring and
'
modernisation'
of
Mahdism, certainly the
most important political development in the Sudan between 1918
and 1937. Maffey
and
Symes,
in
spite
of
their very different
objectives, were both
of
them highly manipulative rulers.
The
absence alike
of
overt Sudanese political opposition after 1924,
and of positive metropolitan direction of policy, seemed to leave
them a free hand to mould the Sudan into shapes that seemed good
to them. But
as
Archer's fate had demonstrated, they could not
afford to lose the confidence of the Political Service, a body which
auto-recruitment and single-territory service had endowed with
a very uniform collective psychology and an unshakable profess-
ional solidarity. Ideologists like Maffey and Symes had to operate
within
the
strict bounds
set by the
imperatives
of
practical
administration
as
seen
by
the Political
Service.
Maffey's reactionary
fantasies were accordingly diluted into something less high-flown
that practical men could handle; and most
of
Symes's alarming
innovations were successfully obstructed.
The apparent omnipotence
of
government
was
largely
an
illusion. Would-be political manipulators
and
social engineers
ignored at their peril the realities of Sudan society. Maffey ignored
the lack
of
adequate economic and political foundations
for
his
proposed native states; and
he had no
magic wand that could
transform the
na^ir
of the nomad Kababish into the akhondoi Swat
or even
the
emir
of
Kano.
Nor
could Symes disentangle
the
intelligentsia from sectarian and nationalist politics and transform
them almost overnight into virtually non-political administrative
and professional experts.
The
Sudan was
not
mere clay
to be
shaped and moulded
by
the superior wisdom
of
the British.
In
fact, government could manipulate only
to a
very limited extent
the tough and resilient network
of
loyalties that held northern
Sudanese society together.
The
strongest
of
these, 'sectarian'
religious allegiances, it could indeed play off one against another;
but
it
could
do
nothing
to
modify their focus
or
their intensity.
Nor
was it so
easy
to
mobilise regional
or
tribal loyalties
as
'protective glands' against nationalism. Some regional
or
tribal
groups — the Nubians, the Danaqla, the Shayqiyya, for example
— combined very strong, 'clannish', internal solidarity with
an
786
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SUDAN: CONCLUSION
aptitude
for
'modernisation'
and
very active participation
in
national politics by their educated members. As a divisive force,
tribalism often damaged the 'protective glands' more than
it
damaged Sudanese nationalism. Small
but
intransigent tribal
groups, insignificant at the national level, were often insuperable
obstacles to the political evolution of multi-tribal native adminis-
trations. Government could usually prevent the ' Nuba'
of
the
northern hills or the Hawawir from openly defying the na^ir of
the Kababish;
it
could never transform them into loyal, or even
cooperative, members of the Kababish Confederacy.
47
The pace
and direction
of
social and political evolution were determined
by forces essentially uncontrollable even by an autocratic govern-
ment, whose naively arrogant pretensions
to
mould the future
of the Sudan were fundamentally ineffective and irrelevant.
47
These reflections are based upon personal observation of the Kababish NA in 1948,
when
it
was still probably
in
as good working order as
it
had ever been. Already by
the later 1930s many British officials were uneasy
at
the failure
of
NAs
to
develop
satisfactorily or to evoke loyalty from their subjects. One senior official feared that they
were degenerating into 'native agencies similar to the old German "akida" system
in
East Africa': CRO CivSec 1/12/40, note by J. A. Reid, 16 January 1938;
cf.
Bakheit,
'British administration and Sudanese nationalism', 267-71.
787
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
GENERAL
For the years covered
in
this volume, accessible source materials
are
far
richer than
for
any other period
in
the history
of
Africa.
Most
of
the continent
was
continuously under
the
control
of
literate governments whose archives, in Europe and Africa, have
largely survived. Governments have varied greatly
in
their
willingness to open their archives to scholars, but a major advance
was made
in
1967 when
the
closed period
for
access
to
central
government records
in
Britain was reduced from fifty
to
thirty
years:
overnight,
key
sources
for the
inter-war period became
available
to
historians. Meanwhile,
a
mass of documentation had
been created
by
missionaries, businessmen, teachers, journalists
and scholars working
in
Africa. Much
of
this
is
still very
incompletely known, but there are
a
number of published guides
to archives
and
other manuscript collections; some
are
listed
below,
on p. 880, and
others
in
connexion with appropriate
chapters. Government publications.
are,
with
a few
exceptions,
excluded from the bibliographies in this volume. British territories
under
the
Colonial Office issued government gazettes, annual
reports, statistical Blue books, legislative council proceedings
and occasional
law
reports
and
digests.
In
addition, reports
of
commissions
and
committees
of
enquiry were published locally
and in London. A growing quantity of such documents, together
with newspapers and archival records,
are
being reproduced
in
microform:
a
partial list
is
given
in
the general bibliography.
The secondary literature
on our
period has mostly expanded
in line with
the
availability
of
source material,
and it
has been
necessary to economise in listing it. In general, items are cited only
once;
where they are relevant
to
more than one chapter, cross-
references
are
given
in the
bibliographical essays. Most items
bearing specifically
on one
region
are
listed
in the
appropriate
788
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
GENERAL
regional bibliographies, but those concerned with Christianity,
Islam and other aspects of African culture are listed in the
bibliographies for chapters 3, 4 and 5. Essays published in
collections are not normally listed separately; cross-references are
supplied in the bibliographical essays. An attempt has been made
to complement, rather than duplicate, bibliographical guidance
that is readily accessible (as in histories of regions or territories);
special emphasis has thus been laid on the most recent literature.
Periodical articles which are largely subsumed in books have been
excluded, as have many articles published in regional journals;
articles have, however, usually been cited in preference to the
authors' doctoral theses. In any case, the latter have usually been
excluded if listed in Mcllwaine's inventory of theses for British
and Irish universities (1978). Theses on Africa for universities in
the USA are periodically listed by University Microfilms Inter-
national; other aids to finding theses are listed on p. 881, among
general bibliographies. It may be noted here that the bibliographies
are in general the most useful sections of the African
historical
dictionaries
(Metuchen, NJ). By 1984 these covered nearly forty
countries, but they are very uneven in quality and most helpful
for the period since
c.
1950; few have been listed in this volume.
Research on our period appears in a large number of journals;
those which are concerned with the whole of Africa include the
Journal of African History, the International Journal of African
Historical Studies, African Affairs, History in Africa and African
Economic History. The quarterly International African Bibliography
is compiled at SOAS, London. Asamani has listed contributions
to periodicals and other collective publications in Western
languages between 1885 and 1965.
While written sources are far more abundant for our period
than ever before, other types of historical evidence became
increasingly important. Colonial rule and capitalist enterprise
caused a huge expansion and elaboration of building and
engineering works. This aspect of Africa's material inheritance
from alien regimes has received little attention from historians:
relevant items are listed in the bibliographies for North Africa
(Beguin, Betts), Nigeria (Akinsemoyin and Vaughan-Richards,
Home, Mohammed), South Africa (Herbert), Mozambique (de
Lima) and Ethiopia (Rigotti). Many buildings from our period
have already vanished, but the physical appearance of Africa and
789
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
its inhabitants was frequently recorded
by
the camera, though
photo-journalism was
all too
rare. Many books listed
in the
following pages are illustrated with photographs, though as yet
few books on Africa have been devoted to historical photographs;
those listed
in
this volume cover Algeria (Musso), Douala,
Cameroun (Soulillou),
the
Belgian Congo (Luwel), Burundi
(Collard and Celis) Mozambique (Lobato, Rufino), Johannesburg
(Benjamin), Southern Rhodesia (Baxter and Turner, Mazikana and
Johnstone). There are many photographs
in
Macmillan's hand-
books for West and South Africa. Light (p. 883) records aerial
views of Africa in 1937—8 which vividly illustrate innovations in
land use. Some relevant photographic collections have been
catalogued, e.g. those of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the
Royal Commonwealth Society, the Royal Photographic Society
and the Middle East Centre,
St
Antony's, Oxford. There
are
descriptions
of
important collections
in
France (Rabut)
and
Belgium (Luwel).
Film must also
be
considered
as
evidence
for our
period.
Moving photographs were taken before 1900 in Egypt and South
Africa,
and in
1911 Comerio made some film
of
the Italian
invasion
of
Libya. Between the wars, several ethnographic and
commercial travel films were made
in
Africa, while tourists
occasionally used cine-cameras. By the 1930s, when sound tracks
were possible, films were made
in
Africa
for a
variety
of
educational, commercial
and
political purposes.
The
Italian
invasion of Ethiopia was filmed from both sides, and Becker (p.
982) has compiled an excellent documentary from such material.
Gutsche (p. 961) has chronicled film-making
in
South Africa,
while Low and Smyth (pp. 889-90) refer to British work. Listed
here are some relevant filmographies and a major archival guide;
Roberts has made
a
preliminary study
of
film made
in
Africa
during our period.
Some
of the
sounds
of
the period have been preserved:
ethnographers made sound recordings in German East Africa in
1906 and Nigeria
in
1909-12;
in
southern Africa, Tracey made
field recordings in the 1930s, while African music was recorded
commercially. Catalogues by Tracey himself and by Stone and
Gillis help to show what was done and where it survives. Recently
historians have made much
use of the
tape-recorder when
interviewing those who witnessed the period, whether as rulers
790
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
GENERAL
or ruled. It need hardly be stressed that, whether preserved in
recorded or written form, such oral testimony can be of particular
value to the historian seeking to understand African experience
during our period, though already much of it has moved beyond
the reach of all but the longest memories.
Of the general reference works on Africa listed here, some are
contemporary surveys, some are academic symposia, and a few
treat a particular subject in relation to Africa as a whole. The
section devoted to international relations comprises works whose
main concern is with Africa as a factor in relations between
countries outside it: this is in effect a bibliography of the
'continuing Scramble'. Studies of bilateral relations between
African territories and other countries are listed in the appropriate
regional bibliographies. Official collections of diplomatic docu-
ments covering our period have been published by Britain,
France, Germany and Italy; Vogel indicates the relevant British
command papers. Brownlie provides a guide for the study of
international frontiers in Africa; see also Bono, and studies for
Ethiopia (Hamilton), East Africa (McEwan) and the Belgian
Congo (Jentgen). Toynbee documents frontier revisions in the
1920s. Relevant studies of Britain's imperial concerns during our
period include
Beloff,
Gallagher and Darwin. The growth of
Italian imperial ambitions has been surveyed by Miege and Zaghi.
Pick documented the role of one German businessman in
furthering his government's aims in Africa.
For the years before 1914 there are relevant studies of the
foreign policies of Belgium (Willequet) and Italy (Bosworth). The
Moroccan crisis of 1911 has received much attention (Allain,
Barlow, Barraclough, Parsons; see also Rivet). European inten-
tions towards Ethiopia in the early twentieth century are discussed
by Caplan, Keefer, J.C.Robertson and Marcus (1975) (p. 984).
Relations between Britain and Germany on African questions
before 1914 (of special concern to Portugal) have been examined
by Hatton, Langhorne and Vincent Smith, and in essays in the
collection edited by Gifford and Louis (p. 883). Britain's external
relations in West Africa are considered by Ekoko and Osuntokun.
France's aims in Africa during and after the First World War are
examined by Andrew and Kanya-Forstner; for Italian aims at this
period, see Caroselli, Cole, Costanzo and Hess. The treatment of
Africa by the Paris Peace Conference was reported by Beer,
79
l
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
Woodrow Wilson's colonial adviser; there
are
also academic
studies by Curry and Louis (see also Louis, p. 976). On the African
mandates, the chief authorities remain Wright and Logan. For the
immediate post-war years there are studies of Morocco (Ayache)
and Ethiopia (Buccianti). McCormack has investigated the inter-
national rivalry caused by the development of air travel between
the wars. Britain's reactions to German colonial irredentism have
been discussed
by
Crozier, Ekoko, Louis and Watt; see also
Ageron, Hildebrand
(p.
889) and Kienzle
(p.
962). The imperialism
of Fascist Italy has been studied by Mack Smith, Rainero, Bessis
and E. M. Robertson;
the
international consequences
of its
ambitions in Ethiopia have received much attention (Baer, Hardie,
Harris, Iadarola, Laurens, Spencer, Toynbee (1936), Waley,
Wilkin). Other studies of Ethiopia's external relations between the
wars are listed on pp. 912, 909 (Ross, Scott, Weisbord, Work)
and pp. 982-5 (Bairu Tafia, McCann, Marcus (1983), Rochat,
Rouaud, Steffanson and Starrett). On Liberia's external relations,
see especially Schmokel and Uhomoibhi (p. 948).
I.
THE IMPERIAL MIND
The bibliography for this chapter
is
divided into two sections,
for primary and secondary sources. The former include relevant
works published during our period; many
of
these, and their
authors, are discussed
in
the chapter and do not require notice
here.
Mention should however
be
made of the principal periodicals
in which thinking about Africa was circulated during our period:
the Journal
of
the (Royal) African Society
(1901-
),
Africa (the
journal of the International African Institute, 1928- ),
L''
Afrique
franfaise (1891-1960), the
Mitteilungen aus den deutschen Schut^gebieten
(1888—1919), the
Koloniale
Rundschau(1909—
1943),
UAfricaItaliana
(i882-i94o)and Belgian publications listed on
p.
840. Easterbrook
lists most books
in
English
on
Africa published during our
period; there
is
also
a
useful bibliography
in
Hetherington.
A
great variety of documents relating to British colonial Africa has
been collected by Rhodes House Library, Oxford; see Frewer and
Byrne (p. 880). Two British reference works are specially relevant
to this chapter: Who's who and the Dictionary of
national
biography,
but for our purposes the latter is seriously deficient, despite the
commitment of an early editor to embracing 'all branches of the
792
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008