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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
From the beginning of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, the
British sought to modernize Sudan by applying European technology
to its underdeveloped economy and by replacing its authoritarian
institutions with ones that adhered to liberal English
traditions. However, southern Sudan's remote and undeveloped
provinces--Equatoria, Bahr al Ghazal, and Upper Nile--received
little official attention until after World War I, except for
efforts to suppress tribal warfare and the slave trade. The
British justified this policy by claiming that the south was not
ready for exposure to the modern world. To allow the south to
develop along indigenous lines, the British, therefore, closed
the region to outsiders. As a result, the south remained isolated
and backward. A few Arab merchants controlled the region's
limited commercial activities while Arab bureaucrats administered
whatever laws existed. Christian missionaries, who operated
schools and medical clinics, provided limited social services in
southern Sudan.
The earliest Christian missionaries were the Verona Fathers,
a Roman Catholic religious order that had established southern
missions before the Mahdiyah. Other missionary groups active in
the south included Presbyterians from the United States and the
Anglican Church Missionary Society. There was no competition
among these missions, largely because they maintained separate
areas of influence. The government eventually subsidized the
mission schools that educated southerners. Because mission
graduates usually succeeded in gaining posts in the provincial
civil service, many northerners regarded them as tools of British
imperialism. The few southerners who received higher training
attended schools in British East Africa (present-day Kenya,
Uganda, and Tanzania) rather than in Khartoum, thereby
exacerbating the north-south division.
British authorities treated the three southern provinces as a
separate region. The colonial administration, as it consolidated
its southern position in the 1920s, detached the south from the
rest of Sudan for all practical purposes. The period's "closed
door" ordinances, which barred northern Sudanese from entering or
working in the south, reinforced this separate development
policy. Moreover, the British gradually replaced Arab
administrators and expelled Arab merchants, thereby severing the
south's last economic contacts with the north. The colonial
administration also discouraged the spread of Islam, the practice
of Arab customs, and the wearing of Arab dress. At the same time,
the British made efforts to revitalize African customs and tribal
life that the slave trade had disrupted. Finally, a 1930
directive stated that blacks in the southern provinces were to be
considered a people distinct from northern Muslims and that the
region should be prepared for eventual integration with British
East Africa.
Although potentially a rich agricultural zone, the south's
economic development suffered because of the region's isolation.
Moreover, a continual struggle went on between British officials
in the north and south, as those in the former resisted
recommendations that northern resources be diverted to spur
southern economic development. Personality clashes between
officials in the two branches in the Sudan Political Service also
impeded the south's growth. Those individuals who served in the
southern provinces tended to be military officers with previous
Africa experience on secondment to the colonial service. They
usually were distrustful of Arab influence and were committed to
keeping the south under British control. By contrast, officials
in the northern provinces tended to be Arabists often drawn from
the diplomatic and consular service. Whereas northern provincial
governors conferred regularly as a group with the governor
general in Khartoum, their three southern colleagues met to
coordinate activities with the governors of the British East
African colonies.
Data as of June 1991
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