Empire on the Nile: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898-1934 052130878X, 9780521308786

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THOMAS). BATA LIBRARY TRENT UNIVERSITY

EMPIRE ON THE NILE

EMPIRE ON THE NILE The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1898-1934

M. W. DALY

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The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner uf books m as granted by Henry VIII ,n 1534 The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON

NEW YORK

MELBOURNE

NEW ROCHELLE SYDNEY

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 iRP 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1986 First published 1986 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge British library cataloguing in publication data Daly, M. W. Empire on the Nile : the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898-1934. 1. Sudan - Politics and government 2. Sudan - History-1899-1956 I. Title 320.9624

JQ3981.S8A4

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Daly, M. W. Empire on the Nile. Bibliography Includes index. 1. Sudan - History - 1899-1956. DT156.7.D345 1986 isbn

962.4'o3

o 521 30878 x

I. Title 85-30870

In memory of Joseph and Elfrida Cederberg and John and Mary Daly

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/empireonnileanglOOOOdaly

Contents

List of illustrations Preface Glossary 1

Page x xj x^

THE FOUNDATION OF THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN CONDOMINIUM

:

Blood and champagne The Condominium Agreement The Sudanese in 1900 Kitchener of Khartoum Soldiers at peace 2

3

x x: 23

THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF SIR REGINALD WINGATE

40

The succession of Sir Reginald Wingate Khartoum-Cairo relations, 1900-1916 The principal offices of the Sudan Government Sudan Government committees and the governor-general’s council The beginnings of provincial administration British personnel Substance and style: Wingate as governor-general

40 42 34 67 71 82 93

INTERNAL SECURITY, 1898-1914

IO5

The garrison of the Sudan Security in the North: Sudanese resistance to Condominium rule The Nuba Mountains Security in the South: resistance, pacification, and the beginnings of administration, 1899-1919

105

vii

118 129 133

Contents

viii

4

THE SUDAN AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Introduction Problems and policies during the war The conquest of Darfur, 1916 5

6

7

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS,

1898-1919

192 194 201 210 214 223 227 231

1898-1919 The development of education in the Northern Sudan Missionary education and the Southern Sudan Medical developments

24O 240 249 259

EDUCATION AND HEALTH,

THE SUDAN GOVERNMENT’S TROUBLED

1919-1924 Cairo and Khartoum The Sudan Government, 1919-1924 The rise of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi The beginning of secular opposition to the British The Sudan question in Anglo-Egyptian relations and the crisis of November 1924

9

192

Introduction Sudan Government revenues The development of transport and communications Land settlement Agricultural production and development to 1914 Animal resources Production and exports during the first world war Labour, 1899-1919

ADOLESCENCE,

8

G2 I52 158 171

266 266 270 278 287 298

THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF SIR GEOFFREY ARCHER, 1924-1926 The Sudan in Anglo-Egyptian relations after the 1924 crisis Internal affairs after the 1924 crisis Central government developments The resignation of Sir Geoffrey Archer

313

THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF SIR JOHN

340 34I 349

1926-1934 Khartoum, Cairo and London The central government under Maffey Indirect Rule in the Northern Sudan: theories, statutes, and problems, 1920-1933 MAFFEY,

313

321 329 335

360

Contents Government policy towards education in the Northern Sudan Sudanese opposition to the Sudan Government

ix

379 388

ADMINISTRATION IN THE SOUTHERN SUDAN, 192^1933

396

Pacification and conciliation The search for a policy for the south Southern Policy

396 404 413

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, 192O-I933

420

The economy Government finance Slavery and labour Medical developments

420

conclusion

451

Abbreviations used in the notes, bibliography and tables

454

Tables Notes Bibliography Index

457 462 518

433 439 446

529

Illustrations

Map of Fig. i Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

9 10 11 12 13 14 13 16 17 18 19 20 21

the Sudan Flag-raising ceremony, Khartoum, 4 September 1898 page The Mahdi’s tomb after the bombardment . Lord Kitchener; Sir Reginald Wingate The Khedive Abbas Hilmi at Port Sudan, 1909 Sir Rudolf von Slatin in old age Theodore Roosevelt’s visit, 1910 The Duke of Connaught arriving at the Palace Sharif Yusuf al-Hindi, Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani and J. W. Crowfoot H. A. MacMichael in 'Ali Dinar’s palace at El Fasher Sir James Currie; Lt-Col. M. R. Kennedy Games in front of Gordon College Lord Allenby presenting the reth with a flag Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi; Shaykh 'Ali al-Tum Mutineering cadets, August 1924 The Camel Corps, c. 1920 Governors-general: Sir Lee Stack; Sir Geoffrey Archer; Sir John Maffey; and Sir Stewart Symes Sudanese officials, Wad Medani, 1926 Missionaries at a government rest-house The Sennar Dam under construction The Gezira: canal and Khartoum road The Sudan Defence Force band

xvi 2 3 31 51 63 103 109 175 185 241 243 267 280 293 307 314 333 339 421 427 438

All photographs are reproduced by permission of the Librarian of the University Library, University of Durham, with the exception of No 20, for which the publisher wishes to thank the copyright holder, Mrs C. Bloss.

The Sudan has undergone much change in the last century, some of it superficial, some profound. Because of its unique geographical and cultural situation (as a ‘bridge’, a ‘cross-roads’, or a barrier), its modern history may be observed as a possible indicator of events or trends elsewhere in Africa, the Middle East, and the Islamic world. The Sudanese cultural mosaic has been overlain in modern times by foreign rule, by the TurcoEgyptian regime of the nineteenth century, and the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium that came to an end on i January 1956. This book is an attempt to provide, in some detail, a history of the Condominium up to 1934. A second volume, taking the story up to independence, is planned, and will make use of the additional private and official sources that are becoming available. For the transliteration of Arabic names I have aimed at consistency rather than at rigid observance of a system. It is a pleasure to acknowledge individuals and organisations that assisted the research and writing of this book. My appointment as Research Fellow in Arts at the University of Durham provided an opportunity to make use of the important Sudan Archive at the University Library. I was fortunate to have the constant cooperation of Professor J. R. Flarris, the director of the School of Oriental Studies, and of Miss Lesley Forbes, the Keeper of Oriental Books. The staff of the library and the school were always helpful. Mrs Peter Butterworth, Miss Elizabeth Corey, Mr Malcolm Fergusson, and Dr R. I. Lawless of the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies gave generously of their time and expertise in support of the research. Grants from the University of Durham allowed a trip to the Sudan and archival investigations in Britain. In Khartoum the director of the National Records Office, Dr M. I. Abu Salim, and the head of the Sudan Library, Mrs Asma Ibrahim, and their staffs, made special efforts to accommodate me. xi

Association with the Institute of African and Asian Studies of the University of Khartoum facilitated my work. Professor Hassan Ahmed Ibrahim and Dr Osman Dawi Eisa are among the friends and colleagues at the university whose hospitality and assistance I wish to acknowledge. Generous grants from the American Philosophical Society, Philadel¬ phia, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, D.C., allowed special research on the governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer and the Sudan career of Sir Harold MacMichael. I am grateful to both of these patrons. Professor G. N. Sanderson, Dr Muhammad Said al-Gaddal, and Mr and Mrs Martin Daly read a draft of the book. Their thoughtful criticisms and attention to detail have saved me from many errors and are deeply appreciated. Finally, I wish also to thank Mrs Margaret Sharman and Mrs Elizabeth Wetton, my editor, for their friendly cooperation and encouragement. While this book was thus largely made possible by the efforts of others, it is only fair to state that I alone am responsible for its contents. Khartoum, 1985

m. w. DALY

Glossary

'alim (pi. 'ulama’) aman amir ardeb baraka bassir bimbashi dar daya daym dimangawi dirhem dura effendi faki fallah (pi. fallahin) fatwa feddan al-bakim al-amm ballaq hashab dim imam jallaba jarf jibba

learned one, especially of Islam clemency, assurance of protection, immunity commander a measure of capacity; i ardeb = 198 litres blessing, grace bone-setter rank in Egyptian Army equivalent to major land, homeland midwife neighbourhood; used to denote Sudanese ‘quarter’ of Khartoum district governor in Fur sultanate a measure of weight (3.12 grams); a coin millet (sorghum vulgare) formerly an honorific for a professional, an educated man; later, anyone educated a holy man or religious teacher a peasant (in Egypt) the legal opinion issued by a mufti a unit of land measurement; one feddan = 1.038 acres or 0.420 hectares the governor-general barber-surgeon a type of gum (acacia Senegal) knowledge, especially religious knowledge leader; title denoting the leader of prayers in a mosque pedlar the land between a river’s edge and its bank a robe. A patched jibba was a sign of allegiance to the Mahdi xiii

Glossary

xiv kantar

khalifa khalwa kuttah lukiko mahdi

majlis ma’mur mandub (pi. manadib) maqdum

mek merkaz (pi. merakiz) mu dir mudiria mufattish mufti muhafiz mulazim muwallad

muzayin nazir qadi reth saqia sayyid shaduf Shari"a shartai (pi. sharati)

a unit of weight; i kantar = ioo rotls = 99-°5 lbs; but i kantar = 315 rotls or 312.01 lbs of unginned Gezira cotton successor; lieutenant place of seclusion; denotes both a sufi retreat and a Quran school a school a type of court introduced in the Southern Sudan from Uganda the divinely-guided one, expected by many Muslims to restore Islam and to herald the end of time a council, court a district official delegate; emissary, agent a high office in the Fur sultanate, revived under the Condominium with different powers king office, government office governor of a province province headquarters inspector (later district commissioner) expert in Islamic law commissioner, commanding officer lieutenant; during the Mahdia, a bodyguard of the Khalifa 'Abdullahi someone not of pure Arab blood; in the Sudan used to denote someone of mixed Arab and foreign, often Levantine, origins barber-surgeon leader of a tribe or of a section of a tribe a judge of a religious court the king of the Shilluk a water-wheel operated by human or animal labour formerly a religious title of respect, now roughly equivalent to ‘Mr’ a long-levered pole, a device for lifting water from a river Islamic law a district governor in Darfur

Glossary shaykh sirdar sudd talk tariqa tukl tumargi 'limda ushur wakil yuzbashi

xv

tribal or religious chief or high notable title of the commander-in-chief of the Egyp¬ tian Army barrier; term denoting the region of swamps between Bor and Lake No on the Upper Nile a type of gum (acacia seyal) a sufi order or brotherhood a house or hut of grass or straw male nurse headman of a town or group of villages; mayor one-tenth; a tithe levied on agricultural pro¬ duction agent, deputy rank in Egyptian Army equivalent to captain

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1 ETHIOPIA

The Sudan (showing present-day borders)

The foundation of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium

BLOOD AND CHAMPAGNE

At ten o’clock on the morning of Sunday, 4 September 1898, in the ruins of the governor-general’s palace at Khartoum, a ceremony was held, Sir Herbert Kitchener, conqueror of the Sudan, presiding. At his sign, the band of the Grenadier Guards played the National Anthem as two British officers hoisted the Union flag on a staff planted in a ruined wall. An instant later an Egyptian flag was raised beside it, to symbolise that the conquest had been accomplished by the joint efforts of Britain and Egypt. Then the khedivial anthem was played, after which cheers were raised for Queen Victoria and for Abbas Hilmi, khedive of Egypt. The gun-boat Melik, anchored in the Blue Nile, fired a 21-gun salute. When these essential preliminaries were completed, and an as yet undefined regime thereby inaugurated, a religious service began. Officers and men from all the available British and Egyptian units were drawn up behind Kitchener, facing the army chaplains. Hymns were sung, prayers said, the scriptures intoned. The Roman Catholic chaplain, last to speak, prayed that God would ‘look down . . . with eyes of pity and compassion on this land so loved by that heroic soul’ whose memory they now honoured:1 Charles George Gordon, Gordon Pasha of Khartoum, who had died there almost fourteen years before. Assembled dignitaries were ‘much affected’ by the poignancy of the scene, and Kitchener himself broke into sobs.2 When the service had concluded, the soldiers strolled in the ruins, examining the spot where Gordon had fallen; or in the choked gardens behind the palace, where the untended passion flowers and pomegranates gave bloom and the oranges and limes still bore fruit. Then they walked to their boats and returned to the charnel-house of Omdurman. Across the Nile from the abandoned capital of the Turco-Egyptian Sudan lay the metropolis of its successor state, the Mahdist city of 1

Empire on the Nile

Fig. i

Flag-raising ceremony in the ruins of the governor-general’s palace, Khartoum, 4 September 1898

Omdurman. The city itself had been largely spared two days before when the Anglo-Egyptian forces under Kitchener had met the army of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi at Karari, seven miles to the north. The gunboats of the invaders had pelted Omdurman with shell-fire before and during the battle, damaging the tomb of the Mahdi, holing the great defensive walls, and demoralising the population, but widespread damage was avoided.3 Sudanese casualties from the battle were enormous, the dead counted on the field at Karari alone amounting to about 10,800. The number of wounded is impossible to estimate with any accuracy. Official reports, which have been followed in the secondary accounts, spoke of sixteen thousand. This figure was based on no sound calculation, relying on the ‘fact’ that ‘there were wounded in almost every house in Omdurman’.4 One correspondent wrote that ‘over 9,000’ wounded were treated by the allies’ medical staff, but he gave no evidence for this highly unlikely figure. The number of dead, however, was certainly higher than the official figure, which did not include soldiers who died away from the battlefield.5

Foundation of the Condominium

3

Civilian victims of the shelling and of sporadic street-fighting cannot be known, but eyewitnesses gave evidence of numerous civilian casualties.6 Of the bodies observed in the streets, many must have been of battle casualties who had regained the city before dying. Controversy surrounds several aspects of Kitchener’s and his army’s conduct during and immediately after the battle. In reply to criticism, he ‘categorically’ denied in February 1899 that he had ordered or allowed Mahdist wounded to be massacred, that his troops had carried out such a massacre, that Omdurman was looted, and that civilian fugitives in the city were deliberately fired upon.7 There is, however, evidence to support each of these charges except the last, which appears to have been without foundation. An early, official statement of the allies’ treatment of wounded Mahdists was already defensive in tone, probably because of criticism directed against Kitchener for his previous conduct at the battle of the Atbara. This report, written by F. R. Wingate, the director of intelligence of the Egyptian Army, stated that because there were so many wounded, it was impossible to ‘attempt’ their treatment.8 Winston Churchill, however, in The river war, criticised Kitchener for not having republished before the battle an order he had given before Atbara, that wounded enemy soldiers should be spared. This omission, combined with ‘the unmeasured terms in which the Dervishes had been described in the newspapers, and the idea which had been laboriously circulated, of “avenging Gordon”, had inflamed [the soldiers’] passions, and had led them to believe that it was quite correct to regard their enemy as vermin - unfit to live. The result was that there were many wounded Dervishes killed.’ These fell into three categories: soldiers who still threatened allied forces; severely wounded men with no hope of recovery; and those, ‘certainly not less than a hundred’, who were killed even after they had thrown down their arms ‘and appealed for quarter’. According to Churchill, most of these were killed by Egyptian and Sudanese troops, particularly those under the command of Colonel John Maxwell.9 The killing of wounded soldiers on the day of battle pales in comparison with the horrific neglect, related by Churchill and others, of the wounded left on the battlefield. Three days after the battle, Churchill revisited the site: ‘The scenes were pathetic,’ he wrote. ‘Where there was a shady bush four men had crawled to die. Someone had spread a rag on the thorns to increase the shade.’ Legless and armless men had dragged themselves unaided for miles to the river. Even a week after the battle ‘there were still a few wounded who had neither died nor crawled away, but continued to suffer’.10 Privately Churchill went even further: ‘I shall merely say’, he wrote in January 1899, ‘that the victory at Omdurman was disgraced by the

4

Empire on the Nile

inhuman slaughter of the wounded and that Kitchener was responsible for this.’11 The fate of wounded soldiers was shared by some others in the city itself, where a number of murders were perpetrated by allied officers, for personal or political reasons. Churchill hints at this when he states that on the night after the battle, ‘only Maxwell’s brigade [the 2nd Egyptian] remained in the city to complete the establishment of law and order - a business which was fortunately hidden by the shades of night’.12 Ten years later, in a letter to Wingate, Maxwell himself wrote jocularly: ‘I have always considered a dead fanatic as the only one of his sort to extend any sympathy to - I am very sorry for them when dead! For this reason I quietly made away with a bunch of Emirs after Omdurman and I was very sorry for them after all was over.’13 Slatin Pasha, the former prisonerservant of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi, has also been accused of using the confusion in the city to settle old scores. A recent account charges that important amirs, including al-'Arifi al-Rabi, were brought before him, and that he ordered their execution.14 Among the official reports of the occupation is a list of ‘Emirs of Mulazimin’ who ‘were wounded in the battle, and were subsequently killed in the town’, one of whom was al-'Arifi.15 Controversy surrounds the question of looting. A British witness reported that ‘every variety of loot was hawked about the camp for sale’: shields, weapons, coins, ‘and other trophies of battle or pillage. . . . Everybody brought back a Dervish sword or two.. . . The pretty gibbehs, too, were brought home in large numbers.’16 Bennet Burleigh, the Daily Telegraph correspondent, described the looting of the Mahdi’s tomb, and the catafalque that had been ‘stripped of its black and red covering’.17 If he had arrived at the scene sooner he might have seen Ernest Bennett of The Westminster Gazette stealing it.18 Churchill observed that the khalifa's house had been ‘picked clean’.19 Babikr Bedri, the Sudanese diarist, has supplied a vivid account of the three days of looting: the soldiers, he wrote, ‘entered our houses and took and ate everything within reach of their eyes and hands . . . furniture, fittings and jewels. We had to leave doors, cupboards and boxes unlocked and the street doors open.’ Two British soldiers took money and candlesticks. Three Sudanese soldiers ‘began to take everything they could find - copper, beads, money, ornaments and animals’, but were stopped by an officer because the time-limit for looting had passed.20 The most controversial incident during the aftermath of the battle was the destruction of the Mahdi’s tomb and the desecration of his remains. The tomb had been built over the spot where the Mahdi had died, and its high dome dominated Omdurman. It had become the object of veneration,

Foundation of the Condominium

Fig. 2

5

The Mahdi’s tomb after the bombardment of September 1898

and its location made it the focal point of the religious and political life of the capital.21 During the bombardment of the city on 1 September the dome had been a particular target,22 and had been badly damaged. It was later claimed that this had rendered the structure unsafe, but the main justification for its destruction was political. Kitchener said that he considered it ‘politically advisable . . . that the Mahdi’s tomb, which was the centre of pilgrimage and fanatical feeling, should be destroyed’.23 In this Lord Cromer, the agent and consul-general in Egypt, supported him, and wrote to Salisbury, the prime minister, that the destruction of the tomb ‘was not only justifiable, but very necessary’.24 It was, as Churchill said, a ‘gloomy augury for the Sudan that the first action of its civilised con¬ querors and present ruler [Kitchener] should have been to level the one pinnacle which rose above the mud houses’.25 It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the arguments of safety and expediency were hastily contrived to answer unexpected criticism in Britain. The officer detailed to blow up the tomb was Lt-Colonel W. S. Gordon, General Gordon’s nephew.

6

Empire on the Nile The same conclusion may be reached concerning the remains of the

Mahdi’s body. With the exception of the skull these were thrown into the Nile, on Kitchener’s order. Political necessity was again the reason proposed. ‘I was advised ... by Mahommedan [sic] officers’, Kitchener wrote defensively, ‘that it would be better to have the body removed, as otherwise many of the more ignorant people of Kordofan would consider that the sanctity with which they surrounded the Mahdi prevented us from doing so’.26 Again Cromer agreed, but half-heartedly: ‘If the body had been taken up and buried in the ordinary cemetery, no one could have said a word.’27 Instead, the skull was given to Kitchener as ‘a trophy’. Some friends of his suggested that he should have it ‘mounted in silver or gold, and that he should use it as an inkstand or as a drinking-cup’. Kitchener ‘played with that idea and with the skull for a short time’, which was both insensitive and politically inept.28 The scandal reached the queen who, although confirmed in her adulation of the conqueror, let it be known that she was ‘shocked’ by the way in which the Mahdi’s body had been treated.29 Kitchener later tried to deflect the criticism by pleading his absence en route to Fashoda when the tomb was destroyed and the bones scattered.30 But the orders were his, and the mere mention of the word ‘Fashoda’ did not exempt him from every censure. The skull was eventu¬ ally buried in a cemetery at Wadi Haifa.31 Whatever Kitchener’s apprehensions about the Mahdi’s tomb, there was little sign of popular resistance in Omdurman after 2 September. But that an army of some fifty thousand had on that day attacked the AngloEgyptian forces, and that unbowed remnants of that army had evacuated the capital with the khalifa, testified certainly to the power that Mahdism had retained. This made a deep and lasting impression on the conquerors. They found it difficult to explain the heroism and loyalty shown at Karari except by an all-encompassing reference to ‘fanaticism’. Contemporary British journalists’ accounts describe Omdurman after the battle in Danteian terms. One correspondent found the streets ‘per¬ fectly loathsome’, fouled by the ‘decaying bodies of dead animals’ and human casualties.32 Another saw the city as ‘just planless confusion of blind walls and gaping holes, shiftless stupidity, contented filth and beastliness’; ‘a huge harem, a museum of African races, a monstrosity of African lust’. All was ‘wretched’ and ‘foul’: ‘You could not eat; you dared not drink’. The army moved out after a day, and ‘the accursed place was left to fester and fry in its own filth and lust and blood. The reek of its abomination steamed up to heaven to justify us of our vengeance.’33 That a sprawling and populous city, hours after its bombardment and occupation by an invading army, host to thousands of the wounded and dying who had escaped the carnage of the battlefield, should offend the

Foundation of the Condominium

7

aesthetic and moral senses of war correspondents may be surprising. Perhaps to exaggerate the wretchedness of the prize enhanced the selfless¬ ness of its winning, and mitigated the slaughter of its defenders. In any case, a first priority of the city’s new masters was to restore order. Maxwell’s brigade occupied the main buildings and policed the city. Thousands of Mahdist prisoners were put to work clearing the streets of rubble and carrion. These workers were drawn both from those captured in battle or after, and from the ranks of those in the city caught wearing a patched jibba, an outward sign of allegiance to Mahdism.34 Kitchener had established his headquarters on 2 September in the great square in front of the Mahdi’s tomb, apparently disinclining towards occupying the khalifa’s house. Although he anticipated little serious impediment to the final defeat of the fugitive khalifa, he was occupied chiefly with military matters before his departure for Fashoda on io September, and after his return to Omdurman he left almost immediately for Cairo and England.35 He did not return again to Omdurman until 28 December. Despite the escape of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi, the overwhelmingly superior capabilities of the Anglo-Egyptian forces, especially their mobility, allowed a rapid occupation of the riverain territories east and south of Omdurman. North of the capital the lands along the Nile were all in their hands before Karari, as were the Berber-Suakin road, Kassala, and the northern Butana. After 2 September the main tasks were the assertion of authority in the southern Sudan and the elimination of the khalifa’s and other hostile forces. Among the ‘outlying forces’ listed in an intelligence report were ‘the whites at Fashoda’.36 Although it was not until September that the British knew for certain of the presence and nationality of these ‘whites’, a policy had been decided in June for dealing with any French presence discovered in the Upper Nile. Cromer had then proposed to Salisbury the despatch, after the capture of Khartoum (Omdurman, the capital, being seldom mentioned), of ‘flotillas’ up the Blue and White Niles to establish a claim to outlying territories. In August Salisbury authorised the flotillas, specifying that Kitchener should personally command the White Nile fleet, in anticipation of an encounter with the French. The latter were to be told that their presence was ‘an infringement of the rights both of Great Britain and of the Khedive’. If French ‘forces’, rather than merely ‘authorities’, were encountered, Kitch¬ ener was to use his own judgement to decide what course to follow.37 Lord Edward Cecil, Salisbury’s son and Kitchener’s aide-de-camp, told Wingate that the British government was ‘relying on K. to pull them out of the difficulty of having to send France an ultimatum’.38 The French presence was finally confirmed by Mahdist officers return¬ ing by steamer from Fashoda. Kitchener and Wingate set out from

8

Empire on the Nile

Omdurman on the ioth on the steamer Dal, accompanied by a mixed force aboard the gunboats Sultan, Fateh, and Nasir. A fifth boat, the Ahu Klea, joined the flotilla on the 15th, further upstream.39 At Renk they met the Mahdist steamer Safia and eleven sailing boats, which had just encountered the French at Fashoda. This force and the Renk garrison were quickly overwhelmed. From Fabiu, fifteen miles north of Fashoda, on the 18th, Kitchener despatched his first message to the French, nonchalantly addressing it to the chief of the ‘European Expedition’, and announcing his capture of Omdurman and arrival at Fashoda.40 The vast superiority of the Anglo-Egyptian force made the outcome of any local hostilities with the French a foregone conclusion. It was the likely result in Europe of such hostilities that concerned Kitchener and Wingate. Moreover, Kitchener had not been left with as much latitude as his vague official orders suggested. According to Wingate, Kitchener had also ‘some private letters which pointed to there being no fighting and ... he intended to go as near force as possible without actually exercising it’. He had ‘express instructions not to “have corpses” ’.41 On the morning of the 19th a boat flying a large French flag approached the anchored Dal and Marchand’s reply was handed over. This welcomed Kitchener to Fashoda ‘in the name of France’, and ‘rather staggered’ its recipient. The Dal steamed on to Fashoda where Marchand and his deputy, Germain, came aboard. Supported by Wingate, Kitchener overcame his irresolution and made it clear that he had orders to raise the Egyptian flag at Fashoda. Would Marchand attempt to resist this? The ploy of hoisting only the Egyptian flag was Wingate’s: it allowed the British to assert their control behind a facade of Egyptian sovereignty, and it presented March¬ and with an exit from the choice between death and dishonour. He offered no resistance, and the Egyptian flag was duly raised over a ruined wall of the old fort.42 Colonel H. W. Jackson was appointed commandant of a large Anglo-Egyptian garrison; the British and French officers toasted each other with champagne; Kitchener delivered a formal protest to Marchand, now referring explicitly to the rights of Britain as well as of Egypt; and the flotilla proceeded up the White Nile. Another flag-raising was staged at the mouth of the Sobat, where an unlucky force was left to establish a post. Kitchener then returned to Omdurman, arriving on 24 September. Further expeditions to show the flag had been set in motion on the Sobat and the Bahr al-Ghazal. The diplomatic contest between Britain and France that followed the Fashoda meeting does not directly concern the history of the Sudan. The eventual retirement of the French, via Ethiopia, marked the close of this remarkable episode.43 While the ‘whites at Fashoda’ were the problem of most concern to the authorities in London and had therefore required Kitchener’s personal

Foundation of the Condominium

9

attention, they were certainly not the most dangerous forces to be dealt with after Karari. East of the Blue Nile the Amir Ahmad Fadil remained unsubdued, in command of a considerable force. He had been en route to assist in Omdurman’s defence when word reached him of the khalifa s defeat. An Egyptian force under Colonel Parsons had meanwhile been despatched from Kassala to Gedaref, which was occupied after three hours of fierce fighting on 22 September. The second of Salisbury’s ‘flotillas’ (two boats), under General Hunter, departed from Omdurman on 19 Septem¬ ber. His orders were to ‘hoist flags and leave garrisons at such points’ as he thought ‘advisable to prevent encroachment by any Power in Sudan territory’; and, if he encountered Ahmad Fadil, to offer clemency but to act on his own initiative if the offer was rejected.44 Egyptian and British flags were raised at Roseires on the 30th, witnessed by ‘about a hundred native men’ who, it was reported, ‘cheerfully accepted the fact that they were to be ruled by the British and Egyptian Governments’. On the return journey to Omdurman (which he made in fifty hours), Hunter raised the flags at Sennar.45 He had left no garrison at Roseires, however, and while stopping off Wad Medani he ordered Major Nason to proceed to Roseires with a force, and arranged for another force of 220 men to remain at Sennar to watch for Ahmad Fadil. On 28 September the amir, having at last been convinced of the khalifa's defeat at Omdurman, yet unwilling to sur¬ render, attacked Gedaref in force and was driven off with heavy losses. This reverse did not prevent his ravaging the countryside (and absconding with a treasury of £E 1,600 being conveyed from Kassala to Gedaref), as he moved southwards. He was finally confronted on 26 December near Roseires, when his men were on a small island attempting to cross the Blue Nile to the Gezira. Fierce fighting ensued, and resulted in heavy losses on both sides.46 Ahmad Fadil himself escaped to fight another day, eventually joining the Khalifa 'Abdallahi in Kordofan, but his army was destroyed. Meanwhile Gallabat was occupied by Colonel J. Collinson on 7 Decem¬ ber. Two Ethiopian flags that had been hoisted there after the Mahdist evacuation were left flying, pending instructions from Cairo,47 but the town was garrisoned by two companies of the 12th Sudanese Battalion and two Maxim guns. Although the elimination of Ahmad Fadil as a threat cleared the eastern Sudan of major Mahdist resistance, the attitude of the Ethiopians was undetermined, and the Anglo-Egyptian forces in the region were considered by Collinson, their commanding officer, to be weak. Indeed, the garrison at Gallabat was in an ‘intolerable position, unless all danger of ... being attacked has been removed by negotiations’.48 Until mid-November, the Gezira was ‘in great confusion’, as ‘a large number of dervishes were still roaming about, pillaging and killing the

IO

Empire on the Nile

natives, and looting the cattle and big stores of dhurra which belonged to the Khalifa and other Baggara Emirs’.49 A patrol under Tudway Bey was despatched from Omdurman on 27 September. Ahmad al-Sunni, the khalifa's chief official in the Gezira, had been offered clemency, and he surrendered at Wad Medani on 15 September. Other Mahdist officials in the region eventually surrendered or were tracked down. With the khalifa free in Kordofan, and the Anglo-Egyptian forces rapidly depleting (as British troops had begun to be evacuated to Egypt shortly after the battle of Omdurman), the western Sudan remained out of control. Even the parts of Dongola west of the Nile were said to be in a state of anarchy in late 1898, and the garrison of Kababish auxiliaries at Safia was actually withdrawn because it ‘was not strong enough to keep order’. Disarming the tribes, to whom the British had given weapons during the campaign, would prove to be a long and difficult task. In Kordofan there was no government, the Mahdist administration having collapsed and the new regime being incapable of asserting itself before a final accounting with the khalifa. Shaykh 'Ali al-Tum of the Kababish, whose opposition to the Mahdists was valued, and who was in later years to be viewed by British officials as a paragon of tribal virtue, was in these early days a considerable nuisance. One official’s candidly expressed desire to ‘beat first and then hang . . . the insolent scoundrel’50 for his raiding of neighbouring tribes, shows how far the government writ extended west of the Nile. In the far west, in Darfur, the British had allowed 'Ali Dinar, a grandson of Sultan Muhammad al-Fadl, to install himself at El Fasher where, after eliminating rival claimants, he succeeded in consolidating his position as an independent ruler. El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, was not occupied until December 1899, by which time it had been ‘completely deserted’.51 After the battle of Omdurman, when it was discovered that the Khalifa 'Abdallahi had fled, a cavalry force under Slatin was sent in pursuit. This failed to intercept him, as did gunboats that steamed some ninety miles south but lost contact with the khalifa when he moved westwards from the river. In January 1899 the Kordofan Field Force under the commander-in¬ chief’s brother, Lt-Colonel Walter Kitchener, was sent against the khalifa, and came within striking distance but retired when it was seen that 'Abdallahi had a force far in excess of what intelligence reports had indicated. Another expedition in October 1899 failed to bring him to battle. Finally, in November, a force under Wingate tracked him down and the decisive battle was fought at Umm Diwaykarat, south-west of Kosti, on the 24th. The confrontation lasted little over an hour, superior organisa¬ tion and weaponry again winning the day. The number of Mahdist dead was put at one thousand, with 9,400 prisoners taken. Among the dead was

Foundation of the Condominium

11

the Khalifa ‘Abdallahi. According to Wingate, when the khalifa had recognised that the day was lost, he called on his Emirs to dismount from their horses, and seating himself on his ‘furwa’ or sheepskin, - as is the custom of Arab Chiefs who disdain surrender, - he had placed Khalifa Ali Wad Helu on his right, and Ahmed Fedil on his left, whilst the remaining Emirs seated themselves around him, with their bodyguards in line some 20 paces to their front and in this position they had unflinchingly met their death.52

As at Omdurman, so at Umm Diwaykarat there would be no compromise with the invader: Wingate was never to forget that militant Mahdism had been beaten down, it had not given up; that the Sudanese had surrendered not to the inexorable force of European arms, but to the unarguable will of God; and that more than Maxim guns would be needed to win the battle for the respect of the Sudanese. But large-scale Mahdist resistance was at an end. The renowned Amir 'Uthman Diqna was finally captured in 1900. Of the surviving Mahdist notables, some were imprisoned, some were allowed to live in supervised retirement, others entered into positions of responsi¬ bility in the new regime.

THE CONDOMINIUM AGREEMENT

The decision to adopt in the Sudan what in theory would be a novel form of government was not hastily taken after the battle of Omdurman, but was the result of several years of desultory consultation between Lord Cromer and London. When the Sudan campaigns were launched in March 1896 it was accepted that the territory won from the Mahdists would be restored to Egypt, but there was no urgent necessity to reach a final decision in the matter. This solution was intended in part to overcome Egyptian opposi¬ tion to what was (correctly) seen as a campaign undertaken in pursuit of British rather than Egyptian interests, and partly to forestall European criticism of British expansionism.53 In his communications with the Foreign Office Cromer continued to assume that ‘Egyptian authority’ would be ‘reasserted’ over all territories won from the khalifa.54 From this position of simply repossessing ‘lost’ territories to one whereby those territories would be administered by Britain alone was a step not to be taken lightly. That Cromer was prepared to take it, after the occupation of Dongola, was a result of his desire to avoid European entanglements. In December 1896 he told Salisbury that Kitchener ‘should issue a proclamation in the Soudan’ to the effect that he had ‘undertaken the administration of the Dongola province on behalf of H.M.G. from January 1 until such time as the money advanced to [the] Egyptian Govt, [from the

12

Empire on the Nile

Reserve Fund, for the Dongola campaign] is repaid’. At the same time, Kitchener ‘would continue to fly [the] Egyptian flag’. This would exempt Sudan revenue from the exactions of the Caisse de la Dette in Egypt, and would, Cromer thought, forestall French and Russian objections.55 Under an Egyptian flag of convenience, British control could be exercised. Salisbury was not impressed, at least for the moment. He argued that for Kitchener to have conquered Dongola for the khedive but now to administer it for Britain upon orders from London would in itself excite European opposition.56 Cromer therefore set himself the task of devising a solution that might win the acquiescence of the Egyptian government and avoid ‘stating openly that the Soudan is to be administered direct by England’.57 The question was reopened when it was decided that the Egyptian advance should continue from Dongola to Khartoum. Uppermost in Cromer’s mind was the effect this major campaign would have on the carefully nurtured Egyptian finances. In November 1897 he told Salisbury that while he would not prefer to see the French established on the Upper Nile, he did not ‘share the somewhat extreme views ... as to the absolute necessity of preventing them from doing so’. What was the point, he wondered, of acquiring ‘on behalf of ourselves or the Egyptians large tracts of useless territory which it would be difficult and costly to administer properly?’58 The danger of opposition from the Powers, and the growing conviction that only British control in the Sudan was an acceptable political outcome of the Nile campaign, moved the Foreign Office to pursue a policy that led to the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement (later called the Con¬ dominium Agreement) for the administration of the Sudan. In June 1898 the Ottoman sultan, whose previous intrusions into British plans for the Sudan had been curtly rebuffed,59 seemed about to urge a khedivial reassertion of Ottoman rights. Thus Salisbury warned that it was necessary to acknowledge ‘Egyptian title by itself’, as the army moved deeper into the Sudan. ‘Would it not be wise’, he asked Cromer, if you take Khartoum, to fly the British and Egyptian flags side by side [?] We might treat Khartoum as the capital of the Mahdi State; and the capture of Khartoum would deliver by right of conquest the whole of the Mahdi State from Haifa to Wadelai into the power of the capturing army. That army would consist of two allied contingents.... If we establish this position we shall shake free of a good deal of diplomatic hamper.60

Such an arrangement would also placate public opinion in Britain, where the simple reincorporation of the Sudan with Egypt would have been unacceptable.61 Thus the idea of a condominium originated. Despite the fact that the Sudanese had revolted against the khedive, and it was in his name that the ‘reconquest’ had been undertaken, the separate rights of

Foundation of the Condominium

x3

Egypt were to be ignored. Cromer at first misunderstood the proposal that Egypt’s and Britain’s positions should both be based on a ‘right of conquest’, probably because this made little sense in Britain’s case and none in Egypt’s, but he soon accepted the notion. The hoisting of the two flags would, he said, be ‘wise as a temporary measure’, to ‘give outward and visible expression to a de facto position which already’ existed; it would ‘bring the political theory into harmony with the realities of the situation’, and would warn off Ottomans, French, and other interested parties.62 In August 1898 Salisbury finally stated that ‘In view of the substantial military and financial co-operation’ provided by Britain in the conquest, the government had decided ‘that at Khartoum the British and Egyptian flags should be hoisted side by side’. This, he told Cromer, would have no reference to the manner in which the occupied countries are to be administered in the future. It is not necessary at present to define their political status with any great precision. These matters can be considered at a later period. You will, however, explain to the Khedive and to his Ministers that the procedure I have indicated is intended to emphasise the fact that Her Majesty’s Government consider that they have a predominant voice in all matters connected with the Soudan, and that they expect that any advice which they may think fit to tender to the Egyptian Government, in respect to Soudan affairs, will be followed.63

The essential assertion of the principle of British predominance had been made, while at the same time Egyptian rights were ostensibly maintained so that reference could be made to either, or to both, as convenience dictated. The expedient was useful during the Fashoda crisis. That post¬ poned a final disposition of the Sudan’s future status, however, since while the crisis continued, Salisbury felt, to proceed with ‘organizing the Soudan’ would have an ‘embarrassing effect’.64 It soon afterwards became clear that reference to Egyptian and British ‘rights’, either recently transformed or newly acquired, was no substitute for a general statement about the status of the Sudan and the form of its administration. By November Cromer decided it was impossible ‘to allow matters to drift on, and to settle each point of difficulty on its own merits’, especially (although he did not say this), while Kitchener was in charge in the Sudan. Still, European con¬ siderations predominated: the requirements of the ‘natives’ were simple and unobtrusive. But, Cromer told Salisbury: Numerous demands have been received from Europeans who wish to reside, to invest capital, to trade with, and to acquire real property in the country. It is obviously both impossible to exclude them and undesirable to do so, for without European capital and assistance, no real progress can be made. . . . The question which demands more immediate treatment is . . . how by timely action to prevent the acquisition of rights and privileges which exist in Egypt. ... if we allow Europeans to trade with, and, still more, to reside and to hold real property in the Soudan, without some distinct declaration of the general political, administrative

14

Empire on the Nile

and judicial regime which is for the future to exist in that country, we shall be laying the seeds of much future trouble. . . . they may not unnaturally consider - and many of them will certainly consider - that the status of Europeans resident in the Soudan is similar to that which obtains in Egypt.

Britain should not risk, by tardy attention to constitutional details, the fruits of her victories over Mahdism and France. Cromer went on to rehearse the various options: Annexation by England would, of course, solve all the difficulties. . . . But. . . for many obvious political and financial reasons, we do not wish to annex. . . . the recognition of the Soudan as a portion of the Ottoman Dominions in no way distinct from the rest of Egypt, would perpetuate all the international difficulties and obstruction of which ... we have had such an unfortunate experience in dealing with Egyptian affairs. ... we have to find a compromise between the two extremes. . . . but it is to be remembered that we shall be creating a status hitherto unknown to the law of Europe, and that, therefore ... it is no easy matter to put down on paper any arrangement which may confidently be predicted to be workable in practice.

That ‘arrangement’, he thought, ‘had better take the form of a convention, or agreement, with the Egyptian Government’.65 Before outlining the terms of such an agreement, Cromer raised the question of whether or not it would have any international validity, since Egypt was still nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire. To ignore Ottoman rights was easier done than said. Cromer suggested that the involvement of British troops, officers, and money had brought about the conquest, and therefore invested Britain with ‘predominant rights’ in the Sudan. By signing an agreement the Egyptian government would not, so the argument ran, be ceding territory, but would actually be winning a concession from Britain! The terms of various Ottoman firmans, which had forbidden the Egyptian viceroys’ entering into treaties or into any agreements involving a cession of territory, would therefore somehow be circumvented. But Ottoman and Egyptian claims and rights caused little anxiety to Cromer as a draft agreement was prepared, under his ‘general instructions’, by Sir Malcolm Mcllwraith, the Judicial Adviser to the Egyptian government,66 and he continued paradoxically to insist that the Sudan was ‘still to be Egyptian territory’.67 The preamble of the 1899 Anglo-Egyptian Agreement referred to ‘certain provinces in the Soudan which were in rebellion against the authority of His Highness’ (the khedive), but which had ‘now been reconquered by the joint military and financial efforts’ of Britain and Egypt.68 No mention of sovereignty, Ottoman or other, was made anywhere in the Agreement. Britain’s claim ‘to share in the present settlement and future working and development’ of the Sudan’s

Foundation of the Condominium

15

administration was based on the ‘right of conquest’,69 and no other basis for Egyptian rights was explicitly stated. Article i of the Agreement defined the Sudan by careful reference to territories south of the 22nd parallel that had previously been administered by Egypt and had now been ‘reconquered’, or that might in future be ‘reconquered’, by Anglo-Egyptian forces; or that had never been evacu¬ ated by Egyptian troops. This provision thus included, within the Sudan, Wadi Haifa and Suakin, which the Mahdists had never captured, and excluded parts of the old Equatorial Province and other territories that had not been and would not be ‘reconquered’ by Anglo-Egyptian forces, keeping alive the possibility of purely British expansion northwards from Uganda. Article 2 provided for the flying of both the Egyptian and British flags throughout the Sudan, except at Suakin, since Cromer believed ‘it would raise a great outcry to hoist the British flag at Suakin and it is really hardly necessary to do so’.70 This and other provisions of the Agreement that treated Suakin separately were removed by a ‘Supplemental Agree¬ ment’ of 10 July 1899.71 Articles 3 and 4 dealt with executive and legislative authority in the new administration. Article 3 stated: ‘The supreme military and civil command of the Soudan shall be vested in one officer, termed the “Governor-General of the Soudan”. He shall be appointed by Khedivial Decree on the recommendation of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government and shall be removed only by Khedivial Decree, with the consent of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government.’ The title ‘governor-general’ (al-hakim al-amm) was an echo from pre-Mahdist times,72 while the use of the words ‘command’ and ‘officer’ indicate that, at least for the foreseeable future, it was intended that the governor-general should be a soldier. (Article 9 of the Agreement in fact stipulated that the country should for the time being remain under martial law.) Article 4 spelled out the governor-general’s legislative powers: Laws, as also orders and regulations with the full force of law, for the good government of the Soudan, and for regulating the holding, disposal, and devolution of property of every kind therein situate, may from time to time be made, altered, or abrogated by Proclamation of the Governor-General. Such laws, orders, and regulations may apply to the whole or any named part of the Soudan, and may, either explicitly or by necessary implication, alter or abrogate any existing law or regulation. All such Proclamations shall be forthwith notified to Her Britannic Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General in Cairo, and to the President of the Council of Ministers of His Highness the Khedive.

About the wording and intent of this article there had been some dispute.

16

Empire on the Nile

The first paragraph was identical to Cromer’s draft, but he had specified that the governor-general’s proclamations should ‘be issued only with the prior consent’ of both the kkedive, ‘acting under the advice of his Council of Ministers’, and of the British government, through the agent and consulgeneral in Cairo. This lip-service to joint control was intended to disguise the fact that in practice Cromer himself would control all Sudan legislation. In explaining his draft to Salisbury, he defended the proposal by stating that it was ‘obviously necessary that the Governor-General should be under some control, and the only really effective control will be that of the English Government acting through their Consul-General, but the Khedive must also be mentioned’. Cromer stated that it would be ‘a great mistake to centralise the administration of the Soudan in the hands of any authority, British or Egyptian, at Cairo’. He assured Salisbury that ‘the detailed points in respect to which a free hand shall be left to the GovernorGeneral, can form the subject of subsequent discussion’.73 No doubt Cromer felt confident of winning ‘detailed’ arguments as they arose. But Kitchener protested. He saw in the article exactly such centralisation as Cromer repeatedly professed to deplore. A second point of dispute between Cromer and Kitchener (who, because of his enormous and newly won prestige, had to be taken seriously) concerned control of the Sudan’s finances, and had a long history. Kitchener’s reputation for economy had been earned partly because of the detailed financial supervision that Cromer had exercised over him throughout the campaign. After the conquest of Dongola in 1896 Cromer tried to extend that supervision from purely military affairs to the nascent civil administration. In the spring of 1897 Sir Elwin Palmer, the Financial Adviser to the Egyptian government, proposed a virtual strangle¬ hold on every aspect of finance. The finance ministry would issue instruc¬ tions regarding ‘all financial questions’. It could inspect central and district offices and even villages in the Sudan. ‘No orders affecting any financial question’ were to be issued without its approval.74 Kitchener deprecated as unworkable Palmer’s proposals for using the War Office as a ‘post office for the possible transmission of decisions and orders’, and claimed that they had already been proven as such at Tokar, where Palmer had ‘dashed in, to exploit the new El Dorado’ and ‘introduced the whole of the Finance Ministry system’. The local people had disliked the influx of Egyptian civil servants and ‘it was openly said by the natives that they preferred Dervish rule’. Kitchener had complained to the Council of Ministers, with the result that the War Office took over administration of the district.75 Now, in 1898, it appeared that Cromer was attempting to reimpose a very detailed supervision and control from Cairo. His draft article specified that ‘the whole of the Soudan revenue’ should ‘be at the disposal of the

Foundation of the Condominium

17

Egyptian Government’; that Egypt would be ‘solely responsible for all the civil and ordinary military expenditure in the Soudan’; but that Britain would ‘bear the whole cost of any British troops who may be stationed in the Soudan, other than special expeditionary forces’.76 Kitchener saw in this an attempt to tie the governor-general’s hands. There was little point to the article, he wrote, ‘unless it means that the finances of the Soudan are to be administered entirely by the Finance Ministry in Cairo. Such a central¬ ization’ he considered ‘very undesirable; almost everything in the administration of a country must have a financial aspect’; the article ‘would possibly entail interference from Cairo in every detail of law and administration in the Soudan’.77 Kitchener took his objections directly to Salisbury, who agreed with him, as can be seen from the final wording of article 4 and the omission altogether of Cromer’s draft article 6. Salisbury told Cromer: ‘the Governor General of the Soudan is to govern, and is to spend the money he has. In both cases he is of course to obey orders received from you, and his proceedings may be revised and altered by you; but ... he shall not by a formal document be forbidden to pass an ordinance, or to spend £100 without a preliminary approval.’78 Kitchener won this round, but what Cromer could not obtain by a ‘formal document’ he had other ways of getting. The financial relations between the Sudan and Egypt were to be decided later, and involved close control by Cairo of the Sudan’s finances, while the political relations between the governor-general and the British representative in Cairo were never in practice to depend much on the letter of the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement. Having papered over his differences with Kitchener by post¬ poning financial regulations, Cromer pretended disinterest by claiming that there were only two real issues: ‘to keep internationalism out of the Soudan’, and to give ‘some legal sanction to legislative and administrative matters’; he did not ‘much care about the rest’.79 ‘Internationalism’ was to be kept out by articles 5, 8, and 10 of the Agreement, which duplicated sections of Cromer’s draft. Article 5 stated that ‘No Egyptian law, decree, ministerial arrete, or other enactment hereafter to be made or promulgated shall apply to the Soudan or any part thereof, save in so far as the same shall be applied by Proclamation of the Governor-General in manner hereinbefore provided’. Article 8 removed the Sudan from the jurisdiction of the Mixed Tribunals as applied in Egypt. Article 10 disallowed the accreditation of consular agents to the Sudan without the consent of the British government. Customs dues formed the subject of article 7. Goods imported from Egypt were exempted, while goods entering via a Red Sea port could be charged duty at a rate not exceeding that levied on goods entering Egypt. Export duties could be levied by proclamation.

i8

Empire on the Nile

Article 11 of the Agreement stated that ‘the importation of slaves into the Soudan, as also their exportation, is absolutely prohibited. Provision shall be made by Proclamation for the enforcement of this Regulation.’ This article gave expression to one of the cherished and oft-repeated reasons for British participation in the conquest: the abolition of the slave trade had been one of Gordon’s principal objects; it was incumbent on the British to carry it out. But the article was worded precisely to prohibit trade in slaves, not slavery itself. ‘The question of how to deal with that’, Cromer wrote, was ‘much more difficult. For the moment we had better leave it alone.’80 Finally, article 12 of the Agreement stated that ‘special attention’ would be paid to enforcing the Brussels Act of 2 July 1890, ‘in respect of the import, sale, and manufacture of firearms and their munitions, and distilled or spirituous liquors.’ The Condominium Agreement was signed by Cromer and Butros Ghali Pasha on 19 January 1899, and Kitchener was appointed as the first governor-general of the Sudan, under the new arrangements, on the same day. The Condominium Agreement remained in force until the Sudan regained its independence in 1956. It had not been intended that this should be so. In Modern Egypt Cromer gave his own account, laden with cynicism, of the genesis of the Agreement, and concluded: ‘After this fashion, the new Soudan was born. . . . Should it eventually die and make place for some more robust, because more real political creation, its authors need not bewail its fate.’ The anomalies of the Agreement did not worry him: ‘In Egypt, it was merely thought that one or more paradox had been added to the goodly array of paradoxical creations with which the political institutions of the country already teemed.’81 The salient point was that Britain had gained control of the Sudan, and while her policies and plans there would often have to take account of Egypt, that control was maintained by force, not by the Condominium Agreement.

THE SUDANESE IN 19OO

It is impossible to estimate with any confidence the population of the Sudan in 1900. The first scientific census took place only in 1956. Before and during the Condominium estimates were made, some fanciful, others reflecting their originators’ political interests. In his propaganda Wingate, as director of intelligence of the Egyptian Army, had portrayed the Mahdist State as one of the bloodiest regimes in history, marked by massacres, epidemics, and other depopulating curses: it was the moral duty of Britain to save those who had survived. But as another, quite different inducement to conquer the Sudan, the prospect of a heavily populated southern hinterland was dangled before those concerned with army

Foundation of the Condominium

i9

recruitment. After the conquest the theme of devastation was continued. Panoramas of abandoned saqias, ruined towns, and encroaching jungles illustrated reports. Statistics showing a huge decline in population went unchallenged because they confirmed the worst. At the same time, the teeming south was said to be far less populous than previous ‘estimates’ had indicated, and no longer available as an arena of recruitment for imperial armies. Indeed, certain British estimates show a decrease in population under the Condominium that was hardly less cataclysmic than that suffered under the Mahdia.82 Statistics for the Bahr al-Ghazal, although particularly unreliable, illustrate these points. In 1895 Wingate recorded an estimate, said to be Slatin’s, that its population was ‘between five and six millions’.83 The annual report for 1902 put the population at less than 600,000. The 1903 report estimated that the population ‘prior to Dervish rule’ was 1,500,000, and that 400,000 had died from ‘disease’, and 700,000 from ‘warfare’ since then, leaving a current total of 400,000 people. These figures were said to represent, in ‘the opinion of Sir Rudolph von Slatin . . . and others ... a fairly correct estimate’.84 The 1904 report concluded that while it was ‘impossible to form a true estimate’, the actual figure was probably even less than 400,000. In 1904 even that figure was said to be ‘purely conjec¬ tural’, while the province governor himself wrote that there was insuf¬ ficient information available for him even ‘to form an estimate’.85 The 1913 Sudan Almanac put the province’s population at 810,000. A 1922 report listed it as unchanged at one million in 1918, 1919, and 1920, but gave an ‘approximate estimate’ of 1,500,000 for 1921.86 In 1923 the population had reportedly jumped to 2,500,000, only as suddenly to drop to 1,750,000 in 1927.87 The 1932 Sudan Almanac provides the mysteriously precise and low figure of 666,495. Such a series of wild guesses is of little utility. In the northern riverain provinces, where land and tax records were kept before and during the Condominium, estimates were more sensible. Dongola’s population was put at 95,447 in 1901, and 105,026 in 1902; 110,000 in 1903 and 133,646 in 1905. In 1913 it was estimated at 141,170, and in 1932 at 158,051.88 Wingate’s figures for population change, given in the 1903 report, are interesting. ‘Prior to dervish rule,’ he wrote, the province’s population was 300,000; 190,000 had died from disease and warfare, leaving a population of 110,000. Nothing was said about births. The estimate is at odds with another: in 1897 Clinton Dawkins of the Egyptian finance ministry toured the newly conquered territory and estimated that the population had decreased from 75,000 in 1885 to 56,424.89 In other districts there are similar discrepancies. The inspector at Kassala gave a breakdown by village of his district’s population in April 1899, in

20

Empire on the Nile

which Gallabat was listed as having 591 people. But a report made by the province governor a month earlier put the population at 975.90 The latter report incidentally indicates the extent to which the population had been disrupted at the end of the Mahdia, and how quickly resettlement could occur, as the population of Gallabat, only a year later, was put at 2,250. Clearly the population of towns, the first places visited by the conquerors, would grow quickly as security was restored and people returned to their homes. Some early estimates of town or district gave only the number of men, or of adults, and others gave only impressions: in the Nuba Moun¬ tains, Jabal Eliri was said in 1902 to be ‘thickly populated’, and the vicinity of Ragabat al-Laki had ‘a great many villages’.91 Estimates of the population of the Sudan as a whole are therefore unreliable and inconsistent. What is more, such overall figures were evidently presented without any concern about their provenance. The 1903 Sudan Almanac stated that ‘the general population of the Soudan may, very approximately, be taken at about 3,500,000’, while the annual report for the same year put the total at 1,870,500. The 1904 Sudan Almanac then fell into line, unblinkingly informing its readers that ‘the general population of the Soudan may, very approximately, be taken at about 1,500,000 to 2,000,000’, without any explanation of how or why the estimate (or the population) had decreased by 50 per cent since the year before. The 1903 report gave a figure for each province. How was it concluded that Khartoum Province had lost 610,000 people to disease and warfare since before ‘dervish rule’, and that Sennar had lost 950,000, the Upper Nile 750,000, and so forth, to a total of almost seven million? How was it decided that Kordofan, estimated in 1898 to have had 280,000 people in 1875, lost 1,250,000 during the Mahdia?92 While these figures were concocted for propaganda reasons or simply to fill in blanks in reports, the fact remains that the Sudan was underpopulated in 1900, and it is certain that the revolutionary wars, the famines and epidemics of the Mahdist period, the Anglo-Egyptian conquest, and the 1898-9 famine took a heavy toll. But the government of 1903 was in no position even to estimate the current population of the south, or the population of the country as a whole twenty years before. To arrive at an estimate of the population in 1903 by subtracting a huge and purely notional number of deaths from an exaggerated and purely notional estimate of the 1885 population was a ridiculous exercise. Cromer, however, printed Wingate’s figures ‘in detail’ in the 1903 annual report, because they were ‘so amazing’. Wingate explained them thus: That the loss of life . . . should represent upwards of 75 per cent of the total population seems almost incredible, but, from my own personal experience, I can vouch for the comparative correctness of these figures. One has only to travel through the country to realize the terrible ravages of Dervish misrule, of which

Foundation of the Condominium

21

there is such painful evidence in the wholesale destruction of towns and villages, and the enormous tracts of once cultivated land now either a barren wilderness or overgrown with thorns and high grass.

This and similar comments were of the same type as Wingate’s pre¬ conquest propaganda. They were a useful preface to the glowing selfcongratulation that followed. In the 1904 report, for instance, Wingate wrote that ‘families are considerably more numerous than they used to be, and infant mortality has also diminished’, although he could not possibly have had any evidence for these remarks. He attributed the evident progress to the ‘better nourished condition of the people, who are gradually emerging from the poverty and degradation into which the Dervish misrule had driven them.’ In the same report his governors were more cautious: it was ‘impossible to form any true estimate of the population’, wrote the governor at Wau; ‘I do not consider the census really valuable’, was the opinion from the Gezira; ‘this must not be regarded as anything approaching accuracy’, warned Kassala; and so forth. The condition of the people, as opposed to their number in 1900 can be more accurately deduced from various sources. W. E. Garstin of the Egyptian public works department toured the country in 1899 and recorded his observations. The most devastated region he visited was the Ja'aliyin territory between the Atbara and Shendi. The latter was ‘practi¬ cally deserted and in ruins’ ; Metemma was also ‘practically a deserted ruin, only a remnant of the once important tribe of Jaalin Arabs having survived the massacre instigated in 1897 by the Dervish Emir Mahmud. Between Metemmah and Wad Habashi the whole country appears to be deserted, and there is a complete absence of life.’ But, Garstin went on, the ‘depopulation of the district’ between Shendi and the Atbara must date ‘from a period anterior to Dervish rule’, since Sir Samuel Baker had commented on it in 1869. Similarly, the area around Wad Habashi seemed to have been ‘thrown out of cultivation prior to the rebellion of 1884’. Garstin found the Nile islands between Wad Ramla and Omdurman to ‘bear fine crops of dhurra’ and hay, but the whole region between Omdurman and Berber had ‘suffered more heavily from misrule’ than almost any other in the Sudan, he wrote, and its ‘present state of depopula¬ tion and desolation’ was ‘very striking’. It was, of course, precisely this region that was most widely travelled by British officials, and thus made the strongest impression. From Khartoum, Garstin proceeded up the Blue Nile: In the first 16 kilom. above Khartoum the cultivation on both banks is good. . . . Sakiehs are numerous.. . . [On the west bank] heavy crops of dhurra, lubia, sesame, and vegetables are grown along the foreshore of the river as the water falls. ... In the rains the entire area is covered with dhurra.

Around Rufa'a, he reported, ‘good crops are raised on the foreshore and

22

Empire on the Nile

islands . . . and melons are cultivated upon an extensive scale on the flats up-stream of the town’. Al-Masallamiya was in ruins, with little adjacent cultivation. Wad Medani, on the other hand, seemed a boom town, with between 15,000 and 25,000 people: ‘the principal tribes being those of the Medani and Kawaleh Arabs, mingled with a certain number of Jaalin and Shagiyeh. A few Danagla, and even Egyptians, are to be found, with a sprinkling of blacks from the Fung and Hamegh country.’ A market was held twice a week, to which people flock from long distances, and the scene on market days is a very busy one. Excellent vegetables (tomatoes, onions, brinjals, yams, bahmia) are obtainable in quantities, as are limes and melons. In the market grain of many kinds is exposed for sale, and a small amount of gum of the red variety. Manchester goods, such as mirrors, beads, and cutlery, seem to find a ready sale. Soap and sesame oil are manufactured here locally, and the inhabitants are good leather-workers, and line skins with ornamental polished leather. Large flocks of sheep and goats are to be met with, but cattle are rarely seen. The inhabitants explain the absence of these last by the fact that, during the Dervish rule, they had used to drive their cattle into the forests to hide them, and this custom has gradually developed into a habit. . . . The cultivation ... is chiefly confined to the foreshore, but is good of its kind. A few sakiehs are at work. Melons are grown upon a large scale.

‘Altogether’, Garstin concluded, Wad Medani appeared ‘to be the most prosperous town in the whole Sudan, not even excepting Omdurman’, but the eastern Gezira and the right bank of the Blue Nile were ‘practically deserted’. From the Blue Nile Garstin proceeded to the White Nile. Fine cultiva¬ tion was observed near Dueim and Kawa, and at the latter town a ‘moderately large market’. From Kaka southwards the west bank was lined with Shilluk villages. It was ‘impossible to conceive’ of ‘a more dreary or uninviting spot’ than Fashoda, where, ‘of a garrison of 317 men, only 37 were fit for duty’. But even there, Manchester goods were to be found.93 One measure of the state of the riverain country might be the number of saqias in use before and after the Mahdia. A report listing the number in each district of Dongola Province gave totals of 6,451 in 1885 and 1,545 in January 1897. While there is no reason to dispute the latter figure, the number for 1885 may well have been inflated by the Turco-Egyptian bureaucracy for tax purposes if, indeed, its records were the source of the figure. If the estimate was inaccurate, so were the figures for cattle deduced from it: if there had been 6,451 saqias ‘in full working order each with a complement of three pairs of animals, there must have been some 36,000 [«c] cattle in the province . . . devoted exclusively to irrigation’. But in 1897 the actual number was ‘under 12,000’. The apparent ready acceptance of

Foundation of the Condominium 23 these figures, if not their very production, indicates a desire to stress the depredations of the Mahdist regime. Yet, at the same time, the local people were observed to be ‘lazy and indolent’, unaccustomed to cultivating, which before the Mahdia had been the work of slaves. As early as 1902, however, Dongola was producing so much grain that the governor feared that ‘owners of land will not cultivate’ unless an export market was found.94 What conclusions can be drawn about the state of the Sudan at the turn of the century? That the population was probably about two million has been deduced from analyses based on the 1956 census figures and other information.95 That warfare and natural disasters had carried off tens of thousands during and immediately after the Mahdia is undoubted, but no number can now be given. In terms of the disruption of social and economic life, the Southern Sudan may well have suffered more than the north. Investigations of local history on which general conclusions about the state of the country may be based have yet to be conducted. A visitor to Shendi, Metemma, and Quz Abu Guma in 1899 would have found unrelieved devastation in the first two places, and famine in the third. In other localities, like Wad Medani, trade continued and crops were good. A lack of transport, government curbs on trade, the widely varying exactions of the Mahdist amirs in the final phase of the conquest, and other natural disasters (locusts and other pests), resulted in widely different conditions prevailing in 1900. Totally abandoned towns, like El Obeid, could show remarkable revival as soon as security was restored; others, like Metemma, would never recover from the changes imposed by a new pattern of transportation. Still other towns, like Atbara, Kosti, and Port Sudan, appeared from nothing. The tribal policy of the khalifa had resulted in great shifts of population and great dislocation. The first task of the new regime was to extend the range of law and order, and bring security to a worn and exhausted land.

KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM

Having met Marchand at Fashoda on 19 September 1898 Kitchener returned to Omdurman on the 24th, and arrived in Cairo on 6 October en route to England. He did not return to Omdurman until 28 December. Thus, between 2 September and 28 December he spent about two weeks in Omdurman. Indeed, about half of the entire period of his rule in the Sudan was spent outside the country. Much of his time in the Sudan was occupied in directing the hunt for the khalifa, touring, and observing the building works at Khartoum. The more banal aspects of administration, which in these early days cried out for attention, were neglected. By the time of his

24

Empire on the Nile

resignation in December 1899, central administration was still amorphous, and effective provincial administration did not yet exist. Kitchener’s extended absence abroad in the autumn of 1898 was occupied with receiving the admiration of Cairo and the adulation of Britain. Karari had changed him: before leaving for Cairo Wingate found him ‘in a greater state of restless excitement’ than ever before, ‘owing principally to the peerage which seems to have generally upset his equilibrium’. He spoke to Wingate of his desire to leave the Sudan for greener fields, of succeeding Cromer, of India. Wingate thought the commander-in-chief would ‘lose no time in making tracks for Cairo and London; what an ovation they will give him!’96 It was as Baron Kitchener of Khartoum that the sirdar (commander-inchief) of the Egyptian Army arrived in Cairo on 6 October. Talks with Cromer and other officials followed, during which general decisions were reached regarding the future administration of the Sudan. Kitchener reached Dover on 27 October, to the strains of ‘See, the conquering hero comes!’ At Charing Cross and through the streets of London he was cheered with wild enthusiasm. It is perhaps difficult in a different age to understand the genuine fervour of public opinion, the uncritical acclaim that followed the vindication of modern technology. The freedom of London, of Edinburgh, and of other cities; banquets and honorary degrees were bestowed. At Cambridge he was Gordonis ultor, Aegypti vindex, and more: he was the chosen agent of the gods in fulfilling the oracle of ZeusAmmon that ‘Egypt should be the whole country watered by the Nile’!97 He was a guest at Balmoral and Windsor, at Sandringham and Hatfield. The City of London presented him with a sword of honour, all damascened steel, gold, diamonds and rubies. On that occasion he was introduced, in the presence of the kingdom’s leading men, as ‘the con¬ queror of Omdurman, the Soudan and Khartoum, and, in the words of an illustrious potentate, “The Avenger of Gordon” \98 Every club and society vied for the hero’s presence, from the Royal Engineers to the London Society of East Anglians, at whose banqueting table revellers sampled dishes like ‘Bombe Khartoum’.99 It was not only as a conqueror that Kitchener wished to be remembered: Karari was no memorial to him. Khartoum would be rebuilt, and in it he would found a seat of learning, in Gordon’s name. At the height of his popularity Kitchener launched a fund-raising drive, patronised by the queen and endorsed by the prime minister, the prince of Wales, and other notables, to endow Gordon Memorial College. In a letter to The Times on 30 November he wrote that ‘those who have conquered are called upon to civilize. In fact, the work interrupted since the death of Gordon must be resumed.’100 The results of the appeal were impressive. The British

Foundation of the Condominium

25

government could not, of course, contribute, although it expressed ‘a strong conviction in favour of the scheme’.101 By the time he left England on 7 December, £80,000 had been subscribed, and by the New Year the total had surpassed £100,000. Among the contributors were Vickers, Son and Maxim (£1,000), Sir Ernest Cassel (£5,000), the Stock Exchange (£8,000), Cecil Rhodes (£500), the Mansion House Fund (over £22,000), ‘A lover of Gordon’ (one shilling), and ‘An Imperialist’ (one shilling).102 Soon after the fall of Khartoum in January 1885, the Mahdi had decided that the seat of government should be transferred to Omdurman. After his death, the Khalifa 'Abdallahi had ordered the abandonment of Khartoum, and the city fell into ruins, a source of building materials for Omdur¬ man.103 The great symbolic object of the Anglo-Egyptian campaign had been the recapture of Khartoum, and there seems to have been no question that Khartoum would be the capital of the conquerors: the hallowed associations of the ruins gave it a legitimacy that Omdurman could not match. The exact site for the reconstruction was Kitchener’s personal choice, probably made on 28 or 29 September when he visited the ruins; Milo Talbot, whom he consulted, favoured a site on the right bank of the Blue Nile, where the town of Khartoum North eventually developed.104 The extent of Kitchener’s active participation in the earliest phases of the actual operation, when the plans were laid, was probably not so great as has been assumed. A biographer writes that ‘As early as 21 November, while he was still being dined and wined in England, he had privately ordered work to be begun on rebuilding Khartoum, starting with the palace.’105 Before going to England he had spent only two days at Khartoum with Talbot, during which he could not have done much more than give the most general instructions. The important work of laying out the city was performed by subordinates, chief among them Talbot, G. F. Gorringe, and Maxwell.106 Talbot wrote early in November that Maxwell was ‘worrying away at Khartoum preparing the site and laying out all sorts of lovely squares, crescents etc on the plan I prepared’.107 Although the historian of the Royal Engineers in the Sudan has written that ‘the design for a new Khartoum was prepared by Kitchener himself’,108 it is difficult to determine when he can have done this if the engineers were already putting plans into effect while he was in England. A further point in the design of the city might conveniently be mentioned here. It has been said that Kitchener designed the pattern of the city’s streets to resemble a Union flag or a series of Union flags, but there is no evidence that such a resemblance was intended. It has also been said that the city was laid out according to a military plan, a grid system with diagonal streets, so that machine-guns could sweep the town.109 No evidence supports this view, and it can be assumed that the convenience of a grid system (which was sensible and

i6

Empire on the Nile

hardly innovative) was persuasive. As in Washington and other cities it was soon ‘found that the diagonal streets gave wedge-shaped plots which were awkward for building purposes, and that the crossings were dangerous for motor traffic’. From 1912 ‘the existing diagonals were gradually closed and covered with buildings’.110 Whether or not Kitchener designed the basic plan of the new town, and regardless of why a certain pattern was adopted, there is no question but that he took an almost obsessive interest in the construction. A ‘Works Battalion’ of one thousand men, that had been established in 1897, was set the task of clearing the site, and together with Mahdist prisoners made bricks, dressed stone, and built the roads laid out by Maxwell and Talbot. Gorringe left an account of the scale the project assumed. He started work at Khartoum on 29 November. There I began to collect tools, materials and artisans from the battalions . . . and I obtained also the services of four Egyptian officers who had been under me at various times as ‘Works Officers’. By January 4th, 1899, 2,000 men were brickmak¬ ing, quarrying and burning lime. Lord Kitchener had returned, and was with me daily at Khartoum, working out plans for the roads. By February 6th, all the roads had been laid out, 7,000 trees had been ordered for avenues, the construction of Government Offices had begun, 5,000 men were at work, and the expenditure was ££4,000 a month. As regards the Palace, after clearing the rubble from the walls I had prepared a scheme for reconstruction, and had written to England in December for books on Italian and other architecture. These arrived in due course. With the help of the plans, elevations and architectural details which they contained, I designed the first and second floors, the staircase and the verandahs of the new Palace, everything being submitted to, and approved by, Lord Kitchener. The designs for the original Government Offices were also prepared by me. As regards the portion of the Palace facing the river, the ground plan and the shape of the windows on the ground floor differed little from those of Gordon’s Palace.111

Some of the material for the Palace, such as bricks and timber, were obtained locally. Special woods were sent from Alexandria, to be fashioned locally into doors and mouldings.112 Kitchener busied himself in collecting furniture for the mansion, telling Wingate, then in Cairo, to approach Gorst, the Financial Adviser to the Egyptian government, to obtain ‘a few things out of Ghizeh palace ... or any other place they may know of, in order to help me fit out the palace at Khartoum and Government buildings: if he agrees, loot like blazes. I want any quantity of marble stairs, marble paving, iron railings, looking glasses and fittings of all sorts, doors, windows, furniture of all sorts.’113 Wingate, who had in January 1899 been appointed adjutant-general, was employed as a removal agent in Cairo. In February he wrote to the director of stores, the hapless W. S. Gordon, to ask what had become of the ‘Palace furniture the Sirdar wants’. Gordon could reply only that he had begun to make enquiries, and added hopefully that he had ‘got marble etc. from Prinze Aziz’.114

Foundation of the Condominium

27

Rapid progress was nevertheless made in erecting the new Palace, but not rapid enough for Kitchener. In September 1899 Talbot told Wingate that the Palace was ‘getting on fine. Enormous place. Prodigious waste of money and labour’.115 This summed up the attitude of British officers on the scene: important work was being sacrificed for the sake of Khartoum, and at Khartoum the Palace was the focus of effort. Cromer later referred to the Palace tersely as ‘large, expensive and very unnecessary’.116 Kitch¬ ener was undeterred. He moved into the building before it was completed, but any thoughts inspired by Gordon’s memory must have been tempered by the living conditions. In January 1900 (a month after Kitchener had left for South Africa), Maxwell reported that he was ‘occupying the only rooms ... so far habitable’. He continued: ‘There is no water laid on yet, the W.C.s do not work, there is no light, the electric engine is not in working order . . . there are masses of boxes which will all have to be opened and laid out to find the things wanted and the rooms are not ready yet for furniture.’117 Other building projects continued haphazardly. No contractors were employed, and no detailed plans or estimates were ever made. Kitchener would order the design of a building and be presented the next day with a line drawing. An historian was unable in 1935 to find any plans of the Palace, and learned that in 1907, when the Palace and other buildings came under the jurisdiction of the Public Works Department, ‘no plans or records of these buildings were handed over, nor could any be traced’.118 Construction of the Gordon Memorial College proceeded quickly, although less so than the Palace. On 3 January 1899 Kitchener told Gorringe that Lord Cromer would lay the foundation stone for the new college on the 5 th. Since no preparations had been made, Gorringe ‘set his Department to work overtime’. A suitable stone was rushed over from Omdurman, trenches were dug, and ‘a few courses of brickwork were laid’. A tripod was erected and ‘a special trowel was manufactured for Lord Cromer’s use’. On the 5th, ‘the stone was well and truly laid by the British Agent and Consul General in the presence of a large and distinguished gathering. The trowel was sent by Lord Cromer to Queen Victoria.’ Afterwards Gorringe had to remove the stone ‘with much secrecy’, and replace it in ‘the real building’ once it had been properly surveyed.119 The creative spark having been applied, Kitchener’s interest waned. In May Cromer reported that the governor-general was ‘especially bored with his own creation - the Gordon College - at which I am not at all surprised’.120 Another project taken on by Kitchener was the provision of a hotel for European businessmen and tourists. In this he had the support of Cromer, who believed a hotel was essential for the promotion of trade.121 A mining concession was subsequently granted to the London and Sudan Syndicate,

28

Empire on the Nile

a company headed by Sir Bartle Frere, on condition that it should also build a hotel in Khartoum,122 but progress was slow. In January 1900 Maxwell wrote that the hotel was ‘quite hopeless, the work is not begun yet’, and that Sir Bartle Frere was ‘as much in place as an ordinary sick headache’.123 The hotel finally opened in 1902, but it was a ‘disgraceful’ place, and Wingate wrote angrily that he had ‘many a row with the Directors - a pack of German Jews headed by that ass Bartle Frere, but they will do nothing’. He reminded Cromer that they ‘got the concession from K. of K. and that it was and always will be a bad piece of business’.124 The lack of adequate hotel facilities proved annoying to government officials once European tourists began to arrive. By the end of Kitchener’s governor-generalship Khartoum was still a huge building site. Few people lived there, and there had already begun a tension, that continued, between Khartoum and Omdurman, the modern and foreign garden city versus the sprawling capital of the Mahdi. The intense building activity and the presence of so many Europeans led inevitably to the rapid appearance in Omdurman and Khartoum of foreign merchants, mostly Greeks. The first Sudan Gazette (7 March 1899), publishing the text of the Condominium Agreement, carried also advertisements for the Omdurman establishments of H. and U. Cavadias, ‘Wine and Provision Merchants, Purveyor to Officers and Officers’ Messes’; Angelo H. Capato, another ‘general provision merchant’; M. N. Loiso, a ‘wine, spirit, and general merchant’; and Polisoi Aliferopulo and Co., yet another ‘wine and general’ merchant. The next issue of the Gazette (27 May 1899) carried notices for several other such merchants as well as for two ‘officers clubs’, one in Khartoum, one in Omdurman (the latter of which offered drinks and billiards); a hairdresser and a photographer. Kitchener’s triumphal ideas for the rebuilding of Khartoum may well have been inspired partly by the need to impress the Sudanese with the permanence of the new regime. Yet his neglect of other, more prosaic but more important matters suggests a personal motive. The great conqueror, having disposed of the African host at Karari, would raise up a new capital, found a seat of learning, lay down a charter by which the people should be ruled (his ‘Memorandum to Mudirs’), and depart for new conquests. It was not for the new Alexander to bother with details; these were left for nameless lieutenants. A biographer reveals more than he intended in relating that Kitchener, when offered a peerage, meant to change his name to that of his new city, Khartoum. ‘ “Kitchener” is too horrible a name to put a “Lord” in front of,’ he said.125 The most notable example of Kitchener’s negligence was rather the result of deliberate policy: the famine that persisted in 1898-9. As early as Aprd 1898 Talbot, writing from Korti, told Wingate that the dura crop had

Foundation of the Condominium

29

been harvested and ‘we’ve skinned the people pretty well. I hope they will have enough left for seed. In most places I fancy they are all right, but I believe the requisition has fallen hardly on some districts.’126 It had been impossible to check whether complaints ‘against being compelled to provide so much dura’ were justified, since there were not enough inspectors to investigate.127 In November Maxwell told Wingate that they had ‘to tide over a period of what looks like becoming a famine’. Talbot echoed this warning: there was at Omdurman, he wrote, ‘a great deal of want ... if not actual famine. Maxwell has done what he can, but there is much still to be done’.12S Among Maxwell’s measures, taken in Kitchener’s absence, were a ‘famine relief scheme and Land Bank loans’, which, Talbot complained, ‘proved the most frightful grind’ to administer.129 In his memoirs Babikr Bedri comments on the situation in Omdurman. Kitch¬ ener, fresh from two months of banqueting in England, met with leading merchants in Omdurman, and was told that the high prices there were caused by the government’s having cornered the market; and that the supply from ‘rural areas was cut off because the Government [had] started to build, using for brick-carrying the very camels which normally bring grain to market’. Kitchener then decreed that the government would henceforward buy its grain only from ‘contractors appointed from among’ the merchants.130 But Babikr himself was eventually forced to leave the city because of the high price of grain.131 Along the White Nile famine conditions prevailed. In April 1899 Talbot wrote that Vandeleur, an inspector, had come to Omdurman and reported an ‘absolute dearth’ of food at Quz Abu Guma: ‘People live upon water and nuts and are dying in large numbers. No dura there. It’s very sad, especially as it [is] all due to the Khalifa having been allowed to stop where he is. Grain is still very dear here [Omdurman], and there doesn’t seem to be any prospect of its getting cheaper.’132 Cromer told Salisbury of this ‘state bordering on famine at Omdurman and further south - due in part to the Sirdar not allowing sufficient scope to private trade’. But Kitchener told Cromer that famine conditions would help him in his pursuit of the khalifa}^3 They were also to help in the recruitment of labour: when the new telegraph line was being laid between Quz Abu Guma and Renk, the engineer in charge was told by Kitchener that as far as labourers were concerned, ‘The natives around Goz Abu Guma are starving . . . and you can get as many as you like for a handful of dhurra a day.’134 Kitchener ‘adamantly refused’ to divert for famine relief the trains being used to supply building material for Khartoum.135 Even at Abu Dilayq, north-east of Khartoum, as late as January 1900 the people were reported to subsist on ‘grass and the bark of trees’.136

3°

Empire on the Nile SOLDIERS AT PEACE

Kitchener’s highly personal methods were complicated (or caused) by the fact that he trusted few of his subordinates or superiors. In January 1899 Maxwell complained to Wingate in Cairo: ‘The Sirdar is up the Blue Nile, [and] I wish he would return for all is in chaos. He bottles up all reports etc so I dare say you are somewhat in the dark. I am acting for him here but know nothing of the irons he has in the fire. . . . Nothing’, Maxwell concluded, could ‘be done until he does return.’137 Kitchener’s secretive¬ ness was a long-standing source of friction. The reputation, once established, could not be shed, even when the charge of secrecy was unwarranted. Cromer, for instance, told Kitchener that his ‘ultra-secretive system’ would ‘not work so well in civil as in military matters’,138 but Kitchener insisted that ‘everything that happens of the least consequence is telegraphed down’ to Cairo, adding that Cromer ‘must imagine things are happening which never occur’.139 In this case Kitchener had a right to be ‘much annoyed’. As Talbot put it: ‘Everything has been necessarily hand to mouth, and every paper that is not absolutely urgent gets chucked aside to be dealt with later. There are only two typewriting machines with the whole force here. . . . The office accommodation is inferior in every way. . . . One is besieged by petitioners at every turn.’140 Kitchener’s secretiveness was one factor in souring his relations with Cairo, but it was inevitable that he should come into conflict with Cromer: the valley of the Nile could scarcely contain two such imperious and ambitious men. Cromer’s stern and sarcastic paternalism, his reputation as the ultimate bureaucrat, and his jeweller’s eye trained mercilessly on the rough methods of soldiers ensured that Kitchener, once endowed with the security of prestige, would abandon the tutelary relationship he had in the past been forced to endure. After Cromer’s attempt to enshrine the subordinate status of the governor-generalship in the Condominium Agreement had been checked by Salisbury, he tried to use the financial dependence of the Sudan to achieve the same purpose. But regulations, Kitchener was fond of saying, ‘are made for the guidance of fools’.141 The disputes with Cairo that punctuated Kitchener’s short period of rule convinced Cromer that his reins on the governor-general must be tightened, and Kitchener’s successors paid a price for his independence. On the day the Condominium Agreement was signed Cromer wrote to Kitchener that he wanted ‘to control the big questions, but to leave all the detail and execution to be managed locally’.142 But the days were over when Kitchener would allow himself to be treated as a ‘local manager’, and his enormous popularity in Britain made Cromer wary of a confrontation. Instead, Cromer expressed his frequent misgivings in private letters to

Foundation of the Condominium

3i

Lord Kitchener, 1899 Sir Reginald Wingate, 1899-1917 Fig. 3 Governors-general of the Sudan Salisbury and others. On 9 February 1899 he told the prime minister that Kitchener was ‘better at the military than he is at the civil and political part of the business’. On the 18th he wrote to Salisbury’s private secretary that he was ‘rather concerned’ about the sirdar: ‘He writes to me that “the work is somewhat beyond him” - which I fear is the case. He does not understand civil government, and, moreover, he is such a terrible hand at quarrelling with everyone - except myself. . . . However ... if it is ever clear to me’ that the present system ‘cannot work, I shall lay the matter before Lord Salisbury.’ On 2 March, in reference to public criticism of Kitchener’s conduct after Karari, Cromer told Salisbury that ‘the dead set against Kitchener was sure to come sooner or later’. On the 13th he expressed unease at Kitchener’s expenditure in the Sudan. On the 17th and later he criticised Kitchener’s views on the Egyptian Army, the one area of the sirdar’s duties in which Cromer had expressed confidence previously. After Kitchener left for South Africa in December 1899, Cromer blamed him for the discontent that led to an army mutiny.143 According to Cromer, Kitchener’s ‘sole idea was to rule by inspiring fear. ... his regime in the Soudan . . . must have led to a breakdown sooner or later’.144 When it was later rumoured that Kitchener was planning to return to the Sudan,

52-

Empire on the Nile

Cromer wrote that this was ‘out of the question. He would not be able to hold the Soudan without a large British force.’145 While Cromer was writing in this vein to England, he was offering Kitchener avuncular advice. On 19 January he sent a solicitous private message to Kitchener, with but three suggestions: that he encourage subordinates to speak their minds; maintain a ‘sense of proportion’; and keep Cromer informed. A month before telling London of his concern about Kitchener’s expenses, Cromer told the sirdar not to be ‘alarmed about’ his finances: ‘We are not absolutely swimming in money,’ he wrote, ‘but when you can lay the whole matter before me, I will do what I can to help. Gorst [the Financial Adviser] is most reasonable and conciliatory. Treat him tenderly.’146 To go cap-in-hand to Cromer did not appeal to the sirdar, and it is unlikely that any advice could alter his view of Sir Eldon Gorst, to whom, a week earlier, Kitchener had referred as ‘that little creature’, ‘a little liar’, and ‘the meanest little brute I ever met’. Far from treating Gorst tenderly, Kitchener told Wingate not to send him ‘any accounts from or about civil matters’. They would ‘have as little as [they] could to do with him.... as he is not and never has been straight’. What, Kitchener wondered, could one expect ‘from damned mean civilians’?147 A biographer has remarked that Kitchener ‘constantly diverted funds on his personal initiative and without telling anyone, from one specified purpose to another; and that he forbade Government auditors from Cairo to visit Khartoum’.148 (Maxwell said in January 1899 that to Kitchener the budget was ‘merely a blind and he is juggling with it and he is a past-master in this art but it is very difficult to follow.’) There is little wonder that, after Kitchener resigned, Cromer believed that experience had shown ‘the necessity of establishing a somewhat greater degree of control on the part of the Egyptian Financial Department than had hitherto been the case’.149 The difficulties that strained Kitchener’s dealings with Cairo were magnified in his relations with subordinates. The man who said that regulations were for fools, who disdained bookkeeping, whose personal methods made routine difficult, and whose long absences therefore made efficiency impossible, was not one to establish a bureaucratic system of government. Maxwell referred to a sudd-clearing expedition to the south as an example of Kitchener’s method: You know how K starts such things, a few sweeps of the arm and ‘that will be all right’ and off goes an expedition all quite in the dark, badly formed in every respect, and only a durra ration for the workmen (dervish prisoners impregnated with smallpox).. . . K trusted so much to luck and was so uniformly lucky that it is quite possible that he might have waved a passage through the Sudd.

Talbot told Wingate as early as November 1898 that he could not ‘stand’

Foundation of the Condominium

^

Kitchener’s ‘way of doing things’, and that he wished to leave the country. Jackson, at Fashoda, was ‘utterly sick of the way’ he had been treated. In April 1899 the War Office told Cromer that each officer returning to Britain from service under Kitchener had ‘some little sore’ to complain about, ‘usually leave or pay’.150 The disaffection of British officers caused by Kitchener’s personality and methods had serious repercussions. It was to be expected after the battle of Omdurman that some of the officers would wish to pursue military careers elsewhere, and the coming of war in South Africa increased that desire. In March 1899 Cromer reported ‘a good deal of grumbling amongst the British officers’ because of the climate, the work, inadequate leave, and ‘the fact that the Sirdar ... is regarded as a somewhat exacting Chief who does not treat his subordinate agents with much consideration’. These feelings could not be ignored: British officers seconded to the Egyptian Army could resign on three months’ notice and return to their regiments. There was little inducement to stay. They were needed, but there was already a ‘strong tendency ... to resign the service. Many of the best and most experienced officers’ had left. Garstin, returning from his visit to the Sudan, had told Cromer that the British officers there looked ‘like so many hunted animals’.151 The posts left by experienced officers were filled by younger, inexperienced men or were left vacant. Cromer’s warnings had no effect in London. Far from ‘encouraging’ officers to remain in the Sudan, the War Office was ‘making difficulties’ for them.152 The departure and replacement of ‘old hands’ had important conse¬ quences. These men had led Egyptian and Sudanese troops for years, had fought and associated freely with them. Their replacements were a dif¬ ferent breed: younger, arrogant, unable to speak Arabic, uninterested in their soldiers and their soldiers’ problems. A 1900 report stated that ‘In old times all British officers would continually mix with their men.. . . Now it is all polo, club, etc., and back to their rooms.. . . the young British officers who do not know Arabic are often rude to much older men and native officers, who have far greater service and experience . . . the general idea is to look upon the native as a very inferior being.’153 A British officer’s dissatisfaction could be remedied by his transfer out of the Sudan. The Egyptian officer had no such option. To him, Cromer wrote, service in the Sudan amounted almost ‘to a sentence of perpetual banishment from his home and family’.154 Kitchener was certain of the Egyptian officers’ loyalty, Cromer was not: he recalled a similar certainty before the Indian Mutiny. Money was the root of the problem, and in March 1899 Kitchener admitted that there was ‘discontent amongst some of the officers about pay’, an admission that was, in Cromer’s view, in itself ‘remarkable’, since the sirdar had ‘always rather scoffed at the idea that the Egn. army’ could

34

Empire on the Nile

‘ever prove dangerous’.155 Kitchener had in fact alienated the Egyptian officers and men by cancelling special field allowances and by his niggardli¬ ness in general. Cromer told Salisbury that he had ‘ascertained the principal cause of dissatisfaction in the Army. Money was provided in the Estimates for continuing the payment of extra allowances to all ranks serving in [the] Soudan’, but Kitchener, ‘without reference to any authority at Cairo’, had ‘abolished these advantages, in order to apply money to other objects’. Cromer considered this ‘most injudicious’.156 Disaffection could be sup¬ pressed but not alleviated as long as Kitchener remained sirdar. He ruled ‘by inspiring fear’, and it was only after his departure that the soldiers dared to bring their grievances into the open. Kitchener’s ruthless and short-sighted attention to economy, at least insofar as public rather than personal interests were concerned, sowed seeds of discontent among the Sudanese battalions. In December 1899 Maxwell proposed to reduce those battalions by getting rid ‘of all notorious bad characters and weedy old men who cost money and do nothing’.157 Such ‘old worn out men’ were ‘not worth their pay and rations’, he said, and so long as inefficiency was ‘not the least impaired’, ‘economy should be observed’. Besides, there was ‘no need for anyone to starve in the Sudan’.158 Three days after Maxwell wrote this, he was faced with a mutiny. News had reached the Sudan of British defeats in South Africa, and rumours spread that the Egyptian Army would be transported to the Cape. The shipment of Maxim guns from the Sudan increased suspicion.159 Maxwell was aware of ‘seditious talk’, which, typically, he attributed to ‘disreputable officers’ and ‘the want of control at the Military school’ in Cairo. He had informed Wingate already of the ‘absurd rumours’ and that ‘the nerves of excitable people’ had been affected by ‘the batch of British officers being ordered to South Africa, then the counter order, then the Maxims and armament being ordered to the citadel’.160 Despite all this, Maxwell had ordered the withdrawal of ammunition from the troops because accidents had been caused by its deterioration.161 This order sparked the tinder. On the night of 22 January men of the nth and 14th Sudanese battalions broke into armouries and took several thousand rounds of ammunition. Soldiers’ wives became involved in the ensuing melee, and a semblance of order was restored only after Maxwell allowed each battalion five hundred rounds.162 Wingate, having been appointed to succeed Kitchener only on 23 December, was still in Cairo, where he saw the khedwe, obtained from him a letter ‘definitely dissoci¬ ating himself with the movement’, and entrained for the Sudan. On his arrival at Omdurman he held a ‘levee’ at which representatives of the Egyptian officers presented their grievances, including the ‘financial

Foundation of the Condominium

35

reform instituted by Lord Kitchener’, which they wanted withdrawn. Wingate replied that they were holding a pistol to his head, that he would do nothing for them until the missing ammunition was restored, and that if there was not a swift return to military discipline, ‘a large force of British Troops’ would ‘be at once despatched to the Sudan.’163 By this time (early February) Wingate was confident that a full-scale mutiny had been averted, but the incident could not be closed before the return of the ammunition. He established a commission of senior Egyptian officers to investigate grievances, but its deliberations were slow and the stalemate itself was a reminder of the troops’ successful defiance of authority. By 20 February Cromer had lost patience, and told Wingate that unless the commission reached a speedy conclusion, Wingate should consider dissolving it, and assert his authority, even if he had to ‘shoot down without mercy anyone who shows the least hesitation or reluctance to obey’ orders.164 The commission finally reported, however, recom¬ mending the dismissal of several Egyptian officers guilty of inciting the troops to mutiny. The ring-leader was identified as Yuzbashi (Captain) Mahmud Mukhtar, but proceedings before a court martial were not instituted because non-commissioned officers and men of his battalion (the 14th Sudanese) reportedly feared reprisals if they testified. He, four other officers, and a corporal were to be discharged, and another ranker was reprimanded. The officers were drummed out of the army and quickly sent to Egypt.165 Meanwhile, Wingate had approved a compromise whereby the windows of the armoury were left open one night and most of the ammunition was returned. The incident was thereby closed. Investigations revealed a number of reasons for the insubordination, and reforms were proposed. Although Cromer, Wingate, and Colonel Jackson (having been recalled from Fashoda) all condemned or at least noted the faults of the ‘Kitchener system’, in the end a good deal of blame was attached to an inveterate Egyptian hostility towards the British. Wingate, for example, allowed that there had been ‘much mismanagement of officers’, that many officers had had ‘real reason for complaint’, and that ‘injudicious treatment’ had ‘to a great extent’ given rise to the trouble; and Jackson went so far as to say that ‘the British officers [were] greatly to blame’ for the disturbances.166 Yet Wingate saw the Egyptian junior officers, ‘brought up in the “patriotic” Cairene atmosphere’ as a ‘most obnoxious element’,167 even though he had to admit that any conspiracy among them to incite mutiny would be ‘difficult to prove’.168 Cromer went further. That, like Wingate, he had no ‘direct evidence of the origin of the mutiny’, did not deter him from concluding that ‘Pretty well all the officers, senior and junior, were concerned. . . . The idea was not to kill the English officers - except perhaps Kitchener - but either to keep them in

Empire on the Nile confinement at Omdurman or to send them to Cairo. The whole army was to join, and . . . either the Khedive was to be informed that there were 20,000 men at his disposal... or else ... the whole force was to move on to Egypt.’ Kitchener’s ‘sudden departure’ had foiled the ‘plot’. Even though Cromer had heard nothing to implicate 'Abbas Hilmi, Wingate wrote that Egyptian officers ‘had sought, privately, the sympathy of the Khedive’; that he ‘had previous knowledge’ of the khedive’s ‘sympathetic attitude to the Native officers when they, clandestinely, complained to him’ of Kitchener’s reforms; and that he (Wingate) had been concerned to preclude ‘the possibility of collusion between the mutineers’ and the khedive.169 Indeed, Wingate had told Cromer that the khedive’s influence in the army was so great that it was ‘very doubtful whether the officers would have taken their recent action unless they had received some sort of tacit encouragement from high quarters’.170 To ease the strain in relations, the re-transfer of British officers had been halted even before the Omdurman incident, and some Sudanese non¬ commissioned officers were given commissions in anticipation of the excellent effect this would have among the Sudanese troops. Concessions regarding pay and pensions were made, an Egyptian officers’ club was established, and Cromer put the case for rotating Egyptian units so that none would be permanently stationed in the Sudan.171 The ‘Sudanese’ troops, which at this period meant Muslim ‘blacks’, not ‘Arabs’, were largely absolved from blame for the mutiny. They had been, it was said, ‘terrorized by a clique of Egyptian officers’; they were ‘catspaws’, whose loyalty to the British was ‘undoubted’.172 Exceptions were the newly recruited ‘Dervish blacks’, who had diluted the influence of the Sudanese ‘old soldiers’; and those Sudanese officers who had attended the Cairo Military School and there absorbed the ideas of Egyptian colleagues. Jackson believed that the mutiny had proved that ‘The school black (unless a soldier’s son or a lad from the ranks)’ was ‘useless, and no better than a young Egyptian officer.... all the old soldiers and all officers’ who had ‘carried the knapsack’ were ‘faithful; but these “Muwaled” young blacks from the school side with their colleagues, the Egyptian officer, and become a danger’.173 Various other conclusions were drawn from the mutiny. The British, so recently delighted with the conduct of the Egyptian Army they had trained, were now (and would remain) suspicious of Egyptian officers and men serving in the Sudan. Contact between Egyptians and Sudanese was seen as dangerous. The removal of Sudanese cadets from the Military School in Cairo was recommended, as was the creation of a separate military school at Khartoum.174 The exposed position of the Sudan Government, ‘defended’ by an army it did not trust, became a theme of

Foundation of the Condominium

^

Wingate’s governor-generalship. Far removed from the trouble, Salisbury was perhaps wisest in his judgement of it: the mutiny made a ‘painfully interesting story’, he wrote, and it seemed that Britain ‘ought to make provision against the occurrence of the same danger, at least in some of its forms, in future. Our dominion over savage nations depends on the character of the British officers, or rather of some British officers. The right kind of man has never yet failed us.’175 In describing the ‘system’ of civil government that was established during Kitchener’s governor-generalship it is important to distinguish between theory and practice: between what was written and what actually took place. Budget provisions were ignored, or juggled to fit the needs of the moment; regulations were issued without regard to whether they could be enforced; reports were falsified; famine stalked the country, but resources were funnelled into the rebuilding of Khartoum; resignations, transfers, and replacements made nonsense of attempts to impose a routine. After the conquest of Dongola in 1896, the administration of occupied territory was overseen by the Sudan Bureau of the Egyptian Army’s Intelligence Branch. Kitchener had intended that this bureau and the Sudan Section of the Army’s Finance Branch would ‘then gradually expand’ as the Sudan was conquered, and would ‘be available to form the central administration . . . when a government of the Sudan’ was established.176 This plan was never given effect. At the centre, bare rudiments of an administration were, however, established. Its future evolution depended greatly on its military origins. The head of the Sudan Section of the Egyptian Army’s Finance Branch was re-titled ‘Financial Secretary of the Sudan’. His offices were in Cairo. During Kitchener’s governor-general¬ ship this official, E. G. Harman, seems to have wielded no power at all. Kitchener meant to keep it that way, and was ‘a bit afraid that Harman was inclined to think his an executive office’.177 Harman resigned in May 1900. A Sudan Audit Office was also established in Cairo, to which governors were to send their accounts, with copies to Omdurman.178 The mere location of these offices did not assure Cairo’s control over Sudan finances, as Cromer was quick to recognise. In November 1898 Talbot pointed out to Wingate that ‘Some one will have to do intelligence and secretary for civil govt, to the G.O.C.’, adding, however, that ‘it won’t be me’.179 This may be the first reference to what was to become the exalted position of civil secretary. Fitton Bey held that title from early in 1899 until 8 December. As his successor Kitchener named another officer, Strickland, than an inspector at Berber, but he was in poor health and Wingate, after succeeding to the governor-generalship, appointed his friend Jackson to the post. During Jackson’s tenure the

38

Empire on the Nile

duties of this office went undefined. In January 1900 Maxwell described the civil secretary as someone who should know ‘all the ropes of taxation and land assessment’, and in a letter two weeks later he warned Wingate that it was ‘a difficult office’, and that he should ‘beware of Frankensteins’. Beginning in May 1899 the Sudan Gazette noted that advertisements should be addressed to the civil secretary.180 The third of what were to become known as ‘the Three Secretaries’ was the Legal Secretary. The first occupant of the post was a civilian, E. E. Bonham Carter, appointed on 20 September 1899. Although the develop¬ ment of a legal system occurred during Wingate’s governor-generalship, two ordinances promulgated during Kitchener’s regime may be noted. One of the most pressing matters facing the new government was the question of land ownership and registration. The demographic and econ¬ omic changes of the past twenty years had made this extraordinarily difficult, but economic recovery depended on it. The first issue of the Sudan Gazette (March 1899) notified the public of Kitchener’s order that ‘pending . . . adjudication, no intending vendor of land in the Sudan’ was ‘in a position to give a good and valid title to such land’. The next issue of the Gazette (27 May 1899) contained six proclamations. The Khartoum, Berber, and Dongola Town Lands Ordinance defined the boundaries of those towns, provided for land commissions in Dongola and Berber (one had already been established in Khartoum), and announced procedures for claiming land. To allow planning, provision was made for the government to buy up land and to exchange plots of equal value, and the sale of land was prohibited before a building was erected on it. The Title of Lands Ordinance provided for provincial land commissions to settle disputes over claims. The ordinance upheld the principle that continuous posses¬ sion constituted a valid claim, but provided for cases in which land had been abandoned because oi force majeure during the Mahdia. The fact that Bonham Carter was not appointed until September 1899 precluded any real progress, under Kitchener, in the development of a legal system. Both the Sudan Penal Code and the Sudan Code of Criminal Procedure were drafted by W. E. Brunyate, Legal Adviser to the Egyptian government.181 From the beginning Cromer seems to have known what he wanted in a legal system: in December 1898 he asked the Foreign Office to procure ‘three copies of [the] Indian Penal Code and Criminal Procedure code and send them to me’.182 In practice the responsibilities and powers of central government offi¬ cials continued undefined throughout Kitchener’s governor-generalship and, indeed, developed haphazardly after it. Provincial administration was faced with difficulties even greater than those confronted at the centre. Almost until Kitchener’s departure for South Africa the Khalifa ' Abdallahi

Foundation of the Condominium

39

remained at least an irritating symbol of the new regime’s incomplete control. Most of the Southern Sudan was unvisited. The appointment from the earliest times of provincial officials and Kitchener’s general description of their duties should not be taken to mean that those duties were ever carried out or could have been. As in the construction of Khartoum, it would take years for plans on paper to assume a definite shape. Kitchener’s governor-generalship lasted only eleven months, his period of rule fifteen and a half months. The problems facing him and his soldieradministrators after the battle of Omdurman were considerable, although the Sudan was not the tabula rasa that later admiring observers of the Sudan Government thought or said. Certainly Kitchener recognised this, and a general supposition that pre-Mahdist institutional and personal loyalties would partially reassert themselves was accurate. It might be considered, in fact, that Kitchener had attempted too much rather than too little: the administrative structure he left behind was, like his military railway, built too quickly; more care and thought and patience would have avoided the disruptive washouts faced by his successors, but there was no time. So tight-fisted a general that he counted bullets, Kitchener’s administrative system was conducive to wasting, not saving money. Projects were undertaken without plan, records were not kept, personnel were shifted from post to post like pins on a field map. Such personal methods may be a mark of greatness in successful commanders; in an administrator they constitute self-indulgence. In his superiors Kitchener inspired exasperation and bewilderment; in his subordinates, anger, sullen acquiescence, submission, and usually departure from the scene. None of these reactions was of much constructive benefit to the Sudan. It was not as a result of failures in office that Kitchener resigned. Since the battle of Omdurman, if not before it, he had made known his desire to leave the Sudan. When he was appointed as chief-of-staff to Lord Roberts in the South African war, he made the trip from Halfaya to Wadi Haifa in seventeen hours, a record.183 ‘I tell you this,’ Maxwell wrote to Wingate a few weeks later, ‘the Sudan wants rest.’184 What the Sudanese felt about Kitchener’s leaving cannot be estimated. But from Khartoum to Cairo there were many who felt relief that the conquering hero had departed.

The governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

THE SUCCESSION OF SIR REGINALD WINGATE

On 18 December 1899 Cromer wired to London that he proposed to ‘submit Sir F. Wingate’s name to the Khedive, as successor to Lord Kitchener’, and asked for approval. This was given on the 19th. In conformance with the Condominium Agreement, the kbedive’s approval was obtained, and Wingate was appointed governor-general on 23 Decem¬ ber.1 There was apparently no discussion of, and perhaps no thought given to, the separation of the offices of sirdar and governor-general. In 1902 Cromer commented on this: The Soudan is scarcely big enough for two big men, one commanding the army and one dealing with civil Govt. The competition would almost certainly lead to serious friction. In the second place, the military and civil government is almost inextric¬ ably mixed. So long as the subordinates are soldiers ... it would not do to place them in positions where they would owe a divided allegiance.2

The appointment of Sir (Francis) Reginald Wingate was in many respects a reward for sixteen years of diligent and tactful work in the Egyptian Army. Diligence he had shown as director of military intelli¬ gence: his department’s work was sensitive and useful, and he became a loyal confidant of Kitchener. At the same time he commended himself to the good opinion of Lord Cromer. He was ambitious, and had furthered his ambitions, in the military way, by self-controlled toleration of Kitch¬ ener’s many moods. For long months of work he received little credit and frequent criticism. In 1895 he confided to his brother-in-law a desire to go elsewhere, since Kitchener was so obviously dissatisfied with him,3 nor was this the last occasion on which he professed to contemplate resigna¬ tion. But anger passed, he swallowed his pride and stayed: ‘I was furious,’ he wrote in his diary on one occasion, ‘but could only answer that I would do what he wished.’4 What he could not say to Kitchener he confided to his 40

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

41

diary or his wife: Kitchener was ‘the quintessence of a coward’,5 whose ‘boorish insults’ he tried to ignore;6 ‘a bounder’ who was ‘utterly unscrupulous’.7 In Kitchener’s advance, however, Wingate discerned his own, and the campaign to avenge Gordon was a singular opportunity. The fulfilment of Wingate’s hopes lay in seniority. As British officers completed tours of duty in the Egyptian Army and left, Wingate remained and moved up, and began to contend that no officer from outside the Egyptian Army should be brought in above him.8 In June 1898 he told his wife that ‘Old Cochrane’ had gone, making him ‘senior Col. in the E.A. and next HML [Rundle] in the seniority list’. As the battle of Omdurman drew near, the jockeying for position grew more intense; no decision had been made yet about the form of the Sudan’s future government. Wingate’s wife served as his agent in Cairo. To her he wrote on 20 August 1898: If all goes well at Khartoum - you know my views about the future and I hope that you may perhaps ... be able to put them forward. Of course I may be obliged to spend a few months in the Sudan, but what I really want is to be head of an office in Cairo which will connect the Cairo and Sudan Governments. . . . but I expect others think differently and no doubt there will be other competition in the field. . . . We must carefully watch events and in case of necessity - I shall probably wire to you what line I want you to take.

So far from aspiring then to the highest post in the Sudan, Wingate wished to avoid the place. ‘I never feel quite sure’, he wrote in October 1898, ‘that K. may not try to hustle me back to Khartum and if that happens, I think we must have a crisis.’ ‘The departure of Hunter’, Wingate wrote in March 1899, made him second-in-command of the Egyptian Army: ‘I do not say for a moment that in the event of the departure of the present Sirdar, I should be selected to succeed him; at the same time I should not submit to any other officer now in the Egyptian Army being given the preference over me.’9 By the time Kitchener resigned, Wingate’s competition had narrowed to one man, Maxwell. In Cromer’s view, Maxwell was tainted by the ‘general impression’ that he would ‘carry on Lord Kitchener’s traditions’. After Wingate was preferred as governor-general, he and Cromer tried to conciliate Maxwell, who asked for and received the appointments of Commanding Officer Omdurman and ‘Wakil [Deputy] Governor General’. Wingate added to these posts the title of Governor of Khartoum Province.10 But the Sudan was ‘scarcely big enough for two big men’, and within a month of his appointment Wingate wrote that Maxwell could ‘be spared’ to go to South Africa.11 In London Wingate’s mentor, Sir Evelyn Wood, used his influence to arrange for Maxwell’s transfer. At the same time, Cromer told Salisbury that he would ‘be very glad of the Transvaal excuse to get him away’,12 especially after Maxwell’s role, harshly criticised

42

Empire on the Nile

by Wingate, in the Omdurman mutiny. Maxwell left in February, looking, to one observer, ‘radiant... at getting out’.13 When Cromer chose Wingate to succeed he had more in mind than discontinuing Kitchener’s traditions: what he wanted in a governorgeneral was competence and compliance, and not necessarily in that order. These characteristics Wingate possessed. He also had a detailed knowledge of the Northern Sudan, spoke Arabic, and was intelligent without being clever. He could take orders as well as give them. Unlike Kitchener he had no constituency in Britain, no connections of family or party, no inherited rank or wealth, and would therefore be dependent on Cromer’s goodwill. Wingate cared more for office than for power; ambition of this sort withstands personal and political disagreements. His taste for petty intrigue, pomposity, and verbosity were faults with which Cromer could cope. The virtues, besides experience, that he brought to his new appoint¬ ment were integrity, generosity, enthusiasm, sympathy, and, when he needed it, the common touch. If Kitchener was the greater of the two, Wingate was certainly the better man for the Sudan. Wingate’s appointment was popular. Maxwell observed that his rival’s ‘very difficult job’ would not be ‘made any easier by the extraordinary personality’ of his predecessor. Talbot thought the time had come for a change: ‘We want a less fine sieve to the mill and a wider muzzle to the ox that treadeth out the corn’, as he put it. A correspondent of The Times reported that there had been ‘a general expectation as of something springlike and mild’ at the news of Wingate’s succession.14

KHARTOUM-CAIRO RELATIONS, I9OO-1916

Although the Condominium Agreement had described in general terms the authority of the governor-general, it was left to the man himself, in his relations with Cairo, to establish the limits of his power and the procedures by which he would conduct affairs. Kitchener’s brief rule had taught Cromer a great deal, and he was determined to have a fresh start with Wingate, to be certain that the governor-generalship would remain a post subsidiary, not parallel, to his own. As in his previous relations with Kitchener, Wingate was to prove generally cooperative in submitting to authority. Cromer had told Kitchener in January 1899 that he wanted to control the ‘big questions’, leaving to the governor-general the execution of policy and questions of detail; and he had repeatedly stressed the dangers of ‘over-centralization’ at Cairo of the Sudan’s administration. Both of these principles he ignored in practice, constantly interfering in administrative matters and zealously guarding Cairo’s control, especially its financial control.

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

43

Certainly Cromer decided the ‘big questions’: the Sudan Government’s early policies on land, taxation, slavery, religion, trade, and so forth. Far from limiting his interventions to these important areas, however, Cromer was involved in every aspect of Sudan administration, and at every level. His letters to Wingate were frequent and detailed, dealt with every subject, and were usually written in an imperative mood. He wrote also to Wingate’s subordinates, and met them when they passed through Cairo. One method by which Cromer maintained his primacy was control of the annual Report on the finances, administration and condition of the Sudan, compiled for the information of the British government, a report he not only vetted but, initially wrote himself. The 1899 report commences with this remark: ‘Sir Reginald Wingate’s hands are at present so full of other work that I felt I could not reasonably ask him to spare the time requisite for the preparation of an elaborate report. I arranged therefore . . . that he should leave with me a mass of material which he had collected with a view to framing a report.’15 Cromer apparently believed that Wingate was too busy even to read the report before it was submitted: he hoped, he wrote to Wingate, that it contained ‘nothing which you think had better not be said’.16 In 1901 Wingate prepared a draft report himself, but told Cromer that he might find it ‘long-winded’ and that it contained ‘many imperfections’, and he invited him to use his ‘red pencil’ as necessary.17 Cromer agreed: he told Wingate that his report was ‘very interesting’ but ‘much too long and detailed for publication’; he had ‘cut it down greatly’. Nor was verbosity the only problem: ‘I leave out “Prisons” for other reasons,’ he wrote. ‘The employment of Egyptian convicts in the Soudan is wholly illegal. The less we say on the subject the better.’ He had also ‘cut out the eulogy’ to Kitchener that Wingate had penned. For this, at least, Wingate was grateful: ‘I felt it incumbent on me’, he wrote, ‘to say something about my predecessor and I am much pleased that you felt it equally incumbent on you to erase my remarks!’18 Although from 1901 Cromer did not write the report himself, his role was not limited to abridgement. Wingate sent a separate draft note to him for each department and province, with an introductory memorandum of his own composition. Cromer read each of these reports and commented freely, noting which sections were to be struck out and which required revision. The report for 1903 may serve as an example. After reading the submission of the medical department Cromer commented briefly on ‘sanitary reform’, and stressed the importance of ‘checking venereal disease’, promising his full support but warning that ‘The less the subject is discussed in public, the better’.19 The Controller’s summary elicited the view that ushur tax should be abolished soon; the comment that the controller had referred to Fashoda rather than to the new name of that

44

Empire on the Nile

place, Kodok; and the question as to whether anything could be done ‘to check the excessive use of stationery’.20 No detail escaped him: after reading the report for Kordofan, the British agent and consul-general in Cairo asked the governor-general of the Sudan: ‘Could not Major O’Con¬ nell be supplied with the scissors he requires for cutting ostrich feathers?’21 The report from the Bahr al-Ghazal had impressed upon him the import¬ ance of growing rubber there, and that that province and the Upper Nile should take precedence in health care because their need was greatest and ‘the medical man is a civilizing element and a political agent of very special value’.22 Cromer objected to proposals for game preservation in the Sennar Province report, and opposed the idea of conscription as mooted in the adjutant-general’s report.23 After reading the legal department’s submis¬ sion he suggested a committee to deal with land rights, unaware that the Sudan Government had ‘been occupied with the question . . . for years’.24 Wingate expressed delight with this attention to detail, telling Cromer that ‘all those who have submitted reports . . . are naturally most gratified that their statements have attracted your attention, and that you are sympathetic with their difficulties and their efforts’. To Lord Edward Cecil he expressed a rather different view, saying that he would leave to Cromer ‘the onus of expansion. I really believe he prefers this and would rather I wrote nothing but there are a few points I must bring out, even if he pigeon-holes them which is probable.’25 In 1907 Cromer wrote a Review of the Soudan reports for 1906, a 35page printed critique of the various departmental and provincial reports he had received. The review was sent to the Foreign Secretary in London.26 Possibly Cromer, on the eve of retirement, devised this review as yet another means by which his successor could exert control over the Sudan Government. A second method Cromer used to control the Sudan administration concerned the procedure adopted for promulgating the governor-general’s ordinances. The Condominium Agreement invested the governor-general with full legislative powers, specifying only that his acts should be notified ‘forthwith’ to the agent and consul-general in Cairo and to the Egyptian government. The procedure enforced by Cromer was very different, as he explained: The Ordinance is drafted by the Legal Secretary of the Soudan Government. ... It is then sent by the Governor-General to me. I always send it to the Department of Justice, where it is fully examined by . . . the Judicial Adviser, and Mr Brunyate, who has made a speciality of Soudan legislation. If, as generally happens, some remarks have to be made, the draft Ordinance is then returned to Khartoum for reconsideration. It then comes back to me. If ... I am satisfied with the changes which have been made, I cause the Ordinance to be submitted, by the Financial

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

45

Adviser, to the Egyptian Council of Ministers. He then notifies to me their assent, or their observations if they have any to make. I then inform the Governor-General that the Ordinance may be issued. It is issued in the 'Soudan [szc] Gazette’, and I send a copy to London.27 By this procedure Cromer usurped, except in a merely formal sense, the governor-general’s legislative powers. The personal nature of Cromer’s control is evident in the fact that as of April 1905 he had not once submitted a piece of Sudan legislation to the Foreign Office before approving its promulgation in the Sudan. In fact, the Foreign Office left this to his discretion, although it recognised that the procedure he had indicated was a deviation from the Condominium Agreement.28 This procedure was followed until 1911, when reference to the Council of Ministers was discontinued.29 A third and most important method Cromer used to control the Sudan Government from Cairo was in the area of finance. Cromer’s attempt to establish direct control during the Anglo-Egyptian campaign, and in his draft

Condominium

Agreement

were

thwarted

by

Kitchener

and

Salisbury. Although the Financial Regulations separately drafted did, in fact, impose a strict control, Kitchener evaded this simply by refusing to comply with them. When Wingate succeeded to the governor-generalship, Cromer was determined that this should not happen again. New Financial Regulations were imposed in May 1900, limiting even further the gov¬ ernor-general’s powers.30 When in April 1900 Wingate and Cromer discussed whether to retain Harman as financial secretary, H. W. Jackson judged him incompetent, rude, and ‘entirely unsuitable’, and he was replaced in June by E. E. Bernard, the deputy assistant adjutant-general of the Egyptian Army, who remained in office until 1922, the longest tenure in a single post by any senior official of the Sudan Government.31 According to the new Regulations, the financial secretary and governorgeneral were to be jointly ‘responsible to the Ministry of Finance for the strict execution’ of the Regulations. The budget was subject to the approval of the Egyptian Council of Ministers. No taxes could be levied, altered, or abolished without ministry approval, and Sudan government financial regulations must be approved by the ministry before they were pro¬ mulgated. The ministry had a constant ‘right of supervision, audit or inspection of the whole of the financial arrangement of the Soudan Government’.32 The difficult relations between Wingate (and many other officials) and Bernard resulted from his awkward status as servant of two masters, and from prejudice. Bernard was a Maltese Catholic, and criticism of him tended to be worded in personal terms. Much of his time was spent in Cairo, where the Sudan’s annual budget was framed every autumn when the governor-general and chief officials gathered there en route to the

46

Empire on the Nile

Sudan from leave in Europe.33 Constant supervision, the Sudan Govern¬ ment’s reliance on credits and a large annual subvention from Egypt, and the power and vigilance of the financial secretary combined to ensure Cairo’s ultimate and detailed control of the Sudan’s finances and, as Kitchener had remarked, ‘almost everything’ had a ‘financial aspect’. Wingate’s view of his subordinate status was mixed. He frequently and freely admitted Cromer’s pre-eminence. ‘I hope that I never forget’, he told Cromer, ‘that my position here is rather that of Lt. Gov. under you as Viceroy. ... I tremble to think what Egypt and the Sudan would do without you.’ But he also recognised that Cromer’s power was essentially personal, that ‘if one hunted up chapter and verse for his constitutional right of this, one would not find it’.34 For all his interference, moreover, Cromer’s role should not be exaggerated. Cairo was a long way from Khartoum, and Khartoum was several weeks’ journey from some outlying districts of the Sudan. The central government’s supervision of provincial (to say nothing of local) affairs was light, and information that reached Khartoum might not find its way to Cairo. Although Cromer went so far as to say that ‘every official document which passes through the Soudan Government offices should be capable of being communicated to me’, matters were occasionally concealed. In 1906 the acting governor-general told Wingate, who was on leave, that he had not sent to Cairo any documents dealing with a recent rebellion, nor would he unless Wingate thought it ‘desirable’. In 1905 Owen, the Sudan Agent in Cairo, mentioned in a letter to Wingate a paper relating to Darfur, and said that he was ‘glad your Excellency decided not to show it to Lord Cromer’.35 Cromer’s contact with Wingate’s subordinates was a source of personal discomfort and indiscipline within the Sudan Government. In 1904, for example, Wingate decided that Gorringe, then governor of Sennar, should resign at the end of his ten years’ secondment from the army. Wingate informed Cromer so that he could ‘be assured of’ Cromer’s support in the event of Gorringe’s appealing to him.36 On more than one occasion Wingate complained of Bernard’s going behind his back to the Residency. Cromer did not discourage the practice, nor did Wingate always resent it: in 1904 he told Cromer that Currie, the director of education, was causing trouble, and suggested that ‘a word of advice from an independent source’ like Cromer might help.37 There were other and more important ways in which Wingate could benefit from Cromer’s unceasing role in Sudan affairs. Some of the policies adopted by Cromer and actively pursued by Wingate, regarding, for instance, slavery and missionary activities, caused hostility in Britain, and Cromer’s was a much more powerful voice than Wingate’s in defending them. Wingate and his officials recognised this. In 1905 Cecil told Wingate that Cromer’s interest in the Sudan had begun to

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

47

wane. ‘This is good and bad for us,’ he wrote, ‘as it prevents his interfering in the Sudan much but also prevents him backing us up on any grave issue. >38 To what degree the Sudan was Egyptian, to what degree ‘AngloEgyptian’ (and what this meant), were difficult questions. In Modern Egypt Cromer commented on European reaction to the Condominium Agreement ‘that the political status of the Soudan was such as was laid down in the Agreement of January 19, 1899, and that I could give no more precise or epigrammatic definition’.39 This cleverness sufficed to protect changing British and Egyptian interests in the Sudan, so far as Cromer was concerned. What worried Wingate and his advisers was that Cromer appeared at times not to take account, or even to recognise the existence, of a purely Sudanese interest. In the long diplomatic dispute with King Leopold over control of the Upper Nile ‘the real point’, according to Cromer, was whether retention of the Bahr al-Ghazal was ‘necessary in order to secure the Egyptian water supply’.40 According to Lord Edward Cecil, Cromer believed that ‘some minor alteration in the capitulations is of more importance than the whole Sudan’.41 Matters connected with the granting of concessions in the Sudan were a preserve of Cairo: as late as 1907 Cromer told Wingate that ‘the powers of the Soudan Government in these matters’ should be discussed. When concessionaires required water rights, Wingate referred the matter to Cromer: it was ‘entirely a water question and on that the Sudan has nothing to say’, he told Cromer: he would follow ‘whatever policy’ Cromer told him to adopt.42 In matters relating to Nile waters Egyptian interests always came first. Wingate was so worried by Cromer’s view of the Sudan’s status that he tried to avoid the matter entirely. In 1907 it was suggested that a border dispute with Ethiopia be referred to the Hague Tribunal. Wingate was ‘altogether opposed in the strongest possible manner’ to the idea, and reiterated the cardinal rule ‘of being most careful in any matters likely to raise the Sudan question either internationally or locally’. An indication in 1905 that the European consuls in Cairo were ‘nibbling at getting consuls in the Sudan’ by agreeing to recognise the Sudan ‘as a semi-independent state’, would have been rejected as preposterous by Cromer if he had known about it. He was well aware that Wingate and his senior advisers desired such ‘semi-independence’, and was determined that they should not have it. In January 1904 he admonished Wingate about ‘a tendency to consider the Soudan as a separate and independent Government, more or less unconnected with Egypt. It is nothing of the kind. The only reason why the British flag is flying, and why the Soudan has a Governor-General and special Laws, is to avoid the capitulations and the rest of the interna¬ tional paraphernalia.’ Egyptian money kept the Sudan afloat: ‘In politics,

Empire on the Nile

48

as in music, those who pay the piper have a right to call the tune’ (an aphorism Cromer evidently believed to be inapplicable in Egypt itself). He warned Wingate to ‘get all these ideas of independence out of the heads of your officials. The result of putting them forward is to make people here think - and with some reason - that there is a need of more stringent control.’43 For as long as Cromer remained in charge, any tendency towards independence was necessarily restrained. Only after he departed was the Sudan Government able to emerge from the totally subordinate role it had been forced to occupy. On the eve of Cromer’s resignation in 1907 Wingate rather boldly told him of his hopes that the Sudan’s future relations with Egypt would develop ‘towards eventual financial autonomy’. Cromer’s reaction was predictable. In a valedictory letter to Grey, the foreign secretary, Cromer reiterated his views in such a way as to create in London the attention to Sudan affairs that he had always said he wished to avoid. It cannot have been through carelessness that he referred to the Sudan as ‘that province’ of Egypt. Wingate, he allowed, had ‘done very well’ there, but was ‘very local’. He had not got any firm grip of the main principles on which the Government of the Soudan, or indeed of any other country has to be conducted. Also, he is ignorant as a child of everything connected with financial affairs. The upshot... is that he is very restive under control of any kind, and you will see that he rather wants to make the control over the Soudan, which has been very light in my time, even lighter still. I regard this as perfectly impossible. Far from being lighter, I think that, even if I had remained on here, the control over Soudan affairs would have had to be drawn tighter than before.44 Cromer was succeeded in the autumn of 1907 by Sir Eldon Gorst, who had served under him from 1898 to 1904 as Financial Adviser to the Egyptian government. At least since 1900 Gorst had nursed a hope of winning the consul-generalship some day, and he prided himself with having so mastered the subject of Sudan development that no one else understood or ‘could carry out’ Cromer’s ideas. Gorst saw in Wingate’s ‘administrative incompetence’ an asset to his own ambitions: it ensured that ‘a good man and not a mediocrity’ must be appointed to succeed Cromer.45 That Gorst and Wingate had not been on good terms, either personally or professionally, was probably responsible for the flurry of rumours, following Gorst’s appointment, that Wingate was to resign. These persisted for over a year, until well after Wingate had, in fact, put himself at Gorst’s disposal.46 Gorst’s long service under Cromer was taken as evidence that he would continue Cromer’s policies. Cromer himself said that Gorst’s appointment was ‘an adequate guarantee that no change of policy is in contemplation’,47

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

49

and soon after Gorst took office Wingate told Cromer that Gorst seemed ‘to be following on’ his ‘sound lines’. Gorst, however, had no intention of carrying on Cromer’s policies, which he considered reactionary and unworkable. Instead, he planned, ‘while outwardly proclaiming that Lord Cromer’s policy was unchanged, to apply the precepts laid down in his annual reports rather than follow the actual practice of recent years - in a word to carry into execution the many excellent practical and statesman¬ like maxims which abound in Lord C’s writings but which had remained in the stage of “pious opinions”.’ In Egypt this involved ‘hostility to European privilege’, and a more liberal policy towards both the national¬ ists and the khedive. Regarding the Sudan Gorst resolved ‘to supervise its administration on the sound lines laid down and practised by Lord Cromer, namely to push on its material development as funds permitted, to keep a tight hand over the expenditure, but to interfere with the man on the spot as little as possible in regard to matters of detail’.48 This was an accurate rendering of Cromer’s stated policy, but not of his practice, and it is the policy Gorst attempted to follow during his four years as agent and consul-general. The result was a progressive loosening of Cairo’s actual control over the Sudan’s administration even as Gorst attempted to use Egypt’s nominal partnership in the Condominium as an area in which to conciliate Egyptian nationalist opinion. This process of conciliation, implying an even greater identification of the Sudan as Egyptian than had been the case in Cromer’s day, was the chief point of contention between Cairo and Khartoum during Gorst’s consul-generalship. The financial relations between the two countries were a major complaint of Egyptian nationalists, and Gorst attempted to reduce the Sudan’s continuing financial dependence. Shortly after his appoint¬ ment he initiated a plan to arrange a British government loan for Sudan development that would, according to the civil secretary, Phipps, ‘effec¬ tively assert England’s claim to run the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Thank goodness, the 2 flags prevent any connection with the Colonial Office. We are on the way to be standardised and shall before long become normal.’49 Two weeks later Wingate learned that the loan had been refused. This contributed to the stormy relations between Wingate and Sir Paul Harvey, the Financial Adviser during Gorst’s tenure of office, relations charac¬ terised by Harvey’s pressure to reduce the Egyptian contribution to the Sudan’s finances, and Wingate’s struggle to maintain it.50 With the British government excluded as a source of capital, Gorst had no choice but to continue Egyptian subventions, but to reconcile this with his paramount aim of neutralising the Egyptian opposition he decided to emphasise Egypt’s partnership in the Condominium. He told Wingate: ‘Expenditure on the Soudan is extremely unpopular here . . . and, under

5°

Empire on the Nile

present circumstances, we are no longer able to entirely ignore public opinion. Therefore we must try to reconcile the Egyptians to spending some of their money on the Soudan, and the only way to do this is to make them feel that the Soudan is part of Egypt, and that its development will redound to the credit of the Egyptians.’ Wingate replied that he ‘fully understood’.51 He certainly did not agree. One occasion that Gorst used for his purpose was the opening of Port Sudan in 1909. He was so ‘anxious that the show should be made as Egyptian as possible’ that he would not attend, and he advised that ‘H.M.G. and the Union Jack’ should be kept ‘in the background’. Although he acquiesced, Wingate made sure that the arrangements were brought to the attention of King Edward.52 In arguing that Gorst had ‘not quite understood the desirability of separating Egypt and the Sudan from a Military and political point of view’, and by ascribing this to Gorst’s unwillingness to allow any lessening of his own control,53 Wingate was both unrealistic and unfair. It was largely for its own financial reasons that the Sudan required the continuance of the connections Wingate spoke of ending. The Sudan Government argued unconvincingly that Egypt already enjoyed a handsome return on her investment. As Bernard put it: ‘Immune from fears of invasion, and ensured of the peaceful administration of the Sudan, Egypt now possesses that absolute control of the waters of the Nile which is the very essence of her existence.’ Therefore it was ‘doubtful... if capital expenditure was ever put to a better or more profitable purpose than the restoration and development of the Sudan’.54 Wingate’s solution to the financial and political problems facing him was to approach private British capital. In March 1910 he wrote: ‘the present attitude of the Nationalists and the Legislative Council is to prevent any Egyptian money being expended in the Sudan; the attitude of the Home Government is also one of “hands off” in regard to their Sudan respon¬ sibilities. . . . it is a matter of most vital importance to do all we possibly can to induce British Capital and thus the British Capitalist to have a vested interest in the country’. This would be a ‘sound and practical way of developing the Sudan and keeping the British flag flying when it is now so seriously threatened by the political attitude of both British and Egyptian Governments’. Even when Wingate submitted ideas for the exploitation of the Gezira with British capital, Gorst cautioned him to go slowly.55 In June 1910 the Egyptian government finally sanctioned a loan of up to £E8oo,ooo for railway extension and other purposes in the Sudan.56 During Gorst’s consul-generalship a Governor-General’s Council was established in Khartoum. The initiative came from Khartoum, not Cairo, and the council was to have a more important role in the Sudan Govern¬ ment’s administration than in its relations with Egypt. In taking up the idea

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

Fig. 4

The Khedive Abbas Hilmi at Port Sudan, 1909

Gorst hoped to put a formal check on the governor-general, and used the opportunity to ‘lay down in general terms the matters on which the consulgeneral expects to be consulted’, the first time since 1899 that such a definition was made. ‘In ordinary routine administration full responsi¬ bility’ rested with the governor-general in council, but the consul-general should be ‘kept informed ... in such detail’ as was necessary ‘to keep in touch with Soudan administration and for avoiding divergence of policy’. In ‘all matters involving policy’ he should be consulted in advance. Any matter affecting ‘foreign subjects’ that might ‘lead to diplomatic represen¬ tations’; foreign trade; ‘and questions which appear likely to attract public attention outside the Soudan’ should be brought to his notice. Prior approval should be obtained for legislation, military expeditions, ‘large’ supplementary credits; loans; ‘important’ concessions; appointments to the council and other high office, recommendations for decorations, and some other matters. Certain documents (minutes, regulations, and so forth) should be notified to the consul-general. Reserved for his decision were disputes between the Sudan Government and the Egyptian ministry of finance or the Egyptian irrigation department.57 New Financial Regula¬ tions were issued in February, formally setting out the council’s advisory role in financial matters.58

,-2

Empire on the Nile Although Gorst’s policies in Egypt caused difficulties for the Sudan

Government, his absorption in them freed Wingate from the petty inter¬ ference that had characterised Cromer’s rule. The unresolved tension in their relations was expressed in a contemporary bit of doggerel: Bless Wingate, King, who no occasion loses Of doing here exactly what he chooses. Bless, bless King Gorst, and may he ne’er refuse To tell King Wingate what he’s got to choose.39 Gorst resigned in July 1911 because of ill-health (and died within a few days of his resignation). Despite his policy in Egypt he had followed a consistent policy towards the Sudan, and had tried to help financially. Would his successor do the same? On 16 July Grey announced the appointment of Lord Kitchener, after considerable political manoeuvring on Kitchener’s part. Wingate approved the choice. After his accession in 1899 Wingate had soon forgiven the unpleasant aspects of his relations with Kitchener. They had remained in contact during the intervening years, and Kitchener had visited the Sudan twice, in 1902 to open the Gordon Memorial College, and in 1910 to hunt. Wingate knew Kitchener well, and could rely on his reviving the autocratic methods of Cromer in Egypt, thus freeing the Sudan Government from the effects of Gorst’s policy of conciliation. Wingate also knew that Kitchener’s disinterest in the details of civil administration precluded a return to detailed supervision of the Sudan’s affairs. Kitchener, like Cromer, had enormous prestige in Britain: if he spoke for the Sudan, London would listen.60 Wingate’s

expectations

of

Kitchener’s

policy

regarding

Egyptian

nationalism were fulfilled. He was a ready ally of Wingate in ridding the Sudan of Egyptian influences. But complementary to that, and necessary for British and Egyptian political reasons, was the continuation of Gorst’s policy of reducing the Sudan’s financial dependence on Egypt. As early as July 1911 Kitchener stated that the ‘only valid criticism that the Nationalist party bring against British administration in Egypt, is that the revenues of Egypt are employed to develop the Soudan, where the British flag flies’. British private capital was interested in the Sudan, he wrote, primarily because of the country’s potential as a cotton-producer, but that interest was ‘fraught with some danger’ because of the alienation of land it would entail. The Sudan Government could carry out an agricultural develop¬ ment plan more cheaply, but would need a loan to do so. Such a plan Kitchener described too optimistically as the solution to all the Sudan’s problems: the Sudan Government would be able ‘to meet all its financial requirements ... to repay to Egypt what has been granted in aid, as well as to pay off any loan that might be advanced at the present stage of its

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

^

development’.61 Inevitably the negotiation of a large loan guarantee took time and required political will in Cairo and London. It was doubtful that the passage of The Government of the Sudan Loan Act would have occurred as early as 1913 without Kitchener’s consistent efforts. In his dealings with London over the loan Kitchener of course had Wingate’s wholehearted support. But the other side of Kitchener’s policy, the reduction of the Egyptian subvention, brought howls of protest from Khartoum. Kitchener put pressure on Wingate to make economies and to raise direct and indirect taxes. When Kitchener visited the Sudan in 1912 ‘the apparent affluence of the Sudanese Sheikhs’ caused him to think they were not ‘sufficiently heavily taxed’.62 While Wingate purported to do whatever he could to achieve ‘the end we all have in view’, he nevertheless wearied of the constant cutting and trimming.63 He told Kitchener in November 1911 that he was ‘having almost insuperable difficulties in making both ends meet’. Harvey had asked for a reduction of £25,000, but it could not be done, ‘squeeze and try as we may’.64 Wingate had finally to conclude gloomily that Kitchener, ‘no matter how sympathetic he may be to the Sudan, is a good deal more sympathetic to Egypt’.65 The reduction in Egyptian assistance was balanced by a reduction in Egyptian financial control, however, but even after the annual subventions ended in 1913 the Sudan’s financial independence was merely nominal in that she continued to enjoy the free services of the Egyptian Army and the interest-free loans and other financial advantages that Egypt made available. Wingate’s suggestion that the time had come at last to alter the ‘anomalous position of the Financial Secretary’ fell on deaf ears.66 During the first world war the Sudan Government’s financial independence was increased by a boom in exports. In other than financial affairs Kitchener was usually in agreement with Wingate, especially regarding Egyptian influence in the Sudan. The educa¬ tion of Sudanese in Egypt, Egyptian teachers’ activities in the Sudan, Egyptian civil ranks and decorations, and newspapers were some of the areas that attracted their attention. In April 1912 Kitchener wrote laconi¬ cally to Wingate that ‘The Wad en Nil [newspaper] made some bad remarks about the Anuak Patrol tending to create a want of discipline in the army so I have had the paper suppressed’.67 Whereas Gorst had arranged the opening of Port Sudan as an ‘Egyptian show’, a brief visit there in 1911 by King George V was quite the opposite: ‘neither the King nor Lord Kitchener . . . said anything to the Khedive about the King’s visit, as they’ did ‘not wish him to be present’.68 A large number of Sudanese notables were present, however, and Wingate hoped that the king’s personal attention would show them that they were ‘more or less a part of the British Empire’.69 The visit was heavily publicised at considerable expense to the

Empire on the Nile

54

Sudan Government, and was commemorated annually as ‘King’s Day’.70 But when Wingate began to hint at the advantages that would accrue from the creation of a separate ‘Sudan Army’, in 1912, and even about something as apparently innocuous as ‘the independence of the Sudan in Postal affairs’, the residency would not hear of it.71 Despite

Kitchener’s

and

Wingate’s

general

agreement,

the

pre¬

dominance of British interests in Egypt continued to cause difficulties. In 1913 Kitchener, to deter crime in Egypt, insisted on supplying the Sudan Government with Egyptian convict labour for the Gezira works, despite Wingate’s objections that he neither needed nor wanted it and there would be little or no saving involved.72 Not until after Kitchener’s death in 1916 did Wingate make a determined objection: ‘I consented to the present arrangement’, he told Bernard, ‘principally because Lord Kitchener appealed to me to help him.. . . Now that our old chief is gone and that the personal aspect of the question no longer carries the weight it did, I trust you will do all you personally can to get matters put onto a proper basis.’73 Kitchener’s boredom with administration could be advantageous or detrimental to Sudan government interests. It was difficult to attract his attention even to essential business, and Wingate went so far as to complain that Kitchener was not faithfully executing his duties.74 When they met, however, Wingate consulted Kitchener freely on a wide range of subjects. A typical aide memoire includes cotton growing, concessions, ‘Abyssinian Questions’, patrols, southern administration, surveys, missionary matters, ‘Church and State Questions’, Port Sudan customs, officials’ housing, special grants for various projects, the British garrison, other army matters, decorations, council affairs, laws, a statue of Kitchener to be erected in Khartoum, road works, cattle transport, medical matters, the arrest of a German fugitive, ‘Princess Pless and Duchess of Westminster’, rubber plantation, the annual report, a telegraph convention with Eritrea, person¬ nel matters, and his date of leave. Most of these items were routine and of no concern to Kitchener. But when his interest was raised he was adamant: when in 1913 Wingate suggested that £15,000 be taken from the Gordon College endowment fund to build housing for college officials, Kitchener reacted sharply and the matter was dropped.75 Wingate’s chief complaint about Kitchener, as it was with Cairo officials generally, was that they continued to see the Sudan as ‘a Province of Egypt or a Department like the Police’.76

THE PRINCIPAL OFFICES OF THE SUDAN GOVERNMENT

In the beginning of the Condominium, several government departments had their headquarters in Cairo; eventually all but one of these moved to

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

5^

Khartoum. The exception was the Sudan Agency, the liaison office between the Sudan Government and both the British representative in Cairo and the Egyptian government. In the early years of its existence the agency underwent a number of changes, and it was only after the retire¬ ment of Lord Cromer that it took on an important role. The Sudan Agency evolved from the Egyptian Army’s department of military intelligence, which Wingate had headed until after the AngloEgyptian conquest. The first man to be designated Sudan Agent was Count Gleichen, an officer who had served in the Dongola campaign and was a personal friend of Wingate and a cousin of Queen Victoria. Some con¬ fusion surrounds his appointment. This, as assistant civil secretary and Sudan Agent, Cairo, was announced in the Sudan Gazette of i March 1901, but was later dated as from 17 February. The Gazette of 1 January 1902 announced his appointment as Sudan Agent, Cairo, and director of intelligence. From 1 December 1903 he was called agent general,77 but without any apparent change in his duties. At the time of his first appointment Gleichen was uncertain about what those duties were: he assumed the post was ‘a sort of collecting-Sudanese-information-andpassing-it-on sort of billet’,78 and it was largely as an information officer that he seems to have occupied himself, preparing a two-volume com¬ pendium on the Sudan, and other publications.79 Gleichen was succeeded as agent general and director of intelligence by another friend of Wingate and former aide-de-camp to Kitchener, Lord Edward Cecil, son of the late prime minister, Lord Salisbury. Wingate referred to him as ‘the most capable and wide-minded officer’ he had, in whom he placed ‘complete confidence’. Cecil wrote to his family describ¬ ing his duties: ‘I am Foreign Affairs, Board of Trade and have a roving commission to advise H.E. on any points. ... I have also the Intelligence work and a weird little kingdom of my own called the Sinai Peninsula.’80 When Cecil decided in 1905 to take up a post in the ministry of finance, Wingate wrote to Cromer that they would both ‘miss him greatly in his position as intermediary and the exponent of my views to the Agency’, and he proposed to appoint as his successor R. C. R. Owen, in whom Cromer had recently expressed satisfaction.81 Cecil endorsed the choice: Owen was ‘an excellent intelligence officer’ who would ‘be fully trained when the real difficulties of the Sudan’ began, ‘i.e. when Gorst [appeared] on the scene’.82 Before leaving office Cecil commended Owen’s work, but warned that in future trade, not ‘Politics and intelligence’, would be ‘the most important thing in this Office’.83 Cecil continued to supply information to Wingate on a private basis. On his resignation the title of Agent General was abolished, and Owen was appointed as acting Sudan Agent and acting director of intelligence.84 These titles were held by his successors until the

^

Empire on the Nile

dual appointment was split in 1920 and the director of intelligence was stationed permanently in Khartoum. Before 1920 the intelligence depart¬ ment in the Sudan was nominally under an assistant director. The duties of the Sudan Agent evolved over the years as a result of administrative requirements, convenience, financial constraints, and the relative force of personalities. A 1903 memorandum enumerated his responsibilities. He was ‘the channel of communication between the outer world and the Civil Administration of the Sudan Government represented by the office of the Civil Secretary, Khartoum’. All ‘communications regarding the commercial and economic development of the country’ were to ‘pass through’ his office. He was the liaison between the Sudan Government and the Egyptian government, the British Army, and the agent and consul-general, ‘except on purely financial matters’. He should deal with personnel matters, keeping a register of applicants for employ¬ ment, and would make some minor appointments himself.85 In 1904, ‘in order to represent the Sirdar during his absence in the Sudan, the Agent General’s office’ was ‘combined with the appointment of Senior Military Officer, Egypt’, thus putting him ‘in supreme command of all troops in Egypt’. This arrangement did not endure, because of Cecil’s insufficient seniority. In 1907 the Sudan Agency was separated from the civil sec¬ retary’s department and the agent was made ‘a member of the Governor General’s personal staff and under his direct orders’.86 From Wingate’s point of view the most important duty of the Sudan Agent was to be his eyes and ears in Cairo. As long as Cromer carried on a detailed correspondence with Wingate there was little scope for the agent’s intermediary role, but Wingate needed an independent source of news in Cairo. After Cromer’s retirement the Sudan Agent retained the role of the governor-general’s man at court, and his duties as a liaison officer increased. Owen’s successors were men of ability and tact, trusted con¬ fidants of the governor-general. It was no coincidence that three of Wingate’s five agents in Cairo had served previously as his private secretary. During Lee Stack’s term at the agency (1908-14) its functions were formally redefined. It became a separate department of the Sudan Government, with which other departments and the provinces were to communicate directly. The intelligence department was separated from it. Because these changes implied a greater degree of independence for the Sudan, Wingate did not publish them, but communicated them ‘confiden¬ tially’ to those who needed to know. His decision to ‘use the Sudan Agent in preference to the Financial Secretary’ also enhanced the post’s prestige. Stack was a good choice to fulfil the expanded duties of Sudan Agent. An excellent staff officer, he had definite views that he frankly expressed, but was loyal and trustworthy. Tact and a sense of humour served him well as

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

57

the intermediary between Wingate on the one hand and Gorst and Kitchener on the other. As direct control of Sudan affairs from Cairo lessened, the Sudan Government had a greater need for accurate informa¬ tion from Cairo and a competent spokesman there. The posts of financial secretary, legal secretary, and civil secretary, all established during the Kitchener regime, became the most important under the governor-general. The development of the legal and civil secretaryships was gradual and depended a great deal on the personalities of the incum¬ bents and their relations with other officials. From the beginning of Wingate’s governor-generalship, however, the financial secretaryship was an important post, invested with great powers by Cromer’s Financial Regulations. E. E. Bernard’s relations with Wingate and other officials were strained, partly because of the way he used those powers, partly because he was an ‘outsider’ in the small world of Anglo-Egyptian officialdom. Although he was criticised for being too exacting and miserly (not unusual for a holder of such a post), there was no overt challenge to his stewardship until after the first world war, and he was finally dismissed in 1922. The unmistakable strain of chauvinism in Wingate’s and others’ references to Bernard leads to the conclusion that much of the hostility towards him was the result of prejudice. In 1905 Wingate told Cromer that he was ‘almost’ the only supporter Bernard had: ‘I long ago recognised his sterling financial qualities but of course his methods and his natal origin have been against him and you know far better than I do how difficult it is to get the average English gentleman to submit to somewhat Levantine methods. . . . You will find Cecil one of his strongest opponents.’ Indeed, Cecil referred to Bernard and ‘his race’ repeatedly,87 but Wingate was little better, criticising (to Cecil) ‘the error of Bernard (et hoc genus omne) in going for an immediate small profit’. Wingate said Bernard was ‘a man of great ambition - apparently in sublime ignorance of the fact that, as a Maltese, he would not be tolerated by the British officers and officials in higher positions . . . which would give him ... a “command” over them’. When Bernard was made a pasha, P. R. Phipps commented that the promotion had ‘given one man intense satisfaction’. Even Slatin referred to Bernard as the ‘Maltese Cross’.88 Wingate’s distrust of Bernard exacerbated difficulties inherent in the tight Financial Regulations, even after the resignation of Cromer. When Harvey attempted to interfere in the allocation of funds for the technical departments of the Sudan Government, Wingate suspected that he had been ‘aided and abetted’ by Bernard,89 and concluded that he would in future ‘use’ the Sudan Agent rather than Bernard as the channel of communication with the Egyptian government in ‘all matters in which administration is mixed up with Finance’, since otherwise such matters

58

Empire on the Nile

were unduly influenced by Bernard.90 Wingate entertained the hope of getting rid of Bernard at the end of the latter’s ten-year secondment from the army, but in 1910 he agreed to his permanent transfer to the Sudan Government.91 Relations between them remained difficult throughout Gorst’s and Kitchener’s terms of office. Indeed, in 1912 Wingate told Cecil: ‘I am afraid that “Ikey” is at his old game of getting behind me to the Agency and I am naturally determined that his Dago methods shall not upset my relations with our present Chief - as he succeeded in doing with Lord Cromer.’92 As late as 1913 most of the financial secretary’s office staff were in Cairo, where Bernard spent most of his time. Wingate wanted him in Khartoum,93 where he might be more easily controlled, but he was unable to insist because budgetary and administrative matters required the financial sec¬ retary’s close contact with authorities in Cairo. By April 1914, however, Wingate believed he was at last on the verge of subordinating the financial secretary. He told Stack that Kitchener understood ‘the disabilities of the Sudan Government in so far as its Financial Secretary’ was concerned, and he hoped that Cairo might be persuaded that the ‘anomalous position of the Financial Secretary’ should be changed by ‘an alteration of the present Financial Regulations’.94 That hope was a minor casualty of the world war. Whereas the financial secretary’s powers were stipulated in the Financial Regulations, the functions of the civil secretaryship were not so defined, and the post tended to accrue responsibilities that were not conveniently assignable elsewhere. Under Kitchener the civil secretary dealt with the army’s civil administration, as a counterpart to the sirdar’s military secretary, and there is little to indicate that Wingate initially had any greater role in mind. His appointment of a senior officer, H. W. Jackson, was probably dictated by personal concerns: Jackson had served in Egypt and the Sudan for over sixteen years, had mastered Arabic, and possessed ‘an influence with the Sudanese troops’ that ‘no other Englishman’ could challenge,95 as his services during the Omdurman mutiny had shown. In the aftermath of that affair, Wingate probably wished to have him readily available in the capital, where he was appointed also as deputy governor-general. It is difficult to detect any impact Jackson may have made on the embryonic civil secretaryship. As an administrator he has been judged ‘ponderous and slow (though careful) in his methods of work . . . and apt to fuss over details’.96 He held office for only about a year before the ‘Jackson incident’ occurred and he was demoted to a provincial governor¬ ship. Details of this remain obscure. One version tells of Jackson’s despatch of a telegram disparaging Slatin, and of Wingate’s anger upon learning of it.97 Wingate accused Jackson of disloyalty and ‘banished’ him

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

59

to Berber as governor, a post he held for about six months before his transfer to Dongola. Jackson may have been saved from worse by Cromer’s intervention.45 The episode raises a question about Wingate’s methods: did he use this incident to remove a potential rival? Jackson had enormous prestige in the army, and there was ‘no doubt that the sympathies of all the army, British and Egyptian’ were with him, Cromer said. In later years Cecil confided that Wingate had ‘always, as a matter of policy, got rid of any strong man who was near him’. Wingate’s eagerness to remove Maxwell is a case in point; his insistence on the combination of the sirdarship and governor-generalship precluded the emergence of a civilian rival. Even someone as mild-mannered as Stack could write, shortly after Wingate became high commissioner in Cairo: ‘It looks as if, like [in] the Sudan, the elimination of the outstanding personages around him was beginning.’99 The idea that Wingate surrounded himself with mediocre lieutenants finds some support in his appointments to the civil secretaryship. Probably because of the confusion surrounding the ‘Jackson incident’, Gleichen, the Sudan Agent, who was already an assistant civil secretary, was named civil secretary on io November 1901, obviously as a temporary measure. The succession of Colonel F. J. Nason was announced in the Sudan Gazette of 1 January 1902.100 Nason enjoyed Wingate’s confidence and advised him informally on the whole range of civil and military affairs, but apparently acted, as had Jackson, mainly as a director of personnel. Wingate evidently had no high opinion of the civil secretaryship in any case: a year after Nason’s appointment his assistant, D. K. E. Hall Bey, and the two deputy assistants, A. C. Parker and C. James, were all men of no administrative experience.101 P. R. Phipps had ‘performed the duties’ of assistant civil secretary from 1 September 1902 until the end of that year,102 when Wingate appointed him private secretary. While assistant civil secretary, Phipps, according to one observer, had been ‘responsible for the proper running of the machine’.103 In making this and other appointments Wingate was con¬ strained by the military character of the regime, which required that he observe rules of seniority. It was, for example, probably a consideration of seniority that prompted the substitution in November 1903 of the title secretary-general for civil secretary.104 Nason retained the post without an increase of responsibility, but the change gave him precedence over the legal secretary (a civilian) and the financial secretary (Bernard). How much of the civil secretary’s business was conducted by the Sudan Agent in Cairo who, until 1903, was also an assistant civil secretary, is unknown. He apparently had responsibility for the recruitment of some personnel.105 The civil secretary supervised provincial administration

6o

Empire on the Nile

generally, but was not the sole channel of communication between the provinces and the central government.106 Governors were expected to refer directly to other departments any matters that concerned them. Thus budget estimates, tax returns, monthly accounts, and so forth were sent directly to the financial secretary; police reports to the inspector of prisons; supply accounts to the controller of stores; and so forth. On i January 1905 the controller’s department and inspector of prisons and police department were abolished, and their functions taken up respec¬ tively by a stores section and a prisons and police section, under an assistant secretary, of the secretary-general’s department.107 The department dealt with pump schemes, famine relief, most aspects of personnel, including military personnel. During Nason’s term of office the department’s duties were increased to include the conduct of Arabic and law examinations for British officials, and their transfer for health reasons. The supervision of markets, recording of prices, and even ‘rain reports’ came under the secretary-general’s jurisdiction.108 Nason left the Sudan Government in April 1905, and was succeeded by Phipps, ‘but owing to P. being a comparatively junior man’, he was named civil secretary. Wingate thought that ‘this change of nomenclature’ would be ‘very popular on the civil side’,109 and would ‘prevent the other secretaries from thinking that the Civil Secretary’ was ‘in any way their superior’.110 In any case, it was ‘a distinction without a difference’.111 Views of Phipps’s term as civil secretary differ. One holds that Phipps ‘failed to gain much respect owing to the weakness of his character’,112 another that he was ‘efficient and well-liked but no empire-builder’.113 There are several reasons for the relatively slight impression made by Phipps’s long secretaryship. First, in ‘domestic policy’ generally, Slatin Pasha, the inspector-general, reigned supreme, affording much less scope for policy-making than there would later be. Secondly, although the civil secretary was a liaison officer between Khartoum and the provinces, the governors enjoyed a fair degree of independence and many were personal friends of Wingate who dealt with him directly. Thirdly, the government’s poor organisation demanded the civil secretary’s deep involvement in a mass of routine bureaucratic work. Finally, the ‘policy’ of the Sudan Government up to the first world war had largely been settled by Cromer and Wingate before Phipps took office. A voice crying out in the confusion that plagued the central government, he attempted to rationalise and speed its business. He played an important part in the development of inter¬ departmental committees and in the establishment of the governorgeneral’s council in 1910. The third of the ‘three secretaries’, Edgar Bonham Carter, the legal secretary, was appointed in 1899. We have already noted the promulgation

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

61

of the Sudan Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure, which had been drafted in Cairo and based on Indian models. The Code of Criminal Procedure had been adapted to the ‘forms and methods of Egyptian military law’ because the local magistrates enforcing it were all at first army officers.114 Bonham Carter himself drafted The Civil Justice Ordinance, promulgated in 1900, having based it on the Indian Civil Procedure Code ‘as adapted in Burma’.115 Under the legal secretary, who was the governorgeneral’s legal adviser and responsible generally for the drafting of laws and the supervision of the system of justice, were civil judges, all British. The first of these, Wasey Sterry, was appointed in May 1901. To staff the country with qualified British judges was impossible, and the great bulk of cases were heard by administrative officials. Ma’murs and some other nonBritish officials were third-class magistrates, while all inspectors and some other officials were magistrates of the second class. Governors and some inspectors were first-class magistrates. Until the promulgation in 1905 of The Magisterial and Police Powers Ordinance, only military officers could be magistrates. At the provincial level each governor presided over a firstclass court with full powers, while second- and third-class courts could hear only specified cases and award limited punishments.116 Most of the population remained subject to customary or Shari'a law. Cromer’s statement in the annual Report for 1901 that ‘the whole of the Soudan’, except Fashoda and the Bahr al-Ghazal, was ‘subject to civil justice’, was highly misleading. The work of the legal department in the period up to 1914 was not mainly a series of creative acts. The bulk of its work involved the framing and amendment of routine ordinances; coming to grips with the com¬ plexity of the problems surrounding land tenure; and establishing and supervising the mechanisms of a state legal system. The Sudan Moham¬ medan Law Courts Ordinance of 1902 established a central Islamic court of three members, the Grand Kadi (Qadi), the mufti, and another judge. Minor Shari'a courts were presided over by a qadi. These courts dealt with matters affecting the personal status of Muslims, and other cases in which the litigants agreed to accept their jurisdiction.117 There were inevitably disputes concerning the jurisdiction of different courts, but no serious difficulty until the introduction of Native Administration in the late 1920s. The shortage of trained qadis in the provinces resulted in the settlement by British inspectors of cases that would have been referred to Shari'a courts. The posts in the Islamic judicial hierarchy went initially to Egyptians, that of mufti to a Sudanese, Shaykh al-Tayyib Ahmad Hashim. The first Grand Kadi was Shaykh Muhammad Shakir, who was succeeded in 1904 by Shaykh Muhammad Harun. In 1908 Shaykh Muhammad Mustafa alMaraghi became Grand Kadi, and he held the post until 1919.

6z

Empire on the Nile

In Wingate’s view the law was subordinate to the administration, and he took little interest in legal affairs. Bonham Carter became a personal friend and seems to have been immune to the criticism that was directed towards him. In 1905 Cecil offered this opinion: ‘Bonham may be a good lawyer but he is awfully slow. No patent laws, no marriage laws, no quarantine ordinance. I honestly wish . . . that you had a better Legal Secretary. His knowledge of the international side of Sudan politics is nil as far as I can see and half our big legislation touches our foreign relations.’118 Bonham Carter acquired the reputation of an amiable plodder, but Wingate did not care, valuing his legal secretary’s friendship and advice more than his efficiency. The importance of personal relations during Wingate’s governorgeneralship is most evident in the case of the inspector:general, Sir Rudolf von Slatin Pasha. Following his escape from Omdurman in 189 5, Slatin had become Wingate’s assistant in the Egyptian Army’s intelligence depart¬ ment. The publication of Fire and sword in the Sudan and the press coverage of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest made him a celebrity. During the campaign, however, he became convinced that Kitchener disliked him, and in February 1899 he retired from the army. On becoming governorgeneral, Wingate offered to create a post for him, and Cromer told Salisbury that he was ‘suggesting to Wingate that Slatin’s services might perhaps be utilized’. This was arranged during the summer of 1900, and on 25 September Slatin was appointed inspector-general of the Sudan.119 Wingate viewed Slatin’s official role as that of personal liaison officer with the leading Sudanese and adviser on ‘native affairs’. Slatin certainly had a more intimate knowledge of the Northern Sudan, its peoples and leading personages than any other government official. His reputation as an expert, and Wingate’s friendship and constant support, gave great weight to his views but insulated him from the criticism that, as others gained experience, could have contributed a balancing effect. In his long years as a servant of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi Slatin had not only learned a great deal about the ways of the Sudan, he had also, naturally enough, acquired grievances and formed biases that, when he returned to office, he did not forget. Excepting Cromer and Wingate, Slatin had a greater hand in the political affairs of the Sudan between 1900 and 1914 than anyone else. During his term in office some of the policies he championed outlived their usefulness, but it was only after his departure in 1914 that they were reformed. In 1902 Slatin’s duties were defined in a document drafted by him and amended by Wingate. This was phrased very vaguely, indicating the great latitude Slatin was to enjoy and perhaps also the difficulty in stating precise reasons for his appointment at all. He was to advise the governor-general

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

63

regarding laws and ordinances; ‘acquire full information’ about the ‘general situation’ of the Sudan, and inspect districts as necessary. He should ‘acquaint himself with the names and characters of the principal Sheikhs and other persons’ who had ‘influence over the natives’. He was to inspect and report on officers of government, but not to issue direct orders to any provincial official except in emergencies. His opinion on ‘Legal cases involving native religious or political matters’ should be solicited by the legal secretary ‘before a decision’ was reached, and he was to keep ‘in touch with the Board of Ulemas [szc] and the principal religious leaders’. The inspector-general was expected to ‘give his opinion’ on ‘matters of taxation and especially on all questions connected with Nomad Arab tribes’. So that he could carry out these multifarious duties, ‘all Govern¬ ment officials’ should supply him with any information in their possession ‘that he might’ call for.120 Interpreted broadly, Slatin’s duties encompassed most aspects of administration. He appointed tribal leaders in the name of the government, often men of his own acquaintance over those preferred by local British officials.121 In general Slatin favoured the restoration of traditional values of tribal authority. In religious affairs he was suspicious of the leaders of popular Islam, sufi shaykhs and especially itinerant fakis. His hostility towards Mahdists, especially the family of the Mahdi, was obvious. Slatin’s approach to Wingate was as direct as his dealings with minor officials. In 1901 he told the governor-general: ‘I am as you know “a little obstinate” and I think it is always the best to give yon my opinion straight.’122 Throughout his term as inspector-general Slatin was the actual head of the intelligence department. Although the Sudan Agent was nominally director of intelligence, his duties in this connection were minor, and most of the department’s work was in the Sudan, where it was (again only nominally) headed by an assistant director. No alteration was made to these arrangements until after Slatin’s resignation. His tours of inspection, his personal methods, and his friendship with Wingate kept Slatin informed and able to offer useful advice, but the intelligence department required organisation and direction that it was never to have under the informal, improvised Slatin regime. As C. A. Willis, director of intelligence from 1920 to 1926, later said, ‘any questions requiring expert knowledge tended to be referred to, and decided by, him [Slatin] rather than the department’. This meant that the department was left with routine office work: producing handbooks and reports, entertaining notables (foreign and Sudanese), keeping records, and acting as an information office. Even in this restricted sphere its work could have political repercussions. No one was more sensitive to the importance of managing information than Wingate. When in 1908 Owen included in a report for London the details

64

Empire on the Nile

of a punitive patrol, Wingate remarked that it was ‘of the greatest importance to carefully supervise what [was] sent home. It must be remembered’, he wrote, ‘that the Intelligence Department is not merely a news collection department but also, to a considerable extent, a political department.’123 Slatin’s exercise of diverse and sweeping powers was bound to create tension with other officials, especially in the provinces, who resented his pre-eminence, interference, and methods. His nationality and background contributed to the tension. The prejudices of the British officer class against Bernard, a Maltese Catholic, were not of the type entirely to except Slatin, an Austrian of Jewish ancestry. Wingate’s patronage made all the difference. Slatin enjoyed better relations with British officers than with civilian officials, but even with the former there were (difficulties. Wingate confided to his diary in 1904: ‘Slatin and Nason had a somewhat acrimonious dispute last night about the qualities of the semi-civilized and the non-civilized black. ... It all shows how difficult the Slatin arrange¬ ment is - and how an Englishman cannot ever quite hit it off with a foreigner.’124 The difficulty of the ‘Slatin arrangement’ is well illustrated by a letter he wrote to Wingate in 1903 while touring Kassala Province. Henry, the governor, had accepted Slatin’s advice, but complained that his position was subverted because the Sudanese looked to the famous Slatin Pasha to redress their grievances or intervene on their behalf. Slatin concluded: ‘I tell the people that the Mudir is coming behind and that they have also to explain to him their cases. After hearing them he may perhaps consult me - but any how he has to decide.’ He was less tolerant of civilian officials. In 1908 he argued against the appointment of Kerr, a civilian, as governor of the Red Sea Province: ‘6 years and 8 months are too a [sic] short time to rise from a young schoolmaster to a Governor of a province,’ he wrote. In holding that it was ‘too early to begin to appoint Civilians in our highest posts’,125 Slatin’s view conformed with that of his British military colleagues. Despite his great influence Slatin often complained that his views had not been solicited or his advice had not been heeded. In 1908 he threatened to resign when his advice after a local rebellion was rejected (see p. 126). But although he was consulted in most areas of policy, there is little evidence that his views differed widely from Wingate’s, and to some extent Wingate used Slatin’s name and exalted reputation to support his own views in dealing with Cairo and London. About Slatin’s indispensability Wingate protested too much. In 1908 he wrote that he had ‘received some rather serious complaints from Slatin Pasha that he receives practically no information direct from the Intelligence Office in regard to various matters on which his opinion is of course of very great weight’. In 1911 Wingate

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

Fig. 5

65

Sir Rudolf von Slatin (1857-1932) in old age

reminded G. S. Symes, who had drafted a handbook on the Bahr al-Ghazal, that he had ‘omitted Slatin’s “Fire and Sword’” from the bibliography, ‘and . . . when he sees this omission he will naturally feel hurt’. Symes was told to ‘Be careful to let Slatin see all the Historical portion of your handbook before you send it to the Press’,126 even though Slatin’s expertise certainly did not extend to the Southern Sudan, as Wingate had occasion to know.127 Wingate was at pains, during the last few years of Slatin’s inspector-generalship, to find enough for him to do. In 1911 he told Stack that ‘the climate [was] really beginning to tell on’ Slatin, and he had ‘urged him to take at least five months leave every year’. This was, he said, the only

66

Empire on the Nile

way the government could ‘retain his services which . . . [were] quite invaluable’.128 In February 1913 Wingate nominated Slatin to head a committee to oversee arrangements for the Gezira loans,129 despite Slatin’s poor reputation in financial matters and the already great burden sup¬ posedly imposed by his formal duties. A Foreign Office expert wrote privately in 1912: ‘Slatin has now really nothing to do in the Sudan. His post of “inspector genl.” is in reality superfluous. (All the provincial governors in the Sudan have grown in the last dozen years quite capable of running their own jobs, and in fact rather resent Slatin’s nominal “inspec¬ tions” which are at the same time sometimes interesting sporting trips. The post of Inspector Genl. will probably not be renewed when Slatin goes.)’130 As provincial administrators gained experience and their government became more routine and bureaucratic; and as tribal and religious leader¬ ship passed to a new generation, the inspector-general became something of an anachronism. He was still the best host in Khartoum, ready to regale tourists and newly joined officials with tales of Gordon and the Mahdi, and he still travelled. But when at the outbreak of the world war Slatin could not return to the Sudan, the inspector-generalship lapsed, not so much because no one could replace him, but because there was very little work left to do. One other important post in the central administration may be briefly described. The private secretary to the governor-general was more than simply the head of his private office. The reports and returns of governors and heads of departments reached the governor-general through this official, and he often drafted replies, minutes, proclamations, and so forth. It has been difficult to determine when the office of private secretary, socalled, came into existence and who held it before 1903. An officer named Bailey served for a period before then. Phipps was appointed private secretary on 1 January 1903 and was succeeded by Stack in December 1904. Gilbert Clayton succeeded him in February 1908 and served until April 1914 when he was succeeded by Symes, who held the post until Wingate’s appointment as high commissioner in Egypt at the end of 1916. At the time of Phipps’s appointment Wingate said that what he wanted in a private secretary was ‘a fairly senior officer ... in the closest touch with everything - civil or military’,131 and in practice the private secretary acted as an assistant to the governor-general. Wingate was verbose and unsystematic; he rarely minuted his comments on a report, but instead dictated or wrote lengthy replies, often in the form of personal letters. This could give rise to confusion. An examination of his correspondence shows the following classifications typed or written across the tops of letters: ‘private’, ‘very private’, ‘strictly private’, ‘private and secret’, ‘private and personal’, ‘strictly private and personal’, ‘private and

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

67

confidential’, ‘strictly private and confidential’, ‘very private and personal’, ‘secret’, ‘secret and private’, ‘secret and personal’, ‘personal’, ‘personal and confidential’, ‘personal and decipher yourself’, ‘confidential’, ‘very con¬ fidential’, ‘urgent’, ‘urgent and personal’, and finally, the use of Solomon’s seal in letters to Clayton, to indicate a message for his eyes only. Wingate once referred to a letter as ‘more or less semi-official’. Clearly the private secretary had to be someone who was trusted completely, knew Wingate’s mind, was skilled at organisation and willing to work hard. The private secretaryship always led to a higher post, usually to another where Wingate needed a confidential and resourceful subordinate. Stack and Clayton both became Sudan Agent and, though the point should not be exaggerated, two of Wingate’s five known private secretaries, Stack and Symes, later became governor-general. During Wingate’s governor-generalship, as revenue increased and the country was more closely administered, government departments proli¬ ferated. Some grew up within others before assuming independence, some were originally departments of the Egyptian Army that were transferred. It is noteworthy, moreover, that a ‘department’ might consist of one or two British officers and a few Egyptian or Syrian clerks, and the mere existence of a department can therefore be misleading. In December 1901, for example, the education, game preservation, and prisons departments had but one British official each, the legal secretary’s, stores, and posts and telegraphs departments had only two each.132 Certain departments, however, played important parts in the political history of the period.

SUDAN GOVERNMENT COMMITTEES AND THE governor-general’s COUNCIL

Many questions of policy did not fall clearly within the ambit of a single department. To deal with these a number of committees were established. Some had clearly defined terms of reference, others dealt with a wide variety of issues. While Wingate favoured consultation, he was jealous of his authority, and before the establishment of the governor-general’s council in 1910 no committee even approached executive status. The council itself, under Wingate, was purely advisory. In 1902 a Sanitary Board was established to oversee procedures in ‘The Three Towns’ of Khartoum, Omdurman, and Khartoum North. This committee consisted originally of the director of works, the senior medical officer, the governor of Khartoum Province, the controller, and the civil secretary. In 1905 a Central Sanitary Board was formed, with a wider membership, ‘To advise the Government on the General Medical and Sanitary Policy to be pursued, as well as all important questions of Public

68

Empire on the Nile

Health, such as the Outbreak of an Epidemic’, medical and sanitary development schemes, and on the budget proposals of the medical depart¬ ment. In May 1905 a Commission to Investigate Sleeping Sickness, under the presidency of the director of the medical department, was established.133 In 1903 a permanent committee to allot building sites, offices, and quarters in the Three Towns was formed, representing both the army and the government. Later called the Khartoum Town Improvement and Allotment Board, its composition was altered frequently as government reorganisation and changes in personnel dictated.134 A permanent commit¬ tee for game laws matters (the legal secretary, assistant civil secretary, and superintendent of the game preservation department) was established in 1902.135 Other specialised advisory committees included the permanent archaeological committee and a permanent committee to advise the governor-general on matters ‘connected with Missionary enterprise’. In informing Phipps of his intention to establish the latter body Wingate pointed out that ‘Its functions will be much the same as those of the Permanent Archaeological Committee, i.e. they will only assemble when the Governor General wishes for an expert opinion’.136 To these commit¬ tees were later added the Khartoum Museum Board, the River Board, a Roads and Communications Board, a Purchase of Land by Government Officials Board, the Civil Secretary’s Promotion Board (later called the Permanent Committee on Pay and Promotions), a civil service selection committee, and a host of other bodies.137 As early as 1904 Wingate saw the need for wider advisory bodies to deal with general matters of policy, and two ‘consultative committees’ were established under his presidency. The first of these, consisting of the three secretaries, Slatin, and the agent-general, was ‘To consider such matters of an executive nature (including proposals for legislation) as the Governor General may from time to time decide to lay before it’. This committee was to meet weekly. A second committee, consisting of the three secretaries, Slatin, the controller, the director of woods and forests, the chief judge, the director of education, the director of surveys, the agent-general, and all province governors was to meet monthly, ‘To consider all such legislation and general regulations as the Governor-General may from time to time lay before it’.138 Obviously most of the committee’s members (the gov¬ ernors) would be unable to attend, and it is likely that the establishment of these committees and their general terms of reference represented mainly an attempt to formalise a degree of consultation that already existed. In 1908 an advance was made with the foundation of the Central Government Board. There were two main reasons for its establishment: increasing confusion within the central administration, and Wingate’s

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

69

desire for insulation against criticism from both his superiors (in Cairo and London) and his subordinates. In June Phipps, the civil secretary, told him: These present arrangements cannot go on: there is no elasticity and no reserve of any kind. I’ve had a talk with Bonham. His work is hopelessly behind and he knows he is dreadfully slow. I only keep my head above water by absolute slavery, and it is more by luck than good management we have so few mistakes in our work. But it can’t go on - the service must suffer; there is no time to consider any question: it is a case of taking up your pen, writing quickly and chancing doing the right thing. We must have a sort of Governor General in Council arrangement and every odd, unusual, or unlegislated question must come before [it]. This Council should sit regularly. As it is we are so few in number [and] there are so many Committees that there is considerable overlapping.139

This plea was made at a time when Wingate was under great pressure over the Wad Habuba incident (see pp. 125ff); Cairo and London insisted on leniency, while Sudan Government officials were strongly advising Wingate to resist, even to the point of resignation. If there had been a ‘Governor General in Council arrangement’ Wingate could have presented Cairo with a formal expression of his government’s unanimity, while the council bore the brunt of his superiors’ criticism. Wingate was confident that the Central Government Board would ‘save a great deal of trouble and unnecessary friction, and at the same time . . . keep the Heads of Depart¬ ments in thorough touch with the difficulties of Government whatever they may be’.140 Details of the board’s deliberations are sketchy, but it evidently had little impact. An example of its utility to Wingate was its ‘absolutely unanimous’ view in November 1908 regarding a medical service reorganisation that involved disagreeable personal matters.141 Parallel to the Central Government Board was the Central Economic Board, established in June 1906 under the presidency of the financial secretary. Appointments to the board were all made directly by the governor-general: there were no ex officio members. The board considered any question dealing with economic or commercial matters referred for discussion by the governor-general or any of its members. The board published regular reports and was intended to act as a ‘Commercial Intelligence Branch of the Government’. It too was purely advisory.142 Wingate was on guard against any committee’s acquiring an executive role. In 1911 he warned Phipps: ‘It must be distinctly understood that the Permanent Selection Board is a purely Advisory Board and that I alto¬ gether refuse to tie my hands in any way whatever in regard to what I shall or shall not place before it.’ In 1913 Willis wrote that the Promotion Board had ‘died, because Wingate disregarded it, so the members withdrew’.143 The boards and committees saved Wingate from the trouble of expressing his own views: when in 1912-13 a suggestion was made that Maltese

7°

Empire on the Nile

workers might be attracted as colonists in the Gezira, Wingate was able to blame the Central Economic Board, and specifically, ‘in strict confidence’, Bernard, for having rejected a suggestion he would not for a moment have countenanced himself.144 The most important step forward in creating a formal process of consultation was the establishment in 1910 of the governor-general’s council. In the summer of 1909 Wingate corresponded with Stack and Clayton on the subject, and in October Gorst recommended the creation of ‘an executive legislative council on the lines of the Viceroy’s Council in India’.145 By the terms of The Governor-General’s Council Ordinance of 1910, it was composed of the three secretaries, the inspector-general, and between two and four other members to be named by the governorgeneral. A Foreign Office suggestion that the council should have ‘a native member’ was rejected by Wingate ‘for the simple reason that there are no such people in the Soudan suitable to occupy a seat on the Council; nor are there likely to be for a long time to come’.146 Wingate also decided that the chief judge, who had been a member of the Central Government Board, was not eligible for appointment to the council, on the curious grounds that ‘some of its decisions might well come before him in his judicial capacity’.147 More importantly, Wingate may have wished to ensure a large majority of military over civilian members, or simply to exclude Sterry, the chief judge, who was one of the most outspoken civilians in the government. The Governor-General’s Council Ordinance stipulated that ordinances, laws, regulations, and the annual budget should be brought before the council for approval by a majority vote, the governor-general having a ‘second or casting vote’ in the case of a tie. Although the governor-general could overrule any council decision (in which case he must record his reasons), Wingate was reluctant to use that power. In 1912, when he planned to remove the customs department from Port Sudan to Khartoum, Wingate worried that Bernard, who opposed the move, might carry the council with him, and thus ‘create a most unpleasant situation . . . tan¬ tamount to a definite defeat of a scheme’ which he considered important.148 The council was empowered to decide its own rules of procedure. At its first meeting a select committee (Bonham Carter, Phipps, and Asser, the adjutant-general) was appointed to do this. Under those rules, the gov¬ ernor-general convened meetings of the council and determined the agenda. Members could refer only matters connected with their own areas of responsibility. A rule allowing provincial governors to bring matters to the council was passed, but after Phipps objected to Wingate that this was not ‘in the interests of discipline’, and that he, as civil secretary, represented the governors, the rule was changed and the governor-general’s special permission was required before a governor could refer to the council.149

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

71

It is evident that Wingate had no intention of permitting the council to acquire more than an advisory capacity. In 1910 it convened twenty-five times, but in 1916, the last year of Wingate’s governor-generalship, it met only four times. Wingate attended fewer than half the council meetings during his administration. He continued to consult council members personally and to form other advisory committees. In his dealings with Cairo the council was useful, and as long as the governor-general retained his authority the council was no threat to him. It was only under Wingate’s successors, Stack and Sir Geoffrey Archer, that the council became a powerful entity in its own right. Meanwhile, any hope that it might improve the efficiency of the government was gradually abandoned: committees, commissions, and boards continued to proliferate. In 1915 Willis told his sister: ‘Everything is a board here. I shall apply for a board to choose me a new suit.’150

THE BEGINNINGS OF PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION

Even before the battle of Omdurman a structure of provincial administra¬ tion was introduced in the territories that had come under Anglo-Egyptian control. Although subject to modification, the structure remained until the end of the Condominium, a lasting legacy of Kitchener’s rule. In the development of provincial administration, the old Turco-Egyptian province of Dongola served as a proving ground. After its conquest in 1896, the general officer commanding the troops was made governor (;mudir), with his headquarters at Merowe, and had at his disposal a small staff for civil work. Dongola was divided into three military areas, the commandant of each having responsibility for the civil administration of the districts within it. A system of ‘police administration’ was set up, under which the riverain territory was divided into eleven such districts (as it had been before the Mahdia), with an Egyptian military ma’mur in charge of each. Stationed in each district were an Egyptian police officer, seconded from the army, and sixteen lower ranks as police.151 Ma’murs and police officers were selected from among Egyptians who had ‘been brought up in the Military school [in Cairo] under British supervision’.152 A general instruction, later incorporated in Kitchener’s ‘Memorandum to Mudirs’, was issued to ma’murs, in which the new regime’s high-minded intentions were put on record: ma’murs ‘should always bear in mind’ that they were agents ‘of a just and merciful Government’, and should do all in their power ‘to gain the confidence and respect of the inhabitants who should, in their turn, be made to look to and respect the Government’. They should ‘make the government ... as great a contrast as possible to that of the dervishes. Every effort should be made to induce the inhabitants to feel that an era of justice and kindly treatment has come. ’Ma’murs were warned not

72

Empire on the Nile

to accept bribes. ‘Nothing . . . should be taken’ from the people ‘without payment, in accordance with the fixed tariff’, women should be respected, and the ma’mur should be an example of morality to the people. Any official found to have accepted ‘bakshish of any kind’ would be liable to trial by court-martial.153 As a set of guidelines this was unexceptionable. Cromer was sure that as little government as necessary should be imposed, and that, ‘for the time being’, the only possible course was ‘to let the officer in command of the troops run the civil administration’.154 Reports had already reached him that ‘the soldiers’ were running the civil government ‘in a patriarchal fashion very well’.155 Thus the pattern of the Condominium’s provincial administration, combining the military and the civil, was set very early. Significantly, the Condominium Agreement itself had nothing to say on the subject. By the time Wingate was appointed governor-general there were six mudirias: Khartoum, Berber, Dongola, Kassala, Sennar, and Kordofan. Suakin, Wadi Haifa, and Fashoda were designated ‘administrative districts’ (;muhafzas).156 This distinction continued in the terms ‘first-class’ and ‘second-class’ mudirias, but was dropped in 1907. No practical difference in the administrations of the two classes of provinces is apparent, although the mudir of a first-class province was paid more. In May 1902 Khartoum Province was divided into a ‘Khartoum City’ province, consisting of the Three Towns and ‘about a ten mile radius round [sfc] them’; and a ‘Khartoum Gezira’ province.157 The ‘Gezira Province’, as this was known, became Blue Nile Province on 1 January 1905. The Bahr al-Ghazal constituted a military district under a ‘commandant’ until it was trans¬ ferred to civil jurisdiction on 1 January 1902, when it became a mudiria.158 In 1903 Fashoda became a mudiria and its name was changed to Upper Nile Province, while the post of Fashoda itself was renamed Kodok, the Shilluk word for the vicinity, as a gesture to France.159 Mongalla Province, comprising essentially that part of Upper Nile Province south of 70 30', was established on 1 January 1906. In 1905 White Nile Province was formed, and in 1914 the Nuba Mountains region was detached from Kordofan to constitute a separate province.160 Provincial and district boundaries were frequently altered, their head¬ quarters moved, and the names of districts and towns changed. In January 1900 Maxwell told Wingate that it was ‘impossible to fix’ boundaries ‘with any idea of permanency’ before a systematic survey was conducted and lines of communication were established: ‘Along the river there is no great difficulty,’ he wrote, but ‘where Sennar ends and Kassala begins in the desert is rather vague, the limits of Dongola as regards Khartoum, the limits of Khartoum as regards Kordofan or Berber desertwards must all

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

73

more or less be left vague until we survey it piecemeal and know tribal boundaries’.161 The increasing number of provinces was matched by a progressive redivision of districts and sub-districts. In March 1903 there were forty-four ma’murias (ranging from eight in Gezira Province to none in the Bahr al-Ghazal). The Sudan Almanac for 1904 lists fifty-two; that for 1906 lists sixty-nine; for 1907, seventy-six; for 1910, ninety-one; for 1912, ninety-six; and so forth. The dates of the first governors’ appointments are uncertain. Dongola, Berber, and Kassala were constituted as ‘provinces’ - although of what they were provinces is debatable - before the battle of Omdurman. Maxwell was appointed ‘governor’ at Omdurman, and Jackson was left as ‘commandant’ at Fashoda in September 1898. Early Sudan Gazettes identify the mudirs as of March 1899: Collinson Bey in Kassala, Hickman Bey in Dongola, Maxwell in Khartoum, Lewis Bey in Sennar, Jackson (recently transferred from Fashoda) in Berber, and Sparkes Bey at Fashoda. Each mudir was to have two ‘assistants’. These were the first inspectors, later to be called district commissioners (mufattishin), British officers seconded to the civil administration: B. T. Mahon and C. F. S. Vandeleur in Khartoum, Stanton and Strickland in Berber, Ravenscroft and Borton in Dongola, J. H. Butler and N. M. Smyth in Sennar, H. H. S. Morant and H. Smith in Kassala. Apparently no inspectors had yet been appointed to the muhafzasd62 Although there were from the beginning of the Condominium great differences between the north and south in provincial administration, some generalisations can be made about the powers and responsibilities of officials, and their effectiveness in office. The mudir or governor was the chief executive and judicial officer of the province, as well as the command¬ ing officer of the corresponding military district, until the appointment of civilians as governors. He was responsible to the governor-general directly and, in theory, solely. Although there was a chain of responsibility through the various departments of the central government, for various reasons (poor communications, inefficient departmental administration, local con¬ ditions, personal predilections, and Wingate’s unwillingness to conform to reporting procedures), decisions were often reached either locally or after direct consultation with the governor-general himself. Khartoum’s prim¬ ary means of control over the provinces was the same as Cairo’s over Khartoum: financial. Until 1905 provincial taxes had provided a local source of income, but from that year Khartoum assumed control, and the income derived from them was included in the provincial budget. A civil administration order in 1901 ‘reminded’ governors (and heads of depart¬ ments) that ‘Budgetary Provision’ was itself ‘not an authority upon which to prefer claims’, in other words that Khartoum’s approval must be gained

74

Empire on the Nile

before even budgeted sums were spent. Even after this practice was discontinued, control remained close. In addition to his financial respon¬ sibilities, the rnudir was charged, from 1905, with raising and supervising local police, and for recruiting volunteers for the Egyptian Army.163 Occupying most of the mudir’ s time was the day-to-day business of a government that was heavily bureaucratised. As early as 1905 the governor was charged with filing twenty-five annual reports, twelve half-yearly reports, eleven quarterly reports, twenty-four monthly reports, six weekly reports, and three reports at ‘various times’. These covered every aspect of administration, from budget estimates and confidential personnel matters to returns on supplies, prisoners, revenue, and arms, the requisition of stationery and even seeds, reports on rainfall and market prices, and recommendations for rewards and promotions.164 To assist in the prepara¬ tion and despatch of as many as seven hundred reports a year the governor had a headquarters staff that varied in size with the wealth, population, or other importance of his province. Endless, and ever-increasing paperwork at the provincial headquarters made the governor’s occasional tours of inspection more of a relief than an essential duty. Lengthy annual leaves greatly concentrated the work load. The efficient performance of the mudir’s duties depended mainly on two factors: the problems and potential of his province, and the efforts of the governor himself. In this respect the enormous differences between the north and the south cannot be exaggerated: the task confronting a governor of Berber or Dongola cannot justly be compared with the prospect facing a mudir of the Upper Nile or the Bahr al-Ghazal. In the early years of the Condominium the military character of the regime gave prominence to seniority as the main (and often apparently the sole) criterion for promo¬ tion or transfer. Some provincial governors saw their posts (and their posts were seen by others) as merely extensions of their military careers, secondments that presented not so much the challenge of civil administra¬ tion as the promise of an ‘easy billet’ before a return to military life. The first civilian governor was not appointed until 1909. Until then Wingate had at his disposal a limited number of officers, most of whom were unversed in civil administration and ignorant of Arabic, whose constant transfers ensured that detailed local experience was rare. In August 1901 Wingate wrote to Jackson about two of his governors: Colonel E. A. Stanton’s ‘precipitate action’ in all he did was ‘a very disturbing element’, and Wingate could not decide whether to confirm him as mudir of Khartoum. Major G. de H. Smith had ‘no idea of dealing properly with natives’, and Wingate thought his services as governor of Sennar should be dispensed with (they were). G. F. Gorringe asked Wingate to ‘keep open’ Sennar for him,165 and Wingate obliged. No sooner had Gorringe taken up

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

75

the post, however, than he too caused alarm. In July 1902 Wingate was told that Gorringe and his methods of Administration are going to cause trouble. I hear today that most of the leading merchants are about to present what is practically a combined petition against him. It is common talk all over the town that he is absolutely driving trade away by vexatious and arbitrary rules and regulations, and I fear there is much truth in what is said. They say that people will not come into Wad Medineh now to trade, as they fear being caught on some pretext and made to work for Govt. ... his crime and punishment rate is appalling.166 Indeed, there were more sentences of up to six months awarded in Sennar than in the two Khartoum provinces combined, and there was probably ‘some truth to the stories’ that Gorringe was ‘obtaining cheap Government labour by creating prisoners’.16 Although apparently sharing the concern, Wingate took no action. Two years later he told Cecil that although Gorringe ‘had done extremely well in Sennar up to a certain point’, he was ‘severe, autocratic, and determined’, and while ‘these qualities are very useful in this country ... his severe methods are dreaded by the natives and . . . British Officers and officials serving under him are often worked up into a state of irritation by his methods.... I do not think he is an officer at all suited for any of the higher administrative appointments in this country, beyond that of Mudir.’168 (It is interesting to note Wingate’s idea of the relative importance of a governorship and ‘the higher administrative posts’.) Wingate often had to turn a blind eye to abuses of power, in order to placate his officers. Lt-Colonel A. de S. McKerrell, governor of Dongola in 1901 and of Berber in 1902-3, was notorious for sloth and incompetence, setting a standard by which others were judged: Lt-Colonel A. Blewitt, newly appointed governor of Gezira Province, was in 1902 described as ‘rather the McKerrell type’.169 A week later Major G. E. Matthews, Blewitt’s successor as commandant at Fashoda, arrived in Khartoum and said that Blewitt had left ‘absolute chaos’ behind him and had ‘implored’ Matthews ‘not to make a report!’ At Khartoum it was ‘an open secret. . . that Blewitt plumes himself on the fact that “he is going to a ready made Mudirieh [szc] where the Katibs can run the show”; that his leave ... is the one thing he thinks of, and that he is a second McKerrell in that he is about 10 times as slack and useless and incapable’.170 It is unclear whether Blewitt’s departure from the government in 1902 was caused by Matthews’s report or not. In June 1902 Wingate expressed ‘immense relief’ that Colonel St G. C. Henry had taken over the governorship of Kassala, ‘the most important Province and District in the Country’. His relief was short-lived. In February 1903 Slatin toured the province and reported that Gedaref had

76

Empire on the Nile

‘no administration’, and he had had to divide the district himself, appoint¬ ing shaykhs and 'umdas. There were ‘dozens of other questions - [such] as meat contract, fees, division of road taxes - assessment of Usher [sic] etc. etc.’171 Not all of the military governors in the north were disappointments. One of the most successful governors of the Condominium was a soldier: H. W. Jackson (later a general and pasha). The ‘Jackson incident’ ended his career in the central government, but began a long and successful tenure as a mudir. He remained governor of Dongola until 1922, and obviously relished his seignorial role. As early as mid-June 1902 he was reportedly ‘setting down to real business in Dongola’ and was ‘full of energy and plans’, and in August Nason, the secretary-general, recommended Jack¬ son’s report on Dongola regarding remunerative investment in the prov¬ ince as ‘an excellent one’.172 Under Jackson a cadastral survey was completed in 1906, years before the central government had undertaken one. He even invented an improved saqia. In 1914 Wingate generously singled out Dongola as ‘one of the most prominent features in the success’ of the Sudan Government.173 Towards the end of his career Jackson served as acting governor-general, and was even given the title inspector-general in 1922-3, although simply as a mark of seniority. Upon retirement he stayed on in Merowe, and died there in 1931. Difficulties with high-ranking personnel were encountered in the south as well, where they were at once magnified and of less concern to Khartoum. More than in the north, a mudir s success depended on his own efforts, and some early governors quickly gained a reputation for careerism and time-serving, for viewing a brief posting at Kodok or Wau as a stepping-stone. Blewitt has already been mentioned in this regard. Suther¬ land Bey, governor of the Bahr al-Ghazal in 1905-6, was another. Named acting governor in May 1905, he was reported in July to be ‘doing as little as he possibly can and . . . going on the line that he wont [52c] do anything unless he knows he is to be made Govr. of the Province’. That this was a poor reason for advancement cannot be doubted, but Sutherland was made governor in October, and promoted to Berber a year later.174 The south had its dedicated military governors, men who, like Jackson in Dongola and Savile in Kordofan, combined tirelessness, keen interest, and a high sense of duty. The most notable of these in the pre-war era, but one who, curiously, has received little attention, was G. E. Matthews, in charge of Fashoda (Upper Nile Province) from May 1902 until January 1910.175 The district was in such a ‘deplorable state’ at the time of his appointment that he had to cancel his leave (after a season spent directing sudd-clearance on the Bahr al-Jabal), to take over its affairs as soon as possible.176 Stamina alone could not set things right. Matthews’s extensive correspondence with Wingate shows that he was not one to mince words. One complaint was

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald. Wingate

77

lack of staff: ‘A comparative glance at the staff of respective Mudirias will show you I am not satiated with help from Government. But I am quite able to realise that help is possibly meted out in proportion to revenue derived, so I expect I have got my share!’177 What Matthews did get was a steady stream of unwanted tourists. It is a mark of Wingate’s frivolous view of the south that tourism became the major bone of contention between him and Matthews. As early as January 1904 Matthews told Wingate that in the Upper Nile Province ‘Steamers burn every stick of wood available.. . . Tourist steamers don’t tow barges enough, and consequently I cannot transport building materials. ... I could not get bullocks to the Sudd to feed its labourers. No room. When the results of the season’s work are considered, these things cannot very well be ignored.’178 Wingate responded to such complaints with characteristic sympathy and evasion: ‘I am very much obliged to you’, he told Matthews, ‘for the courtesy you have shown to M. Jenisch and others to whom I give letters of introduc¬ tion. I am loath to trouble you in this way - but as I am bothered in the same way myself I must ask Mudirs to share my worries with me.’ With remarkable tactlessness he concluded: ‘This letter will be given to you by Mr Rottenberg - who is going to Gondokoro with his wife and two daughters. Any little courtesy you can show them will be much appreci¬ ated. He is a business man and much interested in machinery.’179 (Wingate’s comparison of his own position with that of his mudirs was inexact: he invited the tourists, Matthews did not.) The governor con¬ tinued to complain, and Wingate’s well-connected acquaintances con¬ tinued to steam south. In 1908 Matthews told him he had ‘been able to do little or nothing for all your various friends, about whom telegrams, letters, and notes of introduction have reached me’. He had ‘missed Count Hunyadi and party, amongst others’, and sarcastically commented that ‘some unknown admirer of mine lurks at Khartoum who raises delusive hopes in many tourists’ hearts that their difficulties, deficiencies, and discomforts will vanish on meeting Matthews’. He concluded that “‘Princes and Powers” are 3 a penny in the Zeraf Valley at present. I sincerely hope they will not shoot each other.’180 Matthews’s disdain was not reserved for foreign tourists. In March 1904 Wingate made one of his spurious tours of inspection in the south, and Matthews failed to receive him.181 Matthews’s experience serves as an example of the difficulties that characterised provincial relations with the central government before the first world war. The rapid transformation of Khartoum into a modern town with a large European population, and the early development of a bureaucratic system of government distorted the central administration’s view of the provinces. Mudirs often saw Khartoum as both remote and unconcerned, and (partly because of Slatin) as suspicious and interfering.

78

Empire on the Nile

The governor who forcefully presented his province’s case for staff or funds was seen in Khartoum as an enthusiastic dreamer or even as overly devoted to duty. In 1905 Wingate gently reminded Matthews that‘not only from a personal but also from an administrative point of view ... an annual visit to headquarters (and leave as well) all help to grease the wheel and keep up good relations - in such an administration as ours this latter is an absolute essential and I am confident you will do your best to maintain such relations.’ The hint was not taken. In June Phipps told Wingate that ‘poor Matthews has sent down pages of general accusations against everyone. He wrote privately to me to say he was not on speaking terms with most Depts.’182 Matthews fought with Bernard for more money, and with the forests department for wood supplies, and other departments became ‘wild when Matthews name [was] mentioned, so poor Matthews hasn’t a friend. There is no doubt he thrives on fighting’, it was said.183 Matthews’s complaints were often outraged; those of other mudirs were frequently pathetic. R. C. R. Owen, when governor of Mongalla, wrote to Wingate in 1909 that he had ‘begged, or rather implored, Colonel Bernard, to let me have ten more mules for the province’; in 1912 he made this pitiful plea to the governor-general: ‘You also know my house. I have only one room for sitting room, dining room and work room and a bed room. ... I do hope something will be done to give me a house this next season. My present one is unbearable in the dry hot season.’ In 1913 Wingate told Phipps that R. S. Wilson, acting governor of the Nuba Mountains, wished to return to the army: ‘He has been a long time in the Jebels and when you see the country, understand the work, and realise the wretchedness of the accommodation provided, you would appreciate the diffidence with which any man would approach the prospect of spending the rest of his official life there.’184 Wilson was persuaded to stay, and was confirmed as governor of the province at the beginning of 1914.185 One Khartoum official who came to the defence of the governors was Currie, the civilian director of education who was often a thorn in the government’s side (and remained so for twenty years after his retirement). In 1910, when the rules for the governor-general’s council were being framed, Currie proposed that governors should have the power to bring matters before it. ‘I do not think our Governors are fit for it,’ Phipps told Wingate, insisting that they, ‘like everyone else’, could ‘get their com¬ plaints seen through’ [sfc], Currie was again at the centre of controversy in 1912 for his defence of provincial officials. In a scathing attack on the public works department he dared to tell Wingate: I do not suppose this letter will have the slightest effect, but I feel it my duty to call your attention to the housing provided for the Inspector at UM RUABA in Kordofan. Craig has been living there under conditions which would smash any body. There are holes in the roof of the straw house and you have to wear a helmet

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

79

there all day. . . . The money for the house has been voted for, I think, more than a year, and no beginning is made. The present system of arranging for Mudiria buildings is ... as bad as can be. Till we allow Governors and their Engineers to build; and use the Director of Works as an Inspection Office, in fact decentralise all round [sic], the present state of things will go on. . . . the way we manage what we have I do think deplorable.

With Currie’s view (if not with the way it was expressed) Wingate felt some sympathy. He told Stack that the accommodation provided in ‘far-distant and unhealthy provinces’ required ‘first and greatest consideration’, and admitted that when ‘the fellows outside’ saw the ‘comparative comfort of officials in Khartoum’, they naturally drew ‘undesirable comparisons’.186 But poor accommodations, insufficient staff, little financial independence, a mass of detailed office work, endless judicial work, frequent transfers, language difficulties, low morale, and Khartoum’s indifference ensured that governors usually earned their annual leave, the length of which, to be sure, added to the inefficiency of provincial administration. Below the mudirs in the provincial hierarchy were the inspectors (mufattishin) and ma’murs. As in Dongola in 1896, ma’murs were appoin¬ ted from among Egyptian officers as administrative officials in districts corresponding as closely as possible to those of the old Turco-Egyptian regime. By July 1899 ten ma’murs had already been appointed in Khartoum Province, and appointments had been made to five districts in Sennar, four in Berber, three in Kassala, seven in Dongola, and at Wadi Haifa, Suakin, and Tokar. As in the case of inspectors, ma’murs had not yet been appointed in the south.187 According to Kitchener’s ‘Memorandum to Mudirs’ governors should divide their provinces ‘into two approx¬ imately equal districts, and hold each Inspector responsible for the exact execution of all Orders and Regulations in the district allotted to them [sic]’. The inspector was responsible for the district’s police, presiding over courts, and supervising the ma’murs. He should not be ‘a channel of communication between Mamurs and the Mudirieh [sic], that is, Mamurs will forward direct to the Mudirieh all Reports and Returns called for. He will, therefore, have no office staff, but will make himself acquainted with the work of the Mamurs of his district either in the central office or while inspecting the Mamuriehs.’188 Thus the inspector was to supervise, not to become involved in everyday administrative matters, which were left to the ma’mur. This is not how the offices evolved, however, as the administra¬ tion was gradually centralised and the ma’mur (who, in an early report, was termed a ‘sub-governor’)189 became a local assistant to the inspector, who himself became involved in the whole range of administrative and judicial matters. This development was gradual, and culminated in the dismissal of the Egyptian ma’murs in 1924. Despite his view of the Egyptian ma’mur as a district administrative

8o

Empire on the Nile

officer, Kitchener believed that ‘even a British officer with no experience whatever would be better than a discontented, intriguing Egyptian’.190 This attitude was certainly shared by his successor and subordinates, whose view of the ma’mur was ambivalent. As early as November 1898 an impatient Maxwell asked Wingate ‘when some of the “Big Questions” ’ would be considered: ‘beyond putting, often an indifferent officer, as either mamur or police officer and then leaving him severely alone to do what he likes, what have we done? What means of inspection have we established?’ A month later Talbot complained that the ‘Mamurs and police’ were ‘absolutely uncontrolled’. There were numerous petitions. In outlying areas the situation was worse. Men about to make peace (aman) with the government had been robbed: it would ‘be gratifying to them to learn’, Talbot wrote sarcastically, in reference to recent reports, ‘that the tribes “who have asked for and received the aman” . . . “are now living in perfect peace and security”!!’ Lewis of Sennar complained that even for his basic duties of collecting ushur, providing telegraph poles, and disarming the tribes, he was ‘quite understaffed’.191 Maxwell expressed the prevailing sentiment: ‘A mamur and thirteen indifferent policemen in a district about half the size of Great Britain does not strike one as the most effective machine - yet I will say the Mamurs where good are marvels’,192 a rare British testimony to the important contribution of this class of official. The records of the Sudan Government and memoirs of its British officials have little to say about the achievements of the ma’murs, who from the earliest days toiled in obscurity. Kitchener’s memorandum specifically mentioned land measurement and registration as among their duties, which, however, came to encompass all aspects of ordinary civil administration. The Egyptian ma’mur was excoriated for his corruption, insensitivity, haughtiness, and unscrupulous methods, but there is little written evidence of his dereliction. While he was blamed for administrative failures, he almost never received credit for the government’s success, which was reserved for the British inspector. The inspector’s duties, as enumerated by H. A. MacMichael in 1920, extended from taxation to prisons, from municipal improvement to supervising schools. Former inspectors’ published accounts of their work tend to be exaggerated and self-congratulatory. One early inspector published this description of the task he and his colleagues faced: We spoke of the many criminal and civil cases to be heard, land disputes to be settled, the maintenance of law and order, building of stores and police lines, the development of the economic possibilities of the country, the issuing of licences for various enterprises. . . . We spoke of constant bouts of fever, the exacting climate, vast distances to cover with slow and inadequate means of transport. We told of different languages still to be learnt, of tribal customs and characteristics which we

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

81

were striving to understand ... of the great tracts of land still unmapped which we hoped to explore and, some day, to administer.193

Ma’murs might have said the same, but their story remains to be told, and the history of their local administration remains largely unwritten. When the Egyptian ma’murs were expelled in 1924 few cared, or dared, to defend them. Sudanese sub-ma’murs were appointed as early as 1912, both to assist with the increasing work in the districts and as a step towards lessening Egyptian influence in the administration. ‘Careful consideration’ was given to the family connections of Sudanese candidates. By 1920 there were over sixty sub-ma’murs.194 After the conquest of Dongola in 1896 it had been accepted as a guiding principle that local administration would be left as much as possible in the hands of Sudanese. Because the people remembered ‘the faults of the former [Turco-Egyptian] administration’, and ‘racial animosity’ had not ‘died out’, it was deemed important that they realise that ‘their local traditions and former system of patriarchal Government’ would be ‘duly respected’. Thus, it was said, ‘the greatest care and circumspection should be exercised in selecting the class of minor officials’ who would be in closest contact with the people. When Sudanese of sufficient education were available, they would be appointed.195 In this way Sudanese 'umdas, or village headmen, were selected, initially for a probationary period of at least six months, from among local notables.196 The government’s reliance on seconded military men to fill mudirships, the difficulties of life in the provinces, and the sometimes strained relations between province and centre, led to rapid changes in personnel in most provinces, resulting inevitably in a lack of continuity of policy and procedures. Between 1898 and 1914 Berber had ten governors (including Jackson twice), seven of them serving in the period 1900-8; Kassala had five; Haifa ten; Sennar seven; Suakin (Red Sea Province) six; Khartoum four; and Fashoda (Upper Nile) six. The Bahr al-Ghazal had seven governors between 1902 and 1914.197 The succession of inspectors was similarly rapid, although this owed something to a deliberate policy of transferring officials because of senior¬ ity and to afford some breadth of experience. Rough calculations based on a survey of almost all the inspectors appointed between 1898 and 1914 (excepting the Nuba Mountains Province established in 1914) show that of 255 for whom dates of appointment and transfer are known, the average tour of duty in a province was slightly longer than thirty months. Perhaps surprisingly, the province with the longest average tour of duty was Mongalla (four years), and that with the shortest was Haifa (nineteen and a half months). Even in the Bahr al-Ghazal, where disease took a toll, the

82

Empire on the Nile

average tour was twenty-nine months, longer than in all but four of the provinces. Tours of duty were often of a year or less, infrequently more than three years, and when annual leave and travel time are taken into account, together with the size of inspectorates and the language problem, the ‘average’ pre-war inspector cannot have had an intimate knowledge of the district under his supervision, or have spent the time in it needed to acquire such knowledge.

BRITISH PERSONNEL

The outbreak of war in South Africa so soon after the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of the Sudan depleted the number of British officers in the Sudan at a time when they were sorely needed. The mutiny of the Egyptian Army in 1900 was partly a result of this, and was another factor in convincing British officials in Cairo and Khartoum that some permanent administra¬ tive service, free from the demands of imperial incidents, should be devised. As early as July 1896 Cromer had expressed the view that newly conquered Dongola could be administered in ‘only one way’, by the soldiers. The following winter he had been assured that ‘the soldiers’ were ‘carrying on . . . very well’. His repeated preference for soldier-administra¬ tors justified his own control: there must, he told Salisbury in December 1898, ‘be some sort of general control over the soldiers, or they may lead us into all sorts of trouble’.198 Once the Condominium had been improvised, Cromer began to con¬ sider the future administrative needs of the Sudan. After a visit to Khartoum in January 1899 he told Salisbury: ‘the main difficulty will be to find suitable agents. The youthful soldiers are in many respects excellent. My only fear is that they will, through ignorance of the language, fall into the hands of scheming native subordinates.’199 It was not only language that rendered the seconded officer an imperfect agent of civil government, for he was as capable as anyone else of learning Arabic. The real difficulty was his impermanence, resulting from freedom to re-transfer to the Army on short notice, and from the War Office regulations governing the terms of secondment. For reasons of pay and promotion the period of second¬ ment was limited, and attempts to extend it were resisted in London. In March 1900 Cromer told Landsdowne, the foreign secretary, that it might be necessary to alter the rules governing secondment. In May he forwarded to Salisbury Wingate’s proposals for reform,200 but the War Office insisted on a ‘limit of seven years’ service at full-pay’, ‘after which officers lost their claim for regimental promotion’.201 In 1902 Cromer told Lansdowne bluntly that the ‘popularity’ of British rule depended on ‘the presence in each district of one or two qualified British officers’: where the Egyptian

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

83

officials ‘were left to themselves, complaints’ were ‘rife’. He concluded ominously that Britain was ‘conducting a hazardous experiment in the Soudan’.202 Thus the limit on service at full pay was extended to ten years, the Egyptian Army paying the increased expenses.203 At the end of 1901, the total number of British officials in the Sudan Government was sixtyseven, of whom forty-six were military and twenty-one civilians. The railways employed eleven British personnel, but no other department had more than five. Kordofan and Khartoum provinces had six British officials each, more than any other province.204 Not every observer penned eulogies to the soldier-administrator, as we have seen. Those best able to judge saw difficulties beyond War Office regulations. In November 1898 Maxwell told Wingate: We want more officers - I do not know where the sort we want is to come from! The musketry training and excellent canteen training of the British officer will not serve our purpose! We want men who will try at least to understand the people, study their habits and customs, get to know about the tenure of land and the various questions connected with land and tribal feuds.. . . The days of active service in the soldier sense are past but there is lots of very active service for those who wish to get on in the Sudan and who wish it to get on.

Even if such officers could be found, Maxwell doubted that ‘they as a rule would be successful. I think we want a regular civil service.’205 No steps were taken before 1900 to establish such a civilian cadre. The decision to do so seems to have been precipitated by the Omdurman mutiny. Investiga¬ tions showed the unreliability of both British and Egyptian officers, albeit for widely different reasons. Superior and aloof, green but jaded, young British officers were unlikely, during their brief tours of duty, to combine the efficiency and sensitivity to local conditions that were essential for success. Cromer was well aware of this when he told Salisbury in June 1900 of a conversation he had had with a ‘young German professor’ recently returned from Kordofan: He spoke in the highest terms of the administration of the Soudan, and praised the English officers warmly.. . . but, he added . . . the English officers are far too much in the hands of their Egyptian subordinates, and repose a most undue amount of confidence in them. The Egyptian officials he described as being, almost without exception, lazy, corrupt, and tyrannical. The people trust us, and recognize that we wish them well, but they complain that between them and the Englishman there is always some Egyptian underling or Arab Sheikh.

Cromer concluded that ‘The only remedy’ was ‘gradually to train up a number of young English civilians’ who would ‘be prepared to stay in the country and acquire a thorough knowledge of the language’.206 What Cromer looked for in civilian recruits were ‘active young men, endowed with good health, high character and fair abilities’; he did not

84

Empire on the Nile

want ‘the mediocre by-products of the race, but the flower of those who are turned out from our schools and colleges’.207 The first six civilians were recruited in 1901 from Oxford and Cambridge, and several others added annually. There was no competitive examination for entry into the service, aspirants having merely to apply and, if called, to appear before a selection board that convened every year in London to fill vacancies in both the Egyptian and Sudan civil services. Although a university degree was not required, from the beginning the board favoured men with that qualifica¬ tion. Once accepted, a candidate spent a year studying Arabic at his own expense, usually at Cambridge or Oxford, before taking up his appoint¬ ment. The political service, as the administrative service was later called to distinguish its members from the ‘departmental’ civil service, also included a number of British officers seconded to the Sudan Government. In the period up to 1914, a total of 88 men joined the service; in the period 191533 the number taken on was 185. Much has been written about the Sudan Political Service. During and especially after the first world war it began to be publicised outside the Sudan. An ethos developed, places in the service were sought after, appointment itself became an achievement. The self-glorification of the service by, among others, H. C. Jackson,208 emphasised the difficulties of life in the Sudan, often with an embarrassingly false modesty or transparent understatement, that devalues the real achievements of the service. If the inspector had to walk for days, suffer torments from insects and illnesses, and bear the heat of summer, so, after all, did his Egyptian and Sudanese subordinates, and the men who carried the bags. Another aspect of the service’s reputation is precisely that it was a ‘service’. Exactly when the idea emerged that the political service existed to help the Sudanese ‘eventually to govern themselves’, is impossible to determine; it certainly dates to the inter-war period, when Egyptian nationalist propaganda made some moral justification of British rule a political necessity. This is not to say that before then the service had no sense of commitment to the people, but merely to suggest the obvious: in joining the Political Service a young man was attracted by a career that promised an outdoor life, good salary, excellent leave arrangements, a great degree of independence, authority, and power. He was not a missionary. If he ruled well, no less should have been expected: this is why he was there, and what Sudanese and Egyptian taxes paid him well to do. As one observer, highly sympathetic to the Sudan Government, put it in 1921: ‘making every allowance for the few drawbacks which may be admitted to exist in the Sudan Government Service as in all other careers of this character, it is undoubtedly one of the finest, that without capital, interest and years of hope deferred, lie within reach of the educated and hard-working young Englishman.’209 Historians’ interest in the service has resulted in detailed conclusions

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

85

about its social composition. In the period 1899-1939, 315 men joined the service, of whom 224 had attended what have been called ‘Early Leading Schools’, that is, the most famous and well-established English public schools. A mere nine had attended non-public schools, and only one of the nine was recruited before 1919. The range of universities attended was even narrower. Throughout the whole period of the service’s existence, ‘not a single student was recruited . . . from the English provincial universities or university colleges.’'10 There was, especially in the early years, an obvious bias towards Oxbridge. In 1907 Wingate told an enquiring parent: ‘For admission to the Egyptian [or Sudan] Civil Service it has been ruled . . . that a University training is an essential qualification. Both Cambridge and Oxford have all the conditions and application forms so that if your boy goes to either of them he will have no difficulty in finding out how and who to apply to.’211 Up to 1939 only thirteen recruits came from other universities (Edinburgh, Dublin, St Andrews, Glasgow, London, and Melbourne). Of those educated at Oxford or Cambridge and recruited during the period 1899-1939, ninety-four were Scholars or the equivalent, fifteen took First Class Honours, eighty-nine Second Class, and ninetyseven took other degrees.212 Many former members of the service have stressed the importance attached in the selection process to athletic achievement: hence the stock phrase that the Sudan was a ‘country of Blacks ruled by Blues’. Although this can now be shown to be an exaggeration, it was based on fact and accepted as such. Up to 1939, 64 of the 215 men recruited from Oxbridge had won representative honours in some athletic pursuit.213 The convic¬ tion that athletic prowess was an important qualification for quite different forms of endeavour was not, of course, limited to the Sudan Selection Board: athletic achievement was taken to indicate physical toughness, stamina, resourcefulness, confidence, ‘team spirit’, loyalty, and other qualities; and all of these were considered especially desirable in the administrator of a country like the Sudan. Wingate himself may have placed too great an emphasis on the point. Explaining why the board had rejected a candidate Wingate favoured, Sir V. Corbett told him in 1905: ‘I quite sympathize with your weakness for muscular men, but it would be disastrous if it were thought that physical outweighed intellectual merit.’214 Nevertheless, the service retained a reputation for brawn over brains that according to statistical evidence was undeserved. It was school spirit Cromer wanted, not necessarily Honours and Blues. As he put it in 1903: ‘A lad in whom the sense of individual effort and personal responsi¬ bility has been fostered naturally becomes “capax imperii”. In the free atmosphere in which his boyhood is passed, he learns a number of lessons which stands him in good stead in after life as one of an imperial race.’215 The picture that emerges, then, of the ‘typical’ recruit is different from

86

Empire on the Nile

that popularly received: he attended a good public school, had an Oxford or Cambridge degree, usually a good one, and showed athletic ability, sometimes to the point of distinction. He was likely from the upper middle-class: recruits were not usually drawn from the aristocracy or, apparently, the gentry. The strong bond of loyalty within and to the Sudan Political Service was the product largely of a public school tradition shared by the great majority of the service’s members. The ethos of the sendee was the ethos of the public school. If the views and values that informed it were narrowly based, the characteristics these produced provided the Sudan Government with just and decent men. The absence of a competitive examination for the service gave great latitude to the selection board, which was comprised of representatives of the Egyptian and Sudan governments. Although university records were almost always the determining factor in selection, social or political influence was occasionally brought to bear. In 1903 Edward Pease was appointed after the intervention of Arthur Balfour, the prime minister. Pease’s tenure was unhappy. He served for twenty months in Haifa as a deputy inspector before transfer to the civil secretary’s office. Less than a year later he was posted to Suakin.216 In December 1907 Phipps told Wingate that ‘any moment would be a good moment for young Pease’s transfer to Egypt’: while he had been in charge at Port Sudan, ‘the accounts got into a muddle. The investigation is still going on. There is no suggestion of any thing against Pease except absence of the power of command and unsuitability for any position of responsibility.’ Unfortunately, Pease could not ‘say Boo to a Goose!’, and Phipps hoped that Gorst might ‘take a fancy to him’.217 Pease was recalled to Khartoum, where he worked in the legal secretary’s office until his resignation in 1911. Balfour interested himself in the Sudan again in 1906, when his nephew, Francis Cecil Campbell Balfour, was appointed to the public works department. Cromer asked Wingate to report on his progress, since his uncle was ‘such an old friend’.218 In 1912 Balfour was appointed to the Political Service, a highly unusual transfer, following Wingate’s interven¬ tion. The new inspector ran off to Cairo (where his cousin, Lord Edward Cecil, was then Financial Adviser), only to receive a ‘preemptory’ [sic] order from Khartoum to return.219 Phipps wrote to Wingate at the end of March 1913: I saw Balfour today about his exam, and gave him a bit of my mind. He asks me to say he is very sorry indeed this should have occurred after all the trouble you personally took on his behalf. ... He is I suppose a typical Cecil ... he said he could only do a certain amount of work a day and also said he had never passed an exam, in his life!! I told him his coming was much resented and the Civil Service was watching him carefully and in justice to you and as an act of gratitude to you the least he could do was to prove himself worthy of your selection.220

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

87

The Balfours’ connection with the Sudan did not end there. In 1912 Bruce, an officer detailed to raise the Equatorial Battalion, was refused leave. Wingate later wrote to Owen, the governor of Mongalla, explaining what ensued: ‘When I was at Carlsbad last June I met there Bruce’s father [Lord Balfour of Burleigh], who is an old friend. ... he received a telegram from his son to the effect that his leave had been refused: Lord Balfour was very much upset. . . . My talks with the parents led to the various telegrams which passed between the Acting Sirdar and myself and ... it was finally agreed that he should take leave, but that he should not go back to the Equatorials’. In yet another case, Wingate wrote to Phipps in 1912, enclosing ‘some correspondence’ with ‘lady Tweeddale about her son. . . . I hope’, Wingate said, that ‘you and the other member of the Selection Board will use your influence to get him taken on.’221 The Sudan Political Service was composed entirely of British subjects. Others were not barred from applying, but none was ever selected. In seeking a director of agriculture in 1905 Cromer omitted from the advertisement a reference to ‘British Subjects’: ‘not that there is any intention of engaging others,’ he wrote to Wingate, ‘but there is no necessity to say so in any official documents.’222 One applicant for a post was rejected because there was ‘something Levantine about him’, and ‘that fact alone’ made him ‘undesirable’.223 When in 1906 an applicant for government employment, who had been born and raised in Brussels, listed his native language as French, Wingate commented that ‘any parental or political connection’ with Belgium ‘would not be desirable for a Sudan official’.224 In its early years the Sudan Political Service had neither an ethos nor even a separate identity. Wingate was not alone in seeing civilian recruits as possibly out of place, inferior substitutes for the soldiers he preferred. T. E. Hickman reacted to Cromer’s plans by commenting that it was still ‘nicer to have soldiers who are disciplined and gentlemen for certain’. That Wingate had no intention of demilitarising the government is evident in the fact that the number of British officers in the civil administration rose from 50 in 1901 to 105 in 1913225 (thereafter declining as Britain’s war effort demanded the retransfer of officers). In June 1902 Wingate ruled that ‘the appellation of the appointment of “Inspector” as held by Civilian Offi¬ cials’ was ‘no longer to be used, “Deputy Inspector” being substituted’.226 Thus all civilian recruits were appointed as deputy inspectors, whereas officers entered the administration as ‘assistant inspectors’, a degree higher. Some officials had no use for the civilians. Matthews of the Upper Nile, having been assigned S. A. Tippetts as a deputy inspector in 1902, told Wingate: ‘He works hard but is extraordinarily young for his age, and I fear he will not command the attention of the Shilluks and Dinkas for many a long day.’ Two months later Matthews was more blunt, said he preferred

88

Empire on the Nile

a soldier to a ‘young Inspector’, and recommended Tippetts’s transfer, which was duly arranged. Nor were soldiers the only critics. Even Currie, a champion of the civilian element in the government, occasionally expres¬ sed reservations about the ‘product’ of the selection board: according to him, C. E. Lyall, who joined the service in 1901, was ‘in every way rather a “light weight”. He is, I think a good long way from realising that current Oxford chatter will not help him very much in, say, Darfur. ... He is a long way behind Kerr!’ Of the service’s 1911 intake of two, Currie considered one ‘ideal’, the other weak ‘on the intellectual side’. The soldiers’ disdain for civilians was heartily reciprocated. C. A. Willis, the acerbic civilian who later became director of intelligence and governor of the Upper Nile Province, criticised the government as being run ‘as if it was a battalion - [but] without the discipline in the ranks or the sufficiency of staff’.227 According to him, the soldiers were ‘quite conscious’ that they were ‘not in the running with their own [civilian] inspectors - Headlam is the only man from the army I’ve met so far in the civil for whom I’ve any respect’.228 However much Wingate may have been tempted to limit the experi¬ ment with civilians, there was pressure to increase their numbers. ‘I do not like the constant changes in the civil administration in consequence of

military requirements,’ Cromer told him in July 1903. ‘I want you to push on your civilians as fast as you can. It is the only remedy.’229 Moreover, the problem was not simply a matter of recruiting more: strong feelings existed among civilians and soldiers alike. Currie was a constant irritant, ‘not increasing his popularity ... by the way in which he speaks of military administrators’, Wingate told Cromer in 1904: he was ‘a bit too socialistic and dogmatic for the ordinary soldier man’. Bonham Carter and Sterry who, with Currie, were the highest civilian officials, were similarly openly critical of the bias against civilians. Phipps considered the civilian C. H. Armbruster such a serious troublemaker that ‘every effort should be made to get rid of him’: He is largely at the bottom of this discontent and has . . . been trying to get up a feeling against the military man. I am told they call it the ‘Armbruster League’. I need hardly say how extraordinarily undesirable this sort of insidious poison is. Currie and Sterry are I gather always with A. and have long discussions. ... I am quietly watching things and if necessary I shall take the bull by the horns and tackle A. ... A. is not and never has been the sort of man we want, and I am afraid his coming to Khm. was a mistake. Later in 1910 Armbruster solicited Cromer’s help in finding other employ¬ ment. The civilians, he wrote, realised that ‘the action of the Government in filling up the senior administrative posts in the Civil Service by

permanently appointing to them soldiers of our own age completely prejudiced such chances as we had originally of advancement.’230

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald. Wingate

89

Bonham Carter was more tactful in his approach. In 1910 he warned Wingate that the civilians were ‘in a very uneasy condition as to their prospects. They . . . see Military men being constantly brought over their heads many of whom express the intention of obtaining permanent service. ...Iam told by some of the civilians that they find themselves lower in the seniority list after three or four years service than when they first joined.’ Wingate made light of the warning, describing Bonham Carter as ‘on the war path’, but admitted that there was ‘a good deal’ in what he said about ‘the disrepute into which the Sudan Civil Service’ was falling. Illogically, however, Wingate blamed the ‘impossibility of disconnecting Egypt and the Sudan’ for the problem. According to Willis, Cromer himself admitted in 1911 that the service had been established only because soldiers had been siphoned off to the Boer War in 1899-1900, and ‘he now saw no future for the civilians so introduced, and would never advise anyone to go in for the job’.231 Whatever Cromer’s views, Bonham Carter’s were based on his assessment of recent selections for the service. The candidates in 1908 ‘were not intellectually on a par’ with those he had interviewed before: ‘there were no first-class honours men and few second-class honours men’, and five of those actually called for interview were rejected on medical grounds.232 By 1912 the senior civilians were in open revolt, and Bonham Carter and Sterry both refused to serve on the selection board. In 1913 the promotion board was likewise bereft.233 Ironically, it was Wingate’s determination to maintain the military character of the regime that gave rise to the term ‘Sudan Political Service’. Because the War Office insisted on reducing the number of British officers serving in the Egyptian Army and seconded to the Sudan Government, it was clear that the proportion of civilians would have to be increased. Kitchener, as agent and consul-general, agreed that this was unfortunate, but warned that ‘the question was bound to come up ... as the Sudan developed; it was therefore desirable to try and think out some scheme which would promise a permanent solution of the question’. He suggested that ‘instead of taking on more civilians’, officers might be given permanent posts in the government service. Clayton, then Sudan Agent in Cairo, to whom Kitchener mentioned the idea, reminded him that ‘there would certainly be an outcry from the civilians . . . who would inevitably complain that their prospects and those of future candidates were being ruined’. Instead, Clayton recommended the formation of ‘The Sudan Political Service’ to recruit soldiers for permanent duty in the ‘outlying Provinces’ that required military governors: ‘This Service could be quite distinct and under different conditions to the present Civil Service which would remain as the “Administrative” Service - in fact it would be on very similar lines to the Political Services in India.’ Kitchener approved, and Clayton began to collect information about the Indian service,234 but the

Empire on the Nile

9o

war intervened, with the inevitable result that the military element in the Sudan Government continued to decrease. Just as the South African war had led to the establishment of a British civilian cadre in the Sudan, so the first world war solidified its position and made demilitarisation of the government irreversible. In 1913 there were 105 British officers in the civil administration; by 1916 the number had dropped to 85,235 and it continued to decrease thereafter. In August 1916 Willis wrote gleefully: ‘The soldiers here are beginning to realize that they have lost their chance in life and they are all trying to get into permanent jobs in the Sudan Govt, or will be trying as soon as they see an opportunity and it will be hell’s delight to keep them out. Master [Wingate] is of course hopeless about it.’236 The first civilian to be appointed to a provincial governorship was G. C. Kerr, who joined the service in 1901. His outstanding ability posed a problem. It had been simple to invent the designation ‘deputy inspector’ to ensure the initial subordination of civilians, but promotions were naturally expected. In 1904 Cecil suggested Kerr’s appointment as director of lands, to ‘end all this talk of civilians getting no promotion’. In June, however, he was made ‘junior inspector’, and was promoted to ‘senior inspector’ in 1906. In 1905 Phipps told Wingate that ‘The question of an Inspector for Port Sudan’ was one ‘of great urgency’. Kerr was ‘the sort of person’ required, but there was no governor there to supervise him.237 The problem at Port Sudan was solved by the appointment of R. M. Feilden as ‘a semi-permanent Administrator of Port Sudan’, which was to be ‘an Island in the province . . . much as Omdurman ... in the Khartoum Province’.238 In 1908 the question arose of a governorship for Kerr. Slatin’s intervention illustrates the rift between soldiers and civilians. He told Wingate that Kerr had not served long enough, that he was ‘steady’ but not especially ‘clever’, that he often took the side of ‘natives . . . against the Government’, and that a number of qualified officers should not be passed over; it was ‘too early to begin to appoint Civilians in our highest posts’. Nevertheless, with all the civilian members of the promotions board favouring Kerr, Wingate approved the promotion and he became governor of the Red Sea Province on 18 January 1909.239 A

factor

in

Wingate’s

determination

to

maintain

the

military’s

predominance was his own dual position as sirdar and governor-general. In 1902 Cromer mentioned the possibility of appointing two men, one to act as sirdar, the other to act as governor-general, during Wingate’s absence on leave. Wingate reacted with consternation: ‘Our existing organisation makes the division of duties an impossibility and I would most strongly advise that not only should such an idea not be countenanced for a moment but not even mooted. It would have a most unsettling effect on everyone

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and would result in confusion and chaos.’ By 1903 Cromer had apparently accepted this view, and reportedly said that as long as Wingate remained, ‘no divorce between the Military and civil was possible’. Wingate’s warning of ‘chaos’ was surely exaggerated. In 1905 Phipps assumed that during Wingate’s leave Bonham Carter was acting governor-general, and ‘was horrified’ some time later to discover that someone else was!240 In 1911 it was suggested that the mudir’s post and that of officer commanding the corresponding military district be separated. The mudirs were by then mostly men who knew ‘little or nothing of the Army’, who had ‘lost interest in it many years’ before, had ‘grown so rusty in Army matters’ that they were ignorant of current standards and uninterested in training the troops. The results were irresponsibility and inefficiency. A province-by¬ province plan for the delegation of the mudir's military functions was devised by Asser, the adjutant-general. Clayton suggested that each mudir would remain ‘paramount... in his own province’, but would consult an ‘O.C. District’ in military matters affecting the province. Wingate, however, saw ‘no particular reason for hurrying on this tendency towards separation’.241 Significantly, the furthest he was willing (and needed) to go was the separation of the posts only when a civilian was appointed to a governorship.242 The British element, both military and civilian, in the Condominium administration was always numerically weak. Even if officers had been easily recruited and retained, and if suitable civilians could be enlisted, the Sudan Government’s financial position allowed their recruitment only for the highest posts. Beneath the British in the government structure were relatively large numbers of officials of Egyptian, Lebanese, and other nationalities, and, as they passed through the education system, Sudanese for subordinate posts. Theoretically representative of an equal co-ruler of the Sudan, the Egyptians never attained high rank in either the central or provincial government. It was, in fact, a ‘principle’ that the higher posts would remain forever beyond their reach.243 Until 1925, however, they constituted the backbone of the administration. From the outset, relations between British and Egyptian officials were uneasy, affected inevitably by political currents in Egypt. British suspicions of Egyptian disloyalty appear, at least before the first world war, to have been based on a recognition that the Egyptians had no particular reason to be loyal. Although the Omdurman mutiny in 1900 did not involve Egyptian civilians, there was reportedly even then ‘considerable discontent’ among them, largely for financial reasons. The same arguments in favour of engaging British officers for civil administration applied to the Egyptians recruited for subordinate posts: soldiers could be re-transferred to the army by order of the sirdar, their pensions would be paid by Egypt, not by

92

Empire on the Nile

the Sudan Government, and soldiers accustomed to military discipline could more easily be controlled. But there were drawbacks. The army could not supply the expertise required in some of the technical depart¬ ments; for this civilians must be recruited or trained. And the discontent considered latent in the army officer corps gave an impetus to the replacement of officers by civilians. The alleged untrustworthiness and corruption of Egyptian officials is a continuing theme of the pre-war period. In March 1901 Wingate reported that he had been ‘obliged to dismiss’ the ma'murs of Gedaref and Gallabat, and concluded that the country would never be governed successfully ‘without many more British inspectors’. In June 1902 Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani, the head of the Khatmiya tariqa, reportedly told Fergusson that Omdurman will never be content or safe as long as Egyptian officers were the real people who came into touch with the natives. He says there is no end to the backshish, extortion and favouritism of the Egyptian officer; that between us British and the people there was a high wall, the Egyptian official. . . . That at present a British officer was in Omdurman for a few hours 3 or 4 times a week. . . . ‘How’ he went on to say ‘does the Gov. Genl. know what is going on in (say) Geili or Abud’ -1 said ‘through the British Inspectors’ - He said ‘Yes, but how does the Inspector know - He arrives in a village; where does he go first? To the Mamour’s office - The Mamour has told everyone the day before that the Inspector will be angry if there are complaints . . .244

A week later ^ergusson had arranged for a British officer to be available in his private office in Omdurman at fixed times and without Egyptian officials present; and another officer was soon stationed there permanently as sub-governor. But he expressed concern that the pressure of work had made it necessary in Berber Province to grant second-class magistrate’s powers to some Egyptian officers.245 Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani often returned to the theme of the untrust¬ worthy Egyptians. In July 1903 he charged that they were ‘doing all in their power to estrange the Sudanese’ from the British, and expressed his wish that the Sudan ‘could be rid of them’.246 The sayyid perhaps had reasons of his own for sowing seeds of doubt,247 and the British were not averse to being told what they wanted to hear. Indeed, some British officials were not above undermining their colleagues’ position. Even Slatin commented on this: ‘I am the last to trust a Gyppy,’ Slatin wrote, ‘but we have to back them up as long as nothing is against them and to support them against natives if they are honest.’248 Although few cases of gross misconduct were ever proven, events outside the Sudan steadily deepened British suspicions. There was undoubtedly an element of competition between the co-domini for the hearts and minds of the Sudanese in which the Egyptians had the advantages of religion, language, and the experience shared with the

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

93

Sudanese of British domination. On the other hand, the British became accustomed to using the ‘corrupt’ Egyptians as scapegoats for the mistakes of the regime. This disproportion of British power and responsibility was one more of the ‘anomalies’ on which the Condominium was based.

SUBSTANCE AND STYLE: WINGATE AS GOVERNOR-GENERAL

Despite Wingate’s subordination to Cairo, within the Sudan he was personally supreme. He exalted his position with viceregal trappings, and by simulating a court at Khartoum. To Cromer he may have been a mere ‘It. gov.’, but in the Sudan Wingate acted like a monarch. This was both personal preference and political calculation: there was no precedent to follow. Wingate invested the office of governor-general with prestige that lasted until the end of the Condominium. The tone of British official and social life was set by him and his wife, and this was of political significance in that it influenced the relations between the British and the Sudanese, the governors and the governed. One of the lessons of the 1900 mutiny was that lack of contact between the British and their subordinates, and the ignorance and snobbery that characterised much of the contact there was, could result in serious trouble. It was a lesson soon forgotten in the Edwardian Sudan. Before the first world war Wingate spent surprisingly little time in Khartoum and probably between six and seven months a year in the Sudan. A glimpse of the ‘Sudan year’ shows that he usually returned from annual leave in mid-November and remained in Khartoum for the ‘season’, December to February, except for a provincial tour or two of several weeks. In March or April he moved to Erkowit in the Red Sea Hills to escape the heat, and in June departed for Britain on leave, returning to Cairo towards the end of October for several weeks of consultation with British officials of the Egyptian and Sudan governments.249 Wingate revelled in the ‘social side’ of his position: his complaints about its demands are transparently insincere. He carried on an enormous personal correspondence and was not much interested in routine office work. His official correspondence often dealt with private affairs; his personal letters frequently referred to political matters. He was unsyste¬ matic, sometimes capricious, and jealous of his own authority. He once told Phipps, who was acting sirdar and acting governor-general, to ‘decentralize as much as you possibly can so as to leave yourself free to grapple with the bigger questions without having to be bothered with the thousand and one details . . . which . . . can perfectly well be carried out by your subordinates’. But Wingate himself was notoriously unwilling to delegate. His successor, Stack, complained on assuming office that

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Empire on the Nile

Wingate’s organisation had resulted in a ‘mass of trivial detail . . . unim¬ portant correspondence and returns’ pouring into the Palace because the whole government had ‘been trained to report the most minor matters’.250 Because he wasted so much time, Wingate was usually busy, but with the ‘social’ or ‘state’ aspects of his position, not its executive functions. In 1912 he told Cromer that ‘one’s time’ had ‘been very fully taken up’ that winter by ‘Their Majesties’ visit to the Sudan, the Consecration of the Cathedral, the opening of the El Obeid Railway extension by Lord Kitchener’, and a ‘recent tour’ of the Nuba Mountains.251 That summer he complained that even on leave in Scotland he had ‘a great deal of correspondence, official and private’, and could ‘seldom manage more than one round of golf a day’.252 In December 1913 Wingate said that he was ‘about as pushed’ by work as he had ever been, mentioning specifically. ‘Tourists, French Scientific Societies, Convicts, Budgets’ and ‘Masonic matters’, most of which need not have concerned him. A few weeks later he met separately with the governor of Khartoum and the leader of the Greek community to ascertain ‘how the questions of the Skating Rink and the Hellenic Enclosure’ were developing.253 It was Wingate’s custom annually to make a long tour of inspection. These journeys served three purposes: they allowed the people to glimpse their ruler, they gave him some impression, however false, of provincial conditions, and they were enjoyable diversions for Wingate, his guests, and their retainers. They were also a great waste of officials’ resources of time and money, and were privately derided as useless from an administrative point of view. The Upper Nile was a favourite destination because it offered big game, wild surroundings, and pleasant river travel. ‘Inspec¬ tions’ carried out there in 1902, 1903 and 1904 were certainly unnecessary and expensive. In January 1903 Wingate and his wife were accompanied by the Cromers, the Gleichens, Phipps, Bond, Harry Boyle, Lt-Colonel Penton, and others. During the 1904 visit a ‘Durbar’ was held. A 1908 tour aboard the Dal, the big steamer that had brought him and Kitchener to Fashoda in 1898, was a typical ‘inspection’. Wingate was accompanied by Slatin, Bernard, Bonham Carter, his private secretary and assistant private secretary, assistant military secretary, Arabic secretary, an aide-de-camp, the director of works, and the assistant director of the steamers and boats department, a Sudanese escort, and servants. On 23 April the party reached Renk where they were met by the governor, Matthews, ‘inspected’ the ma’muria, walked through the market, and left ‘presents’ for the poor. After less than two hours they steamed on, Matthews preceding them on his own steamer in order to receive the party at Kaka the next morning, where the governor-general stopped and left ‘some money for distribu¬ tion’. Matthews again steamed ahead to meet them at Kodok. There Wingate inspected a guard of honour, met the reth and other notables,

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

95

‘made a thorough inspection of all buildings’, and toured the market. On the 26th Tawfiqia was reached, Matthews having ‘passed ... in the night’ to greet them on arrival. More inspection ensued before departure for Tonga, Matthews steaming ahead. From Tonga the governor-general passed into Mongalla Province, where Owen, the governor, was taken aboard. After stops at Lado, Gondokoro, and other stations, the party headed north, spending most of the return journey (3-9 May) in sport and rest.254 In keeping with the governor-general’s dignity, a wide range of con¬ veyances seemed essential. Answering criticism, Wingate declared that these would be needed in the event of a khedivial visit to the Sudan. But his plan in 1901 to purchase a ‘State Coach’ was vetoed by Cromer as ‘utterly unsuitable’ and ‘ridiculous’, the coach being of the sort ‘used on very rare occasions by perhaps a dozen of the wealthiest people in London’.255 Undeterred, Wingate went ahead with the construction of a ‘state barge’, which, while again available for possible royal or viceregal use, would ‘certainly’ be needed by Wingate.256 This was the paddle-steamer Elfin, which in 1904 was rebuilt for ‘the local use of H.E. the Governor General’, and officially described as ‘H.E. the Governor General’s yacht’. Also at his personal disposal was the steam launch Catherine, named for Lady Wingate.25' For long river tours government steamers were pressed into service as needed. Later in his tenure Wingate ‘picked up’ a converted tug boat to be used as his ‘official’ ocean-going yacht. On his first voyage he was reportedly ‘sick all the way to Suez’, and he never used the craft again.258 Wingate occupied several residences as sirdar and governor-general. First was the Palace in Khartoum, which was embellished and surrounded by magnificent gardens. Until 1903 he had a private house in Cairo. When the landlord gave him notice, Wingate hinted to Cromer that an official house might be found, but Cromer failed to see the need. At Erkowit (reached in the governor-general’s special railway carriage) he stayed at ‘Summit’, presiding over the Sudan Government’s modest hill-station. During the war, Wingate spent much of his time at Erkowit, occasionally visiting Khartoum to see to essential business or simply to show himself. Even

Kitchener’s

grandiose

Khartoum

Palace

eventually

proved

inadequate. In 1912 Wingate complained that the housing of his ‘personal staff’ there was ‘by no means altogether convenient’, because space was needed for the ‘innumerable guests which have to be accommodated’.259 Wingate maintained an elaborate state, and his comings and goings were surrounded by ceremony. A diarist leaves this record of the governorgeneral’s arrival from annual leave: the ‘higher officials’ went to the Palace to greet him and Lady Wingate. We were there by 1 to 7: punctually at 7 they drove up in a double landau, with 4 ponies and postillions, and outriders, A.D.C.’s etc escorting them on horseback.

Empire on the Nile

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A guard of honour from the Yorkshire Regt. was drawn up facing the Palace: officers of the E.A. and the Yorks on the right. . . civilians and Sheikhs and ulemas on the left. The Sirdar alighted from his carriage and after inspecting the Gd. of Honour, went round to each individual, shaking hands and having a few words with each. It was a pretty sight in the early morning sunshine, though rather theatrical; and I could not help being reminded of a Drury lane Melodrama. . . . Here he is absolute ruler; he travels in kingly state, and is always accompanied by native orderlies and attendants as well as by his ADC’s etc.260 An officer described Wingate’s early morning rides in Khartoum as ‘rather a joke with British Bimbashis, as the cavalcade was so glittering and immense, black cavalry men with lances, A.D.C’s, P.S.’s and a herd of all grades of officials’.261 These rides were more than spectacle: they were a nuisance. In 1912 a British judge named Neville was visiting Khartoum and had met the Sirdar with his suite and escort . . . and . . . had raised his stick in salutation. . . . He walked on, and was then surprised to hear an ADC galloping up to him, saluting, and saying gravely:— ‘I beg your pardon, Sir, but, are you a stranger in Khartoum?’ N. replied that he was a visitor, upon which the ADC said: ‘That was the Governor General you passed just now on the road. ... It is customary for all civilians to take their hats off when the Gov. Gen. passes’ said the ADC and rode off.262 The Palace was the centre of Khartoum’s social life, the scene of ‘levees’, garden parties, teas, fetes, dinners, and so forth. By all accounts these were stilted, sticky, and self-conscious imitations of European formalities. Harold MacMichael, in 1905 a newly joined and far from revolutionary civilian official, gave this account of a ‘levee’: it was rather a boring affair and merely consisted of walking past the Sirdar in rows and shaking hands. . . . Every single official and officer in the place had to be there and also lots of merchants and the sheikhs of various tribes. . . . one man wore an evening waistcoat. . . others had straw hats and frock coats (or else bowlers) and one man actually had an ancient ‘topper’.263 Palace dinners were similarly occasions of state that quickly developed traditions of behaviour. Aside from the Wingates, Slatin was Khartoum’s premier pre-war host. ‘Rowdy House’, his residence, was the scene of dinners and entertainments which, compared to the stiffly formal Palace occasions, were relaxed and even raucous. One guest observed that ‘his furniture and cutlery were rich and refined, his cuisine - celebrated.’264 Invitations were much sought after. Phipps described Slatin in March 1913 as ‘much overdone with sportsmen and others’, and giving ‘large dinners nightly’.265 Plans for larger dinners were wrecked by the war: in July 1914 Slatin asked Wingate to provide Sudan Government funds to enlarge his house, and Wingate obliged, ordering the work to be charged to the necessarily obscure ‘Ali Dinar fund’.266

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

97

Wingate took steps to associate his governor-generalship with his predecessors, Kitchener and, especially, Gordon. The famous statue of Gordon was erected in front of the Palace in 1903 and became a focus of religio-political rites. In 1910 Wingate commissioned a ‘well known London artist’ (Miss Ouless) to copy ‘the celebrated picture of Gordon in Lady Abercrombie’s possession’, to hang in the Palace dining-room. This, Wingate thought, was ‘certainly ... an object which should be paid for by the Sudan Government’.267 He was so pleased with the result that he ordered a portrait of himself by the same artist. Kitchener was honoured by a replica of his statue in Calcutta, which Wingate ordered ‘on behalf of the residents of Khartoum and the inhabitants of the Sudan’.268 Wingate’s association with the British royal family was another mixture of the personal and political: it enhanced his position and was said to be a means of strengthening the British while diminishing the Egyptian connec¬ tion with the Sudan. Queen Victoria was a ‘sponsor’ of Wingate’s daughter, Victoria, born in 1899. That year he and Slatin were invited to stay at Balmoral, where they left ‘interesting Soudanese relics’.269 There¬ after a visit to Balmoral was an annual event, more than reciprocated by a flood of royal visits to Khartoum. King George V was the first (and last) reigning king to visit the Sudan when he and Queen Mary stopped briefly at Port Sudan in January 1912. Wingate was determined to do everything possible ‘to impress the natives of the Sudan with the importance’ of the occasion.270 Sudanese notables were assembled at Port Sudan, to show them that they were ‘more or less a part of the British Empire’.271 Extraordinary security measures were taken, including the despatch from Egypt of ‘Secret Agents’, and an increased surveillance ‘over the Native and lower European population’ and ‘fresh arrivals’ at Port Sudan and Suakin.272 Mudirs had been told to submit names of notables to be invited to ‘a special gathering’, but were not even themselves told what the occasion was. This posed a difficulty: Savile, the governor of Kordofan, observed that ‘persons of influence and loyalty’ were wanted, but these attributes were ‘by no means necessarily found in the same person’.273 Khartoum asked for seventy Dinkas to be sent to Port Sudan, for whom ‘70 condemned great coats and 70 blankets’ were provided. Some one hundred Dinkas came, performed for the king, and returned to Renk with gifts: a camp-bed and a cow for their leader, Yol; a cow for each ‘sub-chief’; and fifty piastres and a ‘piece of red sash’ for each man.274 The royal visit itself was a notable success. The king and queen, with a suite of twenty-three, arrived at Port Sudan early on 17 January aboard H.M.S. Medina. A 2 i-gun salute, the presentation of officials, the National Anthem, guards of honour, addresses, and the presentation of ‘Decora¬ tions, Medals and Gifts’ to the assembled notables ensued. A special train

Empire on the Nile

98

conducted the party to Sinkat where a ‘wild arab show’ and Dinka dancing took place. The royal party left Port Sudan that evening.275 Wingate later reported that the political effects of this 12-hour visit were enormous. The bemedalled shaykhs had been ‘almost’ mobbed on their return to Khartoum, so eager were the people ‘to see the King’s gifts’; and ‘at every village’ at which they stopped on their way home they received ‘ovations’. The visit, Wingate claimed, had ‘had an enormous effect throughout the whole of the Sudan’.276 The royal visit was thereafter commemorated as King’s Day in the Sudan. The king’s birthday and the anniversary of his accession were also celebrated as public holidays, marked by dinners, receptions at the Palace, and parades. This was expensive: as early as 1902 ‘ceremonial parades’ at Khartoum cost ‘at least ££400’ a year.277 By 1914 some eighteen holidays were observed by the government.278 Wingate was no believer in the separation of Church and State, at least in the Sudan. Until the opening of All Saints’ Church a room in the Palace was used for Sunday services, even before the city had a resident pastor. Wingate took a great interest in the construction of an Anglican church in Khartoum. In 1903 he wrote to The Times to ‘appeal ... to our fellowcountrymen

throughout

the

Empire’

for

financial

assistance.

One

thousand pounds had already been raised, but more was needed, especially since the church, ‘though simple’, should not be ‘architecturally unworthy’ of its location or of the ‘great historical associations which surround the capital of the Sudan’. In 1911, on the eve of the church’s consecration as a cathedral, Llewellyn Gwynne complained to Wingate that, largely owing to Sunday’s being a working day, practically no one attended services.279 The fact was that the mainly Anglican British community in the Sudan were firm Christians but not fervent worshippers. The church itself was of more than religious significance. The foundation stone was laid by Princess Henry of Battenberg (Queen Victoria’s daughter) in 1904, a notable occasion. Accompanied by other royal personages, and escorted by ‘the cavalry of the Governor General’s Body Guard’ (another of Wingate’s innovations), Princess Henry laid the stone just as the ‘last and parting gleam’ of the afternoon sun ‘shot . . . past the bronze statue of General Gordon’.280 The greatest rehgio-pohtical occasion of the Wingate years was the consecration of All Saints as a cathedral, in 1912. One who was there recorded the opening moments: by 9.15 we were all in our places, soldiers and govt, officials in white uniform, others in frock coats, and a good number of ladies, residents of Khartoum, Atbara' Port Sudan, Haifa etc. and about 30 or 40 tourists. . . . Just before 9.30 we heard the National Anthem being played outside, and the Sirdar entered and walked up the

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

99

central aisle to his special seat in the chancel, being preceded thither by the z churchwardens, Dun and Fleming. These happen to be judges, and as judges they were wearing their levee uniform, which consists of kneebreeches, silk stockings, lace ruff and cut-away coat, with a legal gown over all. These and other uniforms led [sic] a certain dramatic, or even theatrical [aspect] to the scene. . . . The ceremony was impressive and went without a hitch, having been carefully rehearsed beforehand.281 The Bishop of London delivered the sermon, invoking the memory of Gordon and his sacrifice. The Times weekly edition reported that ‘it was of Gordon chiefly that men were thinking ... of him that men will always think when they see the Cathedral at Khartum’.282 Wingate’s personal interest in the cathedral remained keen. In 1913 he wrote to the king’s secretary to enquire whether it would be appropriate to have a banner bearing the Royal Arms hanging over the ‘GovernorGeneral’s Chair’ in the cathedral. In trying to raise money to complete the building he went to extraordinary lengths. Lord Rosebery donated £100 in memory of his brother, but Wingate hoped to ‘induce him to make a very much more substantial memorial. . . than £100 will produce’:283 in fact, he had expected a Rosebery Clock Tower!284 During the war he proposed sending personal notes to the relatives of fallen soldiers who had once served in the Egyptian Army or Sudan Government: those notes ‘might also contain a list of all the articles still required to complete the Cathedral with their approximate cost so that would-be donors . . . would be able to choose some suitable memorial’.285 Wingate’s determination to live regally was expensive for the Sudan Government and an incubus for his subordinates. As early as January 1900 Maxwell complained of ‘having to cater for tourists’ because the hotel at Khartoum had not been completed. Almost two years later Wingate ‘had to ask’ Sir M. Hicks-Beach and his family to stay at the Palace because the hotel was still ‘not ready’. In 1906 ‘complaints about the hotel’ continued to ‘pour in from all sides’, Wingate told Cromer; the management was ‘worse than ever’, the food ‘bad’, and prices ‘exorbitant’. But Wingate was ambivalent towards tourists’ welfare. As often as he complained that they were a nuisance, so did he continue to solicit them. The Sudan became a popular winter stop, allowing the Wingates to entertain in a style they could not afford elsewhere. Any positive effects for the Sudan generally are more difficult to discern; when the country was finally ‘put on the map’ in Britain it was for economic reasons. Meanwhile the steady stream of visitors enlivened Khartoum’s exotic social life and burdened officials. While Wingate told Cromer that tourists were a bane, Slatin, his crony, wrote from St Moritz in 1903 that he had ‘issued any amount of invitations to see Khartum and South - I hope they wont [sic] come - because if

IOO

Empire on the Nile

everyone turn [szc] up who said he wishes to see our country — we would have a St Moritz season!’286 This prospect may have appealed to the gregarious Slatin, but when invitations ‘to see’ the south were accepted, it was left to the hapless local official to cater for travellers’ needs. Matthews of the Upper Nile suffered especially, and his complaints contrasted the needs of the country with those of the tourist: ‘Yes, British officers complain of having no houses at Taufikia and Mongalla, but the cry here is that the tourist enterprise blocks the way’. Wingate responded light-heartedly: ‘Tourists and others who pass through’, he told the governor, were loud in his praise.287 Matthews wanted development, not praise: the tourists were blocking the ‘path of progress’; the movement of supplies, building materials, and officials was ‘decidedly crippled by the tourist boats being so “exclusive” ’. The tourists, he concluded simply, ‘should not be here’. It was regrettable that ‘out¬ siders’ saw the ‘seriously inadequate hospital arrangements’ in his prov¬ ince, such as his recent discovery of ‘all the sick huddled outside the little mud hospital’ at Tawfiqia, ‘coughing and fainting’.288 This attempt to improve conditions by appealing to concern about public opinion had little obvious result, but the governor-general was incensed by the ‘appalling complaints’ he had received ‘from Tourists about the garbage’ they were served on trains and steamers.289 Why Wingate dealt with tourist matters of such surpassing triviality is no mystery. He enjoyed it. The tourists who received his attentions were British and European royalty, nobility, and socialites. A great deal of Wingate’s time was taken up in what he called these ‘social duties’. The entertainment of British royalty could not always be avoided, of course, but even in the Edwardian Sudan it was difficult to justify the lavish reception of obscure and penurious princes. Lord Edward Cecil, who by birth was more adept at dealing with impecunious aristocrats, described the Sudan as a ‘happy hunting ground for royalties’: ‘I hate the lot,’ he told Wingate simply.290 In 1904 Wingate placed the government steamer Ibis at the disposal of Princess Henry of Battenberg and Prince Leopold, to convey them to Cairo at Sudan Government expense. In 1905 a visit from the Duke of Connaught was ‘a heavy drain’ on Wingate’s meagre resources, but he preferred ‘to fork out’ rather than to create ‘a very disagreeable situation’. The Sudan Government was forced to ‘fork out’ too, but Wingate justified the expense for ‘illuminations’ in the guest’s honour as ‘not altogether useless in giving these Sudanese people some impression of Govt, prestige’, though he admitted that ‘this argument’ was not ‘very conclusive’.291 Wingate’s personal resources were stretched, and in May 1905 he arranged an increase in his entertainment allowance, at the same time announcing his resolve that ‘ordinary royalties’ would in future ‘pay for their own tickets and food in the Sudan’. They were, he said,

Governor-generalship of Sir Reginald Wingate

ioi

‘cadgers’.292 But Wingate knew that his complaints were disbelieved; ‘I am thought by some to be unecessarily [sic] lavish and even extravagant,’ he wrote, ‘but I must repudiate these charges.’ Cromer added his own view of the royal caravan to Khartoum. On i July he dined in London with the Prince of Wales who told him Wingate was arranging a trip to Khartoum for him. According to Cromer, the prince ‘did not seem at all keen about going’, and Cromer convinced him to abandon the idea. He told Wingate to ‘discourage’ the trip, and warned him that royal visits were not only troublesome and expensive, but ‘certainly do no good, and may even do harm’, thus demolishing Wingate’s only justification for soliciting them. As Sir Evelyn Wood rather cruelly put it to his protege in 1902: ‘I never looked to your writing to me from a Palace! perhaps some day you will sit on the Khedivial Throne [but] I fancy his Lordship of the Norfolk watering place has most of the power.’293 After Cromer’s retirement in 1907 Wingate had more freedom. Early in December Owen, the Sudan Agent in Cairo, wrote to Wingate enclosing ‘a list of distinguished tourists’ going to Khartoum that winter. Far from betraying annoyance with ‘cadgers’, Wingate’s letters resemble the diary of a London hostess: ‘You will see’, he wrote to the long-suffering Matthews, ‘from the enclosed letter from M. Achille Fould (the French multi¬ millionaire) how very much he appreciated his reception at Renk. I am sure also that you will have found the Duke of Brunswick a very nice and agreeable fellow. ... I much sympathise with you in the failure of the Shilluks to turn out when Winston Churchill passed through, but. . . they quite made up for their failure on that occasion by giving such a very interesting show to the Duchess D’Aosta. . . . She will ... be terribly distressed when she gets the news of the assassination of the King of Portugal and her nephew.’ Problems continued. In March ‘Prince Liech¬ tenstein and Count Berchen’ were ‘back from the Dinder’, and Count Hunyady was due soon, but Princess Schonburg was ‘on a Nuggar near Melut and crying for a steamer’; Slatin feared that her party would ‘all be rosted [sic]’. In June, in the same letter in which he first proposed a governor-general’s council, Phipps gave as one reason for ‘the perpetual overstrain’ of the government the fact that ‘the very few months when we are all together here are much broken into by the visits of potentates of sorts’.294 During the previous three-month ‘season’, Phipps himself had entertained to dinner 170 people.295 Phipps’s complaints, like Matthews’s, were brushed aside. When during the 1908-9 ‘season’ Lord Roberts of Kandahar and his family planned a visit, Wingate decided that ‘special facilities’ must be provided: such a distinguished man, and one who has done so much for England, should be treated with all the courtesy and consideration which it is possible for us to extend to him, and therefore I suggest offering him one of our small steamers between

102

Empire on the Nile

Shellal and Haifa, and, of course, passes for himself and his party on the Railway. I should of course ask him and the famdy to stay at the Palace.. . . All this means both public and private expense, but it cannot be helped and after all he is a man of very considerable weight and, if favourably impressed ... he will probably help us with the home authorities.296 Later, when Wingate arranged for Roberts’s boat to be towed from Shellal to Wadi Haifa, he decided that this was ‘a case in which I can well make this charge against the Sudan Government’. All the same, it was ‘just as well that these little arrangements should be considered entirely private and should not get known’.297 The arrival of Roberts’s party was timed to follow the departure from the Palace of the ‘Battenburg Princes’.298 The next to arrive were the Duke and Duchess of Connaught. While the men were shooting on Matthews’s only province steamer, another steamer was reserved ‘so as to allow the ladies to extend their journey further South if they should get bored cruising about between Renk and Meshra Zeraf’.299 Free passes for the railways and steamers were doled out to Sir William Garstin and Prince D’Arenberg. When a duke lost his gun and ammunition case, a special engine was sent, courtesy of the Sudan Government, to bring them to Khartoum.300 Lord Winterton, his steamer stuck on a rock 35 miles from Khartoum, worried about missing a train, so Wingate ‘bustled off the Elfin in great haste’ to get him.301 At the end of this eventful winter Wingate as usual wrote to scores of people in England to describe ‘a particularly heavy season . . . both in regard to work and social matters’. There had been ‘an exceptionally large number of distinguished visitors’, including (in addition to those already named) the Duke and Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein, ‘the Hohenlohes’, and Prince George William of Brunswick ‘and his Suite’. Slatin, as always, had been ‘quite invaluable in helping . . . both in official and social work’.302 In 1909-10 Theodore Roosevelt arrived. Owen of Mongalla assured Wingate that the former president would ‘get a very warm welcome and everything will be done for him’; he also mentioned that the troops at Mongalla had not even one donkey, and that he had begged Bernard for ten mules. Government steamers were placed at Roosevelt’s disposal, free railway passes were supplied to his party, and he and his family were accommodated at the Palace. The only expenses he had to bear himself were for meals outside Khartoum. Wingate explained that it was ‘only right that the Government should afford these facilities to so distinguished a traveller when passing through the Sudan’.303 The 19 10-11 season was ‘particularly heavy ... in the shape of work and social duties’, and included visits by Kitchener, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Fife and their children, and the King of Saxony.304 The king’s visit on 9-12 February may serve as an example of the duties involved in such

103

Fig. 6

Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to Khartoum, 1910

I'T'W

104

Empire on the Nile

‘social work’. His arrival at Khartoum at 4 p.m. on the 9th was private, and was followed by dinner at the Palace. On the 10th a ‘motor drive round [sic] Khartoum’ was followed by an afternoon cruise on the Elfin and the customary visit to Karari. On the morning of the 1 ith there was a tour of Gordon College, a trip to Omdurman, and dinner at the house of Slatin Pasha. Departure for the Upper Nile on the morning of the 12th was private.305 On the 20th the King of the Belgians appeared, forcing Wingate to postpone his own departure for Erkowit.306 Wingate later allowed that there had been ‘rather too many Royalties for absolute comfort’, but, as ‘an old Sheikh’ had remarked, ‘there must be something in this old Sudan when one King comes and another goes within a day of each other’.307 After the 1913 season, during which Khartoum had seen the likes of the Dowager Duchess of Roxburghe, Lady Desborough, and the Marchese Gentile-Farinola,308 Wingate, in a morning-after letter to Slatin, vowed that ‘next season’ would be different, and told Phipps that ‘to have anything whatever to do’ with ‘tourist work’ was ‘derogatory to Head¬ quarters’.309 By this he meant the socially obscure, for in 1914 the procession of ‘distinguished tourists’ resumed unabated. It is clear that any benefits accruing to the Sudan from the expenditure of time and money on the flurry of society it witnessed and served every winter were exceedingly small. When foreign capital came to be invested, it was at the instance of Lancashire, not St Moritz. After long summer leave, ‘inspections’, holidays at Erkowit, the winter ‘season’, and an enormous private correspondence, Wingate had little time left for the actual business of being governor-general. But Wingate’s style and the centrality of the governor-generalship made the occupant of the Palace the embodiment of the Sudan Government. In doing this Wingate was conforming with Sudanese precedents and creating a model for future rule.

Internal security, 1898-1914

THE GARRISON OF THE SUDAN

After the battle of Tal al-Kabir in September 1882, the Egyptian Army had been disbanded, and a new army formed under the sirdarship of Sir Evelyn Wood. Selected officers and non-commissioned officers from the old army were re-enrolled, and recruits were drawn directly from the provinces. Eight battalions were thus raised. A Sudanese battalion (the 9th Sudanese) was raised in May 1884, and the xoth Sudanese in January 1886. To these were added, in 1887-8, the nth, 12th, and 13th Sudanese battalions, and, consequent to the decision in 1896 to invade the Sudan, six more battalions (the 14th Sudanese, the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th Egyptian, and the Arab Battalion) were raised in 1896-7. After the battle of Omdurman the 15th Battalion became a Sudanese unit, and absorbed large numbers of Mahdist prisoners. Within days of the battle British units of the Anglo-Egyptian force began to withdraw, and during the next year many experienced British officers in the Egyptian Army were re-transferred for service in South Africa and elsewhere. The permanent British garrison was fixed at a mere 250 men, and even this miniscule force was withdrawn during the summer of 1899.1 The inadequacy of this force, and deficiencies in other areas of British military policy after Omdurman, became clear after the mutiny in the Egyptian Army in January 1900. Only a British force stationed permanently in the Sudan could deter further insubordination in the army, and only a large force could defend the government against a full-scale mutiny. As yet unchallenged southern peoples and recalcitrant Mahdists notwithstanding, ‘the main danger in the Soudan’, Cromer wrote, was ‘the army itself’, a danger ‘only slightly mitigated’ by the presence of a British battalion.2 Even one battalion proved difficult to obtain, and it was therefore the more important to reduce the Egyptian Army from a war-time to a peace-time establishment, taking care not to excite fears of a complete disbandment. The 17th and 105

io6

Empire on the Nile

18th (Egyptian) battalions were disbanded in 1900, and the 14th Sudanese in 1902, a reduction with which Wingate disagreed.3 Cromer was con¬ cerned that London would too quickly forget ‘how narrowly’ they had escaped disaster in 1900, and reminded Lansdowne: ‘service in the Soudan is unpopular amongst the Egyptian officers and men; that the numerous Pan-Islamic newspapers which are published in Cairo are ever willing to foster and encourage any discontent which may exist; and that the army is greatly under the influence of the Khedive, whose friendship can be as little relied upon as his judgment’.4 An immediate result of the mutiny was pressure on the War Office to agree to the permanent stationing of a battalion of British troops in the Sudan. In January 1900, with the British garrison at 250, Cromer was unduly laconic when he wrote that they ‘would almost certainly have been overpowered’ if an armed rising had occurred. Yet in the spring the garrison was withdrawn because of a lack of barrack accommodation for the summer months. Cromer worried about the ‘considerable risk’ thus incurred,5 and it is clear that the War Office did not take sufficiently seriously either the events of the previous winter or the conclusions Wingate had drawn from them. He had by now a long experience of wording warnings: ‘I think it is not an exaggeration to say that our position in the Sudan virtually hangs on a thread and, although I do not wish to pose as an alarmist, I consider it would be unwise and shortsighted to a degree, to ignore the warnings which recent events have given us.’6 Wingate’s warnings, however, could have unexpected results. Upon returning from a visit to the Sudan in 1902 a member of Parliament (Alick Murray) was questioned most about the safety of the small British force in Khartoum. But Murray ‘constantly’ answered that Wingate was ‘alive ... to every possibility and contingency’ and that a mutiny was ‘a most remote possibility’ owing to Wingate’s vigilance. This was the governor-general’s dilemma: he had to emphasise his insecurity while at the same time stressing his control of events. In any case, the War Office was persuaded to sanction the construction of buildings at Khartoum for two companies of infantry, and these were soon expanded to accommodate six companies. (During the construction of the barracks Wingate was again forced to recommend the removal of the British detachment from April to Septem¬ ber 1902, but expressed the opinion that security would not ‘seriously be endangered’ by the temporary withdrawal.)7 By November 1902 six companies of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, were stationed at Khartoum.8 The apparent ease with which Cromer and Wingate convinced London to alter the terms of service of British officers seconded to the Egyptian Army, and to station six companies of troops at Khartoum, owed much to

Internal security, 1898-1914

107

current views of imperial defence requirements generally. In the aftermath of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest and the ensuing Fashoda crisis, the defence of Egypt against a possible Franco-Russian attack had to be considered,9 and the reliability of the Egyptian Army was therefore of more than local interest. In November 1902 a conference was held in Cairo at which Cromer, Kitchener (en route to India as commander-in-chief), Wingate, and the commander of British troops in Egypt agreed that the British garrison in Egypt was ‘wholly inadequate’ to defend the country ‘against an oversea raid of 5000 European troops’; and that ‘a successful raid of this nature might lead to a revolt of the Egyptian army, and, for the time being, the complete overthrow of all British authority in Egypt’.10 At the very least, the continued quiescence of the Egyptian Army in the Sudan was a major factor in Egypt’s defence against external attack. Cromer had already gone so far as to state that ‘the best thing to do with the Egyptian army in time of war, as also in time of peace, is to keep the greater portion of it in the Sudan [sic]’.11 Kitchener even proposed to raise four new Sudanese battalions, that could be available for rapid deployment to Egypt or anywhere else (including India) they might be needed. Wingate expres¬ sed approval of the plan,10 but had no intention of carrying it out. It is likely that he saw a danger of having his best troops become an imperial rather than a Sudan Government resource. Indeed, Cecil reported that Wingate was ‘dead against’ the idea; and that Cromer favoured it only because it would allow him to disband four Egyptian battalions and save money.13 In the event, another turn in international politics altered Britain’s imperial defence needs before the idea could be implemented, and it was abandoned. The defence of the Sudan against its own army of occupation became a common goal of the Sudan Government and imperial strategists in Britain, giving greater weight to Wingate’s arguments for troops and funds. Consequently a number of defence plans for Khartoum were devised, intended to secure the British presence against an Egyptian Army mutiny or Sudanese revolt, of which the former was considered the more form¬ idable threat. Thus in June 1904 the General Staff of the British Army prepared a memoradum on the defence of Khartoum for the Committee of Imperial Defence. This document drew attention to the ‘security of British troops and civilians at Khartoum in the contingency of a mutiny of the Egyptian Army’ as ‘an important factor in the general question of the defence of Egypt’. In such an event no help could be expected from the British garrison in Egypt. ‘Precautionary preparations’ would therefore have to be adequate to ‘enable Khartoum to hold out until a sufficient relieving force had arrived from home and had fought its way to Khartoum’. The memory of General Gordon bore heavily on the General Staff’s thinking: ‘Past experience’ showed that such precautions were

io8

Empire on the Nile

necessary; ‘public opinion’ in Britain would not abandon ‘to their fate’ a British force and a ‘large number of civilians, including women and children’. It was recommended that a fort, stores, and a ‘defensible Artillery magazine’ should be built; that six months’ supplies be provided; and that the British garrison at Khartoum be increased by half a company of artillery.14 Wingate was able on his own authority to direct the construction of the stores and magazine. A detail of Royal Garrison Artillery was posted to Khartoum later in the year.15 In 1905 the Duke of Connaught, inspector-general of the British army, visited the Sudan. His report on the state of the Sudan’s defences closely reflected Wingate’s own views. On the question of who should command British troops in the Sudan, the governor-general or the GOC Egypt, Connaught came down on Wingate’s side: since ‘at any moment in these wild regions there may be serious frontier troubles involving the British Flag’, he wrote, the governor-general should have command of the British troops. The duke restated Kitchener’s point that forces stationed in the Sudan could constitute a ‘first reserve’ in case of trouble in India. Indeed, he put the case for the Sudan’s becoming a major base for British troops: Both in Egypt and the Sudan the cost of maintaining the troops need not be excessive; training ground, manoeuvre areas, camps of instruction, artillery prac¬ tice camps, can be had for nothing, and are admirable; the climate is advantageous [the duke visited in January], and would acclimatize young soldiers to the heat and prepare them for Indian service; forage is cheap, horses comparatively so; in fact ... it would appear that we have now in our hands a military post of immense strategic value, which hardly appears to be appreciated by. the British Government.16 Unfortunately for the Sudan Government, however, the importance of Egypt and the Sudan in imperial defence calculations had diminished with the Anglo-French Entente in 1904 and the ensuing Anglo-Russian rap¬ prochement. The safety of imperial communications seemed assured, and the apparently immense strategic value of the Sudan receded.17 In 1906 the Aqaba (or Taba) incident, involving a dispute over the administrative boundary between Egypt and the Ottoman territories to the east, re-emphasised the strategic importance of Egypt. Apprehension of an Ottoman threat to the Suez Canal, and the widespread sympathy shown, for a variety of reasons, in Egypt for Ottoman claims, seemed to stress the vulnerability of the imperial lifeline. On 26 April Cromer told Grey that the Aqaba incident had been accompanied by no ‘disquieting symptoms’ among Egyptian units stationed in the Sudan’, but on the same day Wingate wrote to Cromer that there was, in fact, cause for concern: ‘As regards the native army . . . they are and always will be a danger - I mean the native officers - and although one does not like pandering to them ... I

109

Fig. 7

The Duke of Connaught arriving at the Palace, Khartoum,

I 10

Empire on the Nile

cannot but feel that it is sound policy to give them no peg on which to hang up a possible grievance.’ Some seventy-two officers were complaining about a recent ruling affecting their pension rights, and were ‘talking a good deal’. Wingate suggested that it would be wise ‘to keep them quiet’ by answering their complaints. Junior officers too had petitioned for a pay increase, and were ‘restless’: Wingate recommended ‘concessions’,18 and asked for ‘discretionary powers to announce a Government decision favourable to’ the officers, ‘should anything occur to make such a step . . . necessary’.19 Wingate’s recommendations were accepted, and he reported on 9 May that the seventy-two officers were ‘very pleased’, and that the junior officers would be helped by an extra ration: if trouble occurred now, it could only be ‘actuated by political or religious motives’. Having admitted a grievance, Wingate attributed the attitude of young officers to a ‘spirit of strike and insubordination’ in Cairo, ‘fostered mainly by malcon¬ tents and individuals of socialistic tendencies’. But in a contradictory and remarkable passage he reminded Cromer that Except in the case of about 5% °f the officers, they have no careers - almost all the higher appointments must be held by British Officers.... I think it is much to the credit of the native officer that he works so well with so little prospect of a satisfactory future. . . . All I ask is that their cases should be impartially and openly considered . . . before their demands are characterised as preposterous or of a blackmailing tendency.20

Again in August 1908 Wingate foresaw ‘troubles’ the following winter, probably beginning in the army: the ‘young bloods’ were the danger, and it was necessary to impress on senior officers their responsibility for keeping ‘a very tight hold’ on their juniors, lest these be ‘carried away by an insane desire to copy events in Turkey’.21 But far from winning more British military assistance in the period of rising tension after the Aqaba incident, Wingate was hard pressed to keep the little he had. In May 1907 a British government committee was appointed ‘to consider the military requirements of the Empire as affected by Egypt and the Soudan’. Both Wingate and Slatin were interviewed.22 Although interested primarily in the defence of Egypt, in its report the committee considered a variety of threats posed to the Sudan’s security. These were a general rising with religious overtones; a mutiny of the Egyptian Army; a combination of the two; and an armed incursion from the western Sudan or the necessity of intervention in Darfur. The supposed danger from the west seems to have originated with the Sudan Government. In July Owen, then Sudan Agent, spoke on the subject to General Ewart in Egypt. The absurdity of his warning and the conditional way in which it was phrased, giving an impression of grave danger without estimating its likelihood, were typical of the Sudan Government: ‘I stated’, Owen wrote, ‘what I think is always a

Internal security, 1898-1914

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possibility, that we may before long perhaps see Darfur invaded by Wadai, and supposing Ali Dinar got severely worsted and appealed to us for assistance. ... If we could not [give it], Darfur would be occupied by the Wadaians which would mean Kordofan would be invaded in its’ [sic] turn and so on.’’3 This and other Sudan Government testimony had no apparent result. Thrown back on its own resources, the Sudan Government instituted plans of its own to enhance security.

‘Defence Committees’ were

established in all military districts outside Khartoum, under the presidency of the respective officers commanding, and these were charged with drawing up defence schemes and considering the site and design of new buildings in accordance with the schemes. A defence scheme for Khartoum had been devised in 1907, but called for the participation of Egyptian troops.24 A separate plan dealt with the deployment and duties of the British garrison, and was clearly designed in anticipation of a mutiny. This plan called for the appointment of a ‘Captain’ and two ‘Subalterns’ from among the members of the various European rifle clubs, to lead them in emergencies. Supplies of sandbags were kept at government buildings and Gordon College, as well as at the fort and British barracks. Instructions were issued for the protection of ‘European refugees’.25 The rifle clubs were originally social organisations among the largest foreign communities in Khartoum. The (British) Khartoum Rifle Club had about one hundred members, the Italian club about two hundred, and the Greek about five hundred. In 1907 Wingate told Harvey, the financial adviser in Egypt, that these were ‘under the impression’ that they were ‘Rifle Clubs pure and simple’, but that he had other ideas: their members would ‘provide a very valuable supplementary European force which, under certain circumstances, might render enormous service’. Even if Wingate did not believe this, the idea of Greek merchants and British accountants manning the ramparts was useful in dramatising the govern¬ ment’s insecurity. He concluded ominously: ‘I need not detail the pos¬ sibilities which are in my mind.’ But these can be deduced from, among other things, the ‘general idea’ of manoeuvres held in 1909, when the Duke of Connaught again visited Khartoum: ‘The country is in a state of insurrection. Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman are isolated. The Railway is destroyed and the Garrisons are very short of provisions.’26 That Wingate resorted to such schemes indicates how little impact he made with his protests and warnings. The Sudan Government’s concern about the influence in the Sudan, and especially in the army, of Egyptian political currents following the Aqaba and Dinshaway incidents was not always shared by British officials in Cairo. Gorst was considered unappreciative of the ‘gravity of the situation’

I 12

Empire on the Nile

created by the dissemination of Egyptian nationalist newspapers and tracts attacking the administration of the army.27 The assassination in 191o of the Coptic prime minister, Butros Ghali Pasha (who had signed the AngloEgyptian convention in 1899) had, according to Clayton in Khartoum, created a ‘widespread feeling of pleasure . . . among the Egyptians both Military and Civil’,28 and although he estimated that the Egyptians had little influence with the Sudanese, he worried that ‘some of the younger Sudanese’ might come to believe ‘the lies’ that they were ‘probably being told’.29 (It was at this time that Theodore Roosevelt visited the Sudan. He addressed the Egyptian Officers’ Club, telling its members to stay out of politics, a message that, Clayton delightedly remarked, was at variance with the ‘eulogy on freedom and liberty’ some of them had expected.)30 Wingate rested more easily after Kitchener succeeded Gorst, but even Kitchener was not always reliable. In 1911-12 the British artillery at Khartoum was manned by only half a company of gunners (the other half being stationed at Malta), an arrangement the War Office considered inefficient. Kitchener agreed. Stack, then Sudan Agent, wrote to Wingate on the subject, and his letter clarifies the problems with which Wingate had to deal: I asked him [Kitchener] how he proposed manning the guns which . . . beside their moral effect, at least give us a superiority over any weapons likely to be brought against us. His reply was . . . that Egyptian Garrison gunners would be sufficient. ... To this I objected in the most emphatic terms saying it destroyed the whole principle of the Khartoum Defence Scheme in the event of a native rising in which Egyptian troops sympathized.. . . [He said] it was quite wrong in principle to base any defence scheme on the idea that troops trained by us were likely to turn against us.. . . it was on the tip of my tongue to add that with all respect I considered he was thinking more of the efficiency of a Garrison Company than the safety of the Sudan. However I felt that . . . this would be rather too strong a criticism for a Major to make to a Field Marshal. ... I might as well have been talking to the Sphinx.

If Kitchener, of all people, was unmindful of the danger of reliance on the British-trained Egyptian Army, Wingate had little chance of convincing London. In this particular disagreement he was reduced to arguing that a decrease in the British force at Khartoum would adversely affect Manches¬ ter’s assessment of the Sudan’s ‘cotton growing possibilities’.31 The rapidly-changing strategic situation in the Mediterranean before the outbreak of the world war again emphasised the importance to Britain of securing the Suez Canal and, therefore, its position in Egypt and the Sudan. In 1913 General Sir Ian Hamilton visited the Sudan and was critical of the British force there. Hamilton found the garrison of 785 officers and men ‘ludicrously’ inadequate. He recommended steps to defend Port Sudan and the Nile-Red Sea railway, and an increase in the number of gunners stationed in the capital. But as war approached, bickering continued over

Internal security, 1898-1914

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the exact number of British officers to be seconded to the Egyptian Army, and which government should pay for them.32 The perceived unreliability of the Egyptian Army necessitated not only a British garrison at Khartoum to guard the Sudan Government, but also the recruitment and training of Sudanese troops to enforce its authority in the provinces. Wingate and his military staff were preoccupied with the possibility of Egyptian insurbordination and incitement of Sudanese officers and men against their British superiors. Whether British suspicion created Egyptian disloyalty, or Egyptian resentment engendered British suspicion, there is no doubt that suspicion and resentment existed. It was therefore Wingate’s policy, whenever possible, to separate the Sudanese and Egyptian elements of the army, and if he could not reconcile the Egyptians, to foster an identity of interests with the Sudanese. The 14th Sudanese Battalion, disbanded in 1902, was reformed in 1906. Although Kitchener’s plan to raise four ‘Imperial Sudanese’ battalions was never likely to be adopted, its chances of success were in any case poor without conscription because, as Wingate knew, the Sudan could not supply the men. This might have been a source of some embarrassment to him, since for years even before the Anglo-Egyptian conquest he had depicted the Sudan as a happy hunting-ground for the recruitment of soldiers. In an article published in 1892 Wingate had extolled the ‘sterling fighting qualities’ of the ‘great cattle-owning negroes and negroids’ of the Southern Sudan, who supplied the Egyptian Army’s Sudanese battalions. ‘The European nation’, he went on, that extends its sphere of influence over these distant lands will secure a recruiting ground for troops to whom for reckless bravery and endurance it would be hard to find an equal. This is a point worth bearing in mind by extensively colonising European nations desirous of obtaining auxiliaries who are less tied down by feelings of patriotism than perhaps any other class, and who have been truthfully described as creatures who ‘eat, drink, and fight, but never pray!’

In his report on the Bahr al-Ghazal, written in 1895, Wingate specifically noted its ‘vast resources ... in men’.33 Once the Anglo-Egyptian conquest had taken place the British found no vast resources of men, and Wingate had no intention of sending what men he had outside the Sudan. On several occasions, however, he used the same promise of military manpower to further his political proposals. When in 1906 he argued for the extension of the railway to El Obeid, he noted that Kordofan would make available ‘a supply of some of the best irregular fighting material’ he had ever seen, which would 'be available for export not only out of the Province but perhaps out of the Sudan’.34 The Lado Enclave was described as another source of recruitment, but, after its accession to the Sudan, ‘for some unexplained reason the supply . . . altogether ceased’.35 The promise of Sudanese manpower became embarrassing when

114

Empire on the Nile

requests for reinforcements began to be made. In 1901 the Foreign Office asked that, ‘when the time comes’, assistance should be given ‘to the recruiting of Sudanese for the East African or Ugandan rifles’. Wingate could not ‘too strongly express the hope that the time never will come’, he said, because recruitment for external service would create suspicions about British intentions in the Sudan. In 1908 the King’s African Rifles wanted ‘permission to enlist 100 Sudanese recruits’, but Wingate replied that the Egyptian Army could not fill even its own needs. As reasons for this he listed a labour shortage in the Sudan, consequent high wages, and the ‘inherent reluctance of the black to submit himself to the restraint of military discipline’,36 a theme notably absent in his prospectus of the Sudan’s potential. During the first world war Wingate resisted attempts by London to conscript Sudanese, warning of the ‘unrest’ conscription would provoke,37 although he himself had several times suggested conscription for domestic military service. Most of the recruitment for the Egyptian Army in the Sudan was undertaken among the peoples of the south. Admired for their martial virtues, they had proven their value during the campaigns of the Mahdia and before, but were rather difficult to command, requiring sympathy, firmness, and the expert knowledge of experienced British officers. Such officers knew what to expect, and when, for example in 1901, an inter¬ battalion fracas erupted at Omdurman, resulting in five deaths and thirtyfive other casualties, it was not considered very serious. Indeed, Wingate wrote of the incident that ‘these blacks’ were ‘little better than savages and children to a degree - rifles in the hands of such men must always be fraught with a certain amount of risk’.38 The influx of recruits during and after the final phase of the Anglo-Egyptian invasion brought the Sudanese bat¬ talions up to establishment,39 but there was soon a shortage of suitable men to fill vacancies. It became apparent that recruitment would not be as easy as Wingate had been led, or had led others, to believe. While at Fashoda in January 1899 Maxwell had told him that the Shilluk and Nuer were ‘an idle good for nothing race of savages’; it would be years before the government could ‘get hold of them and get them to enlist’. In 1904 a Recruiting Commission was established in the Bahr al-Ghazal, but after six months had produced a mere forty-five men. Wingate put on a brave face and declared himself ‘fairly’ satisfied with this result, but much greater num¬ bers were needed. He had high hopes of the Dinka who, while ‘undoubt¬ edly the most warlike and powerful tribe’, had proved ‘the shyest in coming forward’. D. C. E. ff. Comyn, an inspector in the Bahr al-Ghazal at the time, recorded in his memoirs a visit by the Recruiting Commission. It enlisted only one recruit, ‘a man discharged for blindness’ from the army. In fact, the province administration acted to discourage recruitment.

Internal security, 1898-1914

115

Besides, Comyn commented, so much of the commission’s time was spent in hunting game that a shortage of carriers ensued.40 By May 1905 Wingate had to admit that prospects for recruitment in any part of the Sudan were ‘far from brilliant’. In 1907, when plans were in hand to raise another Sudanese battalion, Wingate approved a suggestion for an Arab (that is, Northern Sudanese) battalion instead, although the ‘same high discipline’ could not be expected from them as from Southerners, and there was always a danger of ‘the religious element’.41 While Wingate described his soldiers as ‘savages’, he did not set his sights very high in recruitment. In the Administrative regulations of 1910 it was stated that ‘Only Sudanese of the following classes should be taken for enlistment: — (a) Runaway servants who refuse to return to their masters, (b) Servants who refuse to work, or are liable to prosecution as idle persons or vagabonds, (c) Sudanese without permanent employment who may be charged with minor offences, (d) Sudanese boys in towns without occupa¬ tion or unlicensed as donkey boys, shoeblacks, etc. can be enlisted provided they are medically sound, and if on investigation of their cases it appears to be to the advantage of the individual and of the community that they should be enlisted.’ Bounties were paid to volunteers, and to ‘recruit¬ ing agents’, ma’murs, and non-commissioned officers and soldiers who brought in a recruit.42 One reason for Sudanese unwillingness to enlist may have been the conditions under which the battalions served. During a southern tour in 1902 Wingate recorded the state of one detachment. The men had had ‘no meat rations for months’, and their British officer had no funds or barter goods with which to buy food. ‘In fact,’ Wingate wrote, ‘a more happy-golucky arrangement I have never seen.’ In 1906 there was an incident of insubordination at Mongalla. The two companies involved had been stationed there for two years, Wingate reported. The C.O. of the detachment, Captain Logan . . . was all the summer practically alone at Mongalla.... I have since heard . . . that he did not look well, that he had a ‘wild look in his eyes’ and . . . was suffering from African irritability in a high degree. . . . The Sudanese soldiers require very careful handling and if they think themselves insulted they are rather apt to get excited. . . . this is by no means the first time they have resented treatment at the hands of the British Officers. . . . Logan’s escape on the present occasion was almost miraculous and an Egyptian Officer was wounded. Wingate concluded that more British officers were necessary to avoid posting any officer to ‘a lonely fever-stricken spot for often months at a time’.43 Indeed, two British officers in the Bahr al-Ghazal had resigned rather than ‘face another rainy season’, and the 10th Sudanese should be relieved but could not be because the relief scheme had been upset by troop

ii 6

Empire on the Nile

deployments elsewhere.44 Conditions at Mashra' al-Riqq were found to be deplorable during a 1911 inspection. The barrack was tin, haunted by bats, and had a roof through which water poured ‘in torrents’: the troops had abandoned it and lived in tukls. The telegraph office had been deserted too, and the ma’mur’s house would soon be uninhabitable. A tour of the Upper Nile in 1912 gave an even worse impression. The company at Kodok was badly in need of a British officer. The men wore old boots, had no mosquito nets, and the stores contained ‘old sacks, paraffin, and big gun ammunition’ in close proximity. Conditions on patrol were often difficult and exacerbated by poor planning and inattention to soldiers’ welfare.45 Yet another reason for the reluctance of Sudanese to enlist was their treatment upon retirement from the army. In October 1914 Wingate described an inspection he had made of ‘about 150 old Sudanese reservists’ at Kosti, half of whom had received no assistance from the army. ‘Great illfeeling’ existed, and was justified: For many years [Wingate wrote] it had been looked upon as one of the greatest scandals connected with the Army that the old Sudanese, who had fought so gallantly for us . . . should be kicked out of the Army practically penniless, and many cases of the greatest distress, hardship, and even starvation were brought to my notice. I represented the matter in the strongest manner and asked for a considerable annual grant of money to enable us to rectify this burning scandal, not only because I knew that our atrocious disregard of these old men was having the worst possible effect on our recruiting efforts, and that a feeling of genuine dislike to Government. . . was being engendered . . .

An annual allotment had been granted, but the Cairo authorities had reclaimed unspent funds and were threatening to do so again. This, Wingate said, he would ‘resist to the last’.46 A colonisation scheme for settling old soldiers saved many of them from destitution. Wingate professed to blame the reluctance of Sudanese to enlist on their antipathy towards Islam. The Egyptian Army was of course Muslim, and the southerners who enlisted were, if not already nominally Muslim, almost always soon ‘converted’. In trying to explain why recruitment in the former Lado Enclave had ‘altogether ceased’ in March 1911, Wingate was ‘inclined to think that the system which prevails in Sudanese Bat¬ talions, of turning all recruits into Moslems and circumcising them, has something to do with it’. He therefore suggested a ‘Territorial system’ that would ensure that recruits remained nearer home. This would also give the government the opportunity ‘of getting rid of the Moslemizing influence in the shape of Egyptian Officers and fanatical Sudanese N.C.O.s, and very gradually dropping the Moslem conditions ... in all Sudanese Battalions of the Egyptian Army’.47 Wingate and Owen, the governor of Mongalla, had other things in mind - the whole question of Muslim penetration of the

Internal security, 1898-1914

117

south - when he wrote this, and the subsequent development of ‘Ter¬ ritorial’ forces received its impetus from that concern, as well as from purely military reasons. As early as September 1911 it was reported that the government was ‘on a fair way to the extinction of the Egyptian’ in southern stations, and efforts were well under way to dispense with Northern Sudanese technical staff as well.48 But in most stations the government was represented only by a contingent of troops; and the army was the source, however inadequate, of medical care, food, trade goods, and so forth. In effect, the Sudan Government in the south had all the appearances of a Muslim government. The political benefits accruing from locally raised units were obvious. Troops raised locally would be cheaper; they could ‘be paid, fed, and clothed according to local requirements’, not up to Egyptian Army standards; they would speak the language of the district in which they were stationed, and know the country better than outsiders. These soldiers would man the outposts, while a ‘small striking force of regular soldiers’ remained at province headquarters.49 Companies of troops were allotted areas to cultivate for their own food, and each man was equipped with a ‘fass’ and a saw, the company as a whole being assigned other agricultural implements.50 The plan called for three companies (one in the Bahr al-Ghazal, the others in Mongalla), leading eventually to six companies (two in the Bahr al-Ghazal, four in Mongalla). This would free regular troops for service in the north.51 Although recruitment undertaken in the former Lado Enclave did not meet expectations, it was considered that those enlisted would suffice ‘for that part of the world’ where, in any case, there was ‘no enemy of importance’. Moreover, the Sudanese clerks attached to the companies had ‘too much of the Effendi about them to care for work in such out of the way places’; education had spoiled them.52 Obtaining suitable British officers remained a problem. No one volunteered, and Wingate decided that the only solution was to detail officers to the south. By 1914 a company of Equatorials had replaced the 12th Sudanese at Yambio, and in 1915 another company took over at Tembura.53 In 1914 a Nuba Territorial Company was established, with headquarters at Kadugli, but the local meks did all they could ‘to dissuade their men from joining’ it, and recruitment and training progressed slowly.54 It was not the composition and character of the army in the Southern Sudan alone that Wingate and others considered altering: they had in mind the possibility, however distant, of removing Egyptian units altogether from the Sudan and replacing them with an all-Sudanese force. The idea of conscripting Sudanese was mooted at least as early as 1903, in the annual report of Watson, the adjutant-general, but Cromer had rejected it. In 1913

118

Empire on the Nile

Wingate and Slatin agreed that the time was approaching when they might ‘be able to establish a very modified form of Sudanese Conscription’, without which there would always be a shortage of men for the battalions. In April 1912 Wingate mentioned to Stack the idea of ‘calling the greater part of the Army in the Sudan the “Sudan” Army’, with the Egyptian units forming a ‘Detachment to assist in garrison duties’, but he was sure that British authorities in Cairo and London would object on political grounds. After the outbreak of war in 1914 he returned to the point of forming a ‘Sudan Army’, but still recognised that this was impossible at such a politically sensitive time.55 As early as 1900 it had been proposed that a separate military school should be established in the Sudan, thereby saving Sudanese cadets from the politically polluted atmosphere of Cairo. Cromer favoured the idea, and on 7 May 1905 the Khartoum Military School was opened with an initial enrolment of fourteen cadets. In 1909 the school’s establishment was increased from thirty cadets to forty, and in 1914 to fifty.56 Cadets were ‘chosen from the best families in the Sudan and from the sons of old officers and soldiers’.57 From 1912 a selection committee, sitting twice a year, recommended candidates to the sirdar. By 1913 an educational standard equivalent to the third year of Gordon College was required for admission. Courses included military law, khedivial and army regulations, writing official letters, arithmetic, drill and field-work, riding, musketry, signal¬ ling, and typography. A two-week training camp was held annually from 1908. Arab (that is northern Sudanese) cadets were usually commissioned in the Camel Corps or Arab Battalion, while southerners were commis¬ sioned in the Sudanese battalions.58 Although there was no regret that a separate school had been established, yet the ‘products’ of the school were not so free of ‘Egyptian influence’ as the British would have liked, nor, indeed, could they be, serving as they did under Egyptian officers and with Egyptian troops. Indeed, the first commandant of the military school was an Egyptian, Yuzbashi Muhammad Effendi Rasmy, who served until 1910. His successors were all British officers, but the staff officers of the school were Egyptians or Sudanese.59 In 1910 Wingate already considered that the school required ‘very careful watching’.60

SECURITY IN THE NORTH: SUDANESE RESISTANCE TO CONDOMINIUM RULE

The maintenance of the Egyptian Army at Khartoum and important provincial posts in the Northern Sudan was considered necessary to deal with two types of security problem: tribal and inter-tribal disturbances and local incidents with religious overtones that might, if left unchecked,

Internal security, 1898-1914

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develop into general risings. It was largely the responsibility of the Egyptian Army, under British officers, and of provincial police, to deal with such outbreaks, while the small British garrison held the centre, Khartoum. The worst potential security problem Wingate and his advisers could imagine was a religiously inspired Sudanese revolt precipitating a sympathetic mutiny of the Egyptian Army. This concern in itself required the rapid and ruthless suppression of any such revolt, since a prolonged rising might create an atmosphere conducive to mutiny. When on 24 November 1899 Wingate cabled his wife to say ‘Hurrah Mahdism finished’,61 he referred to the last major armed resistance of the Mahdist State in the person of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi. Mahdism as a belief was far from finished, although to anyone surveying its prospects it must have seemed a lost cause. In some eschatological traditions, however, the demise of the Mahdi is associated with the appearance of al-Dajjal, the Anti-Christ who, in turn, will be destroyed at the return of al-Nabi 'Isa, the Prophet Jesus. In the Sudanese case, the British could be seen in the role of al-Dajjal: where then was al-Nabi 'Isa, and when would he proclaim himself? The first fifteen years of the Condominium witnessed a series of minor risings by self-proclaimed Nabi 'Isas, and even by men claiming to be the Mahdi. Still other incidents occurred involving the refusal of die¬ hard Mahdists to accept the rule of an alien regime. The existence in the Sudan of a growing population of West African Muslims, called collec¬ tively Fallata, who had travelled through the Sudan en route to or from Mecca, and had been attracted by economic opportunities, was a disturb¬ ing element. Among Fallata, expectations of the millennium were particu¬ larly high. Each ‘Mahdist’ incident, no matter how hopeless its prospects or how disastrous its outcome, was considered by the government as the potential spark to ignite a conflagration, for it was from such trivial beginnings that Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi, had emerged to destroy the last foreign regime. The Sudanese were as conscious of that fact as their conquerors were. Thus from the beginning of the Condominium British policy was designed first and foremost to avoid any trespass on orthodox Muslim opinion; to be vigilant of Sudanese deviations from orthodox practice and belief; and to suppress without hesitation any indication of religious revolt. In the wake of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest, members of the Mahdi’s family were treated severely. In August 1899 the Khalifa Muhammad Sharif and the two eldest of the Mahdi’s surviving sons, al-Fadil and alBushra, were killed at Shukkaba on the Blue Nile, where they had been under arrest. It had been rumoured that they were planning an escape to join the Khalifa 'Abdallahi in Kordofan or to incite a rising of the Kinana tribe in the Gezira. After trial by a court-martial they were executed. There

Empire on the Nile

120

are variant versions of the circumstances of their deaths, however, and the incident remains clouded.62 Two sons of the Mahdi survived, 'Ali (i881— 1944) and 'Abd al-Rahman (1885-1959). 'Ali was interned at Rosetta until 1905, and later entered the Sudan civil service. 'Abd al-Rahman, who had been wounded at Shukkaba, was first sent to live with a relative, Muham¬ mad Taha Shajiddi, in the Gezira, and, from 1906, lodged in Omdurman, where he subsisted on a small government pension and was supervised to the point of harassment.63 A British official who visited him there in 1909 later described him as ‘an obsequious, sorry looking youth in soiled clothes’.64 As of 1910 Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s ‘allotment’ was reportedly ££5 per month, a sum that, unless supplemented from other sources, was surely inadequate: his personal household numbered thirty-eight, his brother 'All’s household numbered twenty-five, and there were thirty-five other people for whom Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman claimed financial responsi¬ bility. Among those living under his care were still nineteen women who had vowed to marry none but the Mahdi and were consequently housed by his family.65 Slatin Pasha took a personal interest in the Mahdi’s kin: it was later said that they had been subjected to ‘The Vengeance of Slatin’, that he had kept them poor and denied them their rights.66 Slatin disallowed reference to 'Abd al-Rahman as ‘Sayyid’, and insisted that he sign his name ‘Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Ahmad’, and not ‘Abd al-Rahman alMahdi’. In 1911 the Mahdi’s and khalifas' families appealed for better treatment, but ‘received a severe and public snub at the hands of Slatin’.67 They were allotted building plots in Omdurman chosen for their proxim¬ ity to the police station. Assistance came from special funds controlled by the governor-general,68 as did small pensions. Other Mahdist notables, including prominent ex-amirs and their families, were imprisoned in Egypt, first at Rosetta and later at Damietta. These included 'Uthman Diqna, Muhammad Ahmad al-Hilu, Yunus wad al-Diqaym, Muhammad al-Zaki 'Uthman, 'Uthman Shaykh al Din (the son of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi) who died in 1900, al-Khatim wad Musa, and others.69 In 1908 the Damietta prisoners petitioned the Sudan Government to allow their return to the Sudan. The case received publicity in Britain, and questions were asked in Parliament, causing some embarrassment to Wingate.70 He

feared

a ‘Parliamentary and

[Egyptian]

Nationalist’

campaign on their behalf, to avoid which and to make them less accessible to enquiring British journalists, the remaining prisoners were moved to Wadi Haifa.71 There they were kept under various degrees of restriction, and over the years most were released. By 1918 only four remained, including 'Uthman Diqna who, medical opinion attested, was ‘suffering from religious mania, with delusions’, that could ‘become active and fanatical’ and a ‘great danger to the public safety’.72 In 1924 he was allowed to make the hajj, and he died at Wadi Haifa, a prisoner still, in 1926.73

Internal security, 1898-1914

I2I

Those prominent or presumably dangerous Mahdists who were not imprisoned were closely supervised by the intelligence department, assisted by local officials. Restrictions were imposed on their movements, and special permission was required even for local travel. Inspectors were informed by Khartoum of the dates of departure and arrival in such cases, and regular visits to the local inspector or ma'mur allowed close track to be kept of their whereabouts. As in the case of the Mahdi’s and khalifas' families, land and pensions were assigned to notable ex-Mahdists. These grants were given in proportion to family size, and those assisted included Yunus al-Diqaym, rAbd al-Baqi 'Abd al-Wakil, Isma'il Ahmad, Ibrahim Malik, al-Khatim Musa, Muhammad al-Mahdi Ahmad, and Muhammad Ahmad al-Hilu.74 Attempts were made to prohibit Mahdist rites and customs. From the beginning of the Condominium the patched jibba, the outward sign of holy poverty worn during the Mahdia, made its wearer liable to impress¬ ment into a work gang. The destruction of the Mahdi’s tomb and desecration of his remains were meant at least ostensibly to discourage pilgrimage to the site. A similar fate may have befallen the remains of the Khalifa Muhammad Sharif and the Mahdi’s two sons at Shukkaba.75 In 1915 a sudden increase in the number of visitors to the tomb of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi led to a recommendation that it be ‘completely obliterated’,76 but cooler heads prevailed because this pilgrimage had gone on for years without incident.77 Mahdist prayer meetings were banned, as was use (although not possession) of the Ratib, the anthology of Quranic and other religious verses compiled by the Mahdi. With these restrictions in place, and the natural leaders of Mahdism either dead or living in humili¬ ating circumstances, there was little more that the government could do to suppress the cult. Even so, in 1908, following an incident in Dongola, Wingate ordered a law to be drafted banning not only Mahdist practices but ‘all beliefs in the Mahdi’.78 He was unwilling to accept, as Bonham Carter suggested, that there were Sudanese professing belief in the religious aspects of the Mahdi’s teachings who were not disloyal to the government. In ‘all matters appertaining to the families of the Mahdi and the Khalifa’ it was Wingate’s ‘invariable rule’ to ‘accept without question the views of the Inspector-General’.79 It was not until Slatin’s departure from the scene, in the extraordinary circumstances of the world war, that policy towards the Mahdists changed. In practice that policy was a harsh extension of a general attitude towards ‘popular’ Islam. The spread of Islam in the Sudan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed much to the missionary activities of individual holy men (fuqara) around some of whom tariqas, or religious orders, developed and spread, their leadership often becoming hereditary. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries revivalist tendencies throughout

Empire on the Nile

122

the Muslim world were reflected in the Sudan by the establishment of new tariqas, among them the Khatmiya and Isma lliya. Sufi shaykhs retained the exalted role of saints, and the hereditary principle survived. Under the Turco-Egyptian regime the tariqas were threatened with eclipse, as a system of Sharia courts and a hierarchy of Egyptian 'ulama

were

established. Thefuqara, who resented the ' ulama” s usurpation of some, at least, of their functions and influence, therefore tended to support the Mahdi’s revolt against the government.80 The tariqas seemed to the British to be little more trustworthy than the Mahdists. It was, after all, as a sufi shaykh (of the Sammaniya tariqa) that the Mahdi had gained his earliest disciples, although he later condemned the tariqas. The British were especially preoccupied with the establishment of new tariqas; less con¬ cerned with the affairs of those, such as the Khatmiya, whose leaders had broken with the Mahdi and collaborated with the Turco-Egyptian regime. In 1901 Wingate appointed a council of 'ulama’ to ensure that the Sudan Government’s

decisions

‘on

matters

of

religion’

would, have

the

‘imprimatur’ of orthodox Islam. Wingate saw this council, which came to be known as the Board of Ulema or Board of Ulemas, as a way ‘quietly but firmly’ to deal with the tariqas, by which he meant fuqara generally, who, he said, had ‘been rather on the increase’.81 A proclamation made later in the year, duly approved by the board, defined the government’s policy towards sufism. According to the civil secretary’s office, the board was expected to ‘concur in any action taken by Government to suppress those unorthodox religious preachings or conventicles, known as “Tarikas”, which profess a reformation of religion, but which generally lead to grave political troubles’. The board would allow the government to act ‘as, ostensibly, the approved agents of orthodox Mohammedanism, rather than as a Government acting on its own initiative’. Mudirs were told to be alive to ‘the trend of religious feeling’, and to report developments: ‘The insignificance of the originators of “Tarikas” is often the cause of the attention of Government remaining undirected, until wide influence has been acquired. They are never so easy to check and extinguish as in their nascent days.’ Officials should take the initiative in emergencies, act promptly and certainly, and not allow trouble-makers to escape, lest their followers ‘credit them with supernatural powers’.82 The leaders of established tariqas were gradually accepted by the government, although not accorded the same official standing as the orthodox but uninfluential ulama’. Indeed, the main bone of contention between the tariqas and the government concerned official recognition. This the Sudan Government resolutely refused to give. The Khatmiya tariqa, although clearly favoured by the government, was a case in point. Its leadership was contested by Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani and his brother,

Internal security, 1898-1914

I23

Sayyid Ahmad. Slatin warned Sayyid 'All in April 1912 that recognition was impossible, since tariqas were officially ‘only tolerated’, but thought that Sayyid Ah wanted only ‘a paper as the head of his family’. This he got in May, when Wingate wrote vaguely that the Sudan Government con¬ sidered him to be the head of the Mirghani family. The Khatmiya gradually became identified as the ‘Government Tarika’, an association that Symes, Wingate’s private secretary in 1915, thought should be ‘deprecated in principle’ but had its advantages in practice.83 The reintroduction in the Sudan of an orthodox Islamic establishment presided over by a Grand Kadi, a mufti, and the Board of Ulema, was only one aspect of the Sudan Government’s attempt to proclaim itself the sympathetic protector of Islam. It assisted the construction or rebuilding of mosques, facilitated the hajj, imposed and upheld the Shari'a law in matters of personal status, kept Friday as the day of rest, eschewed interference in the internal affairs of mosques, observed as holidays the principal Muslim feasts, and even, although somewhat inadvertently, encouraged Muslim proselytisation in the south. Despite the government’s encouragement and support of the 'ulama’, they remained uninfluential outside the larger towns, maintaining a symbiotic relationship with the government in which their own positions were upheld and the government received an orthodox Muslim sanction for its actions. The Sudan Government’s concern for fuqara and faki-led risings was constantly reinforced by events: the history of the Condominium before the first world war is punctuated by incidents of varying seriousness and tinges of religious inspiration. But it should be noted that official descrip¬ tions of such incidents were often tailored to meet political ends rather than to provide objective reporting, and to justify pleas for more Egyptian money and more British officers and men. That very few incidents caused serious concern is borne out by the government’s reactions to them. The first ‘sect’ with which the Sudan Government had to deal was the ‘Millenniumists’, so called because they expected the Nabi 'Isa at any time, whose appearance would signal the start of the millennium of perfect harmony. 'Ali 'Abd al-Karim and several followers in Omdurman were arrested in 1900, and brought before a religious court, which convicted them of ‘creating a belief’. The leader and five disciples were ‘imprisoned in chains’ at Wadi Haifa. As late as 1921 the sect reportedly showed ‘signs of revival in Omdurman’ under the leadership of Ibrahim al-Saruq and Muhammad Ahmad al-Jabalabi.84 Thirty-nine members were known, and their heterodoxy was clear when Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, having denied he was a prophet, denounced the sect and was branded by them as an apostate! Sixteen were then sent to prison. 'Ali 'Abd al-Karim was kept imprisoned at Wadi Haifa until his death in 1941 (when he was about one

i24

Empire on the Nile

hundred years old) lest his release be deemed a miracle by his few remaining adherents.85 In August 1903 a certain Muhammad al-Amin, of West African origin, having returned from Mecca to the Sudan and made his way to southern Kordofan, proclaimed himself at Taqali to be the Nabi 'Isa.87 Having been informed of trouble by the local qadi, the acting governor of Kordofan urged that it be ‘nipped in the bud’ before it assumed ‘serious propor¬ tions’.88 A force set out under Colonel Mahon, the governor, and the village where Muhammad al-Amin was staying was surrounded on 12 September. He and his followers surrendered, and he was brought to El Obeid. The village was torched. At El Obeid tension increased as it became clear that Muhammad al-Amin had enjoyed wide influence, that several tribes had been interested in him, and that some tribal leaders were in El Obeid awaiting developments.89]. R. O’Connell, who was promoted from inspector to succeed Mahon as governor on 25 September, urged on the 26th that Muhammad al-Amin be hanged as soon as possible because of the ‘excellent effect’ this would have locally.90 Nason, as acting sirdar and acting governor-general, baulked at this, preferring to await Wingate’s return from leave, and asked O’Connell if there was any possibility of Muhammad al-Amin’s escape: if so there would ‘be no difficulty in having him hung at once’.91 O’Connell replied that escape was ‘quite possible’, whereupon Nason told him to proceed with the execution as soon as he thought it necessary. Muhammad al-Amin was publicly hanged that day (27 September) before the whole population of the town.92 The importance attached to this incident, after it was over, may be explained by reference to the nature of the rising and the circumstances of its suppression. A religious ‘fanatic’ leading nomadic tribesmen against El Obeid was an evocative nightmare for the Sudan Government. But Muhammad al-Amin had caused no bloodshed, and had been executed without a trial. It therefore became politically opportune to magnify the danger he had posed. The Residency told the Foreign Office that Nason (who had remained in Khartoum throughout the incident) had feared that the Sudanese troops guarding the prisoner might be bribed to allow his escape - ‘gold being an almost irresistible temptation to a black’ - but there was no evidence to justify this fear. Cairo argued that Muhammad alAmin’s ‘intended’ resistance of arrest, the disaffection he had spread, and his conspiring against the government fully justified his execution.93 The Foreign Office worried about executions without trial, especially when they were publicised. Lansdowne told Cromer that they ‘must see to it that these telegrams as to the hanging ... do not see the light’. After the story reached the newspapers, however, the Foreign Office suggested that it might be preferable ‘to describe the execution as having taken place under

Internal security, 1898-1914

I25

military law, and as justified by military necessity’.94 Cromer accepted this advice, declaring that it was ‘an error to suppose that the man had surrendered; that he was surrounded and captured. That the execution took place under military law and was justified by military necessity’.95 It had taken almost three months after the hanging of Muhammad al-Amin for British authorities to decide on what charges, and by what law, he would have been convicted if he had been given a trial.

In August 1904 Adam wad Muhammad, a Dongalawi, proclaimed himself the Nabi Tsa in Sennar. His plan to win the support of the Kinana tribe by ‘miraculously’ defeating a small government force went awry, however, and he and nine followers were killed in a skirmish in which the ma’mur of Singa also lost his life.96 Two of Adam’s followers were later executed despite the expressed reservations of the Residency. In January 1906 an unemployed Ja'ali tailor at Wad Medani, Sulayman wad al-Bashir, was arrested for declaring himself al-Nabi Tsa. A native of Borgu, Musa Ahmad, was imprisoned at Kassala in December 1906 after making the same claim. Two more claimants appeared in 1907; both were exiled.97 The most important rising with Mahdist overtones to occur before the first world war was that of 'Abd al-Qadir wad Habuba at Katfia on the Blue Nile in April 1908. 'Abd al-Qadir belonged to an influential family of the Halawin tribe, and had been a devoted partisan of the Mahdi. His family’s loyalties had been divided, however, and after the Anglo-Egyptian conquest he returned to find that his land had been settled on relatives who had supported the invaders. During the internecine legal disputes that ensued, 'Abd al-Qadir was reinforced in his Mahdist beliefs by the evident injustice of the new regime. He secretly organised like-minded individuals, Mahdists with grievances stemming from a government land commission’s rulings concerning Halawin lands. In April 1908 the deputy inspector at Rufa'a, C. C. Scott-Moncrieff, having been informed by the ma’mur of alMasallamiya of 'Abd al-Qadir’s activities, went with the ma’mur of Kamlin to investigate. They were set upon and murdered by 'Abd al-Qadir and some followers. The governor of the province, Major Dickinson, led a force of regular soldiers to the district, arriving in the vicinity on 1 May. That night 'Abd al-Qadir, realising the weakness of his defensive position, led a surprise attack on Dickinson’s camp. Although this was beaten back with thirty-five dead, the government lost seventeen dead and thirty-nine wounded. Within a few days, however, resistance ebbed, and 'Abd alQadir was captured by villagers and delivered to the government. He was tried at Kamlin and publicly executed at Hillat Mustafa, the market town of the Halawin, on 17 May.98 'Abd al-Qadir had made no claim to divine inspiration or powers for himself. In the aftermath of the rising a dispute arose between the Sudan

126

Empire on the Nile

Government and British officials in Cairo and London. On 28 May Gorst informed the Foreign Office that twelve of 'Abd al-Qadir’s confederates had been sentenced to death, and that Wingate intended to confirm the sentences despite Gorst’s advocacy of maintaining the ‘British reputation for mercy’. The Sudan Government was convinced, Gorst said, that leniency would be construed as weakness and that public opinion in the Sudan fully expected the rebels to hang." But it was the Foreign Office, not Gorst, that was fearful, and it was public opinion in Britain and Egypt, not in the Sudan, that concerned it. A Foreign Office minute tells the tale: ‘If we hang them all. . . we shall facilitate the Govt, of the Sudan and minimise the risk of a recurrence of such incidents . . . but... we shall unchain all the fanatics and sentimentalists in Parliament and in the country and also, no doubt, provoke a certain effervescence among the Nationalists in Egypt and their supporters in

Europe’.100 Another minute rehearsed

the

‘immense harm done by the Denshawai sentences’, and recommended clemency. Finally Hardinge, the permanent under-secretary, wrote that executing ‘all the prisoners’ was ‘quite out of the question’, and that ‘The ring-leaders of the rebellion, however guilty, should only receive sentences of imprisonment’. It would be ‘far better to err on the side of leniency than to go in for wholesale hanging, as the soldiers’ wanted. Grey accepted his officials’ advice, and told Gorst that the British government ‘could not possibly’ agree to the executions.101 He wired privately that Gorst should inform the Sudan Government that he was acting under direct instructions from London.102 Wingate’s only alternative to obeying orders was to resign, a course recommended by several subordinates, who briefly considered it them¬ selves. Slatin offered, then withdrew, his resignation.103 Currie was certain that all civilians in the government would have followed if Wingate had resigned, and he expressed the real danger posed to the government by commutations: But for this decision Moncrieff . . . would not have died in vain. The whole affair would have put our relations with the cream of the Egyptian officers on a totally different plane.... Now they come in, and . . . tell one in good plain terms that they quite understand that they have been sacrificed in an attempt to appease the Cairo vernacular Press. . . . Another’s criticism. You hanged four people for a rather doubtful murder at Denshawai. Some twenty five have been cut to bits this time and you do nothing. . . . The effect of the decision on the native mind will be little less disastrous.104 Phipps hoped that the officers would realise that Wingate had not had a free hand; Wingate hoped to conciliate the Sudanese by liberal treatment of the widows and families of the officers killed in the rising. Although Gorst commented that ‘the chief military feature was that the Soudan forces were

Internal security, 1898-1914

12/

surprised by the Dervishes at night’,105 awards were distributed on such a scale that three years later they were ‘still something of a joke’.106 Notwithstanding the rejection of his advice and the danger inherent in a lenient policy towards rebels, Wingate saw opportunities in the Foreign Office’s intervention in Sudan affairs. A close watch would have to be kept on events in the Blue Nile Province,107 but the ease with which the Katfia rising had been extinguished, and the fact that it had received little support and had no serious repercussions, indicated no danger of a Mahdist insurrection. By rejecting his policy the Foreign Office took upon itself some responsibility for future troubles, a fact of which Wingate tried to take advantage by exaggerating the importance of the Katfia rising. As early as 19 May Wingate said that his report on the affair would ‘supply a certain amount of food for reflection to the higher powers’. In a memorandum to the Foreign Office he stated that there were still in the Sudan many ‘ardent believers in the Mahdi’s divinity and tenets’, and many others who ‘from motives of self-interest . . . would welcome the re¬ establishment of the Faith he preached’. Despite admitting to Stack that there was ‘no doubt’ that land disputes were involved in the rising,108 Wingate claimed that it had ‘conclusively proved’ that Mahdism was becoming ‘a very real and present danger’. It was clear, he said, that ‘only lack of combination among would-be rebels and a policy of pure “bluff” ’ upheld government authority in ‘outlying Provinces’. There were only ‘two courses’ open: to increase the government’s military forces or to improve their mobility. British troops might be stationed at Sinkat, but for speedy deployment in the Sudan, railway extension south, east, and west of Khartoum was necessary. Since the Sudan could not pay for this, and Egypt would not, the time had come for the British government to advance capital.109 To this memorandum Grey minuted that there was ‘an increas¬ ing tendency in the Sudan to tire of the monotony of peace and to revolt against the rule of aliens and unbelievers’, and he accepted that a choice between Wingate’s alternatives must be faced.110 Unfortunately for the Sudan Government, once the immediate danger was seen to recede, so did outside interest. Wingate’s own ‘bluff’ may have been over-played. By June Gorst recognised that Wingate was ‘using his act of clemency as an argument for forcing . . . every conceivable kind of expenditure in regard to the Army and the Soudan’.111 Gorst warned Grey that when Wingate reached London that summer he would ‘no doubt draw . . . a very gloomy picture’, but that he was ‘by nature an alarmist’ and in terms of security the Sudan was in no ‘worse condition than at any time since the reconquest’. Although Gorst restated the need for railways or troops, his lack of enthusiasm was obvious. He, at least, cannot have been surprised when in November Grey told him that the Cabinet had shelved

128

Empire on the Nile

the idea of a Sudan loan. When it was finally arranged in 1910 that the National Bank of Egypt should lend £E8oo,ooo to the Sudan Government for railway extension, Grey’s approval of the transaction was qualified by the stipulation that ‘no responsibility for its repayment’ could fall on the British government.112 Other disturbances with religious overtones may be briefly summarised. In June 1909 'Abdallah Fadlallah, a Nubawi from Taqali, proclaimed himself the Mahdi and was imprisoned in Khartoum after a medical examination determined that he was ‘just insane enough to have a follow¬ ing’.113 In August 1910 near al-Damer, a self-proclaimed prophet named Sharif Mukhtar and his three sons attacked a sub-ma’mur and some police. One policeman and a bystander were killed, along with one of the sons. Sharif Mukhtar, although obviously deranged, and the two surviving sons were convicted of murder. He was hanged, and the sons were sent to prison for life.114 In the same year a ‘religious fanatic’, al-Sharif Mahmud, was reported to be ‘practising witchcraft’ at Burri al-Daraysa. In September 1911 Slatin reported another Nabi 'Isa in Sennar: the usual ‘rott [sic] and nonsense’ was how he described it. In 1912 a ‘Fiki who was disturbing the peace in Southern Kordofan’ was killed with eight followers by the Camel Corps.115 The occasional proclamation of prophethood came to be expec¬ ted, and even served the government’s interest by announcing the inten¬ tions of would-be rebels, usually before they had gathered a ‘following’. Further, the assumption of the prophetic role was easily tested by govern¬ ment rifles, handcuffs, and ropes. It should be remembered that many if not most of the examples cited (and others) are of individuals who were clearly considered by their neighbours to be mentally unbalanced. The disturbances they caused do not imply an underlying general hostility to the government during the period,116 as their routine suppression makes clear. It was only at the outset of the first world war that the danger of a mass rising in support of Muslim Turkey was genuinely feared. A Sudan Government beleaguered by latent Mahdism was an image it fostered itself. In 1910 the financial secretary to the Egyptian Army, in making budgetary proposals, wrote of a recent incident at Singa: If timely information had not been received, there is little doubt that the attempt would have been successful and that after a similar raid on Roseires where there is a garrison of one company, a body of armed Natives would have made their way to the White Nile, and with a following increasing at every success, have become a formidable body of armed men inspired by fanaticism. To oppose them would have been beyond the capacity of government forces ‘even at Omdurman itself’, he wrote. ‘Agitators’ were waiting to exploit just such a situation, and ‘the eventual price of restoring or extricating isolated garrisons’ would prove a ‘very costly charge’.117 This

Internal security, 1898-1914

129

sequence of events was so conditional, so fantastic, as to be almost a parody of Wingate’s warnings, and in its transparent allusions to the events of a generation before was as ‘die-hard’ as any Sudanese Mahdist: Mahdism must be contained by reference to Gordonism. It is clear that by 1910 the threat invoked did not exist or, if it did, Wingate had proven himself so adept at dealing with it that no further measures were needed. In any case, when compared to the operations undertaken by the Egyptian Army in the Nuba Mountains and in the Southern Sudan during this period, which were relatively unpublicised, police activities in the north were minor.

THE NUBA MOUNTAINS

Opposition of a different type was encountered in the Nuba Mountains, the wild frontier region between the northern, Arab, Muslim Sudan and the African, non-Muslim south. Here the British encountered steadfast resistance and employed fiercely repressive measures of pacification before some semblance of government authority could be imposed. The Nuba literally ‘took to the hills’ in the eighteenth century in selfdefence against nomadic Baqqara tribes. The resulting enforced isolation of the separate Nuba communities, each restricted to the vicinity of its own mountain fastness, broke down social relations among them, and led to a pattern of communal warfare. This served two main purposes: the settling of disputes, for which Nuba society apparently had no other mechanism; and the enrichment of a particular community’s resources of animals and, especially, of people. Slavery existed, but captives were more commonly fully integrated. Although most of the Nuba communities were politically acephalous, the exigencies of turbulent times often resulted in the emergence of war-leaders who galvanised resistance. Both the TurcoEgyptian and Mahdist regimes had attempted to subject the Nuba, or at least to exact tribute, commonly in the form of slaves. The already isolated hill communities thus became even more distrustful of outsiders.118 As in the Southern Sudan proper, the Sudan Government’s aim in the Nuba Mountains was the establishment of order, that is, the cessation of raiding. In 1908 the government estimated that there were some 20,000 rifles in the mountains: it took no expertise in local government to realise that the understaffed administration should prefer the path of peaceful penetration to that of enforcing its authority. Wingate wisely disdained government interference, and the patrols that visited the area in 1900 and 1902 were in the nature of reconnaissance in force. But as the government gained confidence, relations deteriorated. In 1904 a patrol was sent to punish the Nuba of Jabal Shatt and Jabal Dayer, for non-payment of tribute and for raiding. Another patrol, led by the governor of Kordofan

I30

Empire on the Nile

against Jabal Mandal, had to retire, an ignominious defeat for the govern¬ ment and an important psychological victory for the Nuba. In October 1904 a patrol sent to arrest the self-appointed mek of Kitra was forced to withdraw, and the fear of an alliance of two or more Nuba tribes prompted the despatch of a patrol of almost four hundred men, two Maxims, and artillery. After a siege the Nuba surrendered. Following this decisive blow Nuba cooperation was forthcoming, but the Nuba tended to view the tribute they paid as protection money, in return for which the government was expected to stop Arab raids on them. Since there was still no real administration in the region, this was a logical expectation. The govern¬ ment, for its part, began to consider punitive patrols, or the threat of such, as a substitute for administration.119 In 1906 a serious incident occurred at Talodi, where the government had established a post in 1903. The Talodi population was mixed, consisting of various ex-slaves who had themselves enslaved Nuba from the vicinity. Although these slaves had asked for their freedom, the provincial administration felt itself too weak to risk the possible consequences of enforced emancipation. The temporary presence of two companies of infantry in 1906 allowed the government to act, and 120 slaves were freed. Three disgruntled notables thereupon conspired to raise the local popula¬ tion. On 25 May a feast was arranged, at which the invited officers, officials, and soldiers were set upon. Forty-six people, including the ma'mur, were killed. The rebels were subsequently joined by others, and attacked the Talodi ‘fort’ for three days, but failed to overwhelm its defenders. Some 1,200 men from Kadugli, Miri and Qadir combined with Baqqara to attack the rebels and relieve the garrison. The rebels eventually retreated to Jabal Eliri, where they were besieged by a strong government force in June. An amnesty was offered those who escaped, on condition that the ringleaders were surrendered. About 400 rebels were killed during the insurrection. In August two rebel leaders, ‘Fiki Awri and Abd Sham Sham’, were executed after a court martial, thus precipitating a controversy similar to that caused by the hanging of Muhammad al-Amin in 1902. Bonham Carter, the legal secretary, thought that the execution was an ‘error’ that could ‘not be passed over without jeopardizing the administra¬ tion of justice and the credit of the Government’.120 His qualms were brushed aside, however, and because of possible adverse reaction outside the Sudan, British officials tried to prevent publicity of the episode. As Cromer said, ‘The less attention is drawn to these matters, the better.’121 Wingate saw the incident as a valuable argument in favour of his schemes for railway extension and troop reinforcements: ‘If any serious trouble arose and with our present unsatisfactory communications ... it would be by no means a difficult task to overthrow government authority. To

Internal security, 1898-1914

131

attempt to reinforce the garrisons, even if we have sufficient reinforce¬ ments to send, would reproduce much the same situation as existed in 1883.’ Having raised this spectre he hastened to assure Cromer that he did ‘not for a moment say’ there was ‘any imminent danger’. The government’s decisive victory, openly and forcefully aided by local people, did not necessarily lead to such a conclusion as Wingate’s; the ‘Arabs and Nubas’ of the Talodi region were, in fact, reported locally to be ‘delighted at [the] downfall of [the] Telodi [szc] people’, since these had ‘for years raided and murdered as they pleased’.122 Another conclusion drawn from the Talodi affair was, in Wingate’s words, the need ‘to have a separate organization to deal with the moun¬ tains’.123 Thus in 1908 the Nuba Mountains were constituted as a ‘SubProvince’ of Kordofan, headed by a sub-governor and three inspectors. This reorganisation heralded, or coincided with, a new era in the govern¬ ment’s policy, during which it sought to disarm the tribes and ‘pacify’ the region. The Nuba were unwilling to pay annual tribute once the govern¬ ment had managed to control Arab raiding, and this gave the government a pretext for the subjugation of the Jabals by regular ‘punitive’ patrols. In 1908 a patrol overran Jabal Fassu, bombarded Jabal Kakara, and captured Jabal Fanda and Jabal Katla Kurun in the Nyima Hills. Subsequently the government decided that its chief objectives should be the confiscation of rifles or the imposition of fines payable in rifles, and the settlement of the Nuba in the plains below their eyries. A series of patrols was launched in the following years. Gradually order was enforced and tribute more regularly paid.124 In 1914 the division of the Nuba Mountains from Kordofan was completed, and a separate Nuba Mountains Province was established. The attempt to substitute patrols for detailed administration made continued violence inevitable. Even those few officials who were stationed in the Jabals had little experience or sympathy with the tribes. Wingate was told in 1910 that ‘the destinies of these people have not been in the right hands and that . . . unwise selection of the officials to see to their welfare’ had ‘more or less brought about the present state of affairs’. A ‘notoriously bloodthirsty medal hunter’ was not ‘the type of man to look after and guide such people as the Nubas’.125 Nuba resistance continued throughout the first world war. In 1915 Fiki 'Ali Almi, mek of the Miri Nuba, organised a revolt and planned an attack on the government’s post at Kadugli. Wingate immediately concluded that Turco-German propaganda was to blame, since the mek had been one of the government’s ‘main supporters for many years’.126 It is more likely that a number of grievances - the long-time payment of tribute in exchange for no apparent benefits, the replacement of tribute by direct taxation once the

I32

Empire on the Nile

Nuba Mountains Province had been established, pacification of the area and a consequent decrease in the loot to be had by assisting government patrols - seemed soluble by throwing off the government yoke. A personal motive was Fiki 'Ali’s belief that the government was planning to replace him as mek. Some thirty of the Nuba Territorials (which consisted at the time of only about fifty men), stationed at Kadugli, were Miri Nuba or slaves, and these Fiki 'Ali attempted to suborn. Although they were aggrieved by a recent cut in their dura ration, only two soldiers agreed to assist the attack, and the plan itself was reported to the authorities.127 A large government force was immediately sent against the rebels at Jabal Tuluk, which was invested. Having offered to surrender, Fiki 'Ali escaped by night, but was captured, taken to Talodi, tried, and sentenced to death. At the request of the mudir, Wilson, Fiki 'Ali was to be hanged at Kadugli, but en route he contrived to escape. Wingate believed that this ‘indelible slur to the Egyptian Army’ must have resulted from ‘collusion between the prisoner and his guard’, and he attempted to hush up the affair. The government’s concern to settle the matter quietly led to a meeting between Fiki 'Ali and F. C. C. Balfour, the acting governor of the province, at which an agreement was reached.128 Thirty years later Balfour recalled the occasion: The meeting place was in an open waddi [sic] and there was a rifle pointing from behind every rock. Conran and I put ourselves on two deck-chairs and awaited developments. ... we sent the police escort back about a quarter of a mile and Conran very pluckily went forward ostentatiously unarmed.. . . The Nuba always had a sense of humour and saw the joke at once. After not very long negotiations I had secured Fiki Ali’s surrender together with that of some 50 of his relatives and we had a large pile of rifles in front of us. Fiki Ali went off in one direction under escort bound for Khartoum and his interview with the Master [Wingate], while I started off for Talodi with the rest of the party.129 Fiki 'Ali was eventually settled at Wadi Haifa. In the mid-1920s he was permitted to reside at Kadugli, but was considered dangerous and trans¬ ferred to Dilling, where he died in 1936.130 Subsequent risings in the Jabals were characterised by the desperate ferocity of Nuba resistance and the increasingly sophisticated and brutal government methods of suppressing it. In 1917-18 operations were re¬ launched against the Nyima Hills, the objectives of which, in the words of an official report, were ‘limited to the harassing of Nubas while cultivating, the destruction of crops and villages, and the capture of cattle outside the main group of hills’. To accomplish this a massive force, led by 31 British and 105 other officers, and consisting of 2,873 men, eight artillery pieces and eighteen machine guns was despatched.131 On 6 June 1917 five villages were burned; on 10 June, four more; on the 19th, several; on the 27th,

Internal security, 1898-1914

*33

‘most’ of the villages at Jabal Doraa were destroyed. At Kurnutti the water supply was cut, and the Nuba were ‘constantly harassed by artillery, machine-gun fire, and bomb traps’. At the end of December the two leaders of the revolt, Agabria wad Ahauga and the Kunjur Kilkun, surrendered and were hanged. ‘All the vdlages were entirely destroyed.’ Although most of the surviving Nuba surrendered because of thirst, many held out, and some simply died of thirst rather than come down from the mountain. By the end of these operations over four thousand Nuba had been captured, along with some seven hundred rifles and quantities of animals.132 Clearly the Nuba of the Nyima Hills were made an example: the government even brought in notables from other hills to witness the operations.133 Indeed, the resolve of the government to resort to massive military campaigns of deliberate ferocity is a remarkable feature of its policy towards the unpacified peoples of the south during the 1914-18 war. Weapons existed to be used; if the total subjection of a people was required to win acceptance of government authority, so be it. The concern of British officials over trial procedures and public opinion in the Northern Sudan seems sensitive indeed when compared to the campaigns undertaken in the south.

SECURITY IN THE SOUTH: RESISTANCE, PACIFICATION, AND THE BEGINNINGS O F AD M IN ISTRAT I O N

, 1899-1919

During a tour of the Upper Nile in 1903 Cromer wrote to London that the British should not, ‘on purely humanitarian grounds’, lose sight of the main British and Egyptian interest in that region, which was that ‘both banks of the Nile, from Lake Albert Nyanza to the sea, should be in British or Anglo-Egyptian hands’: ‘The good government of the wild tribes of the interior, and even the possession of districts which may be commercially productive, are, relatively speaking, considerations of minor importance.’134 Possession of the entire valley of the Nile was seen as a strategic necessity, and even the vast lands of the watershed were con¬ sidered by Cromer and others as inconvenient and expensive death-traps, buffer zones between the Nile and Britain’s African rivals. Until a settlement was reached with King Leopold in 1906, by which the Belgians withdrew their territorial claims, this rivalry was an important factor in determining the scope of British involvement in the region. But both before and after that settlement the British faced a task in the Southern Sudan at the same time simpler (in that their aims were so limited), and infinitely more complex than that assumed in the north. By 1898 the Southern Sudan had experienced a period of perhaps unprecedented dislocation. The Turco-Egyptian regime had made little

x}4

Empire on the Nile

attempt to administer the region, which was prey to the depredations of traders from the north and farther afield, who came first for ivory and later for slaves. By the 1870s they had penetrated far into the interior, and a few large-scale traders like al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur had, at the command of private armies, extended their control over vast territories. In his bid to enlarge Egypt’s African empire the Khedive Isma'il sought to limit their powers, and agreed to a cessation of the slave trade and the employment of Europeans and Americans to assist in administering the country. But the conscription of southern Sudanese into his armies could hardly be dis¬ tinguished from enslavement, and the harsh methods of his administrators bore more than a superficial resemblance to those of the great slavers. The Mahdist revolt ushered in an even more chaotic period, as the Mahdists raided but would never succeed in ruling the south. A devastating era of local warfare and general insecurity ensued.135 The sad results of Turco-Egyptian and Mahdist incursions were not the only, nor even the most fundamental problems that in 1898 faced the new regime in the south. The region was virtually unknown to those who were called upon to rule it: British officers of the Egyptian Army whose expertise, if any, in administration was usually with the Muslim, Arabic¬ speaking, culturally homogeneous people of Egypt or the Northern Sudan. That experience could not have prepared them for the congeries of southern peoples, varying from the large, pastoralist Nilotic groups, the Shilluk, Nuer, and Dinka, and the Azande of the south-west, to very small peoples in the western Bahr al-Ghazal, Equatoria, and the extreme north¬ east of the region. At least fifty separate peoples can be distinguished. Ethnic and linguistic diversity was paralleled by political variation. The Shilluk were relatively unified under their divine king, or reth. Likewise the great conquering Azande were organised in militant principalities that included in their populations wholly or partially assimilated peoples who had fallen before the Azande onslaughts. At the other extreme, however, were the ‘acephalous’ peoples such as the Nuer, to whom a political structure was unknown, and to whom the village was the largest unit of society. The Dinka presented a less extreme example of an acephalous society, but the authority wielded by hereditary warriors or cult figures depended on personal prestige, and the separate Dinka sections united in a common cause only on rare occasions. Such social systems were encountered by early British administrators with utter incomprehension. There must be chiefs: tribal customs and rules might be mystifying or repugnant; tribes might be recalcitrant, reactionary, or resistant to change; but that a society could have no recognised leader was unthinkable. The vastness of southern diversity renders it an over-simplification to speak of ‘southern administration’ without qualifications. It is valid to generalise,

Internal security, 1898-1914

05

however, to the extent that in 1898 the British in the Southern Sudan encountered scores of peoples of whose history, traditions, cultures, societies, and languages they knew nothing at all. They would later be confronted by a central government that, by experience and prejudice was unwilling, and because of practical restraints was unable, to provide even the basic ingredients of men and money that might make the region intelligible and, eventually, susceptible to administration. For these reasons, and because of the unhealthy and often uncongenial surroundings, it is not surprising that there was such a rapid succession of British personnel in the south during the first generation of Anglo-Egyptian rule: the early southern official was as much an explorer as an administrator, an explorer under a starless sky, adrift without a compass. The provincial administration of the Southern Sudan was to be identical structurally to that of the north: a hierarchy of mudirs, inspectors, and ma’murs endowed with the same powers as their northern counterparts. There the resemblance ended. What little Khartoum knew of the south - its size, the difficulties of communication, the probable problems of com¬ mercial exploitation - burdened its policy towards the region with a pessimism relieved only by apathy. In practical terms this was reflected in the meagre resources allocated to the region. By the beginning of the first world war the Southern Sudan as a whole remained in the era of pacifica¬ tion that had ended in the north over a decade earlier. On 23 September 1898 Wingate had written condescendingly of the French predicament at Fashoda that the British had ‘taken over the protection and administration of the whole country’,136 an exaggeration that became even more fantastic as time passed: in 1903 there was one ma’mur in the entire south. A generation would be needed before such a claim, modest in itself, was justifiable. The first task of the government in the south was to extend and secure its river communications. In October 1898 Kitchener despatched Major Malcolm Peake to reconnoitre the Bahr al-Ghazal and the Bahr al-Jabal. Peake ascended first the Bahr al-Ghazal until blocked by the sudd, returned to the Sobat, then steamed to the Bahr al-Jabal, which was found to be blocked at its mouth. Peake then undertook two journeys up the Bahr al-Zaraf, first some 80 miles and, after returning to Fashoda, 180 miles before being halted by the sudd.137 He reported to Jackson at Fashoda that ‘when the steamer could proceed no further owing to shallow water, I went on \ a mile in the Feluka, and having climbed a tree, could see nothing beyond or around but reeds and patches of water at intervals’.138 Pen¬ etration of the far south by river was therefore impossible. Obviously administration could not even be considered without access, nor, more importantly, could British territorial claims be enforced. Priority was

136

Empire on the Nile

therefore placed on cutting a channel through the sudd, to open a path to the south. After an inspection in the winter of 1899 Sir William Garstin of the Egyptian ministry of public works advised a sudd-clearing expedition to the Bahr al-Jabal. This was approved and in December set out under Peake. The expedition was ill-planned and poorly equipped, and depended for its labour on 800 Mahdist prisoners. The work of clearing the sudd was back¬ breaking and tedious. By March 1900 82 miles of river had been opened, and in April a passage through the swamps was discovered, bypassing the sudd of the main channel. Four further expeditions were necessary before the main channel of the Bahr al-Jabal was finally cleared in the winter of 1904-5. Meanwhile the channel discovered by Peake in 1900 was used for navigation. Sudd-clearing was likewise undertaken in the Bahr al-Ghazal system. The Bahr al-Ghazal itself was from 1898 clear of obstructions almost as far as Mashra' al-Riqq, but the Jur River, the tributary of the Ghazal connecting the important post at Wau with the White Nile, required sudd-clearing and dredging operations in 1900-1 and 1902. Annual sudd-clearing was necessary thereafter to ensure the passage of river traffic to the heartland.139 Early reconnaissance was undertaken in the valleys of the Sobat and its tributaries. In September 1898 Major Maxse led an expedition up the Sobat and about eighty miles up the Pibor, while a second steamer explored the Baro. Maxse reported that the inhabitants were ‘terrified’ and fled at the steamer’s approach.140 Similar reactions were encountered by Major Hill Smith in the vicinity of the new government post at Nassir on the Sobat. The Nuer, he recorded, were ‘exceedingly shy and primitive . . . and by no means friendly to us’. They had not ‘shown any other feeling than one of fear and anger at our advent’.141 The government of the entire Southern Sudan was centred at Fashoda until 1901, when the Bahr al-Ghazal was constituted as a province, with its headquarters at Wau. In December 1903 the Fashoda Administration became a first-class mudiria, Upper Nile Province, and the town of Fashoda was renamed Kodok. On 1 January 1906 Mongalla Province was established, comprising the southern part of the Upper Nile Province. To Mongalla was added, in 1910, the Fado Enclave, territory that had been leased for life to the king of the Belgians. Further boundary changes were made from time to time. The first administrator at Fashoda was H. W. Jackson, who was appointed ‘Commandant Fashoda’ by Kitchener in September 1898. When not preoccupied with increasingly difficult relations with the French, Jackson used his brief term at Fashoda to persuade the local people of the government’s friendly intentions. Understandably, his impressions seem

Internal security, 1898-1914

137

naive: the Dinka were ‘much poorer but far and away sincerer’ than the Shilluk, who were ‘the laziest lot of men’ he had encountered.142 The Shilluk were ‘certainly magnificent men’, but they would require ‘a lot of “sitting on” to bring in hand’. Their new reth, Kur Nyidhok, installed with Jackson’s support, would need ‘firm dealing with’ before he could be ‘of any use’, and was ‘usually drunk’.143 Jackson called in the local notables and ‘registered’ them. He planned to tour the area as soon as the French left, and hoped that his appointment would be made permanent, since he was ‘already greatly taken up with the tribes’ and felt ‘quite one of them’.144 Just before he was recalled to Omdurman he completed ‘the division of Shilluk and Dinka countries for administrative purposes having personally interviewed and nominated each sheikh’.145 These ‘appointments’ are an early example of the British failure to discern the social systems of the people into whose territory they had intruded. But Jackson’s parting comment showed some realisation of the nature of the problem the British faced: ‘Here of all places’, he wrote, the government required ‘a permanent man’.146 Jackson might later have reflected upon the attention paid to his advice: Fashoda was to have three successive administrators in 1900 alone. Jackson was followed in 1899 by W. S. Sparkes, who in turn was succeeded by W. Hayes-Sadler. In December 1900 A. Blewitt was appointed to the post, and he served until May 1902.147 If his contemporary critics are to be believed, Blewitt’s term of office was a failure (see above, p. 75). But in 1901 the permanent presence of a mere three British officials in the entire administration148 can hardly have encouraged extraordinary effort, or have impressed the administrator with the importance attached by the central government to his task. The personal influence of officials was the key to winning first the respect, then the trust and cooperation of the people. As early as mid-1901 Wingate sent Slatin up the White Nile to ‘arrange for the Shilluks and Dinkas to pay a small nominal tribute’, and in 1902 Wingate himself spoke to assembled notables at Fashoda, calling upon them ‘to provide a small contribution of cattle and grain’, which would be collected by the reth.149 Blewitt was promoted to the Gezira Province in May 1902 and suc¬ ceeded at Fashoda by Matthews, one of the most indefatigable and conscientious military administrators the government had. His sympathetic outlook, although flawed by a misunderstanding of Shilluk society, might have altered the course of British administration had it been adopted elsewhere in the south. Long before there was debate in the Sudan about the relative merits of ‘direct’ administration and Indirect Rule, Matthews had ‘every intention of delegating most things to the Mek’ of the Shilluk, a policy dictated by necessity and common sense.150

!^8

Empire on the Nile

Unfortunately, Matthews did not realise that a reth was not like a khedive of Egypt, to be appointed, propped up, and discarded at the will of an occupying power. He deposed Kur Nyidhok and appointed Fadiet KwaiKong as reth, and wrote hopefully that his ‘dominating idea was to make the Mek govern, merely building up his authority on what’ he considered ‘the right foundations instead of the system of the past’.151 Governing through the ‘Mek’, however, was

not quite as easy

as it looked, as

Matthews soon had cause to know. In 1904 when his inspector was on leave, ‘a serious Shilluk fracas’ occurred. In April 1905 he told Wingate that the Shilluks always seem to try conclusions with each other at this particularly inconvenient time of year, when they ought to be engaged in husbandry! Then the inevitable cattle fine ensues, and I have to be most careful that the Mek is not too severe. This is the whole crux. If a revolt against his harsh sentence occurred there would be all sorts of complications. Yet one must support him up to the hilt, remembering all the while that he is only a savage.152

The problem was that the reth, although a divine personage central to Shilluk society, was not traditionally endowed with absolute political powers. British insistence that he command, and the predilection of a government-appointed reth to take advantage of his position, inevitably complicated efforts to rule indirectly. The occupation of the Bahr al-Ghazal was precipitated not by a desire to extend an already hard-pressed administration, but to forestall encroach¬ ments by the Congo. On 29 November 1900 an expedition of about 350 men led by Colonel W. S. Sparkes left Khartoum, and on 12 December reached Mashra' al-Riqq, whence the campaign to occupy the region was launched. Swift progress was made in occupying the territory to the south. Within a few months Wau, Tonj, Shambe, Rumbek, and Daym al-Zubayr had been occupied, an administrative headquarters established at Wau, and contacts made with the Azande principalities to the south-west. Most of the small tribes of the region were eager to escape the Azande hammer to the south and the Dinka anvil to the north, and they welcomed the British as possible saviours. More significantly, the most powerful peoples, the Dinka, Nuer, and Azande, remained aloof or unaccommodating.153 Wau, the provincial seat and an important settlement in Turco-Egyptian times, had been destroyed during the Mahdia. Adjacent to the site was Fort Desaix, built by Marchand in 1897-8, which lay abandoned after the French evacuation until reoccupied by Sparkes. By 1904 the new town of Wau had about one thousand inhabitants, and by 1908 about three thousand, including soldiers.154 To the south of Wau lay the princedoms of the Azande, who for over a hundred years had been expanding east and north, subjugating, and in many cases assimilating, weaker peoples. By the time the British arrived the Azande had already considerable experience of

Internal security, 1898-1914

*39

Europeans, through the Turco-Egyptian government, private traders, the French, and the Belgians. The intrusions of these powers had added to an already complex political situation, in which the various Azande states warred upon each other and were riven by the ambitions of competing princes of the Avungara royal clan. The strength of these states lay in their centralisation of political power and their military might; their weakness was a propensity to internecine warfare that could be and was exploited by the Europeans who were themselves enlisted by one Azande ruler against another. The first Azande king with whom the Sudan Government came into contact was Tembura, in whose village the French had established a post, Fort Hossinger, and maintained profitable relations. Tembura’s kingdom was inhabited by mostly non-Azande subject peoples. To the south he vied with other Azande rulers, notably Yambio. In the event of hostilities with a rival, Tembura realised the advantage of cooperation with the British, and therefore sent envoys to Sparkes, offering gifts and peace. Sparkes visited Tembura’s village, 180 miles south of Wau, in June 1901, and was received with elaborate hospitality, returning to Wau with ivory worth £Ei,200 and the promise of Tembura’s assistance when required. In 1902 the king’s brother and son were sent on an embassy to Khartoum, and later in that year another brother was installed at Wau as his ambassador.155 During his visit to Tembura in 1901 Sparkes wrote to Yambio, soliciting his recognition of government authority. Yambio sent a delegation to Wau and, after its return, an invitation to Sparkes to visit him. Yambio’s experience of foreigners had been as extensive as Tembura’s, but decidedly more unpleasant: he had been a prisoner during the Turkiya, had fought off Mahdist incursions, had witnessed a French alliance with his enemy, Tembura, and, at present, awaited a Belgian invasion. It was imperative to avoid a confrontation with the British. Yambio therefore attempted to match Tembura’s influence by, among other things, sending his grandson to Wau with a valuable gift of ivory. In January 1903, at his invitation, a patrol set out to visit him. Skirmishes occurred with Mangi, a son of Yambio, however, and the patrol was fortunate to escape by night. Why Yambio’s son and vassal adopted this course is unclear, as is the question of Yambio’s complicity in the attack; when the government demanded an explanation he pleaded ignorance of the incident.156 Following a breakdown in Anglo-Belgian negotiations over the Upper Nile, Wingate recommended the institution of a ‘protectorate’ over the territories of Tembura and Yambio, to establish a definite British presence in the region before the Congolese could do so. Thus the ‘Yambio Patrol’, consisting of two hundred men of the 15th Sudanese Battalion, and equipped with two Maxim guns, set out in January 1904 under the

140

Empire on the Nile

command of Major Wood. His ineptness resulted in a violent confron¬ tation at the village of Riketa, another of Yambio s sons, in which the Azande lost six dead and the patrol two. The dispersal of the patrol’s carriers, and the need to care for the wounded forced the patrol to retreat. In the autumn another expedition was despatched to conquer Yambio. By far the largest such ‘patrol’ sent to the Southern Sudan thus far, it consisted of almost nine hundred troops, field artillery, and four Maxim guns, and was commanded by Boulnois Bey, the governor of the Bahr al-Ghazal. Promises of cooperation and assistance had been received from Tembura, and elaborate preparations made, including new road and bridge construc¬ tion and the establishment of new posts along the route south. Meanwhile Yambio himself suffered a crushing defeat in an attack on the Belgian post at Mayawa. His power broken, Yambio sent word to the Belgians declaring his submission, in the hope that this would forestall the British invasion, but it was too late. The British advanced, Yambio refused to surrender and was mortally wounded during an attempt at flight. The resistance there¬ after of the Azande princes was insignificant, and most submitted without a struggle. A large part of the government force was withdrawn, and a new post was built at Yambio’s village, thereafter called Yambio.157 With the collapse of Azande resistance the Sudan Government established the rudiments of administration in Zandeland. Three districts (Maridi, Tembura, and Yambio) were created, corresponding to the domains of Mangi, Tembura, and Yambio. Azande princes were retained as (increasingly) nominal rulers or ‘sultans’. Where the government appointed ‘commoners’ (that is, non-Avungara) as rulers, it soon recognised that they had no prestige and were dependents of the govern¬ ment. In succession to Yambio a grandson, Okuwe, was appointed. Having failed to win acceptance, he was quickly replaced by Basungada, Yambio’s son. Tembura himself, although having been named ‘paramount chief’, was set aside in 1911 in favour of Renzi, a son, and on Tembura’s death in 1914 the institution of paramount chief became defunct. The administration of the three districts was provided by a few British officers, as inspectors, assisted by Egyptian and Sudanese officers of the garrison. Even this miniscule complement might not have been provided had the British not had to concern themselves initially with the Belgians. In April 1905 Boulnois considered that Yambio District could be left unad¬ ministered, and although there was trouble brewing in Mangi’s territory between the Azande overlords and their non-Azande slaves, Boulnois was ‘inclined to leave them to settle their differences’ themselves, if it were not for the proximity of the Belgians.158 As of 1911 Maridi still had no civil staff at all. The retention of the skeleton of Azande political institutions did not for long obscure the fact, however, that the British were now the power in

Internal security, 1898-1914

141

the land. Without the traditional unifying factor of the paramount chief or king, the princes dissipated their energies in intrigues, ensuring British dominance. They were stripped of their military role, which was taken up by the government and its police, and restrictions placed on the princes’ judicial functions gradually broke down their authority.159 The main reason for the early occupation of the Azande kingdoms was to frustrate Belgian designs in the region. In the north-west of the Bahr alGhazal no such imperative existed, and the Sudan Government was late in establishing authority there. Most of the numerically and militarily weak peoples of the region welcomed the British arrival, but beyond the few government outposts in this, the Western District, authority was purely nominal. The proximity of the border with French territory, itself lightly administered, facilitated the activities of bandits, raiders, and rebellious chiefs. In 1907 the Feroge chief, Musa Hamid, who had at first cooperated with the British, was arrested and briefly exiled; after his reinstatement in 1908 he fled with some followers to French territory. The chief of the Kreish-Hofra, Murad Ibrahim, adamantly refused government orders and was deposed in 1908, only to cross the border and conduct ever more frequent raids into Sudanese territory. In 1912 he attacked the government post at Kafia Kingi where, in a fierce battle he and his ally, Andal' Abdallahi of the Feroge, were killed.160 When D. C. E. ff. Comyn was posted as inspector to Daym al-Zubayr in 1904, he was the only British official in that desolate district headquarters. His arrival heralded a round of tax¬ collecting, all the more unpopular because of the different conditions prevailing in the neighbouring Central District. Comyn’s building budget was £E20; for road construction he was allotted another £E20. Local chiefs were therefore forced to do road-work in lieu of paying taxes. The most noticeable effect of ‘administration’ of this type was the recalcitrance of those administered.161 In the Central District of the Bahr al-Ghazal the government was successful in winning the loyalty of the war-weary peoples in the vicinity of Wau. As early as the spring of 1902 friendly contacts were made with the Golo, Bongo, and Ndongo west and north of the town. In September Captain E. H. Armstrong held a ‘durbar’ of all the chiefs living within fifty miles of Wau, and told them of the government’s ‘simple’ requirements of them: road-clearance and maintenance, the construction and repair of resthouses along the main roads, a monopoly of ivory and india-rubber, and an end to the slave-trade.162 But to many, road-building was an insulting imposition for an apparently pointless end; even to Comyn the ordinance requiring licences to trade ivory was ‘tyrannical, impossible, and against the best interests of the country’,163 and the government was too vacillating and thinly spread to enforce any policy regarding slavery or the slave-

I42

Empire on the Nile

trade, even had it wished sincerely to do so. The government’s need for carriers resulted in forced labour, since no one would volunteer. In 1905 Phipps told Wingate of the method employed to enlist carriers at Shambe: ‘apparently villages have been surrounded at night and men seized for carrying, no food given them . . . altogether regular Congo atrocities’.164 Many locals voted with their feet and left the district to avoid carrier work. The numerically and militarily stronger peoples viewed as insulting and absurd the demands of an apparently weak government that was only the most recent of foreign arrivals, all of whose predecessors had eventually departed. This was the attitude the British encountered among the Dinka. Although no overt opposition was confronted during the first government expedition in 1901, it soon became clear that bitter resentment awaited only a combination of circumstances to burst to the surface. In January 1902 the Agar Dinka near Rumbek, who had a long history of defying alien rule, rose in rebellion after having been ordered to return cattle taken during a raid on another Dinka section. Under the leadership of Myang Mathiang, the Agar ambushed a government column, killing its comman¬ der, Captain Scott-Barbour, and all but four of his escort. Wingate was on tour in the south in March, and recorded in a diary his main concern, government defences that were so weak as to constitute merely a provoca¬ tion to revolt: We are now holding 1200 miles of river and the whole of the Bahr el Ghazal with 3 companies of regulars and 250 Irregulars. None of the stations are in a state of defence - the tribes are not to be trusted and though not armed with rifles they could by sheer force of numbers demolish our smaller stations. . . . When one knows how nearly we escaped a serious rising when Scott-Barbour was killed, we must take warning and strengthen our positions all round.165

But first the tribes must be ‘punished’. Captain W. H. Hunter led a small force of Sudanese troops into Agar country, where they cut a ten-mile swathe of destruction by burning villages, confiscating cattle, and round¬ ing up those implicated in the recent rising. Shortly after this force withdrew, another much stronger punitive expedition arrived, the ‘Shambe Field Force’ under Lee Stack. The Agar country was wrecked to the point that ‘not more than a dozen houses [were] left standing in the whole’ district.166 Myang Mathiang managed to escape but in July was surprised by a government patrol and killed with twenty-four followers. In their wake the victorious government forces left a trail of devastation and famine. Although the government’s treatment of the Agar was meant partly as a warning to other Dinka sections, soon after the Agar were suppressed the Atwot Dinka rose. This revolt failed, but the imposition of a fine was not forgotten, and the government’s demands for road-clearing led in 1909 to

Internal security, 1898-1914

*43

the destruction of rest-houses, attacks on patrols, and finally open rebel¬ lion. Under the leadership of Ashwol, all the Atwot clans joined the revolt. A punitive expedition was launched by the government in January 1910, and in February the Atwot country, to the south-east of the Agar district, was traversed, with the confiscation of large numbers of cattle and the capture of over a hundred Atwot. Ashwol surrendered and was imprisoned, and the revolt collapsed. The government appointed Diu to lead Ashwol’s section of the Atwot, but he had no authority and was ignored, so, in 1913, in what was becoming a typical manoeuvre, the government reinstated Ashwol. But even his authority had stemmed from leadership during the revolt, and he was unable to impose his will in peace¬ time. In 1917 the Atwot rose again, killing police and burning government buildings, under the leadership of the Agar Malwal Mathiang, apparently a relative of the man who had led the 1902 revolt. In March 1918 a government patrol failed to capture him, but the many casualties inflicted on the rebels and their great loss of cattle reduced his prestige, and in May he surrendered.167 The most serious Dinka rising of the early Condominium was that of the Aliab, which broke out at the end of October 1919, as a result of the usual Dinka resentment of government exactions. A police post was attacked on 30 October by some three thousand Aliab, and eight policemen were killed. Raids on 1 and 2 November resulted in more deaths. A general rising seemed imminent, involving not only the Dinka but also the northern Mandari. A column under Major R. F. White, commandant of the Equatorial Battalion, was ambushed in its camp on 16 November, with a loss of seven men. On 2 December White was reinforced by Major C. FI. Stigand, governor of Mongalla, and they began an advance into Aliab country. On the 8th their column was attacked by a thousand men. Stigand and White were killed, as were an Egyptian officer and twenty-two soldiers. A large expedition, supported by artillery, machine-guns, auto¬ mobiles, and aircraft, was mounted in 1920, but with little initial success since the Dinka with their cattle evaded capture and the unwieldy patrol could not force a battle. While almost all the Aliab villages were torched, the expedition’s results (measured as usual by ‘enemy’ dead and cattle captured) were poor. Eventually, however, enough cattle were taken to induce the surrender of Ron Anok, the most important leader of the rising, and the expedition was concluded.168 The causes of Aliab hostility, twenty years after the foundation of the Condominium, illustrate why this period is better described as one of pacification than of administration. One Aliab grievance had been the conduct of the Egyptian ma’mur at Minkammon, who, it was said, had forced the Dinka to work without pay, had requisitioned animals without

144

Empire on the Nile

compensation, had paid less than the fixed rate for ivory, and had pocketed the proceeds from the sale of confiscated tusks. These irregularities had gone uncorrected because the British inspector spoke neither Arabic nor Dinka. V. R. Woodland, in 1920 the new governor of Mongalla, wrote: ‘The Government has done nothing for the Aliab. It has not protected them from aggression, has given them no economic benefits ... it has forced them to do a certain amount of labour, to pay taxes and to endure a not negligible amount of extortion by police.’ But in the aftermath of the rising there was no improvement. The offending mamur was removed, but Woodland would not appoint another because he had no British inspector to supervise the district. There was, therefore, no administration at all.169 By giving nothing but taking taxes and labour the government relied on force of arms alone to impose its will. Despite its great material superiority, however, the various risings against it were not the hopeless acts of entirely desperate men. Both strategically and tactically the Sudanese often had every advantage over the government, except in one area that could finally matter most: firepower. The Atwot patrol of 1918 may serve as an example. The Atwot evaded every government troop movement, and the terrain and cover afforded by their forest refuges robbed the government of the element of surprise. When troops approached, the Atwot scattered their cattle, only to re-collect them at night, when the women re-supplied the men. Stores of grain were secreted in the forest. Surrounding tribes, supposedly ‘friendly’ to the government, were at best neutral, and offered no help and false intelligence to the patrol. Climate limited military activities to the dry season. The Atwot willingness to sacrifice villages, and their strategy of never engaging the troops, limited the results the govern¬ ment could achieve:170 it could burn houses, try to capture cattle and grain, kill as many cattlemen as it could corner, but all knewr that eventually the government would withdraw. Unless and until it was willing to establish posts and administer, rather than simply to plunder, the government was faced with the inevitability of constant ‘patrols’. In the little explored north of the Bahr al-Ghazal’s Central District, between Wau and the Bahr al-Arab, confrontation between the Sudan Government and the Dinka was similarly precipitated by the government’s half-hearted attempts at control. In 1909 a garrison was stationed at Nyamlall on the Lol River to act as a buffer between the Dinka and their Arab neighbours to the north. A new road was constructed from Nyamlall to Wau through previously unadministered territory, causing resentment among the local Dinka. A leader emerged, Ajaakir, who revolted against the government and was soon joined by other disgruntled Dinka clans. As the government prepared to launch an expedition, Ajaakir relented. A fine was levied, which he, as ‘chief’ of his ‘tribe’ was expected to collect. This he

Internal security, 1898-1914

145

was unable to do, and he reopened hostilities. A government patrol marched through the district, burning villages and taking cattle as usual. Ajaakir surrendered. During the first world war another rising occurred in the same district, after the garrison at Nyamlall had been removed for duty elsewhere and the area had been left to itself. Incidents occurred throughout the war years, until in 1918 the government sent troops to reoccupy Nyamalall, and order was restored. The peace thus established was uneasy, however, and based as it was on a total misunderstanding by the government of the nature of authority among the Nilotes, it could not last.171 Dinka resistance appears to have been more vigorous and intractable than that of the Nuer, the other great Nilotic people with whom the British had somehow to come to terms, largely because contacts with the Nuer were far fewer; no attempt to administer them was made until after the world war. Until then the government’s main aim was the maintenance of inter-tribal peace and security. Given its resources of men, money, and expertise, even that aim was ambitious. Unlike the series of Dinka risings in the Bahr al-Ghazal, Nuer resistance grew out of a tradition of inter-tribal warfare pre-dating the advent of the Sudan Government. In an obvious way the British were to the Nuer no different from the Turco-Egyptians, Europeans, and Mahdists who had preceded them up the Nile, none of whom had been able to ‘administer’ the Nuer in even the loosest sense. The British constituted a new and powerful rival to be mistrusted, conciliated if necessary, coopted when useful, but certainly not to be acknowledged as sovereign, even if such an idea had any meaning for the Nuer. Moreover, the government’s obvious favouring of the Dinka in their relations with the Nuer, a result mainly of ignorance, discounted a tradition of Nuer-Dinka cooperation that had been constructed upon the assimilative effects of kinship ties resulting from intermarriage, the adoption of war-captives, the sanctuary offered to individuals, the enlistment of warriors under a particular chief, and so forth. The government’s unqualified perception that the Nuer and Dinka were inveterate enemies only distorted and exacerbated intertribal disputes.172 When the British first contacted the Nuer in 1899, they attempted to win the submission of tribal chiefs. In the Nuer case this meant the prophets Dengkur and Diu. They were not ‘chiefs’ in any sense the British knew; rather, they were, in a political sense, at most symbols of the tribe who, possessed of the spirit of the Sky God, were feared and influential among their people, but had no authority. Their main political function had been to lead cattle raids against neighbouring tribes.173 The initially poor response of Nuer ‘shaykhs’ to the British invitation to acknowledge government authority was interpreted as apathy or shyness or the result of

x 46

Empire on the Nile

vivid memories of previous foreigners. The government therefore tried to walk softly and leave the Nuer to themselves. In September 1901 a Nuer raid on the Anuak people living on the Ethiopian side of the border led to a modification of the government’s policy, after the Ethiopian authorities used the incident to justify old claims to Nuerland. The Sudan Government was forced to attempt administration or at least to secure the border. The first government patrol into Nuer territory was launched in April 1902, a force of 160 men under Blewitt Bey, to receive the submission of Dengkur, who was assumed to be the paramount chief of the Nuer in the Sobat valley. Word was sent ahead that in return for a nominal tax payment and acknowledgement of government authority the Sudan Government would not interfere with the Nuer. When no reply was received, Blewitt’s forces burned deserted Nuer villages, including Dengkur’s, and confiscated cattle, but Dengkur managed to elude them. In 1905 another patrol under Wilson marched from the Sobat to Bor, across the territory of the Lau Nuer, as a show of force and to state the government’s intentions, collect taxes, and promise peace. Wilson’s method had better results than Blewitt’s, and the govern¬ ment began to see its role as essentially that of peacekeeper between the tribes and as arbiter of their disputes. After Dengkur’s death in 1906 a patrol led by O’Sullivan in the same district won a similarly equable response.174 But officials who understood and favoured a slow, patient policy were a minority. The mutual incomprehension of the British and the Nuer remained the principal cause of mistrust and violence. The British had no better response from Diu, the apparent ‘paramount chief’ in the Zeraf Valley, than they had from Dengkur in the Sobat. In 1902 Diu had sent a friendly message to the government, but avoided any direct contact. In 1905 it was determined that Diu’s personal attendance was necessary, and after much delay he came in. Diu believed that a policy of conciliation might help to preserve the status quo and his own position, since, in the Nuer view, the British had sided with their Dinka enemies by trying to prevent Nuer raids against them. Diu opened negotiations with the government, during which Wilson promised to stop Dinka raids on the Nuer but would not recognise Diu’s paramountcy in the valley of the Zeraf.175 A contradiction in British policy thus became apparent: while attempting to coopt leading ‘chiefs’ and rule through them, the British were reluctant to allow an individual’s consolidation of power, lest that power be used against the government. The British considered Diu’s death in 1907 an opportunity; but it soon became clear that his prestige had acted as a check on Dinka raids, which recommenced soon thereafter. Between 1906 and 1909 raids between the Ol and Angai Dinka and the Gaweir Nuer increased in severity. In June 1908 Machar Diu, a son of the

Internal security, 1898-1914

T47

late prophet, led a raid on Falwal and killed the Twi Dinka leader and ten men. Increasing violence, and the British inability to contain it, led to the government’s decision in 1909 to establish a ‘tribal boundary’ between the Nuer and the Dinka, corresponding to the provincial boundary between Upper Nde and Mongalla provinces. All outstanding cases between the Dinka and Nuer were to be cancelled. The Ol and Angai were to be ‘repatriated’ to their old lands, and the Lau Nuer settled within the Upper Nile Province. This ‘settlement’ of a ‘boundary’ gave rise to even more grievances. The Nuer looked upon the Mongalla Province authorities as allies of the Dinka, and several incidents involving Dinka soldiers and junior officials tended to confirm this view. The boundary was an attempt artificially to separate people who, despite their mutual raiding, had maintained a tradition of intermarriage and other relations. In fact there was such a communal mixture of the peoples along the border that their enforced separation tended towards social breakdown rather than towards tribal unification.176 Just as the Dinka had sought to enlist government protection against Nuer raids, and Diu had hoped for a similar result by the payment of tribute, in the east the Jackaing Nuer attempted to buy protection against the depredations of their neighbours, the Anuak. In the nineteenth century the Nuer had repeatedly raided Anuak territory, to the point where the Anuak faced extinction. The military and political position was radically altered, however, by the Anuaks’ acquisition of firearms from Ethiopia. Anuak revenge raids began. The Lau Nuer were especially hard hit. In 1911 a patrol under Captain F. D. Dickson went up the Sobat and Akobo against the Anuak, burned villages but killed only thirty Anuak. In March 1912 a large government patrol under Major C. H. Leveson, with artillery, invaded Anuak territory. In a battle near Adonga the government lost fifty killed, including two British officers, and the Anuak lost fewer than one hundred, a ratio not at all customary or satisfactory for the Sudan Government. Another patrol, planned for 1914, was cancelled at the outbreak of war in Europe. The government placed strong garrisons at Pibor and Akobo, established smaller posts between the Nuer and the Anuak, and maintained constant patrols to forestall raiding. But it was not until the 1920s that the government extended administration to the region of Adonga.177 The government’s inability to prevent Anuak raids, and the Anuak introduction of firearms into inter-tribal warfare, altered the balance of power east of the White Nile. The Nuer had always seen their taxes as payment for government protection; if the government could not or would not protect them there was no reason to pay. Further, the Anuaks’ possession of rifles made it imperative that the Nuer should have them too,

148

Empire on the Nile

if only for self-defence. The possession of firearms allowed the relatively weak to become, almost overnight, the relatively strong. In one incident in 1912, the Gaajok section of the Jackaing Nuer raided the Anuak and returned with some five hundred rifles.178 The Sudan Government had little to offer except fitful interference. Government patrols became the only instrument of authority, but were no substitute for administration; the appearance of a patrol, its destruction of villages, looting of cattle, and withdrawal, were different from a Dinka or Anuak raid in a sense altogether too subtle for the Nuer to appreciate. As early as 1904 the government had tacitly admitted its weakness by arming the Dinka in the Upper Nile with rifles. It was, the then-governor said, ‘all we could do for them’.179 Following Nuer raids on the Ol and the Angai in 1914, the government again distributed firearms to the Dinka for self-defence. The reluctance of the Lau Nuer to submit to the government was reinforced by their successful evasion of tribute, the confidence they had gained from their firearms and their devastating attack on a government post near Kongor in 1916, and the simple fact that there was still no government post in their district. A massive punitive expedition in 1917 ravaged the Lau Nuer country and collected enormous numbers of cattle and sheep, but its political effect was no more than to determine the Lau to engage in raiding sufficient to restore their herds.180 By the end of the first world war the Sudan Government had clearly failed in even its basic aims (and duties) in the Upper Nile Province. Instead of cooperation it was faced with unremitting suspicion; instead of peace, with almost continuous unrest; instead of administration there was merely a series of posts designed to keep one tribe away from another. Around these posts some stability was achieved, but away from them there was no government. From Khartoum’s point of view, the extension of administra¬ tion in the south was ‘rather a financial question’. Wingate saw the posts as the best he could do, what with money ‘so very short’, and these at least could protect the telegraph lines and, it was hoped, ‘prevent this inter¬ tribal raiding’.181 Moreover, by imposing a Nuer—Dinka boundary the government introduced into their relations the pointless rivalry of its own officials. During the war the governors of the Upper Nile and Mongalla provinces refused even to discuss the boundary problem. In 1918 the inspector at Bor explained that ‘the tendency of the Nuers and Dinkas’ was ‘to fuse with one another’; that ‘to support the idea of a tribal boundary’ was ‘merely to strive to keep open a sore which could otherwise tend, with proper treatment, to heal itself’. But provincial rivalry remained, as did the boundary.182 The violent relations between the Nuer and Anuak were mirrored to the south by the Bor Dinka and the Beir (or Murle). The latter, inhabiting the

Internal security, 1898-1914

i49

upper Pibor valley, had a history of raiding the Bor Dinka. The Sudan Government made no attempt to administer these Dinka until 1906, when Mongalla Province was constituted. The Bor Dinka were amenable to British rule in return for protection, but this was not forthcoming. In 1906 the Beir raided twice, in 1907 three times. Wingate believed the Beir would never ‘accept Government authority without being taught a lesson’,183 and in 1908 a patrol sent against them took a large haul of cattle but failed to force submission. To compensate for their losses the Beir launched more raids against the Bor Dinka in March and December 1909, and July and November 1910. Wingate would not sanction another patrol; he insisted that government policy must be ‘never to advance into such unoccupied districts unless you fully intend to stay there, and in the present case ... I am not yet in a position to effectively occupy the BEIR country. I fully agree . . . that sooner or later this must be done, but the time is not yet.’184 Following a devastating Beir raid in February 1911, however, he ‘dared not risk further delay’, and in January 1912 another patrol was sent into Beir country. By April the Beir had submitted after serious defeats. To supervise the peace, yet another isolated post (called Pibor Post) was established.185 Wingate’s reluctance to deal with the Beir reflected financial, not political concerns. Without revenue there could be no real administration, and without administration the country could generate little revenue. In the Southern Sudan as a whole, revenue never exceeded expenditure. A. F. Broun, sent to report on the economic prospects of the Bahr al-Ghazal in 1902, was unenthusiastic: there was little scope for commercial exploi¬ tation of rubber; timber might one day produce a profit; little could be expected from the people, especially the Dinka whom he described as ‘filthy lazy brutes’. He foresaw ‘immense development’ only as soon as colonisation was possible.186 The only easily exported product of import¬ ance was ivory, and the government moved mercilessly to exploit it. Ivory exports increased from 15 tons, worth ££7,925, in 1901, to 76 tons (££51,326) in 1905 and 125 tons (££113,236) in 1913 (see below, p. 458). When Matthews worried in 1904 that ‘ivory traders’ were ‘about to be let loose’, and he was ‘powerless to restrain their enterprise within the bounds of propriety’, Slatin ridiculed his desire ‘to protect the “poor blacks” against unscrupulous traders’ who paid ‘only a few beads for a tusk’. Slatin’s concern was ‘to get the tusk to Khartum instead [of] to Mombasa [sic]’.187 Ivory exports alone could not sustain the region; all that remained was the collection or extortion of taxes, tribute, and labour in return for ‘security’. Taxes were necessarily light. No direct tax was levied in the Bahr al-Ghazal and Mongalla until 1910, when ushur was first collected there. A herd tax, of two bullocks per hundred, was also levied. Forced labour and

15°

Empire on the Nile

the ‘requisition’ of grain were imposed in lieu of taxes, as needed. Results were poor, even in ‘administered’ areas, because assessment and collection were expensive.188 In 1909 Owen, the governor of Mongalla, enthused that if he only had sufficient transport he could ‘get about ££150 out of the BERRI. . . tribe’. In 1904 Matthews had already recognised the harsh fact that ‘help’ from Khartoum was ‘possibly meted out in proportion to revenue derived’.189 Since the government could do little without money, the major recurring issue was whether to raid or to stand aloof, the dilemma faced by Wingate in dealing, for example, with the Beir. He and some of his subordinates regretted the starkness of the choice: the question of policy involved ... is one on which there nqust always be a variety of opinions. On the one hand you have the extreme view of Matthews who holds that everything must be done in a pacific manner: my natural tendency is to support this view, but I do not think it is always quite feasible.. . . but on the other hand, if you read Owen’s June Report. . . you will find altogether the other side of the story.190

Matthews was in a minority. Many soldier-administrators too readily favoured their military calling over their civilian role. In 1912 Khartoum learned that Stigand, then an inspector in Mongalla, ‘had been having some minor operations’. Phipps had to warn Owen that ‘such affairs’ could not be ‘considered as ordinary routine or people like Stigand’ would become even more ‘casual’. While it was unacceptable for provincial officials to keep Khartoum uninformed, Khartoum was careful to keep news of patrols from the outside world. In 1908 Wingate acted quickly to delete part of the June intelligence report, because it included Owen’s orders for the Beir patrol. ‘I am altogether against official orders for burning villages appearing even in these confidential documents that go home’, he said.191 Some idea of the depths of wretchedness the southern administration reached may be gained from a letter Stack wrote to Wingate in June 1917, six months after Wingate became high commissioner in Egypt and Stack succeeded him in Khartoum. The subject was Owen, governor of Mongalla since 1908: For some time past I have felt that Owen has been losing his administrative powers and grip of affairs in his Province. ... A civilian sub-mamur tied up two chiefs because he thought they were concealing some ivory . . . and had them beaten so cruelly that both died. Owen . . . sentenced the offender to only 6 months imprisonment and a fine of ££40. You ordered the case retried and the man received 7 years imprisonment.... a sub-mamur being pressed to collect carriers during the recent Lau-Nuer Patrol shut up in a room without windows or other ventilation so that they should not run away about 48 men, women and children and in the morning 14 were found to be dead or dying. Owen’s covering minute to Civil Secretary showed utter indifference to the sufferings of those unfortunate people, his comment was merely that the sub-mamur was inexperienced and his only action

Internal security, 1898-1914

ISI

[was] to transfer him to another and . . . better district. . . . The only charitable construction I can put upon the lack of feeling for the sufferers of these abominable acts and failure to appreciate the seriousness of the offences is that long residence South has affected his knowledge of right and wrong.. . . you yourself had to draw his attention to the amount of flogging that had taken place in his Province and ... I do not feel altogether satisfied with the situation in this respect. More recently a small patrol was sent out... to punish offenders concerned in the death of a soldier of the Equatorial Battn. The Egyptian officer’s report is a record of indiscriminate shooting at sight and burning of villages. Owen forwards the report without comment, it not striking him evidently as anything out of the ordinary. Fur¬ thermore there are persistent and strong rumours of irregularities with regard to the game laws and I have reasons for believing these rumours are well founded.

Stack suggested that Owen would qualify for his pension at the end of the year and should ‘be retired’.192 Wingate agreed, and went so far as to describe Owen as ‘not of that mentality which is altogether desirable, especially in the more remote districts’.193 But Owen had been governor of Mongalla for almost ten years. On his retirement in 1918 he was made governor of the Egyptian oases, a sinecure. The abuses Stack revealed indicate a pervasive official brutality and irresponsibility at all levels. Two decades of violence in the Southern Sudan (and three years of slaughter in Europe) had rendered the atrocious unexceptional.

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The Sudan and the first world war

INTRODUCTION

Wingate was in Britain when war was declared in August 1914. He ordered all other officers and officials on leave to assemble in London, whence they sailed together for Egypt. Kitchener, who was to go with them, was called back at the last moment to be Secretary of State for War.1 Immediate pressure was exerted, as it had been during the Boer War, on the Sudan Government to release British officers for service with their regiments. Most were said initially to have ‘accepted the situation without agitating to go home’,2 but this soon changed. By the end of October about thirty officers had gone, despite Wingate’s attempts to keep resignations to a minimum. It would be ‘criminal’, he said, ‘to denude the Army and Civil Service of British Officers and officials’ who would ‘be invaluable’ if the Sudan were ‘drawn into the arena of active operations’.3 But in November a British officer received a white feather anonymously posted from Britain, and Wingate admitted that there was ‘a good deal of feeling about . . . officers being prevented from returning to their Regiments at the Front’. He therefore asked Kitchener to wire his assurances that their duty lay in the Sudan. Kitchener went further. In January 1915 he authorised Wingate to retain any British officer he considered necessary, ‘irrespective of the termination of their contracts’.4 As the war progressed, however, both the Egyptian Army and the Sudan Government suffered from unfilled vacancies and the ‘temporary’ secondment of officers. As of January 1916 nine civilians and twenty-two officers had resigned from the government, and twenty-two civilians and four officers had been ‘temporarily detached for duties outside’. Thirty-seven officers had left the Egyptian Army and twenty-three had been ‘temporarily detached’. The total of 117 officers and officials was particularly felt in the technical departments of the govern¬ ment and in the southern provinces, which were staffed mainly by soldiers. The veterinary department alone lost eight inspectors in August 1914.5 In G2

The first world war

i $3

January 1916 Wingate told Clayton that there must be ‘a definite “halt” \6 The exodus of experienced personnel from the already undermanned Sudan Government was not eased by recruitment to the political service, which was all but discontinued during the war. The demand for officers in Europe ensured, however, that the demilitarisation of the Sudan Govern¬ ment, which had been continuing slowly but far from certainly for a decade, would now be irreversible, as civilians were necessarily promoted to the highest echelons of the government. A number of important changes in the personnel of the Sudan Govern¬ ment occurred during the war. Lee Stack had ended his long tenure as Sudan Agent in April 1914 to become civil secretary, and was succeeded in Cairo by Clayton, until then Wingate’s private secretary. Clayton’s talents were largely wasted at the agency, and he soon took on additional war duties. The delicate relations between Cairo and Khartoum were confused by a proliferation of military and civil lines of authority in Egypt, and by the internal politics of the Residency. When Wingate succeeded to the chair of Cromer in 1917, Clayton remained as Sudan Agent for Stack, a personal friend and more agreeable task-master than Wingate. G. S. Symes, who had succeeded Clayton as private secretary in April 1914, remained in that post until Wingate’s transfer, when he was ‘seconded for special service in Egypt’, as was the assistant private secretary, A. W. Keown-Boyd. This provided Wingate with a degree of continuity in his ‘private office’, and deliberately robbed his successor, Stack, of any continuity in his. M. J. Wheatley and A. B. B. Howell became private secretary and assistant private secretary respectively on 1 January 1917. Wheatley also temporarily assumed the duties of civil secretary, until a permanent successor to Stack, R. M. Feilden, was appointed in April 1917. Edgar Bonham Carter, legal secretary since the inception of that post, retired in September 1917 and was succeeded by Wasey Sterry, a civil judge since 1901 and lately ‘Chief Justice’. That honorary title was thereupon bestowed on R. H. Dun, formerly advocate general. Another leading civilian, James Currie, director of education since 1901, retired in August 1914, and was succeeded by J. W. Crowfoot, his assistant director since 1903.7 At the finance department Bernard continued to reign supreme. The most significant personnel changes during the war occurred in intelligence, and resulted from the resignation of Slatin Pasha, an Austrian national, as inspector-general. Slatin was in Vienna on leave in August 1914, and although war was imminent, both he and Wingate attempted to arrange his speedy return to the Sudan. Slatin was en route when war was declared, and he gave up the attempt. His resignation was at first refused by Wingate, but finally accepted when it became clear that his return was impossible. Meanwhile Slatin had already consulted the Austrian govern-

154

Empire on the Nile

ment about military and propaganda action that might be taken by the Central Powers against the British position in the valley of the Nile. British officials resolutely refused to believe he would do such a thing, and in any case his services were not taken up. In September 1915 Slatin assumed a post in the Austrian Red Cross.8 Whether officials in the Sudan ever seriously suspected Slatin of assisting Britain’s enemies to the detriment of the Sudan’s security is a moot point. With knowledge of the most confidential military and political matters he was certainly in a position to do so.9 Slatin’s resignation was more than a personal misfortune. In his last years as inspector-general he had acted rather as a reactionary brake to change than as an adviser or even ‘inspector’. With the brake removed, and the country travelling on the unknown road of a major war, the opportunity arose for new men to plot its course. Secondly, Slatin’s personal methods had resulted in his sole possession of much detailed political information. His secret agents were often known only to him; his appointments made with reference not to personnel files but to personal knowledge. Although in fact responsible for directing the intelligence department in Khartoum, he had neglected it, delegating work but not responsibility, with the result that as the Sudan Government (and the Egyptian Army) entered the war they had in place no real system of intelligence gathering and assessment. As of March 1915 Slatin’s duties were nominally divided among the intelligence department, the private secretary, and a certain Captain Dumbell.10 At the outbreak of war the post of director of intelligence was still combined with that of Sudan Agent in Cairo, little of whose time was actually devoted to the intelligence department’s work. The two assistant directors were employed in military work in Egypt, leaving the effective supervision of the entire department to the intelligence officer, a minor official, in Khartoum. ‘Temporary assistance’, including C. A. Willis, a civilian inspector, was lent to the department in 1915, and he became assistant director at Khartoum in March 1916.11 At the end of 1915 Wingate persuaded his old friend Milo Talbot, who had been director of surveys until 1905, to rejoin the government, and planned to ‘put him in general charge of Intelligence at Khartoum’, ‘very much in the same way’ as Slatin had been, or to use him as a ‘Political Officer ... to give all the departments a helping hand’.12 There seems to have been little for Talbot to do, however, and in May Wingate sent him to Cairo to help Clayton.13 By that time Willis had effectively taken over the intelligence department. His conception of his work, and realisation that the department might be useful in furthering his personal ambitions, would admit no competing officer ‘in general charge of Intelligence’. Wingate, in fact, judged that the department

The first world war

ij^

had been functioning ‘in a thoroughly satisfactory manner in spite of great difficulties’.14 Willis’s prominence in ‘native’ affairs was to have important consequences after the war. The outbreak of war raised anew the question of Egypt’s anomalous status, which technically remained that of an Ottoman province. The Ottoman entry into the war rendered the problem acute, and on 18 December 1914 Britain declared a protectorate over Egypt. The next day the reigning khedive, 'Abbas Hilmi, who was in Istanbul, was deposed and an uncle, Hussayn Kamil, was installed with the title of sultan. Kitchener’s successor, Sir Henry MacMahon, came to Cairo as ‘high commissioner’, a title meant to reflect Egypt’s new status. His was supposed to be a temporary appointment, since Kitchener had been assured that he would return to the post after the war. Egypt was a base of operations throughout hostilities, and played an important part in them. It is doubtful that any British Resident would have been able to carry on a detailed supervision of the Sudan Government during this hectic period. MacMahon’s complete lack of Egyptian experience and consequent reliance on advisers precluded even the general control exercised in Kitchener’s day. Wingate saw the declaration of a protectorate over Egypt as another opportunity to advance the Sudan’s independence. Few shared that view. As early as December 1914 he wrote that ‘the present status of Egypt makes the Sudan more British than ever, and I am inclined to think that the time is not far distant when it may be possible to have a Sudan Army’.15 Clayton, in Cairo, was instructed to ‘leave well alone, but work when possible towards a still greater freedom from a financial point of view and a less irksome system as regards the Finance Ministry’.16 Wingate even told Cromer that the greater independence of the Sudan implied by the protectorate confirmed the old proconsul’s ‘far sighted and absolutely sound’ policy that the Sudan should never be ‘ruled from Cairo’!17 Wingate tried to exploit MacMahon’s ignorance by telling him that before the protectorate British policy had been ‘to make the status of the Sudan as British as possible’, and that Sudanese loyalty during the war was based, in part, on the assurance that they would ‘never again be governed from Egypt’. The high commissioner himself neither favoured nor rejected these notions; he simply ignored Sudan affairs, leaving them to others who took more notice. In January 1915 Lord Edward Cecil, once Wingate’s Sudan Agent but now the powerful Financial Adviser to the Egyptian govern¬ ment, suggested that it had become ‘very necessary’ to know ‘what real control’ was to be kept over ‘Soudan legislation’. There had been ‘a certain tendency of recent years to make it more and more a nominal control. Personally’, he thought that this was ‘not wise’, and that ‘measures . . . should be taken to make the control a real one’. The type of ‘measures’

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Empire on the Nile

Cecil contemplated had been put forward by W. G. Hayter two days earlier. He complained that ‘if the High Commissioner is to exercise a real control over Sudan legislation’, each draft ordinance sent to Cairo ‘should be accompanied by a proper “Dossier” which would include all docu¬ ments, memoranda, minutes, and so forth of relevance to the framing of the ordinance’.18 Nothing came of the proposal. Far from the high commissioner’s exercising ‘a real control’, he was a remote and unknown figure to the Sudan Government. From the begin¬ ning of the war, moreover, Wingate felt that the attitude of the Residency towards him ‘personally’ had changed, and he complained that he was kept ‘in the dark’. ‘Galling as it was’ to him, he had ‘sat down under it for the sake of peace’ and because he held ‘very strong views on the absolute necessity of “playing the game” and subordinating personal feelings’.19 Be that as it may, what mattered were not his views or feelings, but the proper conduct of essential business. Clayton told him of Cairo’s ‘lack of interest in and sympathy for the Sudan’: this complicated things to the point of ‘impossibility’ and was ‘like fighting “a feather bed” ’.20 Since Wingate was determined not to leave the Sudan for the duration of the war, even to visit Egypt, he had to rely on Clayton and official communications to maintain contact. In April 1915 Stack, temporarily in Cairo, told Wingate that ‘the High Commissioner does nothing. Cheetham is in despair and Storrs runs everything’. Clayton said that as of mid-January 1915 he had not ‘even seen’ MacMahon who, he supposed, did ‘not even know of [his] existence.’ Wingate never reconciled himself to this neglect (although it was preferable to interference), but there was little he could do about it. In April 1915 Clayton told him that MacMahon ‘never bothers about Sudan affairs, which is [just] as well as the less interference . . . from here the better. I therefore leave it at that and do not volunteer information.’ In May he told Wingate that he did not ‘discuss Sudan affairs with people’ in Cairo, ‘especially with Graham and Cecil’ who had ‘nothing to do with the Sudan’. He had ‘made it a practice . . . not to tell them anything but mere general news’.21 Later Clayton even suggested hopefully that MacMahon’s lack of interest might be an indication that he recognised the importance of separating the Sudan’s affairs from Egypt’s.22 On the contrary, to Wingate’s exasperation, MacMahon referred in a despatch to the ‘Egyptian Sudan’.23 After his own appointment as high commissioner Wingate told Hardinge at the Foreign Office that he had ‘never understood why MacMahon was appointed to Cairo. . . . rather a stupid man, of secondrate ability’, who was certain to ‘fall into the hands of a man stronger than himself’, by whom Wingate meant Edward Cecil.24 Notwithstanding Cairo’s apathy, issues remained that required the Sudan Government’s access to the outside world, especially to London,

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and Wingate needed no reminding of how insignificant the Sudan’s affairs were in London’s estimation. He therefore depended upon Kitchener who, as Secretary of State for War, was better placed than ever to promote the interests of the Sudan Government, if he was so inclined. During the events of 1915—16 that culminated in the conquest of Darfur, for instance, Wingate consulted directly with Kitchener and withheld information from the Residency. He often used FitzGerald, Kitchener’s aide-de-camp, as an intermediary, reporting to him whatever news he wished Kitchener to know.25 On 5 June 1916 Kitchener was drowned when the ship carrying him to Russia hit a mine and sank. The Foreign Office began to search for a successor to MacMahon as high commissioner, and on 12 October Grey offered the post to Wingate. In accepting, Wingate asserted a claim to authority at variance with what he had for years attempted to achieve: that he should ‘continue to exercise supervision’ over Sudan affairs from Cairo, and that his successor in Khartoum should be named acting sirdar and acting governor-general for the duration of the war. For this dual appoint¬ ment - and there was no discussion of separating the offices - he nominated Stack.26 In the official announcement in Khartoum of Wingate’s appoint¬ ment it was stated that some of his ‘personal staff’ would accompany him, ‘to maintain close and constant intercommunication between Sir Reginald Wingate in Cairo and the Acting Governor-General and Acting Sirdar at Khartoum’.27 These officials (Symes, Keown-Boyd, and others) were not, in fact, his ‘personal staff’, nor were they employed at Cairo as liaison officers with the Sudan Government. Further, there was no valid political reason for Stack’s appointment to be ‘acting’ only. Wingate had based his refusal to leave the Sudan during the war on the importance of his personal prestige for the maintenance of order; his leaving for a better post may have led him to avoid embarrassment by asserting that he was not really leaving at all. It is unlikely that the Sudanese were very concerned with whether the governor-general was at Erkowit or Cairo, and the appointment of a successor who was to remain ‘acting’ for two and a half years was a more obvious admission of possible British vacillation in the Nile Valley than a normal and orderly succession would have been. Certainly Stack’s status was a nuisance professionally and personally. There is evidence that Wingate wished to keep open his post in the Sudan (as Kitchener had done in Cairo), although there was no question of his high commissionership being ‘acting’. He also seems to have had in mind a viceroyalty of the Nile Valley, mirroring the Raj; perhaps he viewed a combined possession of the high commissionership, governor-generalship, and sirdarship as a step in that direction.28 The possibility remains that only Wingate’s self-importance was served by Stack’s ‘acting’ status.

i ^8

Empire on the Nile

In scores of letters he referred to ‘the general regret... on the part of the natives’ at his departure; the idea that ‘a complete severance was repugnant to them’; and so forth.29 The irony (or hypocrisy) of Wingate’s apparent reassertion of a Cromerian control is obvious, but his claim to supreme authority remained verbal, since he was occupied with Egyptian and military affairs for the duration of the war. Even before Wingate left Khartoum Stack complained of how little time Wingate devoted to the Sudan’s affairs. Bereft of Slatin and the Khartoum ‘season’; commander of an army at peace while the empire was at war; ignored by Cairo, his expertise unused and unremembered; Wingate was restless and bored. Once he took up the Cairo post he was ‘very good up to a point’, Stack wrote, but it was largely ‘a case of “out of sight out of mind” as far as the poor old Sudan’ was concerned.30 Less than a month after his promotion Wingate regretted his inability to reply ‘adequately’ to Stack’s letters, ‘and thereby bear tangible witness to the deep interest’ he took in ‘Sudan affairs’,31 a comment of remarkable remoteness from one who had ruled the country three weeks earlier. Stack was an obvious choice as Wingate’s successor: he had a reputation as an excellent staff officer, had a long experience of Sudan Government posts in Khartoum and Cairo, had served Wingate well and, as import¬ antly, could be relied upon to continue to do so. He was a man of definite views who rarely tried to impose them. He preferred conciliation to confrontation and lacked decisiveness. This was reflected in a reluctance to make needed changes of personnel and to take ‘drastic action’. But his governor-generalship was marked by a much greater degree of consul¬ tation than Wingate’s: Stack tried to preside over the Sudan Government, not embody it. The rigid formalities of British society were eased during his tenure (not least because of his wife, whose easy charm contrasted with Lady Wingate’s austere propriety). Stack maintained the dignity of his offices, but eschewed the pomp of the Wingate regime. If a trip to Cairo was necessary, he would make it, he said, since he did not share the notion that his absence would ‘necessarily mean a general “bust up” ’, as Wingate had said his own might (at least until he left).32 As Wingate himself had once said, but apparently since forgotten, ‘when an official thinks the entire applecart will be upset if he goes away for a few days, it is high time he was sent away for a change’.33

PROBLEMS AND POLICIES DURING THE WAR

At the beginning of the war the Sudan Government had stationed in its territory four companies of British territorials and a detachment of British artillery; twelve infantry battalions, four double companies of the Arab

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Battalion, six companies of the Camel Corps, a squadron of cavalry and three companies of mounted infantry, and artillery, all of the Egyptian Army; and the Sudanese territorials stationed in the south. The total number of officers and men was between fourteen thousand and fifteen thousand, of which the British detachment was stationed at Khartoum and the Egyptian Army units were spread among some forty-six posts. Wingate’s apprehensions about the reliability of the Egyptian Army became active concern at the outbreak of war, and turned to alarm at the entry of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers. On 7 November 1914 Wingate told Egyptian officers that he would allow any of them to assume non-combatant status rather than fight against the Turks. Four days later only two officers had registered ‘conscientious scruples’ of this kind. Both were placed on disponibilite and assigned to Dongola Province for anti-locust and other work.34 At the end of the month, however, Wingate told Cromer of his lingering fears about his officers:

You know them well and their love of sitting on the fence: then one must remember that many of them have Turkish blood in their veins and are connected with Turkish families. The majority of the younger officers who come from the Cairo schools, which are the home of Nationalist propaganda and anti-English, and, in some cases, pro-Turkish ideas, were, I knew, the dangerous element; but I relied on the older and senior officers, who had everything to lose and nothing to gain by disloyalty, to keep the younger bloods in order. ... I must say, to their credit, the senior Egyptian officers have played up well. To Clayton he suggested another reason for Egyptian cooperation: ‘the Sudanese hate the Egyptians, and I think the latter are gradually beginning to realise that in case of any trouble they would be the first to have their throats cut’.35 Nonetheless, the supposed propensity of the Egyptian and Sudanese officers to revolt was of concern especially during the first two years of the war, and Wingate warned his subordinates that they ‘must not be blinded, by the present outburst of loyalty ... to the imminent danger’ that still existed with regard to the ‘native officers’.36 Measures were taken to secure the Sudan’s defence. Frontier posts were reinforced and border patrols increased. Two British destroyers were deployed off the Red Sea coast. In 1917 the Sudan Reserve Corps Proclamation authorised the creation of a reserve corps ‘to assist in the defence of the Sudan or in the suppression of disorder’, and in which all male British subjects resident in the Sudan were to be compulsorily enlisted (with exceptions made on the grounds of age, occupation, and so forth). The War Office had no objection to this extension of the rifle clubs, so long as the Sudan Government paid for it. The corps never functioned.37 Further war measures included the legalisation in the Sudan of notes of the National Bank of Egypt, and a decision to treat Port Sudan and Suakin as

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British ports for war purposes.38 Ordinances regulated food exports and prices; prohibited trading with the enemy; gave special police and customs powers to the government; and so forth. The Sudan played no direct role in the war. Wingate’s attitude towards this lack of involvement altered as the war dragged on. In September 1914 he offered to send up to eight companies of Sudanese troops to Nimule for service in Uganda, where the authorities feared a German incursion. As he put it: T long to let our black troops fly at the throats of these enemies of mankind, who shamelessly sack towns, murder defenceless women and children, and wreak blind barbarian vengeance on small and unprotected states defending their vital interests.’39 But reinforcements for Uganda were to be sent from India, and the posting of troops at Nimule merely as a reserve was something Wingate would not accept. Detachments were sent, however, to the borderlands in Didinga country east of Nimule, to stop Didinga raids into Uganda.40 Wingate’s eagerness to launch his ‘black troops’ against the ‘enemies of mankind’ was less keen when the War Office tried to arrange the recruitment of Sudanese soldiers for service outside the Sudan. In November 1916 the suggestion was made that newly created Sudanese units replace British troops in Egypt, freeing them for service elsewhere. Wingate argued that conscription would lead to disaf¬ fection, creating the need for more, not fewer, British troops in the Sudan itself; while voluntary enlistment in the Sudan, even at a high rate of pay, would leave the existing Egyptian Army units seriously and increasingly depleted, would preclude the formation of new units for the garrisoning of Darfur, and would lead to trouble in the Egyptian Army because of the disparity in wages. A series of plans was desultorily discussed in London, Cairo, and Khartoum for the recruitment of Sudanese and the general improvement of the Egyptian Army, but these had no impact on the war effort or on the defence of the Sudan during the war. In 1918 even an attempt by the military authorities in Egypt to recruit civilian labourers and animal drivers was rejected by the Sudan Government.41 One of the most intriguing proposals was Kitchener’s idea to replace the British force at Khartoum with a contingent of Maoris: this, Wingate noted solemnly, would entail ‘grave risk’,42 and was never implemented. As the war progressed, there were increasing signs of disaffection among both Egyptians and Sudanese in the army. These Wingate blamed almost entirely on enemy propaganda, despite early and continuing efforts to limit its spread. A defence bureau was established, governors and heads of departments were kept informed of the military and political situation,43 censorship was imposed, enemy nationals (and suspected Sudanese and Egyptians) were either deported or closely supervised, and a ‘counter¬ propaganda’ was instituted.

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16 x

Because martial law had never been repealed, no new enactments were needed to impose censorship. Examination of telegraphic communications was started at Suakin and Wadi Haifa. On 6 September 1914 the mails were made subject to inspection. This was initially limited to correspondence ‘between German or Austrian subjects or persons in those countries’. After the Ottoman empire entered the war, travelling censors were placed on the steamers between Wadi Haifa and Shellal, and ‘special supervision’ was given to ‘all non-European or non-Allied correspondence or literature’. Objections to the use of postal employees as censors led to the transfer of censorship duties first to the intelligence department and, on 18 August 1915, to the civil secretary’s department. Internal censorship was begun on 11 February 1915, ‘in consequence of a very serious campaign of seditious literature being started in Egypt’, but the interception of no such propa¬ ganda led to the discontinuing of this censorship on 18 December 1916. While precautions were later judged to have been justified,44 they showed that government fears about Sudanese and Egyptian loyalty had been exaggerated. From its inception, however, the censorship had been intended not only to detect but also to deter would-be ‘seditionists’. As early as October 1914 Wingate reported his satisfaction with the results of ‘surprise censorship’ of some fifty thousand letters, fewer than twelve of which contained ‘anything undesirable’. The arrest of even a few individu¬ als, however, would ‘at least . . . have a terrifying effect on those who indulge in seditious correspondence’.45 The treatment of enemy aliens was complicated in the Sudan by the presence of resident European communities engaged in business or mis¬ sionary work. In mid-September 1914 there were some ninety-three Austrian and German subjects in the country.46 Initially they were required to sign a declaration promising to give ‘no assistance by word or deed to the King’s enemies’.47 Wingate later boasted that he had marked his return to the Sudan in 1914 ‘by immediately kicking out’ the most prominent members of the German and Austrian communities (at the same time trying to arrange Slatin’s return). Among them was the hapless Charles Neufeld, whom Wingate had been trying to banish for years.48 In October 1914 further lists were compiled. By far the largest foreign community was the Greek, with over eight hundred people. But there were still twenty Austrians, forty-eight Germans (including the captured crew of a German vessel), and various others: some eighty-seven Italians, an American, a Pole, a Swiss, a Belgian, a Russian, Maltese, Armenians, and so forth. By the end of March 1915 all but one of the Germans had been deported or had otherwise left, and there remained only one Austrian, excepting missionaries.

49

In September 1914 Wingate personally warned the vicar apostolic of

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Empire on the Nile

Central Africa, Bishop F. X. Geyer, a German, of the government’s determination to tolerate no anti-British activities. The bishop signed an undertaking to observe the government’s wishes,50 and he and his subordi¬ nates behaved, according to Wingate, ‘in an exemplary manner’. As the war progressed pressure grew on the government to take sterner measures, not because the Austrian priests had compromised themselves, but because of the rising passions engendered by events in Europe. Indeed, the Report by

the Aliens Committee as to the Austrian Mission, issued in 1916, stated that ‘no direct or in any way conclusive evidence’ had been found to indicate that any member of the mission had ‘contravened the conditions under which’ they were allowed to remain in the country. ‘The conduct of all members of the Mission’ had been ‘remarkably discreet and indeed . . . exemplary’. Nevertheless there was a ‘strong feeling’ in the ‘British and Italian communities’ that the missionaries should be expelled or interned. The Aliens Committee, consisting of Stack, Willis and Bonham Carter, therefore recommended that all German and Austrian members of the mission be withdrawn from the stations at Dilling, in the Nuba Mountains, and Tonga and Lul in the Upper Nile Province. The committee was divided as to the disposal of the missionaries at other stations: Stack and Willis thought that all should go, Bonham Carter that they should be allowed to stay.51 Only Dilling, Lul, and Tonga were evacuated. Wingate’s attempts to control ‘subversive’ information and activities were not limited to censorship and the restriction or deportation of enemy aliens. An ‘active counter-propaganda’ was undertaken. Wingate was a master of the art, and enjoyed it.52 ‘A sort of mild press campaign’ was begun by inserting ‘inspired articles’ in the Arabic section of the Sudan

Times.52, An article that appeared in the issue for 9 November described the German ‘desire to gloat over the corpses of the victims sacrificed’; and noted that the kaiser’s inspiration ‘must be written in blood on a parchment of human skulls’ so that he could ‘give to the world yet another book to stand beside the three holy books’.54 In his most famous war-time speech, to assembled 'ulama on 8 November 1914, Wingate emphasised Britain’s role as the protector of Islam, recalled the Sudan’s experience of ‘the Turkish yoke’, and made the following remarks: Not content with the overthrow of the Sultan Abdul Hamid . . . unrestrained by the loss, through their mismanagement and maladministration, of the European and other former provinces of their Empire, these men - this syndicate of Jews, financiers and low-born intriguers - like broken gamblers . . . have gone to war with the one Power who has ever been a true and sympathetic friend to the Moslems and to Islam.55 The speech caused a minor stir in Britain, where the editor of the Jewish

Chronicle complained of its ‘monstrous insult’ and ‘insolent and abomin-

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able affront’ to Jews.56 Wingate’s subsequent propaganda was less clumsy but no less vivid, nor was it reserved for the consumption of the Sudanese; some of his best efforts were directed towards British authorities in Cairo and London (where, as usual, their ignorance was his advantage) during the campaign to conquer Darfur (see below pp. 182-3). 1° I915 he went so far as to censor news that King George had fallen from a horse, ‘on the grounds that the Sudanese are . . . extremely superstitious, especially with regard to the fall from his horse of a high personage and always associate it with impending disaster’.57 Various attempts at subversion were uncovered and dealt with. One Singer, deported with Neufeld in 1914, was said to be ‘the accredited agent of Hasselbach for the propaganda of German and Turkish lies’.58 ‘Loose talk . . . amongst the [Egyptian] junior officers’ came to Wingate’s atten¬ tion in February 1915, and senior officers were thought too ‘morally inept’ to stop it. Wingate proposed therefore to deport three trouble-makers as an example, and then called to the seniors’ attention their duty to ‘put down the seditious talk’. He reminded them ‘that with a stroke of the pen the Egyptian Army could be disbanded . . . the consequent loss of all pensions and gratuities by officers now serving’ would, he thought, put an end to the ‘insufferable

tongue-wagging’.59 Wingate

had

already recommended

several Sudanese NCOs for commissions, to ‘appease some of the old and faithful Sudanese N.C.O.s’,60 a fact that would not go unnoticed in the military schools. Egyptians were not the only ‘tongue-waggers’ to be deported: early in the war twenty young men, ‘mostly . . . students from Gordon College’ were interned in Egypt, presumably lest they ‘preach unrest and discon¬ tent’.61 In 1915 Hussayn al-Khalifa Muhammad Sharif, son of the Mahdi’s second khalifa, was banished to the Upper Nile Province for involvement ‘in some sort of conspiracy against the Government’. He required ‘delicate handling and a very careful watch’.62 In July 1915 Wingate reported that ‘poison’ was being ‘sedulously disseminated’ in the army, particularly at Shendi. Even worse, a somewhat mistaken circular . . . calling for volunteers for the Dardanelles, has shown that - almost to a man - the Egyptian officers are not for it - mainly because they do not want to fight against their co-religionists - at least that is their ostensible reason - but I think it is more likely to be the result of the propaganda of a Secret Society which is supplied with funds by our Turco-German enemies.63 A proposal by the Egyptian ministry of finance to circulate Maria Theresa dollars during a shortage of silver coinage in 1916 was met by Wingate with incredulity: such a step would only confirm rumours that ‘the new German Government’ in the Sudan was imminent (and that it would ‘remit all taxation for ten years’).64 ‘The probability of dangerous

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views and teaching being disseminated by pilgrims returning from the Hedjaz’ was precluded by an enforced moral disinfection at Khartoum, carried out by local religious chiefs’, before the pilgrims continued their homeward journeys.65 Indeed, a ‘Turco-Sudanese’ spy, who had crossed from Arabia to ‘raise a mutiny in the Army’, was spared execution only in exchange for ‘important information about Turkish intentions’.66 Political discussion groups arose, whose deliberations ‘took a strong anti-Government and undesirable turn’. Their leaders were deported. ‘Threatening letters’ were addressed to the governor-general and ‘prominent natives who had given public witness to their loyalty’.67 In February 1915 a ‘very obnoxious proclamation in Arabic’, capable of doing ‘an immensity of harm’, was received by some religious shaykhs, two of whom brought it to the government’s attention.68 Similar proclamations were on occasion found wrapped in sugar-loaves or bales of cotton; twenty such documents were found in one consignment alone, and a dhow wrecked near Port Sudan yielded up a large number.69 In March 1915 nomad tribes in Dongola Province refused to pay tribute because they expected an early change in government; an inspector in Kordofan was told by Sudanese travellers that the ‘new Turco-German Governor had been installed in Omdurman and that they had seen him with their own eyes’. In June Wingate reported ‘mutinous signs’ in the detachment of Equatorials at Yambio. In November 1916 a rumour circulated that the British had searched 'Abdin Palace for a wireless receiver. From Kamlin in April of that year came word that 'Ali Dinar had defeated the government; the Germans were victorious in Europe; and that forty thousand German agents had arrived in Britain disguised as monks! Even after the armistice a rumour had it that Stack was en route to Khartoum with a Turkish officer and a deputy of Slatin to assist in running the government. A crowd gathered at Khartoum station on Stack’s arrival, to see the newcomers!70 In combatting rumours, incidents, and attempts at inciting disaffection, censorship, vigilance, and occasional gestures were helpful and sometimes necessary, but the government was not satisfied that these means would be sufficient to weather the storm. Close cooperation with leading Sudanese, secular and religious, was to be reinforced or, specifically in the case of the leaders of popular Islam, undertaken actively and openly for the first time. Even before the Ottoman Empire entered the war Wingate was active in meeting notables and canvassing their support, and ‘expressions of loyalty and adhesion to the present Government’ poured in.71 Indeed, when Wingate addressed the Board of Ulema in September 1914, its president, Shaykh Abu’l-Qasim Ahmad Hashim, is reported to have said: ‘Until this war broke out we never heard of the existence of Germany, and we hope that when this war is over they will no longer exist.’72 The much-feared

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Sudanese reaction to the Ottoman entry into the war was even more vehemently pro-British. Wingate reported that after his address to the 'ulama’ in November, They vied with one another to get up and make protestations of loyalty — Perhaps the most prominent was a descendant of the Prophet, Sherif Yusef El Hindi, who has enormous influence in the country, people from all sides coming to kiss the hem of his garment; the Mahdi’s eldest son was also very enthusiastic and vouched the loyalty of all ex-Mahdists. Seeing how keen they all were to show their loyalty to Great Britain, I sent them all down to one of the offices in the Palace and told them that if they wished to put down their feelings on paper in a form which I could communicate to the British Government, they could do so.73 The result of this effusion was The Sudan hook of loyalty. Copies of Wingate’s address had been sent to all northern mudirs, to be read to local assemblies of prominent men. Secular notables were as quick as the religious to protest their allegiance. The governor of Kordofan reported the attitude of Shaykh 'Ali al-Tum, the nazir of the Kababish, as ‘just as emphatic as any of the others in his declaration of loyalty to the Govern¬ ment under which they have all enjoyed such peace and prosperity as they have never known before’. Many of the nazirs stressed their gratitude to the government for honouring their women, and respect for Islam and low taxation were also praised.74 Wingate seems to have been genuinely surprised and was clearly relieved by the breadth of popular support, but from important elements of the population strong support should have been expected. In the first place, the president of the Board of Ulema can have exaggerated only slightly when he said that no one had heard of Germany. The Turks, on the contrary, were too well-known. The Turco-Egyptian regime’s iniquities, and the Sudan Government’s rehearsal and embellishment of them, ensured a vivid recollection of the Turks.75 By 1914 the leaders of orthodox Islam had amply demonstrated both their loyalty and their lack of influence, and the leading 'ulama’ were Egyptians, whose sympathies may have been .more suspect than those of the indigenous leaders of popular Islam who undoubtedly commanded wide influence. The government’s recognition of their importance can be seen in Wingate’s specific reference to the ‘loyalty’ shown by Sharif Yusuf al-Hindi and the Mahdi’s ‘eldest son’ ('Ali al-Mahdi, but probably a mistaken reference to 'Abd al-Rahman alMahdi). The greater public role assumed by the leaders of tariqas and, perhaps more surprisingly, by Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman, was a recognition of past loyalty and a promise of fruitful collaboration. The antipathy towards Egypt of the most prominent sufi shaykh, Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani, was well-known and frequently expressed. In February 1915 he reportedly told Wingate: ‘Why should you English people be surprised at the

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thoroughly disloyal attitude of the Egyptians? They are a race of slaves and never will be anything better; their character is contemptible and, after all, you are to blame for having given them an education altogether beyond their capacity and put them up on a pedestal, and you now find your idol has feet of clay.’76 In June 1915 Wingate recommended Sayyid 'Ali for a KCMG (the mufti and Grand Kadi being nominated for CMGs). Sayyid 'Ali also helped the government as an intermediary between Wingate and 'Ali Dinar.77 The jealousy aroused in the Sudan by Sayyid 'Ali’s knight¬ hood was, according to Wingate, itself ‘a step in the right direction’.78 The decision to lighten restrictions on Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman alMahdi, in return for his support, was the result of a combination of circumstances. Because of the death or retiring nature of,other descendants of the Mahdi, and his own ingenuity, Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman had emerged by 19x4 as undisputed leader of the Mahdi’s family. The policy that had relegated him to closely supervised impoverishment had been devised and enforced by Slatin. Now Slatin had gone, as one official put it, ‘and with him his horror of a revival of Mahdiism [sic]’.79 His place as chief intelligence officer (in fact but not in name) was soon filled by C. A. Willis, who not only disagreed with Slatin’s policy but saw in the rehabilitation of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman a chance for his own advancement. Further, the seditious propaganda worrying the government was of a type considered inflammatory of ‘fanatical Mahdism’, and Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was therefore ‘allowed’ to tour areas where Mahdism still held sway. Sedition was expected to yield results in the western Sudan if anywhere, where Mahdism was strong, government control light, and a potential agent of enemy designs, Sultan 'Ali Dinar of Darfur, most dangerous. The outspoken support of the Mahdi’s son (whose mother was a daughter of a Fur sultan) for the Sudan Government, at a time when 'Ali Dinar’s hostility was increasingly expressed in religio-political terms, was an asset not to be foresworn, whatever the theoretical basis for the ‘vengeance of Slatin’. By enlisting Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s support, however, the government had no intention of creating a post-war role for him. The Mahdi’s son had ideas of his own. When Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman toured the Gezira early in 1916 to urge support for the government, it became even clearer that Slatin’s policy had failed. Wild rumours circulated: the ‘day was at hand’, the government’s fall was imminent, and so forth.80 The sayyid’s visit had convinced his followers that they had ‘been officially recognised’ and that the govern¬ ment needed them, and they had ‘come right out into the open boldly’, much to the annoyance of the large, non-Mahdist majority.81 ‘At every Hilla or tribe’, another agent reported, Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman ‘was welcomed with rejoicing and ecstasy and extolled’; the people believed that

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God had ‘willed that this visit should be made’. Not God, but C. A. Willis, had begun to elaborate a revisionist theory of Mahdism, and a new policy to reflect it. According to him, ‘Since the outbreak of the European war the whole standard of loyalty in the Sudan’ had ‘been altered. Previous to the war, disloyalty implied a hankering after the Dervish Regime and an active desire to restore it, or at the least, dissatisfaction with the present system of administration.’ But now, the Turks were at war with Britain, and ‘in enmity of the Turk the most fanatical dervish can meet the Government on common ground’. Thus ‘the danger of the old Mahdism’ was ‘infinitely less’, and those who had been outcasts were now ‘effective if humble’ allies. The increasing use of the Mahdi’s Ratib, and the open performance of Mahdist rites, without government interference, were acceptable so long as no anti-government preaching occurred. An anomaly resulted, however, that the government must resolve: Sayyid ‘Abd al-Rahman had ‘shown by his loyalty and good will’ that he should ‘be relieved of some of the restrictions’ on his movements. Retaining these risked driving him into opposition; to lift them risked alienating other influential ‘sects’ and actually encouraging Mahdism. Willis therefore suggested treating the Mahdists as an off-shoot of the Sammaniya tariqa, to which the Mahdi once belonged, and their leaders as their individual prominence required.82 Having advanced these arguments, Willis soon raised what amounted to a test case. ‘Certain respectable merchants’ at Wad Medani had applied ‘at the beginning of this year’ (that is, before his Note on policy) to have a Mahdist tent at the Maulid al-Nabi celebrations. A similar request came from 'Abd al-Rahim Abu Daqal, nazir of a branch of the Hamar tribe, for the celebrations at Nahud. Refusal, Willis argued, would be an insult and would make martyrs of the Mahdists; how could the government concili¬ ate Mahdists but ignore Mahdism? ‘To reiterate the problem as a policy does not in fact solve it’, he observed with typical sarcasm. The fact was that ‘the situation as between the Mahdists and the Government’ had ‘altered from one of overt antagonism to tentative alliance’. At base the matter was this: the government was ‘in a position to obtain the whole¬ hearted public support of that section of society’ which had previously been opposed to it. The inevitable criticism from the sufi shaykhs would be rooted in jealousy. It was foolish to spurn support.83 The tents were erected. Another example of Willis’s change of policy concerns the reading of the Ratib. In November 1917 the acting governor of the Blue Nile Province reported that a man had been ‘caught in possession’ of a copy, the government had confiscated it, and no further action was proposed. Willis responded that he did not ‘consider the fact of such possession of any importance’, and recommended that mere possession be ‘disregarded for

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the time being pending the consideration of the whole question of the Mahdist Sect’ by the governor-general.84 In March 1919, no such con¬ sideration having occurred, Willis told another governor that the Ratih, far from being dangerous, was ‘a very innocent in fact, a highly moral work’.85 By virtue of his position Willis had no right to make policy; his policy towards Mahdism was implemented in the absence of sustained opposition to it. But there was an opposing view. It was best put by Symes, who had gone to Cairo as Wingate’s private secretary in 1917. Early in the war he had warned Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman against ‘organising’ the Mahdists, and that the sayyid ‘would be held personally responsible if the Government was kept in ignorance of any revivalist activity amongst them’. The idea of treating the Mahdists as an ‘offshoot’ of the Sammaniya was neither practicable nor desirable. Mahdism, he said, had been hot only a religious movement but also ‘a national (and therefore political) revolt against a foreign government’. The involvement of Mahdism with some as yet inchoate Sudanese nationalist movement must be avoided. ‘Let us con¬ tinue’, Symes advised, to deal with those of their leaders who seem to be intelligent and well disposed to us, let us continue to be tolerant towards the present and older generation of ‘conscientious’ Mahdiists [sic]: on the other hand let us show clearly that we regard Mahdiism as an exploded cult and that we cannot sanction its followers advertizing their creed or organizing themselves on tarika or any other lines.

If the ‘official attitude of the Government’ was clarified, all would be well.86 This was a reasonable suggestion to relax but not abandon Slatin’s policy. But Symes was in Cairo, the world was at war, and Willis’s views did not ‘worry’ Stack, even though he had to admit that Wingate and Symes considered Willis ‘a bit dangerous’.87 It is possible that Willis’s policy might never have been pursued - it was, indeed, never officially adopted - if he had not defended it so skilfully, and implemented it so underhandedly. In the event, Willis’s conduct of his office generally (and from 1920 he was in name as well as in fact director of intelligence) made him as unpopular as Slatin had ever been, and his Mahdist policy was subjected to the scorn more accurately directed towards him. He had, after all, recognised the possibility that the Mahdism of 1885 or 1898 was not necessarily the same as the Mahdism of 1916, a view less naive for him to hold than it was reactionary for his colleagues to oppose. Unquestionably, however, Willis’s support eased 'Abd al-Rahman’s phenomenal rise to prominence during and after the war. Why this was later viewed as a disastrous mistake is debatable. A clue may lie in Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s name itself: the British had come to the Sudan (in the popular view) to avenge Gordon, not enthrone his conqueror’s son.

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Several episodes of a politico-religious character occurred during the war, similar in all respects to the series of incidents already mentioned (pp. 123-9). All, in Wingate’s well-chosen words, were settled ‘by the prompt action of the local officials, with or without the despatch of regular troops to the scene’.88 In April 1915 Muhammad Nur, a West African, was reported to be ‘preaching’ near Talha in Sennar Province, where his ‘many followers’ spread his claim to prophethood. He was gaoled at Wadi Haifa.89 A Mahdist rising at Jabal Qadir in 1915 was suppressed after Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman brought it to the government’s attention - a development Wingate considered ‘rather satisfactory’.90 Following the sayyid’s visit to Kamlin a Nabi 'Isa appeared, predicting a jihad against the Christians.91 A Fellata Nabi 'Isa was put down in the Nuba Mountains in 1915. Wingate detected a general ‘recrudescence of fikism’, and that ‘the poison’ of enemy propaganda was ‘slowly working’, but he continued to believe that the ‘attitude of the big religious chiefs’ would produce ‘sufficiently powerful antidotes’.92 Whatever the intentions of the government’s enemies and collaborators, the Sudan endured the war without serious anti-government incidents. The government’s ‘success’ in bringing this about should not be exaggerated. Above and beyond the measures taken to ensure its security, it had the advantage of its own record. The economy had made important advances; the war was a boom period. Taxation was low. Justice was seen to be done. Religious feeling had been respected. By 1914 the government had won rather more ‘loyalty’ than some of its officials seemed to think it deserved. An example of how policy paid dividends can be seen in the famine relief undertaken in 1913-14. Drought had afflicted the Northern Sudan since 1911, without eliciting much government response. In August 1913 Wingate feared that there would be ‘a good deal of want’, and that ‘anything like a famine’ would be particularly hard on the government because of its current financial position. Dongola Province was especially badly affected. The governor, H. W. Jackson, reported horrific scenes of starving women and children (the men having gone off in desperation to look for work elsewhere), ‘no cattle, no crops: all is desolation’.93 There was grain, but no money to buy it. The cattle used to work the pumps were dead; the sheep and goats had been eaten; personal effects, even beds, doors, and roofs, had been sold. Jackson thought that at Khartoum the gravity of the situation was unappreciated, and sent photographs to illustrate the calamity. When Stack saw these he immediately ordered dura to be imported from India. Twenty-seven thousand tons were shipped. The government distributed grain to the departments and provinces, which sold it at cost price and on easy terms.94 In November Wingate freely acknowledged the political impact of this timely action. It had had ‘more

17°

Empire on the Nile

effect on the inhabitants’ than anything that had happened since the conquest: a little money had been lost, but the government had ‘gained a thousand-fold in prestige and popularity’.95 Struve, governor of the White Nile Province, remarked on the deep impression made by the ‘solicitude’ of the government, and the ‘world-wide power implied in bringing it from the very distant and almost mythical India’. Even more fortunate, the 1914 crop was excellent, a fact that, Wingate wrote, might alone ‘be worth an Army Corps’ to the government. Towards the end of the war a ‘Political Intelligence Report’ attributed the ‘state of quietness’ to two main factors: prosperity and confidence in the government.96 By the time of his appointment as high commissioner at the end of 1916 Wingate had become incensed with the attitude of British officials in Cairo and London towards what he saw as the great achievement of maintaining order in the Sudan. As early as November 1914 he told Clayton that ‘the most glaring example’ of Cairo’s indifference was the lack of response to ‘the great outburst of loyalty’ in the Sudan.97 Protestations of loyalty by the ‘Aden Hinterland Sultans’ had been publicised by the British govern¬ ment; the Sudan’s sentiments received scant notice.98 Wingate sent an article to The Times, praising the Sudan Government, but the published version attributed the loyalty of the Sudanese to their common sense rather than to the government’s efforts.99 In Cairo General Maxwell told MacMahon that there was in any case no ‘cause for alarm’ in the Sudan as long as Egypt remained quiet. Cromer wrote to Wingate in praise of the govern¬ ment’s ‘most extraordinary feat’ of keeping the country quiet, then attributed its success to low taxation, leniency towards slavery, and the restriction of missionary activity,100 all policies that he himself had instituted. Wingate continued to stress the importance of his own uninter¬ rupted presence in the country: his departure, ‘even for a short time’, he told Cromer, ‘would be the signal for a host of undesirable rumours’. If anyone with less experience had been in charge, he told another corre¬ spondent, ‘appeals for thousands of British reinforcements’ would have been made.101 This oft-repeated claim was abruptly dropped when he was offered the high commissionership. More irksome than British neglect of his government’s achievements was disregard for his own expertise. In January 1915 he wrote regally to Clayton: it should be clear to anyone with a grain of sense that we in this country, with our long experience, have some knowledge of dealing with Arab tribes and Moslem Religious authorities, and if the British and Indian Governments think it undesir¬ able to make any use of our experience, our geographical position, and our close connection with the other side of the Red Sea, that is their affair.102

When all else failed, Wingate tried to make even British disinterest a result

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of his own policy: his ‘aim and object’, he told FitzGerald, was ‘to let you all forget that there is such a place as the Sudan’.103

THE CONQUEST OF DARFUR, I 9 I 6

The Fur, an African people with their own language, have their ancestral home around Jabal Marra in Darfur (the land of the Fur). With the Funj kingdom of Sennar the Keira sultanate of Darfur dominated the territory of the Northern Sudan from the sixteenth century until the Turco-Egyptian invasion of 1820. The Keira sultanate maintained its independence in the distant west until its overthrow in 1874. The heyday of the sultanate was the nineteenth century. From the capital of El Fasher, the Fur sultan ruled territories more extensive than any of his predecessors. Trade flourished with the Nile Valley and Egypt. A complex social and political system had evolved, combining traditional ideas of Sudanic kingship with Islamic forms and institutions. In 1874 Zubayr Pasha, the merchant prince, conquered Darfur in the name of Egypt, and a Turco-Egyptian governor was installed in El Fasher. The brief period of Turco-Egyptian rule was marked by sporadic revolts by the Fur and the turbulent Baqqara tribesmen to the south, to whom the outbreak of the Mahdia promised the destruction of a hated foreign regime. The last Turco-Egyptian governor was Slatin, who had been appointed by Gordon in 1881. The province fell to the Mahdists in 1883, but proved as difficult for them to administer as it had for their predecessors. The tribes continued to reassert their independence, and a Furawi prince, Yusuf Ibrahim, who had been left in charge at El Fasher in the absence of the Mahdist governor, tried to revive the sultanate. An army sent by the Khalifa ‘Abdallahi put an end to these pretensions in 1887-8; Yusuf was killed and Mahdist supremacy restored. In 1888, however, a renegade Mahdist called Abu Jummayza led a popular revolt. Initial successes threatened the Mahdist hold on the western Sudan until Abu Jummayza died and the movement lost its impetus. The Baqqara tribes of southern Darfur remained a serious problem to the regime, and were subdued only by the drastic measures of enforced migration to the east and brutal suppression by loyalist forces.104 After the death of Yusuf Ibrahim in 1888 the title of sultan was assumed by a brother, Abu al-Khayrat, who was murdered in 1890. He was succeeded by 'Ali Dinar, who remained in Omdurman from 1892 until the overthrow of the Mahdist State. He then set out for Darfur to reclaim his patrimony. In this the resourceful prince was aided by the weakness of the fledgling Anglo-Egyptian regime and of its preferred candidate for the succession, Ibrahim 'Ali. 'Ali Dinar succeeded in establishing himself in El Fasher, quickly dealt with rival claimants, and entered into correspondence

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Empire on the Nile

with the Sudan Government, acknowledging its suzerainty and pledging his loyalty. The government took some time to clarify its own policy towards Darfur. Wingate, ever the imperialist, appeared to favour a formal assertion of Condominium rule, symbolised initially by the flying of the British and Egyptian flags at El Fasher, but Cromer, mindful of the remoteness of the ‘province’, the likelihood that little revenue would accrue from its administration, and the difficulty the government would face if called upon to enforce its claims, counselled governing ‘through’' Ali Dinar.105 He feared that the military administrators might be ‘carried away by the earth-hunger and prestige mania’; and insisted that Ali Dinar must be held ‘with the lightest of threads’.106 This then became government policy, and 'Ali Dinar was to rule without interference or supervision from Khartoum, his obligations to the distant regime limited to an annual payment. No government official entered his domain, and little attention was paid to its affairs. In government terminology he rapidly evolved, for no precise reasons, from its ‘agent’ to ‘Emir’, from ‘Governor-General of Darfur’ to, finally, ‘Sultan Ali Dinar’.107 The main issue in 'Ali Dinar’s relations with the Sudan Government was the definition and integrity of Darfur’s borders. The Baqqara tribes of southern Darfur and Kordofan were persistent irritants eventually sub¬ dued by force. More threatening in the long term was the gradual movement east towards Darfur of the French. By 1900 they had extended their control to the borders of Wadai, the important state west of Darfur that was separated from it only by the minor sultanates of Dar Sila, Dar Tama, Dar Gimr, and Dar Masalit, over which 'Ali Dinar claimed sovereignty. By 1909 the French had conquered Wadai and installed a figurehead sultan, while Dars Tama, Sila, and Gimr had fallen under various degrees of French control. But on 4 January 1910 the French suffered a disastrous reverse at the battle of Kirinding, near El Geneina, at the hands of the Masalit. 'Ali Dinar thereupon sought to assert control over the border sultanates, occupying Dar Gimr and Dar Tama and raiding Wadai, but on 7 April the French defeated a Fur force at Garayda and Dars Tama and Gimr returned to French control. On 9 November the French, in a bloody battle at Daroti, defeated the Masalit army, and followed up their victory in January and February 1911 by marching through Dar Masalit. Subsequently they consolidated their hold on Wadai and the Gimr, Tama, and Sila principates, and forced the sultan of the Masalit to cede a third of his realm.108 The steady growth of French power on Darfur’s western borders and in territories to which it had traditional claims caused disquiet in El Fasher; this turned to anger and suspicion when the inability or unwillingness of the Sudan Government to restrain the French was revealed. The govern-

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ment was not, of course, free to act: the future status of the region was a matter for Franco-British negotiation. British attempts to reach a border agreement had not previously been pursued with any urgency, and had been met by French temporising. As early as 1899 Cromer had suggested Wadai as a ‘buffer-state’; by 1912 events had rendered such a solution impracticable. In 1910 Wingate had indicated his consciousness of the need to reassure 'Ali Dinar, but his hope that Slatin could do so in cor¬ respondence with the sultan was misplaced. By their actions the French gave 'Ali Dinar no reason to trust their promises to respect his frontier if he reciprocated: the absence of a mutually recognised border rendered any such assurances meaningless.109 The Franco-British Declaration of March 1899, settling territorial dis¬ putes in the wake of Fashoda, had stipulated that the border between the French and British spheres should be between Wadai and Darfur as the latter had been constituted a Turco-Egyptian province in 1882. Provision was made for the appointment of a joint boundary commission. The French position was that the intermediate dars were not part of Darfur but were vassal states of Wadai and therefore on the French side of any border that might be delimited. The Sudan Government strongly contested this claim. In 1911 Slatin put its case in a detailed memorandum, convincingly supportive of 'Ali Dinar’s (and therefore the Sudan Government’s) claims. But the French wanted the Sudan Government to occupy Darfur, thus eliminating the irritant of 'Ali Dinar and bringing the negotiators face to face on the ground as they were at the conference table. To this the Sudan Government objected that it lacked the resources to annex and administer Darfur and had, in any case, given commitments to 'Ali Dinar. Wingate himself distrusted the French (and the Foreign Office), and in 1912 expressed himself 'not very hopeful that the Darfur question’ would be settled to the Sudan Government’s satisfaction.110 Slatin was convinced that French complaints about border difficulties with 'Ali Dinar were trumped up, and stated haughtily (and probably for a general readership) that the Sudan Government was better placed than France ‘to decide as to the necessity, on ethical or other grounds, of increasing its administrative control over Darfur; and also as regards the kind of administration suited to that country’. London was unenthusiastic in support of the Sudan Government’s position, but clung to the view that no delimitation could occur until the French recognised Dars Tama and Masalit as ‘dependencies’ of Darfur.111 To break the impasse Grey, the foreign secretary, proposed a FrancoBritish conference, but difficulties arose, or were created, over the time and place for such a conference. In February 1913 therefore, Grey proposed arbitration, to which France gave qualified agreement.112 After further

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Empire on the Nile

procrastination the French made detailed proposals for an arbitration commission’s terms of reference. Protracted diplomatic correspondence ensued, and the Sudan Government’s repeated unwillingness to occupy Darfur was again questioned; Kitchener, then agent and consul-general in Cairo, assured London that the Sudan Government was ‘fully prepared to maintain order on their side of the frontier after delimitation’, a claim openly doubted even at the Foreign Office. Grey therefore asked Kitch¬ ener directly if the Sudan Government was fully prepared, in the event of future ‘troubles’ between ‘Ali Dinar and the French, ‘to contemplate the assumption of direct control of Darfur’,113 and Kitchener’s reply seems to have been designed to prepare the way for just such an ‘assumption’: he told Grey that 'Ali Dinar was ‘strictly prohibited by his appointment from having any direct foreign relations’. This was not true: 'Ali Dinar never having been appointed, there were no such terms. Kitchener said that the Sudan Government would, if necessary, ‘place military posts on [the] Darfur-Wadai frontier’ after delimitation, and if 'Ali Dinar objected he would ‘be liable to dismissal, a threat of which would almost certainly bring about his acquiescence’. Subsequent events showed that this was at best wishful thinking. Kitchener added that there was no intention or hope on the Sudan Government’s part to interfere with Darfur’s ‘internal administration’.114 By August 1914 no agreement had been reached on the arbitration question, and in January 1915 it was decided that the matter should be put off until six months after the end of the war. It is clear, however, that pressure was growing on the Sudan Government to extend its control over territories it claimed as its own. During the first six months of the war Wingate took pains to secure relations with Darfur. As early as September 1914, in commenting to Clayton on a ‘malicious para, in the Wadi el Nil about an expedition against Ali Dinar’, Wingate stressed that it was ‘vitally important that . . . A.D. should not be made suspicious’ of the government. In November there were unconfirmed rumours of enemy agents en route to Darfur to ‘stir up Ali Dinar against the Sudan’.115 From the beginning Wingate’s main concern was with the effects of religious propaganda. After the Ottoman Empire entered the war, he wrote to 'Ali Dinar, enclosing loyal messages from Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani and Sharif Yusuf al-Hindi. The sultan replied in December that he took no interest in the war, but repeated his suspicions of the government’s intentions and asserted his willingness to defend his realm if the Sudan Government failed to honour its obligations to him. Wingate considered this reply better than he had expected,116 and, indeed, stated that he had no reason to suppose’ that All Dinar’s attitude was ‘anything but correct’. The sultan could ‘have little affection for the Turks in their secular capacity’, and Wingate hoped he would ‘take his cue in

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Fig. 8

T75

Sharif Yusuf al-Hindi and Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani with J. W. Crowfoot

matters religious’ from loyal notables in Khartoum.117 A correspondence was therefore initiated between Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani and the sultan. But to FitzGerald, Kitchener’s aide-de-camp, Wingate remarked on the ‘curious tone of some of Ali Dinar’s letters’, that led him to believe that the sultan was ‘being got at’ by enemy propaganda, though Wingate admitted that 'Ali Dinar could not ‘do anything very serious on the Kordofan frontier’.118 In March 1915 'Ali Dinar wrote to Sayyid 'Ali detailing his grievances against the Sudan Government: its failure to sell him sufficient arms, its refusal to deal with French annexation of part of his territory, its harbour¬ ing of rebel tribesmen and marauders, its financial debts to him. In a subsequent letter to the governor-general he castigated the British for the deposition of 'Abbas Hilmi and warned Wingate that he would repulse any aggression against Darfur.119 Although Wingate replied in a conciliatory way, he was by now openly expressing the view that 'Ali Dinar would ‘have to be dealt with’ after the war if not sooner. In Cairo Clayton agreed that 'Ali Dinar was ‘embraced’ in Turkish plans, but thought there was ‘a good deal of “bluff” ’ in 'Ali Dinar’s attitude, and that the sultan would ‘probably shrink from overt hostilities’.120 The gradual change in Wingate’s attitude in the first half of 1915 seems to

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Empire on the Nile

be attributable less to his concern over any military threat posed by Darfur than to the effects on the tribes of Kordofan of enemy propaganda coupled with 'Ali Dinar’s increasingly outspoken hostility. In May 1915 steps were taken to shore up the government’s defences in western Kordofan. Inter¬ estingly, Wingate now wished to conceal his conduct of the matter from British authorities in Cairo.121 In May he wrote: I do not think that Ah Dinar contemplates . . . attacking us, but what he may do, if some of the Turco-German scoundrels find their way south from Cyraenica [sic], is another matter, and if by any chance the Senussi should jump off the fence on the side of the Turks, then I think we must be prepared for a row. However . . . the policy should be to maintain the status quo and avoid being drawn into retaliatory measures even though there may be considerable provocation.

Wingate went on to note the attitude of some of the Kordofan tribes, the Kababish (who, although considered loyal, might have ‘imbibed a certain amount of the rumours that the Government is not as strong as it was and that changes may be in the air’), the Humr, and the Misiriya. He gave tentative agreement to the stationing near Nahud of a company of the Camel Corps, and suggested a meeting to draw up plans for dealing with ‘aggressive action on the part of Darfur’ with or without the ‘assistance of disaffected tribes on the Sudan side of the border’.122 Wingate’s plan to move a company of troops west of Nahud was criticised by his chief military advisers, who argued that no one would believe the ostensible reason for the movement (better grazing), and that the positioning of a small force, without added precautions, would merely dangle ‘bait’ for any raiders from Darfur.123 Savile, the governor of Kordofan, agreed and suggested that if the company was sent it should ‘constantly patrol’ to ward off minor cattle raids. Savile thought that 'Ali Dinar had no ‘hostile intentions’, but warned that he might well be ‘persuaded by any German or Turkish Agent’.124 Wingate decided that the Camel Corps should remain in readiness at El Obeid, and ordered some insignificant measures to improve the position in Dar Kababish. Remark¬ ably, only two days after Savile expressed his belief that 'Ali Dinar had no hostile intentions , the adjutant-general of the Egyptian Army wrote to his deputy at Erkowit, relaying the following message from Savile: I would draw your attention to the military axiom that the best defensive is a vigorous offensive, and would recommend the invasion of Darfur the very moment sufficient rain has fallen to insure water supply for the invading force. ... If however a strictly passive defensive is decided upon, I would very strongly recommend not awaiting Ah Dinar s invasion before sending the strongest avail¬ able force to Western Kordofan.125

The reason for Savile’s apparent change of heart was a letter from 'Ali Dinar to 'Ali al-Tum, nazir of the Kababish, dated 23 May, inviting him to

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rise up against the infidel British regime. Wingate did not appear to share his governor s appraisal of the letter’s importance. Having decided that any hostilities must be seen to have been precipitated by 'Ali Dinar, Wingate stressed that secrecy was the keynote of his policy: if All Dinar learned of any military preparation in Kordofan he would ‘construe it at once as aggression .Ub In any case, he said, 'Ali Dinar’s call to jihad was probably written mainly to frighten the Kababish and to ascertain their attitude in the event of hostilities. Wingate was therefore ‘inclined to maintain’ the policy of ‘ “wait and see” a little longer’.127 At the same time he began to consider the necessity of calling for British reinforcements from Egypt. Savile returned to the charge in July, arguing, in thoroughly alarmist terms, the case for an immediate invasion of Darfur. 'Ali Dinar’s recent assurance that he intended no hostile action had been written in strong and insulting terms, and Savile contended that such an assurance was given only because the sultan felt himself too weak to attack. He warned Wingate that if the Sudan Government allowed the sultan to defy its authority and renounce his allegiance, the government’s prestige in the eyes of the Arab tribes on both sides of the border would evaporate.128 Wingate, for his part, continued to counsel patience and make preparations. On 28 July he wrote to FitzGerald, for Kitchener’s information, of his fears: there is no doubt whatever A.D. has absorbed the Turco-German poison; he has written me a series of most insulting letters and has entirely repudiated all allegiance to the Sudan. In spite of this... I am still hopeful that I shall be able to avoid actual hostilities.. . . My only fear is that our own tribes on the Darfur frontier will think that after these insults - which will in due course become public property - our inaction means that we are afraid to take on Darfur.129

On 26 July Wingate wrote a long ‘secret and private’ letter to Savile, in which he explained his current thinking. It was clear, he said, that ‘relations with Darfur’ would now ‘enter a new phase’, during which the Sudan Government must be prepared for ‘the probability that sooner or later (and the later the better) direct and military intervention’ in Darfur ‘may become inevitable’. Before taking action against 'Ali Dinar the ground must be prepared. The Sudan Government must ‘enter Darfur as the champions of the people (at any rate the Arabs) against the present Sultan and his clique’. It was ‘of vital importance ... to prevent a Religious complexion being given’ to the government’s policy. To avoid this danger ‘it might be desirable eventually to put up and support a rival candidate say Emir Abd el Hamid ... - to the Darfur Sultanate’. The government should ‘endeavour to increase the unpopularity of Ali Dinar’; it should contact, ‘and subsequently . . . secretly support, the various forces of sedition and opposition’ to him, such as the Rizayqat, Habbania, Bani Halba and other tribes; individuals with grievances against him should be

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Empire on the Nile

approached and their services enlisted; and much more intelligence must be gathered about affairs in Darfur. Wingate suggested despatching a ‘Special Service Inspector . . . ostensibly for miscellaneous Province work, but really for the treatment of Darfur affairs locally, the collection and collation of Darfur Intelligence, and as a sort of liaison officer’ between Savile and Khartoum. For this work he nominated H. A. MacMichael,130 who was subsequently transferred from Khartoum to Kordofan. Savile had ‘agents at Nahud and elsewhere’, whose contacts in El Fasher were considered adequately placed to provide early warning of 'Ali Dinar’s military intentions. Intelligence was also requested from the authorities in French Wadai, who agreed to provide it.131 Wingate was clearly determined to avoid a military fiasco reminiscent of Hicks Pasha’s expedition to Kordofan in 1883. On 1 August he sum¬ marised his thinking in a letter to Savile: our object ... is to rid ourselves of a ruler whose principles are directly and dangerously opposed to ours. To effect this object you are inclined to depose the Sultan immediately and by force of arms. This course of action has the merit of simplicity and from the local (Kordofan) point of view has very much to commend it. Its disadvantages, which as you know in my opinion outweigh its advantages, are that its execution involves a march by a relatively small force under Christian leaders into a little known country against a population inclined to bouts of fanaticism (which might spread eastwards if the military operations were not immediately successful) and of whose attitude towards an invading force we cannot be certain.

Wingate told Savile to deal with any effects in Kordofan of the govern¬ ment’s apparent unconcern. It was ‘desirable to give the impression that Government, as a logical outcome of the Sultan's attitude will have to interfere in Darfur affairs before long rather than that Government has decided to do so at the first favourable opportunity'. Above all, ‘the outbreak of hostilities’ must await ‘a more propitious moment’. Wingate was as concerned about the Arab tribes’ forcing the issue as he was about 'Ali Dinar’s doing so. This did not restrain him from arming some of them, however, both in Darfur and Kordofan.133 In September J. R. Bassett, inspector in Western Kordofan, met at al-Udayya with the son of Musa Madibbu, nazir of the Rizayqat of southern Darfur, who for years had been at odds with the sultan but received little support from the Sudan Government. Bassett arranged for the supply of three hundred rifles and thirty thousand rounds of ammunition to the tribe, to arm a special irregular force. In December the loan of two hundred rifles to 'Ali al-Tom of the Kababish was approved.134 Towards the end of 1915 Wingate’s earlier premonitions and assertions about the activities of ‘Turco-German’ agents gained some credibility. At

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the outbreak of the war Italy had held only the coastal area of Cyrenaica, its vast hinterland remaining under the control of the Sanusiya tariqa. Turkish agents, notably Nuri Bey, half-brother of the Ottoman war minister, Enver Pasha, were active in securing Sanusi support. Italy’s entry into the war against the Central Powers in May 1915 sealed the Ottoman-Sanusi entente. In July Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif, the Sanusi leader, proclaimed the jihad. Enver had written as early as 3 February 1915 to 'Ali Dinar, inviting Darfur to join the war against their common enemy, the British, but his letter took over a year to reach El Fasher. In August Nuri wrote again in fulsome terms. By the end of July 1915, however, the British still had no evidence that ‘hostile agents’ had actually reached Darfur.135 In November and December Turco-Sanusi collaboration against the British in the western desert of Egypt clarified the position of the tariqa, which the British had attempted to detach from the Turks. A letter from 'Ali Dinar to Nahud, dated 25 November and received on 16 December, threatened an attack on the town, and this, combined with Wingate’s certainty that the Sanusis’ open hostility would have ‘effects’ in the Sudan, prompted an escalation of the Sudan Government’s military preparations in Kordofan.136 On 17 December Wingate ordered a company of the Camel Corps to be held ‘in readiness to move nearer to [the] frontier’, and this was followed immediately by the despatch of two companies to al-Udayya and a third to reinforce Nahud, in the hope of deterring 'Ali Dinar and reassuring the Kordofan tribes.137 Although Wingate stated that there was doubt even of 'Ali Dinar’s ‘capacity . . . seriously to invade Kordofan’, he thought that the movement of government troops would deter any ‘aggressive action’.138 The months of January and February 1916 were spent in preparing for war with Darfur. Reconnaissance of the border was carried out, and the defences of Nahud were strengthened. Preparations were quickened after it was learned on 9 February that 'Ali Dinar was sending troops to Jabal Hilla, eighteen miles inside his border. Although these reinforcements consisted of only ‘40 horse and 90 men riding two to [a] camel’,139 the moment was seized by Wingate as the necessary pretext for an advance into Darfur. He told Clayton in Cairo that ‘a large Darfur force’ at Jabal Hilla, ‘whether concentrated for invasion of Sudan or not’, would constitute a menace that the Sudan Government ‘should be compelled to meet promptly’.140 He continued to restrain his more enthusiastic subordinates, not because he doubted now the inevitability of war, but because he con¬ sidered that once hostilities were under way they were unlikely to stop short of El Fasher itself. Indeed, news from MacMichael at Nahud indicated no important war preparations in Darfur and little likelihood even of minor border raids. Wingate asked for and received assurances that

i8o

Empire on the Nile

British reinforcements from Egypt would be sent if necessary141 and on 26 February approved a plan to ‘carry out forward movement, and to start from Nahud on March 1 ith’. He himself would come to Nahud and give ‘final sanction’ for the advance.142 On the same day he told Clayton to inform the high commissioner of his intention to occupy Jabal Hilla and Umm Shanqa in Darfur, and that he did not anticipate a ‘very costly or difficult operation’.143 Wingate arrived in Nahud on 8 March and approved the advance to Jabal Hilla and Umm Shanqa. From Nahud he also addressed a ‘last word of warning’ to 'Ali Dinar, offering the ‘aman’ to all who submitted to the forces of the Sudan Government, advising him that he could ‘expect no assistance’ from the Turks, and promising ‘fitting arrangements’ for the sultan and his family if he woiild surrender.144 The invasion force left Nahud on 16 March, and by 22 March the two prime objectives had been taken after only the very slightest resistance. The chief difficulties facing the Egyptian Army were lack of water and extended lines of communication. It was mainly for their wells that the two border towns had been the first goals of the campaign, and it was for its wells that the town of Abiad, fifty miles north-west of Jabal Hilla, was the next objective. This was taken on 10 April, without a battle, the march from Jabal Hilla having encountered only sporadic resistance. Here the Darfur Field Force awaited developments. The major military question was whether or not to push forward to El Fasher before the impending rains. Ft-Colonel P. J. V. Kelly, commanding the force, raised strong arguments for an immediate advance: the rains would disrupt communica¬ tions; it would be disadvantageous to billet the troops at El Fasher during the rainy season; the sultan’s forces were presently concentrated at the capital, and their dispersal might delay final victory; the morale of government troops was high, but delay and propaganda might weaken it; and it was ‘imperative to forestall [the] inevitable attempt of the Sennussi and Turkish and German officers to join hands with 'Ali Dinar as soon as [the] rains’ made this ‘practicable’.145 While Wingate was now firmly committed to an immediate advance, opposition had suddenly been encountered from outside the Sudan. This emerged first among British officials in Cairo, of whose support Wingate had never been certain. On 19 March he had written to MacMahon that ‘the dispersal of Ali Dinar’s main army’ should be undertaken ‘at the first favourable opportunity’, and that since the Fur army was unlikely to engage the invasion force far from El Fasher, the town would probably be ‘the ultimate objective’ of the Field Force, ‘its capture and occupation . . . on the Omdurman precedent’, causing ‘the final overthrow of Ali Dinar and the collapse of further organized resistance’.146 On 3 April Clayton told Wingate that the French government, ‘in view of the paucity of the

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French forces now available in Wadai’, was anxious lest 'Ali Dinar be driven in that direction by the invading Egyptian Army. Thus, ‘a serious attack on El Fasher . . . would be a matter of grave inconvenience’. Clayton, having been kept in the dark by Wingate, assured the French minister in Cairo that no advance was contemplated or even possible before the rains, thus embarrassing Wingate, who was organising just such an advance.14 Fie told Clayton to warn the minister that ‘due regard’ would be given ‘to the views of our French Allies’, but that future movements in Darfur ‘must be guided by circumstances’ that were ‘diffi¬ cult to foresee and consequently impossible to control’. On 17 April Wingate tried to forestall further objections by warning MacMahon that ‘if the news of Turco-German reinforcements from the North’ were accurate (by which he can have referred only to the rumour that Turkish and German officers were en route to Darfur), he might ‘be forced to push on sooner’ than he had ‘intended’. Two days later, however, Cecil, the powerful Financial Adviser in Cairo, told MacMahon that there were not only valid military objections to a further advance, but also that It would be a very serious matter if the British Government were involved in a very costly and troublesome expedition at this moment, and I do not think for one moment. . . that they would consent to the Sirdar commencing the course he now proposes to follow, unless they were assured by independent authority of the gravity, or the reverse, of the operations . . . and some estimate as to the cost in men, material and money is laid before them.

Regarding the purely financial aspect of the matter, Cecil stated bluntly that he doubted Wingate knew what he was doing.148 On 28 April MacMahon, having been informed that the Central Defence Bureau at Khartoum had approved an immediate advance in Darfur, wrote to the Foreign Office suggesting that since ‘other and wider interests . . . Egyptian, British, and French’, not merely Sudanese, were involved, the question should be decided by the British government on the advice of the General Staff. In a subsequent message he added the ominous view of his military advisers that there would be ‘the greatest difficulty’ in sending reinforcements to the Sudan if these were requested.149 MacMahon there¬ fore told Wingate not to act before London’s decision was known; that ‘the French difficulty’ and the problem of reinforcements hampered his ability to help the Sudan Government; and that, in any case, Wingate was unjustified in thinking that the cost of the campaign would be borne by the British government: the Treasury would probably insist that Egypt pay, and Egypt was in no position to do so. These objections annoyed Wingate. He was forced to disclose his plans for an advance, which he ‘had hoped to keep’ secret,150 but he had no intention of submitting to MacMahon and Cecil. Wingate communicated directly with Kitchener in London, a

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Empire on the Nile

correspondence he deemed ‘entirely a personal matter’,151 and the Army Council’s decision was quick in coming. On i May the Foreign Office approved an advance to El Fasher.152 The French government continued to insist that its troops in the region were ‘insufficient to resist’ any movement into Wadai of ‘Ali Dinar and his Allies’, but instructed its forces to assist the operations as far as possible, including the mounting of a ‘demonstra¬ tion’ of force in Dar Sila.153 Ffaving won the day, Wingate accused the French of inventing reasons for delay because they feared a British occupation of Dars Tama and Masalit in the absence of the long-postponed border delimitation.154 The advance on El Fasher, once sanctioned, proceeded quickly. On 12 May copies of two proclamations were dropped dn the capital by an airplane, one of four craft that had been supplied to the Field Force from Egypt. The proclamations denounced ‘Ali Dinar and promised good government, justice, and religious freedom after the conquest; the con¬ firmation ‘in their positions [of] all present heads of tribes’ who submitted and were ‘just men acceptable to the people’; special assistance to the Arab tribes who had suffered from 'Ali Dinar’s oppression; and the ‘aman’ for all who submitted.155 Apart from the alarm caused by the appearance of aircraft, their chief use during the campaign was in reconnaissance. The Field Force began its advance from Abiad on 15 May. Mellit, a town with abundant water thirty-eight miles from El Fasher, was occupied on the 18th. On the 22nd the decisive battle of the campaign was fought near the village of Biringia, twelve miles from El Fasher, where ‘Ali Dinar’s forces had awaited the enemy advance. The Fur army attacked and suffered heavily from the disciplined fire of the government’s superior weapons. The sultan’s force left 261 dead, while the Field Force lost five. 'Ali Dinar, who had remained in El Fasher, attempted to regroup his men for another battle, but during the night was abandoned by many of them, and he fled to the south-west with a small group of loyal retainers.156 El Fasher was occupied on the 23rd. The Sudan Government’s conquest of Darfur had been remarkably easily achieved, a victory of careful planning and superior arms. One aspect of that planning was the propaganda instituted by Wingate in an attempt to ensure support in Cairo and London for the advance. As early as July 1915, in a review of ‘political relations’ with 'Ali Dinar, he had written: It must be remembered that he is totally illiterate and has imbibed all his knowledge of government and his views and conduct of life from his period of detention under the Khalifa at Omdurman. ... He is surrounded by sycophants, and like every petty despot has in course of time rid himself of any strong character in his entourage. . . . The main traits in his character may be summed up as (1) personal pride, (2) innate suspicion, and (3) fanaticism.

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Letters from the sultan received in April 1915 had betrayed ‘a state of mind which may be described as religious exaltation of the lowest and most illiterate type’.157 Wingate was careful to forward such letters, grist for the mill, to higher authorities (who must rely on official translations). In February 1916 'Ali Dinar wrote to the governor of Kordofan and the inspector at Nahud, calling them ‘infidels and dogs’, and warning that he would come against them. Another letter addressed these officials as ‘the Governor of Hell in Kordofan and Inspector of Flames at Nahud’. Both letters were forwarded to MacMahon with a covering note stating that 'Ali Dinar’s ‘tyranny and misgovernment’ had ‘undoubtedly rendered him unpopular with a large section of the natives of Darfur’. Wingate repeated this line in a summary of the conquest sent to Grey in June 1916: he had planned the campaign aware that ‘the bulk of the inhabitants had had enough of ’'Ali Dinar’s excesses, and he repeated, although it was at best a gross exaggeration, that ‘All our information goes to show that a great effort would have been made by our enemies to send officers to organize Ali Dinar’s army and in that case the menace on our western flank would have been very serious’.158 To an American journalist Wingate conveyed ‘privately’ in March 1916 one of the latest stories connected with his ['Ali Dinar’s] beneficent rule. A certain woman had a baby of which her husband was supposed not to be the father. Ali Dinar had the woman and child brought before him, pounded the unfortunate babe to pulp in a large pestle and mortar and forced the wretched woman to eat her own offspring before him - this is the gentleman to whom the Kaiser’s agent is sending a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition.

A month later (when the decision for an advance beyond Abiad hung in the balance) he repeated this amazing tale to Currie in London, this time giving as the motive for the atrocity 'Ali Dinar’s rage that the woman had named her child after him.159 In May he wrote again to America about the ‘incubus of a man who has even more crimes and horrors to his discredit than even the late Khalifa had’. Comparison with the khalifa was a favourite refrain. Kitchener had been told in March that Darfur was ‘groaning’ under 'Ali Dinar, ‘as the Sudan groaned under the Khalifa - but just as Marchand’s expedition precipitated events in 1897-8, so has the insidious poison of our enemies induced the Sultan of Darfur to sever his allegiance and declare the JEHAD’.160 The ‘insidious poison’ of ‘Turco-German’ agents was deliberately exag¬ gerated. Apparently few letters had reached 'Ali Dinar from the north, and no ‘Sennusist’ had visited El Fasher in 1916 except ‘a Sherif who came with letters early in March’.161 As for 'Ali Dinar’s maladministration, both before and after the conquest Wingate approved plans to make as few changes as possible in the system of government in Darfur. Some idea of

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Empire on the Nile

the ‘barbarous’ nature of the sultan may be gathered from the description of El Fasher penned by MacMichael immediately after its capture: The Sultan’s palace is a perfect Sudanese Alhambra. The Khalifa’s house at Omdurman is a hovel as compared to it. There are small shady gardens and little fish ponds, arcades, colonnades, store rooms, and every type of building. The floors are strewn with fine silver sand, the thatch on the roofs is the finest imaginable and looks as if it had been clipped with scissors. The walls are beautifully plastered in red, and the interiors of the halls covered with great inscriptions from the Koran in handsome caligraphy [sic] or with chess board designs. Only the best brush and bamboo had been used in the roofing. Trellis work in ebony is found in place of the interior walls and the very flooring in the women’s quarters, under the silver sand, is impregnated with spices. The Sultan also had other fine residences in Fasher, as had his sons and chief adherents. Officers and officials stationed at Fasher in future should be extremely well housed and the accomodation [sic] is ample.162

While 'Ali Dinar’s misgovernment continued to be mentioned in official despatches, stories of his barbarism and atrocities were not. Nor were questions ever seriously raised as to why the Sudan Government had for the whole period of its existence allowed to continue within its borders the rule of such a cruel and barbarous fanatic, and had forced the return to his domain of tribesmen ‘groaning’ under his misrule. Following the defeat of his army, cAli Dinar continued to resist the Sudan Government from the remote fastnesses of Jabal Marra and beyond. On 29 May envoys reached El Fasher with a letter from the sultan, who blamed all that had happened on the ‘Muluk’, his chief advisers. The letter ‘explicitly’ renounced the sultanate, offered a ‘complete surrender if the Sultan’s life and that of his family and his men’ were spared, and requested permission for 'Ali Dinar to ‘live quietly on his land’. In reply Kelly restated Wingate’s offer of ‘their life and reasonable treatment’ if the former sultan and his men surrendered with their arms. A reward of £Eioo that had been offered for his capture was withdrawn.163 A correspondence ensued, but by early June 'Ali Dinar was still at large and the British were convinced that he was simply playing for time. Meanwhile, the Sudan Government debated what to do with him if he submitted. Wingate averred that ‘any idea of Ali Dinar remaining in Darfur . . . must be absolutely vetoed’; ‘his action had cancelled the conditions’ that had been offered to him before the invasion.164 On 16 June Wingate told Kelly of his hopes for the Arab revolt in the Hijaz. If 'Ali Dinar submitted, Kelly should not keep him long at El Fasher but send him on to Khartoum where I should also make his stay as short as possible and should pack him and his family off to Port Sudan from whence he should be conveyed to the new Arab Kingdom and remain in the safe custody of the Sherif who, being Anti-Turk to the core, would show him the error of his ways and keep a close eye on him_With this end in view I am taking steps to secretly communicate my ideas to the Sherif.

The first world war

Fig. 9

FF A. MacMichael in 'Ali Dinar’s palace at El Fasher, 1916

A week later, Mecca, al-Ta’if, and Jidda all having come under the Sharif’s control, Wingate suggested that Kelly inform 'Ali Dinar that he could ‘go to the Holy Places of Islam and there reside with his family’, and the governor-general even raised the matter of providing ‘sufficient subsidy to keep him and his family going in Mecca’.165 Wingate eventually became convinced that 'Ali Dinar was stalling in the hope of starting ‘a little Imperium in Imperio of his own’ in Darfur,166 a

186

Empire on the Nile

view shared by his officers in the west. During the rains 'Ali Dinar moved to Kulme, south-west of Jabal Marra. In October Major Huddleston, with a force of about 250 men, was sent to Kas, and en route engaged 'Ali Dinar’s son, Zakariya, whom he surprised and routed. Huddleston then repeatedly pressed for permission to make a final assault on Ah Dinar, which Khartoum as often refused. Plans were mooted about a joint action with the French, but on 31 October Huddleston informed Kelly that he was marching on Kulme the next day. He took that place, which had been hastily evacuated, on the 3rd, and on 6 November a small force under his command surprised 'Ali Dinar’s camp and overran it. The last sultan of Darfur and two sons were shot dead outside the camp, while trying to escape on horseback.167 The death of the Fur sultan left the British with three questions to consider: responsibility for the cost of the campaign; delimitation of the Sudan’s western boundary; and the methods by which the huge new province would be administered. When in April 1916 the Residency had indicated Egypt’s unprepared¬ ness, and Britain’s probable unwillingness, to pay for the conquest of Darfur, Wingate had not pressed the matter, preferring to conquer first and arrange payment later. After the occupation of El Fasher he returned to the question, and in a private letter to Grey reviewed the campaign, stressing the imperial reasons for it and the imperial advantages derived from its successful completion. He ended by expressing the hope that Britain would meet the expenses incurred, not least for the novel reason that this would ‘facilitate’ the administration of the new province without Egyptian interference.168 On the same day he put forward other arguments, in an official letter, to convince the British government that the campaign had been a direct consequence and part of the world war, not a local matter. Cecil, who in April had criticised Wingate’s handling of the financial question, returned to the subject during the summer, telling MacMahon that Wingate’s assumption that Britain would accept the charge was unfounded, and suggesting that there might be an adverse political reaction in Egypt if Britain assumed sole responsibility for the campaign.169 The British Treasury naturally seized on this remark as one of several argu¬ ments against British assumption of the war costs.170 Wingate’s promotion to Cairo in 1917 did not serve to advance his views in this matter. In January the Treasury reiterated its refusal and offered to provide a loan to Egypt to meet campaign expenses. In March Wingate re¬ stated the preposterous argument that the conquest had been undertaken ‘for the defence of British protected territory . . . against hostile invasion’, 'Ali Dinar having been ‘directly instigated and (as far as geographical circumstances permitted) . . . actively assisted by our enemies to co-

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operate with the Turkish and Senussiist [sic] forces to overthrow British rule in Egypt and the Sudan’. Wingate pointedly refuted Cecil’s remarks, concluding that it was ‘politically undesirable’ that Egypt should be made liable for the cost of the campaign. This letter was duly forwarded by the Foreign Office, with no endorsement of his views, to the Treasury. A twosentence reply, refusing to modify the position already taken, was sent in July. The War Office added injury to insult when, in September, it announced the intention of recovering ‘forthwith from the Sudan (or Egyptian) Government the cost of all services in connection with the Darfur operations, which were rendered at the cost of British funds’.171 Wingate cannot have been much surprised by London’s attitude: the government had always refused to accept financial responsibility for the Sudan Government. On the specific question of military expenditure, several rulings had been made before 1916, and all had precluded British responsibility. In December 1915, for example, expenditure ‘attributable to the existence of a state of war’ in the Sudan was billed to Egypt when the Treasury found ‘no sufficient reason why assistance should be sought from the Imperial Exchequer in preference to Egyptian funds’.172 None of the arguments advanced in this debate was particularly convincing; in the end, Egypt paid the piper, and London called the tune. The solution of the boundary dispute with France proved as difficult after the conquest as it had before it. In August 1916 Wingate began to promote the matter, as the Foreign Office put it, ‘in the light of the simplification introduced into our relations with Sultan Ali Dinar’. In September Wingate proposed a Franco-British commission to visit the border area and make proposals for its rectification. But just as the French had found it convenient before the war to delay a definition of the border, so now the Foreign Office saw advantages in such a course. As Tyrrell minuted: ‘If the Wadai-Darfour [sic] boundary is to be used by us for bargaining with the French in connexion with general territorial arrange¬ ments between the Allies, it would seem undesirable to treat it as a separate question and to proceed to a joint delimitation at the present moment’.173 The decision to postpone action until after the war did not take into account any problems this might create for the Sudan Government in Darfur. In November it was decided that British officers should be used as inspectors ‘on the Frontier, to negotiate with the Officers of French Equatorial Africa’,174 but ‘negotiations’ could involve only administrative matters. In May 1917 Savile, who had been appointed governor of Darfur, reported that its administration was ‘hampered by the uncertainty as to the Western boundary’. The ‘failure to stake out our claim to Dar Masalit and Dar Gimr’ was ‘very adversely affecting’ the government’s prestige. He proposed at least the establishment of a post in Dar Masalit, ‘even if it is

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Empire on the Nile

only a wireless station with a small guard’, and the imposition of ‘a tribute on the Masalit and Qimr sultans.175 When in 1917 it was reported that the sultan of the Masalit, Bahr al-Din Abbakr Isma'il, called Endoka, was detaining some members of 'Ali Dinar’s harim, the government asked for French intervention, which was refused. But the French, who retained great influence over Sultan Endoka, had apparently come to accept that Dars Masalit and Qimr were within the British sphere, although why they should have done so at this time, or at all, is unclear. In October 1917 they advised the establishment of a British poston the eastern boundary of Dar Masalit, and in March 1918 such a post was founded at Kerenik. MacMichael was sent there as ‘political officer’, and reported that the sultan’s relations with the French had been ‘much closer’ than the Sudan Government had supposed; Endoka went frequently to the French posts, and his ‘grief for the loss of his western province’ had been ‘to some extent soothed by whisky and occasional gifts of rifles and watches’.176 The settlement of the border dispute itself awaited the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where MacMichael (a nephew of Lord Curzon) represented the Sudan Government. On 8 September a Supplementary Convention to the Anglo-French Declaration of 21 March 1899 was signed. By its terms the Sudan was to retain Dar Masalit and Dar Qimr, while the French kept Dar Tama. The convention did not take effect until French ratification in March 1921. Meanwhile the Sudan Government pressed for permission to occupy Dar Masalit and Dar Qimr, because there was an impression locally that France was about to re-enter the territories and impose conscription. France demurred, and the Sudan Government proposed at least to send its newly designated Resident to Dar Masalit. Following French ratification a boundary commission was established to delimit the frontier, and began its work in November 1921. A number of relatively minor disputes arose, some of which remained unsettled until long negotiations in London in 1923. The French and British governments finally signed a protocol on 10 January 1924, delimiting the border.177 Even before the conquest of Darfur the Sudan Government had entertained proposals to distinguish its administration from that of other provinces. The idea of using indigenous leaders as ‘agents’ of the govern¬ ment in Darfur was originally suggested in September 1915 as a possible war measure. MacMichael wrote a memorandum, ‘Concerning the future status of Darfur’, in which he proposed two possible policies: the administration of Darfur along ‘the same lines as those on which the rest of the Sudan’ was administered; or the replacement of 'Ali Dinar ‘by some other Sultan - probably the Emir Abd el Hamid - and leaving the latter to rule Darfur with a British Resident at El Fasher to advise him’. In marginal notes and a letter written to MacMichael by the private secretary, Wingate

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expressed disapproval of the second suggestion. It would, Symes wrote, be considered only ‘in the event of an organised Jehad or anti-Government movement in Darfur assuming proportions with which our available military forces could not successfully cope’, a contingency judged ‘improbable’.178 There were, however, difficulties in pursuing the policy of administering Darfur as any other province, chiefly a shortage of funds and personnel. MacMichael therefore proposed ‘a conservative policy which would leave the power of the existing sheikhs, “shartais”, “meliks” and “salatin” over their people unimpaired as long as they behaved them¬ selves’. In this case 'Abd al-Hamid would prove ‘invaluable’ as a figure¬ head.179 MacMichael appended to his memorandum a draft proclamation ‘To the people of Darfur’, in which ‘Ali Dinar was reviled and tribal leaders were promised continuance ‘in power’. 'Abd al-Hamid was to ‘assist the Government in the re-organisation and management of the Fur country’, supported by a Council of Elders, and he and they would act as ‘the recognised intermediary between the Government and the rulers and sheikhs of such tribes . . . who are not Furs’, except the Baqqara, who would be ‘subject only to their own sheikhs and the Government’. Replying, Symes expressed Wingate’s view that ‘As an interim policy . . . the “existing order” in Darfur’ should not be disturbed ‘in a manner calculated to engender opposition on a scale involving the conduct of military operations or a too rapid extension of our administrative respon¬ sibilities’. It would probably be necessary ‘to give to the “new system” . . . rather more of a native complexion’ than was the case in any other province. For that purpose, 'Abd al-Hamid might be ‘of considerable assistance in the capacity of Government delegate or official intermediary, but not... as the hereditary and legitimate Sultan of Darfur’. Symes went on to quote Wingate directly: ‘MacMichael’s advocacy of a Conservative policy that would confirm the present “leaders of the people” . . . is . . . sound. Without their cooperation any form of “make-shift” Government would be doomed to failure.. . . the presence of Abd el Hamid at El Fasher would provide tangible evidence of our intention not to destroy the authority over their followers of the hereditary chieftains’.180 On 6 March 1916 MacMichael submitted another, more detailed memorandum, which reflected developments since the previous Septem¬ ber and the government’s improved knowledge of conditions in Darfur. The idea of using 'Abd al-Hamid, or any other Fur prince, was shelved, but the suggestion of retaining the various tribal leaders was vigorously upheld. The sultan should be replaced by a Council of Elders, initially as an advisory and consultative body only, to whom it might later be possible to delegate ‘the settlement of such minor administrative and personal ques¬ tions as could not suitably be referred for adjudication to the local sheikhs concerned’. In general, however, it would ‘be necessary ... to decentralize

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Empire on the Nile

all administration as far as possible and to avoid weakening the hands of the tribal chiefs’. There should be minimal interference in the affairs of the Baqqara, the Zaghawa, and the Fur tribes beyond Jabal Marra. Specifically, ‘Sultans’, ‘Meks’ and ‘Shartais’ would have to be appointed officially. ... it would obviously be best to confirm in their office so many of the existing ‘Shartais’ etc. as accepted the new regime and showed themselves willing to co-operate with us and appeared acceptable to their people. It would be most important to avoid upheavals of the existing order and our policy should be to back up the local man unless and until it was thoroughly demonstrated beyond doubt that he was either disloyal or consistently unjust when judged by native standards.

MacMichael went on to advise tribute rather than tax for nomadic tribes, to be apportioned among tribal sections by the head shaykh. Similarly, the existing division of the country east of El Fasher into districts administered by shartais should be retained, and each district assessed a lump sum tribute, that might be revised annually according to the quality of the crops, with the shartais receiving a fixed percentage of the tribute collected. Minor officials (clerks, accountants, etc.) could easily be recruited locally, and Egyptian officials dispensed with ‘wherever possible’. Finally, while ‘the systematic appointment of trained Cadis could be deferred for a year or two ... a man of the stamp of Sheikh Ismail el Azhari (Cadi of Wad Medani) would be invaluable at Fasher as Grand Cadi from the very beginning’.181 These memoranda outlined not only the steps to be taken in settling Darfur, but the thinking that was to inform administrative policy generally until the mid-1930s. The policy of Indirect Rule (or Native Administra¬ tion) as later adopted in the Sudan was contained essentially in these relatively brief documents. Wingate was impressed by the wide scope but basic simplicity of MacMichael’s recommendations. One to which he directed immediate attention was the elimination from Darfur’s administration of Egyptian personnel. Soon after receipt of MacMichael’s March 1916 memorandum Wingate raised the matter with MacMahon: there was ‘no question’ but that the employment of Egyptians had ‘tended to weaken rather than to strengthen’ the administration, and to ‘impair the relations between the British (Christian) chiefs and the Native (Moslem) population’. By dispen¬ sing with Egyptians the government would save itself ‘from one of the grave inconveniences - and the ultimate cause of nearly all’ its ‘previous administrative failures’ at the outset.182 This was not the first time, or the last, that a governor-general boldly blamed his government’s problems on Egyptians. Nor was it unusual in such condemnations to avoid specifics. At a meeting at the Palace attended by Bonham Carter, Stack, Mac¬ Michael, and Wingate in November 1916 a number of MacMichael’s

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proposals for Darfur were adopted. The title ma ’mur would be replaced by muawin. Shaykh Isma'il al-Azhari would be transferred to El Fasher as qadi, while the present qadi there would be appointed mufti. Terms for the enlistment of slaves into the army were discussed, and a special item in the province budget was authorised for ‘payment of a salary to certain head men of Fasher who were rendering to the Government great assistance’.183 From the very day El Fasher was occupied officials of the old regime had entered into the new government’s service: the Palace clerks set about listing 'Ali Dinar’s possessions, flocks, and herds; his chief clerk, Muham¬ mad al-Sinnari, and his assistants gave willing service; the Chief Kadi, Idris 'Abdallahi, from Dongola, having abandoned the last sultan of Darfur, was installed in the mosque of El Fasher to hear cases.184 Thus the old order gave way to the new, and the new deferred to the old.

5

__

,

Economic developments 1898-1919

INTRODUCTION

An appraisal of the Sudan’s economic history during the first two decades of the Condominium is hampered by the inadequacy of sources. Early statistics are unreliable, often including mere guesses, estimates, extrapola¬ tions, and even deliberately misleading figures. After the establishment in 1906 of the Central Economic Board statistics improved, but grave discrepancies are still to be found. Population figures were largely guesses, at best; foreign trade statistics were incomplete and impressionistic; taxes, paid in cash or kind, were variously assessed and variously remitted according to local conditions, and are difficult to analyse. Indeed, govern¬ ment statistics can best be used in discerning trends rather than in isolating short-term results. It is useful to recall that the Sudan occupied a place in world markets before Muhammad 'Ali’s annexation, and that modern economic develop¬ ment preceded the Anglo-Egyptian conquest. Long before the Turkiya, trade routes linked Darfur with the Red Sea and with Egypt, and Sennar with Egypt and Ethiopia. Slaves, ivory, gum, and animals were important exports. Trade, agricultural surpluses, and slave labour sustained fairly elaborate courts, like that of the Fur sultans, and substantial leisure. Merchants of riverain origin dispersed throughout the Sudan, settling in commercial centres and engaging in local and long-distance trade. In the 1790s the traveller W. G. Browne noted the presence at Kobbe in Darfur of merchants from Egypt, Tunis, Tripoli, Dongola, Nubia, and Kordofan.1 The difficulties of transport and communication during the Con¬ dominium, great as these were, should not therefore be exaggerated to depict even the farthest reaches of the country as unreachably remote or inevitably backward. It was not for territorial aggrandisement that Muhammad 'Ali con¬ quered the Sudan, but for slaves and gold. The rest of his life and, indeed, 192

Economic developments, 1898-1919

i93

the whole of the Turkiya, witnessed attempts by Egypt to make its southern empire profitable. Of gold there was little, even of slaves never enough. Government monopolies were established over all important exports. The gum-trade thrived: as early as 1827—8 about 1,270 metric tons were exported. Cattle for Egyptian agriculture and industry, and animal by-products were important exports: in 1836—7 some 25,000 cowhides, 6,400 goatskins, and 19,600 sheepskins were sent to Egypt, and the camel market was always strong. New crops were grown commercially, some, like sugar and indigo, with success; others, like opium and coffee, failed. Efforts at industrial development were in vain: Muhammad 'Ali’s attempt to establish an iron industry in Kordofan was a fiasco. The greater security resulting from Egyptian rule was a boon to trade, but the various development schemes were of no benefit to the mass of Sudanese whose taxes helped to finance them. By 1843 t^ie last °f the state monopolies had ended, after European pressure, and direct trade between Europe and the Sudan increased. There was a chamber of commerce in Khartoum by 1862, and similar bodies in other centres even earlier. A Banque du Soudan, founded in Egypt to finance trade in the Sudan, was established, but failed in 1873.1° 1863 the Khedive Isma'il formed the Compagnie du Soudan to build railways, develop steamer services on the Nile, and encourage exports: it failed in 1868. Railway schemes were launched with more imagination than capital, but the introduction of steamers on the Nile was an important innovation. Greek traders appeared in force. The trade routes flourished. In the 1870s, between thirty and forty thousand camels a year were employed in the caravan trade with Egypt. Berber, at the hub of the routes, became a wealthy entrepot, while Suakin on the Red Sea enjoyed an increasing international trade: by 1879 annual exports from Suakin had a declared value of ££254,000, and in 1880 some 758 vessels were said to have called. A large part of that trade was in gum: in 1881 Britain alone imported some 3,620 tons, valued at £180,084. Meanwhile, Egypt continued to expand its Sudanese empire, annexing the Red Sea littoral and pushing ever south¬ wards in the Nile Valley and its tributaries. In the wake of the soldiers and sailors (and sometimes preceding them) came traders and missionaries, including among them Europeans. The ivory-trade grew in importance, and with it the trade in slaves. European merchants gradually gave way to northern Sudanese, a few of whom rose from the humblest beginnings to become rulers of vast territories in the Southern Sudan. During the 1870s the slave-trade probably diminished somewhat as a result of Egyptian and European official pressure and vigilance, and the decline in the Egyptian market.2 During the Mahdia most of the infrastructure erected during the Turkiya

Empire on the Nile

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was destroyed. There were important exceptions — the steamers, for instance, the civil servants and their methods - but no attempt to build on the foundations already laid. The upheavals of the revolutionary period and the wars and rebellions that followed, culminating in the AngloEgyptian onslaught of 1896-8, caused severe economic dislocation. The forced migration of western tribesmen to Omdurman and the methods of the khalifa’s tax-collectors brought ruin to the Gezira. Famine and epidemic befell the country. Foreign trade almost dried up as a result of Mahdist and British policy, but some gum and ivory continued to be exported, and small quantities of sundry goods found their way into the Sudan. The coinage was debased, the telegraph system all but destroyed, the cultivated area reduced. Labour left the land. There was no modern medicine, human or animal, and no modern education. This gloomy general situation was somewhat relieved by local exceptions; some areas suffered much worse than others. Further, the relatively low standard of living of the Sudanese before, during, and after the Mahdia always meant that disaster was as close as a low Nile or a cattle plague. The greatest achievement of the Condominium - security - itself ensured relatively rapid economic growth.

SUDAN GOVERNMENT REVENUES

Much of the economic progress made in the Sudan before the first world war was the result of large sums of money invested by the Egyptian government. Without these the economic history of the period would be radically different and undoubtedly less impressive. Attempts by Cromer in 1901 and Gorst in 1908 to obtain British financial assistance met with failure. The Financial Regulations of 1899, 1901, and 1910 required that the Sudan Government’s annual budget be approved by the Egyptian Council of Ministers. In practice this involved a lengthy series of meetings in Cairo between representatives of the Sudan Government and the (British) Financial Adviser to the Egyptian government, to consider proposals and frame an acceptable budget. The governor-general was responsible for avoiding a deficit, but if in any year it was thought that revenue would exceed the estimated amount, he was allowed to approve supplementary expenditures. He was also empowered to transfer funds from one budget heading to another. The Egyptian ministry of finance retained the rights of general supervision and detailed auditing and inspection at any time. It was clear that for some years to come the Sudan Government would be unable to finance itself from local sources. The British Treasury offered nothing but sympathy. Cromer pointed out that no one in Egypt believed the

Economic developments, 1898-1919

19$

Condominium Agreement to be fair, so long as ‘the junior partner’ bore the whole of the cost’,3 but Egyptian public opinion carried little weight with the Treasury. Even a plan to sell off the Sudan’s military railway in 1898 failed because the British government refused to guarantee private investment. It was therefore left to Egypt, under Britain’s control, to finance the penurious Condominium. This it did in several ways: the free transfer of capital assets; an annual subvention (until 1913) for ordinary expenditure; grants and loans for capital development; complete financial responsibility for the Egyptian Army in the Sudan; and many other, minor ways.4 The importance of this support can hardly be overestimated. Ownership of the military railways and their equipment, steamers, telegraph system, and other works undertaken during the Anglo-Egyptian campaign was eventually assumed by the Sudan Government, free of charge. Taking into account that these were designed and built to military specifications and later required expensive modification, it has nonetheless been calculated that they were worth about ££570,000. According to Egyptian accounts, Egyptian government loans to the Sudan Government during the period 1900-10 - the Sudan Government continued to draw from these funds until 1914 - amounted to ££5,414,525. Most (££3,919,987) of this sum was expended on railways, on the construction of Port Sudan (££914,320), and on other capital projects. Although these sums were specified as loans, no arrangements were made initially for their repayment or even for the payment of interest, with two minor exceptions. Beginning in 1905 the figure of 3 per cent was mooted as a probable future interest rate, and in January 1908 the Sudan Government began paying at this rate, but only on part of its indebtedness and for a short time. In 1913 Kitchener, then agent and consul-general, explicitly acknowledged the Sudan Government’s obligation to pay both capital and interest.5 These recognitions of liability assumed importance later, when the subject of the Sudan’s indebtedness became an issue in Anglo-Egyptian relations. During the first world war further capital expenditures in the Sudan were made by Egypt. Indeed, in 1918 Brunyate, the acting Financial Adviser in Cairo, said that Egypt had ‘taken over every charge the taking over of which one could have any hope of defending’, including loan interest, overdrafts, the cost of the Darfur campaign, and ££400,000 for agricultural experiments and improvement of cattle transport.6 While large credits were essential for the construction of the Sudan’s communications network, and thus for the development of the economy, more important to the ordinary business of government was the annual subvention made by the Egyptian Treasury. Technically this was not a contribution to cover a budget deficit, but an allowance to expand the budget. Thus the amount of Egypt’s subvention was decided and the Sudan

196

Empire on the Nile

Government had to balance its budget accordingly. The amount of the contribution was determined annually, and depended on the arguments raised by the Sudan authorities, the state of Egypt’s finances, and the political climate. It was largely the last two factors that compelled a decrease in the subvention after 1908, and its discontinuation in 1913. By then Egypt had contributed ££5,353,215 in this way. The subvention was ££415,772 in 1899; ££417,179 in 1900 and 1901; ££389,721 in 1902 and 1903; ££379,763 annually until 1908; ££325,000 in 1909 and 1910; ££360,000 in 1911; and ££335,000 in 1912.7 The subvention was divided into a ‘military contribution’ and a ‘civil contribution’, the former representing the costs supposedly incurred by the Egyptian Army in the Sudan. This was only an estimate, and its appearance in the budget merely an accounting procedure, since no money changed hands. Fluctuations in the military and civil contributions from year to year were caused by the transfer of various departments from the army to the Sudan Government, economies, and the initiation of charges against the army for services previously supplied free.8 There were obvious potential difficulties for both the Sudan and Egyp¬ tian governments in this system of contributions. Conscious that an Egyptian subvention would be forthcoming, the Sudan Government might be tempted to underestimate its expected revenues and include unnecessary items in the budget, or it might go into deficit. Conversely, the fact that, until 1902, any budget surplus might have to be paid to Egypt, could lead the Sudan Government to overspend or invent justifications for inessential supplementary credits. In practice these difficulties were avoided. Cairo scrutinised the Sudan Government’s budget estimates and questioned in detail any budgetary provision that seemed extravagant. In this it was aided by Bernard, the financial secretary, who had a richly deserved reputation as a cheese-parer: someone who ‘counted the forks and spoons’.9 Revenues were estimated cautiously because of the unpredictability of crop yields, the strength of markets, and so forth. Whether or not the Sudan Govern¬ ment deliberately tried to budget for a surplus is uncertain. Revenue stood at ££126,596 in 1899, surpassed £Ei million in 1910, £E2 million in 1917, and was just short of ££3 million in 1919. Complete figures are given in table 1, p. 457. The potential problem of squandered surpluses was solved by establish¬ ing a Sudan Reserve Fund in 1902, into which budget surpluses were paid. This was intended to finance capital projects and other large, non-recurring expenditures, while the annual budget financed only ordinary operations. In practice, however, the Reserve Fund was used in conjunction with the ordinary budget, as, for example, in financing maintenance work, a cattleplague service, and land settlement. From 1909, proceeds from the sale of government lands and some other revenues were deposited in the fund.

Economic developments, 1898-1919

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The fund provided a convenient method of financing projects; it was not a reserve. No surplus was budgetted for maintaining the fund, and if the budget produced no surplus there was, in theory, no source of revenue for it. In 1909 the ordinary budget was balanced from the Reserve Fund: ££14,500 for maintenance work at Port Sudan, ££10,300 for land settle¬ ment, £E25,000 for public works, £E 15,000 for road improvements, and ££7,500 for agricultural experiments. Once an item was removed from the ordinary budget to the Reserve Fund’s, it proved very difficult to return it. Thus the fund itself began to meet not only non-capital but recurring expenses. Much of the development of the Three Towns - lighting, water supply, road work, tramways, and so forth - was financed from the Reserve Fund, as were medical work, communications, and government building needs.10 The local sources of the Sudan Government’s revenue may be divided into three broad types: direct taxes, indirect taxes, and royalties. These may be briefly described. It was a cardinal principle of the early Condominium that direct taxation should be kept low, both to encourage economic recovery and to avoid political disturbance. Cromer and Wingate were convinced that high taxes, pitilessly collected, had contributed to the downfall of the Turco-Egyptian regime, and an obvious way of winning Sudanese cooperation was there¬ fore to contrast previous excesses with present moderation. It was decided too that ‘no innovation, based on western ideas, should be introduced unless its introduction were altogether unavoidable’. Until 1913 when the Traders Tax was introduced, all direct taxation was in forms familiar to the Sudanese, Cromer having observed that although the taxes of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi had been levied in a ‘cruel and extortionate’ way, they had been ‘based on principles . . . generally recognised in all Moslem countries’, and ‘no radical change of system’ was required.11 Thus the new government maintained the basic system of the Turco-Egyptian and Mahdist regimes.12 The chief taxes imposed were ushur, land tax, date tax, tribute, and animal tax. A herd tax, introduced in 1899, imposed a levy of 3 per cent, payable in cash or kind, on the value of camels and cattle, and of 8 per cent on sheep and goats. It was the duty of mudirs to assess the value of animals. In Sennar, for example, Lewis set the value of a camel at £Eio, of a cow at £E8, and of a sheep or goat at fifty piastres, yielding 30 piastres, 24 piastres, and 4 piastres respectively in tax. At these rates (in 1900) he expected ‘a tidy revenue from the Province’. Hickman in Dongola told Wingate that the rates there were not ‘at all excessive’, the local shaykhs having said that their own idea of a fair rate was ‘much higher than the one laid down’ by Kitchener.13 This view was not widely shared. The tax appeared con¬ fiscatory and was so bitterly resented (and so easily evaded) that the government abolished it in 1901.

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Empire on the Nile

‘Tribute’ was imposed on the herds of an entire tribe, but apportioned within a tribe by its shaykh. It was introduced in The Tribute Ordinance of 1901, and was lightly assessed by an unsure government incapable of closely estimating the animal wealth of far-flung tribes and desirous of winning their confidence.14 The contribution from tribute to the govern¬ ment’s coffers rose gradually from a modest ££5,164 in 1901 to just over ££30,000 in 1913. Annual variations were caused by differing methods of assessment, non-payment, payment of arrears, a fluctuating incidence of animal disease, the variable availability of good pasturage owing to rainfall, and the remission of payment in hard times. An increase from ££24,160 in 1912 to ££30,059 in 1913, however, reflected a more thorough assessment because of the government’s increased need for revenue after the Egyptian subvention had ceased.15 Even at that late date the government remained concerned about tribal reaction: Slatin was reported to be ‘a little appre¬ hensive’ but ‘anxious to . . . contribute with tribal re-assessment’ towards increasing government revenue.16 By 1918 tribute reached an annual level of £E42,667,17 reflecting the higher prices commanded by livestock because of the war. Tor sedentary people the herd tax was replaced under terms of The Taxation of Animals Ordinance of 1901 by animal tax. Its provisions were introduced gradually, and imposed a per capita tax on mature horses, camels, donkeys, cattle, and even sheep and goats. Rates were altered occasionally and differed from place to place, but they were invariably very low. Animals used for working saqias were not taxed. Initially assessment was lax, because of a shortage of government staff and a desire to accustom the people gradually to the tax and avoid political upset. Remissions were granted according to local circumstances. Efforts were made to replace tribute with animal tax wherever practicable, because the latter was much cheaper and easier to administer. By 1913 revenue from animal tax had reached ££81,599, and in 1919 it stood at ££148,950,18 another result of the improved demand during the war years. Agricultural production was taxed in two main ways: ushur and land tax. In December 1896 the ma’murs of newly-conquered Dongola were told to tour their districts and report on the conditions of the people, the countryside, and the economy. The Intelligence report for February and March 1897 included a survey, probably compiled from information gathered during the m^murs’ tours, of the state of the province. Notwith¬ standing the fact that famine threatened, land tax was introduced at the beginning of 1898. Based on the experience gained in Dongola, the first taxation measure promulgated by the Anglo-Egyptian regime, The Band Tax Ordinance of 1899, levied tax on all irrigated cultivable land. Four rates were set down. ‘Island land irrigable by means of sakias and shadoofs’ was

Economic developments, 1898-1919

i99

assessed at a rate of 60 piastres per feddan for first-class land, and 50 piastres for second-class. ‘Land on the mainland irrigable by means of sakias or shadoofs’ was assessed at 40 and 30 piastres per feddan. ‘Fore¬ shore land irrigable by flood’ and ‘land irrigable by well’ were assessed at 20 piastres per feddan. Tax was due even on uncultivated land, but remission was commonly given. The government preferred land tax to ushur, where a choice was possible, because of its relative simplicity. But the assessment of land tax was initially greatly complicated by the vexing question of land ownership, and this could be solved only after a compre¬ hensive cadastral survey had been completed. Land tax was therefore introduced only gradually, as progress was made in land settlement and because some provincial officials preferred levying ushur. A progressive land tax, designed to force landowners to cultivate, was levied from 1906, but had little effect: the rates were low and it appears that provincial officials were reluctant to enforce the rules. In 1907 only 5,196 feddans were so assessed, in 1913 only 7,143.19 Ushur is the traditional Muslim tax of one-tenth of the harvest (the word means a tenth or tithe), and was levied under the Condominium on all rainland crops and, where more convenient than land tax, on crops from artificially irrigated land. Annual assessment and collection were expensive and time-consuming. Frequently the tax was paid in kind, and transporting it could cost more than it was worth. When the tax was to be paid in cash the value of the crop was fixed by reference to market prices. Like animal tax, ushur was introduced gradually, and in some areas not at all: those where assessment and collection would be very difficult or unremunerative. In the south no ushur was paid until 1911, and then only in parts of the Upper Nile Province. Official assessments tended to underestimate the size and value of crops, thus avoiding disputes and disaffection. Remissions in times of drought were common, and only certain crops, notably dura, were assessed at all.20 The Land Tax Ordinance of 1899 imposed also a date tax of 2 piastres on every tree bearing fruit, an amount considered to be about one-tenth of the tree’s value and thus corresponding to ushur. The tax was most important in Dongola and less so in the other northern riverain provinces. Royalties were an important source of government revenue. These were collected on gum arabic, ivory, ostrich feathers, rubber, rhinoceros horn, and a few other products. By far the most important of these was gum. An 1899 ordinance fixed a tax of 20 per cent ad valorem on gum, ostrich feathers, ivory, and india-rubber ‘coming from the provinces south of the town of Khartoum’. Royalties were payable in cash or kind, but a shortage of currency meant that payment was usually in kind until January 1901, after which only cash was accepted. In January 1912 the royalty rate on

200

Empire on the Nile

gum was reduced to 15 per cent. Official valuations, based at first on the Omdurman market price, were published from time to time in the Sudan Gazette. Because the royalty was determined entirely by the size of the gum harvest and the market price, annual revenue varied unpredictably, but the trend throughout the first two decades of the Condominium was upwards: revenue rose from ££32,837 in 1902 to ££69,629 in 1913. The royalty of 20 per cent on ostrich feathers was much less important, producing revenue of ££1,374 in 1902 and ££2,256 in 1913.21 Among other taxes were a house tax imposed in the major towns, a boat tax, taxes on land sales, and a ‘road tax’. In the early years of the Condominium much confusion surrounded the imposition and collection of taxes. In 1905, for example, it was reported that government orders prescribed certain dues never allowed by an ordinance, that there was double taxation of some agricultural produce, that ushur was ‘mixed up’ with customs dues, and governors were levying provincial taxes without reference to Khartoum.22 Substantial revenue was derived from goods and services provided by the government: rail and steamer transport, the rental or sale of land and property, the sale of firewood, charges for electricity and water, licensing fees, and so forth. The surpluses shown by some govern¬ ment services, particularly the railways, were not, however, real profits, in that no budgetary allowance was made for interest payments, maintenance, and replacement costs. A final major source of government revenue was customs duties. The Condominium Agreement stipulated that the Sudan Government could not charge import duty on goods entering the country from Egypt, irrespective of their country of origin, nor could it charge export duty on goods sent to Egypt, irrespective of their final destination. The general import duty was 8 per cent, the export duty 1 per cent. Imports from Ethiopia for local consumption were taxed at 5 per cent instead of 8 per cent, according to a reciprocal agreement that came into effect in March 1902. Similar agreements with Uganda and the Congo took effect from April 1904. Until some years after the opening of the Nile-Red Sea railway and the founding of Port Sudan, the great bulk of the country’s trade was carried through Egypt, and the Sudan Government derived little revenue from it. Even after the new route was established, patterns of trade, business contacts, and markets favoured Egypt’s continuing as the Sudan’s major trading partner. Government imports were not assessed for duty until 1905, but from 1908 no duty was paid on materials imported for government development projects. The 1 per cent export duty produced little revenue.23 The Sudan Government had no separate customs department until 1 January 1906. Before then customs work was undertaken by Captain

Economic developments, 1898-1919

201

Charles MacKey, who was appointed in 1902 as ‘Inspector of Local Taxation , with headquarters in Omdurman. He moved to Khartoum North in 1903 and 10,075 and 2,670 in 1913. The increases over the period were unsteady, however, and reflect not so much a greater cultivation as they do the quality of harvests. A shortage of labour, and the expense (in animals, fodder, and wages) and effort involved in artificial irrigation led farmers to engage in rainland farming whenever they could. Thus an increased number of irrigation appliances may denote the lower productivity of the rainlands during the previous year or two or an anticipation of low yields from them at the next harvest.81 Food production during the pre-war period may be assessed by con¬ sidering estimated dura yields, prices, and levels of export. Statistics are insufficient and too unreliable to allow definite conclusions, but they provide some indication of conditions. The 1907 crop was estimated at 248,325 tons, and realised a market price in Omdurman of ££0.275 Per hundred kilos in May. A harvest of 175,708 tons in 1908 increased prices

Economic developments, 1898-1919

217

only slightly, because much of the huge 1907 crop had been stored. After an enormous harvest of 258,000 tons in 1909 yields fell precipitately. In 1911-13 the Sudan experienced severe drought, and the 1911 dura crop was only 163,000 tons, the 1912 crop 129,000 tons, and the 1913 harvest a disastrous 112,000 tons. Market prices rose accordingly. In Omdurman the price for one hundred kilos of dura in May 1911 averaged ££0.323. A year later it stood at ££0.944, or almost three times higher, and in May 1914 had reached ££1.393. The 1914 harvest of 250,000 tons was therefore a tremendous relief. Prices in Omdurman cannot be taken as representative, nor is it possible to assess the value of the crop on the basis of retail prices. Although the government imported grain from India at the height of the famine, there is some reason to believe that had it not actively encouraged the export of dura in 1909-11, the shortages and prices would never have reached the extreme levels they did in 1914. In 1909 some 22,000 tons of dura were shipped; in 1910,32,000 tons; and in 1911, 18,000 tons.82 The production and export of other important crops during the pre-war period may be briefly surveyed. Sesame had wide usage locally but was a valuable cash crop for export, and farmers’ recognition of its earning potential led to a rapid increase in production, to the detriment of dura cultivation.83 Until after the war there was more land under sesame than under any other non-grain crop. In 1913, 122,000 feddans were planted in sesame. Exports totalled 11,358 tons in the period 1905-9, and 26,936 tons in 1910-14. The average annual value of exports in 1909-13 was ££78,931. In 1913 alone 6,841 tons of sesame, worth ££104,939, were exported. Exports of dates averaged 3,131 tons a year in the period 1909-13, the 1913 total of 2,785 tons realising ££31,872. During the same period, groundnut exports averaged 777 tons, senna 893 tons, and dom palm nuts 1,384 tons a year.84 Two other products claim attention, one a traditional export of the Sudan, gum arabic, the other a relative newcomer, cotton. The trade in gum almost ceased during the Mahdia: estimated exports declined from 7,543 tons in 1881 to 1,146 tons in 1885, a mere 7 tons in 1890, and only 160 tons in 1895. With the destruction of the Mahdist State the trade was resumed, and even in 1899 reached 1,890 tons. By the end of 1901 exports regained pre-Mahdia levels (7,695 tons). Gum rapidly became the country’s chief export, and remained so, with few annual exceptions, until overtaken by cotton in the late 1920s. Average prices in Omdurman rose steadily. Hashab or Kordofan gum (.Acacia Senegal) increased in price from 122 piastres per hundred kilos in 1904 to 234 piastres in 1910. The inferior talh (.Acacia seyal) increased in price from 80 piastres per hundred kilos to 128 piastres during the same period. Until 1913 the principal gum market was in Omdurman.85 The internal trade in gum was conducted by a series of middlemen

2I8

Empire on the Nile

between the ‘gum gardens’ of Kordofan and the other growing areas and the market. Many were very minor merchants dabbling in a highly speculative trade, with the result that the pickers and early middlemen made very little money in relation to the final market price. The main collection centre was Dueim on the White Nile, where larger merchants or their representatives bought up the supplies for shipment to the Omdurman market. Trading conditions were difficult, since uncertainty about demand, the availability of transport, loan repayments, and so forth increased merchants’ risks. The development of the Sudan’s transport had a great impact on all aspects of the gum trade. The opening of the Nile-Red Sea railway allowed an economy over the longer and interrupted journey through Egypt. After railhead reached El Obeid, the natural centre of gum production, transport time and costs were cut, risks diminished and ‘commercial intelligence’ improved. In 1912 a gum market, under government supervision, was established in El Obeid, thus eliminating many petty middlemen, and the amount earned by the pickers increased substantially, on average reaching a level perhaps four to six times that of 1903-6. But it was the brokers and big merchants who benefited most from improved transport, as mark-ups remained considerable and the speculative elements of the trade were much reduced. The tonnage and value of exports (there was no local demand) in the pre-war period are tabulated in table 4 (p. 459). It will be noted that annual production increased to almost 10,000 tons as early as 1902, and surpassed that figure every year except 1903 and 1905-7, reaching almost 20,000 tons in 1912, the best pre-war year. That crop alone was valued at over £E6oo,ooo. The increased value of the gum trade was important for the govern¬ ment’s royalty revenue. In 1901 the royalty was assessed at 90 piastres per kantar for hashab and 30 piastres for talh. In 1902 these rates were lowered to 65 and 25 piastres; in 1904, to 50 and 20 piastres; and in 1905 they were raised to 65 and 40 piastres. Adjustments continued to be made period¬ ically. This assessment produced sizeable sums: about 20 per cent of the Sudan’s revenues derived from royalties and export duties, and in 1902 gum accounted for no less than 75 per cent of the country’s total export earnings. It is interesting that although cotton was soon to become the highly publicised king of the country’s economy, gum exports regularly accounted for between 20 and 30 per cent of the value of exports until the mid-i920s, and reached 43 per cent in 1912, 39.3 per cent in 1923, and 34.8 per cent even in 1931, when the bottom fell out of the cotton market and the crop failed.86 Whatever the potential for development of the Sudan’s economy, it was clear that capital investment on a large scale was necessary to realise it.

Economic developments, 1898-1919

2I9

Egyptian development grants and subventions totalled over £En million by 1914. The changing political climate in Egypt in the last years of Cromer’s rule and during the terms of Gorst and Kitchener made it impossible for the Sudan Government to keep returning to the Egyptian well. Recourse to the banks was out of the question without government guarantees and the possibility of some return on investment. There were no Sudanese capitalists on the scale required to finance major projects of uncertain profitability. It was concluded that foreign private capital must be attracted to sustain economic growth and create exportable surpluses to finance future development. One of Cromer’s stated reasons for proposing the Condominium Agreement was that in 1898 European interests were applying for conces¬ sions in the Sudan and could not be put off indefinitely. The agreement opened up the Sudan to free trade, at least in theory. Foreign capitalists were not long in coming or, in most cases, in leaving once they had arrived. The Sudan was neither last frontier nor El Dorado: settlers were discour¬ aged or prohibited, prospectors met with little success. In his report for 1899 Cromer described the provisions of The Mining (Prospecting License) Ordinance, and one of the first companies to enter the Sudan was the Egyptian Sudan Exploration Company, which hired Slatin to search for the Sudan’s fabled gold mines. By 1905 twelve prospective licences had been issued, to the likes of the Victoria Investment Corporation, the Nubia Sudan Development Syndicate, the Suakin Mining Syndicate, and the Sudan Gold Field Ltd.87 It gradually became clear that the Sudan’s mineral wealth was in such quantities and at such remove from markets as to be commercially unexciting, and the old dream of gold faded. A 1915 report stated: ‘In the absence . . . both of minerals of industrial value and indigenous fuel supplies, no prospects for the early establishment of manufacturers can be entertained, and the Sudan is consequently destined to stand or fall by agriculture.’88 This was certainly the prevalent view within the government from an early date. The Sudan’s soldier-administrators were in any event not wildly enthusiastic about an influx of foreign entrepreneurs. In addition to their potential for upsetting the government’s relations with the Sudanese, they possessed, of course, a potential for interference in government policy, through their financial and political connections in Britain. Influential British subjects could not be held on as short a lead as officers and missionaries, and non-British foreigners would inevitably bring with them prying eyes, a need for consular services, and uncontrollable publicity. In making the ‘mining laws severe’ Wingate was, he said, ‘anxious to avoid a rush or boom’. There was little danger of that, but as late as 1914 he wrote: ‘all this talk of Sudan development is bringing to Khartoum a curious lot of

220

Empire on the Nile

the adventurer class, who will want some careful watching’. Those who came were often ignorant and wasted officials’ time. The annual report for 1906 mentioned one enthusiastic applicant for a concession at Kodok who thought that the railway extended there from Port Sudan.89 High promise and poor results attended the efforts of the first agri¬ cultural development companies, and there is no need to detail their speculative, under-capitalised, and ephemeral existences. A number of problems were encountered. The government was determined not to risk political upheavel by alienating land, but could not be certain of traditional rights in the land before settlement and registration were carried out: ‘The rights vary in kind and extent in every district’, a 1906 report noted. ‘To make a satisfactory accommodation involves the satisfaction of all inter¬ ested parties, including the concessionaire. The gist of the accommodation must usually be some recompense accorded by the Government or the concessionaire. The various forms which have been suggested for this recompense add materially to the existing complications.’ Once a conces¬ sion was arranged, a licence was granted limiting its duration and scope. If a suitable development scheme was submitted, a lease was drawn up, to last as long as the scheme should take to complete, and the concessionaire was given an option to buy. Because of differences in local conditions, each concession had to be dealt with individually. Mineral rights, rights of way, reservations for possible canalisation, government rights in the land, control over any new settlements, and other matters all must be decided.90 Agricultural development schemes, highly problematical in any case, were therefore time-consuming and complicated even to arrange. Another problem was posed by water rights. Cromer had long asserted, in the baldest terms, Egypt’s priority in all matters dealing with Nile waters. In his annual report for 1905 he admitted that unlimited irrigation was allowed in the Sudan only between 15 July and 31 January, the flood period: ‘Egypt manifestly has the first call on the Nile water, and the summer supply’ was ‘as yet insufficient even for Egypt proper. ... In respect to the vital question of water, the progress of the Soudan’ was ‘being retarded, in order not to do any harm to Egypt’. ‘Until some of the large irrigation works now being studied are constructed’, he said, it would be impossible ‘to change this state of things.’ His report for 1903 had specified that the Sudan would have no say in the matter: the ‘control exercised from Cairo should be absolute’, Cromer wrote, and Wingate never disagreed with this unfair assertion. Its effect on the Sudan was to necessitate experiments with various crops to determine whether they could be grown commercially with water taken during the flood season. If not, their production must await water-storage works, the expense of which could be justified (and met) only by concentration on a crop or

Economic developments, 1898-1919

221

crops that would command good prices on the world market. Cotton was one such crop, wheat another. Flood irrigation experiments failed, since during years of low Nile there was not enough water for crops, and pump irrigation was precluded by the priority of Egypt’s claims. Until 1904 every single pump scheme required the approval of the Egyptian public works department. After 1904 a total of ten thousand feddans was allowed to be irrigated by pump. This absurdly small amount was doubled in 1912.91 The large-scale development of a cash crop would have to await lengthy studies of its potential. The most important agricultural concession taken up in the pre-war period was at Zeidab, south of al-Damer on the Nile. Leigh Hunt, an American businessman, organised the Sudan Experimental Plantations Syndicate in 1904, was granted a concession of 10,000 feddans, and by early 1906 had begun to grow cotton and wheat using mostly Egyptian labour. Expenses were heavy, yields small. The company was reorganised in 1907 as the Sudan Plantations Syndicate Ltd., with D. P. MacGillivray as managing director. Although good yields of cotton and wheat were achieved, shortages of water and labour and high transport costs were encountered. It was decided to replace direct labour with tenants, and by 1910 some 381 individuals (200 Sudanese, the rest Egyptians and others) had taken up tenancies. Rents had to be set very low to attract and keep tenants, however, and the syndicate’s services were provided at little more than cost. The company was unable to pay a dividend until 1912, and the annual return was unimpressive considering the £E 180,000 the syndicate had invested. The tenants, however, did well, especially in relation to their rate of return from saqia production.92 The Zeidab project was significant in providing extensive experience on which future development schemes were built. Meanwhile the government and the Egyptian ministry of irrigation had conducted their own agricultural research. In 1903 C. E. Dupuis reported favourably on the prospects for growing cotton at Tokar. Cotton had been cultivated there during the Turkiya, and the location had several advan¬ tages over Nile-irrigated lands: it was watered by the Baraka, a seasonal stream outside the Nile system and therefore not subject to Egyptian control; no expensive works were needed; and it was near the coast and thus closer to foreign markets. The government claimed the delta-land as its own and allotted plots to local cultivators annually. The vagaries of the seasonal flood led to widely differing results: in 1903 about 18,000 feddans were flooded, in 1904 some 40,000; but from 1904 to 1934 the total was only once below 30,000 feddans. Not all of the flooded area was cultivated in cotton: some was left fallow, some planted in other crops. In 1910 about 165,000 kantars of cotton were produced in the Baraka Delta.93 The

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Empire on the Nile

development of cotton in the Gash Delta north of Kassala was also undertaken during the pre-war period, on a small scale. The results from Tokar and elsewhere promised a great future for cotton production. It was clear, however, that Tokar’s potential was incompar¬ ably less than that of the Gezira. Investigations into the potential of the whole Nile system resulted in 1908 in a report by Dupuis, now inspectorgeneral in the Egyptian irrigation department, recommending the eventual irrigation of three million feddans in the Gezira by the construction of a dam south of Sennar and an enormous irrigation canal. A venture of this magnitude could not be undertaken lightly, however, and ‘the problem of obtaining the water as economically as possible without detriment to Egypt’ was always dominant. Mainly for this reason Garstin had at first favoured the Gezira as a great wheat-producing area for the nearby Arabian market, with only a small emphasis on cotton, because wheat would not need water in the scarce months. The growing financial importance of cotton made it essential, however, to find out just how much ‘scarce month’ water cotton needed in the Gezira itself. It was therefore decided to undertake detailed investigations of the Gezira’s cotton-grow¬ ing potential.94 Dupuis’s report was optimistic, and gives the impression that there was already a determination to undertake an ambitious cotton¬ growing scheme in the Gezira, whatever the difficulties encountered. In regard to the rate at which earthwork could be performed, for example, Dupuis was unsure, but commented that the ‘conditions are not at all particularly unfavourable’, and concluded that the ‘Gezira Canal’ might ‘be regarded as the great hope of the Sudan’, without which it was ‘hard to see how . . . the country is ever to become satisfactorily self-supporting’.95 In 1911 a test pumping station was established at Tayiba in the Gezira on land rented from local owners, and the Sudan Plantations Syndicate, having acquired little profit but valuable experience at Zeidab, was employed to manage a test scheme. Cultivators were brought from Zeidab because of local hostility to the idea of tenancy, but a good crop gradually created local enthusiasm.96 Thus at Zeidab and Tayiba the tenancy method, with European management, seemed to be suitable to Sudanese conditions. Meanwhile, events outside the Sudan were creating the economic climate necessary to obtain financing for a major irrigation scheme for cotton in the Gezira. The failure of the Egyptian and American cotton crops in 1909 only emphasised the exposed position of Lancashire. In 1910 Sir William Mather, who had funded the Mather Workshops in Gordon Memorial College, actively publicised the Sudan’s potential for cotton-growing. The British Cotton Growing Association used its influence to interest the British government in the Gezira, and in 1912 its chairman, J. A. Hutton, visited the Sudan and sang its praises. The vice-chairman of the Fine

Economic developments, 1898-1919

22 3

Spinners Association did the same: the ‘greatness of the prospects’ were ‘far beyond’ what he had believed possible.97 Finally Kitchener added his great weight to the case for the Gezira, for he saw in it the only way to remove the Sudan’s politically embarrassing financial dependence on Egypt. In 1913 Parliament authorised a British guaranteed loan of £3 million to finance the Gezira Scheme. A second act, in 1914, approved a different distribution of the funds among the various proposed projects, £2 million for Gezira works, and £ 1 million for railway and other irrigation schemes. The loan guarantee was thus the result of an extraordinary coincidence of interests and events: the Sudan Government’s desire for economic development and financial independence from Egypt; Kitch¬ ener’s desire to assist in achieving these ends for political reasons; the British textile industry’s demand for sources of cheap cotton; the British government’s need to supply these; the Plantation Syndicate’s scent of profit; and the Sudanese cultivators’ apparent acceptance of arrangements that promised prosperity. Work on the main irrigation canal began in January 1914,9b but was deferred at the outbreak of war in Europe. There was no quetion of its cancellation. As the British Cotton Growing Association put it in 1917, the Gezira Scheme was ‘the most urgent and the most important’ cotton-growing development with which the association was involved: 'It is the only scheme in the whole of the British Empire which offers any prospect of a considerable production of cotton of good quality, in the immediate future.’99 By 1905 there was already more acreage planted in cotton than in all but three other crops in the Sudan; more significantly, crop values increased year by year, sometimes dramatically. The amount and value of cotton exports are shown in table 6 (p. 460). In 1910 the cotton crop of 8,700 tons realised £E235,ooo; the 1917 crop of 11,800 tons realised over £E6io,ooo. A number of factors account for a great fluctuation in the size of the annual cotton crop. The failure of crops elsewhere accounted for the huge rise in the value of exports in 1910 and 1911. During the war the Plantations Syndicate and the British Cotton Growing Association combined to arrange the sale of the Sudan’s crop. Great demand ensured high prices. The small 1918 crop (only 4,770 tons) serves as an example of how weather drastically cut production. The excellent market for cotton, and the prospect of an even greater demand after the war were powerful arguments for the dominance of cotton culture in the postponed Gezira Scheme.

ANIMAL RESOURCES

The Sudan has long been rich in animal resources, and from the early days of the Condominium the management of wild animals and the marketing

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of domestic animals received some (but never urgent) attention. During the first world war the export market, already well-established, grew enor¬ mously, with important social and economic results. The Wild Animals Preservation Ordinance of 1900 and subsequent ordinances and regulations provided for licensing and restricting hunting, and empowered the governor-general to set aside areas as game reserves. In January 1902 the wild animals preservation department became the game preservation department. The first superintendent, A. L. Butler, who served from 1901 to 1915, was faced with a hopeless task. It was felt that the department should be run on a commercial basis, and in fact its revenue from licensing and shooting fees usually balanced its modest expenditure, limited as this was largely to a few salaries. In 1908 licence fees were raised for the specific purpose of providing for the salary of an assistant superin¬ tendent,100 but in 1912 Butler’s continuing plea for an assistant was ‘vetoed’ on the grounds that his department ‘would have to become a much more paying one before such an expense could be justified’. Wingate had hopes of marketing wild animals abroad to raise money.101 With no staff, enforcement of regulations was purely notional, and the difficulty was compounded by suspension of the rules in favour of Wingate’s and Slatin’s friends and prominent acquaintances. Two examples may be cited. In 1910 Wingate decided to allow Prince Henri Liechtenstein the ‘special privilege’ of hunting the rare Giant Eland, ‘on the strict understanding that he [say] nothing to anyone’ about it. In 1913 Wingate complained to W. SteuartMenzies of the latter’s having revealed that he had ‘shot three white Rhinoceroses’ and had hunted in a reserve.102 It may be added that Wingate’s successors continued his habit of selective application of the game laws. In 1921 the Duke of Sutherland shot a female rhinoceros and her calf, then denied the facts and refused to pay an extra fee. In 1927 he broke other game laws and the game warden requested that he be blacklisted, to which the then governor-general, Sir John Maffey, agreed. But in 1928, when the duke planned another expedition, Maffey abruptly cancelled the ban, and in 1934 the new governor-general, Symes, actually helped in making the duke’s arrangements and invited him to stay at the Palace.103 Wild animal products continued during the Condominium, as they had before, to provide a source of government revenue. Chief among these were ivory and ostrich feathers. Rhinoceros horn was also traded. Royalties were assessed on all three, and in 1903 ivory was made a government monopoly in the Bahr al-Ghazal and the Upper Nile, but the following year most of the south was opened to traders by permit, because the government monopoly had been evaded. In 1901 a bounty of 10 per cent (raised to 25 per cent in 1902) of the value of goods evading royalty

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payment was offered to informers,104 and a ban was placed on female and immature ivory, but government regulations were still impossible to enforce effectively. The government held irregular sales from its stockpiles. Statistics in respect of sales and exports can be misleading: some govern¬ ment sources conflict; annual totals included ‘old ivory’ and ivory originat¬ ing outside the Sudan, and excluded, of course, ivory easily smuggled out of the country. In 1901 15 tons of ivory, worth ££7,925, were exported. In 1902 the figures were 52 tons and ££34,701. The highest level of the trade was reached in 1913 when the enormous (and appalling) amount of 125 tons of ivory, worth £Ei 13,236, were exported, an amount equal to about 10 per cent of the country’s total exports. Tor no year between 1901 and 1919 did the amount exported fall below 39 tons, and the average was over 67 tons a year. It was only in 1909 that the value of cattle, sheep, goats, and untanned hides together exceeded that of ivory for the first time.105 The trade in ostrich feathers was much less important. Demand depended on European fashion, and primitive hunting of the birds, rather than farming them, limited supply. No safe estimate of the total annual yield can be made, because before 1911 most feathers were sent by post to Europe and went unrecorded in customs figures, and after that date evasion of customs was not difficult. Based on royalty collections it has been estimated that some 6,000 kilos were exported in 1900, and that the average annual pre-war export was about 14,000 kilos. Government investigations showed that to develop ostrich farming or to control hunting would be costly and difficult, and in any case demand all but disappeared during the war years as a result of changing fashion.106 Until 1910 veterinary work in the Sudan was undertaken solely by the Egyptian Army’s veterinary department, the senior officers of which were seconded from the British Army’s veterinary department (reorganised in 1903 as the army veterinary corps). Early attempts to establish a regular veterinary department of the government were frustrated, and until 19x3 efforts were directed mainly towards combating cattle plague. The Cattle Plague Ordinance of 1901 codified rules to restrict the spread of that disease. In 1902 the ordinance was amended to apply to camels, sheep, goats, horses, and donkeys. An Egyptian ban on the importation of all ruminants from the Sudan, imposed in January 1902, was eased later that year to apply only to cattle, and in 1903 and 1904 was further relaxed to allow the importation of live animals. This followed the establishment of a quarantine station at Wadi Haifa to screen exports. A new outbreak of rinderpest in 1904, however, resulted in the reimposition of the Egyptian ban on imports from Wadi Haifa, although importation via Suakin was allowed. Severely restricted trade via Wadi Haifa resumed in 1908, but, at the same time, exports from the Southern Sudan were prohibited because

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rinderpest had been diagnosed in the Upper Nile Province. Under the terms of The Animals Export and Import Ordinance of 1913, strict rules were adopted to control the purchase, quarantine, certification, and transport of animals and animal by-products for export.107 The major problem facing the Sudan Government in controlling rinderpest and in developing the export market was a lack of veterinary staff. This, like so many other problems in the ‘technical’ departments, may be traced to budgetary constraints. In 1901 the veterinary department’s ordinary budget was ££3,461; in 1903 it was a paltry ££970, and in 1904 only £E 1,222. In 1905 the Reserve fund was tapped, and ££3,349 of the department’s ££4,916 budget was derived from that source, ostensibly for the cattle plague service, which continued to be financed in this way until the establishment of the veterinary service in 1913. Prom 1910 the Reserve Fund also provided money for the ‘Development of an Export Trade in Eivestock’. By 1913 veterinary work had available funds totalling ££23,208. The growth of the veterinary budget was thus a result of the realisation that a potential existed for a large and lucrative export of animals, and that expenditure could be recouped by quarantine and other fees.108 As of 1903 there were apparently only two qualified veterinarians in the department: the principal veterinary officer, Captain G. R. Griffith, and a ‘civil veterinary surgeon’. The occasional secondment of unqualified personnel from Egypt and from the Sudanese battalions was no substitute for trained practitioners. A special force of ‘cattle plague police’, for instance, established in 1906, did useful work in patrolling the border with Ethiopia, but could never hope to end illicit trade and the consequent spread of disease. In 1907 the then PVO proposed the establishment of a civil veterinary department, the permanent staff of which would not only deal with cattle disease but could also investigate other animal diseases. Even this was too ambitious. A second civilian veterinary surgeon was appointed. In 1908 Captain F. V. Carr became PVO, and remained in that post until 1917. It was Carr who successfully combined the control of animal diseases with the development of the export trade, arguing that the cost of supplying the needed personnel would be more than repaid by the resulting increase in trade. In 1910 the veterinary department became part of the civil administration, and in 1913 was reorganised in four sections: a general veterinary section; a veterinary survey section, later called the research section; a quarantine section; and a breeding section. Professional staff had been increased to eighteen, sixteen British and two Egyptians. Even with this relatively great increase in interest, funding, and staff, however, the real problems facing the department were enormous. The size of the country, its porous borders, the lack of reliable information about its animals and their diseases, the conservatism of Sudanese pastoralists, the

Economic developments, 1898-1919

22/

short supply of needed serums, all made the success of veterinary work as dependent on chance as on science. Moreover, progress was cut short at the outbreak of the first world war, when the department suffered more than any other from loss of personnel. The barriers to export raised by periodic outbreaks of disease, and the government’s increasing interest in the export market are both reflected in the trade figures of the pre-war period. In 1907 some 34,010 sheep were exported, at a value of ££19,448. By 1912 the number exported was 110,824, valued at ££110,769. In the same period (1907-12) cattle exports rose from a mere 136, worth ££575, to 15,249, worth ££107,560. In 1911 alone, some 21,611 head of cattle worth ££129,375 were exported. The export of animal hides increased from 24,493 kilos valued at ££1,167 in 1907, to 403,247 valued at ££22,821 in 1913, while exported skins increased from 206,656 worth ££10,490 in 1907, to 371,458 worth ££31,906 in 1913.109

PRODUCTION AND EXPORTS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The outbreak of war confronted the Sudan economy with problems and opportunities. The government’s concern about the Sudanese reaction to the war was allayed by fine crops in 1914 and by the importation of Indian dura. Indeed, the 1914 dura crop was so bounteous that the problems of shortage quickly gave way to the problems of glut. As a government report put it: ‘If the larger part of the surplus dura cannot be exported each year, prices fall and remain unremunerative to the cultivator who, until he is brought up short by a failure of the rains and the need of grain, will tend to neglect his cultivation.’110 In 1914 the market price of dura at Omdurman fell from ££1.579 per hundred kilos in August to ££0.407 in November, and, even more stunning, from ££2.425 to ££0.493 at Kassala, just at the time when the government was most concerned with public opinion. After reaching a low level in early 1915, the April price of dura steadily increased until after the war: from ££0.392 per hundred kilos at Omdurman in 1915 to ££0.565 in 1916, ££0.651 in 1917, ££0.920 in 1918, and ££1.422 in 1919. These increases had two causes: a general inflation and another disap¬ pointing series of crops. The estimated 1914 harvest of dura in the main growing regions was 257,000 tons. In 1915 it fell dramatically to 169,500 tons. In 1916 and 1917 the harvests averaged about 200,000 tons, but the 1918 crop produced only 119,000 tons, only slightly more than the disastrous 1913 harvest. The 1919 crop showed some improvement, producing about 144,600 tons. The government seems not to have learned a lesson from the immediate pre-war experience of reserve-depletion by export. In the period 1915-18 this averaged 61,500 tons a year, but in 1919

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Empire on the Nile

only one ton was shipped. Exportation had to be banned altogether, and arrangements made to import grain from Egypt. Some 10,847 tons were imported, 1,500 for the army, the rest for sale.111 The government was concerned in 1914 that the war would seriously curtail the country’s exports of gum, ivory, cotton, and oil seeds. The large German and Austrian demand for gum could no longer be supplied, and the closing of the Hamburg Market, which had financed much of the gum trade, was a further problem. It was thought that the relatively small but locally significant cotton crop would also be difficult to sell, and that Egypt would provide no market for either grain or sesame. Moreover, an expected increased demand in Egypt for meat and anijnal by-products did not occur during the early months of the war, because economic problems there led to a decrease in meat consumption. Freight prices rose rapidly: whereas a ton of gum had been shipped to London for ££1.35 before the war, by early 1915 a price of ££3.60 was quoted. Other routes and other commodities showed less drastic but considerable cost increases. A shortage of merchant shipping led to the cancellation of regular calls at Port Sudan, and goods for export accumulated there. Arrangements for ship¬ ment overland to Egypt were therefore expedited, and the government took measures to diversify its markets, through advertising and with assistance in London.112 The Sudan’s increasing trade before the war had been dominated by a few commodities and was vulnerable to international upheavals. The export results for 1915 were therefore not only pleasing, but surprising. Exports increased by 54 percent over 1914, and by 14 percent over the best previous year (1911), to stand at ££1,577,991. The shipping problem was solved, although high freights and erratic scheduling remained. Demand for meat far exceeded expectation, the cotton crop was disposed of through the Sudan Plantations Syndicate and the British Cotton Growing Associa¬ tion, and the gum trade decreased by only 750 tons from 1914, largely because of greater purchases from Britain. The trade in animal by-products thrived. In 1917 the Sudan Government agreed with the authorities in Egypt to reserve all of its exportable surplus of food for Egypt, and to increase that surplus as rapidly as possible, so great were the demands of the forces stationed there. A resources board was established in the Sudan to control food supplies. In 1917-18 some 170,000 tons of grain, 65,000 head of cattle, and 342,000 sheep were exported to Egypt, to the value of ££3,775,000. The Sudan had increased its food production by about 100 per cent in two years.113 The success of the export trade owed much to the efforts of the veterinary department. Although at the outbreak of the war its British staff lost nine of its sixteen professionals, the department’s work was geared to

Economic developments, 1898-1919

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supplying healthy animals for export. In 19 r 5 its general veterinary section began to distinguish between cattle diseases that affected exports and those that did not. Inoculation and quarantine were the usual methods to control the most serious diseases, rinderpest and contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP). By 1915 some sixty thousand inoculations annually were being administered against the latter disease, but quarantine was the more effective means of dealing with it. Cattle from Kordofan were kept under quarantine for two weeks at four separate stages of their journey to Egypt: El Obeid, Khartoum North, Wadi Haifa and Aswan. Quarantine could not stop the spread of disease in the Sudan itself. The understaffed veterinary department under Carr was so fully occupied with supplying the export trade that its other functions, as foreseen in its 1913 reorganisation, could not be undertaken during the war. Carr died in 1917 and was succeeded by Lt-Colonel J. J. B. Tapley. At the end of 1918 the department regained most of its lost strength in manpower, but the very trade it had so successfully protected and developed had increased its task far beyond what it had appeared to be in 1913, and the emergence of a comprehensive veterinary service, which had seemed imminent in 1913, had yet to occur.114 The success of the veterinary department’s efforts is borne out by statistics. The number of cattle exported in 1915 (23,882) was double the previous year’s total, and worth ££170,400. The demand for sheep rose similarly. Total exports of animals in 1914-15 were about 87,000 head; in 1917, 133,353 (worth ££234,490), and in 1918, 208,805 (worth a stunning £E651,257). The number of hides exported more than tripled between 1913 (403,247) and 1918 (1,236,000), to the value in the latter year of ££172,590. The export of skins fluctuated more, but a correlation exists between this and the rise in live sheep exports. In 1915 265,982 skins worth ££30,300 were shipped; in 1919 448,946 worth ££96,798. It was not only the keepers of cattle and sheep (and the middlemen) whose market expanded: the camel nomads benefited from the British forces’ enormous demand for transport animals. In 1913 a mere 789 horses, donkeys, mules, and camels were exported, worth ££7,266. In 1917 the totals were 4,502 and ££50,167, but in 1919, the first full year of peace, only 203 animals, worth ££2,578, were exported. In January 1916 provincial officials had been ordered to assume camel-purchasing duties in order to supply Egypt.115 In 1917 Stack, then acting governor-general, complained that the Sudan had already sent twenty thousand camels to Egypt during the war, and that it was now ‘thundering hard to get a suitable one at any price’ in the Sudan.116 The export of gum and sesame, with dura and cotton the country’s most important crops, achieved excellent results during the war. The quantity and value of gum exports rose from 12,372 tons worth ££314,919 in 1914,

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Empire on the Nile

to 16,614 tons worth ££744,345 in 1917. In the same years sesame exports totalled 3,i 57 tons worth ££52,899 as against 8,795 tons worth ££202,302. Date exports increased from 2,343 tons worth ££29,372 in 1914, to 4,368 tons worth ££84,119 in 1918. Groundnut exports increased from 208 tons (worth ££2,773) in 1914, to 2,647 tons (££67,584) in 1918. During the war the export of ivory, a luxury trade, declined. Ivory had peaked in 1913, when 125 tons worth ££113,236 were shipped. Exports diminished from 92 tons, worth ££84,605, in 1914, to 39 tons, worth ££35,624, in 1918.117 Government statistics on imports are no more reliable than export figures, and are particularly suspect for the period before 1907, when the Central Economic Board began systematic collection of information. Statistics for principal imports and their value are shown in table 7 (p. 461). The Sudan Government itself was, of course, by far the largest importer. Until the end of the war it never accounted for less than 20 per cent of the country’s annual imports: in 1907 the figure was 43 per cent; in 1910, 37 per cent; in 1913, 24 per cent; in 1917, 29 per cent; and in 1919, 37.5 per cent. During this period the value of imports always exceeded that of exports. The year of greatest imbalance was 1908, when exports were worth only 27.2 per cent of imports. The best year was 1918, when exports were worth 97.5 per cent of imports. Two consumer products dominated the import trade before the end of the war, cotton fabrics and sugar. The figures for 1913-18 indicate clearly the extent of price inflation. Consumption increased modestly, but prices dramatically. War-time restrictions were partly responsible for this: coal, iron, steel, and petroleum imports were hampered by a shortage of shipping and by the priority of demand elsewhere. The average price of tea increased from ££60.413 a ton in 190913, to ££98.794 in 1913-18. The price of sugar, for which the Sudanese were developing an incessant demand, increased from £Ei6.oi2 per ton in 191410 ££20.863 in 1915, ££27.533 in 1916, ££36.745 in 1917, ££45.747 in 1918, and ££51.024 in 1919.118 ‘A considerable outcry as to shortage, high prices and profiteering’ was reported,119 and in february 1919 the govern¬ ment declared a monopoly on the importation and sale of sugar. While price inflation mitigated somewhat the spectacular results achieved by Sudanese exports, it is impossible precisely to relate price increases to rises in income, from a pre-war (but undated) base of 100, the prices of selected commodities at Khartoum had reportedly reached the following levels in November 1919: dura, 281; butter, 234; mutton, 171; beef, 167; coffee, 204; rice, 300; wheat flour, 373; tea, 225; sugar, 344; cotton fabrics, 368; petroleum, 381. The prices of luxury goods also increased sharply.120 Evidently the rise in prices of these commodities would have little adverse effect on the majority of Sudanese, the cultivators and pastoralists, the value of whose own produce enjoyed such a strong market during the war.

Economic developments, 1898-1919

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Wages for unskilled labour reportedly continued to rise, doubling, tri¬ pling, even exploding to ten times pre-war levels in some cases (see below). It is clear that those suffering most were the small urban educated class of government employees, officers, commercial assistants, and others whose salaries were fixed and who had no cushion of subsistence farming. It was from this class, significantly, that stirrings of discontent were felt after the war.

labour, 1899-1919

Economic development in the Sudan during the first twenty years of the Condominium was seriously affected by interrelated labour problems. The slave trade of Turco-Egyptian times, Gordon’s and others’ attempts to eradicate it, and its supposed resurgence during the Mahdia had all been widely publicised in Europe, and the final obliteration of the trade had been a stated end of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest. The downfall of the Mahdist State, however, left its successor the problem of reconciling that aim with a chronic shortage of labour. The solution adopted was a pragmatic policy that decried slavery, took some steps to root out the trade, but simultaneously upheld and even enforced the continuation of domestic slavery. The shortage of Sudanese unskilled labourers, and their much remarked lack of ambition, were only somewhat alleviated by the importation and migration of free labour from outside the Sudan. Before the Condominium the economy of the Sudan was based upon slave labour. Along the Nile and in the Gezira, agriculture depended upon it. Among the nomadic tribes slaves tended the animals and provided the food. In the towns they performed all kinds of skilled and unskilled labour, were hired out by their owners, employed as prostitutes, and were even used as a form of currency. Female slaves performed the whole range of domestic duties, and slave children too were assigned their simple tasks. After the Turco-Egyptian conquest an expansion of agriculture led to an increased demand for labour. Riverain areas north of Khartoum that had previously been cultivated mostly by free farmers now entered the slave economy, especially as the use of the saqia spread. It has been estimated that in the latter half of the nineteenth century slaves accounted for between 20 and 30 per cent of the population, and that before the Mahdia as much as two-thirds of Khartoum’s population of fifty thousand may have been servile.121 The supply of slaves was derived mainly from the regions of the Sudan outside the riverain north, and from the lands beyond. Great distances were covered by the trade, in which governments, traders, and merchants all took part. In the west the Fur sultanate sanctioned large-scale raiding by

232

Empire on the Nile

independent traders, while inter-tribal warfare and small-scale kidnap¬ pings and merchandising also supplied the market. Slaves were exported to other parts of the Sudan, to Egypt, Arabia, and elsewhere, or employed locally. During the Turkiya the demand for slaves in both Egypt and the Northern Sudan increased, and the slave trade benefited from an improve¬ ment of the resources available to the slavers. Even the most remote regions of the Southern Sudan were opened up to traders who, with their modern transport and weapons, and their slave-based private armies, became powers in the land. The anti-slave-trade measures supported by Britain and imposed on Egypt in the 1860s and 1870s were disruptive of the northern Sudanese economy without apparently making important progress in halting the trade. The institution of slavery continued, as did the govern¬ ment’s demand for taxes that could be paid only from the surpluses generated by a slave-based economy. Moreover, the fact that the price of slaves in Egypt did not rise sharply indicates either a lessening of demand or the continuation of the supply. No one in the Sudan shared the ideal, based as it was on inapplicable foreign experience and non-Islamic pre¬ cepts, of abolishing slavery. The farmers, the tribes, the merchants, officials, and even in some cases the slaves themselves (who, if freed, were likely to be conscripted into the army) had no reason to support a policy that made no sense economically and contradicted age-old custom. Opposition to anti-slave-trade measures was therefore a factor in the unification of the Northern Sudanese under the Mahdi. During the Mahdia the trade was resumed unhindered. The conscription of agricultural and other slaves into the Khalifa Abdallahi’s jihadiya inevitably had adverse effects on agricultural production, and no doubt contributed to the ferocity of the 1889-90 famine. It had been estimated, hazardously, that of Omdurman’s population of about 150,000 during the khalifa’s rule, at least half were slaves.122 Cromer and Kitchener were well aware that slavery posed a political problem to their administration. Article 11 of the Condominium Agree¬ ment stated: ‘The importation of slaves into the Soudan, as also their exportation, is absolutely prohibited. Provisions shall be made by procla¬ mation for the enforcement of this regulation.’ No mention was made of slavery. In explaining this omission to Salisbury, Cromer said that domestic slavery was a ‘much more difficult’ problem than the slave trade, and warned that ‘For the moment we had better leave it alone.’123 Kitchener’s ‘Memorandum to Mudirs’ was explicit: ‘Slavery is not recognized in the Soudan, but as long as service is willingly rendered by servants to masters it is unnecessary to interfere in the conditions existing between them.’ This statement, notwithstanding its use of the euphemisms of ‘servants’ and ‘masters’, clearly foresaw a policy of tolerating slavery,

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233

based on a recognition of its pervasiveness, its essential contribution to the economy, and the possible effects on Sudanese opinion of enforcing its abolition. Nor was this a position reluctantly taken. Leading figures in the government favoured slavery on less practical grounds than economic necessity. Slatin, whose influence w'as felt in this as in so many spheres, had been embarrassed in 1897 when Queen Victoria was said to be ‘much concerned at rumours’ that he favoured slavery and took ‘the side of the masters over the slaves’.124 He had replied by referring to the ‘inherent bad qualities of these negro races whom we seek in vain to raise to our own level’; such ‘godforsaken swine’ did not ‘deserve to be treated like free and independent men’, for when they had been so treated some deserted, others stole.125 By 1900 Slatin had altered his language but not his views: in a report to Wingate he blamed agricultural problems on ‘the liberation of slaves’; opined that ‘by nature all blacks are lazy’; recommended the return to ‘their master’ of slaves recently recruited into the army, and the settlement on the land of others; suggested the creation of ‘Government farms and work houses where non-enlisted blacks . . . should be placed and made to cultivate’; and proposed that the number of ex-slave ‘female followers’ of soldiers should be limited so as to increase the agricultural labour supply.126 Some of Slatin’s suggestions had by 1900 already been put into effect. The recruitment of ex-slaves and runaways into the Egyptian Army had begun before the conquest, and continued thereafter. The contrast between the apparently easy army life and the drudgery of agricultural work drew slaves from the land. Their owners were sometimes compensated by payment of a fixed sum or a percentage of the recruit’s pay for a fixed term. Agricultural colonies were begun in 1899 for ex-slave soldiers who retired or were discharged, a convenient and inexpensive way of dealing with them. Most of the colonies were established near towns in the central riverain provinces on government land. The government financed the colonies, providing each settler with a plot of land, tools, seeds, and loans if necessary. After a trial period the settler was given ownership of the land, and taxation commenced. Shaykhs, appointed by the government from among the settlers and paid a monthly stipend, were responsible for taxcollection and other duties. With some exceptions the colonies were initially successful, but after about 1910 began to decline.127 The attitudes of officials determined to what extent the government’s ambivalent policy was followed in their areas of responsibility. Rules and regulations were issued to prevent enslavement, to stop the illicit transport of slaves to Egypt, to collect information about runaways and to prevent the migration of ex-slaves to the towns. A 1902 memorandum dealt comprehensively with the subject of domestic slavery. Runaway slaves

234

Empire on the Nile

were to be investigated: those with legitimate grievances were to be forced to work on public projects, and those considered to be without such grievances forced to return to their ‘masters’. Registration of all slaves was to be undertaken, and the Egyptian government’s department for the repression of the slave trade was not to involve itself in matters of domestic slavery. In 1904 the Sudan Government announced its intention of eventually substituting for slavery a system of paid labour, but The Vagabonds Ordinance of 1905 was yet another attempt to keep agricultural slaves on the land and to deter runaways, who were deemed a nuisance in the towns because of their inability or refusal to support themselves.128 Registration meant the permanent recording of each slave’s personal details, after which the status of an individual could be proved by reference to the records. In this way enslavement after registration could be checked. Registration began in 1904, but its success in preventing enslavement varied according to the efforts made at the provincial and district levels. In Dongola and Haifa, for instance, results were good; in Kassala, Sennar, and Kordofan, poor. In some areas inhabited by nomadic tribes registration was not even begun until during the war, in deference to their opposition. In 1913 the legal secretary, Bonham Carter, pointed out that the registra¬ tion system had failed because provincial officials were even then register¬ ing names, and there were cases of children registered as slaves who had been born since the conquest. Obviously, where registration did not occur or was improperly allowed to continue, new slaves could easily be introduced, thus stimulating the slave trade itself.129 It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that any increase in the labour force was welcomed by ‘masters’ and officials alike. In 1918 the governor of the Blue Nile Province wrote that ‘Nothing would give the Arab population . . . more satisfaction than to know that such Sudanese [ex-slaves] were being properly con¬ trolled and worked by the government’, a course he advocated.130 C. A. Willis put the case more generally, arguing that ‘Domestic service suits both the master and servant’ and had ‘the advantage from the point of view of the Government of preventing the servant from becoming a thief or prostitute . . . and of keeping labour on the land’.131 Sterry, by then (1918) legal secretary, argued angrily that Willis and other officials apparently thought that anti-slavery regulations existed merely ‘to show to the AntiSlavery Society if awkward questions were asked’. This was certainly the case: what the government said for public consumption and what it knew to be true were radically different. In 1906, for instance, Slatin had contended: ‘to my certain knowledge, no slave, male or female is obliged by force to stay with his so-called master’,132 a ridiculous assertion. In 1918 Sterry was able still to write about runaways being captured and carried off, tied to camels, all with the knowledge of officials.133 Wingate told

Economic developments, 1898-1919

235

Cromer in 1907, when forwarding a government circular on domestic slavery: ‘This circular had been worked out in such a way that - if it ever became necessary to publish our arrangements, we could, without much fear of difficulty, publish this document as it stands.’134 The government’s true attitude is evident in its dealings with the slavery department of the Egyptian government, which had been founded in 1880 and reorganised in 1899 as the department for the repression of the slave trade in the ministry of the interior. In January 1901 its headquarters moved from Cairo to Khartoum, but the department remained part of the Egyptian government and thus outside the control of Wingate, Slatin, and their provincial lieutenants. Regional headquarters were established in 1902 at Roseires and El Obeid, and in 1905 at Suakin. There was friction between the department and the Sudan Government from the beginning of the Condominium. The government saw an economic and political neces¬ sity for maintaining slavery; the department, especially under Captain A. M. McMurdo, its director until 1910, was determined to eradicate it. The government’s attempts to enforce guidelines by which the depart¬ ment’s activities would be restricted to the trade failed. This independence perturbed Wingate, who demanded supremacy within his own bailiwick, and he set about bringing the department under his own control by contending that its activities were politically dangerous. A rising at Talodi in 1906, for example, was blamed on the ‘resentment caused among the Arabs by the action of the Government in releasing 120 slaves’.135 Wingate attempted, apparently without much evidence, to connect the 1908 revolt of 'Abd al-Qadir wad Habuba with the department’s efforts: Slatin was despatched to Cairo to tell Gorst that ‘any attempt on the part of the Slavery Department to interfere in Domestic Slavery’ would ‘produce hundreds of Abdel Kaders before long’, but there was no proof that it had yet ‘produced’ any.136 Wingate vowed that if the effort to win approval for restricting the department failed, he would ‘throw every particle’ of his ‘official weight into the scales in order that Government may not commit an error which if persisted in may lose us the Sudan’.137 Wingate’s inclination to threaten revolutions when he wanted something from Cairo or London was by now well known, and Gorst was unimpressed. Wingate’s strong feelings were shared by his provincial subordinates, especially in Kordofan. In 1910 Willis and Savile, the governor, went so far as to ‘hint’ that the department was trying ‘to stir up trouble with Darfur’.138 Wingate approached Gorst again in April, stating baldly that if the department were transferred to the Sudan Government, ‘all danger of trouble would be obviated’, and ‘there would be no further need for the services of a Director’. In August he was delighted by news from Phipps about ‘the possible disappearance of the Slavery Department’, and on

236

Empire on the Nile

i January 1911 this, in effect, occurred, as the department was transferred officially to the Sudan Government, Major H. V. Ravenscroft was appoin¬ ted to direct it, and its police, hitherto independent, were merged with the provincial police forces. By 1913, while Bonham Carter was denouncing official disregard for slavery regulations, Wingate and Slatin were discus¬ sing the abolition of the department and assignment of its remaining duties to the provinces. The war postponed this drastic reorganisation.139 During the war the need to ensure Sudanese ‘loyalty’ continued to delay the implementation of its own stated policy. In May 1915 Wingate rejected a plan to introduce the registration of ‘servants’ among the Humr of Kordofan: ‘To run a serious risk simply for the sake of legalising the position of a few hundred Sudanese [slaves] is . . . unthinkable’, he wrote. Slavery

was

the

government’s

‘most

vulnerable

point

for

native

agitation’.140 Despite official hostility, woefully inadequate resources, and the per¬ meability of the Sudan’s borders, the department for the suppression of the slave trade made important progress before the war in limiting the traffic in slaves. The trade across the Ethiopian border was particularly serious and difficult to control because of the connivance or outright participation of authorities there and the uncooperative attitude of local people on both sides of a long border. In one ten-month period in 1899-1900 five raids were made in Darfung. In 1908 twenty suspected slave traders were arrested in the Blue Nile Province, but a lack of admissable evidence resulted in only two convictions. On the Sudanese side of the border Shaykh Khojali and his wife, Sitt Amna, were for long notorious dealers, but were so powerful that local officials turned a blind eye to their activities. In 1912 an Ethiopian provincial governor actually invaded the Upper Nile Province at the head of a large force, and carried off almost two hundred Nuer. In the west, the autonomy of Darfur posed a problem, since slaves were imported with impunity from the Bahr al-Ghazal and French territories. Another difficulty was created by Fallata pilgrims who, passing through the Sudan to Mecca, abducted people to sell en route or in the Hijaz. Between 1909 and 1913 some three thousand such victims were apparently sold into slavery. In Kordofan the tribes resisted registration and continued to raid in the Bahr al-Ghazal, the Nuba Mountains, Darfur, and as far as Wadai. Even in the Three Towns occasional slave trading was uncovered, an outrageous example occurring in 1902 in Omdurman with Wingate’s and Slatin’s knowledge. In the period 1905-13, only 391 arrests for slavery offences were made, of which 241 led to convictions.141 The continuing importance of slavery to the economic recovery of the Sudan can be deduced from available statistics. In 1904-5 there were some 20,517 known slaves in Dongola Province, over 15 per cent of the population; and over ten thousand in Berber Province, comprising

Economic developments, 1898-1919

237

between 10 and 14 per cent. The slave population of Kordofan in 1900 has been estimated at over forty thousand; that of the Blue Nile Province in 1912 at about thirty thousand; and that of the Three Towns and their environs in 1900 at over twenty-five thousand.142 It is probable that these figures represent a significant decline from nineteenth-century levels, but they fail to illustrate the actual trend from a slave-based to a wage-based economy. For all the government’s attempts to maintain slavery, its own development projects created a demand for paid labour that drew slaves from the land. The reconstruction of Khartoum, the building of the railways and Port Sudan, sudd-clearing, police and army recruitment, irrigation schemes, central, provincial, and local government works, all required labour. Various attempts to supply it were made: prisoners of war and convicts, and seasonal workers from Egypt and Ethiopia were used, and Fallata migration and settlement were encouraged. Financial assistance was given to repatriate Sudanese refugees from the Mahdia who had settled in Egypt. Ideas were mooted of importing labour from India and China, Malta and America, and Nigeria, but never put into effect. Labour for the Nile-Red Sea railway was provided by nomads, enlisted at relatively high wages, recruited by Slatin in the hope that the cash needed to increase their herds would be sufficient inducement. It was, but absenteeism, low productivity, and recalcitrance were not entirely overcome. No combina¬ tion of these schemes could supply the required numbers, and consequent high wages naturally continued to attract slaves. In some provinces the labour shortage was so critical that officials actively prevented the manumission of slaves. In the Red Sea Province, Kordofan, and Sennar slaves soon learned the futility of petitioning for their freedom, and simply absconded to the towns. As they left, farmers were forced to do their own cultivating or hire labour; since the latter meant expenses triple those incurred by slave labour, a fall in production was inevitable. The point was reached before 1910 of unskilled labourers earning between 90 and 130 piastres a month while needing only 10 to 15 piastres to subsist. This resulted in a decrease in full-time employment, driving wages even higher.143 ‘In town building jobs, work for a fortnight and rest for a fortnight’ became general, and provided enough income to support rela¬ tives whose labour was consequently removed from the market. It was to force such ‘parasites’ into employment that The Vagabonds Ordinance was devised,144 that immigration was encouraged, and an attempt to fix wages at an artificially low level was made. A Central Labour Bureau was established in 1905 in the intelligence department, under the nominal direction of Slatin, to supply labour for the government. A daily maximum wage of 3 piastres was set. Special arrange¬ ments were made for the Port Sudan works, in order to regulate the flow of labour from the rest of the country. Efforts to enforce the maximum wage

238

Empire on the Nile

failed, however, and in 1909 steps were taken to give the bureau further powers. In June 1910 a system of labour registration was introduced so that the bureau would have a record of unskilled agricultural labour. This resulted in experiments with virtual forced labour, as workers from the towns were despatched to various works projects all over the Sudan. By 1914 some 11,443 workers had registered. Although government depart¬ ments and provinces were required to hire registered workers only, in times of need this regulation was ignored, thus diminishing any value the system may have had. In areas where casual or migrant labour was available, the system had little impact, and the bureau failed to interfere in a lasting or significant way with the development of a free labour market.145 Government officials placed great hope in the continuing migration of West Africans, or Fallata, as a solution to the labour problem. Before the Condominium Fallata had come to the Sudan mainly in transit to or from Mecca, and some had settled as cultivators, especially along the Blue Nile. The Mahdia had attracted others. After the destruction of the Mahdist State the hajj route was again secure, and the economic possibilities of settlement in the Sudan were appreciated. At the same time, the gradual British encroachment into the emirates of the Sokoto caliphate resulted in the migration eastwards, for political, economic, and religious reasons, of thousands of West Africans. One (and probably the most reliable) statisti¬ cal reflection of this was the increase in the number of pilgrims leaving Suakin, from 328 in 1904 to 6,754 in 1908. The average annually during the period 1909-23 was about five thousand, some 90 per cent of whom were said to be of Nigerian origin. A notable arrival was Mai Wurno, son of the Khalifa Muhammad Attahiru of Sokoto, who founded a settlement (later called Maiurno) on the Blue Nile near Sennar. By 1912 its population was estimated at four thousand. Other villages were founded in the vicinity.146 The Sudan Government encouraged this settlement in an area where cultivable land had fallen into disuse. Fallata who had settled in other parts of the Sudan or in the Flijaz tended to resettle along the Blue Nile, but there were important colonies elsewhere, and Fallata ‘quarters’ in major towns. A Sudanese saying that ‘the government took away our slaves, but God sent us the Fallata’ reflected the fact that, unlike ex-slaves, the Fallata showed no disdain for agricultural and other hard, low-paying work, and quickly established themselves in certain occupations. The total number of Fallata settlers before and during the Condominium has been the subject of speculation.147 After the war new conditions and a new attitude among officials brought progress against the slave trade and domestic slavery, although it would be years before the former and decades before the latter were eradicated. Despite the continuing migration to the towns of agricultural slaves, it

Economic developments, 1898-1919

239

seems that a majority remained on the land, as slaves. The Sudan Govern¬ ment’s defence of slavery is understandable in view of its priorities and Sudanese traditions. That it could not openly state its views was the result of European, not Sudanese, susceptibilities. But it must have been clearly recognised that the abolition of the slave trade was impossible so long as domestic slavery was tolerated: a demand for slaves would be supplied, just as it had been in the closing years of the Turkiya. The hypocrisy of the government’s policy was partially obscured by semantic niceties: there were no slaves, only ‘servants’; no owners, but ‘masters’. It should, however, be recalled that aside from its impact on the overall labour supply, slavery was a matter of little moment to Wingate, Slatin, and the central government. It occupied little of their time and became an issue mainly because of outside intervention. The moral side of the matter was not pertinent.

,

Education and health 1898—1919

THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION IN THE NORTHERN SUDAN

Before the Condominium, formal education in the Northern Sudan was concerned almost entirely with religious studies. Those who learned to read and write did so at the feet of a faki who supervised their memorisa¬ tion and copying of the Quran. The khalwa (the kuttab of other Arabic¬ speaking countries, but in the Sudan a word used to denote both a school and a sufi retreat) over which the faki presided was archetypically a patch of ground under a tree, where a circle of boys sat and recited and their teacher instructed from memory. The faki was paid a fee by his students, for most of whom the recitation of the entire Quran would mark the end of literary education. A few would attend a learned faki for further instruction, often travelling great distances to study with a particular shaykh of repute. An even smaller number journeyed to al-Azhar or to the Hijaz.1 The TurcoEgyptian regime made little effort to introduce modern secular education. Half-hearted attempts in the 1850s resulted in the establishment at Khartoum of a school for the children of government employees. In 1867-8 elementary schools were founded there and at Berber and Dongola. Some of their graduates found employment in the government. The despatch in 1869 of a hundred Sudanese boys to a primary school in Cairo was a failure. More important was the gradual training of Sudanese 'ulama’ in Egypt, and their replacement in the Sudan of the fakis as the officially recognised repositories of religious learning, a change that was one precipitate of the Mahdia.2 Both 'ulama’ and government education, such as it was, were overthrown during the revolutionary period. Kitchener’s appeal for a Gordon Memorial College, undertaken in 1898-9 before any education policy had been formed or even discussed, was enormously successful, but in the annual report for 1899 Cromer indicated the general British attitude towards the traditional system of education in the Sudan: ‘I have on former occasions frequently dwelt on the defects of 240

Education and health, 1898-1919

Sir James Currie (1868-1937)

241

Lt-Col. M. R. Kennedy (1873-1924)

Fig. 10

[khalwas] in Egypt. In the Soudan, those defects are . . . present in a very marked degree. The masters are ignorant; the teaching is almost exclusively confined to reading and reciting the Koran. . . . The schools appear to be often in a very insanitary condition; measures are about to be taken with a view to their improvement.’ The plan was to establish ‘one or two Government Kuttabs in each of the large towns’; to start a system of inspection; and, if possible, to give grants-in-aid to satisfactory schools. A primary school would be established at Omdurman, with similar schools to come later elsewhere. The teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic would be in Arabic, and English would be taught ‘in the higher classes’. Gordon College should be used, in Cromer’s view, initially for primary education.3 In the absence of any educational administration Bonham Carter, the civilian legal secretary, was put in charge from early 1900 until the arrival in November of Cromer’s nominee as first director of educa¬ tion, James Currie, an official in the Egyptian education ministry who had worked in educational administration in Scotland.4 As director he was ex officio principal of the Gordon College (although its first ‘headmaster’ was an Egyptian, Ahmad Effendi Hadayat, appointed in November 1900), and was nominally in charge of the Wellcome Laboratories. In his oft-quoted report for 1900 Currie laid down the education policy that the government was to follow in the Northern Sudan for the next twenty years. The poverty of the country and its financial dependence on

242

Empire on the Nile

Egypt made it essential, he wrote, to avoid ‘expenditure on mere educa¬ tional machinery’ and on education unconnected with the Sudan’s econ¬ omic needs. The educational requirements of the country were ‘the creation of a native artisan class’; ‘a diffusion amongst the masses of the people of education sufficient to enable them to understand the merest elements of the machinery of government’; and ‘the creation of a small native administrative class who will ultimately fill many minor posts’. The proposal to subsidise kuttabs was replaced by the idea of establishing ‘model kuttabs, taught by trained Egyptian teachers’, where the three R’s as well as religion would be taught. To create the required ‘native administrative class’, two or three primary schools would suffice.5 In this list of priorities there was no room for education for its own sake: the idea, if expressed, would have struck officials as absurd. Despite a reputation for liberalism (owed partly to his colleagues’ and superiors’ conservatism, and partly to his propensity to disagree with them), Currie’s ideas and policy were fundamentally similar to Cromer’s. In his report for 1901 he strongly deprecated the teaching of English except to those Sudanese destined for government service. In Cromer’s view, teaching English to those who need not know it ‘could furnish the subject races with a very powerful arm’ against their rulers.6 Babikr Bedri, the Sudanese educator, recounted in his Memoirs an example of Currie’s view on this subject:' If ever the Nile runs southward I will send you an English teacher for Rufa'a.’7 Cromer believed that ‘Primary education should teach the poor to write well and to count well. . . and be much more concerned with the observation of facts than with any form of speculative reasoning’.8 Thus, higher education was even at best a necessary evil. He repeatedly asserted of Gordon College that it was a ‘misnomer to call this institution by the somewhat high-sounding title of a college’.9 In January 1903 he stated publicly in Khartoum that ‘high education’ was ‘of course, for the time being quite out of the question’, but the main reason for this was his decision that it should be so. Cromer championed technical education, however, because, as he said in 1908, ‘every carpenter, bricklayer or mason’ produced by the system would ‘be one unit detached from the ranks of the dissatisfied class who necessarily become patriots and demagogues’.10 Even had Currie disagreed with these views, Cromer’s vigilance would have prevented deviation in practice, and the pre-war system was in place by the time Cromer retired in 1907. Currie’s plan for model kuttabs was delayed by a lack of teachers. Existing ‘kuttabs’ at Berber, Dongola, and Wad Medani could not serve his purpose: their teachers were ‘all incompetent’ and could ‘as a rule, neither read, write, nor count in Arabic’. Currie therefore started a training course for six Sudanese shaykhs who would themselves be instructed in reading,

Education and health, 1898-1919

243

writing, and arithmetic and sent to the kuttahs.n Further ‘vernacular elementary’ (kuttah) teachers’ training courses were started in Suakin and Rufa' a in 1907. By then there were 1,280 boys enrolled in the three-year course (beginning at age 7) in these schools; by 1918 there were 6,086. The curriculum of thirty-three hours per week consisted, in the first year, of twelve hours of religious studies, twelve hours of reading and dictation in Arabic, and six hours of penmanship. The second and third year courses were only slightly different. After three years the student was expected to have become literate, to have mastered multiplication and division, decimal notation, weights, measures, and money, and to have learned a little drawing. A vivid description of the early development, problems, and achievements of the kuttahs may be found in Babikr Bedri’s account of his school at Rufa'a. This was established in 1903 with funds supplied privately by the provincial governor, Blewitt Bey, and through the perseverance of Shaykh Babikr, its first master. Largely because of his force of character the school thrived.12 Government inspection and teacher-training could not, of course, ensure quality or uniformity, and Babikr’s account makes clear how much the standards of an individual school, then as now, depended upon its masters. H. C. Bowman visited the Rufa'a school in 1913, and described it as ‘wonderfully good, entirely owing to the personality of Sh. Babekr [szc]. . . . He is a born teacher - he can’t help being interesting, and the standard of the boys throughout is very high.’13 After the first few years of the vernacular elementary schools’ existence it was from among their graduates that the primary schools were supplied with students. Until then khalwa students were enrolled. The first govern¬ ment primary school was established in Omdurman in 1900, with funds from the Gordon College endowment, and another was opened in Khartoum in 1901. There were already primary schools at Haifa and Suakin for the sons of Egyptian officials, which were supported by the Egyptian government until 1902. In 1906 primary schools were opened at Berber and Wad Medani. By 1903 there were already 600 boys in primary schools, but by 1914 the enrolment had risen to only 783, because the government tried to match student numbers to its estimate of the country’s needs. A high percentage of these students paid fees. The primary-school course lasted four years, students entering at or about the age of 12. The curriculum included religious studies, Arabic, translation, penmanship, arithmetic, geometry and land measuring, English, geography, and draw¬ ing. In the final year an additional six hours a week were given to ‘practical land measuring’.14 Gordon Memorial College was officially opened by Kitchener on 8 November 1902. At first it accommodated the Khartoum primary school, training courses for elementary school teachers and qadis (who had

244

Empire on the Nile

been instructed in Omdurman since 1901), a technical-training course, and industrial workshops. In November 1902 the Sudan Gazette announced that ‘Mudirs should take steps to ascertain the names of the principal inhabitants of their various provinces who’ were ‘desirious [sic] of having their sons educated in the College for a Government career’. Applications were to be sent to the principal of the college, ‘for submission to the Governor General, without whose approval no boy can be admitted into the Gordon College’.15 Clearly the authorities viewed the college as a government training school, but quickly realised the blunder of saying so. The Gazette published a correction in February 1903, carrying Wingate’s unmistakable stamp of multiple obfuscatory qualifications: ‘it is not to be understood that boys so educated will be guaranteed a Government career, but only that the education they receive will enable them to be considered as possible candidates for Government Service should there be vacancies and they be otherwise qualified’.16 Up to 1907 there was no entrance examination for the college, because ‘Arabs of good family would have been hopelessly excluded’.17 As one official later put it, ‘unless the entries are rigged - or at least guided and directed - it is usually the wrong ones’ who gain admittance to schools.18 Thus, while it was stated repeatedly that no college student should expect a government post, the fact that almost every graduate entered the government service, and that the curriculum was obviously designed for this, bespoke nothing else. The logical alterna¬ tive occupation for a trainee qadi, teacher, or junior engineer must have been difficult to imagine. By 1912 some 550 graduates of government schools were in government employment. Trainee qadis and teachers were instructed together for the first three years of their five-year courses. The joint curriculum was of religious studies, grammar, reading, composition, dictation, recitation, arithmetic, geometry, penmanship, geography and map-reading, history, drawing, and English. After three years the course divided, and the trainee qadis concentrated on religious studies while the student teachers had a more general course. To improve standards, from 1908 students were drawn from the primary schools and educated in English as well as in Arabic. The training of qadis allowed the dismissal of Egyptian qadis, saved the government money (since Sudanese could be paid less than foreigners), and meant that fewer Sudanese needed to go to Cairo for instruction.19 Industrial instruction commenced in 1901 at the government dockyard with sixty ‘apprentices’. In 1904 courses began in Gordon College’s instructional workshops, which had been endowed by Sir William Mather after a visit to the Sudan in 1902.20 In 1906, 125 students were enrolled there. The curriculum concentrated on practical instruction in carpentry, painting, smithing, cotton ginning, and basic mechanical engineering, and

Education and health, 1898-1919

Fig. 11

245

Games in front of Gordon College at the turn of the century

included six hours a week for reading, writing, arithmetic, and drawing or technical instruction. Enrolment was only on an apprenticeship basis, agreed to in writing between the director of education and the parent or guardian and student. Courses in surveying and engineering were started in 1905. Technical schools were established also at Kassala and Dueim in 1906, but closed in 1914. By that year some 281 boys were enrolled in technical schools. Various government departments organised their own training schemes. In 1903 the first ‘minor employees’ were produced: six land measurers and some ‘minor clerks’.21 In 1904 Currie declared that the three-point programme proposed in 1901 had been ‘transferred from paper to fact’. The economic development of the country now demanded more. He recommended more primary schools with a view towards providing enough candidates for the second¬ ary school being planned. The secondary course was established in 1905 in two sections: a four-year programme to train assistant engineers and works’ overseers, and a two-year course for land surveyors. In 1906 another section was added, to train primary-school teachers in a four-year course. Admission to the secondary school was open to graduates of primary schools, and there was no age limit for admission. The curriculum for student engineers concentrated on civil and mechanical engineering and mathematics, but included courses in the English and Arabic languages. The teacher-training course stressed English and mathematics, with instruction also in geography, translation, drawing, and the ‘theory and practice’ of teaching.22

246

Empire on the Nile

In 1905 sanction was given to a plan to finance elementary schools in Sennar and the Blue Nile Provinces through a special education tax, at the request of local people, prominently including Babikr Bedri. In 1906 plans went ahead to open elementary schools at Singa and the town of Sennar. The Blue Nile Province tax originally supported schools at Kamlin, Rufa'a, al-Masallamiya, and Manaqil. There were reports of dissatisfaction, however, as country-dwellers complained of having to pay for the educa¬ tion of townsfolk. The tax was discontinued in 1913. In that year a total of ££5,293 was raised in the Blue Nile, Dongola, Khartoum, Sennar, and White Nile Provinces through the education tax.23 Babikr Bedri’s best-known contribution to education was in the field of girls’ education. As early as 1904 he raised the issue with the authorities, but failed to move them. Girls’ education certainly had no place in the practical plans that Currie had made, nor was it an area in which British Christian officials cared to innovate, for fear of a hostile Sudanese reac¬ tion.24 But in 1906 Babikr approached the assistant director of education, J. W. Crowfoot, and was given a sympathetic hearing. Currie thereafter gave permission for a girls’ school at Rufa'a as a strictly private venture, and despite some local opposition the school was a success. In addition to elementary instruction in academic subjects, the girls were taught sewing and embroidery, and their manufactures were sold. By 1921 there were five elementary girls’ schools, at Rufa'a, Kamlin, Merowe, Dongola, and El Obeid - but none in the Three Towns. There the government’s hesitation left the field open to private organisations. In 1900 the Verona Fathers’ Mission established two girls’ schools in Omdurman and Khartoum. In 1902 a Coptic Community School for girls opened at Khartoum, and in 1903 this became the first Church Missionary Society school for girls: a second was opened in Omdurman in 1906. In 1908 the American Presbyterian Mission established a girls’ school at Khartoum North. Religious instruction in these missionary schools was entirely optional.25 Currie’s relations with Cromer, which had been warm, began to deteriorate when the director of education urged greater speed in the development of the system and showed a zeal that to his superiors seemed insufficiently tempered by respect for their views. In 1904 Wingate complained that Currie was ‘too socialistic and dogmatic’ and that he disparaged the military. Cromer found Currie’s 1903 draft report ‘slightly flippant and also slightly dogmatic’. Worse, Cromer had heard that the history texts used in the schools ‘were all of a nature to encourage Moslem feeling’. If this was true, ‘they should be changed’, and while there were ‘no good textbooks of recent Egyptian history . . . Paton, Sir John and Lady Duff Gordon would teach the young Egyptian and Sudanese what manner of man the founder of the Khedivial Dynasty was’.26 Cromer was upset too to find that of 577 students, 179 were ‘Muwallidin’, 218 Egyptians, and

Education and health, 1898-1919

24 7

only 180 ‘bona fide Sudanese’. Such figures ‘provoked serious doubts whether educational policy’ was ‘proceeding on sound lines’. Wingate immediately ordered complete statistics compiled on the ‘nationality’ of all students in government schools,27 but as late as 1912 raised the same complaint himself, noting that the primary schools had produced insuffi¬ cient Sudanese candidates for the Military School: it appeared that ‘Currie was confining his attention to educating Egyptians and half-breeds’, Wingate said.28 Attempting to reassure critics who insisted that Gordon College was producing ‘discontented’ and ‘superfluous clerks’, Currie wrote in 1906 that it was ‘utterly impossible to supply one twentieth of the demands’ made for graduates by government departments.29 The expansion of elementary vernacular education from 1906, when provincial education taxes began to be spent, was overseen until his death in 1908 by an Egyptian official, Ibrahim Effendi Kamil. He was but one of the many Egyptian masters and inspectors in the early years of the Condominium who were largely responsible for the success of various education schemes. Babikr Bedri, no apologist for Egypt or Egyptians, called him ‘a man incorruptible in his work, learned in his subject and happy to teach others’.30 Cromer might thunder principles, Wingate might echo them; Currie and Crowfoot extended themselves in the cause of education; but their varying contributions should not obscure the largely unsung and unpaid services of these Egyptian teachers. In 1907 the government ignored Currie’s pleas for salary increases and in 1908 he let it be known that at current rates he could not attract even inferior replace¬ ments for two important officials who were planning to leave (Ibrahim Effendi included). With Wingate the political object was paramount: his fear of Egyptian nationalist influence. After Ibrahim Kamil’s death his post lay vacant for nine months before it was filled, not by a trained master, but by Yuzbashi 'Abd al-Rahman Effendi Subki, an Egyptian officer in whom Currie professed high hopes. In the same year two British lecturers were appointed.31 Politics was again at the centre of an educational issue in 1911, when the ‘higher Moslem Dignitaries in the Sudan (principally Egyptian)’ noted that ‘the only way to provide Moslem teachers for the Sudanese Ulema was to send a few young Sudanese Ulema to the Ashar [szc] Mosque in Cairo’, a move Wingate deprecated because such students would ‘undoubtedly imbibe ideas’ that were ‘prejudicial’ to the Sudan Govern¬ ment. The alternative, of bringing Egyptian 'ulama’ to Khartoum, was equally unattractive, and Wingate wondered if a training course could not be established at Gordon College to teach religious subjects.32 A solution was found in developing religious teaching at the Omdurman mosque, where a government appointed board of 'ulama’ under Shaykh Muham¬ mad al-Badawi had supervised the teaching of 7/m since 1901. Shaykh Muhammad was succeeded on his death in 1912 by Shaykh Abu-1 Qasim

248

Empire on the Nile

Ahmad Hashim. Regulations were drawn up, and the Omdurman Maahad al-Mashiqa al-'Almia became a centre for training Sudanese 'ulama\ In 1917 ten assistant teachers were appointed there, and there were 138 students, mostly from Khartoum Province. Teachers’ salaries were paid by the government, but official control was reportedly very light and was exercised through the legal secretary’s department.33 In 1913 Currie decided to resign. For years he had seen education subordinated to political strategies, and had become embroiled in the intrigues that increasingly characterised relations between the civilian and military elements of the government. In 1913 Kitchener was severely critical of his draft annual report for Gordon College, insisting, in Currie’s words, that ‘all reference to pressing needs or deficiencies ... be excised on the ground that such references constitute reflection on financial policy’. Currie objected that the resulting appearance of self-satisfaction would deprive his department of possible private assistance.34 Wingate gathered that Currie contemplated ‘being “nasty” ’ after he left the government, but nonetheless took Kitchener’s side in the disagreement.35 In mid-December Currie suggested Sterry, the ‘Chief Justice’ and fellow leader of the civilians, to succeed him, with the pointed commendation that ‘the charge of being a popularity hunter’ would ‘never be laid at his door’.36 On his way to England after resigning Currie met Kitchener, who told him he preferred Crowfoot, the former assistant director. Crowfoot was duly named director on 26 August 1914.37 Under Currie the education system had expanded, despite the often unsympathetic attitudes of his superiors and fellow officials and the meagre resources available to him. The endowment of Gordon College (and of the Wellcome Laboratories and the Mather Workshops) had provided important facilities financed from external sources. The education budget had risen from nothing at all in 1899-1900 to ££58,057 in 1913, when it represented 3.7 per cent of government expenditure. Thereafter its percentage of the government’s budget declined until 1922.38 Educational development was slowed during the war, and its emphasis changed. For this Crowfoot does not bear sole responsibility. Politics and education continued to intermingle. In August 1915, in a letter to Kitch¬ ener, Wingate wrote: ‘You and I have both known for some time that all was not well with the present system; and the war now in progress has served to considerably emphasize this fact.’ Fie explained that ‘The Egyptian teaching element in the College’ had ‘undoubtedly introduced a good deal of noxious propaganda of the Nationalist type amongst the students’. There were only two alternatives within the range of practical politics; either we must leave things as they stand and thereby risk increasing the new spirit which we are doing

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our utmost to eradicate, or we must anglicise the teaching on the lines Crowfoot suggests. ... the latter process will involve an ultimate increase in the English staff . . . which it will be difficult to arrange before the end of the war . . . but I want your agreement to the new principles, as this will enable me to reduce a few of the purely Egyptian staff - a step of which the latter will not fail to realize the true significance.39

Aside from the fact that this solicitation of Kitchener’s ‘agreement’, rather than MacMahon’s, flew in the face of normal procedures, Wingate’s letter indicates how abjectly education remained in the service of general policy, and along what lines that policy was developing. The change was seen immediately in a plan for reorganising Gordon College, leading to the reduction of Egyptian staff.40 Thus the engineering, ‘literary’, and teachers’ sections of the upper primary school course were amalgamated for the first two years. All students, not only those intending to follow the engineering course, were to be taught surveying, drawing, mechanics, construction, and carpentry. This would allow the reduction of classes from six to two, and the halving of staff. The resulting curriculum would serve as a good foundation for specialized engineering courses on the one hand, and on the other it should give a balanced training of hand and eye and mind such as will fit boys . . . for the occupations, clerical, administrative and educational, which are open to them in this country. The criticisms which have been so rightly levelled at the purely literary education popular in both East and West are only partially met by the institution of technical schools, so long as the literary schools . . . remain purely literary in character; the curriculum newly adopted represents an attempt to remedy this acknowledged weakness. Further, this curriculum gives the English masters a larger share in the class-work than it was possible to give them previously. . . . under the new scheme the English staff will be responsible . . . for all subjects except the Arabic Language and Geography.41

While ‘higher’ education was being pared, ‘reorganised’, and brought into even closer association with administrative policy, elementary education was greatly expanded. In 1914 there were 3,633 students in forty-nine kuttahs; by 1918 there were 6,087 in seventy-three. In 1919 Crowfoot explained why the higher levels could not similarly be expanded: these ‘grades’, he wrote, had to be ‘regulated, in the interests equally of the country and the boys themselves, with an eye to the demand for the special, and more or less exotic, types of educated natives produced in them’.42

MISSIONARY EDUCATION AND THE SOUTHERN SUDAN

In the Southern Sudan educational development took a completely dif¬ ferent course, reflecting the different conditions the British found there and the priorities of their religious and administrative policies. There was not in the south a tradition of education, a local equivalent to the khalwa,

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or a religious impetus to literacy. The immediate prospects for the economy seemed to demand no urgency in creating a ‘literate class’, or to justify no expenditure on such ‘unremunerative’ activities as education. Educational work undertaken before the end of the first world war was therefore left entirely in the hands of voluntary agencies. Catholic missionaries had entered the Sudan during the Turkiya. In 1842 a Catholic church and school had a brief existence at Khartoum, and in 1846 the vicariate of Central Africa was established. A mission, called Holy Cross, was founded between Shambe and Bor, and another at Gondokoro. These were closed in 1859 and i860 respectively. An attempt by the Franciscans to revive the vicariate failed, at an enormous cost of missionary lives lost through disease. One of the survivors, Daniele Comboni, was made vicar apostolic of Central Africa in 1872, and thereafter concentrated his efforts in Southern Kordofan. The missionaries there, including the famous Father Ohrwalder, were captured and detained during the Mahdia. In 1885 the ‘Missionary Institute for Negroland’ of Comboni, who had died in 1881, became an independent order, the Sons of the Sacred Heart, more often called the Verona Fathers after their headquarters. After the battle of Omdurman Bishop A. M. Roveggio, the vicar apostolic since 1895, began pressing for permission to re-establish the Catholic presence in the Sudan.43 The Catholics were not alone in attempting to open the Sudan to proselytisation. The Church Missionary Society, the evangelical Anglican organisation, was eager to begin work there. In 1885 the CMS had established Gordon Memorial Mission, dedicated to evangelising the Sudanese, which functioned for a season at Suakin in 1890. In 1898, even before the fall of Omdurman, the CMS approached the Residency for permission to enter the Sudan.44 Between the missionaries and Anglo-Egyptian officials conflict was probably inevitable. The Catholics were mostly Italians and Austrians of a peasant background, while the Protestants were mainly lower-middleclass Britons and Americans of a fundamentalist outlook, single-minded and earnest. British officials, from Cromer down, were almost to a man Anglicans, and almost as overwhelmingly pragmatists: ‘What they had of religion was its moral rather than its doctrinal content.’45 They had also a deep fear of ‘fanatical’ Islam, as epitomised by the Mahdist revolution, and viewed as an unquestionable principle the necessity to avoid provoking it. The stubborn simplicity of the missionaries’ views sometimes permitted underhanded tactics to achieve their ends; while the overly sophisticated rationalisations of the rulers led to their obstructing missionary work of obvious utility. Early relations between the missionaries and officials were suspicious and unfriendly. Bishop Roveggio was not on good terms with Cromer and

Education and health, 1898-1919

2 51

Kitchener, and when pressed to allow ‘the Austrians’ to re-establish their mission at Khartoum, Cromer replied that they could ‘go to Fashoda’. Kitchener had met Cardinal Vaughan in London and proposed that the Pope be asked to ‘put the whole of the Soudan under Vaughan instead of under Raveggio [sic]’.46 When Salisbury rejected this on political grounds Kitchener adopted a policy of harassment: he expropriated the site of the Catholics’ old mission in Khartoum, demolished what remained of the mission buildings, and offered a far inferior site with meagre compensa¬ tion. Late in 1899 Bishop Roveggio himself set out for Khartoum. Cromer hoped they could ‘get rid of him in a few days’, but the bishop was in no hurry to leave, and in April 1900 Cromer was still doing his ‘utmost to ensure his speedy departure’. In fact Roveggio died in the Sudan in May 1902.47 The Protestants were treated little better. On 11 October 1898 Cromer and Kitchener met a representative of the CMS in Cairo, who requested permission to send a medical mission to Khartoum. ‘There could be no objection to establishment of missions at Fashoda and southward,’ he was told, but ‘among the Mahomedan population’ this would be ‘very undesirable’.48 The CMS was unattracted by Fashoda, but in December 1898 agreed to open a mission there, obviously as a step on an indirect path to Khartoum. It was not until December 1899 that an advance party, Dr F. J. Harpur and the Rev. L. H. Gwynne, arrived in Khartoum. At about the same time Cromer set down the principle that was to govern missionary activity during the Condominium: that it would be allowed only in the non-Muslim south.49 Cromer was similarly strong in his objections to the establishment of a separate Anglican bishopric of Egypt and the Sudan, as suggested by Bishop Blyth, the bishop of Jerusalem whose diocese included those countries. Blyth worried that if his proposal was rejected, a CMS bishop would be named, but Cromer preferred ‘not to have a bishop at all’, for fear, he said, of the popular reaction in Egypt and the Sudan.50 Fie cautioned Blyth that ‘to encourage missionary enterprise’ in the Northern Sudan would ‘incur a very grave responsibility’, and he regretted that the distinct questions of proselytisation and a bishopric should have become connected. Blyth claimed to share Cromer’s objection to ‘immediate missionary activity’, but argued that to control such activity in the future an administrative structure (that is, a bishopric) was needed.51 Further negotiations resulted in an agreement that missionary affairs should be treated separately and that any see established would not include territory south of Aswan. The two countries remained part of the Jerusalem diocese, however, and no real control of church affairs in the Sudan was exercised from there. In 1904 Cromer finally agreed that a more active exercise of episcopal duties would be permitted.52 One argument raised by the missionaries and their supporters was that a

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minister should be appointed to care for the spiritual needs of British troops in the Sudan. To prevent the CMS from using the point as a pretext for establishing itself at Khartoum Cromer recommended the appointment of an army chaplain of the Church of England. Eventually the idea was hit upon to appoint Gwynne, who was already at Khartoum and chafing at his inactivity. His appointment removed him from direct missionary work, but he continued to interest himself in it. Although suspicions remained, Gwynne’s simplicity won the respect and trust of government officials, and in 1905 he was appointed archdeacon of the Sudan and in 1908 bishop, thus ensuring that episcopal functions would not be exercised in connec¬ tion with fanatical missionary enterprise.53 It was to the south, whether they liked it or not, that missionaries had to turn their attention in the Sudan. The Catholics accepted the restriction and set to work vigorously to establish themselves. Under Roveggio the Verona Fathers acquired an excellent shallow-draught steamer, Redemptor, on which he and four missionaries, including the doughty Father Ohrwalder, set out for the south on 13 December 1900. Their first station was founded at Lul, near Fashoda, and another was immediately thereafter set up at Attigo (Tonga). The efficient, well-planned station at Ful was joined in 1903 by three religious sisters, and some instruction of the local Shilluk was begun. Problems were encountered in winning the confidence of Shilluk and British officials, neither of whom welcomed the priests. Jackson, the first commandant at Fashoda, held that ‘converting the blacks to Christianity’ would ‘ruin’ them: ‘from the time missionaries enter their countries, these tribes will disappear’.54 Bishop Roveggio died in May 1902, and was succeeded by Bishop F. X. Geyer, who reached the Sudan at the end of 1903. The American Presbyterian Mission, having been refused permission to work in the north, began work in the south in 1901. The Sudan Govern¬ ment at first disallowed the site chosen for the mission at Doleib Hill, at the mouth of the Sobat, but relented after pressure from London, and the Americans occupied the site in March 1902. They quickly established a working station, learned the Shilluk language, and gained a degree of trust through their skilled medical work. Some teaching was undertaken, and by 1905 a few boys were being instructed in crafts and in reading and writing Shilluk.55 In 1903 another North American group, the ‘Holiness Move¬ ment’ of Canadian Methodists, approached Owen, the Sudan Agent in Cairo, for permission to work in the Bahr al-Ghazal. He considered them ‘the horrible fanatical canting kind of missionary and undesirable’, and presented them with a grim picture of what they might find in the Sudan: ‘I went nearly so far as to suggest they might be served up as missionary mayonnaise,’ he told Wingate, and no more was heard from them. An

Education and health, 1898-1919

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attempt by the Pentecost Bands of the World Mission to enter the Sudan in 1913 was similarly rebuffed, since they were, according to Mervyn Wheatley, ‘very fanatical and given rather to attempting to convert other Christians . . . than to convert pagans and Moslems to Christianity’.56 Having struggled so long to establish itself in the Sudan, the CMS was slow to begin work there. Financial problems beset the organisation. In January 1903 Wingate wrote to Gwynne officially about the CMS’s apparent disinterest. A dispute ensued about sites for stations. It was not until early in 1905 that Mongalla was chosen, and not until December of that year that a party of six set out for the south. The governor, Cameron, was unwelcoming, and the town itself, with a large Muslim population, obviously unfertile ground, so a station was established just south of Bor instead.57 In 1905 the government issued regulations governing missionary work in the Sudan. No station was to be allowed in any area north of the 10th parallel that was ‘recognized by the Government as Moslem’. South of that line, ‘spheres’ were allotted. Even before the Condominium the CMS and the Americans had recognised the desirability of avoiding any close proximity of stations, and in 1901 had discussed a sphere system. From the government’s viewpoint this had the advantage of avoiding rivalry between missionary societies and their future converts. In the 1905 division, most of the Bahr al-Ghazal was allotted to the Catholics, the Americans were assigned the Upper Nile Province east of the Bahr al-Zaraf and north of 70 30', while the remainder of the south was assigned to ‘British Missionary Societies’. Missionaries were ‘not permitted to act as intermediaries between natives and the Government’. Trading, ‘in any form’, was forbid¬ den. Missions could not own land. It has been postulated that Wingate published the regulations at this time ‘simply because it was convenient to incorporate them in the same document as that which partitioned the whole of the Southern Sudan into exclusive denominational spheres’. Certainly the spheres were drawn up not only to prevent competition among missionaries but also to ensure that the dilatoriness of the CMS would not result in the occupation of the whole region by non-British missionaries.58 The ‘sphere system’ later gave rise to serious problems. Difficulties occurred first between the CMS and the Catholics. The latter expanded their activities rapidly throughout their sphere, ‘within the framework of a grandiose, yet flexible and effective, missionary strategy’. Unlike his predecessor, Bishop Geyer was popular with the British; he was an indefatigable worker, travelling far and wide on foot and in Redemptor, made friends with British officials, including Wingate, and caused no trouble over petty restrictions. In 1904 he went to Wau at the invitation of the governor, Boulnois, and quickly established stations at Chief

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Empire on the Nile

Kayango’s village and at M’bili. Boulnois had already started a school at Wau in 1903 for the sons of soldiers and officials, with an Egyptian official as master.59 His requests for help from Khartoum were met by constant refusals: in February 1904 Currie declined to grant the miniscule sum of thirty piastres a month to pay a teacher, on the grounds that he knew nothing about the school, he was unable to inspect it, and the government had as yet formed no policy on the ‘education of these Blacks’. Wingate agreed, but nonetheless ordered £Eio to be provided for Boulnois’s experiment. He was concerned lest non-Muslims use Arabic books and non-Arabic speakers learn Arabic, and suggested that a Syrian (Christian) translator should be used as a teacher.60 By November 1904 there were twenty-nine boys enrolled, taught in Arabic by a Muslim. But of these all professed Islam and most spoke Arabic, so that Wingate’s apprehensions seem misplaced.61 At the end of 1904 Bishop Geyer was asked to take over the school, and was permitted to establish a station at Wau. The Wau Industrial School, as it was called, was the first in the south to receive government support, and successfully provided vocational training to increasing numbers of boys. In 1905 it had 47 pupils (of thirteen ethnic groups), and from 1905-6 received an annual subvention and occasional special grants from the government. In 1906 a separate, academic class was established, which in 1911 had 24 pupils. Schools established at Tonga, Kayango and Lul had by 1911 some 49 students among them. The arrival at Wau of five religious sisters in 1912 allowed the beginning of girls’ education in the Bahr al-Ghazal. By 1913 the Catholic schools had an overall enrolment of about one hundred.62 By contrast, Protestant expansion was slow. The American missionaries added no new station until 1913, at Nassir. They emphasised crafts and practical skills and were no empire-builders. By 1918 their school, where some instruction in reading and writing in Shilluk and English was given, had no more than 20 pupils.63 The CMS station near Bor had been the scene of internal wrangling over evangelisation policy. A brief experience of ‘iteration’ among the Dinka was a failure, and by 1907 there was talk of giving up and moving to Uganda. This Wingate countered by threatening to dispose of their sphere. A new station was established at Malek, but disease took its toll and in 1908 the one remaining missionary went on leave. Gwynne himself accused the CMS of ‘great folly’ and was ‘sick’ at the way the society had ignored his pleas. By October 1908 work at Malek had recommenced, and a reading class of between 20 and 30 boys, some practical instruction, and a small dispensary were all under way. By 1910 the school had 45 pupils.64 The transfer to the Sudan Government of the Lado Enclave in June 1910 brought to the fore questions of policy with which Wingate felt impelled to

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deal. He had no wish to see the enclave adopt either Arabic as the lingua franca it had become in some localities, or Islam, the influence of which was clearly growing. A number of related policies were debated: the encour¬ agement of English rather than Arabic as a second language and lingua franca; the replacement of Muslim troops with locally recruited nonMuslims; the retention in the enclave of Sunday as the sabbath; and so forth. In December 1910 Geyer, Gwynne, and the Rev. Archibald Shaw, secretary of the Gordon Memorial Mission, met to discuss the language question. Geyer stated that ‘as long as the Government business was transacted in Arabic there was no desire for English among the Sudanese’. He agreed with Shaw that the teaching of Arabic would encourage Islam, but insisted that unless ‘the employment of English speaking natives’ was encouraged by the provincial governors, it was a waste of time to teach English, even if there were a demand for it. The official use of English would at least ‘give Christian missionaries some slight chance against the overwhelming advantages which Islam’ seemed to have in the south.65 Wingate agreed; he had already written to Feilden, governor of the Bahr alGhazal, asking him whether it was feasible to make English the ‘official language’. Wingate thought that ‘if the new system is started very quietly and tentatively - without any fuss and without putting the dots on the i’s too prominently,’ this could be accomplished ‘before anyone has realised that a change has taken place’. Four months later he told Feilden to proceed with plans for ‘the dropping of Arabic and making of English the Official language’, but again urged caution because of possible reaction in Egypt. The plan should be ‘quietly and unostentatiously’ introduced.66 Discus¬ sions, however protracted, could not bring about change, and there was little alteration in the conduct either of education (which had largely been in English outside Wau), or in hiring for government service. Gwynne’s view that the south should be secured by the government for Christianity earned him rebukes from Wingate. In March 1911 there were but two Europeans at the CMS station at Malek, yet Gwynne complained incessantly about government actions and inaction. In May Wingate pointed out that ‘the remedy’ was in the hands of the missionaries themselves: ‘far greater activity’ on their part. In August Gwynne returned to the attack: the Egyptian ma’mur, ‘as a rule a proselytizer of a most energetic kind for Islam’, should go; the Sudanese troops and jallaha should be cleared out, to be replaced by locally raised police and ‘good British trading companies’. Even some British officials were a danger: one, ‘a libertine and sensual to a degree’, had ‘built a mosque and encouraged Islam’; the appointment of another showed ‘a lamentable ignorance of officials appointed to posts of great responsibility’. Wingate refuted the

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charges, repeating that the missionaries held the future in their own hands.67 Indeed, officials were convinced that the missionaries, Protestant and especially Catholic, did little to instil the virtues and habits necessary to withstand Islamic influence.68 Wingate’s Christian patience in dealing with importunate missionaries must be admired, especially in light of their own seeming inability or unwillingness to match with constructive effort their smugly pronounced certainties about the will of the Lord. The issue of the sabbath is illustra¬ tive. Gwynne and others, supported by influential figures in Britain, pressed for the adoption of Sunday as the official day of rest in the Sudan. ‘We cannot even chant the psalms . . . because we cannot raise a choir’, Gwynne lamented, and even if the British did not go to church on Sunday, ‘all of them from pride of race would prefer to have their Sunday rest’. Wingate expressed sympathy with the idea, while doing nothing to implement it. Another occasion for suspicion and complaint was the consecration of Khartoum Cathedral in 1912. The Bishop of London, scheduled to preside, made an ignorant and inflammatory public attack on Islam during a speech in London. Wingate, who later reflected that he and Kitchener had been fortunate to avoid ‘a hole which . . . had been prepared’ for them ‘by very much cleverer men than either the Bp. of London or Bp. Gwynne’, feared that the episcopal visit to Khartoum was intended as a peg on which to develop a strong anti-Govnt. policy as regards religious matters more especially in connection with missions, education etc. A chance remark by the Bp. of London to the effect that you [Kitchener] did not know much about these matters . . . and sundry other ill-advised comments on the present state of affairs shows what they are after. I have therefore determined to at once strengthen up the Govt, attitude in regard to both missions and Education by revising the regulations and stiffening them all round.69

The controversy in Church-State relations did not end there. In 1914 Wingate believed Gwynne was conspiring with members of the British community critical of his policies. His complaint to the bishop elicited this elegant reproach: ‘You work my flock on Sunday. ... You place restric¬ tions on Xtian enterprise in the Northern Sudan. . . . You take customs [duties] on the meagre and inadequate supplies for missions. ... I have never hid the fact that I do not agree with this policy. I think it unfair to our fellow countrymen ... a wrong to the natives themselves - a hindrance to the free run of the Gospel.’ He advised Wingate to have him removed if he thought him a ‘thorn’ and an ‘enemy’.70 The amended missionary regulations of 1912 differed little from those of 1905, but a new set of ‘Instructions’ regarding the establishment and conduct of schools was appended. None could open without the governor-

Education and health, 1898-1919

i^y

general’s permission; an application must provide details of proposed staff, fees, pupils, and syllabus; if the school was to be conducted by mission¬ aries, a signed statement promising to abide by the regulations was required; all schools were to be open to government inspection at any time and would be closed if they broke the regulations. Although these rules were strict, they were not actually enforced before the 1930s.71 Revised regulations did not help to settle outstanding competition between the Catholics and the CMS over the Lado Enclave and Zandeland. In 1911 Bishop Geyer visited the Azande country at Feilden’s invitation, and in May requested the ‘rectification’ of the spheres. In November Geyer proposed the abolition of the sphere system, which he claimed was unnecessary and a hindrance. This was rejected. In 1912 he nonetheless applied for permission to establish a station near Yambio in the CMS sphere. When this too was rejected Geyer opened a post near Tembura, just inside the Catholic zone. Wingate clearly favoured extend¬ ing the Catholic sphere to include all the Azande country, but this depended upon the agreement of the CMS, which was not forthcoming. Wingate wrote in frustration that he would not let Gwynne ‘have his cake and eat it. If he insists on sticking to Yambio and Riketa, then he will have to give up all thoughts of having the whole Enclave’, because the Catholics had claims themselves which, unlike the CMS, they had some means to put into effect.72 When Gwynne would not relent, Wingate reluctantly sup¬ ported the CMS’s claim to Zandeland. The southern part of the Lado Enclave was, however, assigned to the Catholics, who thereafter offered to exchange it for parts of the Azande country. Wingate saw this as an ideal solution: I have no hesitation in saying that I should infinitely prefer to see the Roman Catholic Mission allowed to extend their stations into the Riketa and Yambio Districts . . . but it is clear from the attitude the C.M.S. are taking up that they mean to stick to these districts and that the offer of the Southern Enclave will not tempt them. It is equally clear that I cannot force the C.M.S. to give up . . . the Yambio and Riketa districts . . . unless they fail to occupy them.. . . they have neither the means nor the organization to be anything like as useful to the Government as the Roman Catholics are.73

Wingate’s discomfort with the missionaries’ competition led to the forma¬ tion, in May 1912, of a committee to act as his ‘advisory board’ on missionary matters. This comprised Phipps, Sterry, Symes, and Hewins, and was meant to deal with questions that would ‘crop up from time to time as to the interpretation of the Regulations’.74 In February 1913 the CMS was able finally to establish itself near Yambio. In the northern part of the Lado Enclave, closed because of sleeping sickness since the transfer from the Congo, the CMS opened a station at Yei in 1917.

z58

Empire on the Nile

It is hardly surprising that when the question arose in 1913 as to whether to allow the Sudan United Mission to work in the Sudan Wingate commented that the more he thought about it, the more he was ‘inclined to drop spheres of influence and go on the principle of a fair field and no favour’. But he never attempted the task. The SUM was eventually allowed to open a post at Melut, sixty miles north of Kodok, outside, that is, the region supposedly open to missionary activity. Wingate said the mission must restrict its activities to non-Muslims and could be withdrawn if trouble arose. The Catholics were similarly allowed, in 1913, to establish a post at Dilling in the Nuba Mountains, but they were almost immediately dissatisfied with it and were given permission to move outside the town.75 Among the missionaries it was the Roman Catholics who felt most the impact of the world war. In 1916, after a report by the Aliens Committee, Wingate restricted Austrian missionaries (see above, p. 162). The station near Dilling was closed permanently, and the stations at Lul and Tonga temporarily shut down. Recruitment had to cease. The raising of the Bahr al-Ghazal from the status of a prefecture (which it became in 1914) to a vicariate apostolic in 1917 eased restrictions there, since the bishop and most of his subordinates were Italians. Wau continued to make good progress, as the industrial school did ever more advanced work and the academic course offered a curriculum including English, Arabic, mathe¬ matics, geography, and history over four years. Some boys were given a further, one-year intermediate course. It has been estimated that by 1920 about three hundred students were enrolled in Catholic schools. The Americans at Doleib Hill, by contrast, seem to have receded even further into a quiet self-sufficiency. By 1921 they had but twelve boys undergoing academic training at Doleib Hill, and the educational work begun at Nassir in 1916 had made little progress. During the war the CMS finally became a viable organisation in the Sudan. New stations were opened at Lau (1912), Yambio (1913), and Yei (1917). By 1917 there were already about sixty boys enrolled in the CMS school at Yambio. The arguments about spheres and rights, which had never hampered the Catholics, now cooled, perhaps because of the realisation that there was work enough to do. By 1920 there were about five hundred pupils enrolled in the various southern schools. Of the quality of the education they received little is known.76 The government’s contribution to their education was largely negative; the missionary societies were allowed to do what they could. Almost no government money was spent. No inspection of schools was undertaken. This is not surprising when considered in relation to the general condition of the south. To the missionaries belongs the credit for laying the foundations of the educational system that would be constructed

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later. If blame is to be attached for the artificial divisions introduced between the north and the south by the government’s policies, it must be to the officials who enunciated them. But it would credit them with too much prescience to assume (against all evidence to the contrary) that there was a grand design, except perhaps that expressed in the vague conviction that the spread of Islam was not for the best. The missionaries were sent to the south not primarily to convert or even educate, but simply to be kept out of the north. The recurring arguments between them and the government, the restrictions the government imposed on them, and the official view that the missionaries were there by the grace of the government, attest to the difficulties they faced. The missionaries were tolerated, but they were not partners of government.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Soon after Muhammad 'Ali’s conquest in 1821 medical officers were stationed at army posts in the Sudan. A medical service, limited to TurcoEgyptian officials and soldiers, acquired a central organisation only in 1850. By 1873 there was a hospital of sorts in all but one of the provincial capitals, and a principal medical officer in each province. Little was done to extend professional care to the Sudanese. During the Mahdia the medical organisation, with the rest of the administration, was swept away, although trained doctors continued to serve under the regime of the Khalifa 'Abdallahi. The nineteenth century witnessed at least seven cholera epi¬ demics, including the outbreak that attended the Egyptian Army’s advance in 1896. Smallpox was another scourge: at least a dozen outbreaks are ' known to have occurred. To traditional Sudanese methods of prevention and treatment (skin protection, isolation, migration, and a form of variola¬ tion) were added, in Turco-Egyptian days, quarantine measures and vaccination. The eventual near-disappearance of smallpox may have been caused, however, by the natural immunity built up in survivors of the epidemics. Among other prevalent epidemic diseases were cerebrospinal meningitis and typhoid. Endemic diseases such as malaria, schistosomiasis, bilharzia, leprosy, and tuberculosis were constant dangers. For the nineteenth century as a whole, medical statistics of only the most super¬ ficial and incomplete type exist; for the early decades of the twentieth century they remain of only limited utility. Nonetheless, some general conclusions may be reached about the medical history of the Sudan during this period.77 At the time of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest the Egyptian Army Medical Corps consisted of British Officers seconded from the Royal Army Medical Corps, and of junior staff recruited mainly from among Lebanese

i6o

Empire on the Nile

graduates of the Catholic and American universities in Beirut, Like the Turco-Egyptian medical service before it, the Army Medical Corps was mainly concerned with the health of the troops and officers of the military and civil administrations. The Sudan’s medical administration remained under army control until 1904. The first British civilian doctors were recruited in 1901, and were given the local rank of major (bimbashi). A former principal medical officer of the Egyptian Army, Dr Theodore Acland, recruited medical staff in Britain for the Sudan Government and acted as medical examiner there for candidates for the Sudan service.78 The establishment of a medical department of the Sudan Government in 1904 was attended by an error in personnel management that complicated medical administration for the next twenty years. The principal medical officer of the Egyptian Army offered the post of director to Dr E. S. Crispin, while Dr Acland, in London, having been asked to select someone, offered it to Dr J. B. Christopherson. Both men accepted. Christopherson was eventually preferred, but was given the title of Senior Medical Inspector to Crispin’s Medical Inspector. Christopherson is usually cited as the first director, but the first official to hold that title was C. D. Hunter Bey, appointed in March 1905. Crispin thereupon took up a post outside the department as medical officer at the Port Sudan site, and Christopherson was fobbed off with the distinction of ‘Physician to H. E. the Governor General, in Khartoum’.79 On 1 January 1907 he became director and Crispin was made senior medical inspector. Christopherson’s directorship was a failure, and in November 1908 the Central Government Board was already discussing the ‘Christopherson case’ with a view to reorganising the medical services. According to Wingate, the doctor had ‘altogether failed to obtain the friendship or confidence of any of his Profession, including even ... in his own Department’.80 He accepted a newly created post as director of Khartoum and Omdurman Civil General Hospitals, while H. B. Mathias, the principal medical officer of the army, became director-general of the medical department, with responsibility for all medical services, civil and military, in the Sudan. Christopherson continued, however, to be ‘intensely unpopular’, and Wingate vainly hoped he would resign.81 During the war Christopherson served briefly in a Red Cross hospital in Serbia, was captured and, after the intervention of Slatin Pasha, released. He remained a source of difficulty to the govern¬ ment until his retirement in 1919. Mathias died in 1912 and was succeeded as director-general by H. A. Bray; he, in turn, was succeeded in 1916 by Crispin, who retired in 1922.82 Another significant early appointment was of Dr (later Sir) Andrew Balfour as director of the Wellcome Laboratories. These were a fully equipped medical research laboratory, library, and museum endowed in

Education and health, 1898-1919

i61

1902 by H. S. Wellcome, the chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturer. The laboratories were originally housed in the Gordon College building but were independent of both the medical and education departments. Balfour also held the post of medical officer of health in Khartoum Province, was answerable in theory to the director of education, and maintained close relations with departments and officials whose work was connected with that of the laboratories. The laboratories’ objectives were to promote technical education and the study of tropical diseases, espe¬ cially those of relevance to the Sudan; to assist the various health authori¬ ties and aid in experimental investigations of poisoning cases; to carry out chemical and bacteriological tests in water, food, and sanitary matters; and to test ‘agricultural, mineral and other substances of practical interest in the industrial development of the Sudan’.83 Balfour became director in Febru¬ ary 1903 with a staff of one laboratory assistant and two Sudanese attendants. In September 1904 a British chemist was appointed, and in April 1906 an entomologist, H. E. King. There was also a ‘collector’, who amassed specimens of insects, blood samples, drugs, poisons, and photo¬ graphic records of diseases.84 Under Balfour the Wellcome Laboratories concentrated on the sanitation of Khartoum, specifically to eradicate malaria. Learning from work done in Egypt, he planned a detailed programme, for which over £E20,ooo was allocated, to create a sanitary system and pure water-supply for the capital, and thus eradicate mosquito larvae and banish the disease. A ‘Mosquito Brigade’ was established to oil water sources, drain and clear breeding places, and treat incoming steamers. The Central Sanitary Board, established in 1905 to advise on sanitary and medical matters generally, formulated a malaria policy and directed efforts to newly irrigated agricultural areas. Although this pion¬ eering work was important and successful, it was, until after the war, limited to urban areas, especially the Three Towns, and hence to a small percentage of the population. Balfour was succeeded as director of the laboratories in 1913 by Dr A. J. Chalmers, who held the post until 1920. Under his distinguished direction the laboratories undertook valuable new research into tropical diseases, especially schistosomiasis.85 The creation of a civil medical department in 1904 did not end the role of the Egyptian Army Medical Corps in the Sudan’s civilian health. It continued to have responsibility for all health matters south of Khartoum, where its work was to some extent supplemented by medical missionaries. A medical mission established at Omdurman by Dr A. C. Hall closed on his death in 1903, but was reopened in 1908 in a rented house by Dr F. O. Lasbery, who was succeeded in May of that year by a Dr Lloyd. In 191011, under his direction, this became the first hospital operated in the Sudan by the CMS. In 1914 another dispensary was established at Lui in the

262

Empire on the Nile

Upper Nile Province, which was upgraded in 1921 to the status of a hospital. The American Presbyterian Mission operated a dispensary at Khartoum North, a small hospital at Nassir, and dispensaries at Doleib Hill and Wang Lei in the Upper Nile Province. The Sudan United Mission station at Melut had a small hospital and a leprosy service, and maintained a subsidiary dispensary at Rom. Although the role of medical missionaries was relatively minor, it was assumed in areas where the over-extended government service was minimal or non-existent.86 Gauged by the results achieved among the mass of the people, medical progress in the Sudan generally was slow during the first two decades of the Condominium, a fact attributable to the resources in mpney and personnel made available for medical work. Development was swiftest in the towns. By 1904 there were hospitals at Khartoum, Omdurman, Wadi Haifa, Dongola, Berber, Suakin, Kassala, Wad Medani, Kodok, and El Obeid, none with more than thirty beds. By 1914 hospitals had been added at Atbara, Port Sudan, Merowe, and Dueim. By private subscription hospitals were established at Mongalla in 1911 and Nahud in 1913.87 The quality of hospitals is difficult to ascertain: Bousfield recorded that while those at Khartoum, Atbara, and Port Sudan were good, the others were ‘poor and inadequately equipped’.88 As late as 1920 the small government hospital at Omdurman was staffed by only a Lebanese doctor, three unqualified Sudanese tumargis (male nurses), and an attendant. A British doctor from Khartoum called once a week.89 A 1913 report alluded to the inadequacy of the Wad Medani hospital; the ‘tukhls and dahrtoors’ that comprised the El Obeid facility; the ‘bad repair’ of Kassala’s hospital; the recent destruction of the tukl hospital at Gedaref in a storm; the ‘unin¬ habitable’ quarters of medical officials at Nahud; and so forth.90 The number of in-patients and out-patients rose from 3,357 and 40,862 respectively in 1903 to 10,015 and 206,891 in 1914. In 1904 there were but five British and a few Syrian (Lebanese) doctors in the whole country; by 1914 there were nine British and thirty Syrians, but by 1919 only two British doctors had been added to this total. No civilian doctors were recruited in the period 1910-18. From 1901, if not before, however, ‘civil doctors’ (that is, private practitioners) were authorised. Five such are mentioned in a 1901 Sudan Gazette: three Greeks, a Briton, and an American. The hospitals at Wadi Haifa, Dongola, Merowe, and Suakin were staffed entirely by non-British personnel; British staff were posted to those centres where British patients were most numerous. The first British nurses arrived in 1907, and a Sudan Nursing Fund, a private insurance scheme for nursing care, was established. The first indication of a qualified dentist in the Sudan was a notice in the Sudan Gazette in February 1905. A rudimentary school health service was begun in 1912.91

Education and health, 1898-1919

263

The provision of hospital care affords an insight into attitudes towards social services generally. In-patient treatment was charged according to patients’ status and means and the degree of comfort they were provided. Free treatment was allowed, and free medicines were available, to out¬ patients, ‘in cases only of extreme indigence’. The classification of patients for purposes of fee assessment was initially to be ‘determined by the Mudir or other responsible civil authority’, an amazing assertion of bureaucracy that was doubtless ignored.9: In 1901 the fees were changed so that government employees paid less than other patients. These fees, or ‘stoppages’, were adjusted from time to time. In 1904 a dispensary was established in Khartoum for the poor. Emergency treatment was to be continuously available there, and medical officers would hold regular clinics. Because there was as yet no qualified pharmacist in the capital, medicines were supplied by the dispensary, at rates fixed by the govern¬ ment.93 In the hospital, different rates meant different treatment. In Khartoum, government officials with salaries of ££420 or more (that is, British administrative officials) could be treated at home free of charge if they lived nearby. There were three classes of patient, and different hospital accommodation and food were supplied to the higher classes. Thus, the ‘Ordinary’ diet called for 406 dirhems (about two and seveneighths pounds) of food a day, while the ‘Special [Diet] for First and Second Class Patients’ totalled 483 dirhems (about three and one-third pounds), plus two pounds of milk, and included tea, sugar, soup, and potatoes, all omitted from the ‘Ordinary’ menu. Higher-class patients might also order ‘Extras, such as eggs, minerals, ice, spirits or fish’. Different rates were applied for civilians, wives and children of officials, Gordon College students, ‘Zaptieh Prisoners, convicts, soldiers, and men of [the] Railway Battalion’, servants of officials, and Sudanese soldiers’ wives. 94 The training of Sudanese for all but rudimentary medical care did not begin until after the first world war, but Sudanese attendants were employed for hospital work. A chief attendant was ‘in general charge’ of a hospital, supervised the other attendants, and had a special responsibility for cases of infectious diseases. In the absence of a medical officer at the dispensary, a chief attendant might be placed in charge, but only to dispense (not to compound) drugs. First- and second-class attendants performed various unskilled duties. Christopherson, for one, considered attempts to train Sudanese women as nurses to have failed, and that boys made better attendants.95 The very limited extent of the government’s health services, even in the Northern Sudan, and the suspicion with which the Sudanese sometimes viewed them,96 meant that in most cases and in most places medical

264

Empire on the Nile

attention was provided by Sudanese practitioners of traditional medicine, the hassir (bone-setter), the hallaq or muzayin (barber-surgeon or sanitary barber), the day a (midwife), and th efaki. The first three were often highly skilled, and their occupations were often hereditary. Expertise was recognised, and reputations won or lost, by results. Natural medicines were known and used. In the absence of a skilled practitioner or when circumstances seemed to require it, a faki might be called in to pray and prescribe a remedy. Christopherson, who took an interest in Sudanese medicine, concluded that ‘the Bossara, Fakirs, Hallageen and Daiers . . . unassisted as they are by modern aids to diagnosis, and knowing nothing of the requirements of latter day medicine . . . still possess, with their alert observation and varied pharmacopeia, a not inconsiderable armament of effective medical knowledge’.97 Sudanese practitioners were incorporated into the medical system as far as possible. Part-time sanitary barbers, while continuing their primary occupations, were paid a small monthly retainer for performing vaccinations and registering births and deaths. They also carried out circumcisions and other minor operations. Courses in anti¬ septics, vaccinating, and first aid were organised for their instruction. They were to undertake annual tours to carry out the immunisation of children, and were responsible for issuing death certificates. Month-long courses in hygiene, antiseptics, and child-care were made available to Sudanese midwives. To what extent the hallaqs and dayas availed themselves of these courses, and to what extent the courses were actually available, is unknown.98 The history of various diseases during the period under review may be briefly summarised. Despite Balfour’s efforts, malaria remained a curse in all but the largest northern towns. Without vigilance, the elimination of breeding places and adult mosquitoes could never be assured, and quinine was unavailable for general use. In 1900, for example, of 18,291 admissions to hospital of soldiers stationed in the Sudan, 4,979 were for malaria, and 77 deaths were attributed to the disease. A scheme was instituted to distribute quinine through post offices. In 1914 ‘Sanitary Rules for Canals and Water Courses’ were issued in view of the extensive agricultural developments under way. After the war, great efforts had to be made against the disease in the Gezira." Leishmaniasis was first diagnosed in 1904 in the Bahr al-Ghazal, and there were two British deaths from the disease in 1907 and 1909. Although no major outbreak afflicted Sudanese territory, a Kala-Azar Commission operated between 1909 and 1913 in the south and the Blue Nile Province, during which time some three thousand people were examined in over two hundred localities.100 Of the epidemic diseases there were several major outbreaks during this

Education and health, 1898-1919

265

period. Between 1900 and 1920 sleeping sickness claimed over a quarter of a million victims in Uganda, and the discovery of trypanosomes in animals in the Southern Sudan in 1904 gave rise to great concern. In May 1905 a Sudan Sleeping Sickness Commission was appointed under Lt-Colonel Hunter, to report on the situation in the southern borderlands. The commission began to map the distribution of the tsetse fly and found that sleeping sickness was a danger all along the frontier from the Darfur-Bahr al-Ghazal border to the Uganda-Mongalla border. The commission recommended the appointment of a medical inspector in the Bahr alGhazal, the issuing of clearing instructions to officials, the examination of steamer passengers at Mongalla, and controls on immigration and trade. In October 1909 immigrants from the Congo were diagnosed with the disease, and the commission established quarantine camps on the main border roads, attempted to control border trade, cleared infected streams, and established isolation areas. When in 1910 the Lado Enclave reverted to the Sudan’s control, sleeping sickness accompanied it. In Yei District 268 cases were diagnosed in 1911. Another outbreak occurred in the area of Kajo-Kaji and Nimule in 1915-16. In 1918 a major outbreak in Tembura District spread to Wau and Raga with Azande migrants. In 1920 Source Yabu Settlement was established with some 669 patients. The fatality rate there was 45.5 per cent over the next ten years.101 Extreme measures were later taken to deal with the disease in Zandeland. An outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis occurred in Omdurman in 1898-9. Thereafter only 35 cases were reported in the Sudan until 1914, when there was an epidemic in the north, apparently carried into the country from Uganda. An outbreak at Wau in 1914-15 caused 386 deaths. This epidemic continued, with sporadic outbreaks, until the 1930s, with very high mortality. Of an estimated 3,794 cases in 1914-15, 2,671 were fatal. Relapsing fever, first diagnosed in the Sudan in 1908, was not a serious problem before the mid-1920s. There were minor outbreaks of smallpox during the period, including one at Omdurman in 1903 which Christopherson controlled through fast and thoughtful action. Occasional outbreaks of cholera were quickly dealt with, and quarantines at Wadi Haifa and Suakin (and later at Port Sudan) checked the introduction of the disease into the Sudan. The influenza epidemic in 1918-19 affected most of the country. At Gedaref 1,600 cases were reported among a population of six thousand. It is worth noting, however, that one of the early British doctors, Bousfield, claimed that during a long career in the Sudan he ‘never’ saw a case of scarlet fever; rheumatic fever was ‘very rare’; he saw ‘few’ cases of heart disease; appendicitis was ‘almost unknown’; and the incidence of cancer was ‘negligible’.102

7 The Sudan Government's troubled adolescence 1919-1924

,

CAIRO AND KHARTOUM

The British war effort was much more direct and burdensome in Egypt than in the Sudan. The declaration of a Protectorate in 1914 had been accompanied by a pledge that Britain alone would bear the burden of Egypt’s defence, and that after the war steps would be taken towards Egypt’s independence. Years of experience had given the lie to the former promise, as some 1.5 million Egyptians were conscripted into a Labour Corps, the fallahin were subjected to harsh and unjust treatment, and British officials turned a blind eye to obvious abuses, all for the war. The urban population suffered from a rapidly rising cost of living; the fallahin saw their fodder requisitioned by the army (at what a Foreign Office report called a ‘fair but fixed price, somewhat below the market price’), leaving them insufficient amounts even for their own cattle. Various ‘forms of compulsion’ were used to conscript the fallahin. Incidents involving British troops quartered in Egyptian towns and villages had created further resentment.1 The war demonstrated Egypt’s crucial position in the empire, and once the war was won the British reneged on the promised progress towards independence. Their attitude was clarified after 13 November 1918 when Wingate, as high commissioner, received a delegation (wafd) of Sa’d Zaghlul, a prominent ex-minister, and two colleagues, who requested permission to visit London and put the case for Egyptian independence. Wingate counselled conciliation. The Foreign Office rejected this advice and made it clear that there was no intention of abolishing the Protectorate. Zaghlul and his associates were deported, and violence erupted throughout Egypt. Wingate’s personal enemies in Cairo and London ensured that he was made the scapegoat, and he was superseded as high commissioner by Lord Allenby.2 Order was restored in Egypt, and Zaghlul was allowed to go to Paris where he attempted unsuccessfully to put Egypt’s case at the 2 66

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

Fig. 12

267

Lord Allenby presenting a flag to the retb of the Shilluk, c. 1924

Peace Conference. The spontaneity and violence of the anti-British upris¬ ing, and the fact that it had the support of the great mass of thefallahin, the effendia, and even of the Copts, had a powerful depressant effect on the British, and although the revolt failed in 1919 to win Egypt’s independence, it precluded a return to pre-war tutelage. Despite attempts to blame the violent outburst on Young Turks, German agents, President Wilson, the Anglo-French declaration to the Arabs, the presence of the Amir Faisal at the Peace Conference, and even, perversely, on a ‘new feeling of independence’ engendered by the prosperity of th efallahin,3 the British were unable to recover a moral basis for their rule in Egypt. The rising tension in Egypt in November 1918 sowed a rapidly maturing crop of rumours in the Sudan about the future of Britain’s rule in the Nile Valley. On 22 December a Sudan Government memorandum described the interest of Egyptian officers and Omdurman merchants in the de¬ veloping ‘movement’ in Egypt. There was a ‘feeling of uneasiness, an apprehension that there may be “something in it”, i.e., that the British may withdraw from Egypt and thereby leave the Sudan at the mercy of the Egyptians’. Even the most trusted elements had now ‘withdrawn from their position of outspoken loyalty’ and were ‘awaiting the turn of events’. Wild rumours circulated: Turkish officials would replace the British, the slave trade was to be restored (with the Southern Sudan as its source of supply), pro-British Sudanese were to be punished, and so forth.4 Stack suggested to Wingate that the ‘definite appointment of a Governor General and Sirdar’ would dispel any illusions of a British withdrawal, and on

268

Empire on the Nile

27 December Wingate finally (and ungraciously) urged the Foreign Office to act on Stack’s ‘confirmation or otherwise’ in order to keep separate the ‘Egyptian and Sudan questions’. The Egyptian revolution intervened, however, and Stack was not finally confirmed in his dual post until May 1919.5 Although by then Stack could hardly be described as a newcomer, he certainly acquired additional prestige and authority by his confirma¬ tion, and was in a better position than he would otherwise have been in dealing with Wingate’s successor, Allenby. The new high commissioner had no experience of the Sudan, nor of civil administration, and his relations with the Sudan Government would depend much on the advice he received from his officials and on his personal relations with Stack. CairoKhartoum relations were generally smooth during Stack’s term, except during the crisis of 1924 when their deterioration itself gave support to the Sudan Government’s arguments for independence from the high commis¬ sioner. It was during the immediate post-war period that the status of the Sudan became a major issue in Anglo-Egyptian relations, and it was over that issue that most disagreements occurred between the Palace and the Residency. In general, however, the Sudan Government enjoyed as great a degree of independence from Cairo during Allenby’s tenure as it had during Wingate’s. The economic, political, and social forces that had long tended to separate the two administrations continued to do so, whatever the position formally recognised. It could be said that the Sudan Govern¬ ment had at its disposal (and at its head) men of much more practical experience in Egypt and the Sudan than the Residency had. The Sudan Government had given London no recent reason to doubt its competence and, in any case, the Foreign Office continued to require from the Sudan only what it had always wanted there: peace and quiet. An issue that had become a theme in relations between the Palace and the Residency continued to arise during Stack’s governor-generalship. This was the question of consultation. It was almost inevitable that the changed circumstances occasioned by the war; the increasing importance of the Sudan in British eyes, for strategic and economic reasons; the greater bureaucratisation of the Sudan Government and the emergence of the governor-general’s council from under his control; and the growing difficulty of supervising the Sudan’s affairs from a distance would divide the two centres of British power on the Nile. Egypt’s independence in 1922 accelerated the process, as did the emergence of the ‘Sudan question’ as a major issue in Anglo-Egyptian relations. In 1923 the Residency observed the Sudan Government’s ‘growing tendency ... to “cut out” the High Commissioner, and to deal directly with the F.O.’, a tendency ‘possibly . . . encouraged in London’. In 1924 reference was made to ‘flagrant . . . instances’ of ‘direct communication’.6 The Residency was in a poor

The government's troubled, adolescence, 1919-1924

269

position to demand compliance with old forms of consultation, since the Foreign Office, in dealing with the Egyptian government, increasingly emphasised the independence of action guaranteed the governor-general by the Condominium Agreement. Indeed, in November 1924 the (British) Judicial Adviser to the Egyptian government wrote that by the terms of that agreement ‘the Governor General is a sovereign’. His only obligation was ‘to notify his ordinances to the Residency and the Egyptian Govern¬ ment’: neither that government nor the high commissioner could tell him what to do.7 Although this view was disputed by other experts, it was convenient for the Foreign Office, since by claiming that the powers of the co-domini began and ended with the appointment of a governor-general, it precluded any alteration of his status or interference with the status quo. This made it difficult, however, for the Residency to demand conformity with its demand for detailed consultation, a demand that was increasingly impractical in any case. British distrust of the Egyptian element in the Sudan Government was as old as the Condominium, but during the war the supposed sympathy of the Egyptian officer class and civilian officials in the Ottoman cause had been an irritant to Wingate and his colleagues. Steps taken to ensure the loyalty of the officer corps and to prevent the spread by Egyptians of subversive propaganda among the Sudanese were apparently effective, assuming that the officers’ disloyalty and subversion were actually contemplated or attempted. Wingate himself, who in 1916 had referred characteristically to Egyptian officers as ‘the ultimate cause of nearly all our previous administrative failures’, admitted after the war that the officers had in fact behaved admirably. The Egyptian revolution in 1919, however, left a deep and lasting impression on the British in the Sudan. Again the army remained loyal, but the British seemed unable or unwilling to understand why. The sense of the Egyptians’ racial inferiority may have been so ingrained that they were distrusted as potential mutineers but seen as cowards for remaining loyal. The revolution provided the Sudan Govern¬ ment with a seemingly irrefutable argument for accelerating the dimin¬ ution of Egypt’s role in the Condominium: the Egyptians had rebelled against British rule - why should they be allowed to share in the administration of the Sudan, where inevitably they would foment disaffec¬ tion? A government hierarchy that had been accustomed for two decades to blame its failings on Egyptian corruption and ineptness found it difficult to resist the notion of a fifth column of Egyptian officers and officials. Having failed by insurrection to rid their country of the British yoke, these malcontents, so the theory had it, were conspiring by whispered rumours, lies,

insubordination,

and

propaganda

to

turn

the

unsophisticated

Sudanese against the very government that had rescued them from the

2 JO

Empire on the Nile

brink of extinction a generation earlier. The great contribution made by Egyptians over two decades was now to be ignored altogether or labelled a facade for subversion. Although it was not until the crisis of 1924 that the Egyptian officers, troops, and some officials were withdrawn from the Sudan, the campaign against them had deep roots and complex motivation. Although there was little outward sign of sympathy for the Egyptian revolution among the Sudanese, certainly the proto-nationalist groups that emerged in the early 1920s were at least partly inspired by events in Egypt. Among Egyptian officials and officers there was a generally sympathetic response, but almost no overt insubordination. As far as the government could ascertain, attempts to suborn the Sudanese were unconcerted, inept, and rebuffed. Notables such as the Three Sayyids and others were reported to have shown alarm, amusement, disdain, but no sympathy. In February 1919 Stack reported to Wingate, nominally high commissioner, on ‘the growth of national aspirations in the Sudan’. He judged these still to be non-existent, but supposed that events in Egypt would engender them. Stack believed that the growth of a Sudanese ‘nationalist idea’ would have as its focus the removal of Egyptians from the administration. A ‘definitely British Ascendancy in the country’ would then preclude a lurch towards a ‘Pan-Arab or Pan-Islamic movement’, he averred, and would rid the country of the hated Egyptians. This hopeful assessment was based on the views of the same Sudanese notables who had for years denounced Egypt. Stack now saw their anti-Egyptian sentiment as the beginning of a Sudanese national movement that presented the Sudan Government with ‘an opportunity as well as a sound reason for attempting to get rid of much that is unsatisfactory in the present administration’, that is, the Egyptians. It is apparent that the longstanding British distrust of the Egyptians was strengthened by the testimony of leading Sudanese. The tacit alliance between them and the government was rudely shaken when the ‘national idea’ began to express itself as anti-British and pro-Egyptian, a develop¬ ment that seemed to necessitate not only getting rid of the Egyptians but crushing the ‘national idea’ as well.

THE SUDAN GOVERNMENT,

1919-1924

During the closing months of his long tenure as governor-general Wingate was disinterested in Sudanese affairs and preoccupied with the Hijaz and personal matters. Stack’s first months in office were largely spent in dealing with affairs that Wingate had neglected since the beginning of the war. As he told Clayton, his experience as civil secretary had been ‘most useful’ since in that office he had already had to perform many of the duties Wingate ignored.8 Wingate’s selfish removal to Cairo of several important

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

27J

officials made the period of transition more difficult. Stack complained that of officials he had ‘practically one of everything in place of two or three . . . under the old regime’. The ‘acting’ status of the adjutant-general, civil secretary, and military secretary added to his work.9 His private secretary and assistant private secretary were new to their posts, thus breaking a continuity in the Palace that would be resumed under Stack. The fact that the new governor-general had risen through the government ranks allowed more scope for old personal animosities and ambitions among senior officials to surface, but his manner helped to smooth these difficulties. The governor-general’s council, little more than a formal gathering of officials in Wingate’s day, became under Stack a real consultative body: in effect, a cabinet. It met on average fourteen times a year during the eight years of his governor-generalship, and steadily grew in status and responsibility. Stack viewed himself as first among equals, and in many respects was overshadowed by his subordinates, officials like Sterry, MacMichael, and Schuster, whose capacities were greater than his own. Stack was not jealous of his authority, however, and it was no bad thing for a governor-general to have available, and to heed, intelligent advice. The Sudan Government was becoming ‘professional’: by 1919 someone of the background and qualifi¬ cations of Slatin Pasha already seemed a figure of antiquity. The most important lasting effect of the war on the composition of the Sudan Government was finally and irreversibly to tip the balance in favour of civilian as against military officials. By January 1916 some 117 officers of the Egyptian Army and officials of the Sudan Government had departed for the war. Recruitment for the Political Service all but ceased, only a few soldiers and ex-soldiers being enlisted. In 1919, however, eleven civilians were recruited; in 1920, twenty-three; in 1921, twelve; in 1922, fifteen; in 1923, ten; and in 1924, twelve. These post-war recruits included a high proportion of the men who were to rule the Sudan in the decades ahead: the 1919 intake included V. H. Fergusson (‘Fergie Bey’), Philip Ingleson, G. N. I. Morrison, and Martin Parr; the remarkable 1920 group included Brian Kennedy-Cooke, Maurice Fush, Douglas Newbold, Shuldham Redfern, A. J. Arkell, C. F. Armstrong, C. G. Davies, J. A. de C. Hamilton, F. D. Kingdon, R. C. Mayall, Edington Miller, and C. H. F. Skeet. In 1921 George Bredin, Ewen Campbell, and G. C. Scott joined the service; in 1922 Thomas Creed and James Robertson. Increasingly, the military men in the administrative service were taken on especially for work in the south, often on a contract basis. In the ‘Blue Book’, Sudan

Political Service, their names at first attract little notice because of the brevity of their biographical details, explained by long careers in one or two provinces instead of the frequent transfer common among civilians in the north. Some spent their entire careers in one province: Captain

272

Empire on the Nile

W. M. H. Pollen in Mongalla (1918-26), Captain H. C. E. Routh in the Bahr al-Ghazal (1919-27), J. M. Lee in the Upper Nile Province (1920-9), H. F. Kidd in the Bahr al-Ghazal (1920-32), P. G. W. Maynard in Mongalla (1920-31), and G. S. Platts in the Upper Nile (1921-8). These ‘Bog Barons’ were essential to the administration of the south, since few civilian recruits were willing to accept the extended tours that a knowledge of local languages and customs demanded. A few older officials whose careers in the Sudan had begun with secondment from the Egyptian Army were still present in the upper echelon of government, but they were clearly the last of that breed. It was in the inter-war years that the Sudan Political Service emerged as a famous elite corps. Stack’s governor-generalship was a time of transition for provincial administration. At the end of the war the fifteen provincial governorships were held by seven civilians and eight officers or former officers, an example of the ‘balance’ Wingate favoured. By the end of Stack’s governorgeneralship, in 1924, thirteen mudirs were civilian members of the Political Service, only two were soldiers, and these were in the south (M. J. Wheatley in the Bahr al-Ghazal and C. S. Northcote in the Nuba Mountains). The ascendancy of the civilians was even more pronounced on the district level where, outside the south, it had become very exceptional for an inspector to be a military man. The de-militarisation of provincial administration coincided with its greater centralisation. This is most evident in a redefinition of the roles of inspector and ma’mur partly to diminish Egyptian influence. From 1917 various proposals were debated to improve the position of inspector, reduce that of ma’mur, and devolve more routine judicial, financial, and police powers on Sudanese officials. In 1920 a system of ‘double inspector¬ ates’ was introduced, after much discussion, whereby two British inspec¬ tors would be assigned to a single district to ensure continuity of super¬ vision and, not incidentally, to allow a centralisation of control in British hands. From 15 December 1921 the title of inspector was superseded by district commissioner, a change that both recognised and approved the increasing emphasis on his executive rather than supervisory role. Senior inspectors were to be designated as deputy governors. As a further mark of distinction, the term Political Service began in the early 1920s to denote the British civilian administrative cadre.10 In 1927 it was estimated that since 1908 there had been an increase of 100 per cent in the number of British administrative officials. Nor was the Anglicisation of the government limited to administration. At El Obeid in 1924 there were, in addition to the governor, deputy governor, two assistant district commissioners, and a sub-inspector, a British judge, local audit inspector, engineer, assistant

The government's troubled, adolescence, 1919-1924

273

district engineer, agricultural inspector and two veterinary officers'1 - a far cry from the single British officer who surveyed the abandoned town a generation earlier. While the number of British district officials increased, and their role was enhanced, the position of ma’mur underwent a corresponding dimin¬ ution. In 1917 Bonham Carter deprecated the interposition of Egyptian officials between the British and the Sudanese, and he and Corbyn, the assistant civil secretary, recommended the devolution of ma’murs’ powers to Sudanese under direct British control.12 No statutory change was made, however, and the dilution of the ma’mur’s power proceeded gradually until, by 1924, he was in most districts an administrative assistant to the district commissioner in all but name. Like the Egyptian schoolmaster, the

ma’mur seems to have been resented for being needed. British officials’ accounts of the early Condominium seldom mention the ma’murs at all, dwelling instead on the notion that the inspector was a jack of all trades. In fact it was

the ma’mur on whom fell responsibility for ordinary

administration, and blame when trouble arose. Despite the expansion of administration after the war and its growing ‘professionalisation’, the force of personality still played a significant part in determining government policy and the relative importance of depart¬ ments. This is evident in the case of the ‘Three Secretaries’. Stack’s own tenure as civil secretary had begun a steady advance in the influence of that department.

Having offered the position to Gilbert Clayton who,

however, preferred to remain in Cairo as Sudan Agent, Stack appointed Feilden, governor of the Bahr al-Ghazal. Feilden retired in 1921 and was succeeded by C. E. Lyall, governor of Kassala. Both men came to the civil secretaryship through seniority, and neither made an impact on the office. Indeed, Feilden’s appointment ‘was an order’. In the year of his retirement he confided that the civil secretaryship had ‘made an old man’ of him.13 Lyall, on the contrary, was considered a time-server: even during the crisis of 1924 he reportedly could not ‘understand anyone being busy during the morning’.14 But the appointment in 1919 of H. A. MacMichael as assistant civil secretary ensured the eventual ascendancy of the department. Mac¬ Michael succeeded Lyall as civil secretary in 1926, served until 1934, and thus dominated the department for fifteen years. His influence generally was immense, based on great intelligence, extensive study and experience of the Sudan, a commanding ability in debate, a rigidity of standards, and a public presence of icy reserve. He was acting civil secretary in all but name from the time he entered the department in 1919. Similarly, Stack’s forceful legal secretary, Wasey Sterry, wielded influence beyond his official posi¬ tion which, during Bonham Carter’s incumbency, had retained prestige

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largely because of his friendship with Wingate, his prominence as a leading civilian, and his ex officio membership of the governor-general’s council and other committees. E. E. Bernard remained

as

financial

secretary

until

1922.

His

unpopularity kept pace with the growing complexity of the Sudan’s financial affairs. As long as he remained insulated by the Financial Regulations, seniority, experience, the goodwill of the Residency and the cooperation, at least, of the governor-general, there was little that his many enemies could do to reduce his influence. In the difficult early months of Stack’s governor-generalship Bernard went to great lengths to cooperate with him, earning Stack’s gratitude. Bernard’s colleagues and subordinates took a different view, and tried to capitalise on Wingate’s departure to settle scores with Bernard.15 Stack remained loyal even after it became clear that financial affairs were suffering under Bernard’s management. In 1920 relations between Bernard and his subordinates deteriorated to the point where A. J. Forster, the senior financial inspector, led a depart¬ mental revolt. Forster’s dislike for Bernard personally is obvious from his correspondence: an attack of gout was ‘ “Ikyphobia” or “Bernarditis” ’; the financial secretary was ‘the beast’, ‘as cunning as the devil’, a ‘con¬ temptible brute’, and so forth. It is clear, however, that the department’s affairs were muddled, and that there was merit in the staff’s complaints, which chiefly concerned overwork (because Bernard refused to fill vacancies) and an overcentralisation of authority in his hands. In March 1920 most of the leading officials of the department wrote a formal letter of complaint to Stack, as did the department’s section heads. The letters were held back while pressure was brought on Bernard. Forster wrote that there is no doubt that we have practically the whole Govt, behind us but. . . they all say that Stack being Stack would not consider it sufficient to say you must retire, though he can always do so without giving any reason now the man is over 50. Sterry and Crowfoot both rant and say they would do it at once . . . yet they are certain Stack would not. Moreover they don’t seem to have the backbone to go to Stack in a body. ... It is really pathetic. . . . The thing is he [Bernard] is frightened to death about the Irrigation Dept, and the Gezira scheme works, and with much more cause than I think he realises. If Stack resisted their suggested reforms they would ‘demand to be relieved of all responsibility for the inevitable result’.16 Bernard tried to prevent an official complaint, and promised reforms within the department: fixed working hours, a decentralisation of auth¬ ority, more staff, and, most importantly, the appointment of an auditorgeneral to the government. But in mid-April he threatened revenge against Forster if the letter of complaint was submitted to Stack, whereupon the complainants immediately went to the governor-general. Stack was

The government’s troubled, adolescence, 1919-1924

275

sympathetic, promised to oversee personally the promised reforms, and intimated that although he was not presently prepared to dismiss him, the circumstances were likely soon to arise that would justify his doing so.17 This was the beginning of the end for Bernard. In the spring of 1921 the government was forced, in the light of shocking revised estimates of the cost of the Gezira Scheme (see below, pp. 421-3), to approach the British government for more financial assistance. Investigations indicated that slackness and unprofessional methods, for which Bernard personally was responsible, had helped to precipitate the crisis. A suggestion that the British Treasury and the Foreign Office should undertake supervision of the Sudan Government’s budget was rejected as unworkable, and the Foreign Office decided that Bernard should be replaced by someone nominated by and enjoying the confidence of the Treasury. Because he had dealt with so much of the preliminary work for the new financing it was felt necessary to retain Bernard’s services until a loan was floated, and it was not until August 1922 that he was dismissed, during an unpleasant scene at the Foreign Office.18 The financial secretaryship was offered to George Schuster, a barrister and financier, who was appointed on 1 January 1923 to a five-year term.19 Although nominated by the Treasury, Schuster’s was still entirely a Sudan Government appointment, suggestions that the Treasury assume direct supervision having again been rejected. ‘Men and not measures’ were wanted, the Foreign Office believed.20 Schuster came to the Sudan enjoy¬ ing the confidence of the British government, an obvious advantage that, however, he hardly needed. Like MacMichael, with whom he soon became firm friends, Schuster had a quick intelligence, great administrative ability, and enormous energy. He was also ambitious. His influence soon extended far beyond financial administration, and in 1924 he was the Sudan Govern¬ ment’s chief spokesman in London during the critical Anglo-Egyptian negotiations over the status of the Sudan. The administration of his large department was Schuster’s obvious first duty, for without reforms of the old procedures inherited from the Egyptian Army there could be no hope of solving the problems left behind by Bernard or of avoiding new ones. An auditor-general, F. B. Hardinge, had been appointed in November 1920. In August 1923 Forster wrote delightedly that the government accounts for 1922 had been closed in July (the accounts for 1921 having been closed as late as January 1923), and that the audit department was performing valuable work. Legacies of the long Bernard era continually cropped up. In October 1923 an enquiry ‘brought to light the most appalling incompetence in the Personnel and Pensions Section’, according to Forster, and in January 1924 the department’s books and forms section was said to be in a ‘shocking state’: no records had been

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kept since 1918, with the result that no section of the financial department had a current copy of its own regulations!21 By the time he left office Schuster had reorganised the department and reformed its methods. His most prominent effort, however, involved the high finance of the Gezira Scheme and the high strategy of Anglo-Egyptian relations, as will be seen. The private secretaryship was less important under Stack than it had been in Wingate’s day. Stack was satisfied to delegate to department heads much of the routine work Wingate had reserved for his own supervision, and under Stack departmental business was increasingly bureaucratised, thus precluding the constant mix of business and private matters that characterised Wingate’s enormous correspondence with subordinates. The duties of the private secretary, who continued to administer the governorgeneral’s office in the Palace, therefore conformed more closely with his title. Stack’s private secretaries, Mervyn Wheatley, who served from 1917 to 1920, A. B. B. Howell (1920-3), and R. V. Bardsley (1923-5) never reached the status that Clayton, Symes, or Stack himself had enjoyed as adviser and confidant of the governor-general. The Sudan Agent in Cairo remained an important figure. Having held the post himself, Stack knew how useful a competent agent could be to a governor-general, and he was pleased when Gilbert Clayton, after declin¬ ing the civil secretaryship, agreed to remain in the Cairo office. Clayton’s letters show how important he was as a loyal source of candid information. He resigned in 1920 and was succeeded by R. E. More, governor of Khartoum, who held the post until 1931. During the war Clayton had accumulated numerous duties outside the agency, and when More was appointed in 1920 he was charged with ‘restoring it to its pre-war condition’. More was the first civilian Sudan Agent, and it was probably for that reason that the directorship of the intelligence department was at last formally separated from the Agency. Much of More’s time as agent was taken up in reporting Egyptian political developments of interest to the Sudan Government.22 The disappearance from the scene of Slatin Pasha in 1914 left a vacuum in the intelligence department in Khartoum, largely because of his highly personal methods. Experience gained during the first two years of the war indicated, however, that the government could survive the loss of his vaunted services, and even Wingate approved generally of the department’s work. C. A. Willis, having become assistant director at Khartoum in 1916, quickly emerged as the official in charge of Sudan intelligence, since the Sudan Agent, still nominally director of intelligence, was preoccupied in Cairo. Willis was made director in 1920, and remained in the post until 1926. The inspector-generalship was not formally abolished until after the 23 war. Willis was a capable, clever, and ambitious man, disdainful of the

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

277

incompetence he unceasingly detected around him. If his colleagues and superiors had hoped that the intelligence department, now that Slatin had gone, would be their servant rather than their master, they were sorely disappointed. Willis considered himself Slatin’s successor in a position whatever title was attached to it - of potentially great power and influence. In a letter to his sister in November 1916 he mused about the remote possibilities of his advancement in the normal way, but said: ‘I have an elaborate plan to make myself essential to the Govt, by getting the native to come to me in the way that they used to go to Slatin, and I think that... if they do so, I shall get into a very strong position and incidentally I shall get to know a lot of interesting stuff.’ Two weeks later he was more specific: ‘the Palace will find itself very dependent on me, and I want to make it so. It is a chance not to be overlooked. Stack who is practically unknown to the native is having for his private sec. a quite junior man who has no knowledge of the people either, and all the old staff who did know a bit are going. So the folk will have to come to me. ... So I have hopes.’24 It is useful to view the work of the intelligence department, after the war, with Willis’s ambitions in mind. For the ‘system’ as Slatin left it was perfectly arranged to accommodate them. When explaining the organisa¬ tion of the department in 1919, Willis claimed that ‘a system of Intelligence for the Sudan has largely to be based on a very full and personal knowledge of the leading personalities . . . and if possible ties of personal friendship with them’, an odd conclusion open to obvious objection. By 1918 he had, he said privately, already acquired ‘quite a clientele’ and ‘taken peculiar and binding oaths of mutual secrecy on occasion’.25 Wingate never completely trusted Willis, and on occasion circumvented the intelligence depart¬ ment,26 but he of course had never seen in Willis a successor to Slatin. Willis was wise enough to realise that his influence depended upon what he knew, not on titles or statutory powers, and the use to which he put his knowledge was to have serious consequences in the post-war years. Willis made no attempt to reform the intelligence department which, over the years, had acquired a congeries of discrete responsibilities unrelated to political or military intelligence work. As he later commented in an unpublished memoir, ‘the central government had a way of throwing at the Department any job that was not specifically defined elsewhere’.27 When Reginald Davies became assistant director of intelligence in 1924 he found that the department was still ‘generally regarded as a line of approach to the Government by all and sundry, such as the son of an ex-Dervish Emir who wants a grant of land in Omdurman, a dismissed employee wanting reinstatement, the head of a religious sect troubled by schism, an indigent pilgrim of distinction whose financial arrangements have miscar¬ ried and so on, very nearly ad infinitum’.28 With a relatively small and non¬ specialist staff the department was extremely inefficient, but in its routine

278

Empire on the Nile

functions this hardly mattered. As a central information bureau it received and dispensed information, it prepared the self-censored and misnamed

Sudan intelligence reports that were published and received so long after the news they reported as to be of little utility within the Sudan, and of use mainly as propaganda outside the country. The department’s relations with provincial authorities were poor because Willis, like Slatin, employed numbers of ‘secret agents’. These were not always either secret or agents, and the information they supplied varied widely in reliability. Provincial officials were justified in believing, moreover, that agents were spying on them. Willis communicated directly with subordinate province staff, until in 1922 a governors’ meeting resolved that the practice be discontinued.29 In 1924 Stack expressed ‘decided dissatisfaction’ with the department’s reports on political unrest, and in 1925 a committee appointed by him to report on public security intelligence condemned the department in unequivocal terms. By 1925 Willis was so intensely unpopular, both for personal and political reasons, that his department’s failings provided a pretext for replacing him. The ramshackle department was thereafter reformed, but the damage had been done. Willis’s tenure at the intelligence department is an excellent example of the importance of the individual in the Sudan Government and, specifically, of the government’s failure during the Stack regime to systematise and reform methods that had been improvised during the Wingate years.

THE RISE OF SAYYID 'ABD AL-RAHMAN AL-MAHDI

C. A. Willis’s policy towards Mahdism during the war was not only in advance of official consensus, it was pursued and implemented without ever being explicitly formulated or approved. In a memorandum written in 1926 Reginald Davies, a stern critic of Willis and opponent of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman, described the war-time changes thus: some had been the result of ‘a modification of policy deliberately proposed; others . . . the unfore¬ seen consequence of action taken; others, perhaps the majority, appear superficially to represent a gradual drift, of which the Government was at the time unconscious’. Certainly there was a ‘drift’ during the war, but few officials discerned it and there were few indications that its direction was dangerous. As in other areas, ‘official policy’ had been blurred over two decades, its leading exponents had departed, and the man designated to detect deviations, Willis, actively pursued an opposing line. Khartoum’s declaration of a policy did not lead necessarily to its enforcement or ensure that officials cared very much whether it was enforced or not. Nor was the government simply too preoccupied with the war to notice Sayyid 'Abd alRahman’s increasing influence: he would not have been enlisted in its

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

279

support if that had been the case. Willis wrote in June 1918 that the sayyid’s ‘influence had been wholly in the interest of the Government, and his services have probably been more valuable and sincere to us than most of the other religious chiefs, whose loyalty is taken for granted’.30 The ‘drift’ continued after the war when, so far from retiring, Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was included by the government in a Sudanese delegation to London. The Sudan Government’s post-Slatin indifference to Mahdism may be seen with reference to the Ratib, the devotional book compiled by the Mahdi. In 1917 Willis solicited the opinion of the Grand Kadi, Shaykh Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi, who ruled that it contained nothing unorthodox. Willis therefore advised no local action to discourage its use, pending the governor-general’s ‘consideration of the whole question of the Mahdist Sect’. It was 1921 before the civil secretary reported that Stack felt unable to make a general ruling, and left the matter to the discretion of local authorities. This was not a policy; it merely confirmed that there was none. A 1921-2 edition of the Ratib was first noticed by the intelligence department in December 1926; another edition, of five thousand copies, was published in Cairo in 1924 and distributed openly in the Sudan. Similarly, regarding the ‘organising’ of the Mahdists the government fell victim to its own nonchalance. At least as early as 1916 Sayyid 'Abd alRahman had ‘agents’ (manadib) and ‘sub-agents’ (wukala’) in the prov¬ inces. When confronted with the fact (in 1921) he admitted it, provided a list of agents, but insisted that he had always had the spoken approval of Willis and the relevant mudir before appointing any agent. Even Davies had to admit that this was true, but complained that ‘by getting assent for the sending of individual agents to particular places, and, ostensibly, for particular and innocuous purposes, Sayed Abdel Rahman gradually familiarised . . . Government officials with an idea which would have encountered considerable opposition had it been brusquely presented without concealment of its implications’. This, Davies claimed, was only one example of the sayyid’s favourite method of dealing with the govern¬ ment: the fait accompli.2,1 Clearly, by 1926 Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was so resented that even the government’s incompetence was blamed on him; it was no business of his to explain to the Sudan Government the ‘implica¬ tions’ of activities it approved. Davies’s 1926 retrospective placed insufficient emphasis on Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s utility to the government, which did not end with the war. During the Egyptian revolution in 1919 the idea was raised of sending a delegation of Sudanese notables to London, to congratulate the king on the successful conclusion of the war, and in turn to accept his thanks for the Sudan’s loyal contribution to the war effort. The Egyptian revolution added significance to the event, and the Sudan Government wanted the

280

Empire on the Nile

Shaykh 'Ali al-Tum

Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi Fig. 13

delegation to be as broadly representative as possible. In April the country’s leading religious figures, including the three Sayyids, the mufti, the president of the Board of Ulema, and the head of the Isma 'iliyya tariqa, had expressed their disapproval of events in Egypt, on behalf of ‘the whole population of the Sudan’.32 The delegation to London was more compre¬ hensive, in recognition of the attainment by the leaders of popular Islam of collaborative parity with the orthodox notables and tribal chiefs: Shaykh al-Tayyib Ahmad Hashim, the mufti; his brother, Shaykh Abu’l-Qasim, president of the Board of Ulema; Shaykh Isma'il al-Azhari, qadi of Darfur; four tribal leaders: 'Abd al-'Azim Bey Khalifa of the 'Ababda, 'Ali al-Tum of the Kababish, Ibrahim Farah of the Ja'aliyin, and 'Awad al-Karim Abu Sinn of the Shukriya; and the Three Sayyids. Stack was especially eager to include Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman, who had been ‘constantly loyal through the war and the recent trouble’, and who represented ‘a big following in the Sudan’. Stack hoped that there would be no ‘sentimental objection’ to his visiting England, for the sayyid was ‘living proof of the change that can be effected in one generation of sympathetic administration’.33 Although Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani was designated leader of the delega¬ tion, it was the son of the Mahdi who, through shrewd manipulation of its potential, emerged as its chief beneficiary. At the delegation’s audience he presented his father’s sword to the king, apparently as a token of submis¬ sion. In time-honoured fashion George V touched and returned the sword,

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

28i

for the sayyid to keep ‘in defence of the Sudan and the Empire foreover’. The sword was reportedly put to much different use by Mahdists in the Sudan: the episode of the presentation was woven into a legend that the king had shown approval of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman and even of Mahd¬ ism.34 Be that as it may, the sayyid’s participation in the delegation marked an important step forward in his personal progress and the ‘recrudescence’, as government officials called it, of Mahdism. Despite the stated ‘unofficial’ character of the meeting with the king, it could hardly be said with much credibility that he had not been ‘recognised’ in his position by the British government. In return, his presence in London added to the propaganda value of the delegation at a time of turmoil in Anglo-Egyptian relations and a time of uncertainty in the Sudan. From 1919 to 1924 Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s relations with the govern¬ ment were clouded by the vast grey areas in the government’s policy. Was he a respected and valued leader of Sudanese opinion, or an interloper, a charlatan, a secret revolutionary? The government as a whole could not decide, and in its vacillation lay the sayyid’s opportunity. The diverse nature of his following further complicated the government’s task and fortified the sayyid’s position. In the riverain areas of the central Sudan he was seen in much the way of a traditional religious shaykh, who was revered for his baraka and respected, even by non-Mahdists, as an important and influential man, the son of his father. In the western Sudan, however, and by many West African immigrants, Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was seen as the Nabi 'Isa who would soon proclaim his identity and raise the standard of revolt against the infidel government. Willis described this broad distinction as between ‘the modernist Mahdist sect’ and ‘oldfashioned Mahdism’, a distinction drawn by the sayyid himself, although not in these words. The several episodes of religiously inspired violence that occurred during the immediate post-war period were unconnected with Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman; indeed, the very ineptness of their conception and execution contrasted with the growing sophistication of the sayyid’s organisation and appeal. Two examples may be cited. In December 1918 Muhammad Sanbu, reportedly suffering from ‘religious mania’, led an attack of disgruntled tribesmen on the fort at Kassala, which was repulsed only because of its poor direction. Sanbu was tracked down and killed.35 In the spring of 1919, Muhammad Sa'id Hamid, a nephew of the Mahdi who lived under close supervision at Singa, announced that he was the Nabi 'Isa. Despite reportedly living the life of ‘a luxurious debauchee’ he was ‘believed ... to be the possessor of miraculous powers’ and was the object of veneration. His attempted rising failed at its inception and he was executed in August 1919.36 Despite these incidents it was in the west that

282

Empire on the Nile

the threat of ‘fanaticism’ seemed greatest. This became strikingly clear in 1921, when the most serious ‘Mahdist’ rising since 1908 occurred at Nyala in Darfur. Despite the fact that officials in the west had for some time expressed concern with the ‘recrudescence’ of Mahdism in the region, there had been no serious religiously inspired risings for years. Local disturbances had continued, but these were considered inevitable, isolated outbreaks of endemic fanaticism. The Nyala rising was notable because it almost succeeded in its immediate object and because it involved a large number of insurgents from many different tribes. On 26 September 1921 between five thousand and six thousand men led by a Masalati faki, 'Abdallah alSihayni, attacked the government post at Nyala. The government lost 41 officers and men, the inspector, Tennent McNeill, and a British veterinary officer. Rebel losses were estimated at six hundred. 'Abdallah himself was wounded, and this deterred his followers from a second, probably success¬ ful assault on the small government force. He was captured by tribesmen and handed over to the government in October, and hanged at Nyala on the 28th. Disturbances continued throughout October and November, however, until a government patrol through southern Darfur restored order, although not without encountering resistance: it was attacked on 27 November by between two thousand and three thousand tribesmen who were repulsed with 87 dead. No further serious resistance was met, and large numbers of animals were confiscated.37 In November Colonel Balfour of the intelligence department wrote that the ‘Nyala business’ had come ‘very much out of the blue’. Officials were therefore quick to blame Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman, ‘indirectly’, for the unrest, their very quickness indicating to what extent ‘Mahdist fanaticism’ had become a favourite refuge of officials who could not explain, or preferred not to recognise, Sudanese discontent. The governor of Darfur’s accusation that the sayyid had been in correspondence with various people in the province, and that his letters, even if ‘perfectly innocent’, had had a negative effect, was so vague that it might have been made against the governor himself. According to Savile, 'Abdallah al-Sihayni had been ‘a Mahdist and was continually reading the Rateb [sic]’. In his 1926 memorandum Davies claimed that the Nyala rising could not ‘be regarded as independent of the spreading influence of Mahdism in the west. . . . though it would not be justifiable to infer a direct eastern instigation of the rebellion’.38 Yet soon after the rising, in reference to the Masalit (who had been prominent among Sihayni’s followers), he had expressed a different view: ‘Our moral claim to their loyalty is nil,’ he wrote in December 1921. ‘Under these circumstances the words “loyalty” and “disloyalty’ are inappropriate to an account of the recent unrest.’39

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

283

The true causes of the Nyala rising were obscured by officials too ready to blame the government’s mistakes on Mahdist conspiracies, or too prejudiced to discern a difference. To be sure, Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s ‘agents’ had been touring in the western Sudan, as had other fakis unconnected with him; a ‘pilgrimage’ from the west to his seat at Aba Island was gaining momentum; his influence was increasing. But Sihayni had made no claims for the sayyid, and there is abundant evidence from government sources of tribal dissatisfaction of a purely mundane kind. Willis only hinted at this in the Sudan intelligence report for November 1921, in which he listed five causes for disturbance in the west: (r) The world-wide condition of unrest which has affected even the most remote tribes. (2) The fact that the older men have seen the disappearance of two regimes in the Sudan and feel that the present Government has lasted its allotted time. (3) False reports of the successes of the Nyala rising. (4) The unsettling effect of seditious circulars. (5) The increase this year of the Flomr herd tax rate.40 The first four of these, spurious to varying degrees as ‘reasons’ for the unrest, can be discounted. The fifth should be amplified. Grant, inspector at Zalingei in 1921, reported that in his district the 1920 ushur assessment (which had been conducted in his absence) ‘was so ridiculously high that in many cases’ it ‘must have been in excess of the total crop’.41 There were rumours in Dar Masalit that the government planned ‘to collect four years of taxes all at once . . . and would tax houses and even dogs!’42 Privately, Willis professed to have expected trouble because the tribes in southern Darfur had never been effectively administered and had been put ‘on taxation etc. too soon’, the result of McNeill’s hasty action. Indeed, within the administration it appears to have become the general view that McNeill’s poor judgement was in large part responsible for the Nyala affair.43 In his report (as sirdar) to Sultan Fu’ad on the rising, Stack blamed not only the fanaticism of the Baqqara, Fallata, and Masalit, but also ‘the introduction of a closer system of administration’ that ‘inevitably aroused an undercurrent of discontent’. The most damaging and unmentioned aspect of this ‘closer system’ was the fact that it was not remotely ‘close’ enough. It was foolhardy to impose the range of government taxes, direct assessment, and ‘direct’ methods of administration without either the staff to implement the policy or the military presence to discourage or control reaction. Attempting one without the other courted unrest in a region where rebellion against distant rulers was a way of life, and one encouraged

284

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by the Sudan Government itself only a few years before during the confrontation with cAli Dinar. Even Savile, the anti-Mahdist governor now installed in the Palace at El Fasher, admitted privately that there were simpler explanations for the troubles than the machinations of Sayyid ' Abd al-Rahman. He mentioned specifically ‘over-taxation and the release of Sudanese servants’ (that is, slaves); and a boundary dispute between the Masalit and the Habbania.44 A devastating attack of cattle plague was also overlooked as a factor in precipitating disturbance. In February 1922 Savile reported that ‘almost all’ the tribes of southern Darfur had ‘suffered severely’ from this, the Rizayqat alone reportedly losing two-thirds of their herds. Taxation in such circumstances was more than tactless; ‘seditious preaching’ had included the notion that the plague was ‘divine wrath’ at the ‘irreligious life’ of the tribes and at their ‘intercourse with infidels’.45 Despite admitting ‘injustice’ and ‘grievances’, Savile still sub¬ mitted that the Nyala rising ‘was purely religious’.46 Thus Sihayni could not be considered a popular rebel, but must be a heretic, a fanatic. Almost any explanation except government error was mentioned in official reports: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Egyptian nationalism, Sanusi and Franco-Sanusi intrigue, even bolshevism!47 In the aftermath of the Nyala rising the government, and especially officials in the west, were deeply worried about the apparent spread of Mahdism, usually seeing in the Mahdist resurgence a cause of disaffection rather than a symptom of it. But unease and revolt, hope and expectation, while occasionally assuming a messianic form, did not depend on Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman; Sihayni himself was never shown to be a standard-bearer for the Mahdi’s son. ‘Organised’ Mahdism was only one current in a stream that Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman tried to channel for his own ends. One example of this was what officials called the ‘pilgrimage’ to Aba Island. In 1908 Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman had been allowed to begin cultivation there, marking the beginning (long before the departure of Slatin) of government attempts to distract the sayyid from politics. During the war his establish¬ ment at Aba expanded rapidly, and by 1918 the government began to notice a steady stream of visitors. In 1921 a large number congregated there during Ramadan. Officials expressed concern, but Willis minimised the gathering’s importance. The pilgrims were mostly western Sudanese and Fallata, and numbers of them remained at Aba and at other Mahdist agricultural settlements in the Gezira and along the Blue Nile. The pilgrimage to Aba was only a manifestation in the east of the rising tide of Mahdism in the west. The governor of Kordofan reported that the belief, ‘almost non-existent in Northern Darfur’ in 1916, had by 1922 ‘gained a firm footing’, and among the Baqqara had acquired ‘an amazing hold’.48 Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s agents appointed imams in the villages,

The government's troubled, adolescence, 1919-1924

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and Mahdists ‘looked on these men and not their old sheikhs as their secular as well as religious heads’.49 Concern about rapidly deteriorating tribal discipline’ led to an official order in March 1923 that the sayyid recall or disestablish his agents in Darfur, Kordofan, and the Salim Baqqara district of the White Nile Province. Predictably, this had little effect. In May Willis told the governor of the Nuba Mountains Province that the Baqqara were reportedly ‘seething’ in anticipation of the call to jihad. Fakis unauthorised by Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman were spreading outlandish rumours. One such propagandist, Ibrahim Tarjamawi, a man in extreme old age, was particularly active. Having been judged by Slatin in 1907 as a ‘bad character and of great influence’, he was released from detention at Wadi Haifa only in 1916 and closely watched thereafter. In 1923 he suddenly slipped away and began ‘touring’ in the west. He identified the British as al-Dajjal, the Anti-Christ; taught that Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was the Nabi 'Isa; and predicted July 1924 as the time of the manifestation. He was arrested and sent to live with relatives in Omdurman.50 Similar men with similar messages contributed to the growing tension. In May Willis warned that in ‘the whole of the Baggara country from the Nuba Moun¬ tains Province westward and throughout Darfur the natives’ were ‘on the tiptoes of expectation for the Second Coming’. On the 16th he met Stack and MacMichael to discuss the situation, and they decided that action must be taken under martial law (which had never been repealed) to arrest rumour-mongers and other strangers in the west.51 Meanwhile a crowd (estimated at between five thousand and fifteen thousand) was gathering at Aba Island for the ’Id. This thoroughly alarmed the government, and Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was ordered to Khartoum, his adherents were told to disperse, and steps were taken to impede others from the west; pilgrims en route to Mecca were to be kept to certain ‘main routes’, and muhajarin (‘exiles’) bent on settling at Aba were to be barred from doing so. Willis interviewed Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman who, as usual, pleaded his good intentions and ignorance of the government’s wishes. He constantly repudiated rumours that he was the Nabi 'Isa, he said, and attributed them to his rivals, Sayyid 'Ali and Sharif Yusuf: his only ‘ambition’ was to be recognised as a religious leader of those who wished to follow him. He pointed out that he had given proof during the war and in 1919 of his loyalty and was always prepared to give more: he could not, however, hope to control the westerners if he was denied access to them and rumours were allowed to circulate unchecked. During another inter¬ view the sayyid actually ‘broke down completely and wept’, Willis reported, but again blamed his disfavour on the schemes of his enemies.52 In later years, when cooler heads prevailed, the governor of the White Nile Province commented that the importance of the 1923 gathering at Aba had

286

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been exaggerated: the government’s information had not originated locally, but in Khartoum; the gathering was possibly no larger than in previous years; and the evidence of British witnesses was clear about the absence of any ‘fanatical or anti-Government’ spirit. But to British officials in 1923 Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was the ‘Young Pretender’, waiting at Aba for the likes of Ibrahim Tarjamawi to hand him the crown of the Sudan.53 There was more than shifting of blame in Sayyid ‘Abd al-Rahman’s identification of Sayyid cAli al-Mirghani as a source of his troubles. Since his rival’s coup in London in 1919 Sayyid 'Ali had watched with mounting annoyance and suspicion the rapid rise of the Mahdi’s son. By 1921 Sayyid ‘Ali was claiming that he was treated as no more than first among equals, a position he blamed on the government’s misguided policy towards Mahdism. The differences between the two holy men transcended sectarian rivalry: they encompassed hereditary and personal animosity. As the one was voluble and gregarious, the other was solemn and retiring; whereas Sayyid ‘Abd al-Rahman spoke with animation on a range of interests, the head of the Khatmiya enveloped his thoughts in a few impenetrable aphorisms. While, in British eyes, one was too much in the world, the other had apparently withdrawn from it. Officials were disconcerted to find that they personally preferred the wily and warm-hearted Mahdist to the loyally aloof Mirghani. ‘They were both’, as one observer later put it, in their very different ways, astute and calculating politicians. Had they been artists their pictures would have been characteristically different. Sayed Abdel Rahman would have found expression in a series of magnificent and flamboyant oils, the colour laid on with a lavish hand and great panache, the result a gorgeous if somewhat overpowering creation. Sayed Ali would have produced an occasional small, precise, and rather expressionless pencil drawing.54

Thus the personality of each sayyid, quite apart from religious and political views, was such as to infuriate the other. In the decades of their competi¬ tion that ended only with Sayyid ‘Abd al-Rahman’s death in 1959, this personal element was a formidable factor in the politics of the Sudan. In September 1924, when relations between Egypt and Britain were approaching a crisis, Craig, the governor of Kordofan, interviewed Sayyid ‘Ali. ‘The one obsession of his life’, Craig reported, was ‘intense hatred of Sayed Abd El Rahman and all his works. ... he really believes he is working up to become King of the Sudan, and he frankly states he would prefer the Egyptians to the Sudan under the Kingship of Sayed Abd El Rahman’.55 The ‘check’ administered in 1923 on the activities of Sayyid ‘Abd alRahman evidently had little effect in the west, and provincial officials there were convinced that it had not been intended to do so. W. D. C. L. Purves, a district commissioner in Darfur, wrote privately in March 1924: ‘The

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ignorant faithful in these parts firmly believe that Jesus will appear . . . and lead them to Victory or Paradise, but this Jesus is much too cunning for that. If there is a big success ... he may declare himself, but if the ignorant rise and get well beaten he will disclaim all connection with them.. . . Willis will believe him. It’s so easy.’ In October the governor of Khartoum, E. N. Corbyn, accused Willis of ‘pandering’ to Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman and of ‘deliberately’ disregarding the governor-general’s instructions about limit¬ ing Mahdism in the west.56 When G. J. Lethem visited the Sudan from Nigeria in 1925, he found that ‘almost all . . . of the political officers’ west of the Nile deplored the government’s policy towards Mahdism, and resented the disregard shown to their views by the intelligence depart¬ ment.57 What the western officials were reluctant to admit was the inability of the government to enforce the few restrictions it imposed on the Mahdists. It soon abandoned any attempt to do so. In 1924 the British encountered at first annoying but soon alarming outbreaks of secular opposition. It was essential that the government win the support of the traditional elite against this new force, whose strength was untested. In this regard Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was a friend indeed, and the continuing value of his collaboration exposed again the contradiction of British policy towards Mahdism. His influence could not be conjured up on demand; he must either be accepted as a political force, potentially dangerous but a proven ally, or be suppressed altogether. The sustained fear that the sayyid was probably only awaiting the right moment to rally the tribes and fulfil Mahdist prophecies was, of course, his strongest claim to influence. Willis, whose motives were obviously complex, argued that Mahdism had evolved, that its leader could be and was accepted as a holy man without being a revolutionary. It would be some years before the government as a whole accepted this. Meanwhile it found itself in the uncomfortable position of relying for support on a man thought to be awaiting, or even planning, its destruction. One way of coping with this dilemma had suggested itself: while Mahdism eroded tribal authority, it was weakest in those areas where tribal cohesion had been least impaired. At a meeting of the northern governors in 1920, C. P. Browne of Berber had proposed recognition and extension of tribal shaykhs’ powers, partly ‘to counteract the present preponderating influence of religious leaders’. Events after 1920 did nothing to alter this view, and were partly responsible for the adoption of a policy of Indirect Rule.

THE BEGINNING OF SECULAR OPPOSITION TO THE BRITISH

The rise of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman confronted the British with an issue that appeared, for all its complexity, at least essentially familiar: ‘fanatical’

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Empire on the Nile

Islam. When, after the war, the government encountered the first stirrings of an opposition based not on millenarian beliefs but on ideas of national rights, it had no clear idea of how to combat them. The embryonic Sudanese nationalist movement was condemned as imitative, a weak cutting from an exotic, Egyptian growth; it was derided as a collection of ‘detribalised’ clerks and soldiers, shiftless petty merchants and puffed-up parvenus, pretentious half-literate graduates who parroted Egyptian slo¬ gans for Egyptian money. The truth was not so simple. The movement was imitative, but it had Sudanese as well as Egyptian roots. Among its members were ‘detribalised’ individuals and young graduates, part of the ‘literate class’ the government had created, who had been expected to assume positions of responsibility; but ‘detribalised’ and ‘graduate’ had not previously been terms of derision. There was probably some Egyptian financing of the Sudanese opposition, but this was likely insignificant. It was easier politically and psychologically for the British to blame Egypt for stirring up trouble than to admit Sudanese grievances; to stigmatise the Sudanese involved than to argue with the ideas they expressed; and thus to continue to believe that anti-British sentiment was a drop of oil on a sea of Sudanese gratitude for British rule, to be contained and dispersed by the rolling tides of tribal and religious authority. The traditional leadership was only too glad to cooperate, for any new force on the Sudanese political scene was potentially as threatening to it as to the government. By 1924 the government’s relations with the tribal shaykhs had been mortared by the introduction of Indirect Rule, and its more difficult relations with the religious leaders eased by their shared and oft-declared enmity for Egypt. But the success of these conservative forces in 1924 not only checked Egyptian pretensions, it also marked the failure of the Sudan Government to win the allegiance of its own creation, the western-educated official class. The patriarchal government of pre-war days, when the British inspector was ‘father of the people’, was seen to have failed: the spoiled favourites had rejected fatherly authority. Very well, it was argued, a return to more deeply rooted forms of discipline, in government and in education, would be effected, and the ‘new men’ given their proper place in a traditional system, as strictly marginal technicians. The Sudan Government’s concern about the influence of Egyptian politics was heightened first by the supposed sympathy of Egyptian officers for Britain’s enemies during the war, and then by their acknow¬ ledged interest in the post-war rising in Egypt. The concomitant discovery by Wingate and Stack of a ‘spirit of national unity among the Sudanese’ was certainly premature and suspiciously fortuitous, a counter to Egyptian claims and a basis for future rejection of them. Stack’s memorandum of February 1919, a ‘Note on the growth of national aspirations in the Sudan’,

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purported to detect a growing desire, significantly articulated by the Three Sayyids, to have done with Egyptian participation in the government, and to identify the Sudan’s future with ‘British control’. Thus Stack’s, and perhaps the sayyids’, ideal of ‘national aspirations’ was the use of a vogue term to describe an old mutual desire. Stack noted that many steps had already been taken towards associating the Sudanese with the government, and that these would be extended.58 The failure in 1919 of reported attempts by visiting Egyptian activists to recruit Sudanese support reassured the government but left it uneasy about future prospects. In May Stack told Allenby that the Egyptian revolution had actually increased Sudanese antipathy to Egypt, but that the continu¬ ing uncertainty about a final political settlement there had produced a corresponding uncertainty in the Sudan. Allenby’s main concern was to repair Anglo-Egyptian relations. In June he advised the Foreign Office to disallow publication of letters of loyalty from Sudanese notables, saying these ‘would tend to strain feeling between the Sudanese and Egyptian officials in the Sudan’.59 Allenby’s views were not shared in Khartoum. Egyptian civil and military personnel there were responsible for occasional anti-British incidents: sloganeering, ‘seditious’ speeches, and so forth. By midsummer reports began to appear of similar activities by Sudanese. There was no recorded doubt that Egyptians, even the Egyptian govern¬ ment, were responsible directly for propaganda among the Sudanese. Wishing to indict Egypt, the Sudan Government reported incidents of Egypt’s baleful influence; wanting to prove the overwhelming loyalty of the Sudanese to Britain, it reported the failure of that influence, but warned darkly of the effect in future of incessant propaganda. Perhaps the main effect on the Sudan Government of the Egyptian revolution was to set in train a campaign more drastic than any Wingate had advanced, to rid the Sudan of Egyptian personnel. This was a view conveniently endorsed in 1921 by the Milner Mission. During the Egyptian revolution the Milner Mission was appointed to report on the political situation in Egypt and to recommend steps for constitutional development there. Milner, the colonial secretary, believed that as Britain inevitably withdrew from the ‘administrative occupation’ of Egypt, Britain’s ‘hold on the Sudan’ became ‘increasingly important’. He feared that that hold would be prejudiced if the Sudan Government were ‘full of people in open or secret sympathy with Egyptian “nationalism” ’.60 Milner’s main interest was in how to combat that nationalism in the Sudan and prevent the growth of a Sudanese ‘effendi class’ likely to develop antiBritish sentiments. He and his colleagues were not knowledgeable about the Sudan, however, and relied for information on the testimony of Sudan Government officials and, especially, on papers prepared by Alexander

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Empire on the Nile

Keown-Boyd, a former official in the Sudan, who visited the country on Milner’s behalf during the winter of 1920. Even before his visit KeownBoyd expostulated on the danger of Egyptian nationalism, expressed the view that the Egyptian Army and civil officials should be ‘removed as soon as possible’, and opined that the ‘ethnically quite distinct’ regions of the Sudan ‘should be kept as far as possible locally independent’.61 These sentiments were consonant with those of leading officials in Khartoum. Plans for removing the Egyptian Army and constituting a Sudanese military force were drawn up and freely discussed, and formed a basis for action in 1924. In other respects Keown-Boyd’s lengthy memoranda reflected prevailing views. For instance, the Sudanese, he wrote, disliked the Egyptians, and their ‘dominant desire’ was ‘to get rid of them altogether’ and have ‘more British’. The excellent relations between the British and Sudanese could not withstand ‘constant propaganda’ from disaffected Egyptians: it was ‘desirable from every point of view that the Sudan be purged of this’. Keown-Boyd recognised a ‘growing feeling towards a nationality amongst the Sudanese’. That feeling ‘should be fostered . . . and as far as possible anticipated by taking them gradually into the Government’.62 Milner had expressed interest in the suitability of ‘a system like that prevailing in Northern Nigeria’, thus obviating ‘the necessity of creating an effendi class’, and Keown-Boyd duly recom¬ mended ‘adopting wherever possible existing Tribal organisation in lieu of bureaucratic Government’, but also that Sudanese be appointed to the governor-general’s council and to town and district councils.63 This dual policy, of implementing Indirect Rule through tribal chiefs and simultaneously advancing self-government through modern institutions, was adopted by Stack. He, and to a greater extent his successors, found the Milner Mission’s report a versatile tool for justifying Sudan Government policies. That report (as opposed to Keown-Boyd’s) recommended nothing which the government’s leading officials did not agree with or were not already implementing. It provided strong arguments and a seal of approval that could and would be deployed in future to show that the policy pursued was one recommended by a British government mission and not unilaterally undertaken by the Sudan Government. In 1920 the Sudanese secular opposition apprehended by the govern¬ ment took its first concrete form in the so-called League of Sudan Union, while at the same time the Three Sayyids advanced their public support of the government and their opposition to Egyptian nationalism by buying Hadarat al-Sudan, and making that newspaper a forum for the ‘Sudan for the Sudanese’. The editor, Hussayn al-Khalifa Muhammad Sharif, of whom the government had taken alternating positive and negative views during the war (and before), was to emerge as a leading exponent of a

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moderate, truly Sudanese line in the coming years. In 1920 he wrote pieces in al-Hadara favouring the continued separation of the Sudan from Egypt and a continuation of British ‘guidance’. This, in essence, was the view expounded as the ‘Sudan for the Sudanese’. It was now opposed by five young men, four of them Gordon College graduates, all of leading families, who established the League of Sudan Union: 'Ubayd Hajj al-Amin, Tawfiq Salih Jibril, Muhi al-Din Jamal Abu Sayf, Ibrahim Badri, and Sulayman Kisha. Meant to be a clandestine organisation, the league attracted no official notice before 1922, and its activities were confined largely to cultural events similar to those organised by the innocuous graduate clubs that had existed with official blessing for some time. The league eventually turned to more overtly political activities, but still on a modest scale and of a distinctly ‘graduate’ type: anonymous letters criticising the government and its works and castigating Sudanese collaborators; anti-British submis¬ sions to Cairo newspapers; and so forth. About the membership of this earliest Sudanese political group little can be said with certainty. Aside from its founders none can definitely be identified and, in any case, it appears that membership was fluid; various other clubs and associations appeared, some ascertained only by the survival of a tract or a letter, others perhaps never existing at all except in name. Parallel to the activities of these shadowy organisations were political incidents involving individuals or small groups. It has been determined that ‘detribalised’ Muslim southerners played a notable part in anti-British activities from the beginning. A 1925 report described these ‘negroids’ as outside the orbit of normal control or of appeal to tribal or national sentiment, for [they] have no contact whatever with the southern tribes to which they trace their origin. This class has shown itself readier in the past than most others to avail itself of the educational facilities offered since the British occupation, and is, conse¬ quently, strongly represented in the lower ranks of officials, military and civilian, and similar capacities in commercial life. While the best have done well, many have failed and the majority have grafted upon an overweening conceit ambitions which their capacity makes impossible of fulfillment.64

It is ironic that the first of these ‘negroids’ to gain prominence, 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif, did so because of his attempt in May 1922 to have an article published in al-Hadara calling for Sudanese self-determination rather than simply echoing Egyptian slogans for the ‘Unity of the Nile Valley.’ The emergence of 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif as the leading figure in the political turmoil of the next few years was not, however, fortuitous. Government officials who knew him during and after the 1924 crisis maintained respect for his ability: ‘He was a very dangerous man but he was a gentleman’, the acting governor of Khartoum wrote privately in 1924,65 a remarkable view in

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Empire on the Nile

those days, although publicly a different one was taken: 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif was said to be a ‘savage’ and ‘illbalanced’.66 He had seemed to personify the British achievement in the Sudan: a childhood spent in menial occupation; enrolment in the Military School where he won the Governor-General’s Medal (as ‘most efficient’ cadet) in his final year and excelled in sports; a satisfying military career - until, during the war, he was insulted by a newly recruited British officer, was cashiered for insubordination, and, under¬ standably bitter, viewed his personal downfall as representative of the evils of foreign rule. Whether because of his aborted article for al-Hadara or because of his personal history, he was tried under the omnibus section 96 of the Sudan Penal Code for ‘exciting disaffection’ of the government, and was sent to prison for a year.67 Following 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif’s imprisonment there was an apparent lull in the activities of the government’s youthful opponents. Reliable informa¬ tion for the period is scarce, although the Ewart Report of 1925 charac¬ terised it as one during which Egyptian agents of various nationalist hues increased their contacts with likely Sudanese dissidents and urged them on to anti-government activities. In 1923, after his release from prison, 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif and 'Ubayd Hajj al-Amin, apparently dissatisfied with the meagre impact of the League of Sudan Union, founded with some other graduates the White Flag League. The league, of which 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif was president, took its name from its banner, a white cloth on which were depicted a sketch of the Nile Valley and a miniature Egyptian flag. Implicit in its flag, and clear in the league’s activities, was the goal of political unity of the whole Nile Valley under Egyptian rule and free from British imperialism. Following the stunning victory of the Wafd in the first Egyptian parliamentary elections in January 1924, Egyptian liaison with the league apparently passed from the Watanist party to the Wafd itself.68 The White Flag League formulated no very detailed programme. Although in its tactics it was decidedly more extreme than the League of Sudan Union, its pronounced major aim, unity of the Nile Valley, may be seen as less ‘nationalistic’ than earlier calls for self-determination or the Sudan for the Sudanese. It remains a moot question whether the league (an amorphous group even in its brief heyday) and, indeed, political groups and parties that in future called for union with Egypt, did so as a matter of conviction or for merely tactical reasons, to win Egyptian support and the government’s attention. The league’s association with the Wafdist demand for Egyptian sovereignty in the Sudan played into the hands of the Sudan Government so long as it was voiced by a small band of young and uninfluential ‘effendis’, for it made it inevitable that the traditional reli¬ gious and tribal leadership would oppose them, and seemed to prove that its exponents were at best simply dupes of Egyptian trouble-makers. It was

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essential for the league to broaden its Sudanese base, just as it was for the government to demonstrate the league’s lack of public support. In the end the government was far more successful than the league in this unequal competition. By June 1924 the league had probably only about 150 members, certainly not many more. Broadly, the membership was drawn from the ranks of junior officers and officials, the petty merchant class, and minor employees of government departments and private businesses. While ‘detribalised’ southerners were a notable element, they seem to have been by no means a dominant one, northern riverain tribal origin being more typical. Although the Ewart Report described the league’s members as ‘insignificant persons, disgruntled employees with unsatisfactory records or with grievances, low-class merchants, negro ex-officers without employment, petty artisans, ex-convicts and vagabonds’, this was a decep¬ tive oversimplification. Of 104 members identified in one list, 23 were officers, 39 ‘junior officials’, 2 sub-ma’murs, 2 qadis, and the imam of the Khartoum mosque; the rest varied in occupation from merchants and artisans to postal clerks, teachers and students.69 Indeed, the notable common denominators in the identifiable opposition are youth and education, a fact that no interested party - British, Egyptian, or Sudanese lost sight of. For all its numerical and organisational weakness, and its political and practical deficiencies, the opposition was based neither on tribe nor sect, and the stage for its activities was urban, not rural: altogether an unprecedented combination.70 During the spring and summer of 1924 the White Flag League (together with others not nominally among its member or belonging to other, even more ephemeral ‘leagues’) embarked on an anti-government campaign characterised by noisy and sometimes violent demonstrations; the circula¬ tion of ‘seditious’ circulars; and the posting of anonymous manifestos and threats. On 3 July 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif was arrested after sending a telegram to the British prime minister, protesting Britain’s policy towards Egypt in the Sudan. A search of his house revealed ‘numerous incriminating docu¬ ments’, and he was tried and sentenced to three years in prison. By then, however, the anti-British campaign had gained its own momentum and, in any case, 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif remained, even in prison, in close contact with his colleagues at large.71 In August two incidents heightened tension and convinced any doubters in the government that it was faced with a serious threat to public order. A demonstration at Atbara on the 9th, in which both Sudanese, and Egyp¬ tians of the army’s Railway Battalion took part, shouted pro-Egyptian slogans and damaged railway property. More serious action occurred on the 10th, and British troops were sent from Khartoum. On the 1 ith men of the Railway Battalion, having rushed a cordon of troops, were fired on,

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Empire on the Nile

apparently mistakenly, by nervous Sudanese soldiers. Five men were killed. Although no further serious incident occurred, it was decided to evacuate the entire Railway Battalion to Egypt, and this was accomplished later in the month. This decisive action served notice that the British were willing and able to defend their position, using their own and loyal Sudanese troops. It also served as a rehearsal for the evacuation, later in the year, of all Egyptian units, definite, revised plans for which had been made by the beginning of the summer.72 More galling and disappointing to the government than the insubordina¬ tion of Egyptian troops at Atbara was a demonstration in the capital on 9 August by cadets of the Khartoum Military School. Threatening to use their weapons if interfered with, and carrying an Egyptian flag, the cadets marched through the streets of Khartoum before returning to their barracks and submitting to British troops. They were interned in gunboats on the Nile. A court of enquiry revealed only one convincing reason for the cadets’ apparently sudden politicisation: a grievance about inequality with the Cairo Military School in the matter of commissions. This, according to the Ewart Report, was skilfully manipulated by an Egyptian officer who told the cadets that the British had deliberately treated them unfairly in the hope that they would blame the Egyptian ministry of war and thus side with the British against their Egyptian comrades. It was not reported, however, that the British military authorities had been debating the whole question of ‘native officers’. Colonel Fluddleston, the adjutant-general, had written in May that ‘the native officer system’ was ‘extremely extrava¬ gant’, that the officers’ pay was ‘excessive’, but that ‘an entire cessation from granting commissions to natives’ might ‘lead to considerable discon¬ tent’, since commissions had been promised and expected as usual. He nonetheless recommended the closing of the Khartoum Military School.73 Huddleston, for one, should not have been surprised when the cadets demonstrated precisely because they saw their future status threatened, and the granting of twelve commissions in Cairo but only two in Khartoum appears to have been either politically inept or gratuitously provocative. But the cadets had failed a crucial test: they who had been considered ‘the most loyal military formation in the Sudan’,74 and the heart of a future army without Egyptian officers, showed themselves dangerously unreliable. The closure of the Military School was thereafter easily justified by their action. In the wake of the cadets’ insubordination, rumours of a more widespread ‘mutiny’ reached the government, and it was even feared that if this occurred it might precipitate a general rising among ‘the fighting tribes of Kordofan and the fanatical Mahdist element’.75 Such fears were probably voiced mainly for their value as propaganda.

Fig. 14

Mutineering cadets march through Khartoum, August 1924

Just as the religious and tribal notables continued to support the govern¬ ment, so too could it rely on the ‘rank and file’. Disturbances among Egyptians at Port Sudan in the summer of 1924 were suppressed by Hadandui ‘special constables’: their custody of prisoners resulted in the hospitalisation of nine Egyptians.76 In the capital, Ta'aishi tribesmen from the dayms were enrolled as ‘special constables’, and were reported ‘athirst to break Egyptian heads’,77 which is precisely why they were recruited. The governor of Khartoum envisaged other duties for them in the railway police, steamers workshops, and even as clerks.78 The disturbances involving the cadets and the Railway Battalion came at a time when the British and Egyptian governments were preparing a new round of negotiations on the ‘reserved points’ of Britain’s 1922 declaration of Egyptian independence. Those disturbances gave embarrassing pub¬ licity to Sudanese disaffection and therefore detracted from Britain’s moral claim to preponderance in the Sudan. But the Sudan Government was justified in arguing that the supporters of the White Flag League and parallel groups were a tiny, unrepresentative minority. The demonstra¬ tions were never very large, and contemporary reports agree that the vast majority even of the urban population had nothing to do with them. Even at the height of the crisis in Khartoum in November 1924 British civilians and officials, some of whom feared the worst, were unmolested. Signifi¬ cantly, there was unequivocal support for the British from the traditional religious and tribal leaders. Having remained loyal during the war and in 1919, they were unlikely in 1924 to follow the lead of' Ali' Abd al-Latif, nor

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were they apt to prefer the supposed advantages of a realistically unattain¬ able Egyptian sovereignty to their present considerable status. Attempts by the White Flag League to recruit one of the Three Sayyids failed. Indeed, Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi recognised that he had more to gain now (when his star was clouded by the events of 1923) by openly supporting the government than by even remaining neutral. In June he held a meeting of notables and denounced Egypt while soliciting support for the Sudan Government. The meeting issued a declaration voicing approval of Britain as ‘the guardian of the Sudan’ until it became ‘a self-governing nation’; denouncing the evils of the old Turco-Egyptian regime and the pretensions of present Egyptian leaders; and asking for a share in the administration of the country. On 25 June al-Hadara denounced 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif in an editorial and in a letter.79 Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s outspoken support for the government annoyed his arch-rival, Sayyid 'Ali, whose direct intervention in political affairs was rare. In September there was concern at the Residency that he had been wooed by Zaghlul, and that other notables were therefore wavering.80 Despite the rallying of the traditional leadership, the continued existence of the pro-Egyptian sentiment espoused by the White Flag League deman¬ ded a degree of flexibility on the government’s part in allowing scope for the ‘Sudan for the Sudanese’ party. The notables had publicly declared their hope for eventual self-government, and had spoken of British ‘guidance’ until then, a fact that the Residency correctly observed as indicative of no desire to enter ‘the elastic circle of the British Empire’.81 But the government needed their support at this turning point in AngloEgyptian relations, and there were some, notably Stack himself, who welcomed Sudanese participation, albeit consultative, in the government. In June an official of the graduates’ club, Abu Shama 'Abd al-Majid, writing to Willis to assure him of the educated class’s support, nonetheless took the opportunity to point out that the ‘enlightened’ desired ‘certain reforms’, to be heralded by a public declaration of the Sudan Government’s role as guardian or trustee. In an unpublished letter to The Times, Hussayn Sharif wrote in August that it should be publicly acknowledged that the Sudan was, in fact, ‘for the Sudanese’, ‘not for the English nor for the Egyptians’, that Britain’s position should be defined, and, significantly, that Egypt’s interests should be protected and a ‘sort of union’ be created between Egypt and the Sudan.82 As a spokesman for the moderates, Flussayn Sharif probably represented a commonly held view that the Condominium, whatever its defects, at least provided the Sudanese with a balance of opposing masters, a relationship from which, as the events of 1924 were showing, the Sudanese could benefit. They rejected Egyptian sovereignty but feared that the removal of an Egyptian presence would give

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Britain a free hand and a licence to remain forever. As Willis reported in May, ‘some graduates’ wanted to retain the ‘dual control’ to ‘ensure that no one of the two partners could remain in absolute power, and dispose of the Sudan as a piece of furniture.’83 What the moderates failed to appreciate was that their own influence derived not from their status as a responsible educated elite but from their relation or association with the real moulders of opinion and wielders of power, the religious and tribal leadership. When the government eventually moved to put down the ‘effendis’, they found little support. Indeed, the moderates’ attempt in 1924 to forge an independent position and offer support to the government may have been a gamble designed to slow or reverse the government’s already evident leaning towards Indirect Rule and its corollaries. British officials had been debating the future of the Sudanese educated class since the war. The subject had been taken up by Milner and others in 1920, when it was decided to minimise the size of that class and limit the government’s dependence on it. In 1922 the promulgation of The Powers of Nomad Sheikhs Ordinance, regularising the judicial functions of nomadic tribal leaders, indicated the direction of the government’s think¬ ing about the political development of the Sudan. The wages of Sudanese officials had yet to recover from the inflation of the war years: the special war gratuity for officials was reduced from 40 to 25 per cent in April 1922, to 15 per cent in January 1923 (when the gratuity for unclassified staff became discretionary), to 75 per cent in October 1923, and was abolished on 1 January 1924. Temporary allowances to government pensioners were cancelled on 1 April 1924.84 The possibility of removing the Egyptian Army had been discussed for at least four years; its second-ranking officer had described Sudanese officers as too highly paid and too numerous. Sudanese cadets, for years the pride of the army, had been suddenly insulted in the matter of commissions, at a time when they might have been expected to receive even better treatment than usual. The difficulty in reconstructing the political developments of 1924 is in distinguishing British reaction from British provocation. The conduct of the Sudan Government’s leading officials, both in Khartoum and in London, seems to have been geared to forcing the issue between Britain and Egypt, to precipitating irreversible ‘drastic action’, and unilaterally removing the Egyptian element of the government while crushing any Sudanese assertion of political rights. Thus it is convenient here to note how much of the success of the proEgyptian demonstrations of 1924 can be blamed on the Sudan Government itself. Willis at the intelligence department was more accustomed to dealing with urbane sayyids and self-proclaimed prophets than with the likes of 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif. His department underestimated the trouble these could

Empire on the Nile

298

cause, had little contact with them, and was able only rarely to predict rather than report demonstrations. An almost incredible error was the transfer to posts elsewhere in the Sudan of suspected or even proven agitators who, on arrival in Port Sudan or El Obeid or Shendi, proceeded to organise local branches of their political groups. This was exile in the promised land. Attempting to counter the publicity generated by the opposition, ‘agents’ were used to collect loyal addresses from local notables, an exercise that backfired when British officials refused to cooperate.85 This canvass was what the intelligence department called a ‘campaign’ of ‘counter propaganda’. Despite the troubles, leading officials went ahead as usual with long summer holidays in Europe, leaving affairs in

the

hands

of subordinates.

Telegraphic

communication

diluted

responsibility. The government apparently never considered seriously the issue of a public statement simply and unequivocally reassuring officers and officials of their future status, if only as a denial of Egyptian propa¬ ganda. The British government’s vacillation in relations with Egypt encouraged speculation that Britain would compromise over the Sudan, and this in turn encouraged more pro-Egyptian demonstrations. The evacuation of the Railway Battalion from Atbara came too late to reassure the Sudanese, and appeared an act of desperation, a reaction rather than an aspect of policy. Crisis was exactly what the Sudan Government needed to bring about the changes in the administration it had long ago determined to be necessary.

THE SUDAN QUESTION IN AN G L O - E G Y PTI AN RELATIONS AND THE CRISIS OF NOVEMBER 1924

The development of Sudanese opposition, both religious and secular, occurred against a background of Anglo-Egyptian relations. Indeed, the events of 1924 can be seen as one explosive episode in those relations. This in itself indicates the pace of change in the post-war period. It was only after 1919, when it became evident that British control over important aspects of Egyptian policy would have to be relaxed, that the Sudan became a serious issue between the co-domini; until then British ‘advice’ to Egypt always had to be followed, and the complaining nationalist press could be ignored or suppressed. Once the status of the Sudan was admitted by both governments to be a ‘question’, the attitude of the Sudan Government and, as importantly, the attitude of the Sudanese, became significant. For the first time the Sudan Government entered actively into the Anglo-Egyptian debate, and soon found itself not only consulted but, because of the anomalies of the Condominium Agreement, proclaimed by British offi¬ cials to have the attributes of sovereignty. Similarly the Sudanese, who

The government's troubled, adolescence, 1919-1924

299

before the Egyptian revolution could be depicted as politically docile, were now publicly endowed by both co-domini with a political sophistication few possessed and a vague and implicit capacity for political choice. The intense pressure that had been building between Egypt and Britain finally exploded in November 1924, with a force that would be felt in the Sudan for decades. Despite repeated assertions, even after 1919, that ‘the question of Egypt, the question of the Sudan, and the question of the Canal’ were inextricably linked, and that ‘British supremacy’ would be maintained,86 it was clear that British interests in the Sudan (which with the Gezira Scheme were rapidly increasing) could best be served by loosening the ties between the Sudan and Egypt. If, even after all Britain’s efforts to preserve authority in Egypt, ‘administrative control’ must be conceded there, interests in the Sudan could be made safe, and control over the headwaters of the Nile would keep even the most assertive nationalists in line. Thus, in January 1920 Milner recorded his belief that Britain’s ‘hold on the Sudan’ was ‘increasingly important’. The ‘chief obstacle’ to this was financial: evacua¬ tion of the Egyptian Army would require creation of a Sudanese force; a separate Sudanese army would be expensive, and the British Treasury would not agree to finance it.87 From where was the money to come? In May 1920 Stack suggested a line of approach: if a British subsidy could not be arranged, Egypt, ‘in view of the benefits accruing for all time from a secured frontier and a guaranteed water supply should cancel the debt’ owed to it by the Sudan Government. Stack apparently expected even more than this: he told Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani in April that he hoped Milner’s report would allow the definition of the Sudan’s status and the provision for it of ‘a separate Government which would enable the Sudanese to develop

on

their

own

lines

under

the

guidance

of

the

British

Government’.88 The issue of water rights occupied a central place in Anglo-Egyptian relations. Work had been resumed on the Gezira Scheme, and concern in Egypt over the use of the Nile for vast agricultural projects in the Sudan was intense. In late 1919 and early 1920 the issue assumed major import¬ ance in Egypt, where, according to one British official, it had ‘quite ousted all other subjects as a topic of conversation’ throughout the delta and was a potential ‘lever’ for nationalist appeals to the fallahin.89 Allenby had therefore undertaken that the Gezira Scheme would irrigate no more than 300,000 feddans, a tactical error that was later to hobble the Sudan Government. But the whole subject of water remained in the air, and the fear that a hostile British regime in the Sudan could, at London’s command, starve Egypt of water was a real one. Indeed, it became a tacit and later admitted basis for British claims: a British ‘guarantee’ of Egyptian water

300

Empire on the Nile

rights was, in the circumstances, not so much a commitment to prevent outside interference as it was a promise that Britain would refrain from such interference itself. In June 1920 negotiations began in London between Milner and an Egyptian delegation including 'Adli Pasha and Zaghlul. The idea of replacing the protectorate with a treaty embodying the future relations of the two countries won Egyptian favour, but the issue of the Sudan’s status remained unresolved, indeed virtually unmentioned. In August Milner submitted proposals for a treaty that omitted the Sudan altogether, ostensibly because (from the British point of view) the Sudan’s status had been determined in the 1899 Convention and was not therefore at issue, as Egypt’s was.90 Zaghlul insisted that any proposals must be acceptable to the Egyptian public and, realising that Milner’s could now be taken as a starting point for future negotiations, he called for important concessions, which were refused. Although the negotiations broke down, the idea of a treaty remained alive. The opposing views on the Sudan’s status moved further apart, however, and in October Lord Curzon wrote succinctly that ‘The complete political and military independence of the Sudan’ was ‘the ulterior object which British interests’ demanded. He also indicated how that object might be achieved: Egypt would ‘continue to pay for the water that she enjoys’, and in return for the removal from Egypt of British troops, Egyptian troops would be removed from the Sudan.91 In February 1921 Britain formally announced its willingness to replace the protectorate with a treaty. Negotiations reopened in July at the Foreign Office, with a delegation led by the Egyptian prime minister, 'Adli Pasha, whom Zaghlul had refused to join. Negotiations continued desultorily, and in November Curzon submitted a draft treaty that simply upheld the 1899 Convention, stipulated Egyptian support for the Sudan’s defence, and called for the establishment of a board representing the governments of Egypt, the Sudan, and Uganda to govern distribution of the Nile waters. Even if he had not been subjected to constant nationalist pressure con¬ certed by Zaghlul, 'Adli would have had to reject Curzon’s draft: it was, in 'Adli’s words, a ‘deed of guardianship’. Negotiations broke down, and 'Adli returned to Egypt and resigned. It proved impossible to form a new government, and in late December Zaghlul was arrested and deported. Allenby insisted that the morbid political climate in Egypt required some imaginative and unilateral British action, and he threatened to resign unless the protectorate was formally abolished. On 28 February 1922 a reluctant British government declared Egypt ‘an independent sovereign state’, but reserved ‘to the discretion of His Majesty’s Government’, pending further agreement between the two governments, four issues: the security of imperial communications, the defence of Egypt, the protection of foreign

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

301

interests there, and the Sudan. Until such ‘further agreement’ was reached, the status quo would obtain. This was a unilateral declaration of something less than independence; Egypt was granted a large measure of autonomy in internal affairs, and ‘sovereignty’ had been conceded, however much that sovereignty was practically diminished by the Reserved Points. Unnoticed was the fact that by including the Sudan as a point for negotiation Britain tacitly admitted the impermanence of the 1899 Agreement. Some of the limits of Egypt’s sovereignty were soon realised. In the drafting of an Egyptian constitution the British repeatedly interfered to prevent reference to Egypt’s ‘sovereign rights’ in the Sudan. Pro-Egyptian demonstrations in Khartoum and the arrest there in May 1922 of 'Ali cAbd al-Latif gave publicity to Egyptian nationalist demands and reinforced the Sudan Government’s conviction that disturbances in the Sudan were orchestrated for Egyptian, not Sudanese ends. Further, in the spring of 1922 crucial talks were under way in London to settle the crisis surround¬ ing the finances of the Gezira Scheme, and difficulties were anticipated in raising further loans if investors were uncertain about the Sudan’s political status. Thus the inclusion of a few words in the Egyptian constitution had much more than symbolic importance. British officials in London and Khartoum (but not in Egypt) began to speak more openly of the possible necessity, if Egyptian intransigence continued, of formally annexing the Sudan. When in October the Egyptian constitutional commission pro¬ duced a draft referring to Ahmad Fu’ad as ‘King of Egypt and the Sudan’, and to the Sudan as an Egyptian possession, the British threatened to resume ‘complete liberty of action’ regarding the Sudan. Despite expert British opinion that the Egyptians did, in fact, have a case in law for their claims, the British held firm and King Fu’ad and his government capitulated. The constitution was promulgated, without the offending passages, on 19 April 1923, and Egypt became a constitutional monarchy.92 While Allenby’s insistence on dramatic action in 1922 had resulted in the British declaration of Egyptian independence, the Reserved Points were too comprehensive and crudely stated to be left untested by the Egyptians, and the declaration itself foresaw negotiations. But the Sudan Government viewed the reservation of the Sudan question as a concession in itself. What, it was asked, was there to negotiate? Indeed, why, Egyptians asked, if the British intended to remain firmly in control in Khartoum, did they admit that there was a ‘Sudan question’ at all? The anomalies inherent in Cromer’s ‘hybrid form of government’ had been frustrating for Wingate, but for Stack they took on a nightmarish quality now that Egypt had room to manoeuvre. Stack, for example, was still sirdar as well as governor-general; however, in practice, could he serve two antagonistic masters? The Foreign Office continued to expect that ‘the knowledge that a rupture over the Sudan’

302

Empire on the Nile

would ‘rob Egypt of all hope of repayment for past advances and of any say in the control of the Nile’ would ‘act as a powerful brake on the exuberance of even the most nationalist and irresponsible of governments’.93 London’s expectations were only hopes in Khartoum. By the beginning of 1924 important figures in the civil and military administration had concluded that unless the Egyptians simply relented there was nothing that could be done to save the British position in the Sudan short of just such a ‘rupture’. Events in the Sudan and the attitude of the Sudanese thus became crucial considerations in Anglo-Egyptian relations. The more vociferous the proEgyptian demonstrations, the less likely was the Sudan Government to countenance a solution acceptable to Egypt; the less vocal the opposition, the more likely the British government would heed Residency advice and insist on at least preserving the status quo and some amity in AngloEgyptian relations. Leading officials in Khartoum knew this; Stack himself favoured an Egyptian withdrawal only as a last resort, but few, if any, of his principal subordinates did not want a ‘clean break’. The conduct of the government as a whole in 1924 was such as to encourage the necessity for a confrontation: British officials in Cairo believed that the Sudan Govern¬ ment had been signally lax in allowing small demonstrations to assume serious political significance.94 The Egyptian government, a captive of nationalist propaganda and overly reliant on the double-edged blade of popular sentiment, became an inadvertent ally of its confirmed enemies. Under the new Egyptian constitution of 1923, elections to a bicameral parliament were held in January 1924. In these Zaghlul’s Wafd, the first national political party in Egypt, won an overwhelming victory, and Zaghlul formed a government at the end of the month. An election in Britain at the same time resulted in the formation of the first Labour government, in which Ramsay MacDonald was both prime minister and foreign secretary. Because MacDonald personally and the Labour Party as a whole were sympathetic to Egyptian nationalism, hope was raised that resumed negotiations might lead to a settlement by treaty of the Reserved Points. Unfortunately Zaghlul, newly crowned as the undisputed leader of the Egyptian people, was more accustomed to the role of opposition orator than to the subtle work of directing an Egyptian government necessarily subject to British goodwill. Similarly the Labour victory raised hopes unrealisably high; the security of the Suez Canal and the status of the Sudan were not partisan issues, nor could a fledgling Labour ministry afford to be seen to be considering them as such. While MacDonald was willing to talk, he was unable to offer the concessions that Zaghlul, by his continued leading of public opinion, had caused to be seen as irreducible demands.

In preparing for a resumption of formal negotiations the British govern¬ ment consulted both the Residency and the Sudan Government. The

The government’s troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

303

Foreign Office took the position that ‘a reaffirmation of the AngloEgyptian condominiun’ was as far as Britain could afford to go on the Sudan question. Allenby, anxious to salvage relations with Egypt and to expunge his embarrassing commitment to limit Gezira irrigation, was willing to go further. He agreed that Britain must maintain ‘a predominant political and administrative control’ in the Sudan, yet proposed a ‘slightly more effective participation by Egypt’ in the Sudan’s administration.95 This position was contradictory; Allenby may have hoped for the dis¬ covery of some form of words that could placate Egyptian nationalists while leaving Britain in control. It was a vain hope. The Foreign Office was concerned that no progress had been made over increasing the Gezira irrigation limit, while the Residency feared that London would ‘fall back on their pet theory of a unilateral declaration in the matter of the Sudan’. The Residency clung to a belief that if the Egyptian government could be convinced that Britain’s interest in the Sudan was primarily economic rather than political (that is, a means by which to blackmail Egypt), then Zaghlul would adopt a more conciliatory posture.96 The Sudan Government was deeply suspicious of the Residency’s approach. Since coming to power the Wafd had been making life more difficult in a variety of ways, quite apart from contacts with the Sudanese opposition. When in April 1924 Sudan officials attended the British Empire Exhibition in London, Zaghlul wired the Palace asking how they had done so without the Egyptian government’s permission! The question of the proper method of consultation between the governor-general and the co-domini was reopened, and the Residency feared Zaghlul would demand a reversion to the pre-1911 practice by which Sudan Government ordinances must be approved by the Egyptian Council of Ministers before promulgation. Such ‘approval’ had been the merest formality in those days: it would be different now. The only apparent escape, embarrassingly for the high commissioner, was Article 4 of the Condominium Agreement, which made no reference to the governor-general’s prior consultation with either the Egyptian government or the British representative in Egypt.97 A more serious issue was the replacement of British officers in the Egyptian Army. The new Egyptian government delayed the appointment of replace¬ ments, and the British officer corps was rapidly depleting. Worse, what would happen if the sirdarate itself fell vacant? These questions were among many irritating and potentially serious issues affecting the Sudan Government’s view of the impending Anglo-Egyptian negotiations. On 25 May Stack, undoubtedly with the agreement of his senior advisers, warned London that any compromise, ‘however innocuous’, with Egyp¬ tian claims, would inevitably be interpreted by the Sudanese as ‘a prelude to gradual withdrawal of British control from the Sudan’. No negotiations

3°4

Empire on the Nile

would be useful that resulted in anything but unquestioned British supremacy in the country, and a clear declaration was required that this was the intention of the British government. It was just such a declaration that the Residency wished to avoid, because of the predictable reaction in Egypt. Stack’s concern was treated sarcastically: ‘I should have thought’, one official at the Residency wrote, ‘that an efficient administration like the Sudan Admn. would be able to cope with the situation’ in Khartoum without a statement by the British government.98 But Stack’s proposals went far beyond a simple restatement of British policy. He recommended: retention of the Condominium in name only; settlement of the Sudan’s debt to Egypt; replacement of the Financial Regulations by an AngloEgyptian supervisory commission; a guarantee of Egypt’s southern fron¬ tier and her existing water rights; the definition of thq Sudan’s water rights on a ‘water consumption’ rather than an irrigated area basis; the with¬ drawal of Egyptian units of the army; disbandment of the Sudanese battalions, and an annual Egyptian contribution of ££500,000 towards a new Sudan defence force; but the stationing of a small Egyptian garrison in the Sudan similar to the British force there.99 The Sudan Government did not rest its case even on these ideal terms. Stack went to London to represent the Sudan behind the scenes in the coming negotiations, but the most effective work was done by Schuster, the financial secretary, who accompanied him. While the governor-general continued to express the general views of his government in memoranda and meetings, it was Schuster who met the ministers, addressed back¬ benchers, even lent selected books (as ‘background’ to Egyptian depreda¬ tions in the Sudan) to various politicians. On 11 August, as the dust cleared from the Atbara and cadets’ demonstrations, Stack reiterated his May proposals to MacDonald, warning that he could not ‘guarantee the maintenance of order’ unless the garrison of the Sudan was placed under his ‘sole control and freed from Egyptian influences’. If Egypt did not agree, the British government ‘must be ready to take unilateral action’. Schuster’s work was more complicated. He saw the necessity of protecting Mac¬ Donald from attacks from the left wing of the Labour Party, and proceeded to win it over by taking advantage of its ignorance of the Sudan. This having been accomplished (as Hansard demonstrates), Schuster ‘took the line that nothing short of kicking out the Egyptian units and the Egyptian officers . . . would really permanently put the position on a healthy footing, but the difficulty was to find sufficient reason to justify such high¬ handed action. We made the utmost possible use of the Atbara incident, but that was not enough for our purpose.’100 The Atbara incident was serious enough, however, to persuade Mac¬ Donald to advise Egypt on 14 August that Britain would take any action

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

305

necessary to maintain order and security in the Sudan. Zaghlul refused responsibility for the troubles, and thereupon downgraded the coming negotiations to the vague status of ‘conversations’. In the meantime Allenby tried to repair the rapidly disintegrating fabric of compromise and Schuster feared that he might succeed: that MacDonald’s resolve might weaken and Zaghlul be allowed to ‘wriggle out of the dilemma in which he ought mercilessly to be placed’. The Foreign Office endorsed the Sudan Government’s position that no matter how the talks ended some action must be taken on the Egyptian Army question, while Stack went so far as to demand that unless Zaghlul ‘publicly withdrew Egyptian claims, Britain should confront Egypt with ‘the accomplished decision to rid the Sudan of all Egyptians military and civil’. Stack’s and Schuster’s main concern was to combat MacDonald’s conciliatory tendencies, and reiterate the necessity for ‘drastic action’ unless Zaghlul capitulated.101 Under these circumstances the MacDonald-Zaghlul conversations were bound to fail. Meeting three times between 25 September and 3 October, the two sides agreed on nothing. Zaghlul departed for Egypt. Talks among British officials of the Foreign Office, Residency, and Sudan Government continued, however, in order to determine the British government’s response to the breakdown in negotiations. The situation was complicated by the imminent fall of the Labour government, since MacDonald was unwilling to take strong action on the eve of the dissolution of parliament. Fie did, however, send a despatch to Allenby, publicly reiterating Britain’s determination to carry out its responsibilities and to take any action necessary if Egypt disturbed the status quo. In the October general election the Conservatives won a convincing victory, and took office on 6 Novem¬ ber, under Baldwin as prime minister and Austen Chamberlain as foreign secretary. The Sudan Government’s winning over of the Labour govern¬ ment had strengthened the hand of its successor, in that it broadened support for ‘drastic action’ if this was required. Plans went ahead for confronting the Egyptian government with British demands, and it was decided that the future of the Egyptian Army should be the subject on which specific representations would be made. Allenby and Stack, who was in Cairo en route to Khartoum, agreed that if Egypt refused to separate the army command into Egyptian and Sudanese halves, Britain should demand the evacuation of all Egyptian troops from the Sudan.102 Even this was no longer a radical proposal: by now talk of annexing the Sudan, of a British ‘mandate’ or protectorate, was common in the Sudan. As a district commissioner in far-off Upper Nile Province wrote in mid-October: ‘What we are waiting for now is the end of the condominium agreement. . . and the Sudan to come entirely under Britain so that every Egyptian can leave and the Sudanese can remain uncontaminated.’ A. J. Forster in

306

Empire on the Nile

Khartoum wrote that most people there were ‘apprehensive lest the home Govt, is prevailed upon to allow the Condominium to continue’.103 Officials were convinced that ‘drastic action’ was only a matter of time. Schuster reportedly believed that ‘an incident with Egypt’ was inevitable, and that forced evacuation of the Egyptians would ensue. Stack himself told R. E. H. Baily that ‘when the next disturbance is engineered, the British Govt, will remove the Egyptian army and consent to the formation of a Sudan Defence Force’. Arthur Huddleston incidentally hoped that the evacuation would occur in early December, the most convenient time in relation to labour contracts for the Gezira construction works.104 Thus by mid-November it had been decided to take unilateral action to ‘solve’ the army problem, now generally agreed to be the main source of the Sudan Government’s political difficulties, but the officials in Khartoum hoped for an even more radical change. Both the timing and extent of British demands remained to be settled. The Egyptian government was trapped by its repeated and continuing public assertions of Egyptian rights and by events in the Sudan that were plausibly explained to British public opinion as the natural outcome of those assertions. Indeed, Zaghlul’s last hope was that the situation in the Sudan itself, lately apparently quieting, would continue to relax, thus making unilateral British action appear unjustifiably high-handed. On 19 November any such hope was lost (and with it the hope of the emergent educated elite in the Sudan), when a group of Egyptian extremists shot and mortally wounded Stack as he was being driven to his Cairo residence. He died the next day. The ‘drastic action’ he had advocated since May, at first reluctantly, was now made inevitable by a senseless outrage. At the very time his influence was removed from the scene, there arose a crisis that he, perhaps of all members of the Sudan Government, might have been able to manage with moderation. The months of pent-up frustration in Britain, Egypt, and especially in the Sudan now burst forth with tragic consequences.105 Even before Stack died Allenby was in close communication with London over the terms of an ultimatum they agreed must be served. The previous decision to choose one British grievance as the subject of representations would not now be effected; rather, a whole catalogue of issues, large and small, was mooted for inclusion in an ultimatum. Allenby was determined that this should be delivered before Zaghlul could avoid, through resignation, the humiliation of receiving it, and he therefore finally acted before his proposals had been approved by London. On the 22nd he personally served Zaghlul with an ultimatum demanding an apology; justice for the assassins; a fine of £500,000; the withdrawal within twentyfour hours of all Egyptian officers and army units from the Sudan; notification to the appropriate department that the Sudan Government

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

Fig. 15

307

The Camel Corps, c. 1920

would ‘increase the area to be irrigated at Gezira from 300,000 feddans to an unlimited figure as need may arise’; agreement with British wishes concerning foreign interests in Egypt; and the suppression of political demonstrations. In a separate submission the Egyptian government was told that the Sudanese elements of the Egyptian Army would be formed into a ‘Sudan Defence Force under British command and responsible to the Sudan Government only’.106 Despite its annoyance with Allenby and especially with his irrigation demand, which was tainted with opportun¬ ism, the British government could do little but support him, until he made suggestions for further reprisals, after which London despatched a special representative for consultations in Cairo. The ultimatum, while serving British ends, was maladroitly worded, and the Foreign Office feared European reaction to it. This could not save Zaghlul who, having rejected the ultimatum, resigned on 24 November. British authorities in Khartoum had long ago prepared a detailed plan for the evacuation of the Egyptian units. ‘Plan E’, as it was called, was set in motion as soon as the Residency informed the Sudan Government on the evening of the 23rd that Zaghlul had rejected the ultimatum. Special troop trains were ready, and the Egyptian battalions were entrained, the men armed but without ammunition, except for the 3rd Egyptian Battalion and

•j08

Empire on the Nile

the Egyptian artillery, stationed at Khartoum North. They refused to cooperate with the evacuation unless directly ordered to do so by King Fu’ad. Whether because the British authorities wished to avoid a bloody encounter (as was later said), or because the Egyptian artillery commanded the capital from Khartoum North (as was not mentioned), arrangements were made to obtain orders from the Egyptian war minister.107 Meanwhile disturbances occurred involving elements of the Sudanese battalions. The simple facts may be briefly related. On the afternoon of 27 November men of the 1 ith Sudanese marched on the Musketry School where, having been joined by men from other units, they collected guns and ammunition. They then marched through the city in what appeared to British witnesses as a normal military movement. The Sudanese were bent on joining the recalcitrant Egyptian units in Khartoum North, but as they marched towards the Blue Nile bridge they encountered a British officer and threatened him. He immediately raised the alarm, and Huddleston himself, the acting sirdar, came to meet the marchers. He approached the men, who had halted near Gordon College, identified himself, and asked whether they would obey his orders. When one of the Sudanese replied that they would obey only orders of Rifaat Pasha, the senior Egyptian officer, Huddleston ordered the British contingent escorting him to open fire on the Sudanese. They dispersed immediately, some into the nearby Military Hospital where they killed six people. During the night some of the Sudanese escaped, to surrender or be hunted down later. In the morning, after suffering casualties in trying to storm the building, the British brought up a howitzer and bombarded the building until it was destroyed. All the Sudanese inside were killed. A subsequent court martial sentenced four officers to death for mutiny, three of whom were executed on 5 December, the fourth having had his sentence commuted. A brief episode of insubordination involving the Sudanese Hamla Battalion on the 28th was peacefully concluded through the timely and diplomatic inter¬ vention of R. E. H. Baily.108 A rising of political prisoners at the Khartoum North central prison, begun on the 24th after two weeks of minor disturbances made worse by the incompetence of the prison regime, was not directly connected with the army troubles. Separate, minor incidents of insubordination occurred elsewhere in the country, notably at Talodi, but without fatal consequences. These nonetheless heightened the tension in the capital, where it was thought by some that a general rising might be under way. The Egyptian troops, however, at no time became involved in the Khartoum disturbances, and when the order from Egypt arrived, those in Khartoum North entrained without further trouble. By the end of December all but a few Egyptian military personnel had been evacuated from the Sudan.

The government’s troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

309

In modern Sudanese historiography these events mark the culmination of the ‘1924 Revolution’. In contemporary documents they constituted rather a ‘mutiny’ instigated by Egypt. There is perhaps a third interpreta¬ tion more consistent with the facts. While there was an Egyptian propa¬ ganda campaign in the Sudan and probably Egyptian financing of Sudanese dissidents, and while there were men in the Sudanese battalions who refused to obey their British officers, nonetheless what occurred in late November 1924 was the final act not of revolution or mutiny but of a British coup d’etat. Throughout the summer of 1924 there had been clear signs of disaffec¬ tion in the Sudanese battalions. In July Willis noted the suspicious political activities of some Sudanese officers, and it was thought that about twenty officers and men of the nth alone had joined the White Flag League. The arrest in July of 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif (who was, of course, an ex-officer), and the demonstration of the cadets in August, provided additional evidence of the spread of dissent to the Sudanese battalions. Two incidents of insubordination involving both Sudanese and Egyptian troops occurred at Wau in August and Malakal in September. Reasons for the trouble were later said to have been doubts about future prospects, the seriousness with which the men viewed their oath of allegiance to the king of Egypt, and ‘illconsidered nationalist aspirations’.109 There is some accuracy in all of these suggestions. The future place of the ‘native officers’ had, as we have seen, been under consideration for some time. As early as 1920 General Maxwell had advised the Milner Mission that the army was too big, and KeownBoyd had questioned the necessity of an army in the Sudan at all, wondering whether a ‘well-organised police force . . . officered mainly by British’ would not suffice. Stack himself recommended in his May memorandum the disbandment of the Sudanese battalions. Huddleston was on record as considering the ‘native officers’ an expensive superfluity; and indeed wanted an army in which the Sudanese would rise to a rank no higher than warrant officer, a point that had been made repeatedly by Egyptian officers to their Sudanese colleagues.110 The slap in the face to the officer class occasioned by the granting in August of only two commissions to cadets at the Khartoum Military School seemed an accurate herald of British intentions. Rumours abounded, sometimes enhanced by Egyptian propaganda promising promotions and high wages if Egypt took over the country. It is impossible that the changing British attitude went undetected in the Sudanese officer corps and ranks, and it is certain that the British were aware of Sudanese apprehension. Why was nothing done to allay their suspicions, unless those suspicions were correct? Baily noted in his diary in late October that ‘the feeling that we are going to evacuate Sudan’ was widespread; Arnold Forster’s wife echoed a common but largely

3i°

Empire on the Nile

unspoken view that since the British had known what was going on in the army but done nothing, they themselves were ‘mostly to blame’ for what followed.111 The oath of allegiance to the king of Egypt was a difficulty of an even more serious dimension. This oath, sworn by all Sudanese officers, was unequivocal: I hereby swear by God thrice and by His Holy Books, Apostles, Conscience, Honour and Belief to be faithful and trustful to His Highness Fuad the First, Sultan of Egypt, and His Highness’s Government. To obey all his orders and all other lawful orders that may be given me from my superiors, complying with His Highness’s wishes on land and sea and in and out of Egypt. To be the enemy of his enemies and peaceful to his friends, defending the rights of his country, protecting my arms and will never leave them to an enemy until the point of death and so help me God.112 Sudanese officers were perplexed in establishing where their duty lay. The government of the king of Egypt had spoken openly and repeatedly of his sovereignty over the Sudan, the British had as openly denied it. Were orders ‘just’ if they obviously contradicted the wishes of the king and his government? Who were the ‘enemies’ of the king, and who his friends? Did Sudanese officers ‘defend the rights of his country’ by acquiescing in the evacuation of his army? The dilemma was as obvious then as now. In July Baily wrote privately of the difficulty caused by ‘an army which has sworn allegiance to the ruler of a country that has openly declared its hostility to the presence of the English in the country which the English are govern¬ ing’, and he noted too that the Sudanese officers were concerned about their pensions, should the Egyptians be forced out. In September Reginald Davies, then assistant director of intelligence, told Huddleston of an interview he had had with a Sudanese officer who had told him that his oath was imposed on him by his British superior officers. He was, he said, [one] of those who take their religion seriously, and he therefore felt himself to be completely bound by his oath. ... I formed the opinion that this officer and his like would certainly refuse to obey any order which was quite obviously designed to break the tie between themselves and King Fuad which their oath constitutes. It seems to me, further, that they might obey, in those circumstances, a counter-order emanating directly from the Egyptian Minister of War. Even on 27 November Willis warned Huddleston that the officers’ ‘reputation as officers and gentlemen’ was at stake and that they looked to the government ‘to show them the way out’. The Ewart Report later agreed that the officers’ position was ‘impossible’, adding that ‘the higher the mental capacity of the native officer, the more reason he had, latterly, for doubt as to where his allegiance lay.’ Huddleston himself had said in September that such officers could not be called ‘disloyal as they are loyal

The government's troubled adolescence, 1919-1924

311

to King Fuad to whom they have taken [an] oath. They are in fact his officers and not ours.’113 On 31 October Baily was told ’of the bewilder¬ ment of officers at the uncertainty of their future’. Even in December Sterry reported that there was still confusion among the troops regarding their allegiance, and some Sudanese officers applied formally to be allowed to go to Egypt for the same reason.114 When the Egyptian units in Khartoum North refused the order to evacuate, Huddleston sought a direct order from Egypt; to the Sudanese at the Military Hospital he said only, ‘I am Huddleston Pasha.. . . Will you take my orders?’ After hearing the reply he must have expected, he ordered British troops to open fire. Were the Sudanese who marched down Khedive Avenue, and died in the ruins of the Military Hospital or were executed later, guilty of mutiny? Or, after many months of uncertainty, of being caught in the Anglo-Egyptian war of words, of agonising over their oaths to the king of Egypt, had they simply done what oath and conscience demanded, marched peacefully to join their comrades-in-arms? They owed no loyalty to the Sudan Govern¬ ment, and as Huddleston said, they were not British officers but King Fu’ad’s. The evidence shows that they were guilty of something less than mutiny, and martyrs to something more than a revolution. The attitude of the Sudanese officers is easier to comprehend than that of their British superiors. Nothing was done to attempt conciliation or even explanation. Indeed, British officers seem never to have worried about the requirements of their own oath to the Egyptian king and what, in the light of that, they were doing by evacuating his army from the Sudan. Such was the hypocrisy bred by ‘condominium’. The Sudan Government’s aims in November 1924 may fairly be judged by the outcome of the crisis: the Condominium was now merely a word, Egyptian participation having been reduced to financial support. That even the formal designation ‘Condominium’ was retained was the result of insistence in London and Cairo, where it was seen that a vestige of Egyptian ‘rights’ would be useful in future dealings with Egypt. The British take-over of the Sudan Government was a result of months of planning by its officials who, in London and Cairo, worked to convince the British government to sanction ‘drastic action’, and in Khartoum did all they could to make such action necessary. The targets of their wrath were not only Egyptian soldiers and officials, but the Sudanese officers and ‘intelligentsia’ - dupes, allies, or victims of the hated Egyptians, it mattered not. The Residency repeatedly remarked on the extremism of officials in Khartoum as the summer of 1924 passed to autumn. ‘All the suggestions made for the future ... are negative’, one Cairo official observed. ‘Huddleston . . . will shut the Military School. The Governor of Khartoum advocates hitting, and hitting, and going on

312

Empire on the Nile

hitting. The Intelligence believe in a display of force - and the A/ Governor-General [Sterry] himself seems to believe in a reversal of educational policy. In no case is a constructive suggestion put forward’.115 The hostility of these high officials to Egyptians and ‘effendis’ was by now too deep to respond to suggestions: they wanted confrontation, and in November they got it.

The governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer, 1924-1926

THE SUDAN IN AN G L O - E G Y P TI AN RELATIONS AFTER THE 1924 CRISIS

At the height of the 1924 crisis, some officials of the Sudan Government believed (and more hoped) that they were witnessing the last days of the Condominium, that the disturbances of the summer, the failure of the Anglo-Egyptian negotiations, and the assassination of Stack and its bloody aftermath in Khartoum would provide the justification necessary for the British government to haul down the Egyptian flag and annex the Sudan. That this did not occur was the result of a determination in London and especially at the Residency to salvage something from the wreckage of Anglo-Egyptian relations. To that end the status of the Sudan could be used to induce Egyptian cooperation. The Egyptian soldiers had gone and (some but by no means all) Egyptian civilians were going, but Egypt’s nominal partnership remained. The Sudan Government still required financial assistance, and the British government was amenable to a sym¬ bolic presence if this could be exchanged for a subvention. Thus the Condominium continued, more of a misnomer than ever, and the Foreign Office, not the Colonial Office, continued to supervise its affairs. Signalling London’s and Cairo’s intentions, a new governor-general, Sir Geoffrey Archer, was appointed by King Fu’ad in December, according to the procedure laid down in the 1899 Agreement. His brief term of office witnessed important political developments in the Sudan and a hardening of British attitudes. After the evacuation of the Egyptian troops and the quelling of Sudanese opposition in the Three Towns, British officials looked to London for the abrogation of the Condominium Agreement. Sir Wasey Sterry, the legal secretary and acting governor-general, was the most outspoken advocate of this, but few disagreed: MacMichael, Baily, and Huddleston were prominent proponents. MacMichael stressed the symbolic importance, to 3D

Empire on the Nile

3 r4

Sir Lee Stack, 1919-24

Sir John Maffey, 1926-33 Fig. 16

Sir Geoffrey Archer, 1924—6

Sir Stewart Symes, 1934-40

Governors-general of the Sudan

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

315

the Sudanese, of retaining the Egyptian flag; Baily, on learning that the Condominium would not be abolished, said that London had ‘knocked the heart out’ of the British in Khartoum: The Civil Population are asking our reasons [and] the bewilderment of the Sudanese officers cannot be clarified. How can we carry on [?] We have held the name of Egypt up to scorn and contempt. We and the natives have rejoiced in at last being able to join together in a common execration. We unceremoniously boot them out. Yet we keep their flag - and I suppose are going to salute their King and play his National Anthem.1 Sterry communicated repeatedly with the Residency to stress the importance of ‘hauling down the flag’, but to no avail.2 It was left to Schuster, more detached than his colleagues and absent from Khartoum during the troubles, to calm them. He recorded his view that they were ‘a bit unbalanced’ by London’s decision: Huddleston had actually taken up residence at the Khartoum War Office, and Sterry was ‘seriously consider¬ ing’ hauling down the flag ‘without authority’. But Schuster believed that ‘things had gone incredibly well. . . . the patient had come through a most dangerous operation extraordinarily well’. He told Sterry that the Con¬ dominium would be retained, barring some ‘further provocation’, and that the Residency had returned to ‘the old game of negotiating for a friendly settlement’ with Egypt.3 Schuster’s appraisal was correct. The Sudan Government had achieved all it had set out to do: the outright abrogation of the 1899 Agreement had never been considered a realistic aim. But his colleagues’ state of mind may be gauged by the even-tempered Baily’s cynical comment that Schuster was ‘too ambitious to be indiscreet’.4 Whatever the limits on Schuster’s indiscretion, his ambitions had been a topic of speculation even before Stack’s death, the circumstances of which required the rapid appointment of a successor, in order to reassure Sudanese public opinion. Schuster’s was one name mentioned, although there is no evidence that he was, as has been suggested, the ‘overwhelming choice’ of the British in the Sudan.5 On 2 3 November Sir Geoffrey Archer, governor of Uganda, was offered the governor-generalship, and on the 26th he accepted. Exactly why he was selected is uncertain, but it has been widely believed that Winston Churchill’s influence was decisive.6 On 1 December the Foreign Office told Allenby that the Egyptian government should issue a decree, a procedure quickly adopted by an Egyptian government probably as surprised as officials in Khartoum by this evidence of Britain’s intention to retain the Condominium. Archer arrived in Khartoum on 5 January 1925.7 Archer’s governor-generalship was unsuccessful. Apart from the resolu¬ tion of the November crisis, his tenure included few notable events; the circumstances of his resignation in 1926 remain the best-remembered

316

Empire on the Nile

episode. Archer was personally unpopular, was the first governor-general without experience of the Sudan, and his political views were opposed by his principal subordinates. Much has been made of his personality as a reason for the disaster that overtook him. His formal arrival at Khartoum, wearing the glittering costume of a colonial governor, has been seen as symbolic of the gulf that divided him from his businesslike, even austere, lieutenants, men like Schuster, Sterry, and MacMichael. Schuster later described Archer as ‘six foot seven of beastliness’ who had failed in Somaliland, almost ruined Uganda, and whose ‘ways were very contrary to the Sudan ways’, a ‘complete outsider’.8 But personality was not every¬ thing: Kitchener had been feared and unloved; Wingate had not been personally popular; and Sir John Maffey, Archer’s successor, was even more of an ‘outsider’ than Archer. The new governor-general was at least a civilian, unlike his predecessors, and this eliminated finally the militarycivilian rivalry as a source of friction. Archer came to grief over issues more substantive than correct attire and personal predilections. Indeed, shortly after he arrived in Khartoum Schuster wrote favourably of him, that he would inspire ‘personal allegiance’ among the Sudanese.9 The various complications attending the birth at Khartoum of the Sudan Defence Force were minor compared with the prolonged series of events in Egypt following Stack’s assassination. Allenby’s ultimatum had taken London by surprise, and his subsequent actions resulted in a loss of confidence at the Foreign Office. He had suggested, for instance, the holding and possible execution of Egyptian hostages if further outrages occurred, the rupture of diplomatic relations, and the seizure of the Alexandria customs. Chamberlain immediately vetoed the first two ideas, but the customs were occupied before London could respond. Chamberlain reacted by sending a special representative, Nevile Henderson, osten¬ sibly to acquaint Allenby with the government’s views.10 This sequence of events did much to sour the tone of the Residency’s relations with London. Of the difficulties London wished to avoid, the most important were adverse foreign (especially European) reaction to the crisis in Cairo, and the assumption of administrative functions in Egypt consequent to the resignation of Zaghlul’s ministry. The very appointment of Henderson as Minister Plenipotentiary created new difficulties for Allenby, who argued vehemently that this publicised London’s lack of confidence in him, and would convince Egyptians that the terms of the British ultimatum would be relaxed. ‘Either you have confidence in me or you have not’, he told Chamberlain, and insisted that if Henderson’s status were not clarified, he himself must resign. While Allenby reluctantly agreed to remain for the duration of the crisis, his resignation in 1925 stemmed directly from this controversy.11 Ironically, Henderson agreed

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

317

with Allenby, stating in private letters that it was ‘absolutely undeniable’ that his appointment had created ‘an unfortunate impression and effect’ in Cairo. ‘Most of the Egyptians and some others’ thought that he had been sent ‘to supplant and override Lord Allenby’ and ‘to modify the ultimatum policy’. Thus, both Allenby’s prestige and the salutary effects of the ultimatum had been diminished.12 In the midst of this controversy Sterry’s repeated demands from Khartoum for permission to ‘haul down the flag’ had seemed tactless in the extreme and characteristically parochial. But of more practical concern was the application of the ultimatum’s pot pourri of demands. Insofar as the Sudan was concerned, these reduced to two issues: the establishment and financing of the Sudan Defence Force and the demand for ‘unlimited’ irrigation in the Gezira. A new Egyptian government under Ahmad Ziwar Pasha had been formed on 24 November, and Allenby was anxious to reach agreements with it. On the 25 th the Egyptian parliament, with its huge Wafdist majority, was prorogued. On the 30th the British returned the Alexandria customs to Egyptian control, in return for Ziwar’s assurance that various other demands made by Allenby would be met: the continued autonomy of the British Financial and Judicial Advisers, improved terms for British officials in the Egyptian government, and so forth.13 The Gezira clause was of great concern to the Egyptians because it was a thinly veiled threat to disregard Egypt’s dependence on the Nile waters; and to Britain because it had provoked unfavourable foreign reaction. In defence of the Gezira demand Allenby told the foreign secretary that he had deliberately made it seem excessive so that a new Egyptian government could benefit by winning ‘concessions’ from Britain and accepting lesser demands. This Chamberlain considered a lame excuse, but had a higher opinion of Allenby’s proposal of an ‘impartial commission’ to report on the area to be irrigated after the completion of the Sennar Dam, the way in which surplus water would be distributed, and on a mechanism to ensure that future irrigation works in the Sudan complied with the commission’s decisions. The commission would be appointed by agreement of the Egyptian and British governments, and pending its report the Sudan Government would abide by the previously agreed limit of 300,000 feddans. While the Foreign Office and Residency debated the wording of their commission proposal, which Sterry in Khartoum attempted vainly to modify, Ziwar and his colleagues grew anxious about British intentions.14 He was finally presented not with a proposal but with another ultimatum: either to agree to a commission or the Sudan Government would ‘recover complete liberty of action in regard to matters of irrigation’. Reference to this ‘liberty of action’ was later dropped, but the Egyptians were left with no illusion of what would result from a failure to cooperate.15 On

318

Empire on the Nile

17 December Ziwar agreed to a commission, asking only that its president be a ‘neutral’ (and not an American: ‘in Egyptian opinion’, Allenby explained, ‘Americans are insufficiently distinguished from English¬ men’).16 The arrangement of further details occupied some time, and the commission, under a Dutch president, J. J. Canter Cremers, began its deliberations in the spring of 1925. Allenby’s negotiations with the Ziwar government were viewed with suspicion in Khartoum, and were not universally approved elsewhere. On 15 December Lord Stamfordham, George V’s private secretary, expressed the king’s view that the time had perhaps come to end the Condominium. Chamberlain assured Stamfordham that the Sudan Government’s position was ‘being most carefully weighed’, but that it could not be kept separate from British objectives in Egypt.17 Allenby was blunter. Reacting to Sterry’s opinion that the Egyptian Irrigation Department in the Sudan should be under the detailed control of the Sudan Government, he commented that this would imply ‘an independence of Egypt which the Sudan does not possess’, and could not therefore be countenanced. This chillingly Cromerian response raised eyebrows at the Foreign Office. Murray confessed himself ‘a little uneasy’ at Allenby’s reluctance to ‘ask for anything which would endanger the conclusion of an agreement’ he personally considered satisfactory. Chamberlain was more understanding of Allenby’s views. By the 23rd he had evidently had enough of Sudan Government complaints, and wrote to Allenby: You know and appreciate the policy of His Majesty’s Government both as to the Sudan and Egypt. I doubt whether the Sudan authorities are as well informed. I want to provide as far as possible against future trouble [in the Sudan] but I do not want to destroy the condominium and still less to make the position of a friendly Egyptian government more difficult. . . . Sudan administration seems to me to be thinking exclusively of its own difficulties. They must take account also of yours. He suggested that Allenby lay down the law on British policy in the Nile Valley, to which future Sudan Government proposals should conform. This Allenby did on the 26th, explaining that ‘the maintenance of a friendly Government in Egypt’ was ‘one of the best means of securing’ the British position in the Sudan; that the British must help it in its ‘task of combatting Zaghlulism’; and that the Condominium would remain. He told Sterry that while everything would be done ‘compatible with the Egyptian policy of His Majesty’s Government’ to meet the Sudan Government’s require¬ ments, it must be remembered that the recent crisis could not ‘be expected to lead directly to a solution of all the difficulties between Egypt and the Sudan’.18 This was exactly what his ultimatum had, in fact, been intended to do, but this was now forgotten in the rush to restore Anglo-Egyptian relations.

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

319

The priority of a settlement was further clarified in the negotiations over an Egyptian subvention to finance the new Sudan Defence Force. An early attempt to sever the Sudan’s financial relations with Egypt, as laid down in the old Financial Regulations, was abandoned, and nominal control through the (British) Financial Adviser to the Egyptian government was retained at Allenby’s suggestion.19 On 3 December Allenby recommended British acceptance of a ‘general contribution to the cost of administering the Sudan not a specific contribution to the army’, should the Egyptian government wish to make such a contribution.20 He had ‘practically no doubt’ that Ziwar’s government would be ‘anxious to contribute as a sign of their share in condominium’, and suggested ££750,000 annually. Egyp¬ tian parliamentary approval would be required, and parliament had been prorogued, but Schuster in Khartoum assured that the Sudan Government could cover the cost of the army in 1925, if necessary, through its reserve funds. Chamberlain did not care whether an Egyptian ‘contribution’ was designated for general or military purposes, so long as it was made and was large enough to preclude any expenditure by Britain. In any case, he wrote, Britain would not subsidise the Sudan Government.21 The Foreign Office’s willingness to concede Egypt’s assumption of the role of paymaster for the Sudan Defence Force was bitterly resented in Khartoum. Chamberlain was adamant, however, and in no mood to negotiate with Khartoum or the Egyptians. On 15 December he wired Allenby that the new Egyptian government seemed to be shutting their eyes to the fact that maintenance of the condominium is very much more in their interest than it is in ours.... we are in a position to give effect to our intentions independently of anything that Egypt can do. An influential section of opinion here [including the king] is already urging that we should accept a mandate for the Sudan. Such a solution, whilst defining satisfactorily the role which we intend to play, would connote the disappearance of the condominium.. . . Thus far we have deliberately avoided doing anything which would involve repudiation of that agreement and I hope that the Egyptian government will not compel us to reconsider our attitude.

Chamberlain went on to say that the irrigation commission was but one side of a bargain, the other of which was an Egyptian subvention to the Sudan Government. It was, he wrote, ‘for the Egyptian government to choose whether to take this opportunity of securing for their country a settlement which will permanently remove all reason for anxiety in respect of their present water supply and its future development, or to rely for the protection of their interests on the goodwill of His Majesty’s Government which they have done nothing to deserve’. If Egypt rejected this ‘bargain’, she ‘should be prepared to face the consequences’.22 Chamberlain was, in other words, simply refining the terms of the much criticised Gezira clause

320

Empire on the Nile

of Allenby’s ultimatum: Egypt must conform to British wishes or lose any say in the future distribution of Nile waters. Once again Egypt’s reliance on the Nile made her vulnerable to extortion. In the event, Sidqi Pasha, with whom Allenby was ‘negotiating’, agreed to an Egyptian contribution ‘for general purposes’, and that ££750,000 was not too much.23 In timehonoured fashion the British Treasury now stepped in and pointed out that ‘As no surprise was expressed at the tentative suggestion of an Egyptian contribution of ££750,000, it should be possible in fact to obtain’ more.24 On 12 January 1925 Sidqi finally made a formal proposal, but one that specified an Egyptian subvention for military purposes and noted the Sudan’s continuing ‘ties with Egypt’. Archer, newly arrived in Khartoum, objected that this would create the impression in the Sudan that Egypt would have financial control of the Sudan Defence Force and that Egyptian officers and troops might one day return. Chamberlain discounted the objection.25 A complicating factor in this lengthy negotiation was the political situation in Egypt. New elections were scheduled there in Febru¬ ary and March 1925. Ziwar’s anti-Wafdist cabinet, which by mid-Decem¬ ber had been strengthened by wider representation, made every effort, legal and otherwise, to ensure the Wafd’s defeat at the polls. Zaghlul’s friendly overtures to leading politicians, the king, and even Allenby were rebuffed. The election results were inconclusive, and an anti-Wafd coa¬ lition took office, but in a secret vote Zaghlul was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies. The new government immediately resigned, parlia¬ ment was prorogued, a caretaker government under Ziwar remained in office, and yet another period of instability and pre-election manoeuvring ensued. It was against this background that Anglo-Egyptian negotiations were conducted, a fact that Allenby and the Foreign Office did not lose sight of, but of less concern to the Sudan Government. Its positions were rarely conveyed with tact or apparent awareness of (let alone deference to) British concerns in Egypt. By May 1925 affairs in Egypt were such that Allenby’s long-delayed resignation could be accepted. On the 18th his successor as high commis¬ sioner for Egypt and the Sudan was named as Sir George Lloyd, governor of Bombay. Lloyd arrived on 21 October with a reputation for toughness and a determination to maintain his own and British authority. Before his appointment the Egyptian department of the Foreign Office had attempted to alter the formal relationship between the high commissioner and the governor-general, regarding the former’s title and the way in which communications between Khartoum and London were (usually) still conducted through the Residency. In a memorandum Mervyn Herbert, writing on behalf of his departmental colleagues, pointed out that the high commissioner did not in fact administer the Sudan, had never done so, nor

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

321

could he from two thousand miles away and with no specialised staff. The Sudan

Government

had

for years

complained

about

both

Cairo’s

ignorance of Sudan affairs and of their presentation to London in a way that reflected the Residency’s concerns rather than its own. Since the 1924 crisis the British government had taken great steps to increase the Sudan’s independence of Egypt, Herbert wrote, and although the Condominium remained, it had ‘worn thin, and will probably wear thinner’. Eventually the governor-general ‘should become in fact - and later perhaps in name also - the Governor of a British province’. Thus it was ‘pointless to maintain a wholly unnecessary cog in a machine in the shape of the High Commissioner’. Finally, Herbert mentioned the ‘personal and immediate factor’: ‘Cairo and Khartoum do not see eye to eye. Khartoum thinks Cairo ignorant and unsympathetic in its criticisms. Cairo thinks Khartoum self-centred. Khartoum desires emancipation from Cairo and I doubt whether anybody in Cairo wishes to retain a control over Khartoum which is in practice vexatious and ineffective.’ Chamberlain rather brusquely dismissed the advice of his experts: ‘I am not convinced,’ he minuted.26 In appointing Lloyd he made this clear.

INTERNAL AFFAIRS AFTER THE 1924 CRISIS

The main issue to confront Sir Geoffrey Archer on his arrival in Khartoum was the future of the Sudanese battalions of the Egyptian Army. Humili¬ ated by the events of November, depressed by the execution of three officers, still confused by the apparently ambivalent policy of the Sudan Government and the unresolved issue of their oath of allegiance, and deeply mistrusted by the British, the Sudanese battalions required immedi¬ ate and careful attention. Huddleston, the acting sirdar, professed himself expectant of more trouble (although, as in November, he took no notable steps to prevent it). In mid-December the intelligence department reported that ‘the junior Sudanese officers’ had ‘adopted a sullen temper’ and were ‘talking of revenge’, and that ‘efforts ... to persuade some of the more senior and intelligent officers to discuss . . . the causes of the mutiny’ had failed.27 The battalions remained units of the Egyptian Army, owing allegiance to King Fu’ad. Allenby’s ultimatum had specified the creation of a purely Sudanese force responsible only to the Sudan Government. It remained to give effect to that. The Foreign Office was concerned that this question should be fully and calmly considered before decisions were made, Khartoum’s dire warnings notwithstanding. After much discussion it was decided that the Sudanese battalions would be reconstituted (except for the nth Sudanese, which would be disbanded) into a Sudan Defence Force under a (British) general

322

Empire on the Nile

officer commanding (Arabic: Kaid al-Amm).28 That the new army should take an oath of allegiance to the governor-general rather than to King George was considered necessary to conform with the 1899 Agreement.29 Predictably, the actual wording of a new oath was hotly debated. The form finally chosen for Muslim officers was as follows: I swear three times by God, by all His Holy Books, by His Apostles, on my conscience and my honour, to be sincerely devoted and faithful to His Excellency the Governor General of the Sudan and to his Government, and to obey all his orders and all lawful orders which will be given me by my superiors. ... I further swear that I will faithfully discharge such duties as shall be entrusted to me.

While this wording seemed to fulfil the government’s wishes and was suitably comprehensive, some officers considered their previous oath to King Fu’ad as taking precedence. The mufti, Shaykh Isma'il al-Azhari, was therefore consulted, and after discussions with other notables he issued a fatwa prescribing the ‘dissolving’ of the oath to Ahmad Fu’ad. The mufti personally interviewed the officers involved, and only a few registered ‘conscientious objections’.30 Sudanese officers’ commissions were dis¬ tributed on King’s Day, 17 January. The organisation and distribution of the Sudan Defence Force remained basically unchanged until the mid-1930s. It was organised along the lines of the Egyptian Army, except at the highest level, where the general officer commanding was responsible to the governor-general. During the 1924 troubles, the normal British Army garrison in the Sudan had been temporarily doubled to two battalions. As before, most British troops were stationed in the Three Towns. New barracks were constructed in 1925-6, and the Egyptian Army barracks at Khartoum, Khartoum North, Atbara and El Obeid were converted for the temporary use of British troops. In 1925 permanent buildings were erected at Gebeit in the Red Sea Hills to accommodate troops on short relief tours during the hot weather. British troops served for only a year in the Sudan before transfer elsewhere.31 The country remained divided into ‘military areas’: a Northern Area with headquarters at Khartoum, a Central Area (Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains, and part of the Upper Nile Province) with headquarters at El Obeid, an Eastern Area (Kassala and Fung) headquartered at Gedaref, a Western Area consisting of Darfur, with headquarters at El Fasher, and a Southern Area (Mongalla, Bahr al-Ghazal, and the remainder of Upper Nile Province) with stations at Wau and Mongalla. The force’s establish¬ ment in 1926 was 127 British officers, 41 British non-commissioned officers, 188 Sudanese officers, and 7,963 Sudanese in the ranks. The heaviest concentration of troops (over 1,700) was in the Central Area, with stations at El Obeid, Bara, Talodi, Kadugli, and Dilling. In the Northern

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

323

Area over 1,500 troops were stationed in the Three Towns and Shendi. Over 1,100 troops were posted at El Fasher, Kabkabia, and Geneina in the Western Area; over one thousand at Gedaref, Kassala, and Singa in the Eastern; and fewer than three hundred in the Southern Area. The Equatorial Corps, of ten companies, remained stationed in the south, however, where it was subject, as before, to different terms of recruitment, regulations, and pay. The 9th Sudanese remained a battalion of regular soldiers stationed at Khartoum, while the rest of the troops were irregulars paid at a lower rate but otherwise similarly organised. Twelve companies of reserves were maintained at eight stations (Singa, Kassala, Gedaref, and Kosti with two companies each, and El Obeid, Talodi, Wau, and El Fasher with one each), each company consisting of 130 reservists under a Sudanese officer chosen from among retired Egyptian Army officers. The reserve organisation was designed at least as much as a means of providing income for old soldiers as for security reasons. The Sudan Defence Force maintained its own Medical Corps under British officers seconded from the Royal Army Medical Corps, and with Syrian medical officers and Sudanese assistants, much as before the evacuation of the Egyptian Army. A veterinary department, supplies department, animal transport corps, and pay and records directorate continued to play in the SDF the roles they had under the Egyptian Army. An

expanded

Sudan

Government stores

and

ordnance department

assumed the supplying of military as well as civil needs. It maintained two workshops at Khartoum and Khartoum North. Most equipment was imported from Britain. Auxiliary to the Sudan Defence Force were the Sudan Government Police. From 1925 these were organised separately in the north and south. In the north they were to be primarily a civil rather than a para-military force, and thus remained under provincial control, the beginning of a modern civilian police force designed to fight crime rather than deal with organised opposition to the government. In 1926 the police establishment was approximately 3,000 non-commissioned officers and men as foot police, and about 2,900 NCOs and men in the mounted police. At the district level police were responsible to district commissioners.32 The 1924 disturbances revived the idea of civilian ‘rifle clubs’. These continued to be organised along national lines and open to European members only. Government financial and other assistance was given for training, arms, and maintenance of equipment. In 1925 the commandant of British troops in the Sudan dismissed the rifle clubs as useless, and recommended ‘formation of a battalion (The Khartoum Rifles?), with platoons of English, Italian and Greek nationalities’. This, ‘after a certain amount of drill and training’, would be able to man defensible posts in the

Empire on the Nile

324

capital at times of emergency, thus freeing the permanent British battalion for duties elsewhere. ‘To foster “esprit de Corps” ’ a uniform would be required.33 But a letter circulated to British civilians ‘produced three favourable replies’; worse, during the 1924 troubles ‘a number of officials did not appear to know how to handle a service rifle’. It was therefore suggested that the conditions of service in the Sudan Government be amended to include required membership of a rifle club! Lyall, the civil secretary, intervened to defend the service: the civilians did their work; if the military was incapable of doing its own, reinforcements should be despatched. Besides, he said, ‘foreign’ (that is, non-British European) platoons were ‘for political reasons, out of the question’.34 The comman¬ dant disagreed. In September 192 5 he discovered The Sudan Reserve Corps Proclamation of 1917, a war measure providing for the establishment of a reserve of British civilians and placing responsibility for the corps with the officer commanding the British troops. Now, the commandant wrote with grim satisfaction, he would ‘like to take the opportunity to inspect the Sudan Reserve Corps on parade’. MacMichael concluded the controversy in characteristic style: the Reserve Corps, he told the commandant, had ‘not yet been raised . . . and consequently a Commandant’ had ‘not been appointed’. The Reserve Corps Proclamation, he added laconically, was ‘now under consideration for repeal’.35 The ‘chaotic state of affairs in the Palace during the Mutiny of 1924’ was advanced in 1926 in support of the idea of an ‘Auxiliary Force’.36 The result was the incorporation into the ‘Khartoum Secret Defence Scheme’ of civilian officials of the government. These were divided into four cate¬ gories: technical officials who, in an emergency, should remain at their posts; British officials with ‘previous training in machine gun work’ who would go to the Palace to man Vickers guns; ‘effective members’ of the Khartoum North Rifle Club and some officials of the steamers depart¬ ment, who were to man boats according to plans; and all other officials, who were to report to the Palace, bearing any arms and ammunition they had, and ‘fall in on the North verandah’. This last category was sub-divided into

four

‘platoons’

according

to

departments.37

Concern

about

‘European’ preparedness extended beyond the Three Towns. In January 1925 it was reported that if a disturbance became ‘almost universal, or at any rate so widespread as to cause the stoppage of all work in the Sudan Plantation Syndicate Area’, all its staff would be available for service. It was subsequently argued, however, that the training of syndicate personnel could be interpreted by Sudanese ‘on the lines that the Syndicate are being trained to shoot their tenants in the event of the tenants not working properly’, as part of a ‘Colonisation policy’.38 Concern for European self-defence may be seen as an indication of the

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psychological effect of the 1924 disturbances on some officials. The fact that the most experienced civilian officials opposed the idea of ‘reserve’ forces indicates that concern was far from universal or even warranted. There was nothing in recent experience, including the 1924 crisis, to indicate that Sudanese discontent would inevitably or even probably ever express itself in attacks on British or other European civilians. The conviction remained, however, that, in Huddleston’s words, ‘the main reason for the maintenance of a British garrison’ was ‘the possibility of having to cope with disaffection or open mutiny on the part of the Sudan Defence Force’. In military terms, the numerical disadvantage of the British troops could be corrected only by reducing the SDF or modifying its arms; ‘utilizing racial differences . . . with a view to minimizing the risk of a general action against’ the government; or providing for immediate British reinforcements from outside the country. Modern education and the spread of Islam, Huddleston opined, were posing difficulties, the latter because it made it difficult to ‘balance the racial differences’ in the SDF.39 Thus, it seemed, the Egyptian officers and troops were not the only potential instigators of mutiny. In 1925 the Sudan Government played a much less prominent role in the haggling between London and Cairo and in the negotiations with the Egyptian government than it had during the events of 1924. In this sense, at least, matters had quickly returned to normal: the Sudan was but one aspect of Anglo-Egyptian relations. Once officials in Khartoum realised this, and that, as Schuster pointed out, they had emerged from the crisis with much of what they had wanted, attention in the Sudan returned to the more mundane, but nonetheless important matters of administration in a post-Egyptian government. A clear and immediate problem for the Sudan Government was replace¬ ment of Egyptian civilians in the government. The solution adopted was the only one practicable: most were retained. Suspect Egyptians in posts considered politically sensitive, such as in the education and posts and telegraphs departments, were deported. By February 1925 there were no Egyptian teachers left in government schools, but a total of only 118 Egyptians had been deported, that is, less than 3 per cent of the Egyptians in Sudan Government employ. Thirty of these deportees were teachers, sixteen of the others had been convicted of a crime, while the majority, seventy-two, were deported without ‘formal trial’.40 There remained over four thousand Egyptians, or about half the classified staff of the govern¬ ment, and there was no way they could be replaced at once or even in the near future. Crowfoot, the director of education, argued in vain that teachers should be treated in the same way as other Egyptian personnel; besides, ‘schoolmasters had less influence on the Sudanese than senior

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clerks or officers’. The governor-general insisted, however, that the teachers would be discharged ‘unless some unusually strong case’ could ‘be made for the retention of an individual’. In the event, all were dismissed. A Foreign Office official minuted laconically that it would ‘be difficult to find Sudanese of sufficient intelligence and ability to replace them’.41 But the ruling officials of the Sudan Government had no intention of replacing them with qualified teachers of any nationality. Gordon College had for long been seen as a hotbed of anti-government sentiment, and as a training ground for the type of Sudanese who had caused trouble in 1924. The government had no desire to add to their ranks, and its administrative policy had already been adjusted to minimise both their number and their influence. In January 1925 Nevile Henderson visited the Sudan. Regarding educa¬ tion he reported that there was ‘considerable need for reform, particularly in the direction of education on more technical lines’. He could conceive ‘much harm and no utility from higher education among a people so profoundly backward as the Sudanese’. Archer took exception, not because he disagreed with Henderson’s views, but because, as he said, education policy already reflected just such views.42 Henderson was not the first to argue that education was wasted on the uneducated: he had reached his conclusions, as Keown-Boyd had during similar investigations for the Milner Mission, after discussions with leading officials. What he recommended was what they already intended to impose and, to an extent, had begun to implement. An illiberal attitude towards education was allied to the government’s plans for both the staffing of the bureaucracy and the larger question of administrative policy. This policy, the adoption of Indirect Rule, will be considered in detail in the context of Sir John Maffey’s governor-generalship (see pp. 360 ff). The staffing of the departments needed immediate attention. As early as 2 December 1924 Sterry outlined plans to offer permanent posts to nineteen Egyptian officers who had been seconded to the civil administration, because of the government’s ‘strong moral obliga¬ tion’ to men who had for many years given good service, and because they were ‘also indispensable’ if a ‘complete dislocation’ was to be avoided. Provincial governors had different views about keeping Egyptian ma’murs. The governor of Berber recommended retention of three Egyp¬ tian officers, whose characters were ‘negative’, who were ‘not clever’, and were not ‘particularly pro-British’, ‘not because they are brilliant but because’ he doubted that ‘many Arab or Sudanese Mamurs’ were ‘capable of running an office’.43 Some governors wished to keep Egyptians temporarily, but Khartoum ruled that ‘any who are to go ought to go at once’. Arthur Huddleston, the governor of the Blue Nile Province, had to

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

3^7

recommend the evacuation of an Egyptian officer who had ‘done very well’ but who was ‘frank in his nationalist sentiments’. He later recommended neither the temporary nor permanent retention of any Egyptians: ‘Am prepared to carry on here without any,’ he wired, ‘and would urge all should leave this province as soon as it can be conveniently arranged’.44 Of the nineteen offered permanent posts as civilian ma’murs, only five accepted in any case.45 The evacuation of Egyptian military and civilian officials naturally gave rise to hopes and expectations among educated Sudanese that new oppor¬ tunities and promotions would result. Conversely, some British officials thought that the moment should be seized to abolish the posts of ma’mur and sub-ma’mur, but the civil secretary recognised that the government’s ‘bona fides’ would be questioned if even the title ‘Mamur’ were dropped.46 Reports from the intelligence department that Sudanese hopes were not being fulfilled resulted in a detailed report by MacMichael in April 1925. Before the evacuation there had been three Egyptian sub-inspectors, fortyfive Egyptian ma’murs, and nineteen Egyptian sub-ma’murs. The position of sub-inspector had for years been purely honorific, and it had now been suppressed. Forty of the forty-five ma’murs had left the country. Seven Sudanese civilians, three Sudanese officers, and one Egyptian officer were promoted from among sub-ma’murs, six more Sudanese sub-ma’murs would be promoted shortly, and twenty-three vacancies remained. But, MacMichael noted, there had been too many ma’murs’ posts in the past, and some of these vacancies would not be filled. The nineteen vacant sub-

ma’murs’ posts had all been filled by Sudanese, sixteen from the SubMamurs’ Training School, three from the Sudan Defence Force. Vacancies created by promotions would all be filled similarly by Sudanese. Regarding ‘clerical and other posts’, MacMichael reported that 120 vacancies had been created by the ‘deportation, dismissal or imprisonment of Egyptians’, in addition to those created by the evacuation of Egyptian officers. While some foreigners had been engaged, most such vacancies had been or would be filled by Sudanese. In the posts and telegraphs depart¬ ment, thirty Egyptians had been deported, and thirty Gordon College boys had been brought in at the bottom of the grade-scale, the higher vacated posts being filled by promotions. In the education department two vacancies were filled by Syrians on contract, and others by promotions of Sudanese. The fate of the higher vacated posts was left unremarked. In the railways and steamers department, twenty-four vacancies had been created among the classified staff, thirteen of which remained. Four Sudanese, four Egyptians, and one muwallad had been promoted, and one Syrian and one Egyptian hired. Among unclassified staff, fourteen vacancies were filled by promotions and by the new appointment of two Sudanese, one Egyptian,

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and six Europeans. The real problem in this department, however, had been created by the evacuation in August of the Egyptian Army Railway Battalion. As there were no skilled Sudanese to replace them, fifty-five European artisans had been engaged, and another twenty would be hired soon. In the new stores and ordnance department, six vacancies for accountants would be filled by Sudanese, ‘about four’ by Syrians and Greeks, and two by Britons. In other departments a few foreigners had been hired, but other vacancies had been filled by Sudanese. In the Sudan Defence Force the situation was similar. The evacuation of the Egyptian Army’s clerical staff had resulted in the creation of many new posts. The demand for experienced men meant that about fifty ‘Syrians and other foreigners’ on contract and some seventy Sudanese were taken on. About twenty of the latter had been ‘recruited from Catholic Mission Schools’, most of the rest having been recruited from among boys who had failed final examinations or not completed the primary school course. MacMichael concluded that the government’s ‘main difficulty’ remained the ‘excess of the demand for well qualified staff over the existing supply’. Almost ‘all avenues to employment and promotion’ that had previously been open to Sudanese remained open. There were now more posts for which they were eligible, and opportunities for advancement were greater.47 In his report MacMichael avoided mention of two important matters: the future direction of administrative policy and the place of educated Sudanese within it; and whether, especially in administrative posts but in others too, functions and duties would remain as they had been or be diluted or reassigned. As R. E. H. Baily noted in his diary: ‘the policy of the Govt [was] to aim at providing the maxim, amount of efficiency regardless of political consequences’. Sudanese officers and officials would naturally be ‘disappointed if the most palpable result of the Egyptian evacuation’ was ‘more British officers and more English and Syrian clerks’.48 With the advent of Indirect Rule this is exactly what happened. Indeed, the govern¬ ment had already shown that Sudanese suspicions were justified. The Military School was closed: in future officers would be promoted from the ranks. The Sub-Mamurs’ School would close in 1927. At Gordon College ‘technical’ education was to be advanced, ‘literary’ or general education was to be retarded. Regarding the highest administrative post so far attained by a Sudanese, that of ma’mur, MacMichael had definite plans. Stack had once said that the products of the Sub-Mamurs’ School might someday become inspectors.49 Not in his day, MacMichael decreed: ‘the young Sudanese and Arab official has failed us in the Army and though the conduct of the somewhat similar class in the Sudan Government appears to have been excellent so far, we cannot afford to court risks in the future by

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

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leaving too much in their hands’.50 Clerical and technical posts would be available, and in increasing numbers, but their incumbents would find themselves subordinate to British superiors or ‘native administrations’, and their duties strictly circumscribed to preclude executive functions and political power. Recognition of this was a factor in rising discontent before the 1924 crisis and after it, and no statistics MacMichael produced could alter the fact that the future, as the government saw it and insofar as it could shape it, belonged to the traditional tribal leaders of the past.

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT DEVELOPMENTS

It may be wondered what, while Sterry fulminated about the status of the Sudan and MacMichael re-staffed the departments, the new governorgeneral was doing. In his memoirs Archer wrote little of substance about his governor-generalship. The details of the immediate post-crisis period were beyond the competence of an inexperienced governor-general, and Archer seems never to have attempted to assert himself in these affairs. Rather, if the official correspondence of the period is a reliable indication, his primary concern was the reform of the higher administration. That he failed to effect this has no bearing on the fact that it did, indeed, require reform. Over the previous twenty-five years the departments of the Sudan Government had either evolved from branches of the Egyptian Army or been improvised as need arose. These departments had in some cases become unwieldy, top-heavy, inefficient, and staffed or even directed by unqualified personnel. Even when he had seen the need for change, as in the case of the financial secretary’s department, Stack had temporised and shown too much concern for personal consequences. When Archer attempted more wide-ranging changes he had no regard at all for such consequences, and treated his chief subordinates, some with decades of service and enormous local prestige, without even ordinary courtesy. In dealing with his own officials he was inept and oblivious to the power they had. When a confrontation arose he found himself without support personally or politically, and his schemes for reform did not survive him. In one area where reform was long overdue, it was in fact inaugurated during Stack’s governor-generalship. This was in the direction and respon¬ sibilities of the intelligence department. When it came to sophisticated analyses of the development of tariqas and the machinations of the Three Sayyids, Willis was a master. For these no departmental organisation was required; he relied on his own experience and personal contacts. But with the likes of 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif he was at a loss. Elis ‘agents’ were incompetent time-servers or unreliable double-dealers, and the leaders of the White Flag League could not, like a sayyid, be engaged in tea-time

33°

Empire on the Nile

repartee. These were not men of intellectual subtlety who recognised the unspoken rules of the political game. Willis’s reports on the White Flag League were characterised by references to anonymous agents, under¬ estimates of the opposition’s strength of purpose, and speculation. Indeed, the very establishment of the league escaped his department’s notice for months. Willis won no sympathy over the department’s failures in this case; he viewed his position as a means to gain personal influence, he seemed to his opponents to contribute to the ‘recrudescence’ of Mahdism provinces, and his relations with Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi had seemed to his opponents to contribute to the ‘recrudescence of Mahdism and consequently to unrest. By 1924 Willis was isolated and had neither a record of success nor the loyalty of colleagues with which to deflect rising criticism of his department’s performance. For the purpose of considering that performance Stack appointed J. M. Ewart of the Government of India Police. Ewart took up his assignment on 12 November 1924, and after three weeks of study in London and a week of consultations in Cairo, arrived in Khartoum on 30 December. As he later noted, this was not the most auspicious time to begin his enquiries. From mid-January Ewart toured the provinces to consult governors and their staffs. His investigation was interrupted by a special assignment to compile a report on the recent disturbances, but by May he was able to recommence his primary work. The very appointment of Ewart signalled Willis’s demise. Baily noted in mid-January that Willis had been ‘working fright¬ fully hard’ to win over Archer: there was ‘a frantic race between him and MacMichael. . . . Macmic had a good start by being with’ the new governor-general on his way to Khartoum.51 Ewart’s report ‘on the organisation of Public Security Intelligence in the Sudan’, issued on 8 June, was an indictment of the department, Willis, and all their works. The department had ‘no trained staff whatsoever’, and failed ‘inevitably to check the significance or accuracy of isolated reports, or to follow up lines of enquiry which such reports’ suggested. Officials complained that the department gave ‘little help’, made ‘considerable demands’, and was ‘responsible for no small amount of interference’. As the ‘lineal descendant of the Inspector Generalship’, the department had suffered from both the ‘unpleasant’ memories of the Slatin regime, and from a continuation of the personal methods the pasha had employed. There was therefore a prejudice against the department itself, that Willis’s methods had ‘tended to accentuate’. There was too much dependence on ‘direct sources of information’: ‘unofficial “agents” . . . and personal contact between individual members of the directorate and leading natives of the country’. Such information, Ewart found, formed an ‘unsafe basis for reports and forecasts’.

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Ewart’s report outlined current methods. The intelligence department amassed ‘a vast amount of inchoate detail, which, tested by the experience of the Director’, enabled him ‘to form opinions’, the value of which would be much greater if their formation had ‘been influenced by a wider and more general knowledge of the subject, and by the informed views of equally experienced provincial officials’. The resulting amount of informa¬ tion tended ‘to get buried in files’, because it was ‘too vague or incomplete to be made use of’. The system of close personal contact had failed. Indeed, Ewart contended, both in defence of Willis personally and in criticising his method, no individual could hope ‘to discharge such a vast and complex obligation’. The governor-general and provincial governors were available to meet leading Sudanese, and in any case there were other, better ways to gather information ‘without bringing official patronage and favours into the market where news is bartered, and without setting up a counterpoise to the influence of the Provincial Governor’. Given the manifold deficiencies uncovered, changes were required in both organisation and methods. ‘The worst crime of which an Intelligence service can be guilty’, Ewart wrote pointedly, ‘is to bolster up pre¬ conceived ideas or to withhold information . . . which runs counter to such ideas.’ An intelligence department should have no policy-making or executive functions, and although Willis had never had such statutory powers, the liberty his department enjoyed ‘amounted to the same thing’. The department should coordinate and check information gathered mainly from provincial sources, maintain liaison, and ensure that accurate infor¬ mation was acted upon. Thus a ‘complete change of outlook on the part of everyone in the Provinces’ was needed. All provincial officials must consider it their duty to supply information about their bailiwicks and to explain government policy and intentions to the people they governed. It was up to the central organisation to coordinate and disseminate such provincial news. Such dissemination had been seriously deficient: the news in the Sudan Intelligence Reports was months old when it reached the provinces, and its official character made it overly cautious. What was needed were periodic informal ‘summaries of current events’, indications of developing trends, and suggestions for areas to be watched. As an example of what was being done instead, Ewart noted that he had heard of dissatisfaction among ‘the class which was politically troublesome last year’, but the intelligence department had not, nor had its informants, any idea that this might be of general significance. Much more information should be collected by British officers in the SDF and passed to the central office. Each civil official of the rank of sub-ma’mur or higher should prepare handing-over notes before relinquishing his post. The use of Sudanese ‘talent’ in intelligence work should ‘be definitely restricted and

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Empire on the Nile

carefully supervised’ to avoid the creation of ‘an exaggerated type of “agent” Any staff sent to a province should be under the orders of the provincial governor, and report both to him and to Khartoum. There was, in fact, ‘no justification for the employment of ostensibly secret agents for contact with public opinion’. Agents should be used only in particular circumstances to deal with specific tasks: there was already a ‘numerous fraternity, which levels blackmail in the guise of the “Government informer” ’. Regarding the dangers posed by Egyptian subversion, a ‘thorough investigation’ of Egyptians in the Sudan and Sudanese with ‘Egyptian sympathies or connexions’ should be undertaken. A ‘Black List’ and ‘Who’s Who’ should also be compiled. Organisational changes recommended by Ewart included the trans¬ formation of the department into ‘an Intelligence Branch or Section of the Native affairs side of a general Secretariat’. All non-political and nonconfidential information, publicity, the Labour Bureau, the work connec¬ ted with government honours, the entertainment of foreign and Sudanese visitors, state pensions, prisoners and deportees, the preparation of miscel¬ laneous publications like the Sudan Almanac, and the correspondence between Sudanese notables and the governor-general should be transferred to other departments. The branch or section created should have executive and organisation divisions. Finally, Ewart admitted that Willis had repeatedly recommended creation of a specialised staff, ‘but his recom¬ mendations were infructuous’. In a supplement to his report Ewart made suggestions regarding person¬ nel. Because he considered that the changes needed would be unwelcome to Willis, Ewart recommended his transfer ‘to some other sphere’. ‘Through circumstances rather than actual orders’, Willis had been placed in a position of much greater power than was proper for the director of an intelligence service. The resulting antagonism between him and the provin¬ cial governors was ‘fatal to the growth of the spirit of co-operation so essential to true Intelligence work’. Ewart recommended Reginald Davies, the present assistant director, to succeed Willis.52 No official could have survived such a report, and Willis was lacking in defenders. His ambitions had been realised, but when his methods were exposed as deficient in 1924 he had no escape. In 1926 he was appointed governor of the Upper Nile Province, arguably the least desirable mudiria in the country. Khartoum, and MacMichael, had not even then heard the last of Willis. The implementation of Ewart’s other recommendations required time. All of them were accepted in principle in 1925. The department was recast as the sub-department of intelligence within the civil secretary’s office. The director became an assistant civil secretary. The miscellaneous duties of the

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

333

department were transferred to an assistant civil secretary for administra¬ tion. From i January 1929, the division dealing with intelligence became known as the public security intelligence branch of the civil secretary’s department, under a controller.53 While the reform of the intelligence department was accomplished during Archer’s governor-generalship, it had been initiated by Stack. Archer’s eye was on bigger game: the organisation of the central administration itself. As early as April 1925 he expressed the view that this was the ‘weak spot’ in the Sudan Government. With commendable frankness but insufficient tact and judgement he told the Foreign Office that Arrangements have grown up fortuitously in accordance with the strength of personalities.. . . The institution of a new system is essential.. . . We must, at least, have a Secretariat and other changes. The Council, too, as at present constituted, is weak, except in numbers. . . . Fortune, however, smiles upon me. There is to be a considerable voluntary Exodus in 1926. . . . First and foremost, Sterry and Lyall depart. Sterry on most questions ... is so ‘die-hard’ and so intolerant that he and I could never work together in harmony. . . . Lyall certainly leaves things to an able assistant — MacMichael. . . . That disposes of two of the three Secretaries. There remains Schuster who is quite brilliant. . . . His value to the Sudan and to me personally cannot be overstated. To this appraisal Chamberlain minuted that he was ‘really anxious about the weakness’ of the governor-general’s council, and that it might be ‘necessary to hasten changes in order to strengthen it’, a conclusion that betrayed ignorance of the Sudan Government and a surprising readiness to accept the views of an inexperienced newcomer.54 The question of ‘strengthening’ the council is difficult to understand except on the basis of either personal incompatibility or Archer’s misjudgement of individual capacities, for the council as a whole was weak neither in intellect nor experience. There were, as Schuster had written privately, ‘a number of duds’ in the administration who should be ‘weeded out’ but these were not council members.55 A more startling indication of Archer’s poor judge¬ ment was his assignment of MacMichael, heir to the civil secretaryship, to the task of drafting a plan of central government reorganisation. Loyal lieutenant that he was, MacMichael did so, but his view of having to shuffle the government deck when after two decades he was about to draw the ace, may be imagined. In explaining Archer’s plans MacMichael let it be known that he did not understand them. The civil secretary’s department was to be amalgamated with the private secretary’s office, ‘in so far as the latter . . . dealt with administrative matters’. The civil secretaryship itself would ‘fall into abeyance’, to be replaced by a ‘Secretariat Organisation’ including a

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Empire on the Nile

secretariat to the administration and an advisership for native affairs.56 In November 1925 Archer submitted revised proposals to Lord Lloyd in Cairo. Archer wished to redefine the duties of some officials, ‘to organise a proper central secretariat’, to improve liaison with the provinces ‘on all questions of native affairs’, and to make ‘certain changes in the constitution of the Governor-General’s Council’, especially to ‘strengthen the representation of the political service’. He proposed the eventual appoint¬ ment of a ‘Secretary to the Administration’, suggesting that MacMichael should fill the post when it came into being. He outlined a proposal to appoint an ‘Adviser for Native Affairs’, an official described ominously in the Slatin-Willis tradition: in an interview with al-Hadara Archer des¬ cribed the adviser’s duties as being ‘to travel in the provinces effecting liaison between the Governor General and the Governors’. Archer further proposed to Lloyd an ‘inner council’ of the governor-general and the three secretaries, because the full council was ‘too unwieldy’.57 Lloyd at first reminded Archer that such ‘administrative proposals’ should themselves be referred to the council before submission to Cairo, and Archer assured him that the council had already given its unanimous approval. According to its minutes, however, the council gave approval to what Schuster later called Archer’s ‘undeveloped scheme of “reorganisation” ’, only later in December.58 Lloyd had substantive as well as procedural objections to raise, and to discuss these he sent More, the Sudan Agent, to Khartoum. Lloyd subsequently approved a redefinition of the duties of the private secretary and the official who would supersede the civil secretary, the appointment to the council of the Kaid al-Amm, and the reorganisation of the intelli¬ gence department. With Archer’s concurrence, the formal constitution of an ‘inner council’ and the appointment of an ‘Adviser for Native Affairs’ were dropped.59 Lloyd correctly observed that the title proposed for that official was ‘somewhat anomalous’, and that the ‘functions prescribed’ seemed likely ‘to lead to misunderstandings with the provincial authori¬ ties’. Consultations ensued, involving Cairo, London, and Khartoum, but in no haste. It was finally decided that there was no one qualified for the mooted post of chief secretary, and that the civil secretaryship would therefore be retained, absorbing the administrative functions of the private secretary. Although in February 1926 the governor-general’s council approved the designation of MacMichael, upon succeeding Lyall, as ‘Secretary to the Administration’, he was to keep the title of civil secretary, ‘with functions to be further defined at a later date’.60 Since Archer’s days were numbered and his successor dropped the idea of a chief secretaryship, the few changes actually made enhanced the position of the civil secretary and increased his range of responsibility. He

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now absorbed many of the functions of the Private Secretary and the intelligence department, the latter through the new office of deputy civil secretary for native affairs, an official who was never unleashed to follow in Slatin’s and Willis’s footsteps. MacMichael’s appointment as civil secretary combined with these increased duties to ensure that the civil secretaryship remained the most powerful position in the Sudan Government under the governor-general. Few other traces of Archer’s ‘reforms’ survived, but his handling of the matter, the vagueness of his proposals, his dilatory pursuit of them, and their apparent irrelevance, did nothing to enhance his reputation. It may well have been this that provoked the general lack of confidence which, at the time of his resignation, was said to pervade the Political Service. Archer’s professed inability to work with Sterry has an ironic echo among his chief officials: if contemporary evidence is reliable, he was unwilling to work at all. A catalogue of his subordinates’ complaints would be lengthy, but it is worth noting that neither Kitchener nor Wingate was particularly attentive to office routine, for varying reasons. Stack, however, had been, and Archer inevitably was compared with his popular, conciliatory, and recently martyred predecessor. As early as August 1925 Baily noted ‘derogatory’ remarks about the governor-general among Sudanese, and that a colleague visiting the capital was ‘shocked to see the way the G.G. was criticised everywhere’. Davies complained that Archer ‘never’ read reports sent to him. In the weeks before his resignation, while rumours circulated in Khartoum, Archer resorted to Erkowit, deputing General Huddleston to act for him in the capital. Everyone was ‘furious’ at him, Arnold Forster wrote; ‘exasperation’ was general.61 As one official had admitted even before Archer’s arrival in the Sudan, ‘the idea of having a G.-G. who had grown up in the traditions of the Colonial Office’ was not popular.62

THE RESIGNATION OF SIR GEOFFREY ARCHER

Archer’s governor-generalship ended when he was, in effect, unceremoniously dismissed by his own council. How this came to pass involved two important issues, the Sudan Government’s policy towards Mahdism and the growing influence within the government of the gov¬ ernor-general’s council. En route to Khartoum in January 1925 Archer had paused at Aba Island to acknowledge a Mahdist assemblage welcoming him to the Sudan. A visit then was not possible, but Archer agreed to pay one at an early opportun¬ ity. In his memoirs he writes of his conviction that Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi had to be dealt with as ‘the most important and influential’

33 6

Empire on the Nile

religious leader in the country. He felt that if he ‘could secure his confidence and friendship . . . then all would be well’. To objections from within the government Archer replied grandly that he ‘had never gone far wrong in the handling of natives’.63 As a reward for loyalty during the 1924 crisis and in hope of ensuring continued collaboration the sayyid was awarded a KBE in the 1926 New Year’s Honours List. Archer’s officials thought his views naive at best, and his insistence on imposing them headstrong, especially in the face of his inexperience of the Sudan. Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was not a ‘native’ to be ‘handled’ like any Archer had encountered before. As a way of ‘cementing’ his ‘personal relations’ with the sayyid, Archer met him at the Palace on 6 February 1926 to reach an ‘understanding’.]. D. Craig, the newly appointed assistant civil secretary for native affairs, was also present. A record of the meeting was kept, according to which the governor-general noted that ‘The Sayed’s elevation to be a Knight of the British Empire secured his personal position and made clear to the world the Governor-General’s acceptance of him as a true and loyal supporter of the British Administration in the Sudan. He had now set at rest any doubts that might have existed in the country as to their personal relations.’ Archer went on to warn that the sayyid’s followers were, however, still a danger, reiterated that the Aba pilgrimage should cease, that any settlers there since 1923 should be sent home, and that agents could not be allowed in the west. He expected Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s ‘formal promise and assurance’ (which the sayyid readily extended) that he would report to the govern¬ ment any impending trouble that came to his attention. At the close of the interview Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman asked the governor-general ‘if he would now fulfil his long standing promise and visit him at Aba Island to cement the personal understanding and the ties of friendship existing between them’. Archer said that he would ‘do so at an early date’.64 It is uncertain whether or not Archer had discussed in advance with his advisers this promise of a trip to Aba. Certainly the terms he used to address the sayyid were unwontedly accommodating (and excessively circumlocutory). Archer later professed to view his ‘promise’ as ‘the point of no return’, but it is unlikely that so grave an interpretation was put on it at the time; he also claimed to have expected opposition from, among others, MacMichael, who ‘might not wish to see a new star arise in competition with his protege Sayed Sir Ali El-Mirghani’.65 In any case, the next day a meeting was held at the Palace during which Archer discussed the position with Arthur Huddleston, Reginald Davies, MacMichael, and Craig. The governor-general stated that since he had ‘promised to visit Aba Island he clearly must do so’, and the four discussed the timing and procedure of such a visit. Davies recommended that Archer first visit

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

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Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani, and this was arranged for later in the week. ‘As regards Aba Island it was agreed that the visit should be as informal as possible, though a speech of welcome and some reply would be inevitable. It was felt to be important to avoid giving the visit a political flavour . . . and that the gathering should be so far as possible kept on social lines and speeches confined to obvious banalities.’66 As Archer wrote in his memoirs, ‘whatever the political aspects may have been, the actual visit to Aba Island was in itself a triumphal success’. This took place on 14 February. Some 1,500 ansar were on hand with Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman and his family to greet the governor-general, and a ‘formal’ welcome, with speeches, was staged. The dignitaries, ‘escorted by mounted horsemen’, went by car to the sayyid’s house, where a tent had been erected for a reception. The sayyid delivered a brief and courteous speech of no political significance. In reply, however, Archer said that his ‘visit to . . . Aba Island with all its past associations’ was ‘no matter of chance’, and that it marked ‘an important stage forward in the relations’ between the sayyid and the governor-general and between the sayyid’s followers and the Sudan Government. He had come ‘to accept the proffered hand of welcome, so to cement, before the eyes’ of the ansar, ‘the ties of friendship and understanding’. After further ceremonies Archer went south on tour, ‘entirely happy’ with the visit. ‘Beyond any question of doubt’, he later wrote, he ‘had made a devoted friend’ of the Mahdi’s son.67 While Archer steamed blithely towards the sudd, reports of the Aba visit reached Khartoum, where Sterry, Schuster, and others met to discuss it. Sterry wrote urgently to Archer on the 20th on his own and Schuster’s behalf, a letter delivered to the governor-general at Kosti by General Huddleston. Sterry charged that Archer’s speech at Aba had caused them ‘the gravest disquietude’, that its contents marked ‘a wide departure from the policy that was agreed upon regarding Abdel Rahman’. The terms of the speech would result in a ‘vast enhancement of his political importance’ and, indeed, certain phrases Archer had used appeared ‘suitable for an amicable settlement of differences between independent powers such as the Viceroy of India and the Amir of Afghanistan’, but were ‘completely out of place’ in relations between the governor-general of the Sudan and Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi.68 Schuster and Sterry, having consulted other members of the council, decided that representations should be made to Lloyd in Cairo, and that Sterry, soon to retire, should act as spokesman.69 At Mongalla Archer received a telegram from Lloyd informing him of his contacts with Sterry and advising his return to Khartoum.70 On arrival at Khartoum Archer wrote to Lloyd expressing the opinion that Sterry’s views on the Aba visit were characteristically extreme, and

338

Empire on the Nile

defending his own policy towards Mahdism as simply realistic.71 But in the meantime events in the Blue Nile Province had undermined his defence, and he knew it. Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman, on tour, had, in the opinion of some observers, flaunted his recent preferment, while rumours circulated that his knighthood invested him with a degree of government authority.72 Typical and innocuous as this was, Archer’s opponents depicted it as the inevitable result of his embrace of the sayyid, and Archer himself had later to admit that he was thereby put ‘personally, in a difficult position’. Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was brought before the governor-general at the Palace on 27 March, admonished and dismissed, and further restricted in his move¬ ments. The council was unmollified, for the next day Sterry communicated to Archer its resolutions endorsing Sterry’s letter on the 20th and recording ‘their regret and anxiety that on a matter of the utmost political importance . . . His Excellency should have publicly spoken and acted in a manner . . . completely inconsistent with the policy which had been accepted by him in consultation with his chief advisers’. They resolved also to request an opportunity to put their views ‘on the general situation’ before Lloyd and nominated Sterry to represent them.73 These resolutions were certainly overstated. Craig had attended both Palace meetings before the Aba visit, and accompanied Archer to the island. According to Archer, Craig also approved his draft speech.74 It was therefore disingenuous to state that the speech was ‘completely inconsistent’ with expert advice. In any case, faced with this unprecedented expression of opposition, there was little Archer could do. On 2 April he sent to Lloyd a batch of papers relating to the Aba affair, and, noting that he had ‘incurred the disapprobation’ of the council, tendered his resignation.75 Judging by the extensive dossier he submitted, it appears that Archer had some hope that Lloyd would save him. In Cairo the high commissioner discussed the case with Sterry and Schuster, and with Archer himself, who paid a lightning visit, ostensibly to deal with irrigation matters. Lloyd reported that ‘the salient fact’ emerging from these interviews was that Archer failed to ‘appreciate that the disaccord’ between him and the council ‘was not the result of a single incident . . . but the cumulative result of a number of incidents’ that had produced an increasing ‘feeling of uneasiness’. Archer’s apparent disregard of previously agreed policy was the issue : ‘Ill-faith,’ as Lloyd put it. The Aba episode alone would not have justified the council’s resolutions. But Sterry and Schuster had stated ‘unequivocally that this general lack of confidence’ was felt ‘by the whole Sudan service’. Lloyd therefore recom¬ mended acceptance of Archer’s resignation, merely warning that ‘illhealth’ should be the grounds publicly given for his retirement.76 There is some evidence that Lloyd had quietly reached the same conclusion independently that the Sudan secretaries had professed: Schuster had been

Governor-generalship of Sir Geoffrey Archer

339

‘especially sworn’ not to divulge Lloyd’s attitude towards Archer, and Lloyd certainly did not attempt to retrieve the governor-general’s posi¬ tion.77 In London the only question was how ‘to dispose of Sir G. Archer’ without loss of face.78 Schuster, having arrived in London, told MacMichael that all had been settled except details of the resignation announce¬ ment: ‘the story of ill-health’ had been ‘fairly generally spread abroad’. It was a job well done: ‘I wonder who or what we shall have to “evacuate” next!’ was how he put it.79 Archer’s resignation was announced on 6 July, effective on the 12th. On 8 August the council solemnly recorded its ‘deep regret that medical reasons’ had ‘compelled’ Archer to resign, and its ‘hope for his speedy restoration to health’. In fact, Archer was ill. On his return to London he underwent abdominal surgery, from which he recovered quickly.80 Reviled by his subordinates, Sir Geoffrey Archer has fared little better with historians, who have tended to depict him as a figure of fun. In this they have perhaps accepted too uncritically the expressions of his con¬ temporary detractors, and joined in treating him as an ‘outsider’. The Aba incident that seemed to precipitate his resignation can be seen more objectively now than then. Other incidents giving rise to officials’ lack of confidence in Archer have never been publicly elucidated. The official papers relating to the resignation leave a suspicion that the entire story has yet to be told. The Aba visit was seized upon (if not engineered) by his opponents as an opportunity. His forced resignation was a remarkable indication of the increased power of the governor-general’s council. Its actions in 1926 would have been unthinkable in Wingate’s day. The council’s coup, although occurring in unique circumstances, meant that future governors-general would be taxed with some responsibility to conform with the views of their advisers, even as external control of the Sudan Government, from Cairo, was weakening. They were ‘sovereign’ only when occasion demanded it.

The governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey, 1926-1934

The troubles of 1924; the evacuation of the Egyptian Army and its replacement by an all-Sudanese force whose loyalties were still subject to suspicion; the rupture of Anglo-Egyptian relations, their still uncertain future, and the Sudan’s place in them; an experimental and vaguely formulated shift in the philosophy of administration, away from the modern elements and towards ‘native authority’, the results of which could only be guessed; a continuing uncertainty about the intentions of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi; Archer’s resignation and the retirement of several senior officials; all contributed to a need for firm purpose and direction and a breathing space during which recent experience could be assimilated and the requirements of future policy could be assessed. Many of the ideas that had informed the era of Wingate and Stack had not survived the latter’s death, especially the liberal notion that progress was an inevitable result of honest, efficient administration. So much hope had been placed in the educated class that its push from grace in 1924 left a gap not only in administrative plans but also in the way in which the British viewed their role in the Sudan and their aspirations for the Sudanese. Innocence had passed; even the numerous religious ‘fanatics’ of the Wingate years had been viewed rather paternalistically as the embodiments of the famous Sudanese hot-headedness which only years of patient discipline would control. The events of 1924 were viewed much more seriously: the wayward child had been made literate, but read the wrong things; had been warned about bad company, but had taken up with the Egyptians; had been given responsibility, but now claimed rights. Since the British could not gratify his wishes, they despaired of reforming him, and devised a system under which they could ignore him. What the Sudan needed most, they sullenly believed, was a period of enforced rest after a particularly trying political fever. The circumstances of Archer’s departure show that officials believed the time had come for assertiveness. Superficially, the period of 1926-34 was as calm and quiet as the British 340

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

34i

can have wished. No great Mahdist insurrection occurred, and the likeli¬ hood of one receded; no new 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif emerged to take up the fallen White Flag; no successful Egyptian propaganda campaign was discerned; and no British-armed Sudanese rioted in favour of the Egyptian king. Few realised that the quiet was deceptive. Policies designed to maintain order did not necessarily lead to lasting stability. The governorgeneralship of Sir John Maffey, which encompassed the period 1926-33, witnessed a satisfactory solution of short-term political difficulties, but bequeathed to its successors, and the Sudanese, problems that were the more troublesome because their solution had for so long been postponed. The appointment of Maffey in October 1926 ended a period of intense speculation concerning Archer’s successor. Even before Archer’s resigna¬ tion was decided, rumours began in Khartoum: Sir Gilbert Clayton would return; Schuster would be promoted.1 Schuster himself told a confidant that the best plan would be for him to assume the post ‘for a minimum of 2 or 3 years’. It would ‘be very bad for the country to put in a stranger’ now, and there was no experienced man who was ‘completely adequate’: the Sudan needed ‘someone very much better’ than Clayton. Since the country’s finances were ‘dependent on’ Schuster personally, he should be selected.2 The understandably long search for a successor to Archer, following the lengthy resignation crisis, left the Sudan Government headless for over half a year. During the interregnum the administration was guided (as it had been before) by the Three Secretaries. When the new governor-general arrived at the end of 1926 (still a Foreign Office, not a Treasury appointee) he was, as Archer had been, without Sudan experi¬ ence, but not in all respects an ‘outsider’.

KHARTOUM, CAIRO AND LONDON

Whether or not Maffey was aware of the extent to which Lord Lloyd participated or merely acquiesced in the deposition of Archer, he cannot have doubted that he must himself tread warily in his relations with the autocratic high commissioner. Lloyd was determined that as far as possible the methods he employed and the results they achieved would be unlike any in Egypt since Cromer. Yet in many respects Maffey’s lot was easier than Wingate’s had been, for most of the formal ties between the Sudan Government and Egypt had been severed: detailed supervision had ceased, and the 1924 crisis had not only swept away some of the remaining links, it had also shown that the Sudan’s relations with London could not always be conducted efficiently or sensibly through Cairo. The governor-general now had his own army, independent of Egypt. Difficulties arose, however, when the strong-willed high commissioner disputed the degree of

34 2

Empire on the Nile

Khartoum’s independence, largely on the grounds of his anomalous official status as ‘high commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan’. Although this formula was retained, Lloyd failed when he tried to reassert authority over the Sudan Government. Maffey took a stand immediately in an area of symbolic but potentially substantive importance: tours of inspection in the Sudan by the high commissioner. These had occurred irregularly since the beginning of the Condominium, although MacMahon and Wingate, after his transfer to Cairo, had not visited the Sudan. Allenby revived the tradition, and Lloyd wished to make a tour during the winter of 1926-7. ‘Our relations with Egypt continue friendly’, Maffey wrote ironically to Murray at the Foreign Office in February 1927, but he had had ‘to be a little bit sticky about the High Commissioner’s tour. . . . The idea of a new Governor General trying to do his initial touring in the country while the H.C. was conducting a rival circus seemed . . . silly’. Besides, ‘an annual tour de luxe by the H.C.’ was ‘a bit of a strain’. Maffey was not exaggerating,3 even if his main objection was political: such grand progresses created political difficulties quite apart from their great expense of time and money. Officials considered them pointless except to uphold the high commis¬ sioner’s authority and provide him and his retinue with an exotic holiday. The Residency retained the right to censor the governor-general’s reports but seldom exercised it. In January 1928 Maffey agreed to the revival of this dormant practice, but the Residency seldom made use of it: only one modification was suggested to Maffey’s annual report for 1927, and this regarded the Sudan’s representation at an educational conference in London.4 A striking exception to this concern for form over substance occurred in 1929, when the Sudan Government planned to extend the system of missionary education in the Southern Sudan. In the context of Khartoum-Cairo relations the disagreement marks an attempt by Lloyd to claim ultimate responsibility for Sudan Government policy: his criticisms of education policy were both general, in regard to the philosophy behind it and its potential political consequences, and detailed; when, after a flurry of communications with the Palace no accommodation was reached, Lloyd complained to the Foreign Office.5 The very submission of the problem to London’s arbitration indicated the governor-general’s increased status visa-vis the high commissioner, and the Foreign Office affirmed the gov¬ ernor-general’s right to direct local affairs and, if necessary, to communi¬ cate directly with London. Lloyd’s resignation in 1929 did not end the controversy. He was succeeded by Sir Percy Loraine, who soon reopened the question of the relative powers and responsibilities of the high commissioner and the governor-general. Loraine was at least as desirous as Lloyd had been of maintaining the high commissioner’s supremacy. In November 1929, as Anglo-Egyptian

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

343

negotiations over a treaty progressed, the Foreign Office informed him that the relations between the Residency and the Palace were under review, and while it was expected that future relations would continue to be governed formally by the so-called Gorst letter of 13 January 1910 (see above, p. 51), it might be advantageous that the British representative in Cairo should no longer hold the anomalous high commissionership for the Sudan. In that case, ‘except in questions affecting . . . Egyptian or non Sudanese interest, the responsibility for advice to His Majesty’s Govern¬ ment on Sudanese matters should rest solely in the Governor-General’.6 In any case, it was hoped that London could ‘rely on the good sense of Sir J. Maffey and Sir P. Loraine to render unnecessary an attempt by revision of the 1910 letter to give precision to what should be a flexible, friendly and confidential relationship’.7 During a subsequent visit to Khartoum Loraine discussed the matter with Maffey and looked forward, he said, ‘to close and frictionless cooperation within the general limits of the Gorst letter’. He nonetheless had taken exception to an instance of Maffey’s direct com¬ munication with London, commenting that they ‘had better stick to existing procedure’.8 The matter rested until February 1931 when Maffey expressed the view, over a tax proposal, that ‘where no other important principle is involved and no new departure of note and no question . . . affecting Egyptian interests’, the Sudan Government ‘naturally’ accepted ‘responsibility for taking’ and carrying out its own decisions. Loraine was disconcerted. He could not ‘let this implication’ of independence ‘stand unchallenged’: the governor-general had ‘infringed’ the provisions of the Gorst letter. The ‘responsibility for taking decisions and carrying them out’ was not the Sudan Government’s but Loraine’s, and he was not ‘prepared to devolve it’; nor would he ‘abandon’ responsibility for deciding what should be referred to London.9 In a long telegram Loraine charged Maffey with attempting to reduce the high commissioner’s role ‘to that of an ex-post facto reporting officer to the Foreign Office of the acts of the Sudan Government’. In reply Maffey disclaimed any intention of raising a ‘constitutional issue’, defended his practice of direct communication, and noted that Loraine’s attitude was ‘out of harmony with the practical administrative needs of the Sudan’. Times had changed, and with them ‘the respective positions at Cairo and Khartoum’. The ‘consistent trend’ of British policy had been ‘to delegate administrative authority to Khartoum’: the high commissioner’s authority, ‘under a reasonable inter¬ pretation ... of the Gorst letter’, did not apply until a matter was referred to him by Khartoum. In any case, Maffey suggested, there was ‘a certain basis of irreconcilibility [sic] on this issue’. The real question was whether this prevented a smooth working relationship.10 At the Residency Maffey’s response was interpreted as a clear attempt ‘to

344

Empire on the Nile

modify the status quo’, that should be rebuffed. In April the Foreign Office was brought into what had been a ‘personal’ correspondence. Loraine wrote formally and coldly to Maffey, reserving his ‘powers . . . under established procedure’ and regretting Maffey’s attitude. Vansittart at the Foreign Office was incensed at what he considered foolish officiousness at a serious point in Anglo-Egyptian relations: ‘What children!’ he exploded in a minute; he proposed to pay no attention to the dispute. If forced to intervene, however, he would conclude that Loraine had ‘made an unwise choice of ground for raising a matter which got (and sh. not have got) somewhat under his skin from the start of his tenure’. Unfortunately Loraine forced the issue, writing petulantly that Maffey, ‘in defiance of established procedure’, had refused to come to Cairo to discuss matters with him! The issue was of ‘infinitely greater gravity’ than any single issue of policy: Maffey had challenged ‘the very positioh of High Commis¬ sioner’; his attitude, if ‘condoned’ and ‘upheld’, would ‘undermine the whole structure of the machinery’ that had always existed. At the Foreign Office it was plain that Loraine had ‘from the very beginning . . . over¬ emphasised his position’ just as Lloyd had done. It was he, not Maffey, who departed from procedures that had, since 1929, recognised the change in circumstances. Loraine’s high commissionership for the Sudan was merely ‘nominal’. Correspondence between London and Khartoum should be direct, with copies to Cairo as necessary.11 While their personal relations never fully recovered, this controversy between Maffey and Loraine reconfirmed the governor-general’s virtual independence of the Residency. Of far more consequence than this dispute was the Sudan’s position in the wider sphere of Anglo-Egyptian relations. A number of minor incidents disrupted these, and attempts to find a comprehensive solution, in the form of a treaty, failed. Relations never returned to the nadir of 1924 but, as then, the Sudan Government retained ambivalent views towards an Anglo-Egyptian settlement. The fear remained that Britain’s anxiety finally to reach agreement would necessarily entail concessions in the Sudan. The Sudan Government’s policy was reducible to a simple formula: no settlement was a good one if it compromised British interests in the Sudan. What those interests were, and how best to protect them, were the points at which London, Cairo, and Khartoum occasionally diverged. The Egyptian contribution to the Sudan’s budget inevitably clouded relations, because an annual subvention required annual parliamentary approval and was therefore susceptible to recurring political controversy. The initial contribution of £E750,ooo was approved only after protracted negotiation. In 1927 the Egyptian government’s reluctance to continue it was seen as indicative of diminished fear of the imperious Lord Lloyd. On

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

345

the contrary, Lloyd was unprepared ‘to haggle’, and he advised that a threat to reduce or end the subvention should be countered with a British threat ‘to conduct the administration of the Sudan without further consultation with Egypt. A corollary of this attitude would be the disappearance of the Egyptian flag throughout the Sudan.’12 Thus the subvention was represen¬ ted as ‘the annual cost of the Egyptian flag in the Sudan’.13 By 1931, however, the issue involved not only political but economic considera¬ tions. The full weight of the world depression was felt in Egypt, and Loraine warned Maffey that some reduction of the subvention was both possible and justifiable. To press strongly for a continuation would moreover be an admission of the Sudan Government’s ‘partial financial dependence’ on Egypt, thus strengthening Egyptian claims to sovereignty. Loraine’s advisers were less amenable to Egyptian claims: one argued that if the Egyptian government were allowed to determine what subvention it would make, a demand to investigate Sudan Government finances might follow.14 Together with the question of the Sudan’s indebtedness to Egypt, this issue entered the wider realm of Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations. While the Sudan Government’s views prevailed in the greater question of the Sudan’s future status, they were necessarily overruled in lesser matters. One such, of interest to educated Sudanese, concerned the appointment of a new Grand Kadi of the Sudan. Maffey argued in December 1931 that the appointment of another Egyptian to the post would be a ‘slap in the face’ to the Sudanese, but the Residency wished to placate Egypt in what it viewed as a minor matter. This was a case, the Residency argued, when ‘the Sudan ought to remember’ that Egypt paid ££750,000 annually without ‘any practical return’, and that the Residency must guard ‘Egyptian amour-propre by way of compensation’. An Egyp¬ tian, Shaykh Na’man al-Karim, was finally appointed.15 The British ultimatum of 1924 and subsequent unilateral acts had affected the balance of power in Anglo-Egyptian relations without altering their substance. The Sudan question appeared insoluble. Because of the prominence of that question, the Sudan Government was again drawn into the thick of negotiations in the late 1920s and early 1930s, although not to the degree it had achieved in 1924. Throughout, its basic goal was constant: undiminished British control, whatever formula might be devised to embody or conceal it. The death on 23 August 1927 of Sa’d Zaghlul removed from the scene the most important personality in Egyptian politics, a perpetual thorn in the side of the British and conservative Egyptian politicians alike. The Wafd, however, remained as the party generally associated by Egyptians with protest against foreign domination and with the goal of complete independence. In negotiations with Britain, Egyptian governments of every political composition always had to take

346

Empire on the Nile

account of the acceptability to public opinion, and to potential leaders of that opinion, of any proposals concerned with the Reserved points. All parties had for so long demanded recognition of Egyptian sovereignty over the Sudan that no politician could survive a renunciation of the claim. Since the British position was similarly adamant, negotiations either skirted the issue or aimed at face-saving half-measures. Political instability in Egypt, combined with and exacerbated by British interference and gun-boat diplomacy, did nothing to create confidence. A draft Anglo-Egyptian agreement reached in London in the summer of 1927 by Sarwat Pasha and Chamberlain foundered when the Wafdist majority in the Egyptian parliament rejected it. Further negotiations followed, and another draft was prepared, only to fail in the face of the Wafd’s renewed opposition. This draft dealt unimaginatively with the Sudan by omitting it altogether, a fact that constituted a further blow to Egyptian prestige in the eyes of the Sudanese.16 The Sarwat government fell and was succeeded in March 1928 by a coalition led by Mustafa Nahas Pasha, Zaghlul’s successor as leader of the Wafd. His government was short-lived: in June King Fu’ad dismissed him, a new government was formed by Muhammad Mamud, and the king prorogued and later dis¬ solved parliament. Muhammad Mahmud’s anti-Wafd government reopened negotiations with the new Labour government in Britain during the summer of 1929, and another draft treaty resulted. Meanwhile separate discussions on the future allocation of Nile waters had been under way fitfully since 1925. The commission established then had three members: representatives of the Sudan and Egyptian govern¬ ments and a ‘neutral’ chairman, J. J. Canter Cremers of the Netherlands. He died in June 1925, and discussions lapsed until the following February, when the Sudan Government’s representative, R. M. MacGregor, and the Egyptian, 'Abd al-Hamid Pasha Sulayman, produced a report of their own. This was issued in March, and recommended abandonment of the irri¬ gable-area principle inherent in the 300,000 feddan limit, and replacing it with the assignment to each country of a definite percentage of total volume. The aborted treaty negotiations prevented formal agreement on the Nile waters question until May 1929, when Muhammad Mahmud, freed from the necessity to placate Wafdist opinion now that parliament had been dissolved, agreed to the commission’s recommendations. The ensuing Nile Waters Agreement gave Egypt a comprehensive veto over any works or measures undertaken on the Nile that might adversely affect Egypt’s water supply, and the right to undertake measures for its own benefit on the Sudanese Niles. The lion’s share of water was reserved for Egypt. The Nile Waters Agreement improved the political atmosphere in which

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

347

Anglo-Egyptian negotiations for a comprehensive treaty were conducted during the summer of 1929. Agreement was reached on a draft treaty that made only one specific reference to the Sudan: ‘While reserving liberty to conclude new conventions in future modifying the conventions of 1899’, the two parties agreed that the status of the Sudan should ‘be that resulting from the said conventions’. When the treaty came into effect, an Egyptian battalion would be stationed in the Sudan. Muhammad Mahmud later decided that reference to this force should be removed from the treaty and made the subject of a ‘gentleman’s agreement’. Surprisingly, the return of Egyptian troops was approved by Maffey, who saw the reaffirmation of the Condominium as the only way to maintain the British position in the Sudan; there was ‘no other justification’ for it. That position should not be ‘jeopardised’ by a refusal to ‘swallow an Egyptian battalion’.17 Maffey’s apparently statesmanlike attitude was considered simply irresponsible by some. Schuster, now Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Council in India, wrote to MacMichael that he had ‘really almost wept’ when he heard of the proposed return of an Egyptian battalion: ‘It is so gratuitous a mistake - so easily avoided, and when I think of poor Stack and all those times when you and I sweated together in London and laid the train for our great coup, I am utterly disgusted that the fruits of that sacrifice and labour should have been idly thrown away by Murray with the act as idly watched by Maffey.’ The same proposal had arisen in 1927, Schuster recalled, and had been rejected only after Lloyd’s and his strenuous objections: ‘all that Maffey was worrying about’ while awaiting admission to the Foreign Office conference at which the matter would be decided, ‘was whether he would be kept more than half an hour as he was off to Scotland that night and still had some shopping to do’.18 This was not an isolated view of Maffey’s nonchalance, but there could be no thought of his council’s disassociation with the governor-general’s views in this case, for they coincided with those of the Foreign Office. The opponents of accommodation were relieved once more by the intransigence of the Wafd. In parliamentary elections in December 1929 the Wafd was again victorious, and Nahas formed a government. As in 1924, when a Labour government in Britain had dealt with the Wafd, hopes for a settlement ran high, and the draft agreement previously negotiated served as a basis for renewed discussions in London between March and May 1930. The Sudan Government was not directly represented, since it was considered that the mere presence in London of the governor-general would create the impression that Britain was prepared to make concessions in the Sudan.19 There was no doubt that the Sudan was the greatest stumbling block to an agreement. At the Foreign Office there was concern lest the talks fail and Egypt join the League of Nations and bring the issue

348

Empire on the Nile

to international arbitration. An Anglo-Egyptian agreement along the lines of the 1929 draft would preclude this by endorsing the 1899 conventions. The Sudan Government was thus understandably anxious that its views might be overruled at the Foreign Office. When negotiations opened the Egyptian side renounced the Sudan clause in the 1929 draft and reopened the entire question of the Sudan’s status. On 14 April, after much discussion of wording, a draft Sudan article was tentatively agreed, but a side note demanded by the Egyptians was rejected as ‘wholly unacceptable’ because it specified Egyptian sovereignty, the appointment of an Egyptian deputy governor-general and other officials, the return of Egyptian troops, and no restrictions on Egyptian ‘emigration, property and commerce’. The British countered with their own note, merely to recommend to the governor-general the appointment of Egyptians to vacancies, stipulating ‘no discrimination’ between British and Egyptian citizens in the Sudan, and promising to ‘examine sympathetically’ the return of Egyptian troops. At this stage the views of the Sudan Government were solicited. The governor-general’s council concluded that the appointment of Egyptians to administrative posts would be ‘fatal’ to the Sudan’s interests: the position of the governorgeneral would be undermined, and the government’s prestige damaged. No alternative formula could be devised, they felt, because Egypt would accept only phrasing vague enough ‘to open up an indefinitely wide prospect’.20 In London a protracted exchange of tortuously-worded draft notes ensued, but none dealt adequately with the basic difficulty posed by the British desire to confirm the status quo and the Egyptian determination to claim sovereignty. The Sudan Government was consulted repeatedly by telegraph for its views, and these were consistently upheld by the British side in the negotiations. Although a large measure of agreement was achieved on all issues, the negotiations finally concluded on 8 May without formal agreement. Arthur Henderson, the foreign secretary, remarked that ‘though they had solved the problem of Anglo-Egyptian relations, they had been unable to solve the closely connected problem of the Sudan’. Nahas agreed, adding that ‘the Sudan was sacred to Egypt, and Egypt was sovereign there’. In the Sudan, reaction to the breakdown was muted: Maffey canvassed his mudirs, who reported indifference among the Sudanese and satisfaction that the status quo had been preserved. Predict¬ ably, resident Egyptians were reportedly disappointed, as were some of the ‘so-called Sudanese intelligentsia’.21 The failure of the negotiations was followed by another political crisis in Egypt. In June 1930 King Fu’ad accepted the Wafdist cabinet’s resignation, submitted in protest against his refusal to accept legislation limiting his powers. Isma'il Sidqi formed a government, parliament was prorogued,

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

349

and preparations were made for new elections. These were held under the terms of new electoral laws promulgated by Sidqi. The Wafd boycotted the elections in May and June 1931:, which had been rigged in favour of Sidqi’s Hizh al-Sha’ah (People’s Party), and Sidqi formed a new administration that was to remain in power until 1933. Treaty negotiations were not finally successful until 1936, when in the light of Italian expansion in East Africa Britain and Egypt shared an appreciation of the coming world crisis.

THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT UNDER MAFFEY

No radical change occurred in the structure of the central government during Maffey’s governor-generalship. Under the strong secretariat of the mid-1920s the bureaucracy triumphed over the informal methods that had survived the Wingate era. The Three Secretaries remained pre-eminent. ‘Proper procedures’, while never immutable, were scarcely questioned. No longer would a governor-general conduct a lengthy correspondence with a distant district commissioner; he had neither the time nor the inclination. Areas of responsibility had been defined and refined; the homely, improvised arrangements of the old days, still recalled wistfully by a few veterans, were unknown to the new generation of post-war administrators. Paper had replaced palavers, informal arrangements had given way to office routine, automobiles were already making the camel-borne inspec¬ tion a thing of the past. As the hierarchy, especially at the centre, became more ‘professional’, it grew more aloof, its business increasingly concerned with facts and figures, development schemes and pension funds, and less with the everyday life of the Sudan and the Sudanese. Problems common to bureaucracies preoccupied officials whose forays from the capital were infrequent and largely ceremonial or recreational, and whose contacts with Sudanese outside the government service were ever fewer and more formal. This evolution had its costs as well as its advantages. Of the Three Secretaries, the one least involved in policy-making by the mid-i920S was the legal secretary. Still responsible for drafting legislation, he remained an ex-officio member of the governor-general’s council, but neither N. G. Davidson, who assumed the post in August 1926, nor his successor, B. H. Bell, who served from 1930 to 1936, was nearly so influential as Bonham Carter and especially Sterry had been. Both David¬ son and Bell came to the post through seniority, Davidson having served in the Sudan since 1907 and Bell since 1911, and both were apparently content with overseeing the department and conducting its limited business. In addition to drafting legislation, the office continued to control judicial appointments, supervise government lands and land settlement and registration, and to oversee the courts, with the significant exception of

35°

Empire on the Nile

those established under devolutionary ordinances of the 1920s and 1930s. In this sphere its responsibilities were assumed by the civil secretary’s department. The completion of his five-year term at the end of 1927 brought the departure from the financial secretaryship of Sir George Schuster, whose reputation had been sustained during his management of the country’s exchequer, and whose ubiquitousness in the conduct of the Sudan’s affairs had been unmatched since Slatin Pasha. Schuster’s ambitions had been checked by Maffey’s appointment in 1926, and attempts by both Maffey and Lloyd to retain his services in some advisory capacity were unavailing. Schuster was succeeded as financial secretary by Arthur Huddleston, governor of the Blue Nile Province. His experience with the Gezira Scheme was valuable at a time when the economic future of the country seemed largely dependent on the scheme’s success. Control of the Sudan’s finances had by the mid-1920s largely passed from Cairo to Khartoum, but the formal relations detailed in the Regula¬ tions of 1910 were still technically in force. In 1927 it was recognised that those regulations, if followed, ‘would entail the submission to Egypt’ of the annual budget, reserve fund credits, any taxation measure reducing revenue, unbudgeted expenditures, new permanent appointments, financial rules and their amendment, and special pensions. For political reasons such detailed supervision had long ago abated, and the formal approval of the British Financial Adviser in Egypt was now solicited only for the budget, reserve fund expenditures, and the allocation of budget surpluses.22 Over the years the financial secretary had taken up duties under various statutes. Thus he approved measures regarding taxes and their remission, local budgets, duties, fees, and licence charges, and railway and steamer tariffs; he administered the pension system; he exerted general authority as an ex-officio member of the council’s Gezira sub-committee and Kassala sub-committee, the railway supervisory board, the central economic board, the concessions and payments committee, and other bodies. The financial secretary’s power was in practice curbed by institu¬ tional and personal constraints to a degree greater than during the Wingate-Stack era. The council considered the budget, ordinances, regula¬ tions, taxation measures, and so forth, the governor-general retained a veto over its (and the financial secretary’s) advice, and, more importantly, Schuster had done much to diminish the resentment towards his depart¬ ment that had swollen during Bernard’s regime. The increasingly technical and routine nature of the department’s work tended to remove it from the eyes of administrative officials. Occasions of disagreement still arose, but these were usually settled without acrimony. In the midst of the crisis precipitated by the world depression, Huddleston was appointed in

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

35i

November 1931 as ‘Economic Adviser’, a non-executive post he held until his retirement in the following year. He was succeeded as financial secretary by H. E. Fass, a nominee of the Treasury, who remained until 1934The appointment as civil secretary of H. A. MacMichael in April 1926 had long been anticipated and led to few changes within a department he already dominated. MacMichael remained civil secretary until his appoint¬ ment as governor of Tanganyika in 1933, and was succeeded by J. A. Gillan. By the beginning of Maffey’s governor-generalship the civil secretariat was already the principal department of government. The reforms initiated under Stack and Archer had simply increased the range of its responsibilities. The civil secretary supervised most central govern¬ mental business apart from the purely financial, legal, and military. His control of the civil service, and his role as principal liaison between the provinces and Khartoum put him in an unrivalled position of influence. Such areas as intelligence, police, slavery, prisons, and game preservation, once independent bailiwicks, were now within the sphere of his depart¬ ment. Direction of the various schemes of Indirect Rule further increased his powers. It is to his period as civil secretary that MacMichael’s almost legendary reputation as the Great White Chief can be traced. Characterisations by contemporaries are a catalogue of superlatives, tempered by occasional reference to an apparently excessive formality and reserve. To what extent a cool exterior was warmed by inner humanity may be judged by his early private letters from the Sudan, in which high standards are balanced by wit and evident moderation. His reputation, however, was built on an invari¬ able excellence; and the same subordinate who called him a ‘slave-driver’ referred to him as ‘the head of the Service’ to whom all ‘gave unqualified loyalty’.23 To Douglas Newbold, a future civil secretary, MacMichael was, quite simply, ‘The Government’ who brought to every problem ‘logic, orderliness, orthodoxy’, and who achieved balance even in the criticism of his colleagues, who thought him either too ‘autocratic’ or too ‘timid’.24 For MacMichael, questions of policy and problems of administration were transitory, but the Political Service endured. He was paternal and pro¬ prietary; its reputation must be unassailable. In 1927, when recent proba¬ tioners had ‘shown an unexpected ignorance of such subjects as . . . Islam and the history and traditions and present state of the Muslim East’, MacMichael compiled a reading list for them. This was no bibliography of British imperialism, but included Nicholson’s Literary history of the Arabs, Ameer 'Ali’s The spirit of Islam, and Margoliouth’s Muhammedanism. None of the suggested books dealt specifically with the Sudan. In 1928 he proposed that each new member of the Political Service be required to

352

Empire on the Nile

write a ‘thesis’, relating some topic of Sudanese interest to a larger discipline. For his attention to form MacMichael has been called a perfec¬ tionist, as in his insistence on proper dress in the office, no matter the temperature; but there was usually some purpose to be served: in 1930 he reminded governors of the importance of British officials’ manners while conducting courts, since ‘informality of dress and manner’ and the ‘presence of officials’ wives at sittings of Native Courts’ might be resented and undermine authority.25 Under the flaccid grasp of MacMichael’s predecessors, the morale of the Political Service had deteriorated. In February 1927 a Committee on Pay and Prospects, chaired by Sir James Currie, reported its review of British officials’ terms of employment. Although the ‘high standard’ of the service had been maintained, the committee was concerned that the Sudan was ‘a watertight compartment with no normal promotion outside itself’; that the ‘earning period’ was short because of the early retirement age; that married officials with children often faced difficulties in maintaining two residences; and that pensions were low. Pay increases had not matched a rising cost of living in the Sudan and Britain. Officials fared ‘very badly’ in receiving British honours. The committee recommended increases in salary for the highest officials, higher entertainment allowances for some governors, the raising of the retirement age to 55, an increase in pension rates, consideration of a plan to amalgamate some provinces under a new grade of official higher than a governor, and the prospect of promotion outside the Sudan for officials of great ability.26 Some of these recom¬ mendations, including the pay increases, were quickly implemented. Progress in effecting the others, especially those beyond the control of the Sudan Government, was slow, and in such matters friends in London, like Sir James Currie, were essential. Fie had long championed the cause of civilian officials and had continued to interest himself in officials’ welfare and in matters of policy, of which he was often a stern critic. One of his suggestions, that the mandatory postgraduate year at a British university be reinstated for recruits to the Political Service - it had been replaced by a shorter course at the School of Oriental Studies - was taken up by Maffey in 1928.27 The continuing concern with British honours and promotion outside the Sudan was not simply a preoccupation with status, for a lack of recognition (then as now) could have financial as well as social consequences, while the lack of suitable positions elsewhere might adversely affect the quality of recruits for the service. The Foreign Office was sympathetic but the most likely posts for such high officials were colonial governorships, and in filling these the Colonial Office had a prior duty to its own officials.28 Concern was somewhat eased by the treatment eventually accorded to

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

353

MacMichael. He was made a KCMG in 1932, with the strong support of Maffey, who had argued that the knighthood, ‘the first for the Sudan Political Service’, would boost morale.’9 Even greater effort was required to arrange a promotion. In December 1932 Maffey put the matter to Vansittart at the Foreign Office. ‘The barrenness’ of the Sudan career was ‘becoming most glaringly apparent’, he wrote, and while talented men from the Indian Civil Service and Indian Army had achieved colonial governorships, what of MacMichael? ‘He is now 50,’ Maffey wrote. ‘He has been Civil Secretary ... for eight years.... he possesses unusually high cultural, administrative, and secretarial equipment. No matter how good he is, is he to get nothing, and to be condemned to illustrate the lamentable fact that he has backed a bad horse?’ A new appointment for its chief would ‘stimulate the whole service’; it would be a ‘tragedy and a scandal’ if MacMichael were ‘left to rot’. Vansittart approached the Colonial Office, Maffey continued to use his London connections, and MacMichael was finally appointed governor of Tanganyika, not, perhaps, an office he would have sought.30 MacMichael’s case illustrates both the possibilities that were available for an outstanding individual, and the difficulty encountered in realising them. What effect this and other concerns had on the quality of recruits to the Political Service in the interwar years is debatable. Certainly no great change has been detected in the social, economic, or educational back¬ ground of entrants; changes in attitude, reflected in administrative policy and social relations, may be traced to other factors. The main concern of civilian officials in the early 1930s was not promotion from the service but retention in it, a consequence of the retrenchment necessitated by the effects in the Sudan of the world depression. It was retrenchment as much as a change in administrative policy that eventually accelerated the advancement of Sudanese in the departments of government. The dismissal of some civilian employees during and after the 1924 crisis inevitably created vacancies that were not, however, invariably filled by qualified Sudanese. Between 1924 and 1930 the British element in govern¬ ment departments grew by 54 per cent, and in the provinces by 30 per cent. The adoption of Indirect Rule as official administrative policy precluded the continuing advance of Sudanese to more responsible posts: the highest administrative post attained by a Sudanese by 1924 was that of ma’mur, and none achieved a higher one until the 1940s. Moreover, as Sudanese were increasingly appointed as sub-ma’murs and ma’murs, the powers of these posts were diluted. As early as 1919 it had been noted that the pay and prospects of civilian Sudanese sub-ma’murs were inferior to those of a translator or clerk, and that consequently ‘the most desirable candidates’ did not come forward.31 In 1923 the office quarters of the district

354

Empire on the Nile

commissioners and ma’murs were merged in the Red Sea Province, so that all correspondence between province headquarters and the district passed through the commissioner’s hands. When it was suggested in 1924 that the Sudanese ma’murs and sub-ma’murs saw themselves as the natural suc¬ cessors to the Egyptian ma’murs, MacMichael reacted sharply. Far from assuming greater powers, the Sudanese were meant to exercise such minor executive and administrative functions as the Governor or District Commissioner allotted to them, i.e. relieve him ... of much petty work and be entirely under his orders and at his beck and call. ‘Bottle-washing’ is too extreme a term . . . but it might be used of the relation between the young Sudanese Sub-Mamur and his District Commissioner. ... we must resolutely set our face against allowing this class, admirable for a purpose and up to a point, to arrogate to itself a position which it cannot carry and which . . . will land us in inconsistency and failure in respect of the far more important matter of developing the power and responsibility of the native chiefs.32

Retention of the office of ma’mur did not conceal this diminution of its status, and in fact the entire echelon of ma’murs and sub-ma’murs seemed doomed: in 1930 there were 96 fewer such posts than in 1914, and by 1934 there were only 77 posts of ma’mur and sub-ma’mur in the whole country.33 The increasing number of staff positions open to Sudanese after 1924 were subordinate, not executive, and led nowhere. When the econ¬ omic crisis made retrenchment necessary, the tiny corps of Sudanese administrative officials came under pressure, while the subordinate bureaucracy, for financial and political reasons, fared relatively well. In the numbers game of Sudanese official employment the government was successful in convincing the Foreign Office that good progress was being made in realising Sudanese aspirations. In 1931 MacMichael noted that the number of Sudanese in classified posts had increased by over 50 per cent since 1924, but admitted that results had been less satisfactory ‘in the bureaucratic field’.34 Impressive statistics attested to the increasing number of Sudanese in a wide range of official capacities, but almost entirely in the clerical and ‘technical’ fields. Sudanese officials earning more than £E20o a year increased from 16 per cent of the total government cadre in 1924, to 22^ per cent in 1930.35 Sudanese critics did not dispute such statistics; they disliked the policy that allowed scope for work in all areas except administration. As a Foreign Office minute noted, it was a result of Indirect Rule to ‘bar the “intelligentsia” from jobs to which they would otherwise have looked forward’. Maffey professed to believe that the economic crisis of the early 1930s brought home to the educated class the fact that the Sudan could not afford a large ‘black-coated’ class.36 The dislocation resulting from the world depression clouded what was otherwise the heyday of British rule in the Sudan. Institutions had passed

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

Fig. 17

355

Police officer with two sub-ma’murs, Wad Medani, 1926

the test of time, traditions had become established. British supremacy was unassailable, British superiority smugly assumed. In considering Indirect Rule, the administrative policy that dominated the era, it is useful to view the attitudes of its adherents and their relations with the Sudanese. The unwritten code of British social behaviour in the Sudan was largely the creation of Wingate’s governor-generalship, and the size and composi¬ tion of the British community ensured that that code changed only slowly. The British class system was eminently exportable, and its agents in the Sudan were adept at upholding standards, determining precedence, and maintaining prejudices. There were two British clubs in Khartoum, one for the Political Service and the highest other officials, the other for those who,

356

Empire on the Nile

regardless of pretensions, were of a lower order. Resented and even derided, members of the Political Service were nonetheless a caste apart, serene in constituting the ruling class. In published reminiscences of the period there is little to indicate social tensions among the British or between them and the Sudanese. Yet these existed, as contemporary correspondence attests. R. E. H. Baily thus wrote of his early years as a provincial official: ‘We were in the queer position of being looked upon as superior men - far more important beings than our Provincial Governors and department chiefs, mostly retired military gentlemen. We became convinced that we knew more about the Sudan than our seniors with the exception of the Gov. General.’ New recruits to the Political Service, according to Baily, had two beliefs in common: ‘a sense of being picked gentlemen with a realisation of noblesse oblige’, and ‘a genuine belief in Britain’s God given mission to rule Indians and Africans’. E. A. Balfour, who joined the service in 1932, later recalled Khartoum as a formal, sticky sort of place.. . . We had to call and leave cards on all the good and great and were eventually invited out to ghastly dinner parties where we wore starched evening dress shirts with hard collars and tried to make intelligent conversation with complete strangers. I notice from my letters that the public school spirit was strong in me at that time and perhaps throughout the rest of my career. Everyone . . . appears to be an ‘awfully good fellow’ or ‘a splendid chap’. Well so they were but looking back ... I cannot help seeing a little clay mixed with the pure gold in my idols’ feet. This one had a tendency to pomposity, that one lacked humour; this one was conceited, that one was weak.

The excessive formality of British social life did not relax after the civilian elite succeeded to the highest posts. From the moment of arrival the most callow assistant district commissioner was given to understand the place he occupied in the structure: on arriving in 1926 K. D. D. Henderson was ‘met at the station by various officials and brought to the club for breakfast.. . . servants were allotted on the platform. Cooks [would] come later.’ Cards were to be left ‘upon umpteen people’.37 The conduct of the ruling elite would be an interesting but irrelevant sidelight if its effects had been limited to the internecine warfare of Khartoum’s dining rooms. It was not. The rough and ready qualities of the soldier-administrators had been preserved among some British district commissioners in outlying regions, but in the central government, where most Sudanese officials were stationed, they had not. One British official who arrived in 1922 later recalled that he ‘saw little or nothing of the Sudanese’ socially, for he was ‘immersed in the social, official, and British life of Khartoum’. Nor did this change during his long career in the Sudan.38 In later life Baily recalled that In 1920 Khartoum was just becoming a winter resort. Female relations and friends would get married officials to ask them to stay. They had to be amused. There were

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

357

endless dinner parties and dances with competition as to whose were the smartest. Far too much was spent on champagne. Officials would arrive at their offices next morning with hangovers. Their contact with their foreign subordinates would end when it was time for lunch and not be resumed till next morning. The British went home to their charming houses on the river with their well irrigated gardens and trees while their subordinates were relegated to dismal rows of houses in the dusty back parts. . . . Even where social contact was tried, some . . . was out of a sense of duty and un-imaginative. One good lady tried to teach Sudanese girls Scottish glees. ... A well known society lady tried to get me to take her to the prison to show her a murderer in chains. The Sudanese were still regarded by the likes of her as zoo specimens.39

The foremost ‘zoo’ was still the Southern Sudan, where steamers laden with tourists continued to pass, and governors continued to complain of their and their officials’ wasted time. (The favourable political effect so long alleged to accrue from notables’ visits was exposed as worthless when a tour by the Prince of Wales in 1930 was ruined by his own misbehaviour. The prince himself judged his visit ‘a complete failure’.)40 The increasing number of British women was much remarked, and its effects on relations with the Sudanese were perhaps mostly negative, if only because they increased the difficulty of social contacts. Some officials saw women as simply a nuisance: the summer was the best season for work, Henderson said in 1931, because ‘all the women go home and so do the theorisers in Khartum’; a year later he was even in favour of ‘an absolute ban on marriage for those with less than five years service’.41 Married men were not in fact recruited for the Political Service, and marriage during the twoyear probationary period was grounds for dismissal. As of December 1930, only 64 of the service’s 158 members were married, and 26 of those were governors or district commissioners at headquarters.42 In the government service generally the percentage was higher, of course, and professionals hired for their expertise could not be subjected to restrictions of this sort. Not only had the pace and scope of social life altered since the days of Wingate and Slatin, the very stage on which it was enacted had changed. Khartoum was no longer a dusty outpost, but it remained an artificial enclave, European in appearance and tone, well-tended and well-watered, more Mediterranean than African. A visiting British economist was said to have remarked in 1933 that it seemed the ‘capital of a wealthy and prosperous country’. Within days of arriving in 1926 Henderson wrote home about ‘tea and tennis yesterday with Mrs Matthew. . . . There was only the noise of the kites and the little black ball-boys to remind us that we were in tropical Africa.’43 This isolation of the capital, socially, economi¬ cally, and culturally had long been noted with scorn by Bog Barons and desert DCs, some of the disadvantages of whose working conditions were determined by the bureaucrats ensconced in Khartoum. But by the late 1920s a number of provincial centres had taken on some of the capital’s

358

Empire on the Nile

splendours. E. A. Balfour wrote home about the ‘grand govt, garden’, complete with tennis, badminton, and squash courts, swimming pool and zoo he had found at Singa,44 and the same could be said of a dozen other towns. None of this had much to do with the Sudanese, any more than did the racing clubs, tennis clubs, boating clubs and golf clubs, church societies, dramatic groups, tea dances, and the rest. While economic developments ensured future changes, official life tactlessly celebrated the past: new streets were laid out in the capital, only to be named for Gessi, Baker, Stewart, and even Zubayr, intersecting thoroughfares already bearing the names of British rulers and Sudanese defeats.45 The cult of Gordon reigned supreme: his name was everywhere. At Gordon College Sudanese boys lived in houses named for governors-general; some would go on to the Kitchener School of Medicine, or be employed by the Stack Laboratories; less successful classmates might work for a business named for Gordon or Queen Victoria. King’s Day was celebrated with zest, uniformed Sudanese bands playing English music, marching in the shadow of Gordon’s statue, his back turned towards the palace where he died, the agreed spot marked by a plaque and visited by the guests of his successors. In practical terms a deterioration in the relations between the British and the Sudanese educated class was most evident in the government’s attitude towards and conduct of education itself. Edward Atiyah, who taught at Gordon College in the late 1920s, has left a depressing account of the heavy hand of illiberality there, a grim place where learning was subordinated to an almost military discipline.46 Even British teachers were not fully entrusted with the politically sensitive business of education: members of the Political Service, of whom it is fair to say that they lacked credentials to teach, were seconded as lecturers to the college. Balfour, seconded in the early 1930s, expressed this view of his students: We don’t get at them half early enough - they are partially spoilt by the time they get to the College. It will be a long time before the majority of them are fit for responsible posts - lack of foundation. We are giving them to [sic] much higher education before they have really become ready for it. We ought to pay more attention to character training. ... I had a pleasant change yesterday when I went out to the deims to have tea with the Taisha. They are grand old boys and were full of reminiscences of the old days. There you get the Sudan at its best but unfortunately one cannot keep it there.47

This was a prevalent view. Balfour at least recognised that change, though regrettable, would come. Among his colleagues the general attitude towards the educated Sudanese, the ‘intelligentsia’, the ‘effendia’, was suspicious or even irrationally hostile. The ‘half-educated native’, the Sudanese in ‘European dress’, was the object of derision and contempt. Considered incapable of assimilating Western learning, the effendi

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

Fig. 18

359

Missionaries at a government rest-house in the Southern Sudan, 1927

nonetheless dared absurdly to put himself forward, to claim responsibili¬ ties and even rights, to consider himself ‘enlightened’,48 even equal. As the differences between British ruler and Sudanese effendi apparently diminished, it seems to have been necessary for the ruler to maintain and even to exaggerate them. With the ‘grand old boys’, the bearded elders and hereditary chiefs with whom the British had much less in common, they nevertheless felt more comfortable. This perceived affinity with the rural Sudan was one of the chief reasons for the popularity of Indirect Rule. In that method was seen the antidote not only to the despised effendi but also to ‘bureaucratic’ government, the polluting influence of the city, the dangerous individualism bred by economic development, the breakdown of discipline and order - in short, to all the ills of the modern world and past British rule. The reaction inherent in Indirect Rule was as much against British traditions of rule in the Sudan as it was against the twin dangers of Sudanese nationalism and sectarianism. A poem by Douglas Newbold is instructive. Entitled ‘The Rulers’, it condemns the office-bound British official who views his work as building ‘the best of all worlds for the lowest of all mankind’, who has abandoned the camaraderie of days past, who

360

Empire on the Nile

knows no Arabic, who drinks too much and repeats comfortable old heresies’, who puts development schemes ahead of traditional virtues: But shall it profit a nation to achieve its huckstering goal, To gain a whole world of cotton, if it lose its tribal soul? . . . And while the type-writers clack and the peevish telephones buzz, The pride of the herdsman is shamed that was old in the land of Uz. His wells and his pastures are taken and given to alien knaves, Till he’s forced to beg for his bread from men who were once his slaves.49

INDIRECT RULE IN THE NORTHERN SUDAN: THEORIES, STATUTES, AND PROBLEMS, 192O-I933

As a theory, Indirect Rule came late to the Northern Sudan; in practice it had been adopted informally since the beginning of the Condominium. In his ‘Memorandum to Mudirs’ Kitchener had written of the necessity to gain the trust of the ‘principal men’, and through them ‘to influence the whole population’. But the roles of 'umda, shaykh, and nazir, already much diminished during the Turkiya and Mahdia, continued to decline after the Anglo-Egyptian conquest, as real authority was concentrated in the hands of Egyptian ma’murs and British inspectors. No matter what was said about the desirability of supporting the traditional positions of local notables, government action diluted their power, mainly by the progress¬ ive assumption of their functions and a concomitant diminution of the notables’ prestige. By the 1920s, when Indirect Rule, the maintenance of traditional forms of political authority and the devolution to them of government functions, was formally adopted, the supposed agents of that authority, the tribal leaders, had in most cases become paid servants of the government, and in many cases had ceased altogether to influence their people. It became the chief concern and the principal occupation of the government to reverse this deterioration and even to create agents of native authority where none had existed. The attractions of the policy were many: it should be cheaper than direct rule by trained and salaried civil servants; it should combat, by strengthening tribal authority, the evils of individual¬ ism, nationalism, and Mahdism; it would free British officials from routine work and allow their concentration on duties they alone could perform; and it would render unnecessary the expansion of the distrusted Sudanese official class. Indirect Rule in the Sudan was a reactionary policy designed to foster or even create (but only incidentally to improve) tribalism. In the north it was based not merely on a notion that there was much worth preserving in traditional ways, but, more significantly, on the conviction that there was much in the government’s previous policy that was mis¬ taken: hope was woven with regret. That Indirect Rule (or Native

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

361

Administration, as it was later called) ultimately failed was perhaps more surprising to its opponents than to its adherents, for the latter were convinced that they were fighting a rearguard action both politically and morally, that Indirect Rule concerned values of discipline, order, and filial piety as much as it involved law courts and budgets. Their pessimism about recreating a golden age in the Sudan reflected the passing of a gilded age in Europe. In the afterglow of their own civilisation’s zenith British pro¬ ponents of Indirect Rule attempted, sometimes with self-conscious hero¬ ism, to save the remnants of a Sudanese social system that had, for better or worse, largely broken up. Confronted by the Sudanese townsman, the Gordon College student, the effendi, the merchant, and the tenant-farmer, these officials, bereft of the certainties that had sustained their prede¬ cessors, were shocked and laden with a sense of responsibility, but buoyed by the apparent resiliency of tribal institutions and by the serene perma¬ nence these represented. The paternalism officials condemned as debilitat¬ ing was what in fact informed their own view: it was Britain’s duty to guide the Sudanese back to a path on which they had been embarked for centuries, before unnatural disasters had diverted them. If the effort failed, at least it would have been made in a righteous cause. The practical impetus of Indirect Rule originated in the chronic shortage of trained staff that afflicted the Sudan Government. In the rural Sudan MacMichael, Willis, Davies, Corbyn, and others had as young inspectors necessarily interfered very little in the affairs of far-flung tribes; if taxes were paid and inter-tribal harmony was maintained, they were content. In settled areas the tribal system had largely broken down: populations were mixed, traditional authority had been debased or had lost relevance, and the proximity of government allowed (and its enactments required) constant reference to it. As the functions of government proliferated, the employment of Sudanese, either trained officials or local notables, was increasingly important. But the government’s solicitude for tribal shaykhs may be judged by its treatment of them in the practical matter of remuneration, which was of a fixed percentage of the taxes they collected. In 1918 these rates (1 per cent of date tax, 15 per cent of land tax, 5 per cent of animal tax, 25 per cent of ushur, and 10 per cent of tribute) were unanimously judged by the northern governors as inadequate.50 A protrac¬ ted dispute ensued with the financial secretary, Bernard, who blocked all attempts to increase the remuneration. In 1922 MacMichael went so far as to ask Bernard if he knew that ‘the average Sheikh’ was ‘little better than a local scallywag deputed by the villagers to do such things as the Govern¬ ment require Sheikhs to do’. Bernard was unmoved. Under Schuster, moreover, a generation of neglect could not be corrected overnight. In 1924 Arthur Huddleston wrote of the ‘difficulty in finding suitable

362

Empire on the Nile

Sheikhs’ at all. The idea had taken root that shaykhs were simply cogs in the government machine; in 1925 even the civil secretary’s office advanced as a principle the replacement of shaykhs who evaded responsibility or failed to perform their duty. By then, the issue at stake was far more than rates of pay.51 After the Egyptian revolution of 1919 there was renewed determination to lessen dependence on Egyptian officials by increasing both the number and the responsibilities of the Sudanese official class. While the Milner Report endorsed the dual approach favoured by Stack, there was a strong sense that the creation of an ‘effendi class’ should be avoided. The involvement in the leagues of 1922-4 of members of that class deepened British mistrust. With Egyptians destined for removal, their replacement by Sudanese unacceptable and by Britons financially impossible, the only remaining potential agents of an increasingly extended government were the tribal authorities. Long before the 1924 crisis there was a tendency to look towards them as a foundation for future administration. Significantly, the early enactments of Indirect Rule were imposed by Khartoum on mainly unenthusiastic provincial authorities. Responses to the civil secretary’s request in April 1920 for governors’ views on the regularising of shaykhs’ powers were mixed. ‘I do not think any tribal organisation exists which can usefully be fostered,’ the governor of Khartoum Province wrote, an opinion echoed by officials in Sennar, Kassala, Berber, and elsewhere. Lyall of Kassala condemned as ‘a reaction¬ ary step’ the revival of ‘such despotic powers as were formerly exercised by Nazirs’.52 (A year later, on the eve of his appointment as civil secretary, Lyall had modified his view, so inconsistent with that of the central government, and remarked diffidently that since the shaykhs had been chosen as the future ruling class, they had better be endowed with some powers.) Reactions from the hinterland were very different. The governors of Darfur and Kordofan had already attempted to regularise tribal auth¬ ority in judicial matters, Sagar of Kordofan remarking that it would be ‘greatly preferable’ for future courts to be ‘presided over by prominent natives of standing . . . than by young and half educated lawyers’.53 Opinion was therefore divided about the wisdom of statutory recognition of traditional judicial practice and, more importantly, over the very assumptions implicit in such recognition, a fundamental rift that was never entirely reconciled. The discussions of 1920 resulted in the promulgation, in 1922, of The Powers of Nomad Sheikhs Ordinance, which provided for the recognition and regulation of judicial functions that had, so the ordinance said, ‘from time immemorial’ been exercised by shaykhs of nomadic tribes. A tribal shaykh, duly recognised in a government warrant, was empowered, either solely or in a council or court of tribal ‘elders’, to

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deal with most criminal offences. Capital crimes were reserved for the government, and the right to overrule any decision, even if unappealed, was retained but seldom exercised. By 1923 ‘some 300’ shaykhs had received warrants.54 Meanwhile steps were taken to establish village courts and municipal advisory councils in Khartoum and Port Sudan, in keeping with Stack’s dual policy. These councils were no real advance; similar advisory bodies had existed as early as 1901.55 So long as Stack remained at the helm the dual policy remained official: he was no prophet of Indirect Rule but, like most of his generation, saw the rural Sudanese as essentially a drain on government resources better expended elsewhere, and favoured a policy that led to administrative economies. His policy, recognising the widely varying administrative problems faced in different regions, had three main purposes: to give ‘some satisfaction ... to the reasonable aspirations’ of the educated class; to save money; and to remove ‘the dangers inherent in a system of centralised bureaucratic control’. In 1924, he decided it was time to go further, to establish Sudanese ‘advisory councils’ at the town, district, and provincial levels in the Northern Sudan.56 The necessary legislation to enact this wise and liberal plan was still under discussion when Stack died, and it was subsequently shelved. Doubts about Stack’s policy increased as the political climate worsened in 1924. When the crisis came, few British officials could be found favouring an improvement in the prospects of their subordinate Sudanese officials. Indeed, the dual policy was now viewed as self-contradictory. In October A. G. Pawson, deputy governor of the Blue Nile Province, wrote a scathing ‘Note on the Native Mamur and Sub-Mamur as affecting the Government policy of decentralization’, in which he contended that Sudanese officials had inherited ‘the Egyptian love of personal power and . . . dislike of the powerful Nazir or Omda’. They had ‘no conception of themselves as men of less importance than the Nazirs and Omdas . . . while by an alteration in their dress and mode of life, they raisefd] a barrier between themselves and their own people’. Considering themselves the ‘future governors of the Sudan’, they posed a grave danger to ‘the whole structure of rule by native chiefs’. Pawson’s superior, Arthur Huddleston, having earlier in the year described difficulty in finding shaykhs, now professed agreement: although tribal rule would be less efficient than the ‘mamur system’, it would be cheaper, and ‘power would be in the hands of the natural rulers of the people and not in the hands of a class that would always be expecting more and more pay and power until. . . the complete abolition of British control’.57 MacMichael believed these sentiments were based on a misapprehen¬ sion, since the Sudanese sub-ma’murs were not intended to assume the

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positions previously held by Egyptian ma’murs. In future, he wrote, ‘the administration of native affairs must, subject to British rule and super¬ vision, tend to be left more and more to the authority of the native chiefs’. It was ‘the aristocracy rather than the subordinate bureaucracy whose claims’ were ‘paramount’.58 The crisis of 1924 sealed the fate of the subma’murs. While some were promoted, their responsibilities were diminished: while their conduct had been ‘excellent so far’, the government could not ‘afford to court risks in the future by leaving too much in their hands’.59 It was only after 1924 that the dual policy was finally abandoned and Indirect Rule and its intellectual trappings were assumed. Hearing about Lugard’s Political memoranda and reading The dual mandate in tropical Africa opened British officials’ eyes to the possibility of adopting his advertised theories and methods (although MacMichael found Rajah Brooke of Sarawak more to his liking). Lugardism’s principal disciple in the Sudan was not MacMichael, who has usually been seen, incorrectly, as the chief architect of Indirect Rule there, but Reginald Davies. He had spent most of his career in Kordofan, most notably with the nomad Kababish, whose way of life had touched him deeply. Although as a young inspector he had recognised that nomadic tribes would have to be administered ‘more closely’, and that the nazir would ‘necessarily become more and more a figurehead’, yet Davies urged that both justice and efficiency demanded upholding the nazir’s authority for as long as poss¬ ible.60 In 1922, having experimented with indirect methods in Dar Masalit, he proposed to visit Northern Nigeria, ‘with a view to writing a report. . . on the comparative conditions of administration there’ and in the Sudan,61 a project he took up in 1924. Greatly impressed by what he saw, Davies issued a ‘Note on Native Administration’ (which MacMichael pigeon¬ holed for many months and never published), summarising what he had learned. He defined Native Administration as ‘the utilisation by the ruling power of existing, or, after resuscitating them, of pre-existing native administrative institutions and their development on lines suited to the genius of the people which possesses, or possessed, them’. He believed there were ‘very large regions’ of the Sudan, ‘to which the Nigerian system was applicable without very considerable modifications’. Personnel for native courts, whose learning equalled or exceeded that of ‘the Gordon College graduate’, were readily available. The advantages of the Nigerian model were clear: ‘Native Administrations give rise to no “Intelligentsia” class. The treasurers, scribes and the rest are the humble servants of the Native Authority.... It is inconceivable that they should aspire to political power’; the Nigerian amirs were ‘a valuable bulwark against outbreaks of fanaticism’; Native Administration was ‘much cheaper than the

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bureaucratic variety’, because staff were paid at (low) local rates, were not pensionable, were awarded no automatic increases in pay or promotions, few allowances for travel and the like were necessary, and local police were also much cheaper than a ‘centralised constabulary’.62 There was no great rush to adopt a Nigerian model, as advertised in Lugard’s propaganda or practised by his successors, and Davies’s rather lonely espousal seemed less the advocacy of a policy than the preaching of a militant faith. In 1925 G. J. Lethem paid a visit from Nigeria. He found himself ‘much consulted as an expert’ on Indirect Rule, and became a confidant of its chief exponents. Lethem concluded that ‘practically all’ officials who had served in the western Sudan shared ‘Nigerian views re tarikas, holy men etc. and most’ were ‘coming round to N.A. ideas’.63 Davies was ‘preaching Indirect Administration . . . very hard’, but ‘finding it difficult to “get it across” ’, Lethem wrote in August 1925. In October Davies told him that both Bence-Pembroke of Darfur and his deputy, C. G. Dupuis, were ‘bitten with N.A. in the west’, but Dupuis was pessimistic: the first step is to convince this Govt, of the necessity of adopting the principle in those parts of the Sudan to which it can be applied. . . . but I greatly fear that we shall not be able to do more than prepare the way by small changes and adaptations internally, courting publicity as little as possible! . . . our chief difficulty out here will be in re-orienting the official mind to N.A.

In any case, he had ‘written a real “alarmist” report to Davies about Mahdism’.64 Davies himself, sitting in Khartoum, was even more down¬ cast: he wished to launch a major test of Indirect Rule in Darfur, but MacMichael was ‘hostile’, ‘one of those who timorously hold that you can gradually turn a bureaucracy into N.A.’. It was now too late to stop Mahdism in Kordofan, and almost so in Darfur, he told Lethem in December. By April 1926, his Note still filed away, Davies had concluded that MacMichael had ‘a fundamental antipathy to NA’ and might ‘succeed in strangling ... at birth’ Bence-Pembroke’s plans for Darfur. Davies was reduced to sending extracts from Lethem’s letters to Darfur and elsewhere, ‘for the encouragement of the faithful’.65 Correspondence continued in this vaguely conspiratorial way until the accession of Sir John Maffey, a confirmed partisan of Indirect Rule. It was only with his arrival that MacMichael, without abandoning the caution that had stayed his virtually free hand under Archer, began actively to pursue the implementation of the doctrine. However brilliant an adminis¬ trator, MacMichael was not a particularly original thinker. It was Maffey who expressed the bold ideas based on Indian experience, and MacMichael who refined and modified them in the Sudanese setting. Maffey favoured

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‘wild experiments’,66 MacMichael - to whom the very phrase must have seemed both alarming and unbecoming - tempered these with caution, experience, and, when he thought it necessary, foot-dragging.67 Maffey wasted no time in expressing his views: the old dual policy was anomalous, he wrote on 1 January 1927. Advisory councils, favoured by Stack, were wrong, and might be useful only ‘Later on in certain intelligensia [s/c] areas’, when the government had ‘made the Sudan safe for autocracy. . . . Otherwise Advisory Councils contain the seeds of grave danger and eventually present a free platform for capture by a pushful intelligensia.’ Time was short. ‘Before old traditions’ died, ‘extension and expansion in every direction’ were needed, ‘thereby sterilizing and localiz¬ ing the political germs which must spread from the lower Nile into Khartoum’. India had shown ‘how easily vague political unrest swept over even backward peoples’ because the British ‘had allowed the old forms to crumble away’. No longer could the British political officer be a ‘father of the people’; he must give way to their ‘natural leaders’. Thus would the Sudan ‘be parcelled out into nicely balanced compartments, protective glands against the septic germs’ that would ‘inevitably be passed on from the Khartoum of the future’. The only course was to ‘experiment boldly with schemes of transferred administrative control, making no fetish of efficiency’.68 Having posted the administrative battle-plan of his governor-generalship, Maffey left details to his chief-of-staff, MacMichael. The civil secretary had much experience of the western Sudan, had drafted plans for the indirect rule of Darfur after the conquest of 1916, but later had occasion to reflect upon the policy. He had had, for instance, a personal encounter with Muhammad Bahr al-Din, sultan of the Masalit, who MacMichael described in 1918 as ‘small and gross-looking . . . insignificant in appearance, addicted to drink, weak and irresolute in character. ... no natural dignity . . . vulgar and pretentious’.69 Notwithstanding the accuracy of this appraisal, it was on his experience in dealing with this sultan that Davies based his hopes for Indirect Rule. It is hardly surprising, then, that in 1927 MacMichael urged caution and warned against ‘showy action’ that might precipitate a failure with far-reaching consequences.70 Indeed, MacMichael maintained that ‘ “semi-indirect” rule’, where there was a ‘lack of personalities and training and any educative process in the past’, remained necessary.71 He canvassed the governors for their views on the current state of tribal authority, the prospects for its development, and the results of specific steps already taken. The replies were remarkably different from those elicited in 1920. With the exception of the governors of Khartoum and Haifa, all were enthusiastic. Direct rule was now seen as a dangerous doctrine: ‘May I be permitted ... to dispel any ideas that I

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

3 67

myself am personally an apostle of direct rule’ was how the governor of Kordofan prefaced his reply, and his colleagues were as eager to swear. Although the governor of the Blue Nile Province, Huddleston, could ‘find no trace of continuous exercise of power’ in any tribe except the Shukriya, he nevertheless detected ‘signs of old traditional authority which may have been merely dormant’ and might yet be revived. The ‘main difficulty’ in the White Nile Province was ‘to excavate the original tribal structure’, and then deal with the obstacles of ‘individualism and lack of tribal discipline’, the private ownership of land, irrigation schemes, and the influence of reli¬ gious leaders, particularly Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi. Neverthe¬ less, the province was deemed ready for ‘further progress in the policy of decentralisation’.72 Maffey’s call to arms was thus willingly accepted, and against a variety of enemies: ‘over-administration’, Mahdism, nationalism, ‘individualism’, modern education, bureaucratisation, and so forth. These, denounced not as problems but as evils, could be contained and reduced only by regenerated tribal authority.73 Official enthusiasm led rapidly to the promulgation in 1927 of The Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance, which marked the statutory rejection of Stack’s dual policy. It granted to territorial shaykhs and shaykhs of sedentary tribes the judicial authority previously recognised in The Powers of Nomad Sheikhs Ordinance, and allowed future extension of that authority/4 The wording of the new ordinance was deliberately vague, to permit its application in various circumstances. The extension of courts’ jurisdictions by amalgamation of smaller tribal units was envisaged. In an explanatory note MacMichael pointed out that court procedure need not ‘approximate’ that of the Sudan’s civil law courts, that the ‘sense of equity of the people’ was of paramount concern, and that therefore ‘different judgements on the same set of facts’ would result in different courts.75 Thus the government began to grant powers that, in many cases (despite the ordinance’s preamble), had not been invested ‘from time immemorial’ in certain shaykhs. The result was frequently an anomalous attempt to ‘tribalise’ people who had no memory of tribal authority or desire to recall it, and to put forward as ‘shaykhs’ men who, however upstanding they might be, had no hereditary precedence. An error in drafting the ordinance, by which the legal secretary was forced to rule that it was illegal ‘to constitute a court having a jurisdiction of wider scope than the administrative jurisdiction’ of its president, led to the amendment of the statute in The Powers of Shaykhs Ordinance of 1928. It had been noticed that in ‘many regions’ tribes were so small that their courts had little to do, whereas cases frequently arose beween members of different tribes. Thus, ‘intertribal’ courts were necessary,76 having as their dubious theoretical precedent the ‘inter-tribal meglis’ of yore, and thus the

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requisite sanction of tradition. The official admission that ‘inter-tribal cases . . . probably’ constituted ‘the majority of cases’ in such areas77 does not seem to have dampened belief in the prospects of Indirect Rule, and the new ordinance sanctioned ‘inter-tribal or inter-regional councils for the settlement’ of disputes. In 1932 The Native Courts Ordinance incorporated the various previous enactments to provide one statutory basis for Native Administration in the Northern Sudan. While that ordinance was in the drafting stage, even Davies, to whom The Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance had seemed ‘too restrictive’, argued that no ‘general advance on a wide front’ should yet be attempted, but that limited advances should be made in certain areas, a view clearly recognising the broad variation in the country’s administrative needs, as Stack’s dual policy had.78 The Native Courts Ordinance was the last important Indirect Rule legislation adopted during Maffey’s governor-generalship, and was a rather timid document in the light of its proponents’ views. By the 1930s native courts were an established fact, and some steps had been taken towards financial devolution. Significantly, however, legislation had in fact further centralised the administration of justice, in that tribal custom was now ‘official’. Justice had been effectively removed, however, from the objective supervision of the legal secretary, and made instead a matter for the decisions of political officials. Similar politicisation occurred in educa¬ tion, land registration, and other areas. There was, indeed, a tendency to view every function of government as affecting, and necessarily subordi¬ nate to, administrative policy; and to decry differences of opinion as dangerous deviations. The politicisation of justice did little to enhance the prestige of indirect rulers, whether British or Sudanese, and lost for the government some of the reservoir of respect it had filled over a generation of rule. British critics, like Sir James Currie, derided Indirect Rule as ‘comical’ in its excesses, one of which was the extension of powers to ‘old picturesque rascals’79 whose depredations the government had previously tried to curb. As elsewhere in Britain’s African empire, the legal experts and the administrators fought for control of the judicial system. In the Sudan it was an unequal battle. Baily remarked in 1924 that all seemed ‘to agree that... the best District Judge ... is the inspector seconded from the political service - who short circuits civil suits before they have got past the petition stage’.80 The legal secretary’s office made occasional protests, but was completely under the thumb, after 1926, of the civil secretary’s office. Nigel Davidson, legal secretary from 1926 to 1930, was no match for MacMichael and Maffey, as the vitriolic Wasey Sterry might have been. MacMichael was even quoted as saying that, fortunately, Davidson was a ‘man of straw’.81 In 1928 the

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acting legal secretary objected to native courts’ power ‘to try rape and kindred offences’, and impotently regretted that his view was ‘shared by nobody else’. When Davidson warned in 1929 that shaykhs should not be allowed ‘to remit their own fines’, Davies concurred, but stipulated that in future they should not do so ‘without reference to the District Commis¬ sioner’. In 1927 Davidson complained that murders were being treated as ‘civil disputes’, even when a district commissioner was available to try a case, and held that there were ‘certain matters in which the Government must make itself felt, or which it must keep in its own hands’, one of which was murder, at least where such crimes were committed ‘under the nose of the Administration’.82 When Shaykh Babikr Bedri told Dupuis, then governor of the Fung Province, that three people had been ‘killed through the mismanagement of the Nazir of a tribe or through the weakness of his administration’, the governor replied: ‘this is a period of transition. In all such times incidents of this kind are to be expected’. Shaykh Babikr was scandalised.83 By countenancing such abuses the Sudan Government squandered a basic justification of its rule. Both British proponents and Sudanese critics of Indirect Rule recognised that its success or failure would be determined in the provinces, not in lengthy formulations of principles. There were several criteria for success: cost, popular approval, efficiency, the ebb and flow of Mahdism, and so forth. Even in Stack’s time it was becoming clear, despite the argument of adherents, that Indirect Rule involved additional expense. The ramshackle arrangements for remunerating shaykhs had finally to be reformed, and in 1925 it was considered ‘high time’ to develop a ‘general principle’ to reward equally shaykhs of ‘similar standing’. Where tribal levies proved insufficient, the government had to provide funds.84 But provincial authorities suggested reforms that were both more expensive and less systematic than the current method, and that were based largely on officials’ opinions of how much income a particular shaykh ought to have. Thus in Kordofan adequate remuneration of nazirs would cost an addi¬ tional ££4,776 a year, in the Nuba Mountains an additional ££338, in Darfur ££959, and so forth. Unwilling to increase both expenditure and confusion, MacMichael pared the number of ‘nazirs and Sheikhs of equal standing’ to the manageable figure of fifty-two for the whole of the Northern Sudan.85 Proposals for ‘annual remunerations’ - the term ‘salary’ having been rejected as connoting the wage of an official - involving a total additional cost to the government of almost £E6,ooo, were made. By 1930 annual remuneration totalled ££9,995. Of course, powerful tribal shaykhs supplemented their official ‘remuneration’ by continuing to tax their people. In 1915, for example, Davies estimated that Shaykh cAli al-Tum of the Kababish annually collected for himself more than £E2,5qo.86

37°

Empire on the Nile

‘Economies’ were generally supposed and stated to be inevitable once Indirect Rule was established, but experience showed that the system required additional funds at the local level and increased British super¬ vision at the district level to achieve results. Already in the mid-1920s ‘economies’ were receding into the future as officials offered various reasons for delay. A budget note for 1928 stated as ‘a principle’ that devolutionary ‘schemes must show an ultimate true economy’, but Maffey relieved the governors by ruling that ‘the economies to be expected’ were ‘rarely realizable immediately’, because ‘existing machinery’ could not suddenly be discarded, and because it would ‘often be the second steps in devolution’ that would lead to reductions in government staff. The governors heartily endorsed this view.87 Occasionally provincial officials reported the dismissal of a clerk or accountant, and were quick to indicate a decrease in the number of petitions annually submitted (although these increased in some provinces).88 Such economies as these, ambiguous as they were, were more than balanced by the increase in British staff. It is debatable whether Maffey, Davies, and others expected the system to yield substantial savings, except in terms of staff who might have been needed in future but now would not be. Their main concern was political, not financial. To them the success of Indirect Rule depended on identifying or creating tribal institutions, not on their efficient performance. Yet practical tests could not be indefinitely postponed, and their results were mixed. The chief laboratory was assumed to be the western Sudan, the vast expanses of Darfur and Kordofan sparsely populated by nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes. Support of the right leaders was essential, and provincial officials were repeatedly reminded to find the best men.89 What was wanted, however, was an impossible combination of attributes: hereditary prestige and obedience to the foreigner; autocratic power and docility; independence of thought, but in consonance with British ideas; wisdom but not education; solicitude for tribal well-being combined with satisfaction with backwardness. One of the most interesting local experiments involved southern Darfur. The dimangawi,90 Bosha 'Abd al-Gabbar, was giving constant trouble, and in 1929 the Fur chiefs were reported to be ‘almost all habitual drunkards’ guilty of a host of cruel and abusive administrative practices, whose people preferred migration to life under their rule.91 To remedy the situation the governor of Darfur proposed the revival of the Fur maqdumate, at Zalingei. Under the Fur sultans a maqdum had been a commissioner especially appointed to deal with specific problems, usually of war or taxation. The southern maqdumate had never been hereditary.92 The Sudan Government considered that as maqdum a member of the Fur royal house was necessary (a clear departure from tradition), and after the

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37i

sons of 'Ali Dinar were all judged unsuitable, attention fell on 'Abd alHamid, son of the Sultan Ibrahim who had died during Zubayr Pasha’s conquest of Darfur in 1874. 'Abd al-Hamid had been considered as a possible successor to 'Ali Dinar in 1916. He was now living at Kosti, and, having shown interest, he made a preliminary tour of Zalingei District with his son and putative successor, 'Abbas, a boy of eighteen considered ‘somewhat stupid but of considerable character’, who would revert to a railway clerkship if he could not become maqdum]93 When the tour was judged a success, practical details, even including ‘leave arrangements’ were decided, and 'Abd al-Hamid was installed as maqdum at Zalingei on 17 December 1928.94 The experiment was immediately reported successful, perhaps even too successful, as the maqdum had within a month acquired the title of sultan from the local people. The offensive dimangawi was deemed a public nuisance and dismissed, and his post was suppressed. The local chiefs readily accepted the maqdum’s authority, a court was established, and a rapid delegation of powers was planned. In February 1930, in keeping with his personal dignity as a Fur prince and the hereditary nature of his new post, 'Abd al-Hamid was officially styled ‘Emir’,95 and a year later progress had been so marked that the assistant district commissioner at Zalingei reported grandly that he hoped soon to announce ‘the definite re¬ establishment of the Fur Royal Dynasty’.96 But on 25 October disaster struck: the Emir died. He was succeeded by his son Muhammad ‘on probation’, 'Abbas having failed to shake off the name and attributes of an ‘effendi’.97 The initial promise of the Emir Muhammad’s rule soon dissipated. His subordinates, the sharati of the various dars that comprised the emirate, continued to be ‘lazy, drunken and without responsibility’,98 while his own lapses were hopefully explained as the natural failings of youth. But by 1934 the tone of official reports had changed remarkably. The emir possessed, it was said, ‘an unprepossessing appearance coupled with an unfortunate manner and indifferent manners’. To his half-baked-effendi ideas picked up amongst second-rate, semi-educated colleagues in a commercial firm at Sennar, his father must have seemed oldfashioned indeed, and he set out to model himself on a sort of glorified Mamur and to avoid as far as he could all irksome control. . . . Money, too, has proved a stumbling-block. The sudden control of what must have seemed to him a fortune, naturally went to his head.. . . During the year . . . efforts to get him out of debt. . . proved unavailing and no sooner had an advance of pay been conceded . . . than he ran up still more debts.... A combined attack of syphilis, gonorrhoea, and malaria . . . very nearly caused his death.

He was secretive and evasive, uncooperative with British officials and

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unscrupulous in collecting taxes. Nevertheless, the Resident concluded that the amir's ‘undoubted ability and grasp of the routine details of administration’ were expected to result in a ‘very satisfactory’ structure that could be revivified by ‘a successor of broader sympathies in closer contact with his people’.99 The provincial governor was more pessimistic: Muhammad was clearly unsatisfactory, but there was no alternative until a younger brother could replace him; if the amir made ‘his own downfall unavoidable by some really glaring and unforgiveable series of atrocities’, he should be removed to Kosti and a ‘regency’ established until a brother could assume the title.100 Despite that conclusion, affairs were allowed to deteriorate. The Resident’s report for 1934 noted the amir's requirement of ‘constant guidance’. As for his administration’s effect on the Fur, ‘the more I have seen of it, the worse it seems’, he wrote: ‘a residue of vague and undefined “customary powers” ’ had been awarded to shaykhs, and it was impossible to ascertain even who had such powers and of what they consisted; estates were stolen from heirs; floggings and beatings were used to extort money; the government had failed in its ‘first duty’, the ‘freedom from oppression and protection of person and property’.101 In Khartoum the ‘possibility of a crash’ was recognised, and the ‘reintroduction of a more direct form of administration’102 was suggested for consideration: was it right to ‘submit a large population to a long period of this government by a bad Emir in order to avoid the upheaval which would result by his dismissal’?103 The experience of Zalingei was by no means unique. The earlier experiment in Dar Masalit had met with similar disappointments. An attempt to re-establish the ‘Magdumate of the North’ in 1926, by installing Yusuf, a son of the last hereditary maqdum, failed when by ‘futile intrigue and petty jealousy he prostituted his position’ and was dismissed by his own sharati in the following year. In 1929 the search began for another ‘possible Magdum’, while a ‘Shadow Magdumate’ was established to await him.104 In May 1930 Dupuis reported that the once-tried Yusuf, although having ‘offended in turn all the most important chiefs’, had been reinstated. His brother, Hassan, a ‘somewhat colourless and undistinguished individual’, was kept ready as a successor in case of another failure. In 1931 Yusuf was said to be ‘outstanding neither in ability nor in personality . . . solid rather than brilliant, slow-witted and impassive’, and performing excellently.105 Elsewhere in Darfur, personnel presented similar problems. In 1928 Shartai Karam al-Din Muhammad of the Bergid was ‘found guilty of various misdemeanors, particularly of grossly misusing his Powers under the Nomad Sheikhs Ordinance and of ill treating those who dared complain of his injustices’. His powers were suspended for a year. When in

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1929 proposals for a joint court encompassing the Habbania, Fallata, and Masalit of the Baqqara sub-district were made, Shaykh Adam al-Nur of the Jima’ tribe, a former official of 'Ali Dinar, was chosen as its president specifically because he was not a member of any of the tribes involved, who could not agree on one of their own.106 In proposing a court for the Bani Halba, Dupuis expressed confidence in the nazir, Muhammad Ibrahim Dabaka, despite his obvious inadequacies. As Nazir Muhammad Uthman of the Nyala Misiriya lay dying in July 1929, Dupuis mused about post¬ mortem troubles, since the various sections of other tribes under the nazir’s authority might attempt yet again to throw off his rule. When a complicated plan to assign these sections elsewhere was suggested, it was thought they would choose the Zalingei administration, since that could hardly be worse than that of the Misiriya nazirate. The residual problem of a tiny Humr 'umadia could be solved, ‘at a pinch’, by removing the Humr to Kordofan.107 A two-year attempt to amalgamate the nomadic Ma'lia with the sedentary Rizayqat Ma'lia, ‘proved a failure’, because their leaders fell out, the 'umdas were venal and ‘heartily disliked’, and tribute went uncollected.108 Efforts initiated in 1925 to amalgamate the Northern and Southern Rizayqat under Nazir Ibrahim Musa were wrecked by irreconcilable differences, and abandoned in 1929. Ibrahim Musa himself lost the government’s confidence, and there was talk of his resignation in 1932. A lengthy 1931 report on Native Administration in southern Darfur noted illegal exactions, double taxation, and fear of reporting abuses. The Ta'aisha of south-west Darfur could not be brought under the jurisdiction of any existing native court, a problem for which Dupuis admitted there was no solution. In El Fasher itself the success of the native court was jeopardised when in a brawl the court’s vice-president assaulted another notable. Even the world depression took its toll: a 1933 province diary recorded that shaykhs were embezzling taxes and claiming that the scarcity of money had prevented collection.109 The catalogue of failed experiments, personal peccadiloes, and infamous abuses was a long one, and as much as officials reiterated hopes and reported promising developments, it became clear that in the province thought most susceptible to Indirect Rule the system was proving a chaotic failure, even while limited mainly to ‘judicial devolution’ and matters of taxation. Unsurprisingly, other provinces experienced similar results. Second only to Darfur in the plans of the indirect rulers, Kordofan was, in Maffey’s words, ‘a wonderful field for devolution’,110 where, moreover, the paragon of tribal rule, 'Ali al-Tum of the Kababish, held sway. From something akin to a desert filibuster in Kitchener’s day, 'Ali al-Tum had evolved in official eyes to the point where he was held in affectionate awe by Davies, in whose singularly charming memoir, The camel’s back, it is easy to see

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why. 'Ali al-Tum epitomised to the British the freedom of desert life, a freedom from routine, rules, the written law. (When told by Davies that his young son had regular feeding hours the nazir exclaimed: ‘Already he is brought under the law’!)111 In 1925 'Ali al-Tum was knighted. His ‘tribal autocracy’ was so perfected that, paradoxically, Indirect Rule endangered it, since the regulation of his hitherto largely unfettered powers might lead to their diminution. As a Foreign Office official noted in 1930, Shaykh 'Ali’s powers were ‘so vastly in excess of anything allowed’ by The Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance that its terms were ‘more or less ignored’: his powers were ‘sanctioned by administrative expediency and not by the law’.112 Although his people were apparently content that tribal administration was entirely in his hands, the Kordofan authorities decided in 1933 that his position required ‘strengthening’, and a Major Tribal Court was duly established under his presidency.113 In Dar Hamar, to the south, the adoption of Indirect Rule, and especially its patient nursing by British officials committed to the people’s welfare, brought some order to what had been a chaotic situation. Typically, this resulted in large part from the emergence of a respected and capable tribal leader, Mun’im Mansur al-Shaykh, under whom disparate elements of the Hamar were able to unite. Even if the subsequent regime did not constitute a Hamar renaissance, it did in fact comprise a distinct improvement over earlier conditions. In Bara District, where in 1927 the chiefs were called ‘little more than mere puppets’ of the government, by 1931 the four courts established were said to be at least adequate, despite personnel prob¬ lems.114 A 1934 report on Eastern Kordofan stressed the personality of an individual shaykh, ‘in the absence of a strong Tribal link’. While some shaykhs were described as impartial, effective, and reliable, many others were deemed unjust, impetuous, lazy, and so forth. Most were old, and the problem of succession was a constant worry.115 In the Red Sea Province the Beja tribes had remained as far aloof from direct administration as any in the Northern Sudan. Inconveniently, the Hadandua occupied territory in both the Red Sea and Kassala provinces, and in 1927 Newbold was appointed to supervise the tribe on both sides of the provincial border. Subsequently the Amarar, Bishariin, Bani Amar, Halanga, and other tribes were grouped in one Nomad Administration under a single commissioner with four assistants. The settled Beja in the Gash Delta and around Tokar remained outside this jurisdiction. As in the case of the Kababish, the government moved to improve on traditional ways. None of the shaykhs of the Bishariin had a hereditary claim to nazirship, and they preferred no nazir at all.116 F. T. C. Young, the commissioner, argued, however, that the appointment of a nazir would accord with ‘the main Devolution Policy, and would ... be for the ultimate

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good’ of the tribe itself; the expressed preference for ‘No Nazir’ would not deter him from appointing one. Responding to the contention that the Bishariin were ‘too backward’ for devolution, Young made the same paradoxical point that justified interference with the Kababish: he knew of no other tribe that had ‘so completely and with such apparent success administered its own affairs’. As Baily recognised, the Beja Administration presented ‘few difficulties’ precisely because it was ‘so primitive’: there was little to administer.117 With other Beja tribes progress depended, as usual, on individuals. In 1929 Baily, then governor of Kassala, worried that the ‘political stability’ of the Hadandua depended on the nazir, who was old and unwell.118 Ibrahim Musa died in 1931, and was succeeded as nazir by Muhammad Muhammad al-Amin Tirik, who greatly improved the administration of the Hadandua imperium. By 1932 he had his own civil service, personal representatives on courts, an agricultural department dealing with irrigation and cotton, and so forth, a development applauded by MacMichael as ‘eminently sound’ so long as the functionaries were Hadandua and not, like ma’murs, of different tribal origins.119 The nazir’s assistants were not flawless, however, and the vice-president of the Central Hadendowa Court was described in 1932 as ‘inactive, unimaginative, unprogressive and incompetent’, with the result that ‘the prestige of the Court’ was ‘almost non-existent’.120 In Fung Province, where tribalism had largely broken down, local officials had put little hope in Indirect Rule, but Khartoum was undeterred. Among the Kinana and Abu Rauf the main difficulty in 1928 was said to be their shaykhs, one ‘practically gaga’, the other ‘little better than a gasbag’: both were appointed presidents of courts, and the provincial government was told to persevere.121 In March 1930, H. C. Jackson, governor of Haifa, flatly refused ‘to go ahead with administrative as distinct from judicial Devolution’, since he considered it entirely unsuitable for his essentially detribalised province.122 It was generally agreed that there was little scope for devolution in Khartoum Province, where even village courts had proved disappointing. Remarkably, in 1928 the Garayat, ‘a troublesome thieving people . . . under very little administrative control’, whose taxes could not be collected except by government police, presented ‘a most excellent prospect for an experiment in devolution’, since all else had failed.123 In the Nuba Mountains the ‘tribal mix’ was again a source of difficulty. In 1927 the administration of Eliri was in critical condition: the appointed nazir, 'Abd al-Rahman Twenga, had died, the sub-ma’mnr had been ‘economised’, an attempt to devolve powers on the 'umdas had been a ‘complete failure’, and the governor thought he might be ‘compelled to ask for the re-instatement of the Sub-Mamur’ and thus of direct rule. It was

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suggested instead that the current police chief, Sharif Effendi ‘Uthman, be appointed ‘as de facto head of the Eliri “Arabs” he was soon to retire anyway, and was a ‘most loyal and trustworthy man’, respected by the local people. A difficulty arose as to his title. ‘Nazir’ was unsuitable, and ‘Mek’ was thought ‘rather farcical’: ‘Regent for the Nazir’ was a solution that would allow him to assume ‘customary powers’!124 The futility of Indirect Rule was perhaps most clearly revealed in the Blue Nile Province, where the upheavals of the Mahdia and subsequent population movements, the relative sophistication of the people, and rapid social and economic change brought about by the Gezira Scheme made Indirect Rule particularly reactionary and fantastic. In 1927 Arthur Hud¬ dleston, the governor, could discern no ‘continuous exercise of power’ in any tribe but the Shukriya, in which the position of the Abu Sinn family required no statutory regularisation. At the same time, however, Hud¬ dleston saw some scope for the revival of ‘dormant’ powers. Davies saw agricultural efficiency as a potential ally of administrative reaction: the Plantations Syndicate had ‘pressured tenants to settle disputes with local omdas and sheikhs because going off to [merkaz] led to absenteeism’. Thus he foresaw the day, after the syndicate’s contract expired, when consider¬ able devolution would be possible. Meanwhile, ‘all petty native supervisee [sic]’ should ‘be servants of these native authorities’ rather than of the syndicate. This extravagant notion was unlikely to withstand syndicate opposition; it certainly could not survive the world depression.125 Although governors’ reports continued to strike a positive note, economic change could not be undone. By 1933 it was said that ‘Owing to the “spoon-feeding” methods of the Syndicate and Company . . . the people are, without doubt, rapidly losing most of their respect for their traditional leaders and the leaders are losing most of the ability to exercise authority that they may have enjoyed in the past.’126 The lack of clear ‘economies’, the apparent inability of a tribal system to continue unaffected by changes within and around it, or to be revived where it had deteriorated, or to withstand, where it was strongest, the interference of dogmatic British officials determined to regulate it, were principal causes for the failure of Indirect Rule in the Northern Sudan. There were others. In Northern Nigeria the units of Native Administra¬ tion were large and populous, whereas in the Northern Sudan they were often too small either to require or to support the superstructure of courts that was prescribed as the first step in devolution, let alone the cadres of ‘retainers’ involved in further stages. A result of this insufficiency was the emphasis on tribal ‘coalition’ and ‘amalgamation’ and, later, on ter¬ ritoriality that carried within it the notion of large feudatories capable of supporting expanded administrations. This in turn began to be seen for

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what it was, a parallel government that excluded effendis but had little justification in tribal tradition or advantage over ordinary direct rule. Thus Baily at Kassala saw the early prospect of ‘eight or nine “States” and “Free Towns” ’ in that province, and later a ‘Western Beja Hegemony’ with a corresponding eastern one, consequent to the further development of ‘the pan-Beja ideal’. Ultimately there might be ‘two Kingdoms, a Southern under an Emir Abu Sin’ and ‘a Northern under an Emir of the ruling Hadendowa house, the Wailaliab’. MacMichael mused about the eventual emergence of ‘four to six great overlords’ in the Northern Sudan as a whole.127 Other officials wrote similarly of great tribal magnates and other anachronisms. Provincial maps came to resemble eighteenth-century Ger¬ many’s. But once it had been ruled that the territorial principle was acceptable, as it had been accepted from the start in many places as far afield as Gedaref, Bara and the eastern Nuba Mountains, there was little reason to limit it to ‘detribalised’ areas, and many reasons for not doing so. MacMichael, paradoxically, was among those who argued that these creations would likely fail because they had within them no traditional basis for cohesion. But territoriality had greater prospects precisely because of this: it implicitly recognised the disappearance or deterioration of strong tribal identity. Problems arose when smaller or less vigorous units were ‘amalgamated’ into larger, more powerful administrations with which they often had nothing in common but a traditional enmity. Another flaw of Indirect Rule was the remarkably limited and unimagin¬ ative steps taken to impose it. No matter how committed to the policy, officials were usually hesitant to allow real autonomy, as can be seen in their insistence on meddling even in the affairs of such regimes as the Kababish. There remained a feeling that traditional authority had to fit a mould cast by British administrators, and when Sudanese reality did not conform to British ideas, the mould cracked. British willingness to give up authority was usually limited to devolving duties that could not otherwise be performed or that were tedious and routine. Intramural arguments over what exactly contributed to furthering the ‘principles’ of Indirect Rule, and even over what exactly Indirect Rule was, were sterile and unreal. It is instructive of the vagueness and artificiality of Indirect Rule that some officials heartily approved it while pursuing policies wholly incompatible with it. In Kassala Province Baily argued that a ‘cleavage between Native Administration and [the] Intelligentsia’ would be a ‘disaster’; that to meet the future, tribal organisations required bureaucratisation, modern educa¬ tion, and so forth.128 As he put it: ‘The chiefs represent the Past. The educated classes represent the Present. We must. . . fuse the best of both. In Kassala this is actually happening.. . . The Chiefs will not thank us if we try to keep them pristine!’129 Baily was no ‘apostle of direct rule’, but the

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policy he advocated was, in fact, little different from the old dual policy of Sir Lee Stack. He believed that simple tribal revivalism was ‘oiling the wheels of a disintegrating machine’, and confided in a later diary entry that it was ‘no use’ for the civil secretary’s office ‘to deplore the rising spirit of the educated - and to cling fondly to the reactionary tribal regions of the West as the last trace of all that is good in a world which is gradually sinking into insolence and subversion. If we live with the times we shall produce an evolved native spirit.’ In his handing-over notes, Baily, unbowed by frequent criticism from Khartoum, upheld his policy as ‘Sane Native Administration’. He had ‘declined to make a fetish of Tradition which is often synonymous with blood, dust, [and] procrastination’, and argued that administrations that could not cope with innovation would fail: ‘stasis is appropriate only to a cemetery’, is ’'ow he put it.130 Prestige was not ‘the perquisite of traditional chiefs’, Baby believed, it was ‘attainable in equal measure by bourgeois citizens’: ‘such a body starts a tradition of its own’.131 Baily was not the only high official to reach such conclusions. In August 1929 A. B. B. Howell, soon to retire as governor of Dongola, wrote defiantly to MacMichael that ‘ “native administration” will never be found appropriate to the riverain people of the Northern Sudan’, people who expected ‘professional services in the administration of law, public order, education, public health and other necessary parts of good government’. It would be necessary to provide for a ‘permanent Civil Service derived from native material’, that would ‘ultimately not be excluded from the highest posts’. In a 1933 note entitled ‘Quo Vadis’, John Reid of the White Nile Province recommended gradual replacement of British assistant district commissioners with educated Sudanese. What was needed was a lead from Khartoum, and the appointment in October 1933 of Sir Stewart Symes as Maffey’s successor provided it. Symes, who had long previous experience of the Sudan, was not an uncritical admirer either of the Political Service or of the outlook that had come to dominate it. In an exposition of his views at the 1934 governors’ meeting Symes sounded the death knell for dogmatic Indirect Rule. In ‘sophisticated areas’, he explained, Native Administra¬ tion was incapable of providing the services people needed. The continuing lack of services would lead to ‘seditious movements, based perhaps on justifiable arguments’. He pointed out that the British ‘could not count on the present contented situation in the Sudan continuing all the time. . . . Could not the Sudanese in the next 15 or 20 years be used for something better than “bottle-washing”, and the British staff for the higher duties of Government?’ Could not the ma'mur, ‘who seemed to be in most cases a well-educated man . . . not be given more responsibility?’ The government ‘should look ahead and train men for posts which. . . they could ultimately

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fill’.132 Thus did the pendulum swing back to the dual policy of a decade before, and none too soon, as officials began to accept that Britain’s place in the present and future Sudan required more than attempts to recreate the past as its justification.

GOVERNMENT POLICY TOWARDS EDUCATION IN THE NORTHERN SUDAN

In no area of government activity were the illiberal attitudes behind Indirect Rule more glaring than in education. It would be inaccurate to imply that before 1924 the government’s education policy was idealistic, or that it was unrelated to administrative requirements, as we have seen. With the advent of Indirect Rule, however, the government’s perception of those requirements altered radically, and the very existence of an educated elite was seen as proof that previous policy was mistaken. Inspired by mistrust and even hatred of the effendi, British officials began to see education as at best a necessary evil, and respect for authority, obedience, and selfdiscipline as the desired results of education. The politicisation of educa¬ tion had its critics, British as well as Sudanese, but the former were few indeed and were viewed by the dominant theorists as naive or blind to the dangers posed by an unchecked transmission of knowledge. The government’s reaction to the expansion of educational opportunity began during the first world war, when dissatisfaction with Egyptian teachers and worries about the creation of a large ‘educated class’ increased. The Milner Report reflected and justified those concerns, and was import¬ ant in prompting a shift in education policy that was accelerated after the 1924 crisis. Spending on education rose from 2.4 per cent of government expenditure in 1920 to 2.9 per cent in 1923, but there was little expansion; the number of boys in elementary schools (kuttahs) declined steadily from 1922 until 1929, the number in Gordon College rose only slightly before 1924, and the number of students in teacher-training declined. The involvement or implication of government-educated Sudanese in the 1924 disturbances infuriated some members of the government. Sterry openly espoused a ‘reversal of education policy’. ‘Nothing’, he wrote, ‘will abate the conceit of the half educated native grown on the hotbed of Islam but perhaps the Education Department might essay the task. The older native does not I think regard our system of education very favourably and it would be interesting to see what the effect would be on the school population if the Government schools were not the only road to obtaining Government employment.’ Baily argued that although the ‘great majority’ of Gordon College students became ‘low graded clerks’, they yet received training ‘with the public school spirit. ‘At Harrow we were treated as

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future gentlemen,’ he wrote, ‘but then most of us . . . found careers suitable to our aspirations.’ Gordon College graduates, on the contrary, did not, and the shock made them ‘restive and revolutionary’.133 The solution was vocational training instead of ‘literary’ education. It is symbolic of the change of atmosphere that Gordon College was closed and used as a British barracks during and after the 1924 crisis. After 1924 the change in attitude towards education was evident on all levels, including the organisation and direction of the department itself. Crowfoot, who despite a lack of forcefulness was an educational adminis¬ trator of long experience, resigned in 1926. His successor was E. N. Corbyn of the Political Service, whose career had included no post in education. In 1927 the education department was merged with the medical and veterinary services, and J. G. Matthew, a political officer and assistant financial secretary, was named secretary for education and health. The stated principle behind this appointment was that a ‘political man’ knew the provinces and had ‘a clear and unbiassed idea of what the product of the schools should be’.134 A. J. Forster of the finance department was among those who considered the amalgamation a ‘ridiculous misarrangement’, and the new secretary as having ‘neither learning, experience nor brains’.135 Forster missed the point: what was wanted was political direction, not technical expertise; the most ingenious educator could not have given proper attention to education in such a bloated bureaucratic arrangement. Matthew’s successor in 1932, R. K. Winter, was yet another ‘political’ director. A British official later described the prevalent attitude at the time: in the Sudan, education was ‘better left to the Administration and the amateur . . . than to the expert’, even though ‘education became . . . one of those slogans which one inwardly loathes while outwardly cheering and loyally doing all one can to foster’.136 In the aftermath of the 1924 crisis Egyptian teachers were among the first civilian employees to be evacuated, despite half-hearted protests from Crowfoot. Eventually all were removed, and the government acted also to eliminate Egyptian teachers from private schools. As of February 1925 there were twenty-seven such teachers, sixteen of whom were employed in American missionary schools. The government insisted on their gradual reduction, and by November 1926 only ten remained. In 1929 the remain¬ ing two were allowed to stay. Under provisions of The Education (NonGovernment Schools) Ordinance of 1927 a register of approved teachers was established, inclusion in which was taken to constitute a promise to ‘abstain from political propaganda’. As early as May 1927 there were no Egyptian teachers remaining at the Greek Catholic Patriarchal School in Omdurman, and future employment was restricted to Syrians and Sudanese. A Coptic School was allowed to open in Atbara in 1926 only on

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condition that no Sudanese students would be admitted. Egyptian women teachers were less strictly debarred, but apparently were carefully supervised.137 The care given to removing qualified Egyptian teachers was not balanced by attention to the quality of Sudanese instructors. In 1924 there were nine primary schools with 1,146 students; in 1930 there were ten, with 1,276. In the same period the number of elementary vernacular schools (kuttahs) was reduced from 95 to 87, and enrolment declined accordingly; no new boys’ kuttah was established between 1920 and 1928. Between 1924 and 1930, however, the number of subsidised khalwas increased from 78, with 2,700 students, to 768 with about 26,880. There was no corresponding increase in the number of even partially trained fakis to staff them. Khalwas were strewn about like hay-seeds, wherever provincial authorities direc¬ ted, often in the course of a flying visit by a government inspector like Shaykh Babikr Bedri. Even with genuine education at heart the govern¬ ment would have been hard-pressed to staff these ‘subsidised native schools’ with qualified teachers. But the government cared little about the standard of khalwas, so long as ‘discipline’ and ‘respect’ were instilled and maintained.138 Fakis’ salaries were miniscule, and were expected to be supplemented by parents’ contributions, a ‘tradition’ to which the govern¬ ment happily deferred. The fakis’ training course begun in 1918 was too brief to accomplish much and had in any case been envisaged by Babikr Bedri as a means of introducing some modern technique in outlying regions, not to supply teachers of kuttah competence. When in 1926 Shaykh Babikr and others submitted a draft syllabus for the khalwas, which was extremely rudimentary, even this was discoun¬ tenanced on ‘political’ grounds. In education, everyone was an expert. Although the syllabus prescribed only simple arithmetic, basic literacy, and hygiene, the governor of Kordofan found it too ‘progressive’, noting with concern that such dangerous innovations as ‘compulsory wearing of clean clothes’ had already been observed. The governor of Fung Province favoured leaving ‘details of the curriculum to the discretion of the Fiki under the Local Inspector’s advice’, since the khalwas should be kept ‘as “native” as possible’. Baily of Kassala believed that ‘syllabuses and Western methods’ would ‘stultify the value of the Khalwa’. Teaching should be limited mainly to arithmetic and writing, ‘hygiene’ should be omitted altogether, but ‘local history, tribal customs, tribal folklore, tales of famous tribal ancestors and explanation of current tribal policy should be encouraged’. Indeed, khalwas should be an ‘integral part of . . . tribal organisations’. The governor of Dongola imaginatively likened the khalwa to ‘the old village school in Scotland’; syllabuses and ‘too many regula¬ tions’ would only damage it.139 This barrage of advice was reflected in a

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subsequent statement of policy by the director: khalwas, he wrote in June 1927, ‘should remain as close as possible to the traditional circumstances and conditions of the village or tribe’, and the curriculum should ‘be left to the discretion of the Fiki, under the advice of the Local Inspector in accordance with local needs’.140 That such ‘traditional’ khalwas had long been condemned as educationally useless was forgotten; no ‘standard’ could be prescribed when standards themselves were dangerous. All traces of modern education, from curriculum to furniture, were deemed inap¬ propriate and therefore harmful. The vision of the ‘improved khalwa’ was falsified by neglect, but publicly upheld by misleading statistics showing a vast increase in the number of Sudanese being educated. The real role of the khalwa was no secret: in his 1929 note on devolution, Davies wrote that ‘In any African dependency, educational policy must conform to administra¬ tive polisy’, and the khalwa was ‘fully adequate for the simple needs of the personnel of a Native Administration’. The director of education’s reply, that to ‘follow the easy path of giving practically no education at all’ would be no service to Indirect Rule, fell on deaf ears.141 The extent to which ‘local needs’ were served was of course very much a matter of local judgement, but it should not have been surprising to officials that ‘subsidised khalwas’ achieved poor results; with wretched facilities, uneducated teachers, no curriculum, and little supervision except by meddling district commissioners, little should have been expected. In December 1927 Udal, the assistant director of education, visited Dongola, and reported that the khalwa at Argo was ‘very poor’, and its faki of ‘very little use’; at Galed the faki was ‘a very good disciplinarian but a poor teacher’, whose students knew ‘very little’; at Tagassi the faki was ‘not particularly impressive’, and his khalwa was a small, ‘very dirty, badly ventilated room’; the faki at Mansur Koti was ‘a dear old man but very stupid’, and his pupils, not surprisingly, ‘knew practically nothing’. Despite his own evidence, however, Udal concluded (like a man insisting that one unrotten apple saves the barrel) that ‘the standard of work’ was ‘not at all bad’ and the khalwas were ‘undoubtedly doing very useful work’. H. C. Jackson, the province governor, decided to see for himself. On tour during the following February he encountered neither student nor faki who could identify the governor-general, the location of Mecca, or the name of any province in the Sudan; Gordon was said to be ‘the man who built Gordon College’, and ‘Wad Nejumi’ the present governor-general! Jackson’s sober recommendation that a handbook of historical, geographi¬ cal, and other useful information be provided was rejected by MacMichael, a learned man, on the grounds that such a text must deal with topics of recent history better left unmentioned. The situation did not improve with time. In 1933 Winter reported that tests ‘in villages even near Khartoum’

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indicated that it was a rare khalwa-leaver who could so much as write his own name.142 Away from the Nile the position was, if possible, even worse. Darfur, condemned to be the leading laboratory of Indirect Rule, fared badly in this as in other ways. In 1933 the district commissioner of Southern Darfur reported bluntly that he could see nothing of value in his khalwas, and that the future was ‘hopeless’ unless some potential fakis were themselves educated. A year later, although still describing khalwas as ‘useless’, he yet argued that there was a danger of too much literacy, that education should be limited to ‘the sons of the Sheikhs alone’, and that all his district needed were some literate and numerate chiefs: ‘it would be the greatest of pities, if the present elementary school developed into something . . . which was more than the district needed or deserved’.143 By 1935 Indirect Rule had made Darfur the poor relation of the Northern Sudan in education as in administration: there was one elementary school, one ‘tribal elementary school’, and two ‘subgrade “literary Schools” cum khalwa’ to serve some 500,000 people, on whose education the government spent less than £E 1,200 a year. In the whole of northern Darfur there were no schools at all except khalwas, but the director of education’s request for ££55 to introduce ‘some education’ was rejected for financial reasons.144 Under the guise of combatting ‘elitism’ in the kuttahs by extending education through the khalwas, the government brazenly cloaked its illiberality in spurious statistics, while rural areas especially moved ever backwards. That the kuttab survived at all is remarkable. Devotees of Indirect Rule were strongly opposed to it. Bardsley of the Blue Nile saw kuttab masters as ‘part and parcel of the bureaucratic machine’, and kuttabs as ‘alien to native surroundings’ and ‘opposed to native institutions’. He recom¬ mended that they be placed ‘under the control of a Native Authority’. A district commissioner at Umm Ruaba in Kordofan wrote in 1927 that the kuttabs there and at Rahad had been ‘full of yellow Gellaba boys with a percentage of sons of pushful and ambitious Sheikhs of Suks, Petty Officials and Police N.C.O.s’. In Darfur the ‘pushful’ bourgeosie was given even less latitude: kuttabs were gradually taken over by Native Administrations or, like that at Nyala, closed. The kuttab at El Fasher thus became, in Dupuis’s words, ‘a finishing school for sons of the more important chiefs’.145 At Zalingei the master of the kuttab established in 1931 envisioned ‘red brick buildings and cement floors, furniture and football, and all the paraphernalia of a sophisticated school’. He was soon enlightened, although still reportedly found it difficult to accept that ‘the atmosphere of chairs and tables’ was ‘not as suitable for the shartai as for the future government clerk’.146 This kuttab, moreover, was to be more than a finishing school: it was seen as a ‘centre of Fur culture’. As such it

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was not entirely successful: the district commissioner’s suggestion that the master ‘collect Darfur historical and moral tales’, and his plan for ‘the writing of the Fur language in Latin characters’ were not taken up, possibly because, as was only discovered later, the master could not speak Fur.147 Not only in Darfur was attention paid to bringing the kuttab closer to ‘traditional’ ways. Throughout the Northern Sudan regulations prescribed students’ and teachers’ clothing, furniture, and subordination of the ‘literary’ to the ‘practical’. In July 1928 some ninety kuttab teachers were assembled in Omdurman for a ‘vacation course which was to include theoretical and practical instruction in mud-building, plastering, and white-washing, carpentry and tailoring . . . the intention being to make these subjects a regular feature of the Kuttab curriculum’. The teachers refused to perform the manual labour, and the ‘course’ had to be dropped. Davies, in reporting the incident, said they had been influenced by anti¬ government propaganda and ‘subjected to witticisms and lampoons ... by the Omdurman mob’.148 The government kuttabs survived because the administrative and econ¬ omic needs of the country could hardly be supplied by ‘subsidised khalwas’, and the kuttabs were necessary to provide candidates for the higher schools. Similarly, Gordon College’s critics were legion, but its ‘products’ were needed. Indeed, the enrolment there increased from 134 in 1920 to 212 in 1924 and to 5 5 5 in 1930, an expansion perhaps surprising in the era of Indirect Rule, but admittedly ‘due entirely to the increased demand of the Government for civil servants’. Moreover, the percentage of fee-paying students steadily decreased. The great majority of students were drawn from the northern riverain provinces: in 1929, some 311 of 510 were from Khartoum and Blue Nile Provinces, while Kassala accounted for only ten, the Red Sea Province for one, and Darfur and the entire Southern Sudan were unrepresented. The evacuation of Egyptian masters in 1924-5 left the college in the hands of much less experienced teachers, British, Lebanese, and Sudanese. Of the thirteen British masters employed in 1929, only two had been there before 1925, and of the seven Lebanese only 149 one. The most important staffing change occurred when new British masters were recruited from among candidates for the Political Service, and political officers were seconded to the college for teaching duties. That none was a trained teacher was of no apparent concern to the authorities. The five college ‘tutors’, all members of the Political Service, served as masters of the five residential houses. A rigid caste system divided British from non-British staff. Edward Atiyah recalled the college as ‘a military, not a human institution’, whose British masters ruled as well as taught and whose students were treated as subjects. In many respects Gordon College

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came more closely to resemble a British public school. Atiyah’s scorn was perhaps born of official racism, but that the ‘first aim of Gordon College’ was ‘to train loyal servants of the Sudan Government’ was Lord Lloyd’s formulation, not a critic’s. Who the teachers were was more important than what they knew or how they taught. E. A. Balfour, seconded, to his horror, to the college in 1936, judged himself a ‘rotten bad teacher’: as an English text he chose a book on ‘the elements of Tropical Elygiene’; in his history lessons he managed to stay ahead of his class.150 As a firm believer in Indirect Rule and its canons, however, Balfour found the education provided to the Sudanese too advanced, and his Sudanese colleagues ‘weak and lazy’, possessing ‘all the faults of their race’.151 Whenever he passed the college’s statue of Sir James Currie, Balfour said he felt it observing him with a ‘cynical eye ... as if to say “Aha, my boy, this will teach you to hold reactionary views” \152 The ageing Currie was indeed not only the loudest critic of the government’s education policy, but almost the only important former official to condemn the excesses of Indirect Rule. During a 1932 visit he ‘found education under a cloud’, while ‘the romanticists of indirect administration had been busy’: the sub-ma’murs’ training course had been closed by Maffey in 1927, technical education was stagnating at the secondary level, the Military School had been abolished, and schools of law, agriculture, and veterinary medicine, frequently mooted, had yet to materialise. In 1929, however, a commission of experts from Britain (including Hans Vischer) visited Gordon College and was generally satisfied with the standards of staff and curriculum and even discipline, which it judged ‘strict, but. . . not oppressive’. In forwarding the report to Lloyd, Maffey said he was relieved that the commission did not find the curriculum insufficiently advanced. The commission’s report received scant notice in Britain, and the Sudan Government ignored its recom¬ mendations, but Currie used it as an opportunity to attack the govern¬ ment’s education policy since 1924. He argued that ‘defects’ in the teaching of English and mathematics were the result of the expulsion of the Egyptian masters, of ‘whose work from 1900 onwards no tribute can be too high’, and their replacement by ‘totally untrained young men from Oxford or Cambridge’.153 Maffey was happy to admit that some deteriora¬ tion had occurred, but averred that the evacuation of the Egyptians had been ‘unavoidable’. Currie’s views had no noticeable effect (although at the Residency they were considered ‘very entertaining reading’)154: for years his opinions had been discounted. The Residency dismissed him as ‘rather a busy-body’, and Udal labelled him a ‘thoroughly dishonest doubledealer’. His was a lone voice: when in 1934 Winter argued that the time had come, if only for the sake of sinking morale, to appoint a professional

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educator as director of education, the civil secretary insisted that a ‘political head’ was still needed, and that criticism from Britain did not ‘carry much real weight’.155 A much more knowledgeable and telling critique was provided, privately, in 1932 by G. C. Scott, the education department’s chief inspector. By now, he wrote in a thoughtful survey of education in the Sudan, there could be ‘Only a few, still imagining to themselves the golden age of the noble savage ... or mistaking the static descriptions of the anthropologist for prophecies binding on the future’: most recognised that Native Administration could not ‘find a permanent foundation in ignorance’. Changing social and economic conditions had already shaken that foundation: it was dangerous and unfair to keep the great majority of the Sudanese uneducated while, as it were, arming a small number of effendis with the inestimable advantage of education. ‘Native Administra¬ tion without education’, he claimed, was ‘a broken cart without a horse.’ There was obviously something wrong with an education system that almost all it educated criticised. Unassisted khalwas, Scott declared, supplied no education at all, and most ‘assisted khalwas’ were no better. Khalwas aside, only 3.5 per cent of school-age boys were receiving even an elementary education, and ‘no more than § per cent of the girls’. Even in the boys’ kuttabs, rote learning was still the norm, ‘academy manners’ prevailed, and over-centralisation divorced education from local reality. Worse, the boys’ kuttabs usually drew their students from among those ‘already deadened’ by the khalwa. Girls’ kuttabs were actually better, but suffered from a rapid attrition of teachers and a still ‘general prejudice’. Scott considered the primary schools largely ‘cramming-shops for the Gordon College’. Most of their students would, however, certainly fail to enter the college and would be left with ‘a foreign, second-rate, halffinished, vocational education’ that made them ‘dissatisfied . . . with their home life’ but prepared only for work that was unavailable. Since all the lower rungs of the educational ladder were weak, it was inevitable that the Gordon College too was flawed. Scott recommended several reforms: in the recruitment and deployment of British staff; an increase in the number of British inspectors (from only two in 1932); reorganisation of the headquarters; an increase in the number of kuttab teachers, and improve¬ ment of their training course, pay, and prospects; the establishment of an agricultural school and improved technical education; and some provision for adult education.156 Scott’s was a plea for the future more than a condemnation of the past. The spirit in which it was written, and the views of his colleagues that it expressed, indicated the end of a depressing chapter in the educational history of the Sudan and heralded an era of cooperation

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that would witness important and overdue reforms, especially, as Scott had hoped, in elementary education. These were largely the result of the efforts of V. L. Griffiths, who was appointed to the Sudan in 1934. That chapter was not to close, however, before the resignation of Maffey in 1933. To the end he held that it was ‘essential’ that the number of Sudanese receiving secondary education should be determined by the labour market, and at a time of economic contraction it was ‘inevitable that there should be a delcine in the number of pupils admitted’. Although he promised more attention to ‘technical training and hand-work in the schools’ and an ‘agricultural bias’, he yet held that few Sudanese possessed the ‘requisite stability of character to turn their intellect to good account’, and this constituted a ‘serious disqualification’ for ‘posts of responsi¬ bility’.137 In education, as in administration, it was time for change. Other educational developments of the period may be briefly sum¬ marised. The establishment in 1924 of the Kitchener School of Medicine was an important step, with complex motives. A medical school would, it was hoped, allow a higher intellectual training unavailable in other disci¬ plines, and avoid sending Sudanese abroad; it would complement econ¬ omic expansion by contributing to public health and population growth; and it would train doctors who, as agents of civilisation, had been found to be more effective than administrators, especially in the south.158 Girls’ education and private education expanded after the first world war. The number of girls’ elementary schools increased from five with 146 students in 1919, to twenty-three with 2,095 students in 1931. In 1920 Miss J. D. Evans joined the government to supervise girls’ education, and in 1921 a training course for women teachers began. By 1930 some sixty-one trainees had been enrolled. Progress was hampered by lingering prejudice and by the short careers of most Sudanese women teachers. Some of the demand for girls’ education was met by private and missionary schools. Private girls’ schools were founded in Omdurman in 1924 and at Dueim and Geteina. The CMS founded a girls’ elementary school in Omdurman in 1927 and the Unity High School for girls in 1928. Roman Catholic girls’ schools were established at Port Sudan and Atbara in 1930. In 1927 the Ahlia school in Omdurman was established to provide primary, non¬ missionary education for boys. The retirement from government service in 1929 of Babikr Bedri marked the beginning of yet another phase in his remarkable career, as he founded first an elementary private school for girls at Rufa'a which, after moving to Omdurman in 1931, became the model for the system of Ahfad girls’ schools. Christian missionaries’ efforts con¬ tinued to concentrate on the Southern Sudan.159

388

Empire on the Nile SUDANESE OPPOSITION TO THE SUDAN GOVERNMENT

If in the aftermath of the 1924 crisis the Sudan Government had acted to consolidate support among the religious leaders and to conciliate the moderate proponents of ‘the Sudan for the Sudanese’ among the educated class, a long period of quiet political development might have ensued. The decision instead to ‘make the Sudan safe for autocracy’ by reviving tribal rule, alienated not only the so-called intelligentsia but also leaders of popular Islam and even the orthodox hierarchy. Although the immediate result was as quiet as the British can have hoped, it was a silence born of shock, sullen resignation, and distrust rather than of fruitful cooperation. The orthodox functionaries, to whom the government continued outwardly to defer, were increasingly viewed as superfluous and even as harmful to administrative policy. The moderate educated class, although still necessary for the efficient running of the government machine, seemed in the heyday of Indirect Rule to be out of place, an evolutionary dead end. The leaders of popular Islam, especially but not only Sayyid 'Abd alRahman al-Mahdi, continued to be seen as a threat whose power could be neutralised by revived tribalism. It is unsurprising that these previously discrete elements should, by the end of Maffey’s governor-generalship, have identified common interests. Long before the rise of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman the Sudan Government had recognised that the orthodox Muslim leadership, on which it had attempted to rely for legitimacy and help in combatting ‘fanaticism’, had failed to inspire the Sudanese. Although the board of Ulema continued to deliberate, the mufti and the Grand Kadi continued to be consulted, and the Shari'a courts remained, they had little political influence. It was to Sayyid 'Ali al-Mirghani that the government looked as the leader of Muslim opinion, and even to Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman that it turned in its hours of need. In the immediate post-war period especially, Egyptian 'ulama’ were viewed with suspicion: some, like Shaykh Mustafa alMaraghi, the Grand Kadi, were admittedly sympathetic to the goals of Egyptian nationalism. The government’s attempts to limit Egyptian influence on Sudanese qadis and students of religion were doomed, and at least some members of this class were active in the 1924 demonstrations. As with educated Sudanese in general, the government, having failed to win the propaganda battle, saw Indirect Rule as a means by which gradually to lessen their numbers and influence. In 1925 it was realised with some concern that about three hundred students were enrolled at the Omdurman mahad, and that there was no possibility of finding posts in the government service for so many: Lyall, the civil secretary, suggested they might be employed as ‘clerical assistants

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(non-Governmental)’ to tribal shaykhs.160 Of more concern were the graduates of the qadis’ training course at Gordon College. In 1929 Davidson recommended discontinuing the course, but MacMichael argued successfully that this would ‘arouse hostility’ to the government’s policy. At the same time, Davies suggested that in future, 'ulama’ appointed to tribal courts should be drawn from tribal khalwas, where they would have received ‘the type of education which corresponded’ to the government’s ‘ideas of native administration’.161 This, of course, meant almost no education at all. In the period 1924-30 the number of Sudanese qadis and district judges rose from seventy-one to only seventy-eight.162 The government’s policy of devaluing the qadi cadre, as it had the ma’murs, was clear. In implementing Indirect Rule it came inevitably into conflict with the ‘ulama', since Shari'a courts were considered yet another agency of ‘detribalisation’. As early as January 1927 Bence-Pembroke commented on the ‘saving of £E2,ooo’ that would accrue from the ‘disappearance of the Mohammedan Law Courts in Darfur’.163 In policy towards the Shari a courts MacMichael exercised his usual moderating influence. In areas of the Nuba Mountains, for instance, where Muslims and non-Muslims lived side by side, he even suggested that ‘the maintenance of all existing “sharia” courts and the general extension under Government auspices, of their scope to areas . . . wholly or partly pagan’ might be ‘the right course’; this would be preferable to ‘drifting aimlessly’. Elsewhere the provincial proponents of Indirect Rule took steps to diminish the role of the Shari'a. Douglas Newbold reported in 1927 that whereas previously no Hadandua shaykh ‘would touch a case with a tinge of “Sharia” in it’, now many such cases were decided by the nazir.164 In December 1927 Maffey discussed the question of courts’ jurisdiction with the Grand Kadi and told him that he ‘expected a helpful attitude from him and his Department’. This interview did nothing to allay the concerns of the 'ulama' or to alter the government’s course. A month later the governor-general’s council considered a note that dealt with the matter by hearkening back to the unremembered past: it must be borne in mind that in most of the tribes and regions in which these [native] courts are being set up it has been customary from time immemorial to settle domestic cases by some local agency . . . without having recourse to Mohammedan Law Courts. Where this has been the case the law administered has been a compromise between the local or tribal custom and the Mohammedan Law, of which exponents exist in almost all Arab tribes and are available for appointment as members of the courts to be set up. In future, a shaykh’s court would be allowed to decide a ‘domestic case’ if the parties agreed to its jurisdiction. The principles were therefore adopted, later in 1928, that any Muslim was entitled to take a case to a Shari'a court

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Empire on the Nile

so long as the dispute came under the court’s jurisdiction and the other party agreed; and that no tribal court could hear a case once it had been submitted to a Shan a court.165 This compromise neither satisfied concerned Sudanese nor did it honestly reflect the government’s intentions. In November 1929 MacMichael told the governors that there had been and would continue to be a ‘natural tendency ... to extend the area over which the Sheikhs’ Courts have jurisdiction in Shari’a matters, at the expense of the Mohammedan Law Courts’. MacMichael, however, was mindful of potential difficulties, and warned that ‘to abolish a Mohammedan Law Court without providing an adequate alternative’ was ‘gratuitously to provide the intelligentsia . . . with a weapon with which to attack’ Native Administration. He therefore stressed that the ‘Ulema members of Sheikhs’ Cpurts’ must be men respected for their knowledge of the Shan a. Davies, who saw the religious courts as an obstacle to devolution, and individual qadis as possible agents of Mahdism or even as ‘left wing’,166 had a much more radical solution: the abolition of the Shari’a courts was ‘the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty’ posed by overlapping jurisdictions, ‘and the one most in conformity with . . . native policy’. Thus, while MacMichael commented on an apparently natural development, Davies recommended accelerating it. In 1931 Dupuis of Darfur proposed the abolition of religious courts at Kuttum and Nyala, arguing that the Nyala qadi was uncooperative with devolution and the Kuttum court was a ‘definite obstruction to the development of Native Administration’. It was, he said, ‘inevitable that the abolition of these two courts’ would ‘lead to unfavourable comment among the intelligensia and especially among members of the Kadi caste’.167 At this point Maffey, presumably prompted by MacMichael, intervened to rule that such comment would indeed result, and it was therefore up to Khartoum, not the governor, to decide when ‘political expediency’ demanded that such a consideration was ‘paramount’.168 The Shari’a courts were saved, but without a permanent solution to the problem of conflicting jurisdictions. In a 1932 note the legal secretary, Bell, pointed out that it was not simply the ‘Kadi caste’ but the educated class as a whole who had strong views about the fate of the Shari’a courts, which had always been seen as proof of the government’s policy of non¬ interference in religious affairs. The government’s current policy, however, was that native courts, if fit for ‘Sharia jurisdiction’, should exercise it, and that in ‘Native Administration areas . . . the ultimate aim’ was the ‘abolition of the Sharia Courts’; that the government should appeal to the ‘educated religious classes’ to carry out these aims; and that every Muslim was guaranteed the right to take his case to a religious court. This last provision, which had ‘been emphasised to the Sharia authorities’, Bell

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

39i

admitted, lost much of its meaning if the abolition of courts confronted litigants with great difficulty in presenting their cases. Both the established religious hierarchy and ‘unofficial and perhaps more important leaders of religion’ had insisted that ‘any encroachment on the Sharia Courts’ was ‘an attack on the Mohammedan religion’.169 It is impossible to reach general conclusions about popular preference between Native and religious courts in areas where both were available to litigants. There is, however, no evidence that the Shari'a courts had performed unsatisfactorily, a point stressed in 1928 by the mufti, Shaykh Ismail al-Azhari, no enemy of the government. His prediction that the Native Courts would lead to grave abuses and popular discontent was borne out.170 That Sudanese saw Native Courts as a gratuitous interference in religious matters lost to the government some of the confidence it had enjoyed among a loyal, moderate, and politically unassuming class. One of the main objects of the proponents of Indirect Rule was to limit and even reduce the influence of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi by strengthening the chiefs of tribes thought susceptible to Mahdism. British officials in the west especially stressed this point, and their views were concerted and elaborated by Davies, whose dislike of the sayyid personally went beyond a simple concern for the success of the devolutionary experiment. Yet despite the government’s continuing suspicion of the sayyid, and his opposition to Indirect Rule, by the end of Maffey’s governor-generalship he was more influential than ever, and the newly enhanced position of tribal chiefs was at most an almost irrelevant annoyance to him. Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s remarkable adaptability during this period and his deft use of the new political conditions imposed by Indirect Rule may be briefly detailed. Despite the repeated ‘alarmist’ warnings of western officials, very few outbreaks of unrest occurred that had ‘Mahdist’ overtones. In 1926 it was reported that Mahdism was the ‘natural belief of every Arab’ around Nahud, and that all the police force there were Mahdists. An intelligence note in March 1927 reported current rumours, such as that the government had blocked Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s bank accounts and that ‘El Daggal had come to Khartoum with Slatin Pasha’.171 In January 1927 a faki claiming to be the Mahdi gathered a few hundred men around him in Zalingei District; he was killed with two adherents, and some fifty-eight followers were sentenced to prison terms. Subsequent investigations showed that dissatisfaction with taxation, recent measures (such as inoculation and delousing) taken to contain relapsing fever, and the general unpopularity of the government were behind the trouble, in which, moreover, most tribal leaders showed a disappointing reluctance to assist the government.172 A Nabi 'Isa appeared in Fung Province in 1928; another

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Empire on the Nile

in Atbara in 1931.173 In 1932 a ‘semi-lunatic from the Hejaz who was known as the “Inspector General” ’ was deported. In 1933 watermelon seeds bearing an omen of the Nabi 'Isa were found, and discovery of his name carved on a tree caused a minor stir.174 Few believed that Sayyid ' Abd al-Rahman would involve himself in such things, and in 1932 he was personally responsible for handing over a self-proclaimed Nabi 'Isa at Aba.175 Rather more official notice was given to Mahdist rites. Distribution and use of the Ratih continued to occupy much attention. By 1932 some six editions, most printed in Cairo, were known. By the mid-1930s the book was distributed openly, to no apparent detriment to security, although British officials still reported the objections of tribal leaders like the nazir of the Shukriya, who concluded that ‘God had determined that the Government itself should strengthen the hands of people who would always be its enemies’. The nazir had a point: if the Ratih was harmful, why did the government permit its distribution; if it was harmless, why did the government wish to know who read it and where it was sold?176 Similar ambivalence concerned the construction of a new Mahdist mosque in Omdurman. Rebuffed when he asked permission to rebuild his father’s tomb (which had been left as a symbolic ruin), the sayyid was nonetheless allowed to build a large mosque. While ‘official’ representation at both the ground-breaking and dedication was denied him, yet British officials attended in an ‘unofficial’ capacity.177 Despite the presence in Khartoum of Davies, Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s severest critic, first in the intelligence department and later in the civil secretary’s office, the government’s attitude towards him during Maffey’s regime remained ambivalent. The main thrust of Maffey’s policy towards Mahdism was to assist the sayyid in his business pursuits, especially agriculture, in the hope that he would be diverted from trouble-making and appear less unworldly to his devotees. A decision actually to grant him an annual pension was rescinded, but Maffey thought it prudent, ‘as a measure of political expediency, to bind him’ to the government ‘by economic fetters’. In 1928 he began pump-irrigated cultivation on two hundred acres at Aba Island; with annual extensions this grew to some fifteen thousand acres by 1933, producing an annual return of between £E20,ooo and ££30,000. In 1926 the sayyid was allowed to commence a pump scheme at Gondal on the Blue Nile, where in 1929 he entered into an arrangement with the government whereby it assumed capital and running costs for irrigating some two thousand acres, in exchange for 40 per cent of the crops. Despite the collapse of the world cotton market the sayyid’s annual profit here was estimated at £E2,ooo, while even an eventual return on the government’s investment of £E2 8,ooo was questionable. In the Gezira proper Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman had begun to acquire land as early

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

393

as 1920, and despite government restrictions and prohibitions continued to do so, until in 1931 he was found to own about 6,000 acres there and have rights to another 3,600. Most of this land was left uncultivated, but its control made the sayyid an important local landowner and justified frequent visits to the region. Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s attempts to expand his agricultural interests on the Blue Nile south of the Gezira were checked when the government intervened to prevent his personal contact with the colonies of western Sudanese and West Africans living there.178 The government’s hope that by allowing Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman to become wealthy it would somehow diminish his appeal was the result of a continuing misunderstanding of his influence. A 1935 intelligence report judged it ‘probable that his evident attachment to material things’ had ‘weakened the belief in his Messianic mission’, at least among his ‘fanatical adherents’. It went on to note, however, that the ‘pilgrimage’ to Aba continued, and that his influence in the west had not diminished. Evidently the government realised only too late that the sayyid was less interested in money than in what he could do with it. As C. A. Willis had theorised years before, the nature of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s following was changing. The 1935 report discerned three types of adherents: those who still saw the sayyid as ‘a supernatural being’; those who regarded him as the head of a sect or merely as a distinguished citizen; and those who viewed him as a nationalist leader. The sayyid’s relations with the last two groups were at least partly dependent on his wealth; and it was the first group who provided that wealth. Thus his business activities were intimately connec¬ ted to his influence. Further, although the sayyid lived in considerable state, his extravagances were not blatantly self-indulgent; he supported a huge and growing family, contributed to numerous charities, and main¬ tained numbers of poor adherents. His largesse was sometimes contrasted with Sayyid 'Ali’s less evident charity. Indeed, it was admitted that Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman was ‘a very impressive figure’ and it was ‘natural enough that he should be looked upon at least by the semi-sophisticated with respect and admiration’.179 In his relations with the government Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman main¬ tained, it was said, his ‘eternal watchfulness for and immediate exploitation of any opportunity . . . for disregarding or neglecting or “misunderstand¬ ing” the restrictions’ placed upon him. One moment’s relaxation of vigilance ‘was all he required to present it with another “fait accompli” . . . in the shape of a mosque, or of a new acquisition of land in a forbidden area, or of a large size advertisement of his pretensions to be a national figurehead’. When confronted, he pleaded ignorance of government wishes, or accused enemies inside or out of the government of misrepresent¬ ing him.180 This charge he had levelled repeatedly over the years, and it is not to Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman that blame should have attached for the

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Empire on the Nile

government’s ‘relaxation’; and for claiming misunderstanding of the government’s wishes there was sufficient reason: the government’s wishes remained contradictory. Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman’s attitude towards Indirect Rule was predict¬ ably negative. In combatting his influence in the west there were early pronouncements of the policy’s success, but these were later revealed as wishful thinking or disingenuous apologies for Indirect Rule, which in all respects was proving a disappointment. Sayyid Abd al-Rahman argued openly against the policy, citing the injustice of leaving individuals to the mercy of unsupervised tribal chiefs. British officials countered that if his influence were not checked, he would soon emerge as the leading per¬ sonage of the Sudan, ‘in which case goodbye to the success of . . . devolution and building for the future on the foundations of the old tribal autocracies’.181 What officials realised only slowly, however, was that the sayyid appealed not only to disgruntled or ‘fanatical’ tribesmen, but also to their leaders, and after an initial period of opposition the sayyid changed course and tried to win over tribal notables, many of whom were flattered by his attention. The advance of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman in the late 1920s and early 1930s was partly at the expense of Sayyid 'Ali. Indeed, the character and personality of the head of the Khatmiya were an excellent foil for Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman. His new wealth was useful in a way that Sayyid 'Ali could not match, despite the latter’s attempts to do so. In 1925 Sayyid 'Ali became involved with the Sudan Building and Agricultural Company, embarrass¬ ing the government. He agreed to disassociate himself, but pointedly reminded the governor-general, during an interview, that ‘when the Caliph Abu Bakr succeeded the Prophet and incurred some criticism by continu¬ ing to run a shop in Mecca . . . the difficulty was solved by a subsidy from the Treasury’.182 The hint was not lost on the government, and the sayyid made his point more explicitly in subsequent meetings: he needed money. Late in 1926 the government lent him £E 1,000; he asked for £E8,ooo more. MacMichael argued for the provision of an independent income for Sayyid 'Ali: in helping him the government bound him more closely to itself and enhanced his prestige vis-a-vis ‘his rival’. Besides, MacMichael said, the government owed the sayyid ‘a big debt of gratitude. He is not a fighting champion . . . and tends to keep clear of political trouble - and intrigue but he always . . . speaks the truth and tries to help us so far as he can.’ Steps were therefore taken to help Sayyid 'Ali financially, both with and without his knowledge, in acquiring agricultural income, and in paying his debts.183 Sayyid 'Ali’s precedence was irritating, even infuriating, to ‘his rival’. An unholy rivalry, born before their time and destined to outlive them both, grew ominously. As one sayyid supported this charity and discussion

Governor-generalship of Sir John Maffey

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group, the other lent his name to a ‘rival’ philanthropy and opposing salon. As one report had it: ‘Every split in the ranks of the public of Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman has become an occasion for a Mahdist/ Mirghanist trial of strength, and as a result... the collective and individual disputes of the effendiya over their Clubs and their social and charitable activities have given continuous minor trouble.’184 The sayyids’ competition for influence over the ‘intelligentsia’ had important results in the long term. In the heyday of Indirect Rule, however, the educated class was demoralised, unorganised, indeed aimless and deracinated,-a minority who, having been abandoned by Egypt and humiliated by the British, were grateful for the attentions of the religious leaders. There was no repetition of the organised action of the early 1920s, there were no ‘leagues’, no demonstrations. The occasional anonymous ‘circular’ oiled the government’s intelligence machinery, but served as a mocking echo of an earlier political virility. The future looked bleak as the government’s educational and administrative policies widened the gulf between the elite and the political authority withheld from them. Sayyid 'Ali al-Rahman moved early to fill the gap. That the educated class, conscious of its identity as the enlightened vanguard of Sudanese political aspirations, should involve itself with a religious figure whose most devoted followers saw him as the Nabi 'Isa was an important development. It was symptomatic of the elite’s isolation and marked a convergence of views, especially regarding Indirect Rule. The sayyid’s mediation of a 1931 Gordon College students’ strike was a turning point when, in the government’s view, he obtained ‘a hold over the “effendiya” ’ that he ‘never lost, not to mention a further and justifiable claim on the gratitude of Government’.185 Within a few years the ‘minor trouble’ of the early 1930s would be remembered wistfully by British officials, for the quiet born of depression that had characterised political life since 1924 was soon to be disturbed by the beginning of Sudanese nationalist politics, a movement that would lead, within two short decades, to the end of the Condominium and the independence of the Sudan.

Administration in the Southern Sudan,

1920-1933

PACIFICATION AND CONCILIATION

In The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, published in 1934, Harold MacMichael appended to a chapter on ‘Native Administration in practice’ a single paragraph on the Southern Sudan. ‘It will be realized’, he began, ‘that in the southern provinces . . . conditions differ widely from those prevalent in the northern and central area of the Sudan.’1 To MacMichael and his gener¬ ation in the central government, that difference was an unbridgeable gap: the south was an area of speculation, no more comprehensible than the human mind, mysterious, unknown, and better left that way. Far from being merely picturesque, the Nile steamer’s slow journey up-river was like a time machine’s into a dark and silent past, and the region and its peoples seemed a visible reminder of the recent and precarious emergence of humanity from a morally and materially primitive state. The inclusion of this vast territory within the Sudan’s borders was to them an unhappy result of imperial politics that added nothing of benefit to the country as a whole but drained it of scant resources. That it had to be administered was an unmitigated inconvenience. Whereas the north had emerged from the tumult of the Mahdia culturally intact and, with British rule, was entrained on the road to material progress, the south remained mired in backward¬ ness and conflict. By the end of the first world war Khartoum viewed the south, when it was forced to view it at all, with bewilderment, even despair. The first two decades of British rule were marked by increasing local opposition and official violence. ‘Pacification’, not administration, was the inevitable resort of a government that was ignorant of local languages and cultures and unwilling to expend the financial and human resources needed to consolidate its rule. The Sudan Government was seen locally as only the latest in a series of foreign intruders who raided and taxed, plundered and killed, promised security and did not provide it, came and went. Pessimism was pervasive: of economic development there was none; of real 396

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920-193j

397

administration, very little; education was left to missionaries as a bone to a dog. The criterion for successful rule was simply order, and order was deduced from apparent quiescence. When human enemies relented, disease awaited. In 1920 Sterry, surveying the scene from Khartoum, judged administration in the south a ‘failure’, a conclusion he based on ‘the frequency of semi-military operations’ and the ‘apalling excess of expenditure over revenue’." What was to be done? There was no simple answer. After the war it became clear, however, that the system of administration prevailing in the north, employing the methods and personnel of direct rule, was unworkable in the south. Frequent transfers of staff were self-defeating in a region with no common language. The value (but not the danger) of trekking was mitigated where communications were poor, distances so great, languages unknown, staff insufficient, and local hostility always threatened. Reliance on local chiefs was impossible where there were no chiefs or, indeed, where leaders seemed to emerge only to organise resistance against the British. Public works won no local friends when their construction and maintenance depended on forced labour. A British officer at Mongalla in 1920 encap¬ sulated the dilemma: How they expect anyone to administer a district without knowing the language I don’t know. One doesn’t really realize how much it means till one gets down here and has cases to try. ... I had to take over Mongalla from a fellow gone halfbalmy. . . . They are short of inspectors now. . . . the whole of the west bank is inspectorless. . . . The [company] at Torit was moved to Rejaf as there has been a dura famine and the troops couldn’t be fed. . . . There is a new post now just under the Boya at Khor Losinga. There is a [company] there and an inspector. The latter’s job is purely an Intelligence show, as he doesn’t administer or take tax. . . . The present inspector [at Torit] ... is keen but... he can’t get carriers, nor even dura owing to the famine, and of course he doesn’t know the language. . . . They’ll never do anything in this place unless they make roads and give a fellow a long enough time to know his district.. . . They’ve had an extraordinary number of changes both in the Civil and the Equats. lately - about a dozen fellows one after the other. . . . [The Aliab Patrol] has been actually operating for over a month. ... all the carriers have had to be withdrawn owing to . . .Meningitis. . . . Net result to date 62 Dinkas killed, and about 300 cattle, sheep, goats, parrots and guinea-fowl taken!. . . Of the 62 Dinkas killed most are believed to be Riverain sitting-on-the-fence - and probably none are Aliab! ... It is most refreshing having Woodland as Governor . . . but, as he says, the whole province is in such a muck-up state he doesn’t know where to start especially as they won’t give him any staff. . . . He is all in favor [sic] of withdrawing our very advanced posts and only grabbing what we can really administer. ... he wants to wash his hands civilly of the whole Aliab district until the military achieve this.3

Conditions in the Bahr al-Ghazal were more settled, but still difficult. G. W. Titherington, in 1920 a newly arrived assistant inspector, reported ‘14 different languages’ spoken at Wau alone; but despite ‘the appalling

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Empire on the Nile

language difficulties’, he managed to hear cases with the help of local police.4 Left in charge of the vast Central District after only a few months in the country, Titherington lamented his inability to leave province headquarters: much of the district remained ‘unadministered’.5 From throughout the south the letters home were remarkably similar: the difficulties of day-to-day existence made administration a notion seldom put into effect. The series of patrols against recalcitrant southerners brought real administration no closer. The devastating Aliab Patrol in 1920, for instance, did not crush Dinka resistance. During the spring of 1921 the formation of a small lake near Khor Lait between Rumbek and Lau attracted large numbers of pilgrims, for whom it had divine significance and apparently heralded the end of British power. The consequent tension was expertly relieved by Captain V. Fergusson (‘Fergie Bey’), who defused the situation by wading into the lake and departing unscathed by divine wrath or Dinka spear.6 Fergusson’s success in this case, and personal investigations among the Dinka and Nuer of the Bahr al-Ghazal’s Eastern District, convinced him that a greater latitude should be given to govern¬ ment cooperation with indigenous institutions. Yet individuals still appeared with whom he, and the government, had to contend. Most notable was Bor Yol, or Ariendhit, a prophet of the Malwal Dinka, who from Unading on the Lol River rapidly gained a reputation far beyond his own section. Ironically, much of his enormous personal prestige derived from success in mediating inter-tribal disputes, and although he professed no hostility to government, his prominence made him a focus of anti¬ government sentiments. A simultaneous escalation in tension between Dinka sections and province authorities increased government suspicions. The precise attitude of Ariendhit himself was, and remains, uncertain, but in March 1922 a large government force was sent against him. Ariendhit submitted without resistance and was banished to the north until 1936.7 The widespread influence of Ariendhit, and the intelligence gained by government expeditions sent to Dinka territory after his arrest, made a deep impression on British officials, contributing to a conciliatory attitude. The peaceful outcome of the Ariendhit episode marked a new phase ‘n the government’s relations with the Dinka, as also with the western Nuer. Fergusson, fresh from his tour de force at the sacred lake, increasingly found his attention occupied by the Nuer sections in the Eastern District of the Bahr al-Ghazal. In 1923 he encountered the hostility of the Jagai Nuer under Madi, and the Nyuong under Garluark, but was powerless to control them. In January 1925, however, he swept through Nyuong country, killing, burning, and looting at the head of a strong force. Madi and Garluark surrendered, Madi to die soon thereafter in detention; but Garluark, after swearing allegiance, was sent back to the Nyuong. Fie

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920—1933

399

emerged as a pillar of Fergusson’s schemes of Indirect Rule, which in practice depended upon a delicate balance of local custom and Fergusson’s forceful interventions. In December 1927, allegedly at the instigation of a local chief, Fergusson was murdered near Lake Jorr. A punitive patrol was immediately launched, culminating in devastating Royal Air Force raids on the Bahr al-Jabal islands where the Nyuong had fled with their cattle. Garluark was blamed, he surrendered and was imprisoned at Malakal, only to be reinstated in 1935 after passions had cooled and those responsible for Fergusson’s murder had been dealt with.8 Fergusson’s death was much remarked: he had been an interesting and popular man, whose ideas of administration were influential (though he followed them only occasion¬ ally himself). In 1920 the Nuer were still largely unadministered, their history of relations with the Sudan Government a long chapter of misunderstanding and neglect punctuated by official violence and popular mistrust. K. C. P. Struve, returning to the Upper Nile Province as governor in 1919 after an earlier inspectorship, remarked that the Lau and Gaweir Nuer were ‘as hopelessly backward and uncontrollable’ as they had been on his arrival in 1906.9 In January 1920, after years of delay during the world war, a government patrol was sent against the Gaajok and Gaajak Nuer east of the Sobat. The depressingly familiar routine of torching villages, capturing livestock, and killing as many as possible of ‘the enemy’ ensued, and as usual led to no political solution. This outcome reportedly convinced Stack to ‘set his face against any more patrols, and especially against cattle¬ raiding’.10 Perhaps a governor-general who had himself led one of the most devastating southern patrols, the ‘Shambe Field Force’ of 1902, was needed to reach that conclusion. An effort can be discerned to adopt a more cautious approach after 1920, based on the knowledge being gained even then by British officials posted to the region long enough to learn something of the customs and languages of the people. J. M. Lee, for instance, served as district commissioner in the Eastern (Frontier) District from 1920 to 1930, and Percy Coriat was posted at Ayod from 1922 to 1931. By 1927 the then governor of the Upper Nile, Willis, could report that although the Lak and Thiang Nuer still ‘periodically’ caused trouble, this was abating, and they were paying taxes and ‘learning to settle their cases for themselves’; the Gaweir, owing to their remoteness and belliger¬ ence, were ‘probably the most pressing problem in the province’; the Lau were called the ‘model of all the Nuer’ who, however, having ‘lived so long in permanent warfare’, found life ‘dull without it’; the Gaajok were ‘beginning to come to hand’, and the Gaajak were improving. Willis emphasised that although problems remained, the personal influence of district commissioners and especially of medical practitioners was produc¬ ing the trust necessary for progress. ‘Any violent change of attitude or

400

Empire on the Nile

policy’, he worried, ‘would only mean the destruction of work already done, and greater difficulty in restoring the old confidence.’11 In a little knowledge there was danger. While study and practical experience of life among the Nuer taught officials that ruling through ‘native chiefs’ was currently impossible, there remained a belief that chiefship must once have existed but had been ‘usurped’ by the kujurs or Nuer prophets. If there could be neither rule through chiefs nor rule by patrol, simply keeping the peace was a reasonable short-term goal, and the district officials tried patiently to expand their range of influence by widening the degree of popular confidence. Willis’s attempts to speed the imposition of Indirect Rule by proposing radical development were scornfully rejected in Khartoum. In March 1927, newly exiled to Malakal, he reported that the ‘prospects of successful development’ of tribal organisation were ‘extremely good’: ‘it is a known fact throughout this part of the world that the Nuer are no longer the enemies of Govt. . . . The result has been an immediate response among the Dinka who are rapidly recovering their tribal organisation, whilst other tribes like the Beir are asking to pay tribute in order to obtain the “Pax Sudanica”.’12 This glowing report, perhaps deliberately misleading, was one of many on which Willis based his various proposals for development: he needed British clerks and a British typist, roads were required, and lorries to travel them, so ‘to bring the three quarters of a million negroids into touch with headquarters’. Khartoum was perplexed. Schuster queried the proposals on financial grounds: the southern provinces were already ‘a heavy liability’, and there seemed ‘little chance for many years of building up a system of agricultural exports’ to ‘make them pay’. MacMichael would have none of it: Willis’s proposals were ridiculous; and the ‘ “appalling objective” of bringing 750,000 negroids in touch with headquarters’ could not be entertained. Maffey agreed, calling Willis’s request for British personnel ‘astounding’, but believed that if he and MacMichael visited the south they might be better able to judge things for themselves.13 MacMichael duly went up the river. His recorded impressions of the region may not be unconnected with the hostility he bore towards Willis. The Upper Nile Province, he wrote, ‘represented the most dismal portion of the Sudan. ... it was a Serbonian bog into which had drifted, or been pushed, all the lowest racial elements surviving north of the equator and a great deal of equally decayed vegetation’. Further south, however, ‘beyond these wastes of embryonic matter, country and people alike were obviously higher in the scale of things: mountains, forests and intelligence, instead of swamps and a “monkeydom of nations” ’.14 A few weeks later it was decided that not even The Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance could be applied to the Upper Nile, where the people were ‘generally speaking, in a

Administration in the Southern Sudan, / 920-/9^

401

state of semi-simian savagery’.15 On a visit to Malakal Maffey personally demolished ‘Willis’ queer notions of centralisation’, before steaming on.16 It has been suggested that the confrontation between the government and the Nuer that began to develop in 1927 was precipitated by Willis himself, as a way of forcing the government to commit resources to the region.17 Certainly he began a campaign, whether cynically or mistakenly, to portray the Nuer prophets as men of war whose influence had to be eliminated before proper chiefs could emerge and administrative progress take root. The particular focus of his ire was Guek Wonding of the Lau Nuer. Operations against Guek involved another debate in Khartoum, and in London, about the advantages of a military as against a political solution of the Nuer problem. Half-hearted attempts to obtain Guek’s submission towards the end of 1927 failed, and Willis’s demand for military action was supported by Huddleston, the commandant of the Sudan Defence Force. The RAF flight recently stationed in the Sudan was called in to fly several missions against the Nuer, with little useful result. Guek remained at large. Criticism of the RAF’s failure to make an impression was answered in London, where Sir Hugh Trenchard let it be known that what Huddleston and ‘some of the political officers’ had ‘wanted all along was a stand-up fight with the Nuers which they thought necessary to secure their complete subjection’. He, for his part, saw the chief value of air power ‘in a place like the Sudan’, as moral, to convince recalcitrants that opposition was hopeless: ‘The strategic aims, therefore, of air officers trained in his school were quite different from those of the military in command of the Sudan Defence Force.’18 Chamberlain, the foreign secretary, agreed: he had ‘great faith in Sir Hugh Trenchard and none in the old ideas’ still apparently held by Huddleston and others. As reports of the campaign against the Nuer reached London, the Air Ministry contended that the Sudan authorities ‘regarded the air arm from the point of view of its effectiveness in inflicting casualties . . . instead of... as an arm’ that should ‘achieve its results mainly by affecting’ the enemy’s morale. Indeed, the SDF had deliberately concentrated the Nuer in small areas, the better to ‘provide suitable objects and targets for the aircraft’. The Air Council pointedly requested that the RAF’s future activities in the Sudan be ‘conducted in a more humane manner than that contemplated by the Officer Commanding, and on principles which will not involve casualties excessive for the purposes to be achieved’. In response to this rebuke of the trigger-happy Huddleston, Maffey praised the ‘broad moral effect’ the air force had undoubtedly already had, but in any case dismissed these ‘petty patrols’ as ‘humdrum affairs’. The ‘true use of the Air Force’ was of ‘a higher dimension’: it rendered impossible an invasion of the Nile Valley by Mahdist hordes, it impressed the ‘petty municipal intelligentsia’, and it

402

Empire on the Nile

facilitated military communications. It was true, he admitted, that past patrols in the south had ‘taken the form of raid and scuttle and had no considered constructive policy behind them’.19 Whatever effect, ‘moral’ or otherwise, the 1928 patrols produced, they did not put an end to Nuer resistance, and the suspicion lingers that some officials were determined to force a showdown. There was nothing ‘moral or even sensible about one government action, an excursion in Gaweir Nuer country led by J. W. G. (‘Tiger’) Wyld, who allowed his Dinka auxiliaries to run amok in the camp of Dual Diu, a prophet who had maintained peaceful relations with the government. Dual Diu thereupon rose in revolt, attacking the posts at Duk Fadiat and Duk Faiwil and raiding the government’s Dinka allies in August 1928. Wyld, who had long identified himself with the interests of ‘his’ Dinka against the Nuer, joined in demanding government reprisals.20 In January 1929 Maffey went to Malakal to confer with Huddleston, the RAF commander, and local officials. He declared that ‘no repressive action was of value unless it was accompanied by a constructive administrative policy which would elimin¬ ate the causes of unrest’. Thus there would be a ‘settlement’, not a patrol, but with ‘armed assistance’ when necessary.21 It was decided to establish a ‘no-man’s land’ between the Nuer and the Dinka, to ‘create a system of roads, by Nuer labour’, and to exact reparations. On 8 February, during an attack on province police, Guek himself was killed. Further land and air operations were undertaken in March. The realisation that patrols were no solution had taken hold, however, and in reporting to Lloyd, Maffey noted the allocation of funds for ‘additional staff, the work of road-making, the maintenance of prisoners, and special expenditure in constructive experi¬ ments, such as cotton-growing, the opening of trading stations, and the institution of elementary schools’.22 The settlement policy began by collecting the various Nuer sections, the Gun Lau, Mor Lau, and Gaweir, in ‘concentration areas’, where they were listed, chiefs and sub-chiefs were appointed, medical treatment was dispen¬ sed and grain distributed. Wanted men were delivered up, hostages taken, and fines collected. Further patrols were needed to round up recalcitrants. Companies of the Equatorial Battalion were posted at base camps, which served also as administrative, medical, and food-distribution centres. Labour was provided by prisoners or in exchange for food. Restoration of Dinka cattle taken in Nuer raids was arranged. Road and embankment construction was begun in order to improve communications.23 In November Maffey reported that the work of settlement was proceeding satisfactorily, that the improvements in communications (although ‘a costly and, at first, unremunerative undertaking’) would prove ‘an essential factor in the evolution of a sound tribal organisation’, and that the

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920-1933

403

proposed extension of medical work would ‘do much to secure the confidence’ of the Nuer and ‘to convince them of the benefits to be derived’ from administration.24 Administration in any form came remarkably late to the peoples farther to the south-east. The Didinga were brought under control only after their repeated raids across the Uganda border necessitated an expedition of the King’s African Rifles, which swept through their territory and established a post at Nagichot in February 1922. The troops were not finally removed until January 1923, after officials of the Uganda government had laid a basis for future administration.23 A similar but much more difficult problem was posed by the Didinga’s neighbours, the Toposa, whose land marched with Kenya and Ethiopia and whose traditional enemies straddled international borders. Inter-tribal warfare in remote regions could not be indefinitely ignored when it involved peoples under the protection of the Sudan and other governments. Early attempts to establish posts in Toposa country failed. At Kitgum in 1924 representatives of the Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya met to discuss a solution by which the so-called Ilemi Triangle would be ceded to Kenya and Toposaland occupied by the Sudan Government. The scheme foundered on Khartoum’s unwillingness to assume the financial burden and on the alleged political impossibility of ceding Anglo-Egyptian territory to a British colony. Toposa raids on the Kenya-administered Turkana continued, and the gravity of the region’s difficulties was exag¬ gerated in the reports of J. H. Driberg, the district commissioner of the Didinga, who invented tales of Toposa depredations in order to justify and speed intervention. Finally in 1925 the government resolved to occupy Toposaland, and this was commenced by the Equatorial Battalion in December 1926. A post was established at Kapoeta and the occupation easily effected, but in May 1927 the Toposa revolted. The occupation force thereupon assumed all the attributes of the usual punitive patrol. The subjugation of the Toposa, however, only increased the pressure on the government to settle the future of the Ilemi Triangle, a desert no-man’s land of Turkana, poachers, and Ethiopian marcher-lords. After years of debate between the Sudan Government and Kenya, and involving the Foreign and Colonial Offices, it was finally agreed that the King’s African Rifles should establish a post near Mount Kaitherin, with Sudan financial assistance. While this temporarily eased border difficulties it did not solve them, and the region continued to pose administrative problems.26 In the Upper Nile Province’s eastern areas the extension of administra¬ tion was similarly delayed. It was only in October 1925 that the Pibor Military District came under the province’s civil control, and the Anuak remained largely unadministered and troublesome. No district commis¬ sioner visited the Anuak of the Adonga between 1921 and 1935. The

Empire on the Nile

4°4

Anuak’s neighbours in Pibor District, the Murle, were similarly left to themselves.27

THE SEARCH FOR A POLICY FOR THE SOUTH

The controversy surrounding the government’s policy towards the Nuer indicated an awareness that periodic patrols were no substitute for longer postings of officials, knowledge of local languages, imposition of administration only where it could be effectively conducted, more staff and money, and improved communications, all of which the region had needed since the beginning of the Condominium. Some officials had realised this much earlier than others: Wheatley, Fergusson, even Matthews, the first governor of the Upper Nile, showed a preference for collaboration and systematic patience. Shortly before his death during the Aliab rising Stigand had placed the blame for the disastrous state of affairs on Khartoum’s neglect. A policy that began and ended with ‘order’ left local officials bereft of a practical end to pursue, and the lack of staff and funds robbed them of the means to pursue any policy that might be devised. The northern bias of the government, especially in financial matters, ensured the south’s continuing, and increasing, relative backwardness; what was needed, Stigand believed, was a separate policy for the region, one that was financed not by grudging grants from Khartoum but by the proceeds of southern development. A necessary condition for that development was, in his view, the employment of local labour of all kinds, to the exclusion of more qualified but more expensive labour from outside.28 In some respects Stigand’s ideas, largely shared by Woodland, his successor in the Upper Nile, simply accepted Khartoum’s apparently endless neglect as a foundation for a positive policy of self-reliance. Such a policy was in 1919 still rather fanciful, but it at least had a long-term end in view. Large subsidiary questions remained: was the government to attempt to exclude Islam and Arabic, or simply to control or eliminate Muslim northerners? The question had been mooted desultorily for many years, but decisions had been phrased as wishes and hopes. It was far from generally agreed that Islam should be debarred, but in any event little was done about it. Arabic was more complicated: there was no other candidate for a lingua franca in the south or indeed in the Sudan, and vague musings about the undesirability of Arabicisation neither prevented it nor sug¬ gested how the services of Arabic-speaking Muslim soldiers, administra¬ tors, and jallaba were to be dispensed with or performed by others. In June 1920 Willis noted coyly that ‘officers and officials’ had asked ‘what is the Government policy with regard to the black tribes of the Southern Provinces’. Since there seemed ‘to be some doubt’ about this, Willis

Administration in the Southern Sudan,

1920-19JJ

405

requested ‘a ruling’. The Palace replied lamely that a general improvement in the lives of the people was the ‘ultimate aim’.29 This was not a policy. Decisions taken in 1922 towards controlling the scope of northern pen¬ etration were as insipid as previous expressions. Under terms of The Passports and Permits Ordinance large areas of the Sudan, including the entire south, were declared closed districts, into which outsiders could go only with official permission. That Darfur and parts of Kassala and the White Nile provinces were also thus ‘closed’ indicates the general concern for security underlying the ordinance, and indeed as great a concern about the movement of Mahdists in the north as about northerners in the south. Besides, such restrictions had been theoretically in force since 1904, without noticeable effect.30 The southern governors’ meeting of 1920 agreed to some general aims, duly reformulated in Khartoum, about the future direction of policy in the south: ‘the gradual elimination of Egyptian Officials’; appointment of assistant district commissioners, ‘so far as . . . possible’; the hiring of Sudanese clerks, ‘some of whom could perhaps in time ... be drawn from among the local inhabitants’; and ‘the substitution of English for Arabic as the official language as it becomes possible’. In accordance with the spirit of The Powers of Nomad Sheikhs Ordinance (which was not applied in the south), the government also resolved to ‘leave administration, as far as posible, in the hands of native authorities, wherever they exist’; where ‘local or tribal organization’ had ‘ceased to exist’, it might ‘still be possible to re-create it’.31 There was no urgency in these decisions, hedged as they were with qualifications and unac¬ companied by suggestions for their implementation. Moreover, the expressed resolve to rule through ‘native chiefs’ was even less appropriate in the south, with its acephalous peoples, than in the north. The difficulty of dispensing with the jallaba was soon recognised. In March 1925 Struve reported several murders ‘in the tribal areas’ of the Upper Nile Province, which he attributed to rumours spread by jallaba. He therefore cancelled all trade permits and ordered all agents of trading companies recalled.32 Archer, the new governor-general with long East African experience, worried that ‘without fairly unrestricted movement of traders’ there could be no material progress in the south, but MacMichael asserted that the jallaba had a long history, before and during the Condominium, in Darfur and in the south, of stirring up trouble. Others, Greeks and Syrians perhaps, could replace them.33 Having toured the affected area Coriat, the district commissioner, reported that ‘all chiefs’ had ‘expressed their relief’ at the expulsion of the jallaba. Yet it was Coriat who, two years later, wrote that once roads were improved, ‘Arab traders’ should be encouraged, to speed economic development.34 Evidently the government’s attitude was ambivalent: from 1924 to 1927 the reported

40 6

Empire on the Nile

number of jallaha in the south increased from 540 to 795; after 1927 the number fluctuated, to 580 in January 1931, 632 in May, and 466 in March 1932. The decrease may have owed more to a deteriorating economy than to government interdict,35 and the desired replacement of jallaba by Greeks and Syrians failed to occur. Unfulfilled hopes similarly attended the questions of Islamisation and Arabicisation. Indeed, in the absence of a firm policy, familiar ruminations about the dangers or benefits of northern influence continued to punctuate government correspondence. It was only in the later 1920s that general agreement was reached about the necessity of isolating the south from harmful northern Muslim contacts. A more significant example of govern¬ ment lip-service to professed policy concerned administrative personnel. The goal had been stated to rule through tribal chiefs and gradually to substitute trained southerners for northern staff. The 1924 crisis pre¬ cipitated removal of Egyptian administrative personnel, and the same objections raised in the north to Sudanese ma’murs and sub-ma’murs were voiced in the south to justify their removal. As this occurred, however, little progress was made in ruling through chiefs for two main reasons. First, few chiefs could be identified, and as often as not those who were recognised by the government went unacknowledged by the people over whom they were supposed to have traditional powers. Second, the Bog Barons were averse to delegating real power, and as they gained local expertise and won the trust of their people they employed ever more ‘direct’ methods. The Bog Barons came to personify the government, both to the people and to themselves. As in the north, centralisation resulted in a proliferation of routine business. The solution of ‘devolving’ judicial powers to local notables would take time and the proper development of chiefs would require sustained vigilance. Thus the district commissioner portrayed himself as both guardian and catalyst. The proprietary attitude assumed by Bog Barons was not only understandable but necessary in the face of Khartoum’s ignorance and neglect. Occasional pontifications from the capital were the more resented for the long periods of silence they disturbed; official parsimony was the more galling when it originated in Kitchener’s garden city. Ignoring official orders could be justified by the certainty that office-bound superiors in Khartoum neither knew nor really cared what the Barons did, as long as they did it quietly. Maffey’s visit in 1927 brought a sudden gust of fresh air to the inconclusive debate over what to do in the south. He was impressed by the economic and political potential of Mongalla Province, and saw reasons to hope for the emergence of native administrations. He questioned the accepted wisdom of limiting Islamisation and Arabicisation and restricting education to missionary schools.36 Although his views were to change

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920-1933

407

radically within a short time, his visit enlivened the debate on the language, religion, and education questions, and resulted in the adoption of what became known as ‘Southern Policy’. That policy had several aspects, none more important than education. While government policy generally had drifted in the early post-war years, there had been notable advances in education. Between 1920 and 1925 the number of schools in the south increased from fifteen to twentyseven, while the number of pupils rose from about five hundred to seven hundred. The experiences of the Catholic and Protestant missions con¬ tinued as before to vary widely: the Catholics flourished and expanded while the Church Missionary Society, hampered as usual by an insuffi¬ ciency of staff and funds, was hard pressed to maintain its presence and deflect Catholic pressure against the sphere system. In 1919 the Verona Fathers established a mission at Gondokoro, which was later moved to Rejaf East where they began an elementary school and a course for training artisans. Stations were opened also at Loa in Madi country in 1921, Torit in 1920, in Acholi country in 1923 and, briefly, among the Didinga at Nagichot. The Tonga station, closed since 19x6, was reopened in 1920, and another Shilluk station was established at Detwok in 1925. The Catholics’ first missions in Dinka and Nuer country were started in 1924 at Kwajok and 1925 at Yoynyang. In Zandeland a station was founded at Yubu in 1923. The CMS was able to open only two new stations between 1921 and 1929, at Lui and Maridi. The Opari station was abandoned in 1921, and that at Malek was maintained only with great difficulty. Maridi had to close between 1924 and 1927 for lack of staff. The Sudan United Mission expanded to Rom in 1924, and established itself at Heiban, Abri, and Tabanya in the Nuba Mountains. This shift in concentration proved a mistake, however, when in 1928 the province was re-amalgamated with Kordofan. The subsequent opening of government kuttabs, with their aura of prestige and promise of employment, worked against missionary success in the area. Always a separate case in the south, the American Mission finally established a school at Doleib Hill in 1925 and, despite its continuing suspicion of the government, expanded its provision of education.37 Unwilling to provide education itself, the government nonetheless continued to question the scope and quality of the missionaries’ efforts. In a 1918 memorandum the inspector of Opari District, E. J. N. Grove, criticised mission teaching as ‘apt to dim the native’s idea that the Government is the dominant factor in his life’, but he rejected kuttabs as productive of effendis. Grove recommended government elementary schools to train minor staff and to provide students for a central school at Mongalla for the training of higher officials and officers. This plan was

408

Empire on the Nile

rejected by his provincial superiors, who still saw missionary education as more appropriate for the south than government schools. In 1922 S. Hillelson, then a lecturer at Gordon College, was sent to report on education in Mongalla, and disapproved of much that he saw. Like Grove, however, he deprecated the kuttab as too structured, too geared to literary education, and therefore potentially detribalising. He recommended con¬ tinuing reliance on the missions, but with greater government control over the location of schools, the number of students, the curriculum, and the appointment of teachers, preferably Arabic-speaking Christians. He fur¬ ther recommended government subsidies and the appointment of an inspector of education for the south. Hillelson’s proposals for grants-inaid, conforming as these did both to the views of southern administrators and to an emerging consensus of expert opinion elsewhere, were adopted by the government. Initial grants were almost deriso'rily small: until 1925 they averaged only ££550 a year, and in 1925 the total grant of ££2,300 represented less than 2.5 per cent of government expenditure on education.38 In 1926 Crowfoot, soon to retire as director of education, visited Mongalla and the Bahr al-Ghazal. Although he found the work of the CMS to be more strictly educational than that of the Catholics, he nonetheless recommended government support for both. He proposed appointment of a government educational officer for each sphere, who would inspect the schools and their personnel, recommend future advances and, most importantly, supervise teacher-training. He also proposed establishing an advisory committee in each province, representing the government and the missionaries, to ‘exercise general supervision over educational work’. As specific improvements Crowfoot recommended expansion of the Mudiria Course that had been attached to the Catholic mission at Wau and funded by the government to supply junior civil servants, and its reconstitution as ‘a regular Government School’ aiming at a standard equivalent to that of the second year of Gordon College secondary school and providing trained teachers. There, Arabic would be retained as the language of instruction, but until southerners could assume the teaching duties staff should be drawn from Syria. Crowfoot proposed that the Catholics’ elementary ‘central schools’, all providing vernacular education, should be improved through teacher-training. The government should assist in financing the schools, all the expenses of which were currently met by the mission, should support the Catholics’ printing press, and should continue its aid to their workshops at Wau and Kayango. Crowfoot recommended similar assistance for the CMS. The Juba ‘High School’, aiming at the same standard as the Catholic intermediate school at Wau, should continue to be assisted to train minor government officials and teachers. To alleviate the

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920-1933

4°9

chronic financial and staff problem of the CMS Crowfoot suggested support for educational missionaries at Juba and in the central schools, thus allowing the CMS to bring in more staff. He estimated the cost of fully implementing his proposals at ££9,099 a year. Apparently objections were raised immediately to subsidising central schools, since in a subsequent note Crowfoot insisted that this was necessary if government control was to be exercised and Native Administration requirements for Sudanese staff were to be met.39 Crowfoot’s proposals were subsequently watered down by Schuster and MacMichael, and the scheme to subsidise elementary schools was shelved.40 Two inspectors of education were appointed in 1927 and 1928, but systematic grants-in-aid to elementary schools did not commence until 1929. This and the rapid increase in total expenditure on southern education, from about ££4,000 in 1927 to about £Ei2,ooo in 1930, were the result of Maffey’s conviction that the success of Indirect Rule required development and the local training of staff. Both the Catholics and the financially strapped CMS were hesitant to accept government aid, because of the greater potential for interference it entailed. Archdeacon Shaw of the CMS worried too that concentration on meeting administrative needs might dilute the missions’ religious role, and that dependence on government finance would lead to government control. Subsequent official conditions for awarding grants did indeed include the satisfaction of government inspections.41 An immediate result of the government’s relative largesse in the late 1920s was a rapid expansion in the number of students in mission schools, to about 2,400 in 1930. Despite the fact that the government clearly discriminated, in its grants-in-aid, in favour of the CMS, the Catholic missions flourished. By 1930 perhaps as many as 1,900 students attended their schools. Of the three post-elementary trade schools, two, at Wau and Rejaf (later moved to Torit) were Catholic. The third was begun in 1930 at the CMS high school, which had moved from Juba to Eoka in 1929. Of three intermediate schools, the Catholics conducted those at Wau and Okaru, which had begun its development at Rejaf in 1928, while the CMS ran the Eoka school. In 1930 the Catholics began a ‘normal school’ to train teachers at Torit, the first such school in the Southern Sudan. The American Presbyterian mission expanded its work at Doleib Hill and Nassir, having reordered its priorities in favour of academic rather than industrial training. In 1929, after its misgivings about accepting govern¬ ment aid had been allayed by a recognition of common aims, the mission received its first grants-in-aid.42 The impact of government grants was one factor in educational expansion; others were an apparently increasing desire of southerners for the education available, and a growing realisation that education could lead to employment.

4io

Empire on the Nile

Mission education, with government financial assistance, seemed by 1930 to be developing along the lines required by administrative policy. Education was one aspect of that policy; language and religion were also important. Indeed, the government had adopted its educational aims largely as a means by which to diminish northern Muslim and Arab influence in the south, as a precondition for undisturbed Native Administration. Language and education were obviously closely tied. By the late 1920s there was finally both general agreement on the desirability of checking Arabicisation, and the political will to attempt this. At the Rejaf Language Conference in 1928 the government recorded its decision, as it had before, against Arabic as a lingua franca; more importantly, recommendations were accepted to develop local languages. Bari, Dinka, Latuka, Nuer, Shilluk, and Azande were chosen as ‘group languages’ to be fostered.43 Matthew, the secretary of education and health, viewed the standard of Arabic in the south as in any case very low, and he and others evinced a distaste for it quite beyond political objections. ‘After the conference,’ he later wrote, ‘I saw a good deal of Nilotic so-called Arabic. It was worse even than I thought possible and seemed ... to be almost incapable of improvement.’ It was ‘wrong to adopt a language which is neither that of the ruling or [sic] the ruled,’ Matthew decided. It was a ‘horrible jargon’: he would not inflict it on the region. MacMichael shared this view. In August 1928 he wrote a memorandum on ‘Arabic and the Southern Sudan’ that was in effect a manifesto for the as-yet unnamed Southern Policy. Arguments favouring the spread of Arabic were super¬ ficially attractive but ultimately spurious, he claimed. Par better for all would be development of local vernaculars, and officials who were conversant in them: in time we shall reap our own advantage, for a series of self-contained racial units will be developed with structure and organisation based on the solid rock of indigenous traditions and beliefs . . . and in the process a solid barrier will be created against the insidious political intrigue which must in the ordinary course of events increasingly beset our path in the north.44 This was practically a paraphrase of Maffey’s famous 1927 note on Indirect Rule, and an indication of Southern Policy’s roots as a special case of Indirect Rule. Even more explicit was a note prepared for the governorgeneral’s council in October 1928: ‘There has from time to time been rambling discussion and correspondence . . . but there has been no definite decision upon the major issues and our policy in the past might be described as one of drift with a slight bias running counter to Arabic’. Conditions in the south were changing. There was no time to lose. Although it was admittedly ‘impossible to bar Arabic and Islam altogether,

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1920-19JJ

411

and ludicrous to say that no Mohammedan should serve the Government or conduct his trade in the southern provinces’, yet if restrictions were imposed the strengthened indigenous institutions would be enabled ‘to withstand contrary extraneous influences’. Familiar steps were proposed: replacing jallaha with Greek and Syrian traders, reducing the number of northern ma’murs and sub-ma’murs, limiting the functions of remaining northern officials to departmental and technical work, encouraging British officials to learn local languages, and so forth. The day was even foreseen when it might be ‘necessary to separate the south from the north and inaugurate a separate political service for the former’.45 This was not the first time the notion of the political separation of the south was raised. Cromer had considered the hinterland of the Nile useless and expendable, and in 1905 Garstin tried to persuade him to cede the ‘southern country’ to the Congo.46 Keown-Boyd had broached the idea in 1920 of detaching the south, and the notion reared its head from time to time subsequently. When in 1930 Sir Murdoch MacDonald, the engineer, suggested that ‘the Sudd Region’ should be ceded to Egypt (with part of Uganda for good measure), Foreign Office experts deemed the idea ‘too hopelessly impractical’ and ‘fantastic’,47 as indeed it was. The fact that such occasional fantasies have been interpreted by some scholars as statements of policy is itself an indictment of the Sudan government’s neglect and miserliness towards the south. Rather than a policy imposed by a distant capital, the progressive elimination of northern officials was one championed by the Bog Barons. What had been casually voiced approval for one of those aims considered unexceptionable and probably impossible to realise developed in the late 1920s into a chorus of abuse against their subordinates, similar in tone to what British officials in the north were saying in the heyday of Indirect Rule. A. W. Skrine claimed that the ‘demise’ of the ma’mur in Mongalla had entailed ‘a noticeable improvement in the confidence between the natives and the Government and also in the smooth working of the Government offices themselves’. The ma’mur, he contended, was barred by his ‘Islamic prejudices’ from ‘carrying out loyally a Government policy’ that was ‘pro-Christian and pro-pagan’! Moreover, ‘his sympathy with the pagan population’ was ‘curtailed by his contempt for the pagan as an “abd” (slave)’. F. C. C. Balfour, Skrine’s successor as governor of Mongalla, claimed he knew of no case of a ma’mur learning a local language; to reintroduce ma’murs would be to ‘accept the introduction of Arabic as the official language’. His district commissioners agreed. Major Maynard at Yei said his district was healthier without ma’murs who drank too much, broke the game laws, and conspired with chiefs. Colonel Lilley of Latuka considered ma’murs ‘a hindrance’, unnecessary, and dangerous

412

Empire on the Nile

as carriers of Islam. Brock, as governor of the Bahr al-Ghazal, saw ‘no future’ for ma’murs, except in the larger towns: they were ‘unsuitable and unnecessary’ for Native Administration, were as alien as the British officer but lacked his sympathy for the people, and they had frequently caused local tribal hostilities.48 Once smitten with Indirect Rule, southern officials were determined to pursue it, but some officials saw the elimination of northern Sudanese influence as an end in itself rather than as a condition necessary for the development of Native Administration. The professed ideal of replacing northerners with southerners was in practice no more successful than its corollary in the north, the elimination of Egyptians and their replacement with northern Sudanese. In both cases the elimination received more attention than the replacement. Thus, in the south, despite the virulent opposition expressed towards northern effendis, little was done to train and promote southerners, and a significant number of northerners remained. Moreover, British officials assumed the real administrative work previously done by those they sent away. Thus, the number of ‘non-Mahometans’ in administrative posts rose from 39 in 1927 to only 32 in 1931, and stood at 43 in 1932. Over the same period the number of British officials said to be ‘qualified in local languages’ rose from 5 to 24.49 The fourteen northerners still employed in administrative posts in 1931 were described as ‘highly trained and experienced Government servants, and their replacement by less efficient’ southerners was ‘not for the moment practicable’.50 Nor were the Bog Barons eager to replace them. Brock, as vocally opposed to northern influence as anyone, nonetheless still had six northern ma’murs and sub-ma’murs in 1930, and claimed to require four for the foreseeable future. Similarly his northern clerical and technical staff could be replaced only very gradually, he said. These were mainly headquarters personnel. In the countryside northern officials were more easily eliminated, but not to be replaced by southerners. Instead, their duties were assumed by British officials, by fledgling Native Administrations, or not at all. As late as 1937 the government’s technical staff in the Upper Nile Province included 61 Muslims but only 33 southern non-Muslims; the province police had 3 Muslim officers and 199 Muslim NCOs and men, but no non-Muslim officers or clerical staff; the district engineer at Malakal reported 3 5 Muslim artisans as against 3 non-Muslims, and 7 Muslim clerical and technical staff as against no non-Muslims.51 In the Shilluk district, Muslim staff outnumbered non-Muslims by 15 to 9. As a whole the province employed 472 Muslim artisans and 389 non-Muslims. The Egyptian irrigation department at Malakal employed 267 Muslims and a mere 3 non-Muslims.52 As for the elimination of jallaba, the favourite scapegoat, this too seemed impossible. In 1938 the district commissioner at Bor, although still convinced that ‘the quickest way of removing Moham-

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920-1933

413

medan and Arabic influences would be the removal of the Northern Gellaba’, had to admit that the hoped-for Greeks and Syrians were unwilling to operate in the district, and without them it was ‘hopeless to try and make a start’.53 Evidently the educated southern Sudanese suffered from the same disability in the eyes of British officials as his northern counterpart, religion notwithstanding: he was ‘detribalised’, had ideas of his own, and could not be trusted. Education, in north and south, was dangerous. There was no place in traditional tribal societies for literacy. Tribal institutions could not be fostered by competitive, educated, individualistic southerners. What the Bog Barons wanted was elimination of Sudanese educated officials, northern and southern, except to perform the most rudimentary clerical work they wished to avoid doing themselves.

SOUTHERN POLICY

The reluctance of British officials to replace northerners with trained southerners conflicted with an expressed component of Southern Policy, which was finally officially adopted in 1929-30. By the time MacMichael issued his circular on the subject in January 1930 there was little new to announce. The chief opposition to the policy came from Cairo, where Lord Lloyd chose to make an issue of the propagation of mission rather than government education. He claimed to discern a new departure in the government’s education policy that had been made without his approval. Missionary education, Lloyd held, had been proven dangerous elsewhere in Africa; the Sudan Government, while allowing the missions to continue simple elementary education, should itself assume the task of educating southerners for government service. This might be expensive, but it was preferable to reliance on the missions.54 When Maffey’s arguments about the expense of government education, the impossibility of recruiting British teachers, and the political dangers of northern Sudanese as teachers failed to convince, Lloyd took the matter to the Foreign Office, but before it was settled Lloyd was recalled, and in October 1929 London ruled decisively in the Sudan Government’s favour.55 MacMichael’s memorandum on Southern Policy reiterated much that he had espoused already and, indeed, what had already been set in train. ‘The policy of the Government in the Southern Sudan’, he wrote, ‘is to build up a series of self contained racial or tribal units with structure and organisa¬ tion based, to whatever extent the requirements of equity and good government permit, upon indigenous customs, traditional usage and beliefs.’ To promote that aim, the elimination of the ma’mur, the recruit¬ ment of local clerical and technical staff, control of jallaba, promotion and

4I4

Empire on the Nile

development of group languages, British familiarisation with local languages, and the use of English rather than Arabic whenever possible were all rehearsed.56 While MacMichael’s formulation of Southern Policy was hardly innova¬ tive, it contained ideas that already in 1930 conflicted with the pattern of administration emerging in the south. That pattern obviated the necessity for creating a southern literate class at all and therefore allowed abandon¬ ment of that aspect of Southern Policy that called for educational advance. As one district commissioner put it, by educating boys the missions made them unsuitable for the declared aim of fostering native institutions.57 Indeed, the commitment of the central government itself to its professed aim may be questioned: was it not simply politically expedient, in arguing the case for removing northern influence, to promise opportunities for southerners? Even the education department, under Winter, reflected in its attitude towards southern education the dominant line of northern administrative policy: an educated class is inevitably hostile to traditional tribal rule. Thus, at the 1932 and 1933 southern education conferences, the government forcefully expressed its view that education must in future conform with administrative policy and should emphasise the practical as opposed to the literary and thus avoid tendencies towards detribalisation. In line with this view, increasing attention was paid to sub-elementary ‘bush schools’ and to practical education in agriculture, and the enrolment in intermediate schools was tied to an estimate of the government’s staff needs. Proposals for educational advisory councils, made by Crowfoot as early as 1926, were flatly rejected, and the annual conferences themselves discontinued in 1933.58 By the early 1930s the department still saw southern education as a nuisance. In 1934 the assistant director wrote that the south as a whole was ‘to the Education Department a mysterious and unexplored region’, although there was ‘a certain amount of work connec¬ ted with it’.59 In attempting to implement another element of Southern Policy, the elimination of Islamic and Arabic influence, local officials were conscien¬ tious to the point of absurdity. Although they continued to employ northerners, and jallaha continued to traverse the region, yet the most trivial examples of creeping northern influence were suppressed. Southerners were prohibited from wearing the jallahia and even long shirts; Shilluk schoolboys were made to wear tribal dress instead of shorts and shirts. Objections were raised to baptised southerners’ using their Christian names because, like Arab names, these were not ‘indigenous’. In 1928 the use of the word effendi was banned in the Bahr al-Ghazal.60 (In 1929 Willis wanted to prevent Dinkas from working for big-game hunters, fearing a ‘stimulus’ to detribalisation.)61 In 1930 Brock’s plan to eradicate

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920-19JJ

415

Muslim influence in the western Bahr al-Ghazal by expelling its Muslim inhabitants was described by MacMichael as reminiscent of ‘the methods of “Tamburlane or Genghis Khan” \62 Nevertheless, it went ahead: to divide Muslim Darfur from the ‘non-Muslim’ Western District a no-man’s land was created by destroying settlements or moving them.Jallaha were expelled, and in 1932 a Catholic mission was established at Raga at Brock’s insistent request.63 About the fostering of indigenous institutions it is difficult to generalise because of the varying conditions in the region. Even more than in the north, the attitudes and methods of district officials determined the course adopted, and the long tenures of Bog Barons inevitably gave them greater personal influence than their northern counterparts. Thus, following the Nuer settlement, the British district commissioner among the Nuer presided, but did not rule; Major Wyld, as district commissioner in Zandeland from 1932 to 1951, ‘was in all but name the Zande Paramount Chief’.64 Certainly some district commissioners saw themselves in this light; it was almost characteristic of the Bog Barons to do so. Of the Nilotic peoples, that deemed most suited to Indirect Rule was the Shilluk, the authority of whose ruler, the reth, had, however, declined disastrously since the mid-nineteenth century. By the time Southern Policy had been adopted the reth had lost much of his prestige and was seen as an instrument of the government. In 1925 an annual meeting of Shilluk elders was begun under official auspices, and steps were taken to enhance the reth’s prestige by constituting a Shilluk police force and recognising the authority of his court. Chiefs’ authority had been so diluted that there was a marked reluctance to forego reference of disputes to British officials, and a tendency of chiefs to avoid judicial functions. The rethship itself seemed in danger in 1932, when the incumbent, Fafiti Yor, survived a challenge by a dissident son of Reth Kur whom the British had deposed in 1903. In the aftermath of this insurrection the government took steps to enforce tribal allegiance to the reth, and the institution survived. The district commis¬ sioner of the Shilluk attempted to rule indirectly, like a ‘Resident’ in the western Sudan. In their dealings with Native Courts British officials were typically interventionist, precepts of Indirect Rule notwithstanding. Courts of one type or another had been introduced towards the end of the first world war without Khartoum’s knowledge. A resolution of the 1921 southern gov¬ ernors’ meeting noted the necessity of limiting courts to the administration of ‘tribal law’, but ignorance of that law left jurisdiction a matter for the district commissioners to settle, as was the composition of a court itself. No legislation to standardise or even generalise courts’ powers was promulgated until The Chiefs’ Courts Ordinance of 1931. At times it was

4i 6

Empire on the Nile

necessary ‘to intervene actively’: ‘So many chiefs’, wrote Wheatley of the Bahr al-Ghazal, were ‘childishly sensitive to public opinion or lazy or venal or all three’, that they must be ‘strongly supported and made to carry out their duties’. Although Maffey had emphasised the importance of the British official’s abandoning his role as ‘Father of the People’, Wheatley could not ‘see far enough ahead to visualize the District Commissioner’s effacement’. His personality and prestige were crucial. ‘Far into the future’ there would ‘remain the necessity of having a white man at the head’. Wheatley’s successor, Brock, argued that ‘a very thorough control of Chiefs Courts’ would be necessary ‘for some time’: chiefs without ‘preGovernment prestige’ could not ‘exert much authority without consider¬ able assistance from their District Commissioners’.65 Davidson, the legal secretary whose ‘interference’ in matters of northern administration was so ineffectual, did not agree. After a 1929 visit he described the so-called lukiko at Yei as ‘extremely good but. . . entirely dependent on the District Commissioner’, Maynard, who ‘intervened authoritatively in the hearing of cases’: It is not mere guidance. Every sentence is formally reviewed by him in the presence of the Court and the parties, and all sentences other than payment of money or orders to a wife to return or to a husband to deliver up a wife, are actually passed by him as a Magistrate. The execution of decisions is also in his hands. While such a system was thorough, it does not lead anywhere in the development of devolution. It may enhance to some slight extent the prestige of the Chief but it is so entirely dependent on the District Commissioner that it can add very little to their authority or sense of responsibility. So far from relieving the District Commissioner of work or responsibility, it must add very considerably to both.... So far from guiding native custom gradually in a higher direction it stereotypes what is a very low standard of morality and is largely concerned in enforcing that portion of customary law which is the most debased.66 One factor Davidson seemed to discount was the cheapness of the system he criticised, and there is no doubt that this was a basis for its appeal to southern governors who had long been pressed to economise. Despite the time-consuming and often expensive duties court work entailed, in 1933 the average remuneration of a chief in the Bahr al-Ghazal was sixty piastres a month, of a clerk forty piastres, and of a policeman a derisory four piastres.67 The partial co-option of ‘chiefs’ into the judicial system, and the detailed British control of it, naturally tended towards the identification of the courts with the government rather than with the ‘indigenous institutions’ from which they were alleged to have stemmed. In some places unofficial courts sprang up in competition with the approved chiefs’ courts, and

Administration in the Southern Sudan, 1920-1933

417

unofficial chiefs drew popular support away from those recognised by the government. After disturbances in Bor in 1932, it was realised that the system of courts prevailing was deeply unpopular. It was inconvenient, unrepresentative, and tyrannical in propping up a head chief who was unsupported by his people, to whom the very institution of a head chiefship was an alien innovation. Yet the deposed head chief was suc¬ ceeded by another, described by the district commissioner as a nonentity who remained in office only with government support.68 Some district commissioners interfered too little. In 1929 R. C. R. Whalley forwarded to the governor of Mongalla some ‘resolutions’ of the chief’s court at Kajo Kaji, which included the enforced prostitution of any woman guilty of adultery whose husband had not already killed her! Although he was all in favour of ‘cleaning up the people’s morals’, the governor remarked that the Sudan Government had yet to endorse the principle of licensed brothels.69 MacMichael’s memorandum on Southern Policy was used by the Sudan Government much as the Milner Report had been. Both commended lines of policy that had already been drawn, and advanced the principle of devolving powers to both trained local staff and traditional rulers. In both cases, however, the role of an educated elite was quietly circumscribed, while that of ‘native authorities’ was emphasised and the functions of British officials were increased. The south suffered more from this lop¬ sidedness because its educated class was only embryonic and the scope of its employment severely restricted. There was nothing in the south comparable to the Gezira Scheme nor, indeed, was there any concerted attempt at economic development. Such local efforts as were made withered in the blast of world depression and were not revived. In 1934, for instance, the district commissioner at Bor wrote that his district had ‘nothing in any exportable quantity which the outside world requires’, there was nothing the people could ‘exploit for their own advantage’ or that could be ‘exploited, or developed, for them’; nothing could ‘be envisaged . . . except an increasing self sufficiency and containment’. This pessimism about even the long-term meant that Southern Policy was to be inter¬ preted, however it was phrased, as defensive, negative, and conservative. It allowed the ultimate political arrangements of a unified Sudan to be indefinitely postponed. But, as a Residency official put it as early as 1924, while the British might in ‘due course’ be ‘in a position to grant’ selfgovernment in the north, ‘the difficulty’ would be ‘to safeguard the very large negroid element, which has never progressed, and presumably never will’.70 The relative economic backwardness of the region was thus reinforced by government policy and even extolled by British administra¬ tors. Like the deserts of the north, the southern forests and grasslands had a

418

Empire on the Nile

romantic appeal, and it was even easier to ‘save’ the south from moral ruin than to pull back the north. Lip-service was paid to development, but to an evolutionary development that implied centuries of slow emergence, not decades of rapid growth. The only possible apology for the government’s inertia in the south is the fact that not even the wildest provocateur would have estimated the remaining period of British rule as a mere generation. A policy that purported to envisage the day when a few southerners might aspire to the office of ma’mur did not include contingencies for independence in 1956. The greatest, perhaps the only, achievement of the British rulers of the south during this period (as opposed to the valuable work done by technical, medical, and non-government personnel) was the relative peace they imposed on the region, the first it had known for many years. This achievement should not be underestimated: apparently a simple prerequisite for administration, it was nonetheless achieved only at great cost in human life, Sudanese, Egyptian, and British. It gave the region needed recuperation. It is the more unfortunate that this condition for economic and social development was not better used. In 1934 Symes, the new governor-general, visited the south. There he found what he called ‘an exclusive and secret policy designed to isolate it as much as possible from northern (Arab and Islamic) influences’: Its purpose is, with the minimum of British Senior Staff, to build up a system of administration on indigenous foundations and with subordinate native personnel paid in accordance with the cheaper southern standards of economy and costs of living. ... it aims at a simple educational system, teaching in local vernaculars and inculcating the moral principles of an approved religion as inexpensively as possible to the (northern) taxpayers.. . . An effort has been made to integrate a babel of local languages and dialects . . . into a series of group languages. The government’s objectives, he wrote, could be summarised simply as ‘free access and communication with all areas served by Nile waters’; ‘frontier protection’; ‘tribal organisation’; and ‘development’; and he added that ‘if the “southern policy” is carried to a practical outcome, the whole region may be made a semi-independent administration’; indeed, it was ‘possible to envisage a political development in the North that would increase the desirability of this arrangement’. This would, however, ‘be premature and uneconomical to effect ... at present’.71 The arrangement he had in mind was not, apparently, the jettisoning of the Southern Sudan into the African heartland, but merely a money-saving amalgamation of provinces that, in fact, he later carried out with disastrous results.72 It hardly mattered: the region had always been a ‘drain’. As MacMichael admitted in later life, he had ‘left the South alone’; he ‘was not really interested’.73 Southern Policy seems to have allowed the rulers in Khartoum to forget the region and proceed with the work that interested

Administration in the Southern Sudan,

1920-19JJ

419

them, while in the south the Bog Barons, a sterile cadre of soldieradministrators, continued to rule over a petrified political and economic system. Whereas once it had been seen that advancement depended on pacification, now peace itself was the end of advance. Even when they began to understand southern societies, learn their languages and feel at home with the people, most British administrators aspired no higher. It was left to the technicians and doctors, and the missionaries so often derided as impractical and socially inferior, to be the real agents of progress. Embedded in a region that to many British administrators seemed to epitomise raw Nature, they yet forgot its basic principle: the inevitability of change.

11

,

Economic and social developments 1920-1933

THE ECONOMY

By the end of the first world war the Sudan had already made important progress in agriculture, and had embarked on an ambitious programme of externally financed expansion. The economic history of the inter-war years is dominated by the successes and failures of that programme. Crops fed the people, created convertible surpluses, and helped to finance govern¬ ment expenditure. The country’s well-being was inevitably tied to crop yields and market prices. Construction of the vast Gezira Scheme and other, relatively minor projects, increased this dependence. Good crops and high export prices meant prosperity for the agricultural population and finance for the government; poor crops could bring famine; and, especially in the case of cotton, all of which was exported, a poor crop combined with a low sale price meant disaster. Agriculture was thus the risk-filled and uncontrollable hope of the Sudan. Excellent results in the mid-1920s seemed to confirm optimism, while the subsequent simultaneous failure of cotton and collapse of the world market price plunged the country into gloom and hardship. The importance of the department of agriculture and forests increased enormously in the post-war period, and agricultural research began to receive the attention it deserved. By 1926 the department’s annual expenditure surpassed ££150,000, and in 1930 reached almost £E2i8,000. Thereafter it declined with general retrenchment, but it exceeded expenditure on education in every year except 1929.1 In 1919 the govern¬ ment farm at Shambat was transferred from the education department, and much of its work taken over by a new Gezira Research Farm near Wad Medani. Shambat continued to perform botanical and plant-breeding work until 1936, but agricultural research headquarters were removed to the Gezira in 1931. Although work on the Gezira Scheme resumed immediately after the 420

Economic and social developments, 1920—1933

Fig. 19

421

The Sennar Dam under construction

war, it was not completed until 1925. The original financial arrangements for the scheme were concluded by the Government of the Sudan Loan Act of 1914, which authorised a British guarantee of interest up to 3! per cent on loans up to £3,000,000 raised by the Sudan Government to finance irrigation projects and railway extension. Construction of the Sennar Dam was postponed in 1914, and canalisation proceeded, after the forceful application of Lancashire political influence, only at a pace necessary to maintain work already done and to fulfil contractual commitments.2 Subsequent investigations concluded that the suggested area of the scheme, 120,000 feddans, was too small, and an area of 300,000 feddans was recommended as economically sound. It was recognised too that the anticipated maximum interest rate of 32 per cent and repayment period of thirty years were no longer realistic, while the cost of the works themselves would rise from £2 million to £2,550,000. The amount of £750,000 for minor canalisation, originally considered a charge against the Sudan Plantations Syndicate, was now to be assumed by the government. A government debt of £780,000 to the National Bank of Egypt, and expenditure for cotton development and railway extension connected with

422

Empire on the Nile

it at Tokar and Kassala (matters excluded from the 1914 act), would, if allowed now to fall within the scope of a guaranteed loan, raise the amount to be borrowed to £6,600,000. In 1919, therefore, the Foreign Office recommended a new act guaranteeing £6,000,000 in loans.3 This guarantee was sanctioned, and included provision for £4,900,000 for the Gezira Scheme and the remainder for other works. Construction resumed in the autumn of 1919. The 1918 estimates soon proved unreliable. In February 1920 a warning of escalating costs apparently received little attention. In March 1921 Sir Murdoch Macdonald of the Egyptian irrigation department reported that the scheme would cost about £E8,ooo,ooo to complete, largely because of a huge but unforeseen increase in the costs of labour and materials.4 Worse, the increased cost would render 100,000 feddans of cotton insufficiently remunerative, but to raise the cotton acreage would itself entail additional costs: for 150,000 feddans of cotton the total finance necessary would be ££9,500,000; for 200,000 feddans, some £Ei 1,000,000. Thus the Sudan Government was ‘left with the alternative of finding either an extra £4,500,000 or £6,000,000 ... to avert a loss on a loan of £5,000,000 already floated’. Worst of all, an increase in the total irrigated area was politically impossible, because Allenby had promised the government of Egypt, where public opinion was aroused over the supply of Nile waters, that the Gezira Scheme would involve no more than 300,000 feddans without its approval. Since no more than one-third of the total irrigated area could be planted in cotton, expansion was effectively contingent on both additional finance and a political agreement with Egypt.5 Thus the Gezira Scheme entered the realm of Anglo-Egyptian relations, which were particularly strained at the time, and remained there until forcefully removed by Allenby’s 1924 ultimatum. Stack summarised the total estimated cost of the Gezira and related projects at a staggering ££15,628,900, of which ££9,408,420 had yet to be raised. The area to be irrigated would have to be increased from 300,000 to 450,000 feddans.6 A difficult series of negotiations involving the Sudan Government, the Foreign Office, and the Treasury began in London on 24 June 1921 to resolve the crisis. A committee was composed of Stack, Bernard, Fraser and Hewison, Sir James Currie, O. E. Niemeyer of the Treasury, and Lindsay and Murray of the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office’s position, that it was desirable on political grounds to decrease the Sudan’s dependence on Egypt and therefore to salvage the irrigation scheme, was countered by the Treasury’s flat refusal to lend or guarantee more money. It was clear, however, that few options except another guaranteed loan were available if the project (and the Sudan Government’s finances) were to be saved. A second conference was even more discouraging, as the

Economic and social developments,

1920-19JJ

423

committee was told that whether or not the scheme went ahead, ‘the Soudan would be reduced to bare bones’. At a third meeting Niemeyer allowed that although the Treasury would not guarantee a new loan, it might allow repayment of such a loan to take precedence over the existing loan. Continuing the project would be less dangerous financially than cancelling it; indeed, ‘the whole future of the country must depend on the completion of the dam’.' On 3 August the results of the committee’s deliberations were submitted to Curzon, the foreign secretary. It was agreed that suspension of the project might precipitate ‘serious political consequences both in the Soudan and in Egypt’, would leave the Sudan with a huge debt and no revenue with which to repay it, and would consequently ruin the Sudan’s credit. The committee therefore concluded that the scheme should be completed, that Parliament sanction transfer to the scheme of funds earmarked for Tokar development and railway extension, and that a political settlement with Egypt was a prerequisite for raising the needed loan. Even then, the Sudan Government ‘must realize that the successful construction of the Gezireh dam’ was its ‘major interest, and that . . . the most rigid economy must be practised in every other branch of Government activity’.8 One result of these deliberations was the decision to dismiss Bernard as financial secretary. The Treasury was concerned with pounds, not personalities, and con¬ tinued to express strong reservations about the scheme. Continuation should be countenanced only if construction was postponed until F. T. Hopkinson, an engineer, could visit the site and report on its finances; the Treasury also declined, pending parliamentary review, to allow recommit¬ ment of the funds earmarked for Tokar.9 Hopkinson submitted his report in February 1922. It was a devastating indictment of mismanagement. The canal construction at Makwar was ‘one of the biggest excavation works of modern times’, but had ‘received the most inadequate and amateurish treatment conceivable’. ‘Extravagance’ had ‘run riot’, and he had ‘not found a single redeeming feature’. Statistical data were ‘voluminous, but unconvincing’. Accounting procedures were ‘hopelessly bad’. There were ‘duplication of methods’ and ‘double expenditure’. The management was overstaffed but performed badly. Wages were too high. While cranes stood idle or even unassembled, human labour was used to move stones of up to i\ tons, an operation Hopkinson called ‘ “Roman” - it may, indeed, have been employed by the Pharaohs’. Quarrying was unplanned, unsupervised, and inefficient. Although the limited amount of cement needed could have been imported, a factory to supply it had been built for £200,000. A station had been erected at a cost of between £25,000 and £30,000 to supply power for only a few days. Redundant machines had been ordered because of ignorance about which were best, and those

424

Empire on the Nile

chosen were underemployed. Telephone equipment was stockpiled, unused. Hopkinson found it impossible to estimate the final cost of the project, but was certain it would exceed Macdonald’s 1921 estimate, which, he said, bore ‘no relation to the actual cost’. The general contractor was incompetent, and had already earned his maximum fee. Responsibility was divided: the Sudan Government paid for the work while the Egyptian irrigation department oversaw it. In all of this Hopkinson saw one saving fact: the cotton-growing prospects of the Gezira. It was ‘not yet too late’ to save the scheme by the immediate adoption of efficient construction methods’.10 Hopkinson had condemned the means, not the end, and the same forces that had combined to initiate the Gezira Scheme rallied to ensure its completion: the Sudan Government; the Foreign Office, intent on loosen¬ ing the Sudan’s ties to newly independent Egypt; arid Lancashire textile interests, whose demand for cheap cotton was unabated. The involvement in the negotiations of Sir James Currie, a strong advocate and, happily, director of the Empire Cotton Growing Association, was instrumental in saving the scheme. When the Gezira committee gathered again in London at the end of March 1922, Niemeyer suggested ‘that a curtain should be drawn’ over past mistakes, and pointed out that ‘it was of no use crying over spilt milk and that all were agreed that the work must continue’. The contractor at Makwar was dismissed, new tenders would be invited within weeks, and a contract placed with Messrs Pearson. If Egypt refused to cooperate, Stack said, Britain ‘must then take unilateral action’. The Sudan Government would draft a new ordinance enabling it to raise the necessary loan.11 Stack later wrote confidentially to the Foreign Office arguing that a British loan guarantee would weaken Egypt’s case in future negotiations over the Sudan, but that failure to guarantee a loan might shake Sudanese confidence and ‘engender a spirit of distrust . . . and give rise to a reactionary movement with the unexpectedness characteristic of Eastern countries’.12 In June the Treasury agreed to guarantee a loan, subject to several conditions, one of which was consideration of leasing or selling the Sudan’s railways or granting concessions to raise additional funds.13 Although nothing came of this, the Treasury made it clear that the Sudan Government must ‘practise some self-help and not put “strategical etc.” reasons above the dam’.14 Under the Trade Facilities Acts of 1922 and 1924 parliament approved guarantees bringing the total authorised loans to a nominal amount of £14,920,000. Parliamentary opposition had been dampened by the insistent demands of Lancashire. Tom Shaw, the Labour member, had said that ‘the organised employers and workmen of Lancashire’ were ‘one on this matter’: they wanted ‘all the development possible’.15 Extension of the 300,000 feddan limit had to await the 1924

Economic and social developments, 1920-1933

425

crisis. In January of that year Murray wrote that until the limit was removed, there was ‘no possibility of the . . . Sudan Government finances being placed upon a satisfactory and secure basis’. To avoid costly delays, a definite arrangement for extending the irrigated area had to be made ‘by the end of November’.16 Allenby dealt with the matter on the 22nd. Under new management, construction in the Gezira went ahead on schedule, and worries about repaying huge debts were submerged in the prospects for cotton. The scheme was inaugurated in July 1925. Under terms of The Gezira Land Ordinance of 1921 the Sudan Govern¬ ment hired irrigable land in the Gezira at a fixed annual rent of ten piastres a feddan, and bought land needed for works at £Ei a feddan. Landowners were to be given preference in applying for tenancies, and the government would assign the remainder, limiting a tenancy to the area cultivable by the individual tenant. Steps were taken in 1923 to discourage mortgaging of a tenancy’s production and transfer of ownership. A comprehensive Land Ordinance was enacted in 1927. An agreement was entered into by the Plantations Syndicate and each tenant. A tenancy originally comprised thirty feddans, later forty, of which ten were given over to dura and fodder cultivation for the tenant’s use and not for sale. The tenant was obliged to follow syndicate instructions about crop rotation, he must maintain field channels and obey sanitary regulations, and deliver his cotton harvest to a specified place. He paid for ploughing, seeds, cultivation, and harvesting. The syndicate provided machinery, maintained major irrigation works, supplied water, and marketed the cotton. The syndicate could terminate a tenancy agreement if the holder failed in his obligations. In a 1929 revised agreement the syndicate’s share of profits was cut from 25 to 20 per cent, while the government’s share was increased from 35 to 40 per cent, the syndicate in return receiving participation in the extension of the scheme from 100,000 to 150,000 feddans under cotton. By 1931 some 682,000 feddans were irrigated by the scheme, including a tract assigned to the Kassala Cotton Company when the government assumed control of its controversial operations in the Gash Delta. Although the tenancy arrange¬ ments were attractive from the tenant’s point of view, they were no guarantee of a living. He was assigned 40 per cent of profits, but his income from this depended entirely on crop yield and market price, which were unpredictable. The apparent equanimity of tenants may be traced to the promise of high cotton prices, both as compared with food crops and as experienced already at experimental stations, where some 20 per cent of the area to be irrigated was already under cotton before the Sennar Dam was inaugurated. Partnership with the government must also have built con¬ fidence, and the crisis surrounding the financing of the scheme did not affect tenants.17

426

Empire on the Nile

The successful completion of the Gezira Scheme left the Sudan Govern¬ ment with enormous potential for riches or ruin: the huge debt incurred was payable without reference to crop yields or market prices. Early results were impressive. After a disquietingly poor yield of only 2.2 kantars per feddan in 1924-5, the country’s cotton yield rose dramatically to 4.79 kantars in 1925-6 and 4.77 in 1926-7. In 1926 the average tenancy’s profit was ££67, and in 1927 ££84. Whereas in 1919 only 2,200 tons of cotton worth ££360,000 were produced, by 1925 the figure was 7,800 tons worth ££1,637,000 . Yields of 22,000 tons (worth ££2,835,000) in 1926 and 28,000 (worth ££3,190,000) in 1927 were realised. Production fell to 23,500 tons in 1928, but a high world price brought ££3,590,000 for the crop. The 1929 crop was the best on record: 30,500 tons worth ££4,583,000. These were the boom years for the Gezira Scheme and all who depended on it: tenants, syndicate, the government and its agencies, and the many Sudanese who indirectly derived economic benefit from it. Plans were made for further expansion, government expenditure rose, and the value of imports increased dramatically. Indeed, concern was expressed with the apparent decadence induced by the scheme’s success. Arthur Gaitskell, a future general manager of the scheme, wrote in 1928 of the ‘idle rich’ tenants: absenteeism was common, as hired labour toiled while tenants lazed elsewhere; the status of tenant had been subverted, as children and slaves were nominated as tenants. There was ‘an exaggerated standard of living’: profits adequate to support a family were accruing to an individual; ‘extravagant expenditure’, not thrift, was encouraged.18 No one - Gaitskell, the syndicate, the government, or the tenants - could predict how great would be the fall awaiting them. As early as 1922 blackarm (Xanthomonas malvecearum) was recognised as affecting cotton yields, and measures taken to combat it could not prevent a drop in yield to 2.2 kantars per feddan in 1925. New seed was imported, and 1925-7 yields showed marked improvement, but in 1928 a lower output was again attributable to blackarm. Weather conditions helped to spread the blight in 1929. The 1930 harvest totalled 27,800 tons worth ££3,046,000, but in 1931 poor weather, blackarm, and leaf curl disease combined to cause a catastrophic fall in production to only 9,000 tons, which in a collapsing world market realised only ££513,000: the 1928-9 crop had been sold for about 21 pence a pound; the 1920-30 crop for only 15 pence; by harvest time in 1931 cotton was selling for only 75 pence a pound, and large stocks remained unsold even at that price. The Sudan’s 1929 level of income from cotton was not reached again until 1937, despite increased acreage. Yield per feddan in the Gezira fell from 4.77 kantars (on 100,057 feddans) in 1926-7, to 1.34 (on 196,023 feddans) in 1930-1. Thus while the area under cotton had doubled, total yield had

Economic and social developments,

Fig. 20

1920-19JJ

427

The Gezira: the canal which brings water from the Sennar Dam, and the main Khartoum road

fallen by about half. Return per feddan fell from ££28.50 for the 1925-6 crop to only ££1.70 in 1931. Individual tenants were hard hit: fixed costs remained, work increased, but income all but disappeared. Indeed, average profit per tenancy tumbled from ££55 in 192910 nothing in i93oand 1931. In 1932 it stood at only £Ei2, fell to nothing again in 1933, and was a mere £E5 in 1934. While tenants understood that a poor harvest meant a poor return, the vagaries of the world market were less penetrable. Tenants’ debts to the syndicate rose alarmingly, repeatedly puncturing ceilings hastily erected after negotiations with the government. Although 1931 marked the bottom of cotton’s fall, world market recovery and improve¬ ment in crop yields took years. The disastrous 1931 yield even raised fears that the Gezira would never again produce an adequate return on invest¬ ment. Persistent efforts by syndicate and government experts and the fatalism of the tenants relieved that anxiety as early as the next crop year, but world prices were beyond their control. Although exports of ginned cotton reached an all-time high in 1932 of 38,249 tons, they realised only ££2,057,071. The 1933 harvest of 24,395 tons earned only ££1,396,627.19 Mixed results were achieved by the relatively minor cotton schemes outside the Gezira. At Gash the 1930 yield was only 1.51 kantars per feddan, a result of leaf curl disease and infestation by pink boll worms. The price per kantar of Tokar seed cotton fell from £E8.2i in 1927-8 to ££2.42

428

Empire on the Nile

in 1930-1, while the total crop value declined from ££439,082 to £Ei 16,119, despite a rise in production from 53,454 to 68,292 kantars. The average yield at small government pump-schemes in Dongola and Berber was 3.24 kantars per feddan in 1930-1, but total production was only 17,545 kantars. Results from rain-grown cotton were better. In the Nuba Mountains, for example, production rose from 8,436 kantars in 1926-7 to 47,824 in 1930-1. In the Upper Nile Province production fluctuated widely: 5,147 kantars of seed cotton in 1926-7; 2,251 in 1927-8; 4,666 in 1928-956,049 in 1929-30; 3,298 in i930-i;andan estimated 4,124 in 19312. Production in Mongalla was rather steadier, rising from 5,519 kantars in 1926-7 to 7,895 in 1930-1.20 Experiments in the development of cash crops had begun in Mongalla early in the Condominium, with small-scale cotton and groundnut pro¬ duction. In 1924-5 an experimental cotton-growing programme was undertaken in the Moru, Yei, Latuka, and Central districts. Cotton gins were built in 1926-7. After the disastrous 1930-1 season, however, these efforts were discontinued. Popular disdain for cotton-growing was a factor in this decision, but poor yields and prices were probably more important. In Torit District, for example, the yield per feddan in 1926-7 was only 1.9 kantars, and in 1927-8 a mere 0.7 kantars. The highest yield recorded there up to 1935 was 2.6 kantars per feddan, in 1929-31. The price paid for Mongalla cotton fell from 50 piastres per kantar in 1929-3010 i8piastres in 1931-2/21 While the Gezira became and remained the focus of the Sudan’s agricultural development, it affected directly only a small part of the population. It had little impact on small farmers growing subsistence crops or cash crops other than cotton, and on herdsmen, gum gatherers and the like, except to provide paid labour and as a market for surplus production. The short cotton boom of 1926-9 certainly caused a rapid increase in general economic activity, but it was too brief to sustain the economy as a whole or to cushion it from the depression ahead. The effects on internal trade of the Gezira’s widely varying fortunes remain subject to speculation in the absence of detailed information. Government statistics are available, however, for the production and export of some commodities, and can be used as a basis for some general conclusions on agricultural production. Production of the staple food grain, dura, continued to fluctuate, as always, the result of weather, pests, and habits. After the low yields and high prices of 1919, a record crop was harvested in 1920, about 511,000 tons in the main growing areas of the Blue and White Nile Provinces, Kassala, and Fung. In 1920 ushur was taken largely in kind, to meet government grain requirements, to build up a reserve, and because the market price left growers without sufficient cash. Prices fell accordingly:

Economic and social developments, 1920-1933

429

within a few months the price of dura at Wad Medani fell from £E2 per ardeb to less than forty piastres; dura became ‘a drug in the market’. Low

foreign demand precluded appreciable export. In 1922, even after a poor 1921 harvest, dura was almost unsaleable at a profit. The great fluctuation in annual production made development of an export market difficult in any case, even though, because of improved transport and war-time demand, farmers had increasingly turned to dura as a cash crop. In 1923 dura still cost less locally than it had before the war. Interestingly, prices rose considerably in 1924, coinciding with (and perhaps a reason for) the urban unrest of that year. In September 192 3 the export of dura was halted, except for surplus stocks from previous harvests. Some dura was imported to counter profiteering and provide a reserve from which cheap sales could be made to the poor, as had been done in 1914. Some 48,000 tons were imported altogether, but most of it by private merchants, the government buying only 11,260 tons and ‘issuing’ about 9,000 tons. Large amounts of imported grain were needed to cope with the critical food shortage in 192 57, which was abated by a good harvest in 1927, but a poor subsequent yield prevented the normal accumulation of stocks. By the end of 1929 food supplies had stabilised at fairly low prices and, despite a locust invasion, the 1930 harvest was adequate. The locusts returned in 1931, however, and hopes for a bumper crop gave way to despair at a very poor harvest. Prices rose; export sales, which had briefly resumed after the 1925 embargo, were again stopped, and grain imported once again. As usual, this shortage affected mainly the town population and those in the areas where crops actually failed. There was a limit to what the government could do to stabilise prices while ensuring adequate supplies, since in good cotton years taxes could be paid from cotton income and dura stored, rather than sold, and, as one shaykh put it in 1926, ‘he was now growing only cotton being sure that he could always buy durah from stocks brought by Govt, “from the Hind” ’. A 1932 report pointed out that until a method could be found ‘to counter the appalling effects of locusts . . . and until the areas of the more reliable rainfall in the south’ could ‘be brought to yield an assured annual quota of food grains’, the country could ‘never be entirely free’ from the threat of food shortage.22 This is borne out by government statistics, which show yields in the decade 1920-1 to 1930-1 ranging from 511,111 tons to a disastrous 75,000 tons (in 1926). The production and export of other major crops may be briefly surveyed. After cotton, gum arabic remained the Sudan’s major agri¬ cultural export, and as late as 1931 (when the cotton crop failed) it constituted 34.8 per cent of the total value of exports. A major change in gum marketing was inaugurated in 1922 when the brokerage system at El Obeid was replaced by an open auction supervised by the government.

43°

Empire on the Nile

Interestingly, the price of gum remained relatively strong during the depression. In the period 1921-5 an annual average production of 15,471 tons realised an average price of ££40.65 a ton; in 1926—30 the figures were 19,600 and ££36.04; and in 1931-5, some 19,782 averaging ££29.15. The value of the crop surpassed £E 1,000,000 in 1923, but declined thereafter, and after reaching ££980,157 in 1930, fell to only ££393,333 in 1933. Gum remained an important product of Darfur, Kordofan, and Kassala. In 1931 some 17,736 tons were sold in Kordofan; 1,325 from Darfur, and 2,602 tons from Kassala. The Sudan regularly supplied between 70 and 80 per cent of the world’s gum, achieving a virtual monopoly. There is no doubt that the gum export market helped to ease the effects of the depression in the main producing areas.23 The quantity and value of gum exports during the period are shown in table 4 (p. 459). In the post-war period sesame production for export rose as high as 13,621 tons in 1929, but declined drastically to 5,445 in 1931. The export market for groundnuts suffered similarly. Having peaked at 11,803 tons worth £Ei70,4i6in 192 5, it fell as low as 1,636 tons worth only£E23,033 in 1927. Some 4,835 tons exported in 1930 realised only ££40,078, and production was halved in 1931. Sesame and groundnut production were susceptible to fluctations in dura supplies: when dura was available cheaply, these were raised as cash crops, but at times of dura shortage they were largely abandoned in favour of dura, cultivation.24 In the post-war period, production and export of animals and animal by¬ products, while continuing as an important part of the Sudan’s economy, declined as a percentage of total production and of export value. Complete statistics illustrate sharp swings in export demand. The 1920 boom was followed immediately by a dramatic recession in demand and fall in prices, occasioned mainly by crop failures in Egypt that led to a wholesale slaughtering of animals for food there. The market for live cattle and sheep did not recover, but was replaced by a strengthening demand for hides and skins. One obvious result of this was a much greater domestic consump¬ tion of meat, reflecting (in what proportion it cannot be said) both an improved standard of living and the poor crops of the 1925-7 period. In 1926-7, when dura production fell precipitately, the export of hides increased from 428,289 to 2,309,000. It is arguable whether the Sudan economy as a whole recovered from the 1926-7 slump before plunging into the 1930 depression. The roughness or unavailability of statistics renders conclusions about the cost and standard of living hazardous, and the variation in local conditions provides numerous exceptions to general conclusions. It is safe to say, however, that even before the full brunt of the depression was felt in 1930-1, periods of dura shortage affected most adversely town-dwellers with relatively stable

Economic and social developments, 1920-1933

431

incomes, including notably government employees. A 1928 report recognised that the ‘wage-earning class’ had ‘been hard hit of late’, and had ‘still to clear themselves of debts contracted during the last two years’. Conversely, Haifa, Dongola, and Berber enjoyed good Nile floods and cheap grain from Egypt during 1926-7, and it was only in the White Nile Province that food was seriously scarce.25 Moreover, country-wide stat¬ istics are unreliable as a gauge of standard and cost of living because the great increase in disposable income enjoyed by the Gezira tenants in the late 1920s tended to mask in those statistics stagnation or recession elsewhere. The effects of the 1926-7 shortages and the world depression on local trade and commerce are even more problematic to judge. Statistics are adequate to expose the dramatic decline in the country’s fortunes, but shed less light on local conditions. In 1928 it was admitted officially that it was impossible even to estimate major items in internal trade, and generalisa¬ tions await results of detailed study. It remains briefly to survey the volume of imports during the period under review, which gives a further indication of standard of living and of the effects of the depression. Table 7 gives quantities and values of certain imports: coffee, tea, petroleum, sugar, cotton fabrics, wheat flour, and coal. From these, several conclusions may be drawn. The 1920 boom and subsequent recession are reflected in import as well as in export figures, as would be expected. Thus, imports of sugar (a government monopoly) decreased from 14,821 tons in 1920 to 6,729 in 1921, but actual consump¬ tion fell less drastically. The sugar import market held surprisingly strongly during 1926-7, as did the market for other non-essentials like coffee and tea. The difficulty posed by these figures is, of course, that they refer to the Sudan as a whole. Thus the increased import of cotton fabrics from 1926 to 1927, at a time of high food prices, probably reflects the increasing prosperity of the Gezira tenants. Provincial statistics on sugar consumption prove the point: in 1926, some 3,447 tons of sugar worth ££202,224 were consumed in the Blue Nile Province, and in 1927 some 4,157 tons worth ££243,877. The collapse of cotton in 1930 produced a sharp change: in 1930 the Sudan consumed 29,375 tons, but in 1931 only 19,763 tons and in 1933 a mere 15,582 tons, a drop of almost 50 per cent in four years. The general conclusion then is of the Gezira Scheme’s holding up import and export levels in the 1926-7 poor crop years, but of consumption declining markedly when cotton failed. In short, the economy of the Sudan depended, as it had been assumed it would, on one crop: cotton. Overall import and export figures, given in table 2, bear this out. These nearly balanced in only one year, 1929, when there was a record cotton harvest. The disastrous 1930 harvest is reflected in a huge decline in exports, from ££6,809,122 the year before to ££2,015,597. What this

432

Empire on the Nile

meant to government and public purchasing power is of course only partly reflected in the steep decline of import values, from ££6,177,410 in 1930 to ££3,761,013 in 1931 and ££3,054,644 in 1932. Other factors, including the fall of world and domestic prices, are not illustrated. In the development of communications the post-war period was one of consolidation and rationalisation rather than of great expansion. During the war no major new works were undertaken, but the responsibilities of the government departments dealing with communications increased dramatically, the consequence of growing export demand and of military activity, including the conquest of Darfur. On 1 January 1918 the Sudan Government Railways and the steamers and boats department were merged in the railways and steamers department. Essential renewal work, involving both maintenance and plant replacement, was much reduced during the war, resulting in an overtaxing of the system after it, at a time when agricultural development projects made increasingly heavy demands. Railway construction during the post-war period was closely connected with the development of cotton. A major extension to provide a more direct route from the Gezira and the Eastern Sudan to the sea had long been discussed, and before the war a route had been surveyed and financing tentatively arranged. After the war the government-owned Kassala Rail¬ way Company was formed, to manage the extension financed by Britishguaranteed loans. The financial crisis attending Gezira development delayed construction. In 1923 a revised route was proposed, and construc¬ tion began from Haiya on the Nile-Red Sea railway south-west of Port Sudan, using Egyptian and Sudanese hired labour. Railhead reached Kassala in April 1924. Between December 1926 and February 1928 railhead was extended to Gedaref. Meanwhile, construction of the Sennar Dam had allowed extension of the main Khartoum-Gezira line eastward across the Blue Nile, thus completing the Gezira’s link to Port Sudan. This important line, spanning the Atbara, Rahad, and Dinder rivers, was in use by early 1929. It was the last major railway construction to be undertaken until after the second world war, and was of great economic significance.26 Like all technical departments of the government, the posts and telegraphs suffered during the 1914-18 war from the demands made on it. The conquest of Darfur occasioned extension of the telegraph system westward from Nahud to El Fasher. Between 1925 and 1927 a new line was run from El Obeid via Abu Zabad, Dilling, and Kadugli to Talodi in the Nuba Mountains. In 1927 Abu Zabad was connected with Nahud, and in 1928 a short extension linked Nahud to al-Udayya. By then the system was over five thousand miles long. Further advances were made in wireless telegraphy, and new stations were established in 1916 at El Fasher and Kabkabia, and at Kerenik, in Dar Masalit in 1918. In that year another

Economic and social developments, 1920-i^jj

433

wireless station began operating at Mongalla. By 1921 there were already thirteen wireless stations. In 1926 a new medium wave system was introduced, which was of use to the Cape to Cairo service of Imperial Airways. Stations were later added to assist east-west African air services. Telephone services were similarly expanded. By 1922 there were already eleven main exchanges and twenty-two sub-exchanges, but service was limited to major towns and was subject to little demand elsewhere.27

GOVERNMENT FINANCE

The greater political independence of the Sudan Government during and after the first world war was paralleled by a greater financial independence, in fact if not in theory. During the 1922-4 Anglo-Egyptian negotiations the subject of Egyptian financial control was of concern to the Residency, the Foreign Office, and the British Treasury, but apparently caused few difficulties in Khartoum. Indeed, Bernard was reportedly reluctant even to discuss financial relations, preferring simply to carry on as before. Similarly, the question of the Sudan’s debt to Egypt was left undecided, but the Residency feared it could not remain so now that Egypt had attained ‘administrative independence’.28 In the end, Allenby’s ultimatum put successive Egyptian governments on the defensive, and there was little difficulty not only in indefinitely postponing repayment of the Sudan’s debt, but also in exacting an annual subsidy for the Sudan Defence Force. In 1926 the question of financial control was raised again by Egyptian politicians. The Residency knew it was ‘almost impossible to explain away . . . the change from the 1899, 1901 and 1910 regulations which definitely stipulated that the budget of the Sudan must be submitted to the Council of Ministers . . . for approval’. It was therefore decided not to explain it at all: the budget had always in fact been approved by the British Financial Adviser, not the Egyptian government; this was the situation up to 1922, and the fact that the Sudan was a ‘reserved point’ meant that previous practice must continue! Egyptian officials’ queries of this sophistry were rebuffed, until they appreciated the ‘hard facts’, one of which was that ‘Egypt’s claim to interfere in Sudan Administration’ could ‘not be admit¬ ted’.29 Thus the old regulations remained, the Sudan’s finances continued as a subject for discussion between Khartoum and the Residency, and the budget was still approved by the Financial Adviser (who recognised his approval had ‘no practical value’)30 the debt to Egypt remained undefined and unscheduled, and the Sudan Government resumed a role it had reluctantly abdicated in 1913, as a recipient of Egyptian subventions. If Egypt’s so-called ‘military expenditure in the Sudan’ is taken into account, subsidies had never ceased: in the period 1913-17 this had averaged

434

Empire on the Nile

££179,481 a year; in 1917-18 it amounted to ££422,764, and in 1922-3 reached ££515,725. In 1922 the foreign Office calculated that the Sudan’s indebtedness to Egypt totalled about £E20 million, including compounded interest, of which the Sudan Government was prepared to admit liability of approximately ££7,800,000.31 By contrast, Britain’s share in financing the Condominium remained at zero, and occasional attempts by the Sudan Government to increase it were rejected summarily. Indeed, the Sudan was hard pressed to avoid financial responsibility for the maintenance of a British military presence. Sudan Government gross revenue expanded rapidly in the 1920s. In 1919 it totalled ££2,992,792; in the 1920 boom year it climbed to ££4,425,340, after which it declined in 1921 and 1922. A steadier upward momentum began in 1923. Revenue surpassed ££5 million in 1926, and reached almost £E7 million in 1929. Thereafter there was a precipitate decline. The main reason for this was the inelasticity of the government’s sources of revenue and continuing dependence on indirect taxes, consumption duties, trans¬ portation tariffs and, in the late 1920s, Gezira profits. Direct taxes remained low: ushur was the traditional 10 per cent, land tax was assessed at differential rates of 5 and 10 per cent, tribute and animal tax were still very lightly assessed, and in some cases purely nominal. In the south and in Darfur, poll tax and hut tax were introduced, replacing ushur, the collec¬ tion of which cost more than the tax realised. The inefficiency of tax assessment and collection, made worse under Indirect Rule, in any case precluded a much greater contribution to government revenue from this source. Indeed, from the beginning of the Condominium the percentage of government revenue derived from direct taxes fell consistently. In 1903 they had contributed 24.7 per cent of government revenue; in 1913, 18.9 per cent; in 1923, 12 per cent; and by 1927 had fallen to below 8 per cent. Over the same period the railways, posts and telegraphs, and government commercial contracts had accounted for about half of all government revenues, while consumption taxes (including the lucrative and unpopular sugar monopoly) and customs duties rose from only 1.9 per cent of government revenue in 1903 to 11.9 percent in 1913, and about 20 percent in 1923. As early as 1927, receipts from the Gezira Scheme accounted for 14 per cent of government revenue, or almost twice the amount derived from all direct taxes. The government’s main sources of revenue were therefore very vulnerable to general economic activity, especially the export market. Poor grain harvests meant not only lower collection of ushur but lower freight returns. A decrease in the people’s disposable income meant decreased revenue from customs duties and consumption taxes. Of this the government was uncomfortably aware before the Gezira Scheme was inaugurated, but rather than relieve the situation the scheme added the

Economic and social developments, 1920—1933

435

crushing burden of its own debt. In both 1926 and 1927 receipts from the Gezira amounted to over ££700,000, and in 1928 surpassed £Ei million. In 1931 they were less than ££130,000. Debt repayments, however, were rising, from about ££570,000 in 1926 to about ££730,000 in 1930 and over ££900,000 in 1932. Rather than contributing an increasing share of government revenue, the Gezira Scheme had fast become a drain on it.32 There was little scope for increasing revenue from other sources after the crash. Direct taxes had always been politically sensitive and an increase was of little utility at a time of falling incomes. Raising railway tariffs would simply lower railway revenue and increase the market prices of commodi¬ ties that were already unsaleable at record low prices. As it was, Sudan Railways revenue declined from ££2,587,298 in 1930 to ££1,868,654 in 1931. The only possible course was to cut expenditure drastically. In 1930 the Tull scope of the economic disaster had not yet unfolded, but the poor prospects of cotton, the global economic situation, and a budget that barely balanced required stern retrenchment.33 In April 1930 Arthur Huddleston, the financial secretary, warned that the Sudan’s loan funds were ‘nearly exhausted’, that development expenditure must be transferred from the Reserve fund to the annual budget, and that ‘rigid economy’ was necessary. Budgets for 1931 should be based on an assumption that only urgent or remunerative services could be financed, whether new or existing. By November his warnings were graver. The prospects for cotton were grim, the government’s share of the Gezira crop would be worth at least ££650,000 less than had been budgeted; the Gezira Equalisation Fund, which had been established with a view towards lean years, was insufficient: its account fell from ££486,55 5 in 1929 to nothing in 1931. The general Reserve Fund, which in 1926 had ££1,660,844 on account, fell from ££1,011,503 in 1929 to ££319,672 in 1930 and to a paltry ££69,920 in 1932. Huddleston warned that retrench¬ ment of up to ££5 50,000 was necessary to balance the budget for 1931. For the next five years or even longer, he wrote, officials must reconcile themselves to the position that the Sudan will no longer be a developing country with expanding expenditure, or at best that development will take place at a price level so much lower than it has been . . . that it will involve an even greater strain on our resources; that therefore, except in so far as it is necessary to secure our revenue, expansion of expenditure must cease and contraction follow: and that measures to effect this immediately be taken.34

Warnings and plans for cuts could not keep pace with the bad economic news. Maffey told Eoraine on 3 December that the 1931 cotton harvest was likely to be poor, and that the course recently advocated by Huddleston, ‘balancing the 1931 budget by margin cutting’ and introducing retrench¬ ment in the 1932 budget, would be insufficient. Approval of the 1931

436

Empire on the Nile

budget estimates was postponed; ‘a drastic retrenchment programme’ would be ‘immediately enforced’.35 This was easier said than done. At governors’ meetings held in December a number of proposals were made: reducing public works expenditure through staff cuts, decentralisation, and cancellation of projects; reducing railways and steamers expenditure by improved coordination of services, cutting allowances, and dismissing British personnel; reducing ‘greatly’ the costs of the agriculture and forests department, again by substituting Sudanese for British personnel and through organisational changes; and reducing veterinary and SDF expenditure. In fact, the governors could discern possible retrenchment of British staff in most areas except their own, the Political Service, a reflection of administrators’ thinly veiled hostility towards the ‘technical’ services and their hope that economic disaster might be of benefit to Indirect Rule by ‘devolving’ more functions to Sudanese. The ‘axe should fall last on the Administrative and Medical Services and on Vernacular Education’, they resolved.36 Lest the governors should be considered solicitous of the education of Sudanese, it should be remembered that ‘vernacular education’ was by now an adjunct to administrative policy, and that in 1930 the entire education budget was only ££198,403. It was certainly no secret that British administrative staff were the most expensive in the country: as the governor of Haifa had admitted a month earlier, ‘Economies can best be made at the top of the tree, not by lopping such insignificant twigs as ghaffirs, police, etc.’ In the event, even medicine was not sacrosanct: Huddleston warned that ‘reduc¬ tion below the standards of 1930’ was ‘inevitable’. As for education, he dismissed the governors’ professed concern by noting that there was ‘hardly scope for reduction’.37 Members of the Political Service were largely successful in defending themselves against budget cuts. It was merely decided that the existing cadre of district officials ‘should not be increased’ and could ‘in certain cases be cut’ in 1931, since a ‘drastic cut’ would itself lead to reduced revenue, ‘even apart from the basic necessity to take due precautions against native discontent’, the much-rehearsed ‘fanaticism’ of the Sudanese again having been invoked to protect vested interests. Besides, the tender plant of Native Administration, although leading ‘ultimately’ to a decrease in British officials, still required the ‘adequate supervision of British staff’. Therefore the possibility might be ‘explored’ of discharging ‘a few’ British administrators from among those on contract or newly appointed; reducing the number of ma’murs and sub-ma’murs, and of police; amalgamating two or more northern provinces; and of other minor economies. Maffey professed to see even in economic disaster the proof of Indirect Rule: ‘So far from acting as a check’ on devolutionary advances,

Economic and social developments, 1920-1933

437

‘financial stringency’ would ‘show how the path of salvation lies through them’. While British administrators could thus for the moment rest easily, their Sudanese subordinates were apprehensive. The governor of Khartoum Province reported growing resentment in 1930, and feared trouble ‘if the intelligentsia element combined with a disgruntled hoi polloi’, among whom unemployment was already on the rise.38 Rumours circulated that no British officials would be discharged, and a demand was voiced that foreigners, not Sudanese, should be the first to suffer.39 The intelligence branch reported conversations with Sudanese officials of ‘the more responsible class’, revealing widespread fears and complaints: All classes . . . are united in condemning the financial regime which they say has led to this debacle. ‘Give us the days of Bernard; he was no financier but when he had PT 10 he spent only 8 and hid the remainder; the trouble arrived with Sir George Schuster, who increased the cadre of British officials: gave them better houses etc., etc., at our expense. . . . We . . . shall cause no trouble: we resent the British incapacity which has resulted in our suffering but you are the butchers, we are the sheep. . . . But British officials must suffer with us; we do not yet know whether they will or not, or whether, while we starve, the DC will continue to save his pay and live on his allowances . . .’40

It was a grim joke that the name of the financial secretary, Fass, who took office in November 1931, means ‘axe’ in Arabic. In the event, the axe fell with more attention to salary than to nationality, since far greater savings were realisable from the retrenchment of highlypaid British staff. As of June 1931, 93 of 1,032 British posts (or 9 per cent of the total) had been retrenched; 152 of 1,641 non-British foreigners (also 9 per cent); and 43 of 2,760 Sudanese (1.6 per cent).41 But few of the British posts retrenched were of political officials. As of December 1930 that establishment numbered 158, excepting those on contract. MacMichael argued that the excellent ‘political relations’ between the government and the Sudanese were largely due to the ‘consistently high standard of character’ in the service, and ‘maintenance of personal touch’ resulting from officials’ accessibility. The service was ‘not overstaffed’, and there was ‘no margin to allow for sickness or accident’.42 Nevertheless, terms were agreed by which political officers could be retrenched, with severance payments. Sir Percy Loraine’s argument, that no pensionable British officials should be let go because the proposed compensation was insuffi¬ cient and dismissals would prejudice recruitment, was overridden at the Foreign Office. Considering the Sudan’s financial condition, almost any compensation was generous.43 By January 1933 some 183 British staff of all grades had been retrenched, saving ££113,043 annually in salaries and pensions. Of posts held by Sudanese, 143 had been eliminated, saving ££24,324. A comparison of the numbers and savings involved shows that

Empire on the Nile

438

Fig. 21

The Sudan Defence Force band

substantial saving could be made only by suppressing British-held posts: the average annual saving realised from retrenchment of a British-held post was about £E6y2, for an Egyptian about £E2o8, for another foreign-held post about ££318, and for a Sudanese post about £Ei68.44 Of more concern to Sudanese opinion than the suppression of posts was the ineptly managed issue of salary abatements for those who remained. In May 1931 the governor-general’s council approved a reduction from £E8 to £Ej in the monthly starting salary for Sudanese entering government service. Maffey and others lamely argued that this was not only an economy measure but also a long overdue reform, since starting rates had been linked to Egyptian Army scales and were too high. Students at Gordon College, and Sudanese officials, saw in this ‘reform’ an ‘attempt to depress the prospects of the educated Sudanese’,45 an allegation strongly supported by the government’s administrative policy. They petitioned unavailingly, and the students went out on strike, which was settled only after the intervention of Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi and the govern¬ ment’s agreement to restore £Ei a month of the cut. In 193 2 general abatements were applied to all but starting salaries. These were of 5 per cent on salaries less than £E6o a year, j\ per cent on salaries up to ££1,750, and 10 per cent on salaries of ££1,750 or more. Maffey voluntarily took a 20 per cent reduction. Additionally, ‘special cuts’ were made in climate, travelling, and other allowances.46 Criticism of the cuts and abatements for Sudanese staff, by Sir James Currie and others, was rejected, largely on the grounds that the cost of living had fallen more for Sudanese than for British officials and, as one Foreign Office note put it,

Economic and social developments, 1920-1933

439

that ‘the Sudanese officials were really better paid than their senior British colleagues’,47 an astonishing presumption. The governor-general’s council itself deemed it ‘undeniable’ that Sudanese were highly paid ‘in relation to their qualifications’, an argument never closely applied to administrative officials or, for that matter, teachers. The abatements, they concluded, would not ‘cause undue hardship’, and were not relaxed until January 1935, at which time the abatement on salaries below £Eio9 was abolished.48 Meanwhile the government had searched for other savings. A Retrench¬ ment Committee was established in December 1930 under N. E. Young and later under MacMichael, whose special pleading was not reserved for the Political Service: retention of the SDF’s band was based on its ‘real political value’, while its dissolution would ‘savour ... of panic’; infantry officers’ horses were needed ‘for the sake of legitimate prestige, apart from polo and exercise’; and so forth.49 Other suggested cuts were more apposite, but many reforms, such as province amalgamation, took years to effect. Government expenditure for the provinces, which had increased steadily until surpassing the £Ei million mark in 1930, fell to ££824,295 in 1931 and ££720,823 in 1933. Expenditure on the SDF fell from a high of ££791,747 in 1929 to ££390,356 in 1933. Almost all government depart¬ ments suffered serious reductions. Expenditure by the agriculture and forests department declined from ££217,984 in 1930 to ££141,924 in 1932; the education budget (once said to have had little ‘scope for reduction’) fell from ££198,403 in 1930 to ££112,393 in 1933, and to only ££85,544 in 1935. The medical service’s expenditure was cut from ££263,566 in 1931 to ££213,213 in 1933; the public works budget declined from ££208,995 in 1929 to ££147,958 in 1932. Even the Sudan Agent in Cairo’s expenditure was halved between 1930 and 1934. The hapless veterinary department saw its already hopelessly inadequate budget drop from ££51,557 in 1930 to ££29,480 in 1933. In all, departmental expenditure fell from ££1,543,000 in 1930 to ££1,236,250 in 1933, and surpassed £Ei-5 million again only in I936-50 The recovery of the cotton crop in 1932 was the first important sign of light in the pervasive economic gloom. Even this was obscured by the poor 1933 results, but a general improvement was at last discernible. The rest of the decade was needed, however, before some indices of economic health reached 1920s’ levels.

SLAVERY AND LABOUR

The retrenchment of posts during the depression was a dramatic reversal of a trend towards ever-larger government establishments, a growth that both

44°

Empire on the Nile

paralleled and was necessitated by the expansion of the economy. The economic development of the 1920s, especially in the Gezira, exacerbated a shortage of skilled and unskilled labour that had been a problem for many years. Means previously used to expand the labour force were continued, and a benign and permissive attitude towards domestic slavery changed significantly only after it was exposed to the glare of international atten¬ tion. West African pilgrims continued to find seasonal work and perma¬ nent homes in the Sudan, efforts were made to keep farmers on the land, and stratagems were devised to depress wages. In the south the government still relied on forced labour to carry out its works. The Labour Bureau, established in 1905 to supply workers and keep wages low, failed to do either. It was not until the depression that urban unemployment became a serious concern to the government. In 1921 the moribund Labour Bureau was superseded by a Labour Committee chaired by the director of agriculture. The committee reported gloomily that until construction in the Gezira was completed, a labour shortage would be a ‘dominant factor’ in the Sudan’s economy: the country ‘must reconcile itself to a permanent labour difficulty’. That having been decided, the committee recommended ways of easing the strain. It was essential that the construction company and the Plantations Syndicate avoid competition for labour: wages forced higher by competi¬ tion would not increase the labour supply, since a labourer would work only long enough to meet his immediate needs. There was strong evidence that the Gezira works were attracting essential labour from Khartoum and the north, and it was recommended that recruitment there should cease, a suggestion adopted previously but, typically, unenforced.51 Although local labourers would work for 6 piastres a day, they were currently earning 10-12 piastres. This must stop: a ‘permanent conference or joint committee’ representing the government, the Egyptian irrigation depart¬ ment, the syndicate, and the contractor should be formed, to agree on ‘daily pay and the maximum rates to be paid’. Untapped sources of labour in the Sudan were unpromising, but it was hoped that private employers and the Gezira contractor would import their own workers from Egypt. At a subsequent meeting Sir Murdoch Macdonald endorsed the aims of eliminating competition and setting maximum rates, and hoped that the government would ‘supply a little moral suasion to induce more people to come and work’. Egyptian workers, he said, were more expensive than Sudanese, but as of March 1921 there were more Egyptians employed at Makwar than Sudanese and Fallata combined, and Egyptians doing piece work were earning up to 18 piastres a day. The committee believed that the only answer was to put ‘pressure ... on the larger employers to reduce their wages to a level ... at which the labourer can support himself if he

Economic and social developments,

1920-19J3

441

works a full month, but not if he only works half a month or less’.52 The futility of attempts to depress wages was exposed in F. T. Hopkinson’s 1922 report, for the problem was not simply pay but the inefficient use of labour. In 1921 over 18,000 men were employed on the Gezira works, and in 1922 some 25,000 were to be hired, but he saw no need for more than 7,000.53 In other words, ‘Pharaonic’, labour-intensive methods were a major cause of the labour shortage. Even if wage control had succeeded and methods were improved, a problem would have remained. The primary need for cash in a still agricultural country was to pay taxes when poor harvests made payment in kind difficult or unwise. In years of good crops farmers were kept on the land longer to harvest and they required less cash. The government could hardly discourage good harvests to bring in labour. What was needed was a reserve of workers, preferably landless, who needed cash. For this purpose Fallata, whether pilgrims or residents, seemed ideal. Their encouragement was another example of the Sudan Government’s tendency in the 1920s to follow a ‘policy’ without adopting it. In 1919 the engineers at Makwar were reportedly ‘very keen to recruit Fallata because of the high cost of Egyptian labour, and there was even an official proposal that direct recruitment be undertaken in Nigeria.54 Lethem, visiting from Nigeria in 1925, reported no doubt that ‘to encourage Fellata immigration for labour and for settlement was and is a part of the policy of the Sudan as practised. There is however such a weakness and lack of leadership as to native policy from the central administration that one has to look to practice rather than the expressions of the heads.... I did not hear recruiting of Fellata spoken of.’ Outside of Khartoum there was less reticence. The second-ranking engineer at Makwar told Lethem that the success of the Gezira Scheme was endangered by a lack of population, and that ‘the only hope was Fellata immigration’. Opposition was voiced, apparently most forcefully by C. A. Willis, despite a much lower rate of entry than had been supposed or hoped for. Among some district officials the feeling remained that Fallata were ‘useful low class labour’, available when needed. The governor of the Red Sea Province considered them indispensable, but as hired hands rather than as freeholders. The ‘real protagonist’ was Arthur Huddleston, then gov¬ ernor of the Blue Nile Province and thus directly concerned with the Gezira Scheme. ‘Within five minutes of meeting me’, Lethem wrote, Huddleston said, T want to have a long talk with you about Fellata immigration. You see we want all the pilgrims to come through here and for about three-fifths of them to be available as casual labour on the Gezireh’. The remaining two-fifths he wanted ‘to settle in the Gedaref region where we want to go in for rain cotton and where we lack population’.55

442

Empire on the Nile

Interestingly, Lethem concluded that Huddleston’s hopes were unlikely to be fulfilled. There was a ‘growing undercurrent of opposition by Arabs to Fellata getting land’, Sudanese were becoming more interested in the financial rewards of cotton, and British and Sudanese district officials alike showed resentment towards the newcomers. Moreover, Lethem believed that it was only the pilgrimage that continued to draw Fallata to the Sudan; wages were little higher than in developing regions of Nigeria, and living conditions ‘distinctly worse’ than any he had seen in Africa outside the South African railway towns. Even the food was poor. ‘In a word the standard of living and prosperity in the settlements . . . near the large labour-employing works . . . does not compare in any way with those of Nigeria. It may safely be said that if there were no pilgrimage there would be no Fellata labour available in the Sudan.’ Fallata content to remain were those who had left Nigeria a generation ago, or their children who had never been there.56 Whether or not Lethem was correct remains a moot point. Statistics about Fallata immigration are of course unreliable, and speculation about their motives is unquantifiable. By the end of the 1920s it did not matter: then there was certainly little economic attraction in the Gezira. Government concern was not limited to agricultural workers. As we have seen, migration from the land was a mixed blessing, providing needed labour but creating a threat to public order when times were hard, and robbing the northern riverain region especially of vital agricultural labour. At least from 1923 lists were maintained in Khartoum of Sudanese ex¬ officials who, it was hoped, might be found work on development projects. These were land-settlement officers whose posts had been suppressed, officials dismissed for misdemeanours, medical problems, or to effect economies.57 By November 1923 the register of unemployed former officials had swollen to over 120, and Willis was unable to find work for even one because province and department officials neglected to consult him when hiring. In February 1924 he pointed out that most of these ex¬ officials lived in the Three Towns and constituted a ‘nucleus of discontent worthy of consideration’.58 Fears about the political consequences of unemployment were revived during the depression. The popular apprehension that Sudanese would be the first victims of retrenchment was fuelled by the fact that early economies were made of low-grade, non-pensionable government employees and day-labourers. The number of foreigners employed was resented. Despite government efforts, among the working class generally there was already evidence in June 1931 of‘the beginnings of an unemploy¬ ment problem’ in the Three Towns. Priority in hiring was to be given to those who had lost work through retrenchment.59 An effort was made to

Economic and social developments, 1920-1933

443

speed the dismissal of foreigners whose standard of work was poor, in order to absorb the ‘output’ of Gordon College. It is remarkable that serious unrest was avoided, and the very low rate of discharge of Sudanese from government service may have played a part in this. The emergence of trade unions still lay in the future, and contingency plans for coping with strikes were not needed.60 The relatively high wages prevailing in the Gezira and the towns in the 1920s inevitably attracted slaves from the land. Of greater concern to the government than wage levels was maintenance of the country’s food supplies, which depended not only on imponderables like the weather but on the availability of cheap agricultural labour. Thus the government continued to discourage the manumission of slaves, all the while paying pious lip-service to its old commitment to abolishing slavery. Tolerance of the institution led to a revived slave trade, long after that scourge was officially proclaimed to be a thing of the past. The scheme devised in 1899 to establish colonies of ex-slaves retired from the army was revived in the early 1920s, after having been neglected during the war. In 1921 new colonies were formed in Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains, and the White Nile and Fung provinces, with government financial assistance. By 1923 there were some twenty-five colonies in eight provinces, with over two thousand settled ex-soldiers. The colonies were supervised and received tax concessions and other benefits. With growing labour shortages in the mid-i920s, however, the need for continuing the scheme diminished, and it was hoped, in consonance with the policy of Indirect Rule, that old soldiers would return to their region of origin rather than settle in ‘detribalised’ colonies. Colonisation therefore declined, and existing colonies were gradually assimilated. In 1927 a labour exchange was established under SDF auspices for retiring soldiers.61 The army’s continuing recruitment, while assisting in socialisation by moving slaves into the larger society, created difficulties for provincial officials determined to keep slaves on the land. Runaway slaves were enlisted after a two-week probation, during which their personal histories were investigated to the extent possible. Attempts by civil authorities to lengthen that period to a month, and by the military to reduce it to a day, illustrate their respective priorities. In 1923 an agreement was reached whereby mandatory compensation of owners for the loss of slaves was discontinued, but ex-slaves were encouraged to pay for their freedom. Like the colonisation scheme, slave-recruitment into the army diminished as the opportunities for paid labour outside it increased.62 In the early 1920s the Sudan Government’s policy towards slavery began to alter for two main reasons. As the economy expanded, there was no longer any valid objection to manumission on the grounds that ex-slaves

444

Empire on the Nile

constituted an anti-social element of unemployed vagrants. At the same time, international attention, since the days of Cromer deflected by official assurances of the progressive disappearance of slavery, began to focus on the Sudan. Minor episodes of controversy erupted in 1919, but complaints from the Anti-Slavery Society in Britain were belittled by the Foreign Office. Indeed, the Sudan Government continued its drive to end the ‘interference’ of its own repression of slavery department, which was finally abolished in 1922 when its functions were nominally assumed by government police. Ironically, it was irate government officials who finally forced its policy into the open. In 1923-4, P. G. W. Diggle, an agricultural inspector in Berber, and T. P. Creed, the assistant district commissioner of Berber town, took up the cause of the slaves. Arguing that the government had turned a blind eye to the brutal excesses of slave-owners and had put impediments in the way of slaves seeking freedom,. Diggle threatened to expose publicly in Britain the Sudan Government’s contravention of its own expressed policy. Ignoring his superiors’ attempts first to silence, then to discredit him, Diggle resigned and brought his complaints to Viscount Cecil and to the Anti-Slavery Society. The ensuing publicity deeply embarrassed the Foreign Office at a time when the status of the Sudan (and Britain’s and Egypt’s relative merits as stewards) was the crucial issue in Anglo-Egyptian negotiations.63 In anticipation of an unfavourable reaction in Britain to Diggle’s charges, the Sudan Government had already by late 1924 taken steps to enhance its reputation. In April the northern governors were told to instruct district officials in the points of existing law, specifically the prohibition of enforced return of runaways, owners’ inhumane treatment of slaves, and the responsibility to provide manumission papers to those demanding them. At their 192 3 meeting Sterry, the legal secretary, was able to override objections from the civil secretary to a new circular proclaiming the government’s intention to do nothing to prevent the disappearance of slavery. That circular, effective in May 1925, upheld the absolute right to freedom, and precipitated opposition from religious leaders, including the Grand Kadi and the Three Sayyids, who deprecated wholesale manumis¬ sion on social grounds and as a contravention of Islamic law.64 Meanwhile Diggle’s private campaign in Britain was carried to the press, and the League of Nations formally took up the case. The Sudan Government’s defence that the legal status of concubines and their children stood in its way won little favour at a time when the British government was pressing to end slavery in Ethiopia and to bring about a new international Slavery Convention. In 1927 the Sudan Government itself (rather than the codomini on its behalf) acceded to that convention.65 As a result of recommendations by the League in 1925, the Sudan

Economic and social developments, 1920-ipjj

445

Government entered into closer collaboration with the British representa¬ tive in Jidda to repatriate kidnapping victims, and established a commission to investigate slavery in the Sudan. C. A. Willis, the discredited director of intelligence, was named Special Slavery Commissioner, and later issued comprehensive reports on slavery and the pilgrimage. Following his reports, special attention was to be paid to Kordofan, the Butana, and the Ethiopian border regions, reforms in applying the Shan a were taken up, and a new certification system devised for freed slaves. Unfortunately for the Sudan Government, its tarnished record did not inspire confidence in its proposed remedies, and a debate in the House of Lords in December 1925 was followed by a White Paper on the subject in 1926. The AntiSlavery Society was unrelenting, and the exposure of large-scale slave trading in 1928 was a serious blow to government credibility.66 The shocking discovery in 1928 marked a turning point in the govern¬ ment’s treatment of the slavery issue. The abolition of the repression of slavery department in 1922 had, not surprisingly, led to a revival in the slave trade, especially on the eastern frontier. By the mid-1920s this complicated problem, involving a long border through wild country, tribes that straddled it, and a network of vested interests in slaving and gun¬ smuggling, had peaked. The apprehension in 1928 of a consignment of slaves in the White Nile Province en route to Kordofan led to a concerted two-year campaign involving the arrest of hundreds of traders and the rescue of over one thousand slaves. Closer liaison with the border tribes and more systematic patrols were undertaken. Occasional episodes of slave trading were revealed thereafter, and interpretation of the laws continued to depend on local officials. In 1925 the district commissioner of Omdurman had described that town as ‘full of slaves still’.67 As late as 1928 the assistant district commissioner in Western Kordofan noted that the ‘accelerated manumission of domestic slaves’ was causing ‘uneasiness among the Hamar’, and he wondered whether a ‘state of domestic slavery’ was not ‘preferable to the conditions to which manumitted slaves’ were ‘transferred - a servitude of prostitution and theft’.68 In 1929, on the other hand,

the

Misiriya

were

reportedly

‘disgruntled’

because

of

the

‘unfortunate recent wholesale manumission of their serfs’. These ‘serfs’, having been freed, seemed to enjoy ‘greater privileges’ and freedom of movement than their former masters.69 Despite a lingering official sympathy for owners rather than slaves, the institution was clearly and finally passing in the early 1930s. The Sudan Government acceded in 1930 to the International Labour Organisation’s convention against forced labour, and in 1931 to the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children. A combination of changing economic conditions, world opinion, and the efforts of a few scandalised individuals had finally

446

Empire on the Nile

conquered slavery and the slave trade, the abolition of which had been a stated aim of the campaign to overthrow the Mahdist State over thirty years before.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

The first world war retarded the extension of medical services in the Sudan. The medical department was unable to recruit British civilians, and supplies were difficult to obtain. Beginning in 1919, however, expansion resumed in many directions, and by the early 1930s the general health of the Sudanese had enjoyed impressive progress, despite the devastating local effects of several serious epidemics. In 1916 Dr E. S. Crispin became director of the medical department, and in 1919 was given a seat on the governor-general’s council. He retired in 1922 and was succeeded by O. F. H. Atkey, who served as director until 1933 and presided over the department’s metamorphosis into the Sudan Medical Service in 1924. Atkey was succeeded by E. D. Pridie. The medical service lost direct representation on the council in 1927, when it was incorporated into the department of education and health, an arrangement discontinued in 1934. As in the civil service, so in the medical sphere the civilian element finally prevailed during the war, and in line with this the medical department assumed responsibility for the Blue Nile and Upper Nile provinces in 1919. After the evacuation of the Egyptian Army in 1924 civilian responsibility was extended to Kassala, Kordofan, and the Fung, leaving only the Bahr al-Ghazal and Mongalla in the exclusive hands of a newly constituted Medical Corps of the SDF. In the wake of the depres¬ sion, military medical personnel were phased out, and the medical service assumed control of all government medical work in the country, civil and military.70 The most important development in the provision of qualified doctors was the establishment of the Kitchener School of Medicine in 1924. Kitchener had expressed interest in such a school, but nothing was done until after his death in 1916, when Wingate began to solicit funds. After the war Atkey took up the matter, and by 1924 some ££50,000 had been raised in Britain and the Sudan. Government interest in the project was prompted by various administrative as well as medical concerns. The school was formally inaugurated by Stack in February 1924, in new buildings near the Khartoum railway station. The first registrar was Dr Norman Smith, whose teaching staff were borrowed from the medical service and the Wellcome Laboratories. Students were selected from among final-year boys at Gordon College, where a science course was added in 1924 to provide pre-medical classes. Students received free room and board and

Economic and social developments, 1920-1933

447

text-books, and an allowance. Their course of study, loosely modelled on the British curriculum, stressed, however, tropical diseases and practical training, and lasted four years. The school’s endowment benefited from the largesse of Hashim Bey Baghdadi, a wealthy merchant, who established a trust fund for the school and made it a beneficiary of his estate.71 The school graduated its first Sudanese doctors in 1928, seven in number, and by the end of 1933 had graduated thirty-four. The fact that retrenchment required a reduction in the number of foreign doctors from seventy-three in 1930 to forty-nine in 1935 illustrates the vital role played by the Kitchener School. Between 1919 and 1933 some fifty-five British doctors joined the Sudan Government, seven in both 1926 and 1927 alone, among them men of the highest qualifications, but the continuing expansion of medical care during the difficult decade of the thirties would have been impossible without the steady enlistment in the service of qualified Sudanese practitioners.72 In 1914 some 10,015 in-patients and 206,891 out-patients had been treated by only seven British and about thirty Lebanese doctors in fourteen hospitals. In 1925 a total of 22,809 in-patients and 530,013 out-patients were treated by twenty-four British and thirty Lebanese doctors and fifty medical assistants in eighteen hospitals and fifty dispensaries. These indices expanded rapidly during the following decade: in 1935 forty-four British, eight Lebanese, and fifty-three Sudanese doctors, with the help of 227 medical assistants, treated 89,083 in-patients and over six million out¬ patient cases in 39 hospitals and 276 dispensaries. The budget for medical services rose steadily from ££106,143 in 1925 to ££263,566 in 1931, when it began to decline. It did not surpass the 1931 figure until 1937. In 1925 medical services accounted for 2 2 per cent of government expenditure, in 1935 for 5.9 per cent. The total number of hospital beds increased from 1,284 in I92^ to 4>I29 in 1936. Provision of hospital services continued, however, to be very uneven, Darfur and the southern provinces lagging behind.73 The CMS’s hospital at Omdurman and small hospitals elsewhere, especially in the south and notably at Lui in Mongalla, con¬ tinued the tradition of medical missionary work and filled a gap in government service. In the 1920s a greater degree of specialisation in care and in the training of Sudanese was undertaken. The medical service assumed responsibility for the quarantine station for pilgrims at Suakin in 1927, and other quarantine stations were established in connection with specific medical problems. In 1925 a Women’s Hospital was opened in Omdurman, and between 1925 and 1933 six hospitals and more than a hundred dispensaries were built, while existing facilities were enlarged and improved. In 1930 a hospital was opened at Juba. In 1924 specialists in medicine and surgery

448

Empire on the Nile

were appointed to the service, and in 1928 an ophthalmic surgeon, whose eye clinic in Khartoum was soon well attended. A gynaecologist was appointed in 1926.74 One of the most important training programmes undertaken was in midwifery. This was largely the work of two British midwives and nurses, Mabel and Gertrude Wolff. In 1920 Mabel Wolff was invited to begin a midwifery training school in Omdurman. In overcoming the obstacles of official and popular scepticism, insufficient finance, poor facilities, and entrenched attitudes towards childbirth she was successful, the result of perseverance, resourcefulness, and a formidable manner. The Midwifery Training School began in a few small houses in January 1921 with four students.75 Training was free, and small allowances were made to pupils. Private donations supplemented the budget. Over a four-month course (raised to six months in 1924) instruction was given in hygiene, basic anatomy and physiology, practical experience, and child care. A special box of midwifery equipment was designed and given to each graduate, along with a licence to practise. She was also provided with an ‘outfit’, or uniform, to set her apart from an untrained daya. An attempt was made initially to train women already experienced in midwifery. Recruitment was difficult, but improved as the reputation of the school and its graduates spread. By the beginning of the second term, there was already ‘no difficulty in getting candidates to come in and train, and ... a marked improvement and appreciation of the work’. By 1923 some thirty-eight midwives had been trained. The appointment of Sudanese staff midwives, beginning in 1922, freed the matron for other duties, especially for tours of inspection and recruitment outside the Three Towns, which began in 1924. Eventually staff midwives assumed the ordinary conduct of the school as well as inspection duties. In 1925 Gertrude Wolff began a Nurses’ Training School at the new Women’s Hospital in Omdurman. As in female teacher¬ training, a problem was encountered in recruiting suitable trainees and in retaining their services. Progress, while slow, was important, and con¬ tributed to a growing acceptance of nursing and of the value of hospital care.76 By the mid-1920s there was already a superabundance of trainee mid¬ wives, and places were limited because of inadequate accommodation and facilities. In 1929 there were still only two staff midwives, under whom fifteen trainees, three staff nurses, and twenty probationers were enrolled. Owing to Mabel Wolff’s prolonged illness in 1929, her sister was appointed assistant superintendent of midwives in 1930. By 1931 some 153 midwives had been trained, of whom 126 were practising throughout the Northern Sudan. Working conditions at the school remained difficult, and it was not until 1932 that new buildings were provided and an ante-natal clinic was

Economic and social developments,

1920-19JJ

449

established which, after the usual initial period of popular uncertainty, proved successful, and had an attendance of over 1,100 in 1933. In 1932 the first student midwives from the Upper Nile Province were enrolled. By 1933 the midwifery course was so popular that applicants from the Three Towns were accepted only on a fee-paying basis.77 The work of ‘the Wolves’, as they were known, and of the largely unsung and underpaid midwives they trained was among the most valuable and, indeed, practical contributions of the Condominium regime to the improvement of life in the Sudan. In other areas of medicine important steps were taken in the post-war period. The systematic training of medical assistants for hospitals began in 1921, and of Sudanese sanitary inspectors (later called public health officers) in 1931, in an effort to economise by replacing British officials. A three-year diploma course produced the first of these inspectors in 1934. The Wellcome Laboratories continued pionering work. Dr A. J. Chalmers retired as director in 1920 and was succeeded by Dr R. G. Archibald, who held the post until 1936. Under him the government assumed control of the laboratories, which in 1925, with assistance from the Stack Indemnity Fund, occupied a new building and were renamed the Stack Laboratories.78 In controlling and treating epidemic and endemic diseases important strides were made, sometimes at an appalling cost to medical practitioners and to the lives of the people they treated. Doctors were not immune to disease. Replying to tactless criticism of slow progress made in treating sleeping sickness, a 1923 report pointed out that in Zandeland, ‘the first Senior Medical Officer left the district worn out in mind and body and quite unfit to return: the second died three days after reaching Tembura: the third had his health permanently impaired through an attack of blackwater fever and the fourth left the district suffering from repeated attacks of malaria at short intervals’.79 Control of sleeping sickness in Mongalla progressed from difficult beginnings in 1911. Detected cases fell from 268 that year to only one in 1928. In the Bahr al-Ghazal greater efforts were required. In 1918 sleeping sickness was discovered among the Azande in Tembura District. A segregation camp was established nearby, but for the endless medical and physical labour needed there were no more than two officials, and one of them, Nasib Effendi Baz, a Lebanese medical officer, was often left alone. In February 1920 he established a settlement of sleeping sickness victims at Source Yabu near the Congo border. The success of that settlement and the belief that the disease could not be controlled as long as people were dispersed, led to a fateful decision to enforce their concentration in settlements along permanent roads. The Azande customarily lived in isolated homesteads rather than in villages, and great difficulty was

45°

Empire on the Nile

encountered in forcing them to gather. By June 1923 there were seven medical staff in the district. Detected cases of sleeping sickness fell from 839 in 1923-4 to 276 in 1924-5, 79 in 1926, and only 26 in 1928. Of 3,630 cases treated at Source Yabu, 1,661 died. No further epidemic outbreak of the disease occurred in the Sudan until the early 1950s.80 Only minor outbreaks of smallpox were reported during the first two decades of the Condominium. In 1925 some 147 cases were detected, and the period 1927-31 witnessed a major epidemic, with some 6,467 cases reported in 1929. Outbreaks occurred in several places, but by far the most serious was in Darfur, where over 6,000 cases were reported that year. An intensive vaccinating campaign was undertaken, over 500,000 doses being administered in 1929 alone. Epidemics of cerebrospinal meningitis occurred in 1918-24, 1926-30, and 1931-6. Spreading from Uganda, the disease was detected at Kajo Kaji and Yei in 1918-19, whence it spread west and north. In 1929-30 some 278 cases were reported, with a fatality rate of over 70 per cent. The major epidemic of 1930-6 first appeared in Khartoum in February 1931. Of 348 cases detected that year, 240 ended in death. In 1932 the fatality rate in 532 cases was 72 per cent. The height of the epidemic was not reached until 1936, when of 13,440 detected cases, 8,906 were fatal. Even more serious than this epidemic was the outbreak of relapsing fever that spread from West Africa to Darfur in 1926. Statistics are unreliable, but it has been estimated that some ten thousand deaths by the end of that year were attributable to the disease. To prevent its eastward spread, quarantine and de-lousing stations were situated along the major routes. These and other measures succeeded in localising the disease, but in April 1930 cases were discovered in the Gezira, probably carried by migrant labourers. The virulence of the epidemic had by then subsided, however, and the fatality rate was low.81 Of endemic diseases, malaria remained a focus of concern. Until the post-war years efforts to combat it were limited to the towns, especially Khartoum. With the advent of the Gezira Scheme, attention shifted there. The vast extent of canalisation was a major obstacle to the usual forms of control: drainage, ‘larviciding’, and the use of mosquito-nets. In later years research produced new methods of prevention and control, but malaria remained, and continues to be, the most seriously widespread endemic disease in the Sudan. Incidences of schistosomiasis, only occasionally detected before the 1920s, increased with the immigration of labourers and the development of irrigation schemes. Efforts were therefore focused on screening workers coming from Egypt and the west, and in annual surveys in the Gezira. These showed apparent success, since only a very low incidence of schistosomiosis was recorded in the region before the 1940s.82

Conclusion

At the time of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest the Sudan was a land in need of rest. By their acceptance of the new regime the great majority of Sudanese attested to this. The occasional risings of religiously inspired rebels were colourful but desperate and, with one or two exceptions, unpopular, and their suppression owed as much to local apathy or even opposition as to government action. The resistance of southern peoples was of a different nature, a symptom of the government’s failure to rule. The Pax Britannica, where it was imposed, was alien, but it was peace, and it was in the area of domestic security that the Sudan Government, whatever its claims to innovation, introduced the greatest change in the life of the Sudan. In other areas change was slower and less perceptible. It was not jokingly that Sudanese spoke of the Condominium as the Second Turkiya: in its structure, in its functions, and in its apparent attitudes (towards, for instance, religion, slavery, and taxation), the new regime imposed no sweeping changes. Symbolically deriving its legitimacy from the old Turco-Egyptian regime, reoccupying its capital, reimposing its governor-general, its ’ulama\ its currency, the Anglo-Egyptian regime was essentially conservative, a continuation of the government that had been interrupted by the revolution of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi. Thus the term ‘reconquest’, although a misnomer when applied to the British, was nonetheless more than a facade, and the regime that followed it was much less than the start from nothing that its earliest officials proclaimed it. From the beginning the regime was conscious that it would be compared with its predecessors, and it deliberately set out to win Sudanese acquiescence and support. Did it deserve it? On the basis of this study some conclusions may be reached. Beyond its greatest achievement, order, its legacy was mixed, largely because to many administrators the function of government did not extend beyond the maintenance of order. That they were usually honest and sympathetic was in itself a source of contrast with the Turkiya. Administration was a profession, the proper work of ‘politi451

4J2

Empire on the Nile

cal’ officers, while the business of education, health, social welfare, economic development, and so forth was secondary, incidental, to be left to others. Illiteracy, disease, and poverty were less a constant challenge than a perpetual reminder of the rulers’ cultural and racial superiority. If it ever seemed unfair to a British official that his salary was one hundred or one thousand times higher than the income of the Sudanese who helped to pay it, he was silent on the subject. To that same Sudanese, circa 1920, the Sudan Government must have presented an imposing edifice, rock-solid, permanent, unshakeable. But much of that edifice was a facade, from the paternalism of a new, Oxbridgeeducated district official, to the apparently masterful marshalling of economic forces that the Gezira Scheme represented. The government had few ‘policies’, and enforced even fewer; it operated on as personal a basis as any small club, and no less efficiently. The Egyptian Army, visible guarantor of rule, was mistrusted by the government it was supposed to protect. An impressive communications system was as secure as one wire fallen or cut. In education the government relied on simple numbers to prove its progress, while admitting its failure by constantly hiring for¬ eigners to staff its own offices. In financial affairs the government teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, exposed as incompetent and amateurish in the real world beyond Egyptian subventions. A generation after its rule began, the Sudan Government still relied on a reputation for achievement won by Maxim guns at Karari and reinforced by the absence of serious revolt. The reality of British rule was belied by Kitchener’s Khartoum. Was policy towards Mahdism the result of analysis (or even of knowledge) or of the irrational vengeance of an apostate Austrian adventurer? Was econ¬ omic development slow because the Sudan had little to offer, or because it had a conservative, inexperienced, and complacent ruling class ignorantly suspicious of development itself? Was the agonisingly slow abolition of slavery a result of keen appreciation for Sudanese susceptibility and economic necessity, or was it more the reflection of officials’ prejudices about black Africans and the stigma of servility? Was the Sudanese educated class distrusted as wreckers or as rivals? And was education itself geared to economic needs or limited by snobbish meanness and cultural insecurity ? Were Egyptians removed because they posed a danger to public order, or because they represented an alternative model of national advance? Was Southern Policy a reasoned approach to the problems of that region, or simply a housekeeping procedure that endorsed neglect and postponed administration? Were patrols, in north and south, imperial peacekeeping or tawdry medal-hunting? Was Indirect Rule a recognition of indigenous genius, or a sentence of perpetual inferiority? Personality, not policy, determined the course of the Condominium:

Conclusion

453

Kitchener of Khartoum, as strange in his way as Gordon had been; Cromer and Wingate, ruler and regnant; Slatin Pasha, succeeded in different ways by Willis and Davies; Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman and Sayyid 'Ali, the epitome of sectarianism; the Three Secretaries; Crispin and Christopherson; 'Abdallah al-Sihayni at the gates of Nyala; Fiki 'Ali and F. C. C. Balfour; Willis and the kujurs; MacMichael, bureaucrat and genealogist; Tembura and Yambio; Archer and his council; Maffey and Loraine; 'Ali 'Abd alLatif and that anonymous officer; Huddleston Pasha hunting 'Ali Dinar with a rifle in 1916, Sudanese soldiers with a howitzer in 1924, and Nuer cattlemen with RAF bombs in 1928; Hashim Bey Baghdadi, Wellcome, and Mather; men with guns in a Cairo street; Allenby and Zaghlul; 'Ali alTum, Fergie Bey, Murray at the Foreign Office, Gorst and 'Abbas Hilmi, Kennedy building Port Sudan, the lives of Babikr Bedri, Garstin, the Wolves, Lady Wingate, Sitt Amna, Jackson Pasha, tourists and doctors, sharati and shaykhs, governors and ungoverned - their collective stories and relations mock the notion of policy, defy generalisation, cry out to the biographer, and illustrate what was meant by empire.

Abbreviations (used in the notes, bibliography and tables)

ADI

Assistant director of intelligence

Bakheit, BA

G. M. A. Bakheit, British administration and Sudanese nationalism (see bibliography) Richard Hill, Biographical dictionary of the Sudan (see bibliography) Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

BD BBRISMES BNP

Blue Nile Province

C., Cd., Cmd

Command Paper

CAB

Cabinet (Public Record Office classification)

CAIRINT

National Record Office (Khartoum) classifica¬ tion

CAO

Sudan

CEB

Central Economic Board

Government,

Civil

Administration

Orders CIB, AR

Commercial Intelligence Branch, Annual Report

CIVSEC

National Record Office classification

CO

Colonial Office

CS

Civil Secretary

Daly, BA

M. W. Daly, British administration and the

Northern Sudan (see bibliography) DARFUR

National Record Office classification

Davies Memo, 1926

R. Davies, ‘Memorandum on the policy of the Sudan Government towards the Mahdist cult’, 11 December 1926, FO 371/12374

DEP MILNER

Bodleian classification (for the Milner papers)

DI

Director of intelligence

DMI

Director of military intelligence

DP

Davies Papers, University of Edinburgh Library (see bibliography) 454

Abbreviations ERP

FO FS GG GMC Handbook, 1912 HC HH HL ID IG IJAHS INTEL IRE JAH KORDOFAN LP LS MECOX MES MONGALLA NMP NP PALACE PD PRO PS PSI REPORTS RFACS

RHL SAD

455

L. M. Sanderson and G. N. Sanderson, Educa¬ tion, religion and politics in Southern Sudan (see bibliography) Foreign Office (and Public Record Office classi¬ fication) Financial Secretary Governor-general Gordon Memorial College General Staff, Handbook of the Egyptian Army (see bibliography) House of Commons Hatfield House House of Lords Intelligence department Inspector-general International Journal of African Historical Studies National Record Office classification Intelligence report, Egypt Journal of African History National Record Office classification Lethem papers, Rhodes House Library (see bib¬ liography) Legal Secretary Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford Middle Eastern Studies National Record Office classification Nuba Mountains Province Niemeyer papers, Public Record Office (see bibliography) National Record Office classification Parliamentary debates Public Record Office (and a classification there) Private secretary to the governor-general Public security intelligence National Record Office classification Reports on the finances, administration and con¬ ditions of (Egypt and) the Sudan (see biblio¬ graphy) Rhodes House Library, Oxford Sudan Archive, University of Durham Library

456 SDF SECURITY SG SIR SNR SPS SPS SSIR UNP WNP WO

Abbreviations Sudan Defence Force National Record Office classification Sudan Gazette Sudan intelligence report Sudan Notes and Records Sudan political service H. A. MacMichael (ed.), Sudan Political Service (see bibliography) Sudan secret intelligence report Upper Nile Province White Nile Province War Office (and PRO classification)

Tables

Table i Sudan Government revenue and expenditure, 1899-1933

Revenue

Expenditure

Revenue

Expenditure

1899

126,569

230,238

1917

2,195,355

1,901,941

1900

156,888

33i,9l8

1918

2,774,689

2,336,3U

1901

242,309

407,335

1919

2,992,792

2,720,513

1902

270,226

516,94 5

1920

4,425,340

3,564,848

1903

462,605

616,361

1921

4,069,235

3,900,000

1904

579.013

628,931

1922

3,498,595

3,496,999

1905

665,411

681,881

1923

3,766,133

3,392,470

1906

817,921

827,961

1924

4,298,856

3,453,273

1925

45866,883

4,375,670 5,482,388

975.973

1,012,357

1908

979.343

1,163,657

1926

5,857,988

1909

1.042,599

1,15 3,519

1927

5,929,945

5,550,493

1910

1,171,007

1,214,676

1928

6,646,883

6,045,286

1911

1,311,218

1,350,854

1929

4,835,003

4,463,687

1912

1,428,605

1,490,668

1930

4,693,623

4,693,623

r9r3

1,654,149

1,614,007

1931

4,398,618

4,398,618

1932

3,853,798

3,853,798

1933

3,631,552

3,621,957

1907

1,543,549

M31,346

1915

I>495>227

1,463,934

1916

1,857,856

1,74 5 > 5 3 2

19 !4

Sources: ‘The Sudan. Historical survey’, Stone, The Finance, 65-69.

1924, PALACE 1/3/63

;RFACS,

1900-34;

1 Until 1928 gross receipts and expenditures for the Sudan Government Railways were included in government revenue and expenditure figures. In and after 1929 only net profits (or losses) were included.

457

45 8

Tables Table 2 Total value of imports and exports (in £E), 1901-33 Exports

Exports

Imports

Imports

1918

3,923,77i

4,024,582

744,677

19l9

2,740,759

4,805,745

749,747

1920

4,713,000

7,007,000

389,364

1,098,750

1921

2,057,000

5,806,000

1905

309,000

1,263,000

1922

1,993,000

4,253,000

1906

264,096

-

1923

2,562,000

4,669,000

1924

276,079

1901 1902

395>321

1903

397.565

1904

547,2”

449.329

1,604,137

3,533,5 18

5,474,9io

1908

5I5.938

1,892,798

1925

3,803,527

5,437,727

1909

673,902

1,775,957

1926

5>I9°>5°5

5,574,401

1910

977.621

1,931,426

1927

5,229,419

6,15 5,314

1911

i.376,958

2,273,949

1928

5,947,026

6,463,206

1912

1,373,”9

1,967,429

1929

6,809,122

6,856,114

1913

1,185,186

2,109,476

1930

5,246,013

6,177,410

1914

1,020,260

1,891,494

1931

2,oi5,597

3,761,013

1915

i,577,99i

1,704,250

1932

4,160,9 51

3,054,644

1916

2,288,403

2,661,468

1933

2,886,511

3,160,619

3,490,565

3,102,117

1907

1917

Sources: RFACS,

1903-08;

CIB, ARs.

Sources conflict, especially in the years

before 1907.

Table 3 Estimated ivory exports, 1899-1931 (in tons and £E) Tons

£E

18 99

over 5

-

1916

78

1900

over 13

-

1917

63

39 50 45 38 57

Tons

£E

70,234 57,25i

!5 57 49

7,925 34,7oi

1918

29,826

1920

1904

64

43,i95

1921

1905

76

51,326

1922

1906

37,oi7

1923

42

56,512

40,304

1924 1925

1909

60

39,673 45,056

32 43

47,808

1908

5° 49 50

1926

25

1910

83

60,999

1927

191 I

25

39,651 34,594

99

19

25,900

107

73,932 94,465

1928

1912

1929

11

1913

I25

113,236

1930

1914

92

84,605

1931

4 8

J4,573 3,348 5,943

1915

60

48,132

Sources: CIB, AR,

1919; Stone,

1901 1902 1903

1907

Sudan,

1919

235-6;

CIB, AR,

1931-32.

35,624 46,556 78,819 32,410 63,308

69,849

Tables

459

Table 4 Quantity and value of gum exports, 1899-1933 (in tons and £E$) Tons

I9°9 1910 1911 1912

2.745 7.693 9,900 8,065 11,816 7,no 7,29° 9,325 TO,108 13,282

-

00

268,878 192,920 113>131 96,000 154,592 I75>271 2or,238 217,932 435,622

0,577 14,357 19,615

371,528 314,9I9 30,919 586,102

!5,I29 12,372 11,615 O

OO ''T

19O OH 1915 1916

-

O

007 t9o8

1,890

ON

1899 1900 1901 r 902 1903 1904 1905 1906

Tons

£E$

1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 193 3

£E$

16,614 15,490

744,345 638,837

i2,ro9 11,023 14,568

566,925 346,863 530,023 1,006,623 846,879

22,425 20,363 18,956 22,744 21,239 22,777 16,787 20,072 20,086 19,452 iy,oS6

79i,931 844,198 680,887 724,468 687,672 980,157 602,753 461,904 393,333

Sources: CIB, AR, 1919, 193T-32; Stone, Sudan, 224-8; Financial and Trade statistics.

Table 5 Estimated dura production, exports, and price at Omdurman (1907-34) Omdurman price (in £E per 100 kg) Crop (tons)

Exports (tons)

April

May

1907

248,325

—

0.266

0.275

1908

175,708

-

0.440

0.326

1909 1910 1911

258,000

22,000

0.327

Q-375

212,500

32,000

0.215

0.212

r63,ooo

18,000

0.3 r r

0.323

1912

129,000

r,ooo

0.863

0.944

1913

112,000

2,000

0.886

0.782

1914

250,000

—

1.230

1

190

-

46,000

0.392

0.524

r9i6

0.565

°-515

OO

0.65 r

0.646

t9i8

0.920

0.980

190

1.422

1.422

T920

-393

Tables

460

Table 5 -

cont. Omdurman price (in £E per 100 kg) April

Exports (tons)

Crop (tons)

May

1921

511,000

31,000

2.03']

1922

O O O

44,000

0.62

1923

217,000

37,000

0.56

1924

141,000

34,000

0.58

per

1925

163,000

26,000

0.92

. year

1926

75,ooo

-

i-33

1927

94,000

—

i-93

1928

223,000

5,000

1.67

1929

114,000

4,000

0.81

1930

245,000

9,000

1931

144,000

19,000

100,000

1 (Jan.-May)

1932 1933

ardeb,

average

87,995 (Jan.-May)

1934

Sources: CIB, AR,

Table 6

1914, 1919, 1931--32;

RFACS

for 1908.

Quantity and value of exported cotton, 1920-33

Ginned cotton (in tons)

Cotton seed Value (£E)

(in tons)

Value (£E)

1920

3.954

1,605,742

7,470

87,264

1921

5.023

378,893

9,291

65,999

1922

4,400

341,796

9,043

63,437

1923

5,093

458,188

9,308

7i,235

1924

8,364

1,460,991

18,003

156,669

1925

7,753

1,636,784

13,93 9

119,269

1926

22,160

2,834,845

46,670

256,514

1927

28,846

3,190,289

57,847

359,4M

1928

23,450

3,589,480

47,960

398,484

1929

30,456

4,583,133

59,8oo

398,559

1930

27,768

3,046,330

56,267

205,746

1931

9,005

512,608

47,637

129,110

1932

38,249

2,057,071

94,807

284,243

1933

24,395

1,396,627

51,068

180,089

Sources: CIB, AR,

1931-32;

Financial and trade statistics 1926-38.

Tables Table 7

461

Average quantities and values of principal imports, 1909-18

Refined sugar

Tons

£E

Tons

£E

1909-13

1909-13

1913-18

1913-18

342,822

12,346

210,525

12,991

Wheat flour

6-779

74,666

5,662

74,783

Cotton fabrics

3.493

458,063

3,606

646,8 5 6

Coffee

2,407

111,807

29,542

636

62,833

Petroleum

230

11,645

202

17,294

Coal

68,423

85,881

58,45 5

201,598

Iron steel

I3.M9

2,354

24,955

Sources: CIB, AR,

O

54,496

489

00

1,404

Tea

1919,

Table 8

Tons

Imports of refined sugar, 1907-31 Value (£E)

Tons

Value (£E)

1907

6,651

—

1921

6,729

413,773

1908

8,708

-

1922

10,157

450,271

1909

9,230

151,5 71

1923

7,810

219,669

1910

10,836

185,480

1924

13,553

400,786

1911

11,833

198,960

1925

13,725

380,480

1912

13,768

257,866

1926

22,345

49V595

r9T3

16,066

258,750

1927

17,758

394,641

1914

i4,931

239,076

1928

24,298

535,966

1915

10,845

226,256

1929

29,922

1916

11,991

330,150

1930

31,249

559,226

1917

11,146

409,555

1931

23,859

400,959

1918

12,966

593,146

19l9

13,221

674,586

1920

14,821

1,119,506

Sources: CIB, AR,

1919,1931-32.

Notes

I.

THE FOUNDATION OF THE AN G L O - E G Y PTI AN CONDOMINIUM

Khartoum campaign 1898, London, 3rd ed., 1899, 257-61. Life of Lord Kitchener, London, 1920, v.i, 2445; Philip Magnus, Kitchener, portrait of an imperialist, London, 1958, 132. This was the first war-time use of Lyddite shells. (E. W. C. Sandes, The Royal Engineers in Egypt and the Sudan, Chatham, 1937, 259, citing ‘Novelties in the Soudan campaign’ ini?. E. Journal, 28, 1898, 2io.)See also Ismet Hasan Zulfo, Karari, the Sudanese account of the battle of Omdurman, London, 1980, 145; and Babikr Bedri, The memoirs of Bahikr Bedri, v.i, London, 1969, 235. SIR 60, 25 May-31 December 1898, appendix 19. Cf. Zulfo, Karari, 230, and W. S. Churchill, The river war, London, 2nd ed., 1900, v.2, 311. Burleigh, Khartoum, 230, 234. See, e.g., Churchill, The river war, v.2, 174. For Churchill’s personal dislike of Kitchener see Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, v.i, Youth,

1

Bennet Burleigh,

2

Ibid.,

3

4

5 6

258; Sir George Arthur,

Boston, 1966, 393, 425. 7

Kitchener to Cromer,

1

February

1899, end.

in Cromer to Salisbury,

17

Despatches from Her Majesty’s agent and consul-general in Egypt respecting the conduct of the British and Egyptian troops after the battle of Omdurman, Egypt No. 1, 1899, C.9133. SIR 60. Churchill, The river war, v.2, 195-6. Cf. Zulfo, Karari, 234; Ernest N. Bennett, The downfall of the dervishes, London, 1898, 182-3. Other eye¬ February 1899,

8 9

witnesses confirmed the official account: see e.g. letter home from an officer of the

Rifle

Brigade,

5

September

1898,

Royal

Green

Jackets

Museum,

Winchester.

The river war, v.2, 223-5. C/. Burleigh, Khartoum, Winston S. Churchill, v.i, 410. The river war, 176.

10

Churchill,

11

Quoted in R. Churchill,

12

Churchill,

13

Maxwell to Wingate, 24 May 1908, SAD 282/5.

Karari, 256.

14

Zulfo,

15

SIR

16

Bennett,

230-4.

No source is cited.

60, appendix 19b.

Downfall,

232-3. Apparently, much of the contents of the Omdur¬

man arsenal was auctioned, some items having been reserved as trophies for the battalions. See Burleigh,

Khartoum, i6y. 462

Notes to pages 4-10 17

Burleigh,

18

Bennett,

Khartoum, 237. Downfall, 222: ‘Some

463

pieces of tawdry drapery which had covered

the tomb lay on the ground, and these I brought away.’

The river war, v.2, 209. The memoirs of Babikr Bedri,

19

Churchill,

20

Babikr Bedri,

21

See F. Rehfisch (ed. and trans.), ‘Omdurman during the Mahdiya’,

v.2, London, 1980, 80-1.

SNR,

48,

1967,38-9. 22

P. M. Holt,

The Mahdist State in the Sudan 1881-1898, Oxford, 2nd ed., 1970, Memoirs, v.i, 234-5; Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 260.

240; Babikr Bedri,

Concerning the destruction of the Mahdi’s tomb see C. L. Shaefer, ‘The re¬ conquest of the Soudan’, 14 May 1890, FO 141-315. 23

Cromer to Salisbury, 12 March 1899, citing Kitchener, PRO 30/57/14.

24

Cromer to Salisbury, 17 February 1899, in

Despatches.

See also Cromer to

Salisbury, 2 March 1899, HH, 3M/A112/17.

The river war,

25

Churchill,

26

Quoted in Cromer to Salisbury, 12 March 1899, PRO 30/57/14.

v.2, 213-14.

27

Cromer to Salisbury, 2 March 1899, HH, 3M/A112/17.

28

Magnus,

29

Salisbury to Cromer, 27 February 1899, HH, 3M/A113/97.

Kitchener,

133.

30

Quoted in Cromer to Salisbury, 12 March 1899, PRO 30/57/14.

31

Cromer to Salisbury, 13 March 1899, PRO 30/57/14.

32

Downfall, 225. With Kitchener to Khartum, London, 1898, 300-1, Burleigh, Khartoum, 229-30; Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 81. Cf. Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, v.i, 250. SIR 60.

33 34 35 36

Bennett,

G. W. Steevens,

37

Salisbury to Cromer, 2 August 1898, FO 78/4955.

38

Wingate to his wife, 18 September 1898, SAD 233/5.

39

Sandes,

The Royal Engineers,

309.

279. This is confirmed in Wingate to his wife, 16

Cf SIR 60, Europe and the Upper Nile, 1882-1899, September 1898, SAD 233/5.

and G. N. Sanderson, Edinburgh,

1965,

England,

333.

See

also

Wingate to Temperley, 31 December 1938, SAD 244/6, and M. W. Daly, ‘Omdurman Wingate’,

and

Fashoda,

BBRISMES

1898:

edited

and

annotated

letters

of

F.

R.

102/1; Wingate to his wife,

18

10, 1, 1983, 21—37.

40

The letter is printed as appendix 47 to

SIR

41

Wingate diary,

SAD

17 September

1898,

60.

September 1898, SAD 233/5. 42

Wingate to his wife, 23 September

1898, SAD 233/5. ^ee also Wingate to

Cromer, 12 April 1895, SAD 261/32. 43

See

44

SIR

SIR 60, 60,

appendix 57.

appendix

72.

See

also

Rundle

to

Hunter,

25

September

1898,

CAIRINT 1/61/323. 45 46

SIR 60, appendix 72. Ibid., enclosure C:

During

the

fighting

with

Ahmad

Fadil,

the

Anglo-

Egyptian force lost 43, while the Mahdists reportedly lost ‘500 killed, besides numbers who were drowned’. 47

SIR

48

Ibid.

49

SIR

50

Talbot to Wingate, 1 December 1898, SAD 266/12.

60, appendix 77c.

60.

464

Notes to pages 10-1$

51 Mahon (El Obeid) to Wingate, 29 December 1899, SAD 269/12. 52 Wingate to Kitchener, 25 November 1899, CAIRINT 1/66/340. For the battle see Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 297-301. 5 3 Salisbury to Cromer, 16 March 1896, and Cromer to Salisbury, 18 March 1896, FO 78/4892. See Muddathir Abdel Rahim, Imperialism and nationalism in the Sudan, Oxford, 1969, 25, citing Cromer to Salisbury, 14 March 1896, FO 78/ 4893; and Cromer to Rosebery, 12 April 1895, FO 633/7. 54 Cromer to Salisbury, 11 April 1896, FO 78/4893. 55 Cromer to Salisbury, 4 December 1896, FO 78/4895. Sir Thomas Sanderson, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, minuted (4 December 1896, FO 78/4895) that ‘logically it will not be very easy to defend a proclamation by the Khedive’s Commander in Chief that he is administering and occupying the Soudan with the Khedive’s officers and troops on behalf of H.M. Govt, by their orders’. 56 Salisbury to Cromer, 5 December 1896, FO 78/4895. 57 Cromer to Salisbury, 7 December 1896, FO 78/4895. 58 Cromer, Memorandum end. in Cromer to Salisbury,' 5 November 1897, FO 78/4959. Kitchener suggested that the Sudan be administered as ‘a crown colony of Egypt’ (‘Memorandum presented to Ford Cromer on the 4th April 1897’, SAD 266/1/1). 59 See Cromer to FO, 24 April 1896; Sir P. Currie (Istanbul) to FO, 24 April 1896; Cromer to FO, 25 April 1896; Salisbury to Currie, 27 April 1896; and Admiralty to commander-in-chief, Mediterranean Station, 30 April 1896, FO 78/4893. 60 Salisbury to Cromer, 3 June 1898, FO 78/5050. Salisbury’s assumption about the significance of the capital has no basis in international law: see Sanderson, England, 268m 61 G. N. Sanderson, Introduction to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 8-9; idem., England, 396-402. 62 Cromer, memorandum, 15 June 1898, FO 78/4956. 63 Salisbury to Cromer, 2 August 1898, FO 78/4955. This statement was drafted by Cromer. See Sanderson, England, 267m 64 Salisbury to Cromer, 24 October 1898, HH, 3M/A113/80. 65 Cromer, memorandum for Salisbury, 10 November 1898, FO 78/4957. For other examples of condominium see Abdalla A. El-Erian, Condominium and related situations in international law, Cairo, 1952. The agreement has been published in, e.g., J. C. Hurewitz, ed., The Middle East and North Africa in world politics, a documentary record, New Haven and Fondon, 2nd ed., 1975, 473-75; for Cromer’s memorandum of 10 November 1898, Ibid., 468-73. 66 Cromer, Modern Egypt, London, 1908, v.2, 116. 67 Cromer, memorandum for Salisbury, 10 November 1898, FO 78/4957. Cf. Abdel Rahim, Imperialism, 31, and Cromer, Modern Egypt, m-12. 68 Although a guarantor of the Ottoman Empire, Britain claimed to have conquered, in concert with a part of that empire, territory that de jure remained its possession. Salisbury similarly claimed ‘complete control over the action of the Khedivial Govt.’ by right of conquest. (Salisbury to Cromer, 15 May 1898, FO 78/5185.) 69 Cf. Sanderson, England, 367. 70 Cromer, Memorandum for Salisbury, 10 November 1898. 71 The ‘Supplemental Agreement’ is published in Hurewitz, ed., The Middle East, 475.

Notes to pages 15-25

465

72 See Richard Hill, Egypt in the Sudan 1820-1881, London, 1959, 167. 73 Cromer, Memorandum for Salisbury, 10 November 1898. 74 Palmer, Memorandum, n.d., end. in Palmer to Kitchener, n.d., [April 1897], SAD 266/1/1. 75 Kitchener, ‘Memorandum presented to Lord Cromer on the 10th April 1897’, SAD 266/1/1. 76 Cromer, Memorandum for Salisbury, 10 November 1898. 77 Kitchener, Memorandum, n.d., FO 78/4957. 78 Salisbury to Cromer, 9 December 1898, HH, 3M/A113/85. See also Cromer to Salisbury, 15 December 1898, HH, 3M/A111/76, and FO to Cromer, 3 January 1899, FO 78/4958. 79 Cromer to Salisbury, 18 December 1898, HH, 3M/A111/81. 80 Cromer, Memorandum for Salisbury, 10 November 1898. 81 Cromer, Modem Egypt, v.2, 112, 119. 82 See Karol J. Krotki, Travellers’ and administrators’ guesses of population size in XIX and early XX century Sudan contrasted with quasi-stable estimates, n.p. [Calgary], n.d. 83 ‘Memorandum on the Bahr el Ghazal’, 7 April 1895, SAD 261. 84 RFACS, 1903, Cromer citing Wingate. 85 RFACS, 1905. 86 SIR, January 1922. 87 K. M. Barbour, ‘Population shifts and changes in the Sudan since 1898’, MES, 2, 2, January 1966, 105. 88 RFACS, 1902, 1903, 1905; Sudan Almanac, 1913, 1932. 89 Memorandum, March 1897, end. in Cromer to Salisbury, 18 March 1897, in Egypt No. j (1897), C.8427. 90 Morant, ‘Report to accompany sketch by Bimbashi Morant Inspector Kassala District’, 15 April 1899, CAIRINT 3/4/73. 91 Butler, ‘Report on patrol in Southern Kordofan’, 14 February 1902, CAIR¬ INT 3/5/92. 92 Count Gleichan, Handbook of the Sudan, London, 1898, 51. 93 Garstin, ‘Note on the Soudan’, 3 May 1899, in Egypt No. 5, 1899, C.9332. 94 For the 1885 and 1897 figures see Dawkins, Memorandum, March 18yj, Egypt No.j, 1897,08427. For the 1902 report see RFACS, 1902;regardingTurcoEgyptian tax records see Hill, Egypt, 41: an 1827 survey showed that where 2,437 water-wheels were recorded in tax registers, only 706 were operated. 95 Peter F. M. McLoughlin, ‘Economic development and the heritage of slavery in the Sudan Republic’, Africa, 32, 4, 1962, 335-91. 96 Wingate to his wife, 28 September 1898, SAD 233/5. 97 Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, v.i, 252. For British reaction to the conquest see Patricia Wright, British public opinion and the rise of imperialist sentiment in relation to expansion in Africa, 1880-1900, University of Warwick Ph.D., 1968,352-60. 98 Programme for Kitchener’s award of the Freedom of London, 4 November 1898, PRO 30/57/105. Cf. Magnus, Kitchener, 147. 99 Programme for London Society of East Anglians, banquet for Kitchener, 14 November 1898, PRO 30/57/105. 100 Magnus, Kitchener, 146. 101 Salisbury to Kitchener, 21 November 1898, HH, 3M/A113/82. 102 ‘Gordon Memorial College Fund. List of donations, legacies, etc.’, SAD 575/ 3; Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 255.

466 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 no 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143

Notes to pages 24-j 1 Holt, The Mahdist State, 104. Talbot to Wingate, 2 November 1898, SAD 266/11. Magnus, Kitchener, 148. Wingate diary, 28, 29 September 1898, SAD 102/1. Talbot to Wingate, 2 November 1898, SAD 266/11. Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 473. Ibid.-, Magnus, Kitchener, 148; H. C. Jackson, Sudan days and ways, London, 1954,24-5. Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 473. A few ‘diagonals’ remain. Ibid., 475, quoting Gorringe notes for Sandes, 4 January 1937. Ibid., 474. Ronald Wingate, Wingate of the Sudan, London, 1955, 124. Wingate to Gordon, Gordon to Wingate, 7 February 1899, SAD 269/2/1. Talbot to Wingate, 16 September 1899, SAD 269/3. Cromer to Salisbury, 9 February 1900, HH, 3M/A112/82. Maxwell to Wingate, ^January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 476-77, citing notes by Sir Charles Gwynn, 25 May 1934, and Basil Burnett to Sandes, 27 April 1935. I have been unable to locate the memoirs supplied to Sandes by Gorringe, Gwynn and others. Ibid., 478, citing Gorringe notes for Sandes, 24 September 1936. Cromer to Salisbury, 9 May 1899, FO 633/6/313. Cromer to Kitchener, ?24 February 1899, PRO 30/57. Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 481; Richard Hill, Sudan transport, London, 1965, 5 r-2Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. Wingate to Cromer, 27 April 1905, SAD 276/4. Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, v. r, 245. Talbot to Wingate, 19 April 1898, SAD 266/4. Talbot to Wingate, 4 February 1898, SAD 266/2. Maxwell to Wingate, 5 November 1898, Talbot to Wingate, 2 November 1898, SAD 266/11. Talbot to Wingate, n December 1898, SAD 266/12. Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 83. See also RFACS, 1898. Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 80-2, 84-6. Talbot to Wingate, 4 April 1899, SAD 269/4. Cromer to Salisbury, 22 April 1899, FO 633/6/312. Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 418. Gabriel Warburg, The Sudan under Wingate, London, 1971, 3. See IRE 9, December 1892 for the use of famine against 'Uthman Diqna. ‘Report on a visit to Abu Deleik made by Bimbashis Boulnois and Battley Jan. 1900’, 13 February 1900, CAIRINT 3/4/70. Maxwell to Wingate, 17 January 1899, SAD 269/1. Cromer to Kitchener, 19 January 1899, PRO 30/57/14. Kitchener to Wingate, n.d., SAD 269/2/1. Talbot to Wingate, 8 February 1899, SAD 269/2/1. Magnus, Kitchener, 149. Cromer to Kitchener, 19 January 1899, PRO 30/57/14. Cromer to Salisbury, 9 February 1899, HH, 3M/A112/8; Cromer to Bar¬ rington, 18 February 1899, 3M/A112/14; Cromer to Salisbury, 2 March 1899, 3M/A112/17; 13 March 1899, 3M/A112/20; 17 March 1899, 3M/A112/21; 26

Notes to pages 31-7

467

January 1900, 3M/A112/69. See M. W. Daly, ‘The Egyptian Army mutiny at Omdurman, January-February 1900’, BBRISMES 8, 1, 1981, 3-12. 144 Cromer to Salisbury, 9 February 1900, HH, 3M/A112/82. 145 Cromer to Salisbury, 27 April 1900, FO 633/6/324. 146 Cromer to Kitchener, 19 January 1899, 9 February 1899, PRO 30/57/14. 147 Kitchener to Wingate, 1 February 1899, SAD 269/2/1. 148 Magnus, Kitchener, 149. 149 Maxwell to Wingate, 17 January 1899, SAD 269/1; Cromer to Lansdowne, 26 May 1901, FO 78/5155. 150 Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1; Talbot to Wingate, 2 November 1898, SAD 266/11; Jackson to Wingate, 17 December 1898, SAD 266/12; Brodrick, WO, to Cromer, 20 April 1899, FO 633/11/31. 151 Cromer to Salisbury, 26 March 1899, HH, 3M/A112/27. 152 Cromer to Salisbury, 20 March 1899, HH, 3M/A112/23. 153 ‘Rough notes by Colonel Jackson’, end. in Cromer to FO, 12 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 154 Cromer to Salisbury, 26 March 1899, HH, 3M/A112/27. 155 Cromer to Salisbury, 17 March 1899 (P.S., 19 March), HH, 3M/A112/21. 156 Cromer to Salisbury, 21 March 1899, HH, 3M/A112/24. 157 Maxwell to Wingate, 26 December 1899, SAD 269/12. 158 Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. 159 Cromer to Wingate, 7 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 160 Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. 161 Maxwell, ‘Station orders’, 22 January 1900, WO 32/6383. 162 Wingate to Cromer, 5 February 1900, end. in Cromer to Salisbury, 18 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 165 ‘Memoirs. Note by R.W. on the mutiny in Omdurman Dec. 1899-Tan. 1900’, n.d., SAD 270/1/1. 164 Cromer to Wingate, 20 February 1900, FO 78/5087. 165 Wingate to Cromer, 22 February 1900, WO 32/6383; Wingate to Cromer, 22, 24 February 1900, FO 78/5087. 166 Wingate to Cromer, 5 February 1900, end. in Cromer to Salisbury, 18 February 1900, FO 78/5086; Jackson to Wingate, 4 March 1900, HH, 3M/ Ai 12/107. 167 Wingate to Cromer, 24 January 1900, SAD 270/1/2. 168 Wingate to Cromer, 9 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 169 Cromer to Salisbury, 27 April 1900, FO 633/6/324. 170 Wingate to Cromer, 6 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 171 Wingate to Wood, 9 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1; Wingate to Cromer, 25 February 1900, FO 78/5087; Cromer to Salisbury, 27 April 1900, FO 633/6/324. 172 Wingate to Cromer, 5 February 1900, end. in Cromer to Salisbury, 18 February 1900; Wingate to Cromer, 9 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 173 ‘Rough notes by Colonel Jackson’. 174 Jackson to Wingate, 4 March 1900, HH, 3M/A112/107. 175 Salisbury to Cromer, 2 March 1900, HH, 3M/A113/108. 176 Kitchener, ‘Memorandum presented to Lord Cromer on the 10th April 1897’, SAD 266/1/1. 177 Maxwell to Wingate, 6 January 1900, SAD 270/1/2. 178 SG 6, 2 November 1899.

Notes to pages 37-45

468

179 Talbot to Wingate, 2 November 1898, SAD 266/11. 180 SG 1, 7 March 1899; SG 2, 27 May 1899; SG 9, 2 February 1900; Maxwell to Wingate, 6 January 1900, SAD 270/1/2; 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. C/. Sanderson, Intro, to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 27, 27m 181 RFACSfor 1899, end. in Cromer to Salisbury, 20 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 182 Cromer to Sir T. Sanderson, 21 December 1898, FO 78/4959. 183 Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 301-2. 184 Maxwell to Wingate, 15 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1.

2.

THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF SIR REGINALD WINGATE

1 Cromer to Salisbury, 18 December 1899, HH, 3M/A112/57; Salisbury to Cromer, 19 December 1899, HH, 3M/A113/102; SG 8, 2 January 1900. 2 Cromer to Lansdowne, 9 February 1902, FO 800/123. 3 Wingate to Rundle, 10 April 1895, SAD 233/4. 4 Wingate diary, 14 February 1898, SAD 102/1. 5 Ibid,., 23 January 1898. 6 Wingate to his wife, 16 May 1898, SAD 233/5. 7 Wingate to his wife, 20 May 1898, SAD 233/5. 8 Evelyn Wood to Wingate, 18 January 1897, SAD 179/6. 9 Wingate to his wife, 8 June 1898, SAD 233/5; 20 August 1898, SAD 233/5; 8 October 1898, SAD 233/5; Wingate to Rodd, 10 March 1899; SAD 269/3. 10 Cromer to Salisbury, 28 January 1900, HH, 3M/A112/72; Maxwell to Wingate, 26 December 1899, Wingate to Maxwell (draft), n.d. [December 1899], SAD 269/12. 11 Wingate to Wood, 9 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. 12 Wood to Wingate, 25 January 1900, SAD 270/1/2; Cromer to Salisbury, 28 January 1900, HH, 3M/A112/72. 13 Wood to Wingate, 9 March 1900, SAD 270/3. 14 Maxwell to Wingate, 4 February 1900, SAD 270/2; Talbot to Wingate, 31 December 1899, SAD 269/12; The Times, 18 April 1900, quoted in Warburg, The Sudan, 8. 15 Enel, in Cromer to Salisbury, 20 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 16 Cromer to Wingate, 8 April 1900, SAD 270/4. 17 Wingate to Cromer, 30 January 1901, SAD 270/1. Cromer said Wingate was ‘somewhat long-winded’, but he preferred this to the ‘silence’ of Kitchener. (Cromer to Barrington, 28 February 1900, HH, 3M/A112/97.) 18 Cromer to Wingate, 18 February 1901, Wingate to Cromer, 21 February 1901, SAD 271/2. 19 Cromer to Wingate, 5 February 1904, REPORTS 3/1/2. 20 Cromer to Wingate, 5 February 1904, REPORTS 3/1/2. 21 Cromer to Wingate, 9 February 1904, REPORTS 3/1/2. 22 Cromer to Wingate, 9 February 1904, REPORTS 3/1/1. 23 Cromer to Wingate, 7 and 8 February 1904, REPORTS 3/1/1. 24 Cromer to Wingate, 10 February 1904, Wingate to Bonham Carter, 19 February 1904, REPORTS 3/1/2. 25 Wingate to Cromer, 19 February 1904, SAD 275/2; Wingate to Cecil, 10 January 1905, SAD 276/1. 26 Cairo, 1907, end. in Cromer to Grey, 3 March 1907, FO 371/247. 27 Cromer, ‘Soudan Legislation’, 20 April 1905, FO 78/5430.

Notes to pages 45-50 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47

469

Ibid,.-, G. E. P. Hertslet, FO memorandum, 24 March 1905, FO 78/5430. Allenby to MacDonald, 26 July 1924, FO 141/446/14684. SG 5, n.d. [1899]. Jackson to Wingate, 14 April 1900, SAD 270/4. ‘Financial Regulations to be observed by the Soudan Government’, end. in Cromer to Lansdowne, 26 May 1901, FO 78/5155. Warburg, The Sudan, 9. See also Sanderson, Intro, to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, V.2, I4-I5. Wingate to Cromer, 27 April 1905, SAD 276/4; Wingate to Clayton, 13 September 1916, SAD 470/3. Wingate asserted himself in his spelling of ‘Sudan’; Cromer always wrote ‘Soudan’. Cromer to Wingate, 3 May 1904, FO 633/8/396; Henry to Wingate, 26 July 1906, SAD 278/6; Owen to Wingate, 20 May 1905, SAD 276/5. Wingate to Cecil, 7 May 1904, SAD 275/4. Wingate to Cecil, 20 December 1912, SAD 183/3; Wingate to Cromer, 22 January 1904, SAD 275/1. Cecil to Wingate, 7 August 1905, SAD 277/2. v.2, 118. Quoted in Wingate to Cecil, 6 August 1905, SAD 277/2. Cecil to Wingate, 14 August 1905, SAD 277/2. See Warburg, The Sudan, 28. Cecil to Wingate, 20 February 1907, SAD 280/2; Wingate to Cromer, 24 April 1905, SAD 276/4. Wingate to Owen, 16 January 1907, SAD 280/1; Cecil to Wingate, 21 August 1905, SAD 277/2; Cromer to Wingate, 25 January 1904, FO 633/8/390. Wingate to Cromer, n.d., end. in Cromer to Grey, 19 April 1907, FO 800/46; Cromer to Grey, 19 April 1907, FO 633/13/2/77. Gorst, Autobiographical notes, 1900, MECOX. See also his notes for 1905; and Wingate to Milner, 17 April 1907, SAD 280/4. Willis to ‘O’ (his sister Olive), 22 April 1909, SAD 209/2. See Wingate to Hohler, 24 September 1909, SAD 288/5; Wingate to Gorst, 26 January 1909, SAD 286/1. Warburg, The Sudan, 32. In 1910 Cromer exclaimed: ‘All my twenty-five years undone in two. Yet I have no one but myself to blame, for I recom¬ mended Gorst.’ (Quoted in Kenneth Rose, The later Cecils, London, 1975, 2°7-)

48 Wingate to Cromer, 19 November 1907, FO 633/12/80; Gorst, Autobio¬ graphical notes for 1907, MECOX. 49 Phipps to Wingate, 13 July 1908, SAD 283/7/1. 50 Warburg, The Sudan, 34-5; Wingate to Stack, 20 December 1908, SAD 284/ 13; Wingate to Gorst, 22 December 1908, SAD 284/12/2. 51 Gorst to Wingate, 18 February 1909, Wingate to Gorst, 28? February 1909, SAD 286-2. 52 Gorst to Wingate, 18 February 1909, SAD 286/2; Wingate to Bigge, n March 1909, SAD 285. 53 Warburg, The Sudan, 36, quoting Wingate to Clayton, 1 August 1908, SAD 469/1. 54 Bernard, ‘The Sudan. Capital expenditure on its restoration and development . . .’, 28 March 1909, SAD 286/4. 55 Wingate to Clayton, 6 March 1910, SAD 290/3/1; Gorst to Wingate, 19 April 1910, SAD 296/1/3.

470

Notes to pages po-y

56 Harvey to Bernard, 12 June 1910, SAD 297/4. 57 Gorst to Wingate, 13 January 1910, end. in Gorst to Grey, 28 February 1910, FO 371/890. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 34. 58 Wingate and Harvey, ‘Finandal Regulations’, 15 February 1910. 59 Anon, ‘Ed-Ab-Win-Go. Rex Sudanorum’, n.d. [January 1908], SAD 282/1. (A pun: Rex was Wingate’s nickname.) 60 Magnus, Kitchener, 252-60. Cromer recommended Kitchener. See Cromer to Grey, 14 July 1911, FO 633/20/232. 61 Kitchener, Memorandum, n.d. [July 1911], FO 371/1114. 62 Wingate to Stack, 29 February 1912, SAD 180/2/2. See also Wingate to Slatin, 21 May 1912, SAD 181/2/2, and Wingate to Kitchener, 7 April 1912, SAD 181/ 1 /1. 63 Wingate to Kitchener, 7 April 1912, SAD 181/1/1. 64 Wingate to Kitchener, 9 November 1911, SAD 301/5. 65 Wingate to Palmer, 12 April 1912, SAD 181/1/2. 66 Wingate to Stack, 25 April 1914, SAD 190/1/2. 67 Kitchener to Wingate, 7 April 1912, SAD 181/1/1; Wingate to Kitchener, 26 October 1911, SAD 301/4. 68 Wingate to Palmer, 14 December 1911, SAD 299. 69 Wingate to Wigram, 20 September 1911, SAD 299. 70 Midwinter to Wingate, 1 May 1912, SAD 181/2/1. 71 Wingate to Stack, 29 April 1912, SAD 181/1/1; Wingate to Kitchener, 20 January 1913; Borton to Wingate, 30 January 1913, SAD 185/1/2. 72 Wingate to Kitchener, 20 November 1913, Wingate to Clayton, 22 November 1913, and Clayton to Wingate, 26 November 1913, SAD 188/2; Clayton to Wingate, 23 December 1913, SAD 188/3/1; Wingate to Stack, 1 June 1914, SAD 157/6. 73 Wingate to Bernard, 15 June 1916, SAD 200/16. 74 Wingate to Phipps, 29 April 1912, SAD 181/1/3; Warburg, The Sudan, 42, citing Wingate to Stack, 6 May 1913, SAD 108/16. 75 Wingate to Currie, 14 April 1913, SAD 186/1/1. 76 Wingate to Clayton, 20 December 1913, SAD 188/3/1. 77 SG 21, 1 March 1901; SG 22, 1 April 1901; SG 31, 1 January 1902; SG 54, 1 December 1903. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 2o6n;for Gleichen see BD, 138, and Rose, The later Cecils, 198. 78 Gleichen to Wingate, 18 December 1900, SAD 270/12. 79 Gleichen to Wingate, 27 March 1901, SAD 271/3. See The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan: a compendium . . ., London, 1905. 80 Wingate to Cromer, 2 July 1902, SAD 273/7; Cecil to his family, quoted in Rose, The later Cecils, 204. 81 Wingate to Cromer, 17 May 1905, SAD 276/5. 82 Cecil to Wingate, 7 August 1905, SAD 277/2. 83 Cecil to Wingate, 14 August 1905, SAD 277/2. 84 SG 91, 1 March 1906. 85 F. Mason, ‘Duties of Sudan Agent’, 23 February 1903, FO 141/448. 86 More to Residency, 27 October 1925, FO 141/448, quoting a memorandum of November 1904. 87 Wingate to Cromer, 27 April 1905, SAD 276/4; Cecil to Wingate, 14 August 1905, SAD 277/2. Cf. Richard Hill, Slatin Pasha, London, 1965, 75. See also Rose, The later Cecils, 199-200, 213-14, etpassim.

Notes to pages 57-63

47i

88 Wingate to Cecil, 20 August 1905, SAD 277/2; Wingate to Cromer, 17 May 1905, SAD 276/5; Phipps to Wingate, 19 June 1905, SAD 276/6; Slatin quoted in Wingate to Corbett, 4 May 1905, SAD 276/5. 89 Wingate to Stack, 31 March 1908, SAD 284/13. 90 Wingate to Stack, 3 April 1908, SAD 284/13. 91 Wingate to Stack, 8 March 1908, SAD 284/13; Wingate to Wynne, 4 December 1910, SAD 298/3. 92 Wingate to Cecil, 20 December 1912, SAD 183/3. 93 Wingate to Stack, 7 April 1913, SAD 186/1/2. 94 Wingate to Stack, 25 April 1914, SAD 190/1/2. 95 Wingate to Cromer, 15 March 1900, HH, Salisbury papers, ‘E’. 96 Sanderson, Intro, to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 28m 97 Alleyne Nicholson to the author, 17 February 1981. Cf. Jackson to Slatin, 5 March 1902, SAD 452/276; Wingate diary, 27 March 1902, SAD 272/8. See also Hill, Slatin Pasha, 78-9. 98 Seejames Marsden to Richard Hill, 12 January 1966, SAD 294/18/8. 99 Cromer to Lansdowne, 19 January 1902, FO 633/6/336; Cecil to Salisbury, July 1917; quoted in Rose, The later Cecils, 225. Stack to Clayton, 22 February 1917, SAD 470/6. 100 CAO 127, 10 November 1901 ;SG 31, 1 January 1902. 101 Talbot to Wingate, n.d., end. in Talbot to Nason, 1 January 1903, SAD 273/1; Wingate diary, 27 February 1902, SAD 272/8; SG 31,1 January 1902; SG 43, January 1903; SG 54, 1 December 1903; SG 82, 1 October 1905; SG 83, 1 November 1905. 102 SG 43, January 1903. 103 Talbot to Wingate, n.d., end. in Talbot to Nason, 1 January 1903, SAD 273/1. Cf. Sanderson, Intro, to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 28. 104 SG 53, 1 November 1903; CAO 101, 30 November 1903. 105 CAO 77, 12 June 1901. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 65. 106 Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 65. 107 CAO 229, 230, 12 December 1904. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 65. 108 CAO 102, 19 July 1902; CAO 354, 30 October 1905. 109 Wingate to Corbett, 10 April 1905, SAD 276/4; SG 75, 19 April 1905. no Wingate to Cromer, 10 April 1905, SAD 276/4. in Wingate to Cecil, 13 April 1905, SAD 276/4. 112 Warburg, The Sudan, 63. 113 Sanderson, Intro, to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 29. 114 Cromer to Salisbury, 20 February 1900, FO 78/5086. 115 Warburg, The Sudan, 124, 116 SG 25, 1 July 1901; Warburg, The Sudan, 125-6. 117 Warburg, The Sudan, 129. 118 Cecil to Wingate, 10 September 1905, SAD 277/3. 119 Cromer to Salisbury, 8 June 1900, FO 633/6/325; Warburg, The Sudan, 46, citing Slatin’s diary, 27 February 1900, SAD 441; Hill, Slatin Pasha, 57-61, 71. For Slatin’s professed ability to blackmail Kitchener see Slatin to Wingate, n.d., SAD 267. 120 ‘Duties of Inspector General’, April 1902, SAD 403/6. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 47. 121 Warburg, The Sudan, 52-4. 122 Slatin to Wingate, 5 January 1901, SAD 271/1.

472

Notes to pages 64-72

123 Willis to DMI, WO, London, 31 May 1919, INTEL 1/20/105; Wingate to Channer, WO, Cairo, 31 July 1908, SAD 283/7/1. 124 Wingate diary, n March 1902, SAD 272/8. 125 Slatin to Wingate, 16 February 1903, SAD 273/2; Slatin to Wingate, 15 March 1908, SAD 282/3/1. 126 Wingate to Channer, WO, Cairo, 28 August 1908, SAD 283/8/1; Wingate to Symes, 2 December 1911, SAD 301/6/2. 127 See, e.g., Wingate’s ‘Memorandum on the Bahr el Ghazal’, 7 April 1895, SAD 261/14, based on Slatin’s information. 128 Wingate to Stack, 6 December 1911, SAD 301/6/2. 129 PS to IG, 19 February 1913, SAD 185/2/2. See also Cromer to Wingate, 20 February 1907, SAD 280/2; Hill, Slatin Pasha, 102. 130 Vansittart to Herman, 7 August 1912, FO 371/1361. 131 Wingate to Talbot, 25 January 1903, SAD 273/1; SG 43, January 1903; SG 70, 1 January 1905; SG 128, 1 March 1908; SG 252, 27 April 1914. 132 Cromer to Lansdowne, 18 November 1901, FO 78/5157. 133 CAO 59, 17 April 1902; CAO 302, 15 May 1905; CAO }6y, 16 November 1905. 134 See, e.g., CAO 106, 30 November 1903; CAO 125, 23 January 1904; CAO 416, 24 April 1906; CAO 422, 19 May 1906. 135 CAO 135, 24 November 1902. 136 Wingate to Phipps, 11 May 1912, SAD 181/2/2. 137 Sudan Government, Administrative regulations, 1910, 109-14; CAO 80, 17 May 1902; CAO 126, 23 January 1904. 138 CAO 131, 23 January 1904. See CAO 142, 1 March 1904. 139 Phipps to Wingate, 7 June 1908, SAD 282/6. 140 Wingate to Stack, 15 December 1908, SAD 284/13. 141 Wingate to Acland, 29 November 1908, SAD 284/11/2. 142 Sudan Government, Administrative regulations, 109-11; Percy F. Martin, The Sudan in evolution. New York, 2nd ed., 1970, 75-6. 143 Wingate to Phipps, 16 April 1911, SAD 300/4/2; Willis diary, 12 January 1913, SAD 210/3. 144 Ian Hamilton to Wingate, 10 February 1913, 28 February 1913, SAD 185/2/1. 145 Warburg, The Sudan, 75, citing Wingate to Clayton, 11 September 1909, SAD 469/1; Gorst to Grey, 7 October 1909, FO 800/47. 146 Warburg, The Sudan, 75, citing Ritchie to Grey, 19 October 1909, FO 800/47; Gorst to Grey, 30 October 1909, FO 800/47. 147 Wingate to Sterry, 22 January 1910, SAD 290/1. 148 Wingate to Cecil, 20 December 1912, SAD 183/3. 149 Wingate to Gorst, 30 January 1910, SAD 290/1; Warburg, The Sudan, 76; Phipps to Wingate, 26 April 1910, SAD 296/1/3. x 50 Wingate to Kitchener, 7 April 1912, SAD 181 /1 /1; Clayton, ‘Memorandum on procedure regarding ordinances to be laid before the governor-general’s council’, 10 December 1912, SAD 183/3; Willis to ‘O’, 28 January 1915, SAD 209/6; Warburg, The Sudan, 76-7. 151 IRE 50, appendix M(3), 15 December 1896; ‘Notes on civil administration in the Sudan’, n.d. [1897], SAD 266/1/3. 152 ‘Notes on civil administration in the Sudan’. 153 IRE 50. J. S. R. Duncan (The Sudan, a record of achievement, Edinburgh, 1952, 64) attributes this instruction to Hunter. It is identical to the section of

Notes to pages -72-8

154 155 156 157

158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168

169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185

473

Kitchener’s ‘Memorandum to Mudirs’ addressed to ma'murs. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, p. 70. Cromer to Barrington, 22 June 1898, HH, 3M/A111/48. Cromer to Salisbury, 21 February 1897, HH, 3M/A110/15. Cf. SIR 60; Warburg, The Sudan, 4; Abdel Rahim, Imperialism, 49, 49m Suakin and its hinterland became Red Sea Province on 1 January 1906. CAO 66, 1 May 1902. Khartoum Gezira was originally a second-class province (Gleichen, The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, v.i, 2). The name Khartoum North was recognised from 25 October 1903 (CAO 88, 25 October 1903; SG 53, 1 November 1903). Warburg, The Sudan, i93n; SG 34, April 1902. SG 54, 1 December 1903. See also Wingate to Cromer, 23 November 1903, FO 141/378, and Lansdowne to Cromer, 7 December 1903, FO 633/6/359. SG 69, 1 December 1904; SG 78, 1 July 1905; SG 86, 1 January 1906; Warburg, The Sudan, i93n, citing RTACS, 1914. Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. See Handbook of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1922, 1-2, 171-2, 283-5. SG 1, 7 March 1899; SG 9, 2 February 1900. Warburg, The Sudan, 72; CAO 66, 28 May 1901; CAO 116, 12 Sept. 1901. CAO 354, 30 October 1905. Wingate to Jackson, 18 August 1901, SAD 271/8. Fergusson to Wingate, 23 July 1902, SAD 272/5/1. Fergusson to Wingate, 15 July 1902, SAD 272/5/2. Wingate to Cecil, 7 May 1904, SAD 275/4. ‘Creating’ prisoners was normal. Willis once complained that a ‘dreadful paucity of prisoners’ had put his tennis court ‘out of order’. (Willis to ‘O’, 28 May 1913, SAD 209/4.) Fergusson to Wingate, 16 June 1902, SAD 272/4/2. Fergusson to Wingate, 23 June 1902, SAD 272/4/1. Wingate to Henry, 23 June 1902, SAD 272/4/1; Slatin to Wingate, 16 February 1903, SAD 273/2. Fergusson to Wingate, 16 June 1902, SAD 272/4/2; Nason to Wingate, 8 August 1902, SAD 272/6 Warburg, The Sudan, 73, citing RFACS, 1903, 1904, 1905, and quoting Wingate to Jackson, 25 November 1914, SAD 192/2. Phipps to Wingate, 24 July 1905, SAD 277/1; SG 79, 1 August 1905; SG 83, 1 November 1905; SG 101, 1 October 1906. SG 36, June 1902; SG 169, 8 February 1910. Fergusson to Wingate, 1 July 1902, SAD 272/5/2. For sudd-clearance see R. O. Collins, Land beyond the rivers, New Haven and London, 1971, 37-8. Matthews to Wingate, 9 January 1904, SAD 275/1. Matthews to Wingate, 9 January 1904, SAD 275/1 (not ibid.). Wingate to Matthews, 1 February 1904, SAD 275/2. Matthews to Wingate, 10 February 1908, SAD 282/2. Matthews to Wingate, 31 July 1904, SAD 275/5. Wingate to Matthews, 1 February 1905, SAD 276/2; Phipps to Wingate, 1 June 1905, SAD 276/6. Phipps to Wingate, 5 June 1905, SAD 276/6. Owen to Wingate, 29 January 1909, Wingate to Phipps, 1 April 1913, SAD 186/1; Owen to Wingate, 24 August 1912; SAD 182/2/2. Wingate to Phipps, 14 April 1913, SAD 186/1; SG 252, 27 April 1914.

Notes to pages 79-86

474

186 Phipps to Wingate, 26 April 1910, SAD 296/1/3; Currie to Wingate, 26 May 1912, SAD 181/2/1; Wingate to Stack, 27 March 1913, SAD 185/3/2. 187 SG 3, 31 July 1899. 188 Kitchener’s ‘Memorandum to Mudirs’ is enclosed in Cromer to Salisbury, 17 March 1899, FO 78/5022. 189 Garstin, ‘Note on the Soudan’, 3 May 1899, end. in Cromer to Salisbury, 4 May 1899, Egypt No. ;, 1899, C.9332. 190 Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. 191 Maxwell to Wingate, 5 November 1898, SAD 266/11; Talbot to Wingate, 11 December 1898, SAD 266/12; Lewis to Wingate, 26 January 1899, SAD 269/1. 192 Maxwell to Wingate, 26 December 1899, SAD 269/12. 193 H. C. Jackson, Behind the modern Sudan, London, 1955, 59-60. For inspec¬ tor’s duties see Daly, BA, 42-3. 194 See Daly, BA, 44-5. 195 ‘Notes on civil administration in the Sudan’, n.d. [1897]. 196 IRE 50. 197 See M. W. Daly, ‘Principal office-holders in the Sudan Government, 18981955’, IJAHS, 17, 2, 1984, 309-16. 198 Cromer to Salisbury, 4 July 1896, FO 633/6/262; 21 February 1897, FO 633/6/ 276; 18 December 1898, FO 633/6/306. 199 Cromer to Salisbury, 14 January 1899, FO 633/6/307. 200 Cromer to Lansdowne, 9 March 1900, FO 633/8/259; Warburg, The Sudan, 79-

201 Warburg, The Sudan, 79, citing service conditions of British officers in the Egyptian Army, WO, Cairo, 17 November 1900, FO 78/5088. 202 Cromer to Lansdowne, 2 January 1902, FO 78/5225. 203 Warburg, The Sudan, 80. See also Lansdowne to Cromer, 29 January 1902, FO 800/123, and Syed Abdur Razack Bukhari, Military aspects of internal security in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898-1925, University of London M.Phil. thesis, 1972, 117-18. 204 Cromer to Lansdowne, 18 November 1901, FO 78/5157. 205 Maxwell to Wingate, 5 November 1898, SAD 266/11. 206 Cromer to Salisbury, 8 June 1900, FO 633/6/325. 207 Introduction to S. Low, Egypt in transition, 1913, cited in SPS, 1. 208 See, e.g., Behind the modern Sudan; Sudan days and ways. 209 Martin, The Sudan, 45-6. 210 J. A. Mangan, ‘The education of an elite imperial administration: the Sudan Political Service and the British Public School system’, IJAHS, 15, 4, 1982, 683. My emphasis. 211 Wingate to Plumer, 15 April 1907, SAD 280/4. 212 Mangan,‘The education’, 688. 213 Ibid., 685. 214 Corbett to Wingate, 10 August 1905, SAD 277/2. Corbett reportedly placed special importance on a candidate’s ‘private means’. (Phipps to Wingate, 15 August 1906, SAD 279/2.) 215 Text of Cromer’s speech in Khartoum, 27 January 1903, SAD 273/2. 216 See Wingate to Cromer, 1 August 1913, SAD 187/2/3; SG 47, May 1903; SG 49, 1 July 1903; SG 70, 1 January 1905; SG 83, 1 November 1905. 217 Phipps to Wingate, 14 February 1907, SAD 201/6. 218 Cromer to Wingate, 16 November 1906, SAD 279/5.

Notes to pages 86-93

475

219 Wingate to Phipps, 1 April 1913, SAD 186/1/2. 220 Phipps to Wingate, 29 March 1913, SAD 185/3/1. 221 Wingate to Owen, 29 April 1913, SAD 186/1/3; Wingate to Phipps, 6 July 1912, SAD 182/1/2. 222 Warburg, The Sudan, 83, citing Cromer to Wingate, 10 April 1905, SAD 234/3223 Wingate to Cromer, 24 April 1905, SAD 276/4. 224 Wingate to Bonus, 23 August 1906, SAD 279/2. 225 T. E. Hickman to Wingate, 3 June 1900, SAD 270/6; ‘Average number of British officers ... for the years 1901 to 1916’, n.d., SAD 202/4. 226 SG 36, June 1902. 227 Matthews to Wingate, 3 May 1903, SAD 273/5; 19 July 1903, SAD 273/7; SG 54, 1 December 1903; Currie to Wingate, 11 July 1901, SAD 271/6; 8 August 1910, SAD 297/2; Willis to ‘O’, 29 December 1908, SAD 209/2. 228 Willis to D, 6 November 1911, SAD 209/2. 229 Cromer to Wingate, 14 July 1903, SAD 273/7. G/. Fergusson to Wingate, 9 March 1901, SAD 271/3. 230 Wingate to Cromer, 22 January 1904, SAD 275/1; Phipps to Wingate, 26 April 1910, SAD 296/1/3; Armbruster to Cromer, 24 September 1910, end. in Wingate to Gorst, 28 Sept. 1910, SAD 297/3. 231 Bonham Carter to Wingate, 30 June 1910, SAD 469/2/1; Wingate to Clayton, 2 July 1910, SAD 469/2/2; Willis diary, 25 August 1911, SAD 210/3. 232 Bonham Carter to Wingate, 7 August 1908, SAD 283/8/2. 233 Wingate to Clayton, 2 July 1912, SAD 469/4. 234 Clayton to Wingate, 8 April 1914; see also Clayton to Wingate, 20 April 1914, SAD 469/6/2; and Warburg, The Sudan, 83. 235 ‘Average number of British officers . . .’. 236 Willis to ‘O’, 6 August 1916, SAD 209/7. 237 Cecil to Wingate, 25 December 1904, SAD 275/9; SG 78, 1 July 1905; SG 86, 1 January 1906; SG 105, n.d.; Phipps to Wingate, n.d. [August 1905], SAD 277/1. 238 Phipps to Kerr, 31 October 1905, SAD 277/4. 239 Slatin to Wingate, 15 March 1908, SAD 282/3/1. 240 Wingate to Cromer, 23 May 1902, SAD 272/2; Cecil to Wingate, 1 March 1903, SAD 273/2; Phipps to Wingate, 5 June 1905, SAD 276/6. 241 Asser to Wingate, 16 August 1911, Clayton to Wingate, 11 September 1911, Wingate to Phipps, 6 September 1911, SAD 301/3. 242 Wingate, ‘Relations between troops and Sudan Government Officials’, 13 May 1911, SAD 300/5. 243 Warburg, The Sudan, 86, citing Wingate to Cromer, 9 May 1906, SAD 278/5. 244 Maxwell to Wingate, 26 December 1899, SAD 269/12; Wingate to Cromer, 14 March 1901, FO 141/364; Fergusson to Wingate, 25 June 1902, SAD 272/4/2; Warburg, The Sudan, 84-5. 245 Fergusson to Wingate, 1 July 1902, SAD 272/5/2. 246 Nason to Wingate, 23 July 1903, SAD 273/7. 247 Fergusson to Wingate, 25 June 1902, SAD 272/4/2. 248 Slatin to Wingate, 16 February 1903, SAD 273/2. Cf. Wingate to Cromer, 17 January 1902, FO 141/371, wherein Wingate commends Slatin for disclosing the ‘maladministration’ of ‘native officers’. 249 Warburg, The Sudan, 9-12.

476

Notes to pages 94-9

250 Stack to Clayton, 28 June 1917, SAD 470/6. 251 Wingate to Cromer, 21 March 1912, FO 633/21/81. 252 Wingate to J. Kennedy, 14 August 1912, SAD 182/2/2. Phipps told Wingate that decisions could ‘almost always await his return from leave’ (6 August 1913, SAD 187/2/2). 253 Wingate to Clayton, 20 December 1913, SAD 188/3/1; Symes to More, 17 January 1914, SAD 189/1. 254 ‘Diary of tour of inspection of White and Upper Nile stations, January 9th to 27th, 1903’; Wingate to Cecil, 25 November 1904, SAD 275/8; ‘Diary of tour of inspection of White and Upper Nile stations 1908’, n.d., SAD 282/4. 255 Cromer to Wingate, 20 June 1901, SAD 271/7. 256 Watson to Wingate, 15 July 1901, SAD 271/7. 257 RFACS, 1904. 258 Willis to D, 8 May 1913, SAD 209/4. 259 Wingate to Cromer, 16 April 1903; Cromer to Wingate, 21 April 1903, SAD 273/4; Wingate to Asser, 26 June 1912, SAD 181/3. 260 FI. C. Bowman diary, 10 November 1911, MECOX'. 261 S. S. Butler, ‘The Egyptian Army, 1909-1915’, SAD 422/12. 262 Bowman diary, 18 February 1912. The practice of Sudanese rising or dismoun¬ ting when encountered by a British officer continued well into the post-war era. See, e.g., E. A. Balfour to his mother, 21 September 1932, SAD 606/3. C/Hill, Slatin Pasha, 81. 263 MacMichael to his parents, 1 December 1905, SAD 578/4/1. 264 R. E. H. Baily, ‘Early recollections of the Sudan’, n.d. [1960s], SAD 533/4. 265 Phipps to Wingate, 24 March 1913, SAD 185/3/1. 266 Wingate to Bernard, 22 August 1914, SAD 191/1. 16-/ Wingate to Currie, 25 August 1910, SAD 297/2. On 27 May 1911 Wingate told Kitchener £100 had been ‘voted’ for the picture (SAD 300/5/1). 268 Wingate to Ouless, 6 February 1912, SAD 180/2/2; Wingate to Birdwood, 4 January 1911, SAD 300/1. 269 Princess Beatrice to Wingate, 6 September 1899, SAD 269/9. 270 Wingate to Wigram, 15 September i9ii,SAD 299. 271 Wingate to Wigram, 20 September 1911, SAD 299. 272 Wingate to Kerr, 30 December 1911, SAD 301/6/2. 273 Savile to ADI, 27 November 1911, INTEL 2/14/118. 274 Symes to Newcombe, 27 December 1911; Butler, ID, to Director of Stores, 30 December 1911; ADI to inspector, Renk, 31 January 1912, INTEL 2/14/118. 275 ‘Visit of Their Majesties the King and Queen to the Sudan’, n.d.; ‘Programme on the occasion of the visit of Their Majesties to Sinkat, on 17th January 1912’, SAD 401/3. 276 Wingate to Stamfordham, 4 February 1912, SAD 180/2/1. A ‘souvenir’ edition of The African World was financed with £E200 from the Sudan Government. See Wingate to Midwinter, 24 April 1912, Midwinter to Wingate, 1 May 1912, SAD 181/1/2. 277 Fergusson to Wingate, 16 June 1902, SAD 272/4/2. 278 ‘List of feasts and holidays’, n.d. [1914], SAD 106/6. 279 Wingate to The Times, 4 February 1903, SAD 273/2; Gwynne to Wingate, 19 November 1911, SAD 301/5. 280 ‘Ceremony of laying the foundation stone . . .’, end. in Owen to Charlton, 10 February 1904, SAD 275/2. 281 Bowman diary, 1 February 1912, MECOX.

Notes to pages 99-106

477

282 The Times Weekly Edition, 2 February 1912. See Butler, ‘The Egyptian Army’, and H. C. Jackson, Pastor on the Nile, London, i960, 134-6. 283 Wingate to Stack, 18 March 1914, SAD 189/3. 284 Wingate to Acland, 20 March 1914, SAD 189/3. 285 Wingate to Rev. H. C. Robins, 17 May 1915, SAD 195/5. 286 Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1; Wingate, minute to Hicks-Beach to Wingate. 26 October 1902, SAD 272/8; Wingate to Cromer, 6 February 1906, SAD 278/1; Slatin to Wingate, 21 August 1903, SAD 273/8. 287 Matthews to Wingate, 9 January 1904, SAD 275/1; Wingate to Matthews, 1 February 1904, SAD 275/2. 288 Matthews to Wingate, 3 February 1904, SAD 275/2. 289 Wingate to Cecil, 10 January 1905, SAD 276/1. 290 Cecil to Wingate, 28 December 1904, SAD 275/9. 291 Wingate to Cromer, 29 March 1904, SAD 275/3; Wingate to Cecil, 6 January 1905, SAD 276/1. 292 Corbett to Wingate, 12 May 1905, Wingate to Corbett, 27 May 1905, SAD 276/5. 293 Wingate to Corbett, 24 April 1905, SAD 276/4; Cromer to Wingate, 2 July 1905, SAD 234/4; Evelyn Wood to Wingate, 12 May 1902, SAD 272/2. 294 Owen to Wingate, 2 December 1907, SAD 281/6; Wingate to Matthews, 7 February 1908, SAD 282/2; Slatin to Wingate, 31 March 1908, SAD 282/3/1; Phipps to Wingate, 7 June 1908; SAD 282/6. 295 Phipps to Wingate, 27 March 1907, SAD 280/2. 296 Wingate to Bernard, 28 July 1908, SAD 283/7/2. 297 Wingate to Watson, 26 November 1908, SAD 284/11/1. 298 Watson to Wingate, 15 November 1908, SAD 284/11/1. 299 Wingate to Maxwell, 27 December 1908, SAD 284/12/1. 300 Wingate to Garstin, 24 January 1909, Wingate to Kerr, 25 January 1909, SAD 286/1. 301 Wingate to Stack, 18 February 1909, SAD 286/2. 302 Wingate to Bigge, 11 March 1909, SAD 285. 303 Wingate to Leigh Hunt, 25 February 1909, SAD 286/2. 304 Wingate to General Dalton, 18 February 1911, SAD 300/1. 305 ‘Visit of H.M. the King of Saxony’, n.d., SAD 300/2. 306 Wingate to Herbert, 17 March 1911, SAD 300/3. 307 Wingate to Herbert, 26 March 1911, SAD 300/3. 308 Wingate to Acland, 21 January 1913; Wingate to Butler, 5 January 1913, SAD 185/1/3. 309 Wingate to Slatin, 5 April 1913, SAD 186/1/1; Wingate to Phipps, 11 April 1913, SAD 186/1/2. 3.

INTERNAL SECURITY, I

898-1 9

I 4

1 Handbook, 1912, 11-13; Bukhari, Military aspects, 122. 2 Cromer to Lansdowne, 5 June 1901, FO 800/123. 3 Cromer to Salisbury, 25 February 1900, FO 633/6/321; Handbook, 1912; Cromer to Wingate, 3 February 1903, SAD 273/2. 4 Cromer to Lansdowne, 2 January 1902, FO 78/5225. 5 Cromer to Lansdowne, 9 March 1900, FO 633/8/259; Cromer to Salisbury, 1 May 1900, FO 78/5087. 6 Wingate to Cromer, 10 May 1900, FO 78/5087.

478

Notes to pages 106-14

7 Wingate to Cromer, 5 February 1902, FO 141/371. 8 Bukhari, Military aspects, 123-4. 9 David R. Facey-Crowther, British military policy and the defence of Egypt 1882-1914, University of London Ph.D., 1969, 7, 66. 10 ID, WO, ‘Memorandum on the garrison in Egypt’, 9 April 1903, CAB 38/2/21. 11 Facey-Crowther, British military, yin, citing Cromer to Lansdowne, 3 June 1902, end. in FO to WO, 20 June 1902, WO 106/41. 12 ID, WO, ‘Memorandum on the garrison’. 13 Minute by Major General G. T. Forestier-Walker, WO, 28 July 1902, WO 106/41. 14 N. G. Lyttelton, ‘Memorandum by the General Staff on the defence of Khartoum’, 15 June 1904, CAB 38/5/60. 15 Bukhari, Military aspects, 129. 16 Duke of Connaught,‘Report of the Inspector-General. . .’, 27 February 1905, WO 106/41. 17 Facey-Crowther, British military, 163. 18 Cromer to Grey, 26 April 1906, FO 371/65; Wingate to Cromer, 26 April 1906, SAD 278/4. 19 Wingate to Cromer, 29 April 1906, SAD 278/4. 20 Wingate to Cromer, 9 May 1906, SAD 278/5. 21 Wingate to Asser, 29 August 1908, SAD 284/10. 22 Facey-Crowther, British military, 238. 23 Bukhari, Military aspects, 132-6; Owen to Wingate, 24 July 1907, SAD 281/1. 24 Army order, 7 March i909,CIVSEC 15/1/1; ‘Defence Scheme for Khartoum, Omdurman, Khartoum North . . .’, 23 November 1907, SAD 281. 25 ‘Memoranda in connection with orders for the British troops in case of ALARM’, 6 January 1910; ‘Secret arrangements for defence in the event of special circumstances’, n.d., SAD 297/4. 26 Wingate to Harvey, 26 November 1907, SAD 281/5; f°r t^e ‘general idea’ of the 1909 manoeuvres see SAD 286/2. 27 Wingate to Clayton, 17 March 1910, SAD 290/3/1. 28 Clayton to Wingate, 1 March 1910, SAD 290/3/2. See also Samir Menas Seikaly, The Copts under British rule, 1882—1914, University of London Ph.D., 1967, 181. 29 Clayton to Wingate, 6 March 1910, SAD 290/3/2. 30 Clayton to Wingate, 20 March 1910, SAD 290/3/2. 31 Stack to Wingate, 6 April 1912, SAD 181/1/3; Wingate to Norman, FO, 28 August 1911, FO 371/1113* 32 Bukhari, Military aspects, 144-6. 33 F. R. Wingate, The Sudan past and present, repr. from Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution, 19, 14, 1892, 3; Wingate, ‘Memorandum on the Bahr el Ghazal’, 7 April 1895, SAD 261/14. 34 Wingate to Cromer, 12 December 1906, SAD 279/6. 35 Wingate to Gorst, 1 March 1909, SAD 300/3. 36 Wingate to Cromer, 4 July 1901, end. in Cromer to Lansdowne, n.d., FO 800/ 123; Gough (KAR) to Wingate, 9 July 1908, Wingate to Gough, ? July 1908, SAD 283/7/1. 37 Wingate to Grey, 28 November 1916, SAD 202/3. 38 Wingate to Cromer, 21 February 1901, SAD 271/2.

Notes to pages 114-20

479

39 Maxwell to Wingate, 19 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. 40 Maxwell to Wingate, 17 January 1899, SAD 269/1; Wingate, memorandum, n.d., SAD 276/1; Comyn, Service and sport in the Sudan, London, 1911, 181-2. 41 Wingate to Cromer, 18 May 1905, SAD 276/5; Wingate to Asser, 18 July 1907, SAD 281/1. 42 Sudan Government, Administrative regulations, 1910, 137. 43 Wingate diary, 7 March 1902, SAD 272/8; Wingate to Cromer, 13 February 1906, SAD 278/1. 44 Wingate to Cromer, 23 February 1906, SAD 278/1. 45 Asser to Wingate, 8 September 1911, SAD 301/3; and 2 September 1912, SAD 182/3/1. 46 Wingate to Garsia, 14 October 1914, SAD 192/1/1. 47 Wingate to Gorst, 1 March 1911, SAD 300/3. Cf. ERP, 83, and Collins, Land, 177, who attribute the idea originally to Owen. 48 Asser to Wingate, 8 September 1911, SAD 301/3. 49 Asser, ‘Note’, 14 August 1911, SAD 301/5. 50 ‘Conditions of service, Equatorial Battalion’, 27 February 1912, SAD 106/6. 51 Asser, ‘Note’, 14 August 1911, SAD 301/5. 52 Asser to Wingate, 15 September 1912, SAD 182/3/2. 53 Wingate to Matthews, 17 December 1912, SAD 183/3; Collins, Land, 178; ERP, 83. See also Wingate to Gorst, 1 March 1911, SAD 300/3; to Gwynne, 9 October 1911, SAD 301/4; to Asser, 29 August 1913, SAD 187/2/2; to Feilden, 18 April 1914, SAD 190/1/1. 54 ‘Historical Records, Nuba Territorial Company’, n.d., SAD 106/5/2. 5 5 Cromer to Wingate, 7 December 1904, REPORTS 3/1/1; Wingate to Palmer, 29 August 1913, SAD 187/2/1; Wingate to Stack, 29 April 1912, SAD 181/1/1; and to Herbert, 23 December 1914, SAD 192/3. 56 Cromer to Wingate, 7 February 1904, REPORTS 3/1/2: J. H. Pattison, ‘Historical Records. Military School Khartoum’, 16 December 1914, SAD 106/4. C/- Handbook, 1912, 70. 57 Handbook, 1912, 70. 58 Ibid.-, Pattison, ‘Historical Records’. 59 List of Military School commandants, n.d. [1914], SAD 106/4. 60 Wingate to Asser, 10 March 1910, SAD 290/3/1. 61 SAD 269/11. 62 Daly, BA, 54-5; K. D. D. Henderson, Sudan republic, London, 1965, 46; Holt, The Mahdist State, 242; Sadiq al-Mahdi (ed.), Jihad f sabil al-istiqlal, Khartoum, n.d. [1965], 10-11; J. A. Reid, ‘Note on Mahdism with special reference to the White Nile Province’, 24 November 1934, CIVSEC 56/2/18. 63 Daly, BA, 55; A. S. Cudsi, Sudanese resistance to British rule, 1900-1920, University of Khartoum M.Sc., 1969, 9-10. 64 R. E. H. Baily, ‘Early recollections’. 65 Davies memo, 1926; Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, family details, 24 June 1909, and ‘Mahdi’s family’, n.d., INTEL 9/2/22. 66 Reid, ‘Note on Mahdism’. 67 Davies Memo, 1926 68 ADI to IG, 27 March 1914, INTEL 2/39/324. 69 Hasan Dafalla, ‘A note on the political prisoners of Wadi Haifa’, SNR, 47, 148.

480

Notes to pages 120-6

70 Wingate to Gorst, 7 February 1908, FO 141/416; Cromer to Grey, 8 March 1907, FO 371/247; Warburg, The Sudan, 105. 71 Wingate to Phipps, 20 March 1908, Phipps to Wingate, 15 March 1908, SAD 282/3/2; Hasan Dafalla, ‘A note’, 148-9. 72 E. M. Parsons Smith, Medical Corps, ‘Certificate’, 8 February 1913, INTEL 1/8/39. C/. F. G. Vansittart, FO minute, 6 February 1919, FO 371/1637, quoted in Warburg, The Sudan, 214. 73 Hasan Dafalla, ‘A note’, 150. 74 Act. ADI to FS, 18 July 1914, INTEL 2/39/324. See also files INTEL 2/38/322 and 2/39/326. 75 Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 81; Sadiq al-Mahdi, Jihad, 11. 76 Inspector Kosti to governor, WNP, 16 October 1915, INTEL 2/41/339. 77 Willis to governor, WNP, 5 November 1915, INTEL 2/41/339. 78 Daly, BA, 52, citing Wingate to ADI, 6 June 1908, INTEL 9/1/9. 79 Wingate, 18 May 1911, quoted in Davies Memo, 1926. 80 Holt, The Mahdist State, 17-22. 81 Wingate to Cromer, 13 June 1901, SAD 271/6. 82 Asst. CS to intelligence officer, 15 August 1901, INTEL 2/32/260. 83 Slatin to Wingate, 29 April 1912, SAD 181/1/3; Warburg, The Sudan, 99, citing Wingate to Sayyid Ali, 28 May 1912, SAD 101/17/4; Symes to Savile, 20 September 1915, INTEL 2/32/261. 84 Balfour, ID, ‘Note on the faction of Ali Abd El Kerim’, 28 July 1921, CIVSEC 56/3/25; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 16-17; Warburg, The Sudan, 100. 85 Balfour, ‘List of persons believed to be members of the sect of Ali Abd El Kerim’, 10 September 1921; Willis to governor, Khartoum, 21 October 1921; DI to CS, 29 November 1921, CIVSEC 56/3/25; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, i6n. 86 Morant to administrator, Suakin, 10 January 1902, INTEL 2/27/218. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 100-1, and Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 19m 87 Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 20, 2on. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 100. 88 Act. governor Kordofan to CS, 2 September 1903, INTEL 2/27/218. 89 Mahon to Nason, 15 September 1903, O’Connell to Nason, 27 September 1903, INTEL 2/27/218; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 21-2 90 O’Connell to Mahon, 26 September 1903, INTEL 2/27/218. For O’Connell’s appointment see SG 56,1 January 1904; cf. Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 22, who places Mahon in charge at El Obeid. 91 Nason to O’Connell, 27 September 1903, INTEL 2/27/218. 92 O’Connell to Nason, 27 September 1903, Nason to O’Connell, 27 September 1903, INTEL 2/27/218 93 Findlay (Residency) to FO, 4 October 1903, FO 78/5302. 94 Lansdowne to Cromer, 30 October 1903, FO 633/6/351; FO to Cromer, 15 December 1903, FO 78/5303. 95 Cromer to FO, 18 December 1903, FO 78/5302. 96 Findlay to Lansdowne, 8 August 1904, FO 78/5367. 97 Note, n.d., SECURITY 6/8/45; Warburg, The Sudan, 101. 98 E. E. Bonham Carter, Memorandum on the Katfia rising, 18 June 1908, Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, F 395; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 3043; cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 101-3. Details differ. An interesting partial account is in Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 149-51. 99 Gorst to Grey, 28 May 1908, FO 371/451

Notes to pages 126-32 100 101 102 103

104 105 106 107 108 109 no in 112 113 114

115

116 117 118 119 120

121

122 123 124 125 126 127

481

Norman, minute on Gorst to Grey, 28 May 1908, FO 371/451. Mallett, minute, n.d.; Hardinge, minute, n.d., FO 371/451. Grey to Gorst, n.d., FO 371/451. Slatin to Wingate, n.d., Wingate to Slatin, 3 June 1908, Bonham Carter to Slatin, n.d., SAD 451/124; Stack to Wingate, 1 June 1908 and 4 June 1908, SAD 234/6. Currie to Wingate, 9 June 1908, SAD 283/7/I- The sentences of rebels caught later were also commuted. Phipps to Wingate, 4 June 1908, SAD 282/6; Wingate to Herbert, 22 July 1908, SAD 283/7/1; Gorst to Grey, 6 June 1908, FO 800/47. FO minute, 10 November 1911, FO 371/1112. Wingate to Asser, 14 September 1908, SAD 283/9/1. Wingate to Asser, 19 May 1908, SAD 282/4; Wingate to Stack, 19 May 1908, SAD 284/13. Wingate, Memorandum, 9 August 1908, end. in Wingate to Grey, 17 August 1908, FO 371/452. Grey, minute, n.d., FO 371/452. Gorst to Cromer, 6 June 1908, FO 633/14/11. Gorst to Grey, 22 June 1908, Grey to Gorst, 25 November 1908, FO 800/47; Gorst to Grey, 1 June 1910, Grey to Gorst, 11 June 1910, FO 371/893. ‘History sheet’, n.d., INTEL 2/28/223. Governor, Darner to ADI, 15 August 1910; Arthur Huddleston, act. gov., Berber to ADI, 15 August and 17 August 1910; ADI to FS, 13 September 1910; Legal department to managing editor, Sudan Times, 10 October 1910, INTEL 2/28/224. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 103. ADI to governor Khartoum, 23 August 1910, INTEL 2/28/228; Slatin to Wingate, 15 September 1911, SAD 301/3; Wingate to Herbert, 31 March 1912, SAD 180/3; cf- Warburg, The Sudan, 104. Cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 104. Palmer, ‘Note on Army budget proposals for 1911’, 2 October 1910, end. in Palmer to Wingate, 2 October 1910, SAD 298/1. Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 63-70. Ibid., 74-82. Findlay to Grey, 10 July 1906, FO 371/65; O’Connell to adjutant-general, 22 June 1906, INTEL 1/17/82; Findlay to Grey, 29 August 1906, Cromer to Grey, 25 October 1906, H. M. Hutchinson to Wingate, 1 September 1906, FO 371/65; Bonham Carter to Wingate, 27 August 1906, SAD 279/6; Wingate to Cromer, 13 December 1906, SAD 279/6; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 83-90. Findlay to Henry, 29 August 1906, FO 141/402; Cromer to Wingate, 22 November 1906, SAD 279/5. Grey agreed. See correspondence in INTEL 1/ 17/82, and Matthews to Wingate, 6 June 1906, SAD 278/6. Wingate to Cromer, 12 December 1906, SAD 279/6; O’Connell to adjutantgeneral (telegram), 29 June 1906, INTEL 1/17/82. Wingate to Cromer, 12 December 1906, SAD 279/6. Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 92-105. Asser to Wingate, 12 October 1910, SAD 298/1. Wingate to Clayton, 25 March 1915, SAD 194/3/1; 11 May 1915, SAD 195/4. Balfour to ADI, 4 December 1915, SAD 197/3/1; Historical Records, Nuba Territorial Company; Wingate to Balfour, 24 July 1915, SAD 196/2; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 111-12.

Notes to pages 132-41

482

128 Wingate to Clayton, 27 August 1915, SAD 196/3; ‘Extracts from letters of Colonel F. C. C. Balfour to his mother . . SAD 303/8. See also Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 113-14. Cf. Ahmad Uthman Muhammad Ibrahim, A history of the Nuba Mountains 1898-1947 . . ., University of Khartoum Ph.D.,

l977> 75

-

129 Note by F. C. C. Balfour, n.d. [1946?], SAD 303/8. 130 Wingate to Coate, 4 February 1916, SAD 199/2; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 115-16; F. C. C. Balfour, ‘Fiki Ali’, SAD 303/8; A. U. M. Ibrahim, A history, 83, citing an oral account. 131 SIR, October 1917. 132 ‘Operations in the Nyima Hills, Nuba Mountains Province, 1917-1918. Patrol No. 32’, end. in Smith to adjutant-general, 25 February 1918, FO 371/3203. 133 Stack to Wingate, 7 August 1918, FO 371-3203. 134 Cromer to Fansdowne, 21 January 1903, FO 78/5301. 135 For the nineteenth-century south see Richard Gray, A history of the Southern Sudan 1839-1889, Fondon, 1961, and R. O. Collins, The Southern Sudan, 1883-1898, New Haven, 1962. 136 Wingate to his wife, 23 September 1898, SAD 233/5. 137 SIR 60; H. W. Jackson, ‘Fashoda, 1898’, SNR, 3, 4-5. Cf. Collins, Land, 29. 138 Peake to O.C. Fashoda, 29 October 1898, CAIRINT 3/16/248. 139 Collins, Land, 31-41. For the early journey south see ibid., 41-5. See also W. Scott Hill, memoir, 21 August 1953, SAD 466/4. 140 SIR 60, appendix 53. 141 Ibid., appendix 56. 142 Jackson to Wingate, 12 January 1899, SAD 269/1. 143 Jackson to Wingate, 6 January 1899, 12 January 1899, SAD 269/1. 144 Jackson to Wingate, 20 October 1898, CAIRINT; 6 January 1899, SAD 269/1. 145 Jackson to Wingate, 24 January 1899, SAD 269/1. Jackson appointed ‘head¬ men’ as early as September. See SIR 60, appendix 58b. 146 Jackson to Wingate, 24 January 1899, SAD 269/1. 147 BD, 81, 161, 342; SG sp. ed., January 1901, SG 36, June 1902. 148 Cromer to Fansdowne, 18 November 1901, FO 78/5157. 149 Wingate to Cromer, 2 June 1901, SAD 271/6; Wingate, ‘Shilluks and Dinkas’ (notes or remarks at Fashoda, 1902), SAD 272/1. 150 Matthews to Wingate, 19 July 1903, SAD 273/7. 151 Ibid. Cf. Collins, Land, 165. 152 Matthews to Wingate, 30 April 1905, SAD 276/4. 153 Collins, Land, 78, 80-1; Cudsi,Sudanese resistance, 205-6; cf. Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Handbook series. 1. The Bahr El Ghazal Province, Khartoum, 1911, 59. See also S. Santandrea, A tribal history of the Western Bahr El Ghazal, Bologna, 1964. 154 S. Santandrea, A popular history of Wau, Rome, 1977, 18-25. 155 Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 2070, 208-11; Collins, Land, 85-6. 156 Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 212-26; cf. Collins, Land, 99. 157 Collins, Land, 103-10, 113-26; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 227-8, 234-8. 158 Boulnois to Wingate, 23 April 1905, SAD 276/4. 159 Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 238-47; The Bahr El Ghazal Province, 39-41. 160 Collins, Land, 219-21. 161 Comyn, Service, 136-40. 162 Collins, Land, 92-3.

Notes to pages 141-52 163 164 165 166 167 168

169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177

178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187

483

Comyn, Service, 146. See SG 64, 1 July 1904. Phipps to Wingate, 9 August 1905, SAD 277/2. Wingate diary, 7 March 1902, SAD 272/8. Collins, Land, 88-91, citing SIR 94, May 1902. SIR, August 1918; Collins, Land, 208-13. R. O. Collins, ‘The Aliab Dinka rising and its suppression’, SNR, 48, 1967, 7785. At Pap a notable’s body was exhumed and burned to provoke an Aliab attack. Ibid., 87, quoting Woodland to CS, 1 August 1920, INTEL 2/30/249. SIR, May 1918, appendix A. Collins, Land, 215-17. Douglas H. Johnson, ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars: Nuer—Dinka relations in the Sobat and Zaraf Valleys, c. 1860-1976’,/A//, 23, 1982, 183-9. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, London, 2nd ed., 1974, 187-9; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 123-4. Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 130—42. Ibid., 143-56. Ibid., 160-1; Johnson, ‘Tribal boundaries’, 193-5. Symes, ‘Note on the Arms Traffic’, 28 November 1911, INTEL 1/8/39; Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 168-70; Collins, Land, 203-6. See Wingate to Cromer, 16 April 1912, FO 633/21/104. Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 170-2. Matthews to Wingate, 3 February 1904, SAD 275/2. Cudsi, Sudanese resistance, 177-80; ‘Operations in Lau-Nuer country’, end. in Stack to Wingate, 14 November 1917; Johnson, ‘Tribal boundaries’, 196. Wingate to Asser, 2 August 1908, SAD 283/8/3. Johnson, ’Tribal boundaries’, 197, quoting Mongalla monthly intelligence report, September 1918, INTEL 2/48/408. Wingate to Asser, 2 August 1908, SAD 283/8/3. Wingate to Owen, 14 January 1910, SAD 290/1. Wingate to Cromer, 21 March 1912, FO 633/21/81; Collins, Land, 194-5. A. F. Broun to Wingate, 22 February 1902, SAD 272/1. Matthews to Wingate, 31 July 1904, Slatin to Wingate, 18 July 1904, SAD

275/.5

•

188 Collins, Land, 235-8. 189 Owen to Wingate, 29 January 1909, SAD 286/1; Matthews to Wingate, 9 January 1904, SAD 275/1. 190 Wingate to Asser, 2 August 1908, SAD 283/8/3. 191 Phipps to Wingate, 21 April 1912, SAD 181/1/1; Wingate to Channer, WO, Cairo, 31 July 1908, SAD 283/7/1. 192 Stack to Wingate, 27 June 1917, SAD 164/8. 193 Wingate to Stack, 15 July 1917, SAD 165/1/1. 4. 1 2 3 4

THE SUDAN AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Wingate to Crawford, 31 August 1914, SAD 191/2. Crawford to Wingate, 19 August 1914, SAD 191/2. Wingate to Elgood, 28 October 1914, SAD 192/1. Wingate to Kitchener, n.d. [November 1914], SAD 192/2; Draft telegram, Kitchener to sirdar, January 1914 (sic), SAD 189/1.

484

Notes to pages 152-8

5 SG 267, 28 November 1914. 6 Wingate to Clayton, 13 January 1916, SAD 470/1. 7 SG sp. ed., January 1901; SG 9, 2 February 1900; SG 25, 1 July 1901; SG 52, 1 October 1903; SG 76, 1 May 1905; SG 245, 24 January 1914; SG 252, 27 April 1914; SG 262, 8 October 1914; SG 263, 4 November 1914; SG 313, 20 January 1917; SG 316, 1 April 1917; SG 324, 18 October 1917. 8 Buchanan (Petrograd) to Grey,. 14 September 1914, FO 371/1971; Gordon Brook-Shepherd, Between two flags. The life of Baron Sir Rudolf von Slatin Pasha . . ., London, 1972, 248-69; cf. Hill, Slatin Pasha, 119-27. 9 On resigning Slatin received a gratuity of over ££4,000 and a pension of £E6oo a year. See Maffey to FS, 26 December 1926; ‘Note’, 27 December 1926; Note to FS, 28 December 1926, PALACE 4/4/15. After the intervention of powerful friends, Slatin’s British decorations were reinstated in 1927. See Currie to Schuster, 7 February 1927, PALACE 4/4/15; Brook-Shepherd, Between two flags, 313-18, 332-3. 10 Wingate to F. Milner, 11 March 1915, SAD 194/3/1. , 11 Willis to DMI, WO, London, 31 May 1919, INTEL 1/20/105. 12 Wingate to Callwell, 4 January 1916 and 24 January 1916, SAD 198; Wingate to Clayton, 17 January 1916, SAD 470/1. See also Talbot to his wife, 8 March 1916, RHL, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 424. 13 Wingate to Clayton, 25 May 1916, SAD 200/3. 14 Wingate to Clayton, 17 January 1916, SAD 470/1. 15 Wingate to Herbert, 23 December 1914, SAD 192/3. 16 Clayton to Wingate, 6 January 1915, SAD 194/1. 17 Wingate to Cromer, 31 March 1915, FO 633/24/67. 18 Wingate to MacMahon, 2 June 1915, PRO 30/57/47; Cecil to Cheetham, 16 January 1915, SAD 194/1; Hayter to Cecil, 14 January 1915, SAD 194/1. 19 Wingate to Clayton, 19 November 1914, SAD 469/7. 20 Clayton to Wingate, 30 November 1914, SAD 192/2. 21 Stack to Wingate, 28 April 1915, Clayton to Wingate, 21 April 1915, SAD 195/ 3; Clayton to Wingate, 16 January 1915, SAD 194/1, and 29 May 1915, SAD 195/6. 22 Clayton to Wingate, 8 June 1915, SAD 195/n. 23 Wingate to Davidson, 21 August 1915, SAD 196/3. 24 Wingate to Hardinge, 14 February 1917, SAD 163/2. 25 Wingate to Kelly, 13 June 1916, SAD 200/6. 26 Wingate to Grey, 12 October 1916, FO 848/2. See Janice Terry, Sir Reginald Wingate as high commissioner in Egypt, 1917-1919, University of London Ph.D., 1968, 3on, 35-7. 27 N.d., FO 371/3722. 28 See Daly, BA, 6-8. In 1916 Wingate wrote to Clayton about bringing Aden, Somaliland, and even Mesopotamia ‘under the Sudan’ (13 April, SAD 470/2). In January 1918 he suggested centralising all British political intelligence for Africa in Cairo. See Wingate to Hardinge, 25 January 1918, SAD 167/1. 29 See, e.g., Wingate to G. M. Wingate, 10 December 1916; Wingate to Robert¬ son, 23 November 1916, SAD 202/3. 30 See Daly, BA, 8-9. 31 Wingate to Stack, 22 January 1917, SAD 163/1. 32 Stack to Clayton, 22 March 1917, SAD 470/6. 33 Wingate to Henry, 4 September 1904, SAD 275/7.

Notes to pages 159-62

485

34 Wingate to Clayton, 11 November 1914, Wingate to Savile, 15 November 1914, SAD 192/2; Bukhari, Military aspects, 155-6. 35 Wingate to Cromer, 27 November 1914, SAD 192/2; Wingate to Clayton, 16 September 1914, SAD 469/7. Some Egyptian officers volunteered to fight in Europe (Bukhari, Military aspects, 150-1). 36 Wingate to Kenny, 10 December 1914, SAD 192/3. 37 ‘The Sudan Reserve Corps Proclamation. Explanatory note’, n.d. (1916), and minutes; WO to FO, 27 January 1917, FO 371/2930; Bukhari, Military aspects, 166. 38 ‘Note on the situation in the Sudan . . .’, 6 September 1914, end. in Cheetham to Grey, 7 September 1914, FO 371/1970. 39 Wingate to J. McKenzie, 23 September 1914, SAD 191/3. 40 Wingate to Owen, 20 September 1914, SAD 191/3; Bukhari, Military aspects, i58-941 Wingate to Grey, 28 November 1916, SAD 202/3. G/. Bukhari, Military aspects, 167-77; Sudan Agent to ADI, ^February 1918; GG’s office to Willis, 20 February 1918; ADI to Sudan Agent, 21 February 1918, INTEL 1/8/40. 42 Wingate to Clayton, 19 March 1915, FO 141/512/628. 43 Wingate to Clayton, 28 October 1914, SAD 192/1. 44 A. E. Robinson, ‘Report on the censorship in the Sudan . . 10 March 1920, INTEL 1/20/106. 45 Wingate to Clayton, 28 October 1914, SAD 192/1. 46 ‘List of Austrian and German subjects residing in the Sudan’, n.d., end. in ADI to PS, t8 September 1914, SAD 191/3. 47 ‘Note on the situation in the Sudan . . .’, 6 September 1914, end. in Cheetham to Grey, 7 September 1914, FO 371/1970. 48 Wingate to FitzGerald, 28 September 1914, SAD 191/3. For Neufeld see Wingate to Clayton, 16 September 1914, SAD 469/7, and 23 September 1914, SAD 191/3. See also SIR, September 1914. In October 1915 rumours placed him in the Libyan Desert. See Wingate to Jackson, t3 October 1915, SAD 197/1/1. 49 Wheatley to PS, 9 October 1914 and 17 October 1914, SAD 192/1; Willis to ‘O’, 31 March 1915, SAD 209/6. See also Pearson, act. ADI, Note, 1 March 1915; Wingate, Note, 3 March 1915, SAD 194/3/2. 50 Wingate to Clayton, 16 September 1914, SAD 469/7; and 23 September 1914, SAD 191/3. 51 Wingate to C. Penfield (US ambassador Vienna), 25 November 1914, SAD 192/2; Report by the Aliens Committee as to the Austrian Mission, Cairo, 1916. Cf. Willis to ‘O’, 31 March 1915, SAD 209/6, wherein Willis opined that if the ‘Jehad were raised, the missionaries would be the first to get it in the neck’. 52 ‘Report by the Governor-General on the general situation’, end. in Wingate to WO, 8 August 1916, FO 371/37x3. 53 Wingate to Cromer, 27 November 1914, FO 633/23/97. See also Wingate to Clayton, 15 October 1914, SAD 192/1. 54 ‘Translation of an article that appeared in the “Sudan Times” on the 9th November 1914’, SAD 192/2. 5 5 ‘His Excellency the governor-general’s speech to the ulema’, end. in PS to Symes, 20 March 1919, INTEL 1/8/41. Cf. Wingate to Cromer, 31 March 1915, FO 633/24/67, wherein he avowed certainty of the ‘rottenness of Islam’.

486

Notes to pages 163-9

56 Wingate claimed that ‘such an interpretation’ was ‘entirely foreign’ to his intention. See Crowe to Cheetham, 7 January 1915, Wingate to FO, 29 January 1915, Wingate to Cromer, 29 January 1915, SAD 194/1. The speech was published, without the reference to Jews, in The empire at war. 57 Wingate to Clayton, 30 October 1915, SAD 469/11. 58 Wingate to Clayton, 16 September 1914, SAD 469/7. 59 Wingate to Herbert, 23 February 1915, SAD 194/2. 60 Wingate to Herbert, 14 January 1915, SAD 194/1. 61 M. V. Morris, Political intelligence report for Lt. Col. GSPI, 12 July 1918, INTEL 1/8/40. 62 Wingate to Owen, 20 April 1915, SAD 195/3. 63 Wingate to Clayton, 19 July 1915, SAD 469/70. 64 Wingate to Clayton, 10 January 1916, SAD 470/1. 65 Wingate to Doughty Wylie, 21 December 1914, SAD 192/3. 66 Wingate to Charlton, 9 January 1915, SAD 194/1. 67 ‘Report by the Governor-General on the general situation’. 68 Wingate to Clayton, 13 February 1915, SAD 194/2. 69 Wingate to Fitzgerald, 18 January 1915, SAD 195/4. 70 Wingate to Clayton, 25 March 1915, SAD 194/3/1, and 1 June 1915, SAD 195/ 9; Wingate to Lyall, 19 November 1916, INTEL 1/8/40; ‘Extracts from reports by secret agent, Kamlin District, 24th March to 1st April 1916’, INTEL 9/1/13; Stack to Wingate, 24 November 1918, SAD 170/3/1. 71 SIR, October 1914. 72 Quoted in Wingate to Clayton, 16 September 1914, SAD 469/7. 73 Wingate to Cromer, 27 November 1914, FO 633/23/97. 74 Savile to Wingate, 26 November 1914, SAD 192/2. The tribal notables too were invited to sign the Book of loyalty. 75 See Wingate to Cromer, 27 November 1914, FO 633/23/97. 76 Quoted in Wingate to Cromer, 24 February 1915, FO 633/24/45. 77 Wingate to Clayton, 1 June 1915, SAD 195/9; Wingate to MacMahon, 1 June 1915, PRO 30/57. 78 Wingate to J. Kennedy, 9 January 1916, SAD 198. 79 Baily, ‘Early recollections’. 80 ‘Extracts from reports by secret agent, Kamlin District, 24th March to 1st April 1916’, INTEL 9/1/13. 81 Sagar to Willis, 11 May 1916, INTEL 9/1/13. 82 ‘Report by an agent, dated Kosti 13/2/16’, INTEL 2/41/345; Willis, ‘Mahdism’, 17 February 1917, INTEL 1/18/89. 83 Willis to PS, 29 March 1917, INTEL 1/18/89. 84 H. C. Jackson to ADI, 5 November 1917, Willis to governor, BNP, 10 November 1917, INTEL 9/1/2. 85 Willis to Cameron, 2 March 1919, INTEL 9/1/2. 86 Symes to Stack, 4 March 1917, INTEL 1/18/89. A postscript noted Wingate’s agreement. 87 Stack to Clayton, 22 April 1917, SAD 470/6. 88 ‘Report by the Governor-General on the general situation’. 89 As late as 1922 his son was reportedly passing his letters to the ‘faithful’. See ‘Note on Fellata Fiki Mohammed El Nur’; Cameron to ADI, 24 May 1916 and 27 August 1916; ADI to CS, 29 January 1919; governor Fung to DI, 3 March 1922, INTEL 9/2/26. 90 Wingate to Clayton, 24 April 1915, SAD 469/9.

Notes to pages 169-75

487

91 ‘Extracts from reports by a secret agent, Kamlin District, 24th March to 1st April 1916’, INTEL 9/1/13. 92 Wingate to Clayton, 11 May 1915, SAD 195/4. 93 Wingate to Asser, 29 August 1913, SAD 187/2/2; Jackson to CS, 29 June 1914, SAD 452/276. 94 Jackson to CS, 12 July 1914, SAD 452/276; Warburg, The Sudan, 107; CIB, AR, 1914. 95 Wingate to Clayton, 8 October 1914, SAD 192/1. 96 Struve to PS, 23 November 1914, SAD 192/2; Wingate to Doughty Wylie, 31 October 1914, SAD 192/1; Morris, Political intelligence report . . ., 12 July 1918, INTEL 1/8/40. 97 Wingate to Clayton, 19 November 1914, SAD 469/7. 98 Wingate to Clayton, 28 November 1914, SAD 469/7. 99 See Willis to ‘O’, 30 December 1914, SAD 209/5. 100 Maxwell to MacMahon, n.d. [April 1915], FO 141/512/628; Currie to Wingate, 21 December 1914, FO 633/23/168. 101 Wingate to Cromer, 31 March 1915, FO 633/24/67. 102 Wingate to Clayton, 14 January 1915, SAD 469/8. 103 Wingate to FitzGerald, 28 July 1915, SAD 196/1. 104 For political institutions see R. S. O’Fahey, State and society in Ddr Fur, Cambridge, 1980. For Abu Jummayza see Lidwien Kapteijns, Mahdist faith and Sudanic tradition, University of Amsterdam Doctor of Letters thesis, 1982, 99-113. 105 Cromer to Salisbury, 29 March 1900, FO 403/298, quoted in A. B. Theobald, Ali Dinar, last sultan of Darfur, 1898-1916, London, 1965, 38. 106 Cromer to Lansdowne, 5 June 1901, FO 800/123. 107 Theobald, Alt Dinar, 39-43: The 1900 annual report refers to ‘Sheikh Ali Dinar’; Wingate addressed him (1 May 1901, FO 371/1637) as ‘the Hon. Emir Ali Dinar, Managing Darfur Affairs’! 108 Kapteijns, Mahdist faith, 213-19; Theobald, Alt Dinar, 84-91. 109 Cromer to Salisbury, 10 February 1899, FO 633/6/309; Wingate to Cromer, 24 August 1910, FO 633/14/89; Theobald, Ali Dinar, 94, 97, citing Gorst to Wingate, 20 March 1910 and Gorst to Grey, 20 November 1910. 110 Wingate to Slatin, 21 May 1912, SAD 181/2/2. hi Slatin to Wingate, 12 November 1912, SAD 183/2; Bertie to Grey, 29 May 1911, enclosing Bertie to Cruppi, 26 May 1911, quoted in Theobald, Ali Dinar, 114. 112 Kitchener to Grey, 25 January 1913, Grey to Bertie, 3 February 1913, and Pichon to Bertie, 17 April 1914, FO 371/1637. 113 Kitchener to Grey, 5 May 1913; Vansittart minute, n.d., and Grey to Kitchener, 26 May 1913, FO 371/1637. 114 Kitchener to Grey, 29 May 1913, FO 371/1637. 115 Wingate to Clayton, 30 September 1914, SAD 191/3; Symes to Savile, 3 November 1914, SAD 192/2. 116 Ali Dinar to Wingate, 6 December 1914, INTEL 2/2-11 and 7/4-10, and Wingate to Savile, 26 December 1914, INTEL 7/4-5, quoted in Theobald, Ali Dinar, 138-40. 117 Wingate to Doughty Wylie, 21 December 1914, SAD 192/3. 118 Wingate to FitzGerald, 18 January 1915, PRO 30/57/47. 119 Ali Dinar to Ali al-Mirghani, 20 March 1915, INTEL 7/4/10; Ali Dinar to Wingate, 22 April 1915, INTEL 2/2/11, quoted in Theobald, Ali Dinar, 140-3.

488

Notes to pages 175-81

120 Wingate to Wigram, 21 May 1915, Clayton to Wingate, 22 May 1915 and 29 May 1915, SAD 195/6. 121 Wingate to Clayton, 17 May 1915, SAD 195/5. 122 Wingate to Pearson, 22 May 1915, SAD 195/6. 123 Adjutant-general to military secretary, 22 June 1915, SAD 127/2. 124 Savile to Wingate, 24 June 1915, SAD 127/2. 125 Adjutant-general to D.A.A.G., Erkowit, 26 June 1915, SAD 127/2. 126 Ali Dinar’s letter quoted in Theobald, Alt Dinar, 144— 5. See Wingate to Stack, 27 June 1915, Wingate to adjutant-general, 27 June 1915, and Wingate to Clayton, 29 June 1915, SAD 127/2. 127 Wingate to Savile, 28 June 1915, SAD 127/2. 128 Wingate to Clayton, 28 June 1915, SAD 127/2, and 29 June 1915, SAD 195/9; Savile to CS, 2 July 1915, SAD 127/3; Ali Dinar to Wingate, 1915, quoted in Theobald, Ali Dinar, 147; Savile to Symes, 24 July 1915, INTEL 2/5-18, i47~8129 Wingate to FitzGerald, 28 July 1915, SAD 196/1. 130 Wingate to Savile, 26 July 1915, SAD 127/3. Abd al-Hamid Muhammad was a grandson of Sultan Muhammad Fadl (BD, 10). 131 Wingate to Savile, 30 June 1915, SAD 127/2; MacMahon to FO, 26 September 1915, FO to MacMahon, 19 October 1915, FO 371/2352. 132 Wingate to Savile, 1 August 1915, SAD 127/3. 133 Wingate to Savile, 19 August 1915, SAD 196/4. 134 ‘Report by J. R. Bassett on his mission to the Rizeigat’, 1 October 1915, cited in Theobald, Ali Dinar, 15 5-6 (for the loan to the Kababish, 159). 135 Clayton to Cheetham, 25 July 1915, FO 141/426/1006; Theobald, Alt Dinar, 140, 152-4. 136 Wingate to Logan, 20 December 1915, SAD 197/3/1. Cf. RFACS: ‘at the direct instigation of the Turkish Mission to the Sennoussi’, 'Ali Dinar ‘started to plan an invasion of the Sudan to be carried out simultaneously with the Sennoussist attack on Egypt’. 137 Theobald, Ali Dinar, 157-8. 138 Wingate to Clayton, 21 December 1915, FO 141/426/1006. 139 Inspector Nahud to ADI and governor Kordofan, 10 February 1916, quoted in Theobald, Ali Dinar, 166. 140 Wingate to Clayton, 10 February 1916, FO 141/426/1006. 141 Wingate to Clayton, 21 February 1916, and Wingate to Kitchener, 22 February 1916, SAD 199/2; Theobald, Ali Dinar, 167-8. 142 Wingate to MacMichael, 26 February 1916, quoted in Theobald, Ali Dinar, r72Wingate to Clayton, 26 February 1916, FO 141/426/1006. Wingate to Ali Dinar, 17 March 1916, SAD 127/7. Kelly to Wingate, 16 April 1916, SAD 128/2. Wingate to MacMahon, 19 March 1916, FO 141/426/1006. Clayton to Wingate, 3 April 1916, FO 141/426/1006. Wingate to Clayton, 13 April 1916, SAD 128/1; Wingate to MacMahon, 17 April 1916, SAD 128/2; Cecil to MacMahon, 19 April 1916, FO 141/426/1006. 149 MacMahon to Grey, 25 April 1916, MacMahon to FO, 26 April 1916, FO 141/ 426/1006. 150 MacMahon to Wingate, 25 April 1916, FO 141/426/1006; Wingate to Kelly, 24 April 1916, SAD 128/1. 143 144 145 146 147 148

Notes to pages 182-9

489

151 Wingate to Talbot, 27 April 1916, SAD 128/3. 152 FO to MacMahon, 1 May 1916, FO 141/426/1006. Wingate admitted that without Kitchener’s ‘powerful aid, politicians might have suddenly stopped our advance just as it was about to mature’ (Wingate to Garstin, 22 July 1916, SAD 201/3). 153 FO to MacMahon, 6, 9, and 24 May 1916, FO 141/426/1006. 154 MacMahon to Grey, 16 May 1916, quoting Wingate to Clayton, n.d., FO 141/ 426/1006. 155 ‘A draft proclamation in Arabic “To the people of Darfur” ’, n.d.; ‘Text of Arabic proclamation to Darfur’, April 1916, SAD 127/2. 156 Theobald, Ah Dinar, 189-93. Kelly thought the aircraft had ‘probably not’ been ‘worth the great expense’ they incurred. (Kelly to Wingate, 20 September 1916, SAD 130/4.) 157 Note, 10 July 1915, FO 141/426/1006. 158 Wingate to MacMahon, 19 March 1916, enclosing Ali Dinar to governor Kordofan and inspector Nahud, 6 February 1916, 7 February 1916, FO 141/ 426/1006. 159 Wingate to H. L. Bridgman, 31 March 1916, Wingate to Currie, 29 April 1916, SAD 198. 160 Wingate to Bridgman, 3 May 1916, SAD 198; Wingate to Kitchener, 15 March 1916, SAD 199/3. 161 MacMichael to ADI, 27 May 1916, SAD 128/5. 162 MacMichael to ADI, 27 May 1916, SAD 128/5. 163 MacMichael to ADI, 29 May 1916, SAD 128/5. 164 Wingate to Kelly, 5 June 1916, SAD 200/6. 165 Wingate to Kelly, 13 June 1916, SAD 200/6; Wingate to Kelly, 21 June 1916, SAD 200/7. 166 Wingate to Stack, 5 July 1916, SAD 201/2. 167 Theobald, All Dinar, 197-204. 168 Wingate to Grey, 8 June 1916, FO 800/48. 169 Wingate to Grey, 8 June 1916, quoted in Theobald, Ali Dinar, 206; Cecil to MacMahon, 6 July 1916 and 13 August 1916, FO 141/426/1006. 170 Cubitt, WO, to secretary, Treasury, 10 January 1917; FO minutes, 23 January 1917, FO 371/2930. 171 Graham to Wingate, 29 January 1917; Wingate to Balfour, 23 March 1917; Graham to Treasury, 11 April 1917; Chalmers to FO, 7 July 1917; Cubitt to FO, 21 September 1917, FO 371/2930. 172 Treasury to FO, 16 December 1915, FO 371/2352. 173 FO to MacMahon, 2 August 1916, FO 141/737; Tyrrell minute on Wingate to MacMahon, 6 September 1916, FO 371/2667. 174 ‘Rough notes of meeting held at the palace on November 3rd 1916’, SAD 130/6. 175 Savile to CS, 30 May 1917, FO 141/737/2457. 176 MacMichael, ‘Report on Dar Masalit’, 19 April 1918, FO 141/737. 177 Allenby to Curzon, 22 February 1920, and Allenby to FO, 15 April 1920, FO 37i/50.ii178 MacMichael, ‘Memorandum. Concerning the future status of Darfur’, n.d., Symes to MacMichael, 29 September 1915, SAD 127/3. 179 MacMichael, ‘Memorandum . . . Darfur’. 180 Quoted in Symes to MacMichael, 29 September 1915, SAD 127/3.

Notes to pages 190-201

49°

181 MacMichael, ‘Memorandum concerning the administrative policy to be fol¬ lowed in Darfur in the immediate future’, 6 March 1916, AD 127/7. 182 Wingate to MacMahon, 23 March 1916, FO 141/426/1006. 183 ‘Rough notes of meeting held at the palace on November 3rd 1916’, SAD 130/6. 184 Commandant, Abiad to Wingate, 26 May 1916, MacMichael to ADI, 27 May 1916, SAD 128/5. 5.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS,

1898-1919

1 O’Fahey, State and society, 140-1. 2 Hill, Egypt, 49-59, 73-4, 97-9, 123-5, 154—7- See also P. M. Holt and M. W. Daly, The history of the Sudan, London, 1980, 9-11; Charles Issawi (ed.), The economic history of the Middle East 1800-1914, Chicago, 1966, 468-9; P. M. Holt, ‘Modernization and reaction in the nineteenth-century Sudan’, in W. R. Polk and R. L. Chambers, Beginnings of modernization in the Middle East, the nineteenth century, Chicago, 1968, 401-15. For aspects of nineteenth-century trade see Paul Santi and Richard Hill (eds. and trans.), The Europeans in the Sudan 1834-1878, Oxford, 1980; for the Darfur caravan trade, O’Fahey, State and society, 139-44. 3 Cromer to Salisbury, 9 February 1900, HH, 3M/A112/82. 4 John Stone, The finance of government economic development in the Sudan 1899 to 1913, Khartoum, 1954, 12. 5 Ibid., 31-3, 37-43. 6 Brunyate to Bernard, 26 January 1918, SAD 167/1. 7 Schuster, Note on the payments made by Egypt to the Sudan since 1899, July 1924, FO 371/10068. 8 Stone, The finance, 57-64. 9 Interview with Sir George Schuster, 19 May 1976. 10 Stone, The finance, 14, 139-51, 154-6. 11 Cromer, RFACS for 1899. Wingate had long championed a ‘very lenient fiscal system’. See IRE 8, November 1892. 12 See Hill, Egypt, 3 8-41; Holt, The Mahdist State, 126-7, 2 5 7-60; Warburg, The Sudan, 165. 13 Lewis to Wingate, 13 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1; Hickman to Wingate, 3 June 1900, SAD 270/6. 14 SG 7, 2 December 1899; SG 26, 1 August 1901; Stone, The finance, 109-12, 192-4. 15 Stone, The finance, 101, 193-4. 16 Wingate to Kitchener, 7 April 1912, SAD 181/1/1. 17 Egypt No. 1, 1920, Cd.957. 18 Stone, The finance, 194-7; Egypt No. /, 1920, Cd.957. 19 SG 2, 27 May 1899; C. E. Dawkins, Memorandum, March 1897; Stone, The finance, 188-92; Warburg, The Sudan, 165-6. One feddan is 1.038 acres. 20 Stone, The finance, 185-8; Warburg, The Sudan, 166-7. 21 SG 2, 27 May 1899; Stone, The finance, 199-204. 22 Asser to Wingate, n.d. [March 1905], SAD 276/3. 23 Stone, The finance, 180-1, 185. 24 Wingate to Cecil, 20 December 1912, SAD 183/3; Warburg, The Sudan, 193; A. N. Gibson, ‘An outline history of the Sudan Customs’, 28 July 1935, SAD 606/1.

Notes to pages 201-8

49i

25 Rothschild to Cromer, ^January 1898, FO 78/5185. See also other papers in that file, and F. G. A. Pinckney, Sudan Government railways and steamers, London, 1926. 26 RFACS for 1898. 27 Kitchener to Rodd, 8 September 1898, FO 78/4957. 28 Hill, Sudan transport, 25-6. 29 Gorst to Cromer, 10 September 1898, FO 78/4957. 30 Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 294; H. A. Micklem, ‘Report on construction of bridge over Atbara River’, 28 August 1899, in Royal Engineers Journal, 29, 1899, 224. 31 W. S. Gordon, ‘Memorandum on the superstructure of the Atbara Bridge’, 13 May 1899, Egypt No. 6, 1899, C.9424. 32 Micklem, ‘Report on construction’. 33 Hill, Sudan transport, 26-7, 49-51; Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 294-5, 39134 Hill, Sudan transport, 67; Mustafa Mohammed Khojali, The significance of the railway to the economic development of the Republic of the Sudan . . ., University of Wales M.A., 1964, 102. 35 Hill, Sudan transport, 50, 67-9; Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 392-9; See SG 90, 2 February 1906, and Gwynn to Barrington, 22 April 1956, SAD. 36 SG 69, 1 December 1904; Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 400; Hill, Sudan transport, 18-23, 75-6; Khojali, The significance, 109; SG 92, 1 April 1906. 37 Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 58-9, 494-7. 38 Wingate to Cecil, 8 November 1904, SAD 275/6; Wingate to Grabham, 24 October 1934, quoted in Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 497. See also Hill, Sudan transport, 71-2; SG 70, 1 January 1905; SG 73, 1 March 1905. 39 Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 497-8; for a plan, 500-1. 40 Ibid., 499; Hill, Sudan transport, 72, 74; see SG 153, 1 May 1909, and H. E. Hebbert, ‘The Port Sudan water supply’, SNR, 18, 1, 1935, 89-101. 41 Wingate to Cromer, 21 February 1901, SAD 271/2; Alick Murray to Wingate, n.d. [June 1902], SAD 272/4/1; Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 404; Hill, Sudan transport, 77-8. 42 Owen to Wingate, 13 January 1907, SAD 280/1; Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 404; Hill, Sudan transport, 79-80. 43 Owen to Wingate, 24 July 1907, SAD 281/1; Slatin to Wingate, 28 March 1908, SAD 282/3/1. 44 Wingate to Asser, 14 May 1908, SAD 282/5. 45 Wingate to Stack, 12 May 1908, SAD 284/13. 46 Harvey to Bernard, 12 June 1910, Bernard to Rowlatt, 20 June 1910, SAD 297/ 4; SG 214, 26 March 1912; Hill, Sudan transport, 80. 47 Midwinter to secretary, CEB, 12 April 1913, SAD 186/1/1; Kitchener to Wingate, 24 April 1913, SAD 186/1/3. 48 RFACS for 1900, 1904, 1908, 1913, 1920. 49 See Hill, Sudan transport, 57-66; C. H. Page, ‘Inland water navigation in the Sudan’, SNR, 2, 4, 1919, 293-306; W. E. Longfield, ‘The growth of Sudan communications’, in J. A. de C. Hamilton (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from within, London, 1935, 338. 50 RFACS for 1906. 51 RFACS for 1904, 1908. 52 Omar Mohammed Osman Abdon, The development of transport and econ¬ omic growth in the Sudan: 1899-19)7, University of London Ph.D., i960, 78, 87-8, 103-4.

92

Notes to pages 208-16

53 Hill, Egypt, 130-1, 157;Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 258;Holt, The Mahdist State, 248. Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 416-18, 420. Quoted in Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 418. Ibid., 420-1, 424-33. Ibid., 433-5. Gleichen, The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 218; RFACS for 1904. RFACS for 1913. SG 31, 1 January 1902; SG 32, February 1902; cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 193. For Macauley and Midwinter see BD, 219, 238. 61 SG 31, 1 January 1902; SG 147, 1 January 1909; SG 222, 10 October 1912; SG 254, 12 June 1914; SG 321, 18 September 1917; RFACS for 1920. For Bond see BD, 82; Drury, 115-16; Moir, 240. Gordon’s original title was ‘directorgeneral’. See SG 10, 1 April 1900; SG 20, 1 February 1901; SG 69, 1 December 1904; SG 70, 1 January 1905. 62 N. T. Borton to CS, 20 April 1903, SAD 542/1; H. Bell, ‘Report on the settlement of El Obeid Town lands’, n.d. [1913], SAD 542/1; cf. Warburg, The Sudan, 155-6, 159, 161-2. 63 Wingate to Cromer, 17 November 1906, Owen to Wingate, 18 November 1906, SAD 279/5; Warburg, The Sudan, 162-4; J- Stone, Sudan economic development 1899-1913, Khartoum, 1955, 33-4. 64 G. W. Williamson, ‘Note by the registrar-general of lands. . .’, 12 June 1916, SAD 542/22; Stone, Sudan, 13-14. 65 Stone, Sudan, 14. 66 Ibid., 17-18; Williamson, ‘Note’; Warburg, The Sudan, 159; Stone, The finance, 163-4. See ‘Land settlement in Sennar Province’, n.d., end. in Bonham Carter to Munro, 16 February, SAD 542/12. 67 Williamson, ‘Note’. 68 See Ryder memoirs, 1905-16, SAD 400/8, and J. F. Kershaw, Berber Land Commission, ‘Report’, 5 August 1904, SAD 542/6. 69 Ball to LS, Final report of Geteina rainland settlement, 17 December 1913, SAD 542/10; P. Munro, ‘Report on land tenure’, 27 October ?, SAD 542/11. 70 See B. H. Bell, ‘Individual rights in tribal lands’, end. in Bell to asst, director of lands, 11 August 1930, SAD 542/23. 71 E. S. Jackson, ‘Report on Southern District of Bahr El Ghazal Province’, n.d., SAD 542/18. 72 Warburg, The Sudan, 68, citing RFACS for 1903. For Broun’s appointment see SG 31,1 January 1902. 73 SG 54, 1 December 1903; SG 59, 1 February 1904; SG 84, 1 December 1905; Warburg, The Sudan, 68. 74 Warburg, The Sudan, 68, and citing RFACS for 1906. 75 SG 59, 1 February 1904; Phipps to Wingate, 19 June 1905, SAD 276/6. 76 Cecil to Wingate, 4 January 1904, SAD 275/1. 77 Frank Crowther, ‘Organization of agricultural research and the experimental farms’, in J. D. Tothill (ed.), Agriculture in the Sudan, London, 1948, 416-22; ‘Extract from a report by Mr. J. Nevile on the work done at the Shendi experimental farm’, Egypt No. 1, 1903, Cd.1529; SG 190, 5 January 1911; Warburg, The Sudan, 68-9, citing GG’s council minute book, 2 March 1915; Stone, The finance, 160-1. 78 Egypt No. 1, 1900, Cd.95; Stone, 124-5; Warburg, The Sudan, 165-6.

54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Notes to pages 216-28 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 no hi 112 113

493

RFACS for 1904. Cromer to Lansdowne, 26 February 1904; RFACS for 1903. Stone, Sudan, 129, 155-6, 161. CIB, AR, 1914, 1919; RFACS for 1908; Stone, Sudan, 134. Stone, Sudan, 139—40. CIB, AR, 1914, 1919; Adel Amin Beshai, Export performance and economic development in the Sudan 7900-/967, London, 1976, 175. Beshai, Export, 100, 116, 118. Ibid., 117, 246; CIB, AR 1914. Egypt No. 1, 1900, Cd.95;SG 8, 2 January 1900; RFACS for 1904. For Slatin’s prospecting see Hill, Slatin Pasha, 6}-j. E. R. Sawer, ‘The agricultural problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, in Central Research Farm, Bulletin No. 1, Pump irrigation in the Northern Sudan, n.p., 1915, 1. Wingate to Cromer, 13 April 1903, SAD 273/4; Wingate to Herbert, 29 January 1914, SAD 189/1. RFACS for 1906. Arthur Gaitskell, Gezira, a story of development in the Sudan, London, 1959, 40—1; Stone, Sudan, 160—3. Stone, Sudan, 168-70; Gaitskell, Gezira, 51-3. RFACS for 1903; Hill, Egypt, 115-16; Stone, Sudan, 185-6, 189. Gaitskell, Gezira, 49-50. C. E. Dupuis, ‘Gezira Canal, preliminary report’, RFACS for 1908. Manager, Sudan Plantations Syndicate to Gaitskell, 25 March 1928, SAD 418/3. J. W. McConnel to Wingate, 24 January 1914, SAD 189/1. See Kitchener, Memorandum, n.d. [July 1911], Kitchener to Grey, 19 October 1911, FO 371/1114; Grey minute, 14 May 1912, ‘Note respecting Soudan Loan’, end. in Kitchener to Grey, 16 June 1912, FO 371/1363; FO minute for Cabinet, 3 January 1913, FO 371/1635; Kitchener to Grey, 24 January 1914, Hamilton to Tyrrell, 9 March 1914, Simon to Grey, 17 March 1914, Kitchener to FO, 21 March 1914, FO 371/1965; Gaitskell, Gezira, 53-60. The British Cotton Growing Association, Twelfth annual report, Manchester, 1917, 26-7. SG 9, 2 February 1900; SG 31, 1 January 1902; RFACS for 1908. Wingate to Butler, 12 May 1912, 22 May 1912, SAD 181/2/1. Wingate to Steuart-Menzies, 4 May 1913, SAD 186/2/2. Steuart-Menzies was fined ££50. See correspondence in CIVSEC 31/4/16. SG 20, 1 February 1901; SG 31, 1 January 1902; SG 47, May 1903; Stone, Sudan, 236. CIB, AR, 1931-1932. Stone, Sudan, 238-40. Ibid., 197-201; SG 18, 1 December 1900. Stone, Sudan, 161-3. CIB,AR, 1931—1932; Stone, Sudan, 9-14, 20; The finance, 162-3. CIB,AR, 1914. CIB,AR, 1914, 1919. CIB,AR, 1914. CIB,AR, 1915, 1918.

494

Notes to pages 229-37

114 See T. Tvedt, Colonial technicians, the Sudan Veterinary Service, 1898-1936, University of Bergen hovedag, 1983, 30-47. 115 CIB,AR, 1914, 1919, 1931-1932; R. E. More to northern governors, 25 January 1916, SAD 199/1. 116 Stack to Clayton, 28 June 1917, SAD 470/6. 117 CIB,AR, 1919. 118 Statistics taken or calculated from CIB, AR, 1919. 119 CIB,AR, 1918. 120 Naval Staff Intelligence Division, A handbook of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1922, 465; CIB,AR, 1916. 121 T. M. Hargey, The suppression of slavery in the Sudan, 1898-1939, Oxford 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131

132 133 134

135 136

137 138

D.Phil., 1981, 16-25. Ibid., 5-16, 52-70. Cromer, Memorandum, 10 November 1898, FO 78/4957. Bigge to Prince Francis of Teck, 7 August 1897, SAD 438/653. Slatin to Bigge, 6 September 1897, SAD 438/653. Slatin to Wingate, 27 January 1900, SAD 270/1/1. Hargey, The suppression, 81-6. SG 80, 24 August 1905; Hargey, The suppression, 81-6. FS to Wingate, 28 December 1913, SAD 188/3/1. Quoted in Hargey, The suppression, 88-9. Ibid., 100, citing draft memorandum, August 1918, CIVSEC 60/1/1. See ‘Regulations as to Sudanese servants’, 1 May 1919, end. in Henderson to Chamberlain, 5 September 1925, FO 407/201. Hargey, The suppression, 102, citing Sterry to CS, 2 September 1918, CIVSEC 60/1/1, and 79, citing Slatin in the RFACS for 1906. Hargey, The suppression, 102, citing Sterry to CS, 2 September 1918, CIVSEC 60/1/1. Wingate to Cromer, 30 January 1907, SAD 280/1; See Sudan Government confidential circular memorandum no. 22; ’Regulations as to Sudanese who leave their masters’, 4 January 1907, end. in Henderson to Chamberlain, 5 September 1925, FO 407/201. See also Cromer to Wingate, 22 January 1907, SAD 280/1. Findlay to Grey, 20 July 1906, FO 371/65. Wingate to Stack, 12 May 1908, SAD 284/13; cf. Hargey, The suppression, 87, 193; Warburg, The Sudan, 172-3; Wingate to Stack, i9May i9o8,4june 1908, SAD 284/13. Wingate to Stack, 31 May 1908, SAD 284/13. Clayton to Wingate, 5 April 1910, SAD 296/1/3; see Warburg, The Sudan,

173-4139 Wingate to Gorst, 13 April 1910, SAD 296/1/3; Wingate to Phipps, 14 August 1910, SAD 297/12; Hargey, The suppression, 221-3. 140 Wingate to Savile, 17 May 1915, SAD 195/6. 141 Hargey, The suppression, 106, 144-57, 173-201, 47°; Warburg, The Sudan, 171. 142 Hargey, The suppression, 126, 131, 183, 194, 202. 143 Ibid., 109, 115, 122, 203, 228; Stone, Sudan, 52-4; Warburg, The Sudan, 179-89. 144 Stone, Sudan, 54.

Notes to pages 2 j 8-47

495

145 RFACS for 1905; Hargey, The suppression. 146 Mark R. Duffield, Maiurno: capitalism and rural life in Sudan, London, 1981, 28-30. 147 See, e.g., G. Ayoub Balamoan, Peoples and economies in the Sudan 1884-1956, Cambridge, Mass., 2nd ed., 1981.

6.

EDUCATION AND HEALTH, I 898-19 19

1 Mohamed Omer Beshir, Educational development in the Sudan 1898-1956, Oxford, 1969, 3-12; J. S. Trimingham, Islam in the Sudan, London, 1949, 116-20. 2 Hill, Egypt, 88-9, 126-7. 3 Egypt No. 1, 1900, Cd.95. 4 Egypt No. 1, 1901, Cd.441; Sir James Currie, ‘The educational experiment in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1900-33’, Journal of the (Royal) African Society, 33, 1934, 362. 5 Egypt No. 1, 1901, Cd.441. 6 Quoted in Beshir, Educational, 27, citing Cromer, Ancient and modern imperialism, London, 1910, 106-7. 7 Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 163. 8 Quoted in Beshir, Educational, 26. 9 Egypt No. 1, 1902, Cd.1012. 10 Text of Khartoum speech, 27 January 1903, SAD 273/2; Beshir, Educational, 27, quoting Cromer to Gorst, 12 November 1908, FO 633/14. 11 Egypt No. 1, 1902, Cd.1012. 12 RFACS for 1907; Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, io9ff; Beshir, Educational, 45. 13 Bowman diary, 7 March 1913, MECOX. 14 RFACS for 1907. 13 SG 41, November 1902. 16 SG 44, February 1903. 17 Currie to Wingate, 10 April 1907, REPORTS 3/1/5. 18 T. R. H. Owen, ‘Sudan days’, p. 113, SAD. 19 Warburg, The Sudan, 89-90; RFACS for 1907. 20 See Wingate to Cromer, 12 February 1902 (nos. 60, 61), FO 141/371, and Mather’s diary of a visit to Sudan, SAD 404/8. 21 RFACS for 1904; Egypt No. 1, 1905, Cd.2409; Egypt No. 1, 1907, Cd.3394; RFACS for 1907. 22 RFACS for 1907. 23 Egypt No. 1, 1905, Cd.2409; Egypt No. 1, 1907, Cd.3394; Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 121; Asser to Wingate, 2 September 1910, SAD 297/3; Beshir, Educational, 197. 24 Sanderson, Intro., to Babikr Bedri, memoirs, v.2, 40-1. 25 Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 127, 137-40; L. M. Sanderson, ‘Some aspects of the development of girls’ education in the Northern Sudan’, SNR, 42, 1961, 91-101. 26 Cromer to Wingate, 3 February 1904, SAD 275/2. 27 Cromer to Wingate, 3 February 1904, Wingate to Cromer, 14 February 1904, SAD 275/2. 28 Wingate to Phipps, 21 May 1912, SAD 181/2/2.

4 96

Notes to pages 247-54

29 Currie to Wingate, 25 June 1906, FO 371/67. 30 Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.i, 123; see also in, 122, 146; and E. R. J. Hussey, Tropical Africa 1908-1944, memoirs of a period, n.p., 1959, 4. 31 Currie to Wingate, 7 March 1908, SAD 282/3/1; RFACS for 1908. 32 Wingate to Kitchener, 26 October 1911, SAD 301/4. 33 Legal Dept., ‘The Omdurman Maahad Ilmi’, 16 September 1946, SAD G//s 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54

535- . Currie to Wingate, 19 November 1913, SAD 188/2. Wingate to Kitchener, 20 November 1913, SAD 188/2. Currie to Wingate, 31 December 1913, SAD 188/3/1. Currie to Wingate, n.d., SAD 190/1/2; SG 263, 4 November 1914. Beshir, Educational, 195. Wingate to Kitchener, 3 August 1915, SAD 196/3. Crowfoot to Wingate, 18 September 1915, SAD 196/5. GMC, Report and accounts to 31st December, 1915, n.p., n.d. GMC, Report and accounts to 31st December, 1918, rvp., n.d. Hill, Egypt, 78-9, 105, 163; idem, ‘Government and Christian missions in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1899-1914’, MES, 1, 2, 1965, 115; ERP, 34. See also L. M. Sanderson, Education in the Southern Sudan, 1898-1948, University of London Ph.D., 1966, and Elias Toniolo and Richard Hill (eds.), The opening of the Nile Basin . . ., London, 1974. ERP, 28-9; Hill, ‘Government’, 117; Collins, Land, 282-4. Hill,‘Government’, 114-15. Cromer to Sanderson, 21 December 1898, FO 633/8/193. Hill, ‘Government’, 116, quoting Cromer to Kitchener, 7 December 1899, SAD 269/12; Cromer to Salisbury, 27 April 1900, FO 78/5087; ERP, 35-6. Cromer to FO, 11 October 1898, FO 78/4959. Hill, ‘Government’, 118, 122; ERP, 30-1. Cromer to Salisbury, 2 February 1899, FO 633/6/308, and 30 January 1900, FO 78/5086. Cromer to Blyth, 8 February 1900, FO 633/8/254, 23 February 1900, FO 633/ 8/256; Blyth to Cromer, 15 February 1900, FO 78/5087. Cromer to Barrington, 29 March 1900 and Cromer to Salisbury, 27 April 1900, FO 78/5087; Cromer to Blyth, 26 October 1904, FO 633/8/402. Cromer to Lansdowne, 9 March 1900, FO 633/8/259; Cromer to Salisbury, 27 April 1900, FO/5087; Cromer to Wingate, 9 March 1900, SAD 270/3. See also Jackson, Pastor. Jackson to Cromer, 15 June 1900, HH, 3M/A112/118.

ERP, 38-956 Owen to Wingate, 25 June 1905, SAD 276/6; Wheatley minute, 9 September 1913, CIVSEC 46/1/26. 57 ERP, 43-5, 51. 58 Ibid., 43-4; L. M. Sanderson, Education, 39-40. 59 ERP, 56-8. 60 Currie to Nason, 2 February 1904, Wingate to Boulnois, 3 February 1904, SAD 103/7. 61 Wingate to Governor, Bahr al-Ghazal, 21 November 1904, SAD 103/7. 62 ERP, 59-64. 63 Ibid., 54-5. 55

Notes to pages 2 54-63

497

64 Gwynne to Wingate, 20 April 1908, SAD 282/4; ERP, 51-4. 65 Gwynne to Wingate, 26 December 1910, SAD 103/7.

66 Wingate to Feilden, 27 December 1910, SAD 103/7; 15 April 1911, SAD 300/ 4/2. 67 Wingate to Gorst, 1 March 1911, SAD 300/3; Wingate to Gwynne, 17 May 1911, SAD 300/5/1; Gwynne to Wingate, 29 August 1911, SAD 301/2; Wingate to Gwynne, 9 October 1911, SAD 301/4. 68 See, e.g., Asser to Wingate, 8 September 1911, SAD 301/3. 69 Gwynne to Wingate, 19 November 1911, SAD 301/5; Wingate to Kitchener, 11 February 1912, SAD, 180/2/2. Cf. ERP, 91-2. 70 Gwynne to Wingate, 25 February 1914, SAD 189/2. 71 ERP, 92. 72 73 74 75

Wingate to Phipps, 24 April 1912, SAD 181/1/3. Wingate to Feilden, 27 May 1912, SAD 181/2/2. Cf. ERP, 88. Wingate to Phipps, 11 May 1912, SAD 181/2/2. Wingate to Stack, 10 July 1913, SAD 187/1/2; Wingate to Slatin, 18 July 1913, SAD 187/1/1; cf. Wingate to Stack, 14 June 1913, SAD 186/3; and Wingate to Phipps, 10 May 1913, SAD 186/2/1. See also ERP, 93-4. 76 ERP, 64, 93-104. 77 Hill, Egypt, 16, 48, 93, 128-9; Ahmed Bayoumi, The history of Sudan health

services, Nairobi, 1979, 55-65, 83-4. 78 Bayoumi, The history, 89-90; H. C. Squires, The Sudan Medical Service, London, 1958, 3-5. I am grateful to Dr Bloss for access to the unpublished ‘The Sudan, a medical history’, co-authored with Dr A. Cruikshank. 79 CAO 370, 20 December 1905. 80 Wingate to Acland, 29 November 1908, SAD 284/11/2. 81 Wingate to Acland, 14 November 1911, SAD 301/5. 82 Squires, The Sudan, 5,47; Bayoumi, The history, 91; SG 60, 1 March 1904; SG 61,1 April 19045^63, i June 19045^76, 1 May 1905;^ i05,n.d.;SG 147, 1 January 1909; SG 226, 1 December 1912; SG 310, 7 December 1916. 83 Bayoumi, The history, 123, citing First Report, Wellcome Research Laboratories, 1904. 84 SG 47, May 1903; SG 91, 1 March 1906; SG 95, 1 May 1906; Bayoumi, The history, 123. 85 Egypt No. 1, 1906, Cd.2817; CAO 367, 16 November 1905; Bayoumi, The history, 124-5, 252-3; Squires, The Sudan, 7, 29. 86 Bayoumi, The history, 113-18. 87 RFACS for 1904; Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, 5/9, and appendix 1. 88 Leonard Bousfield, Sudan doctor, London, 1954, 70. 89 A. Cruikshank, ‘The Midwives’ Training School . . .’, paper for the Durham Sudan Historical Records Conference, April 1982. 90 RFACS, 1913. 91 SG 29, 1 November 1901; SG 71, 1 February 1905; Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, appendix 1; Bayoumi, The history, 91-2; Squires, The Sudan, 13, 16-18, 79. 92 SG 6, 30 September 1899. 93 SG 23, 1 May 1901; SG 64, 1 July 1904. 94 Provisional regulations of the Sudan Medical Department, Khartoum, 1910, 19-20, 30-2.

498

Notes to pages 263-J5

95 Ibid.., 12-14, Egypt No. 1, 1909, Cd.4580. 96 See, e.g., Dr Ali Bedri, ‘The story of. . . health services in the Sudan’, paper for the Durham Sudan Historical Records Conference. 97 ‘Notes on medicine in the Sudan’, n.d., SAD 407/6. 98 Provisional regulations, 2-9. 99 Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, 4/3; Bayoumi, The history, 253; Squires,

The Sudan, 30-1. 100 Bayoumi, The history, 281. 101 Ibid., 181-7; see also H. B. Mathias, ‘Sleeping sickness in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, in the Fourth Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories, London, 1911. 102 See SAD 407/1-2, ‘Papers concerning an outbreak of smallpox at Omdurman, July-September 1913’; Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, 6/4; Bayoumi, The history, 209, 222; and Bousfield, Sudan doctor, 72.

7. THE SUDAN GOVERNMENT’S TROUBLED AD O LE S'C EN C E , 1919-1924 1 R. Graham, ‘Note on the unrest in Egypt’, 9 April 1919, SAD 162/6/5. See also W. Willcocks, Memorandum, 4 March 1919, with minutes by A. T. Loyd and Wingate, FO 371/3714. 2 See Wingate, ‘Main points which have given rise to the present situation’, n.d. [November 1919], SAD 238/3. For Wingate’s failure to receive a peerage see Curzon to Milner, 19 December 1919, DEP MILNER 162. After leaving the Sudan Wingate received gratuities of ££12,790 from Egypt and ££4,932 from the Sudan. 3 Graham, ‘Note on the unrest’. 4 C. A. Willis, Note, n.d., end. in Stack to Wingate, 22 December 1918, FO 37i/37ii5 See Daly, BA, io.

6 Residency minute, 24 October 1923, FO 141/579/540; Wiggin, Residency minute, 22 September 1924, FO 141/777/2426. 7 Amos to Wiggin, 7 November 1924, FO 141/777/2426. 8 Stack to Clayton, 14 January 1917, SAD 470/6. 9 Stack to Clayton, 22 March 1917, SAD 470/6. 10 Bakheit, BA, 38-42; Sanderson, Intro, to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 3 3-4 ;SG 386, 15 December 1921. The title deputy governor was abolished in 1930. Some districts had two inspectors before 1920. 11 See Daly, BA, 181. 12 Bakheit, BA, 39-40. 13 Feilden to Slatin, 13 April 1921, SAD 437/480. 14 R. E. H. Baily diary, 8 November 1924. 15 See Daly, BA, 11-12, 27-8. 16 Forster to his wife, 15 March 1920, SAD 600/10. 17 Forster to his wife, 12 April 1920 and 16 April 1920, SAD 600/10. 18 Forbes Adam, FO, to Treasury, 19 August 1921, Niemeyer to FO, 30 September 1921, and FO minute by A. D. Cooper, 3 October 1921, FO 371/ 6319; Forster to his wife, 8 August 1921, SAD 601/1; FO to Stack, 17 August 1922, FO 371/7754. See Daly, BA, 190-4. 19 SG 409, 29 January 1923. 20 R.C.L. to Curzon, 4 August 1921, FO 371/6319.

Notes to pages 276-85

499

21 Stack to FO, 6 October, FO 371/5031; SG 366, 28 December 1920; Forster to his wife, 6 August 1923, 17 October 1923, SAD 601/2, 27january 1924, SAD 601/3. 22 More to Residency, 27 October 1925, FO 141/448/6258. 23 Stack to Wingate, 5 December 1918, Wingate to Stack, 16 December 1918, FO 141/739. In 1922 H. W. Jackson was named inspector-general, an honorific providing seniority. See papers in FO 141/574/4224. 24 Willis to ‘O’, 30 November 1916 and 17 December 1916, SAD 209/7. 25 Willis to DMI, WO, 31 May 1919, INTEL 1/20/105; Willis to ‘O’, 28 April 1918, SAD 209/9. 26 Wingate to Jackson, 28 November 1914, SAD 192/2; Wingate to Kelly, 13 June 1916, SAD 200/6. 27 Willis, ‘Sidelights on the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, 72. 28 Davies to ‘Mother and Brethren’, 24 October 1924, DP 36. 29 Record of the northern governors’ meeting, 1922, CIVSEC 32/1/3. 30 Davies Memo, 1926; Willis to CS, 15 June 1918, INTEL 2/41/341. 31 Davies Memo, 1926; ‘Distribution of Ratibs’, n.d. [1932], SECURITY ^/9/5732 Sharif Yusuf al-Hindi to Stack, 21 April 1919; Notables to Stack, 23 April 1919, FO 371/371733 Stack to Wingate, 8 May 1919, FO 371/3711. See Daly, BA, 70. 34 The African World, 2 August 1919; see Daly, BA, 73. 35 See Thomson to Hearn, n.d., SAD 639/14, an eyewitness account; and Daly,

BA, ii. 36 R. E. H. Baily, ‘An account of the rising near Singa . . .’, May-June 1919, SAD 5 3 3/:r 37 Yockney to Savile, end. in Savile to CS, 8 February 1922, INTEL 2/50/422; Daly, BA, 79-80. 38 Balfour to Tweedy, Residency, 4 November 1921, INTEL 2/51/429; Gov¬ ernor Darfur to Willis, 1 November 1921 and 8 November 1921, INTEL 9/1/ 8; Davies Memo, 1926. 39 Davies to Governor Darfur, 5 December 1921, INTEL 2/51/430.

40 41 42 43 44

SIR, November 1921. Savile to CS, 30 January 1922, INTEL 2/50/425. Kapteijns, Mahdist faith, 243. Willis to Pasha, 8 December 1921, SAD 204/3. See Daly, BA, 87. Stack to Sultan Fu’ad, 28 December 1921, Savile to CS, 30 January 1922,

INTEL 2/50/425. 45 Savile to DI, 28 February 1922, INTEL 2/50/425. 46 Savile to CS, 26 February 1922 (telegram), CIVSEC 2/50/425. 47 See Daly, BA, 86-8. 48 R. Davies, ‘A note on the recent history of Mahdism . . .’, 6 November 1925, CIVSEC 56/2/18. 49 A. J. Arkell, ‘Mahdism in the Western Sudan’, 1926, CIVSEC 56/2/18. 50 Slatin to Wingate, 24 July 1907, SAD 281/1. See also Morant to Wingate, 27 June 1907, SAD 280/6, Lyall to ADI, 30 September 1915, Cameron to Willis, 23 August 1920 and 27 September 1920, Willis to Cameron, 30 November 1920, and Lush to DC Omdurman, 20 June 1923, INTEL 2/42/355. 51 Willis to CS, 13 May 1923, MacMichael to governors, 19 May 1923, INTEL 9/ 2/26.

500

Notes to pages 2 85-97

52 Report, 27 May 1923, Willis to Stack, 16 June 1923, INTEL 9/2/26. See Daly,

BA, 93-4. 53 Reid, ‘Note on Mahdism’; ‘The lament of a pacifist’, n.d. [1923], KORDOFAN 1/16/79. 54 F.C.C.B. (Balfour), Note, 23 December 1921, INTEL 9/2/26; A. Paul, ‘The Sayyada’, 1958, SAD 639/11. 5 5 ‘Extract from letter from Mr. Craig, El Obeid, to Mr. More, Cairo, dated 15 th September, 1924’, FO 141/669/8100; Baily diary, 2 November 1924; Daly,

BA, 94. 56 ‘Extract from a private letter from Purves to Craig dated 19/3/24’, end. in Governor Kordofan to DCs Kordofan, 15 April 1924, KORDOFAN 1/16/ 79. For Corbyn’s accusation see Baily diary, 30 and 31 October 1924. 57 G. J. Lethem, ‘The Mohammedan movement in North Africa’, 18 October, 58 59 60 61

1925, RHL, LP, 12. See Daly, BA, 102-5. High commissioner to FO, 16 June 1919, FO 141/806/8100. Milner, Notes on the Sudan, n.d. [January 1920], DEP MILNER 163. Milner, diary of conversations while chairman of the mission, 24 February

1920, DEP MILNER165. 62 Keown-Boyd, ‘Sudan 1920’, n.d., DEP MILNER 161. 63 Milner, Notes on the Sudan; Keown-Boyd, ‘Sudan 1920’. 64 Ewart Report on political agitation, 1925, end. in Henderson to Chamberlain, 27 June 1925, FO 371/10905. See Daly, BA, 110-11; and Bakheit, BA, 32. 65 Baily diary, 30 November 1924. 66 Ewart Report. Baily was a signatory. 67 See Daly, BA, 112-13. 68 See ibid., 113-15. 69 Bakheit, BA, 336-8. 70 See Daly, BA, 116. Lists of members of the White Flag League are in Bakheit, BA, 336-8 and Baily’s diary, 29 and 30 June 1924. 71 Although there was reportedly ample evidence to convict 'Abdallah Khalil, an officer, Davies and Baily ‘were impressed by his personality’, and he was not prosecuted. See Baily, ‘Early recollections of the Sudan’, n.d., SAD 533/4. 'Abdallah Khalil was prime minister of the Sudan, 1956-8. 72 See Daly, BA, 117-20. 73 Residency minute to Sterry to acting high commissioner, 21 August 1924, FO 141/805/8100. 74 Bakheit, BA, 91, quoting DI to GG, 16 August 1924. 75 Skrine to PS, 14 August 1924, CIVSEC 36/1/3. 76 Forster to his wife, 13 August 1924, SAD 601/3. 77 Ibid. See also Daly, BA, 117. 78 Baily diary, 31 October 1924. 79 See Daly, BA, 122-6. 80 Residency minute, 1 September 1924, FO 141/805/8100. 81 Gardiner minute, 2 July 1924, FO 141/806/8100. 82 Abu Shama Abd al-Majid to Willis, 7 June 1924, PALACE 4/10/49; Hussayn Sharif to The Times, end. in act. asst. PS to CS, 28 August 1924, PALACE 4/9/44. 83 Note by Willis, 21 May 1924, end. in More to high commissioner, 28 May 1924, FO 141/806/8100.

Notes to pages 2 97-311

501

84 SG 389,15 February i922;SG403, 30 October i922;SG4i6, ijjune i923;SG 423, 20 October 1923; SG 429, 24 January 1924. 85 Gardiner minute, 4 August 1924, FO 141/810/8100. 86 Arthur Balfour in the house of commons, PD, HC, 121, 17 November 1919,

77}' 87 Milner, Notes on the Sudan. 88 Stack to Wingate, 10 May 1920, SAD 237/5; for Stack’s remarks to Sayyid Ali see Wheatley to Keown-Boyd, 8 April 1920, FO 141/806/8100. 89 R. S. Stafford, inspector of interior, Tanta, to adviser, ministry of interior, 24 February 1920, FO 141/43 5/101944. 90 Report of the Special Mission to Egypt, 1921. Curzon, memorandum, October 1920, FO 371/4980. See Daly, BA, 139-41. Daly, BA, 141-6. J. Murray, memorandum covering Stack’s of 11 October 1923, FO 371/8991. Gardiner minute, 29 June 1924, FO 141/806/8100. Murray, memorandum on Anglo-Egyptian negotiations, 7 April 1924; Allenby to MacDonald, 6 April 1924, FO 407/198. 96 Murray, ‘300,000 feddan limitation imposed on the Blue Nile Irrigation Scheme’, 7january 1924; Gardiner minute, 13 May 1924, FO 141/784/12311;

91 92 93 94 95

Daly, BA, 148. 97 Palace to high commissioner, 30 April 1924, Allenby to MacDonald, 26 July 1924, FO 141/446/14684. 98 Stack to Allenby, 25 May 1924, and ‘Memorandum on the future status of the Sudan’, 25 May 1924, end. in Allenby to MacDonald, 1 June 1924, FO 371/ 10049; Residency minute, 13 May 1924, FO 141/806/8100. 99 Stack, ‘Memorandum on the future status of the Sudan’. 100 Stack to MacDonald, 11 August 1924, PALACE 4/9/44; Schuster to More, 23 October 1924, MECOX. 101 Daly, BA, 150-1. 102 Ibid., 151-3. 103 Coriat, UNP, to his wife, 18 October 1924, RHL,MSS. Afr. s. 1684; Forster to his wife, 10 October 1924, SAD 601/3. 104 Baily diary, 13, 14, 27 October 1924. 105 Daly, BA, 153-4; see also Baily diary, 7, 21, 24 October and 20 November 1924. 106 See Daly, BA, 154-5. 107 Baily diary, 27, 28, 29 November 1924. 108 Ibid., 28 November 1924; Daly, BA, 158-61. 109 Ewart Report. 110 Baily diary, 17, 30 November 1924. hi Ibid., 27 October 1924; Mrs Forster to Grace Balfour, 17 December (1924), SAD 606/3. 112 Ewart Report, appendix i. 113 Extract from letter of Baily to his parents, 25 July 1924, SAD 533/2; Davies to C.S.O. and A.G., 15 September 1924, PALACE 4/9/44; Willis to C.S.O. and A.G., 27 November 1924, PALACE 4/11/55; Ewart Report; Huddleston to Stack, 3 September 1924, quoted in Stack to MacDonald, 16 September 1924, FO 371/10053. 114 Baily diary, 31 October 1924; Sterry to Allenby, 11 December 1924, PALACE 4/11/5 5; Sterry to More, 2 December 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/8.

Notes to pages 312-21

502

115 Residency minute to Sterry to act. high commissioner, 21 August 1924, FO 141/805/8100.

8.

THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF SIR GEOFFREY ARCHER

1 Baily diary, 8 December

1924.

Baily noted MacMichaePs views on 4

December. 2 See, e.g., Sterry to Allenby, 11 December 1924, PALACE 4/11/5 5. 3 ‘Rough notes by Col. Schuster’, 14 December 1924, FO 371/10883. 4 Baily diary, 8 December 1924. 5 Robert O. Collins, Shadows in the grass, Britain in the Southern Sudan, 19181956, New Haven and London, 1983, 48. Schuster tried to arrange Currie’s appointment: see Schuster to Niemeyer, 22 November 1924, NP. 6 Sir Geoffrey Archer, Personal and historical memoirs of an East African administrator, London, 1963, 178; Schuster to Niemeyer, 22 November 1924; 7 8 9 10

NP; interview with Sir G. Schuster, 19 May 1976. FO to Allenby, 1 December 1924, FO 371/10054. Interview with Sir G. Schuster, 19 May 1976. Schuster to Niemeyer, 24 January 1925, NP. Allenby to FO (tels. 403, 409), 24 November 1924, Chamberlain to Allenby,

24 November 1924, FO 371/10044. 11 Allenby to Chamberlain, 29 November 1924, FO 800/256. 12 Henderson to Selby, 6 December 1924, FO 800/264. 13 A. F. R. Wiggin, ‘Egypt: 1918-1925’, 15 May 1926, FO 371/11582. 14 Allenby to FO, 27 November 1924, FO 371/10045; Chamberlain to Allenby, 22 December 1924, FO 371/10046. Another embarrassment was the ‘enor¬ mous rise’ in the price of Sudan Plantations Syndicate shares: see Schuster to Murray, 23 December 1924, FO 371/10891. For the functions of the proposed commission see Allenby to FO, 3 December 1924 and 11 December 1924, FO to Allenby, 15 December 1924, FO 371/10046, and Allenby to FO, 15 December 1924, quoting Khartoum to Residency, n.d., FO 371/10047. 15 FO to Allenby, 15 December 1924, FO 371/10046. 16 Allenby to FO (tel. 544), FO 371/10046. 17 Stamfordham to Chamberlain, 15 December 1924, Chamberlain to Stamfordham, 17 December 1924, FO 800/256. 18 Allenby to FO, 15 December 1924, quoting Sterry to Residency, n.d.; Allenby to FO, 19 December 1924 (with minutes by Murray), and Chamberlain to Allenby, 23 December 1924, FO 371/10047; and Allenby to Sterry, 26 December 1924, end. in Allenby to Chamberlain, 27 December 1924, FO 371/10889. 19 FO to Allenby, 1 December 1924, FO 371/10045. 20 Allenby to FO, 3 December 1924 (tel. 480), FO 371/10046. 21 Allenby to FO, 3 December 1924 (tel. 481); and Chamberlain to Allenby, 3 December 1924, FO 371/10046. 22 FO to Allenby, 15 December 1924, FO 371/10046. 23 Allenby to FO, 17 December 1924, FO 371/10047. 24 Treasury to FO, 20 December 1924, FO 371/10047. 25 Allenby to FO, 12 January 1925; Archer to Allenby, 15 January 1925^0 371/ 10883; FO to Allenby, 14 February 1925, FO 371/10879. 26 Mervyn Herbert, ‘Succession to Lord Allenby’, 2 April 1925, FO 371/10908.

Notes to pages 321-33

5°3

27 Quoted in More to Residency, 17 December 1924, FO 371/10879. 28 See Allenby to FO, 14 January 1925, FO 371/10879 regarding the name of the force and title of its commander. 29 ‘Memorandum regarding the allegiance of the Sudan Defence Force’, end. in Murray to Stamfordham, 9 March 1925, FO 371/10880. 30 ‘Oath of allegiance’, n.d., end. in Archer to Allenby, 19 January 1925; Untitled paper signed by Isma il al-Azhari, 21 January 1925, end. in Ferguson to DI, 10 February 1925; Willis, ‘The oath of allegiance’, sent to PS and others, 20 January 1925, SECURITY 8/2/7; Allenby to FO, 15 January 1925, citing Khartoum to Residency, n.d., FO 371/10879. 31 General Staff, WO, Military report on the Sudan, 1927 32 Ibid. 33 Commandant, British troops in the Sudan to HQ, SDF, 19 May 1925, CIVSEC 15/1/7. 34 Extract of letter to CS from General Staff, SDF, 21 January 1925, end. in G. F. Foley, General Staff, SDF, to HQ, British troops, 23 May 1925, CIVSEC 15/ 1/7; Lyall to HQ, SDF, 13 June 1925, CIVSEC 15/1/7. 35 Commandant, British troops, to HQ, SDF, 21 September 1925; MacMichael to HQ, SDF, 24 September 1925, CIVSEC 15/1/7. 36 ‘Notes of a meeting held in the Kaid El ‘Amm’s office on 6th April 1926’, n.d., CIVSEC 15/1/7. 37 ‘Khartoum Secret Defence Scheme 1926’, CIVSEC 15/1/7. 38 ‘Report on the possibility of employing the British personnel of the Sudan Plantations Syndicate as a Reserve Force’, 20 January 1925; Huddleston, governor BNP, to CS, 10 December 1926, CIVSEC 15/1/7. 39 Huddleston, ‘Notes on the strength of the British garrison in the Sudan’, n.d. [January 1926], FO 141/5x2/628. 40 Allenby to FO, 15 March 1925, FO 371/10880. 41 More to Residency, 28 December 1924, and FO minute by Nichols, FO 371/10879. 42 Henderson, ‘Notes on a visit to the Sudan, January 10-25, I925> end. in Allenby to Chamberlain, 13 February 1925, FO 371/10979; Archer to Allenby, 27 April 1925, end. in Allenby to Chamberlain, 9 May 1925, FO 371/10880. 43 Sterry to More, 2 December 1924; governor, Atbara, to CS, 25 November 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/8. 44 CS to governor, Wau, 8 December 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/7. For Huddleston’s comments see his letters to Parr (25 November 1924) and the CS, 3 December 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/7. 45 MacMichael to PS, 24 April 1925, CIVSEC 50/2/7. 46 See, e.g., Skrine, governor Mongalla, to CS, 7 December 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/ 10; CS to governors, 20 January 1925, CIVSEC 50/2/11. 47 MacMichael to PS, 24 April 1925, CIVSEC 50/2/7. 48 Baily diary, n.d. [early April 1925]. 49 50 51 52

See Daly, BA, 187. MacMichael to governors, 6 December 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/10. Baily diary, 16 January 1925. ‘Report of Mr. J. M. Ewart, Indian Police, on the organisation of public

security intelligence in the Sudan’, 8 June 1925, CIVSEC 36/1/2. 53 J. M. Ewart, Reorganisation of the intelligence department, 20 December

504

Notes to pages 333-41 1925, end. in CS to FS, 24 December 1925, CIVSEC 36/1/1; ‘Distribution of work in civil secretary’s office’, 2 November 1927, Davies to recipients of the

SIR, 11 December 1928, CIVSEC 1/5 5/149. 54 Archer to Selby, FO, 3 April 1925, minute by Chamberlain, 23 April 1925. See also Selby to Archer, 27 April 1925 and Archer to Allenby, 27 April 1925, end. in Allenby to Chamberlain, 9 May 1925, FO 371/10880. 5 5 Schuster to Niemeyer, 24 January 1925, NP. 56 MacMichael to Matthew, 2 October 1925, CIVSEC 1/55/149. 57 Archer to Lloyd, ^November 1925, end. in Lloyd to Chamberlain, 18 March 1926, FO 371/11609; ‘Local vernacular press resume’, 21 January 1926, CIVSEC 1/55/149. 58 Lloyd to Archer, 4 December 1925, Archer to Lloyd, 5 December 1925, FO 141/632/17679; Schuster to MacMichael, 3 October 1927, SAD G//s 469; GG’s council minutes, 228th meeting, r9, 24, 28 December 1925. 59 Lloyd to Archer, 24 December 1925, FO 141/632/17679. 60 Lloyd to Chamberlain, 18 March 1926, FO 371/11609; GG’s council minutes, 233rd meeting, 8-11 February 1926. 61 Baily diary, 9 August 1925 and undated (later in August); Davies to Lethem, 27 April 1926, RHL, LP 11/3; Forster to his wife, 6 June and n June 1926, SAD 601/5. 62 Davies to his mother and ‘Brethren’, 5 December 1924, DP. 63 Archer, Personal, 18 5—7. 64 ‘Precis setting out private understanding between Governor-General and Sir Sayed Abdel Rahman’, end. in Archer to Lloyd, 2 April 1926, FO 371/11612. 65 Archer, Personal, 244. 66 ‘Note of a meeting held at the palace at 6.45 p.m. on 7/2/26’, INTEL 9/1/6. An inaccurate account of Archer’s version of events is in Sir G. Schuster, Private work and public causes, a personal record, Cowbridge, 1979, 55. 67 Archer, Personal, 244-8. 68 Sterry to Archer, n.d., end. in Archer to Lloyd, 2 April 1926, FO 371/11612. 69 Interview with Sir G. Schuster, 19 May 1976. 70 Archer, Personal, 251. 71 Archer to Lloyd, 5 March 1926, end. in Archer to Lloyd, 2 April 1926, FO 371/11612. 72 Davies Memo, 1926. 73 Sterry to Archer, 28 March 1926, end. in Archer to Lloyd, 2 April 1926, FO 371/11612; ‘Note of a meeting at the Palace, 10 a.m. 27/3/1926’; untitled note, 27 March 1926, SECURITY 6/8/47. 74 Archer, Personal, 250. 75 Archer to Lloyd, 2 April 1926, FO 371/11612. 76 Lloyd to Chamberlain, 10 April 1926, FO 371/11612. 77 Schuster to MacMichael, n.d., SAD G//s 469. 78 FO minute by Murray and Herbert, 21 April 1926, FO 371/11612. 79 Schuster to MacMichael, 11 May 1926 and n.d., SAD G//s 469. 80 Archer, Personal, 15 5.

9. THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF SIR JOHN MAFFEY i Forster to his wife, 11 June 1926, SAD 601/5; Reuters report, 29 (July) 1926, FO 141/574/4224; Dupuis to Lethem, 18 October 1926, RHL, LP, 11/3.

Notes to pages 341-53

505

2 Schuster to Niemeyer, 27 August 1926, NP, T 176/10. 3 Maffey to Murray, 3 February 1927, FO 371/12374. 4 MacMichael to Sudan Agent, 3 January 1928, end. in Cairo Chancery to FO, 11 January 1928; Cairo Chancery to FO, 27 July 1928, FO 371/13140. 5 Lloyd to Henderson, 19 June 1929, FO 141/635/18821. 6 Lindsay to Loraine, 20 November 1929, Murray minute, 8 October 1929, FO 371/13846. 7 Murray minute, 8 October 1929, FO 371/13846. 8 Loraine to Murray, 1 November 1929, FO 371/13849. 9 Maffey to Loraine, 23 February 1931, Loraine minute, 25 February 1931, FO 141/721/97. 10 Loraine to Maffey, 28 February 1931, Maffey to Loraine, 3 March 1931, FO 141/721/97. 11 Residency minute, 6 March 1931, FO 141/721/97; Vansittart minute, n.d., Loraine to Vansittart, 17 April 1931, and Murray minute, 21 April 1931, FO 37i/i542412 Murray minute, 30 March 1927, FO 371/12386; Lloyd to Chamberlain, 15 May 1927, FO 371/12383. 13 Residency minute, 20 January 1931, FO 141/720/79. 14 Loraine to Maffey, 31 January 1931, Residency minute, 20 January 1931, FO 141/720/79. 15 Maffey to Loraine, 4 December 1931, FO 141/709/272; minute by Smart, 25 February 1932, FO 141/490/126; for the shaykh’s appointment seeSG 561, 15 May 1932. 16 SSIR 11, 13 April 1928. 17 Draft Anglo-Egyptian treaty, 15 July 1929, end. in Murray to Muhammad Mahmud, 14 [sic] July 1929; Murray minute, reporting conversation with Muhammad Mahmud, 18 July 1929; Maffey to Murray, 29 July 1929, FO 371/13844. 18 Schuster to MacMichael, 25 August 1929, SAD G//s 469. 19 FO minutes, 20 February and 26 March 1930, FO 371/14607. 20 Cecil Campbell, FO, ‘Memorandum on the course of the negotiations in regard to the Sudan’, 15 May 1930, FO 371/14613; Maffey to Henderson, 15 April 1930, FO 407/211. 21 Campbell, ‘Memorandum . . .’, 15 May 1930, FO 371/14613; Maffey to Hoare, 18 May 1930 (enclosing governors’ remarks), end. in Loraine to Henderson, 29 May 1930, FO 371/14614. 22 ‘Note on financial control in the Sudan’, 1927, SAD 635/10. 23 Interview with Martin Parr, 3 June 1976. 24 Newbold to MacMichael, 11 January 1931 [sicpro 1932], MacMichael papers, RHL. 25 MacMichael to governors and dept, heads, 3 March 1927; MacMichael, ‘Theses by members of Political Service’, 18 June 1928, CIVSEC 17/2/8; MacMichael to governors, 15 March 1930, CIVSEC 1/14/46. 26 ‘Report of the committee on pay and prospects’, 9 February 1927, FO 27 28 29 30

37X/I2373See Maffey to Lloyd, 7 November 1928, FO 371/13127. Chamberlain to Lloyd, 20 June 1928, FO 371/13127. Maffey to MacMichael, 23 December 1931, SAD 584/8/39. Maffey to Vansittart, 20 December 1932; see Vansittart to Schuckburgh, CO,

50 6

31

32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49

Notes to pages 333-63 5 January 1933, Wilson, CO, to Vansittart, 19 April 1933, Vansittart to Maffey, 11 May 1933, FO 371/17015. MacMichael suspected that Lloyd had opposed his advancement; see Lloyd to MacMichael, 10? January 1938, SAD 584/7/8. Memorandum, end. in Maffey to Loraine, 18 July 1930, FO 371/14650; ‘Notes on the pay and prospects of civilian sub-mamurs’, end. in CS to Sterry and others, 18 December 1919, CIVSEC 50/1/5. S. A. Tippetts, governor RSP, ‘Memorandum re: the merging of District Commissioners’ and Mamurs’ offices’, 12 February 1923, CIVSEC 20/4/15; MacMichael to governor, BNP, 11 October 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/10. ‘Provincial administrative staff, etc.’, n.d. [1930], CIVSEC 20/28/138; ‘Mamurs and Sub-Mamurs establishment, 1934’, CIVSEC 50/1/4. MacMichael, ‘Circular respecting the prospects of educated Sudanese’, 17 November 1931, end. in Loraine to Simon, 4 January 1932, FO 371/16116. Memorandum end. in Maffey to Loraine, 18 July 1930^0371/14650. Mack minute, FO, 3 March 1932, FO 371/16124; RFACS for 1932. Baily, ‘Early recollections of the Sudan’, n.d. [1960s], SAD 533/4; E. A. Balfour, Explanatory and autobiographical note, n.d. [1978], SAD 606/3; Henderson, letter home, 14 December 1926, SAD 537/10. M. Lush, ‘Replies to questionnaire’ sent to him by F. Deng, n.d. I am grateful to Brigadier Lush for a copy of this. Baily, ‘Early recollections’ (my italics). Balfour to Maffey, 3 April 1930, SAD 303/9. HRH was referred to as ‘that little blighter’, whose departure occasioned celebrations by officials from the governor-general down. See Balfour to his wife, 4 April 1930, SAD 303/4. Henderson to home, 14 April 1931 and 4 March 1932, SAD 537/10. MacMichael to FS, 18 December 1930; Redfern, ‘Note’, xi December 1930, CIVSEC 20/29/141. Mack, FO memorandum, 31 March 1933, FO 371/17028; Henderson to home, 14 December 1926, SAD 537/10. N.d., SAD 606/4. Maffey to Bertelli, to Miss E. Baker, and to ‘El Maisera Zobeir’, 9 February 1931, Parr to D. H. H. Stewart, 29 June 1931, PALACE 4/4/16. An Arab tells his story, London, 1946, 136-46. E. A. Balfour to his mother, 24 October 1936, SAD 606/5. See Bence-Pembroke, ‘Proposals for the introduction of the policy of Native Administration throughout Darfur Province’, 23 January 1927, CIVSEC 1/ 20/60. K. D. D. Henderson and T. R. H. Owen (eds.), Sudan verse, London, 1963,

23~550 CS to FS, 4 August 1918, CIVSEC 20/21/97. 51 MacMichael to FS, 29 March 1922; Huddleston, ‘Memo of subject No. 5 for Governors’ Meeting’, 1 January 1924; and ‘Note by Civil Secretary’s Dept.’, 25 January 1925, CIVSEC 20/21/97. 52 Governor Khartoum to CS, 19 April 1920, Governor Sennar to CS, 25 August 1920, Governor Kassala to CS, 31 May 1920, Governor Berber to CS, 24 March 1921, CIVSEC 1/9/30. 53 Lyall to CS, 17 April 1921, Sagarto CS, 26 May 1920, Savile (governor Darfur) to CS, 11 May 1920, CIVSEC 1/9/30. 54 The Powers of Nomad Sheikhs Ordinance, SG 396, 15 June 1922; See Daly, BA, 177.

Notes to pages 363-9

507

5 5 CAO 34, 14 March 1901; The Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman Municipal Council Proclamation 1921, SG 375, 15 May 1921. 56 MacMichael to governors, 9 September 1924, CIVSEC 1/9/31; Draft‘Procla¬ mation. Council of Notables’, n.d., end. in Stack to Allenby, 10 November 1924. FO 141/787. 57 Pawson’s note, 2 October 1924; Huddleston, ‘Memorandum on the native mamur and sub-mamur as affecting the Government policy of decentraliza¬ tion’, 9 October 1924, end. in Huddleston to CS, 9 October 1924; CIVSEC 50/2/10. 58 MacMichael to governors, 20 October 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/10. 59 CS to governors, 6 December 1924, CIVSEC 50/2/10. 60 Davies, ‘Policy in Dar Kababish’, 9 June 1915, SAD 627/1; see Davies, The camel’s back. 61 Davies to MacMichael, 10 October 1922, CIVSEC 69/6/19. For the Dar Masalit experiment see Daly, BA, 177-8; Kapteijns, Mahdist faith, 241-6. 62 Davies, ‘Note on Native Administration’, end. in Davies to CS, 22 January 1925, CIVSEC 1/9/32. For MacMichael’s view of this note see Baily diary, 14 May 1926. 63 Lethem to Palmer, 19 June 1925, RHL, LP, 11/1. 64 Lethem to Tomlinson, 10 August 1925, RHL, LP 11/1; Davies to Lethem, 20 October 1925, ibid., 11/3; Dupuis to Lethem, 8 November 1925, ibid. 65 Davies to Lethem, 5 December 1925, 27 April 1926, RHL, LP, 11/3. 66 Maffey to Murray, 3 February 1927, FO 371/12374. 67 See, e.g., Baily diary, 15, 16 February 1927, 21 November 1929. 68 Maffey, ‘Minute by His Excellency the Governor-General’, 1 January 1927, CIVSEC 1/9/33. 69 ‘Report on Dar Masalit’, 19 April 1918, FO 141/737/2457. 70 Quoted in Sanderson, Intro, to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.i, 52. 71 MacMichael, minute on Bence-Pembroke, ‘Proposals for the introduction . . . Darfur Province’, 23 January 1927. 72 MacMichael to governors, 25 January 1927, Sarsfield-Hall (governor Kordofan) to CS, 30 April 1927, Huddleston to CS, Pawson (WNP) to CS, 27 March 1927, CIVSEC 1/9/33. See also other papers in the same file. 73 See, e.g., Bence-Pembroke, ‘Proposals for the introduction . . . Darfur Prov¬ ince’, 23 January 1927. 74 The Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance 1927, SG 494, 15 August 1927; ‘Note to introduce The Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance’, n.d. (1927), CIVSEC 1/10/34. 75 MacMichael, ‘Notes on the application of the Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance 1927’, 16 April 1927, CIVSEC 1/33/88. 76 ‘Note to Council’, 3 March 1928, CIVSEC 1/12/41, 77 ‘Note to Council on certain proposals in furtherance of the policy of Devolution’, 5 January 1928, CIVSEC 1/12/41. 78 ‘Note by Mr. R. Davies on further steps in Devolution’, 25 December 1929, CIVSEC 1/11/37. 79 Currie to Murray, 30 June 1929, FO 371/13875. 80 Baily diary, 18 April 1924. For details of the situation elsewhere see, e.g., H. F. Morris, ‘Lawyers, administrators and Indirect Rule in East Africa’, unpublished seminar paper, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, n.d. [1974?]. 81 Baily diary, 15-16 February 1928. 82 Act. LS to CS, 18 July 1928, CIVSEC 1/20/61; LS to CS, 16 March 1929;

508

83 84 85

86

87

88

89

90 91 92 93 94

95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Notes to pages 3 69-7j Davies (for CS) to no. governors, 23 March 1929, CIVSEC x/i 1/36; Davidson to CS, 15 November 1927, CIVSEC 1/10/35. Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 337-9. ‘Note by Civil Secretary’s Dept.’, 25 January 1925, CIVSEC 20/2/97. Act. governor Kordofan to CS, 22 July 1925; act. governor NMP to CS, 9 June 1925; governor Darfur to CS, 13 June 1925; MacMichael, ‘Remuneration for Nazirs and Sheikhs of equal standing’, end. in MacMichael to FS, 14 February 1926, CIVSEC 20/21/98. Matthew, FS’s dept., to secretary, GG’s council, 20 April 1926, 20/21/98; Matthew, ‘Notes’, 6 June 1926, CIVSEC 20/22/99; figure for total annual remuneration based on lists end. in CS to no. governors, 5 October 1930, CIVSEC 1/11/38; Davies, ‘Policy in Dar Kababish’, 9 June 1915, SAD 627/1. ‘Extract from part IV(a) of Budget Note for 1928’, CIVSEC 1/10/3 5; ‘Note to Council on certain proposals in furtherance of the policy of Devolution’, 5 January 1928, CIVSEC 1/12/41; for the governors’ views see A. Huddleston to CS, 20 February 1928, CIVSEC 1/40/107; act. governor Kordofan to CS, 1 November 1928, CIVSEC 1/33/90; Munro to CS, 6 November 1928, CIVSEC 1/32/86, Redfern to CS, 13 November 1928, CIVSEC 1/16/50. Jackson to CS, iojanuary 1929, Dupuis to CS, 28 January 1929, Walker to CS, 23 January 1929, Nalder to CS, 9 January 1929, Baily to CS, 21 January 1929, CIVSEC 1/11/36. See, e.g., MacMichael, ‘Notes on the application of the Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance 1927’, end. in MacMichael to governors, 19 April 1927, CIVSEC 1/12/41. Dumungawi: a Fur official title. Dupuis to CS, 13 May 1928; see also Dupuis, 'Note on Emir Abdel Hamid’s tour’, 17 June 1928, CIVSEC 1/20/61. See O’Fahey, State and Society, 87-91. Davies to Dupuis, 5 January 1928; see also Dupuis to Davies, 7 January 1928, CIVSEC 1/20/61. Grigg to governor Darfur, 1 April 1928; Dupuis to CS, 13 May 1928; ‘Extract from a private letter from Mr. W. D. C. L. Purves ... to Dupuis . . . dated 23/ 12/28’, CIVSEC 1/20/61. ‘Extract from letter from Governor Darfur Province to Mr. R. Davies’, 26 January 1929; Dupuis to CS, 26 March 1929; Dupuis to CS, 28 March 1929, CIVSEC 1/21/62; Dupuis to CS, 28 February 1930, CIVSEC 1/21/63. E. D. M. Batty to governor Darfur, n.d. [February 1931?], end. in Dupuis to CS, 8 February 1931, CIVSEC 1/22/64. Dupuis to CS, 5 December 1931, CIVSEC 1/22/65. See BD, 10. Sandison to governor Darfur, 19 January 1933, CIVSEC 1/23/66. Keen (Resident, Western Darfur), annual report for 1933, 12 February 1934 CIVSEC 1/23/67. Dupuis to CS, 28 February 1934, CIVSEC 1/23/67. Keen, Report on Zalingei district, 1934, 23 December 1934, CIVSEC 1/23/67. Gillan to Dupuis, 22 June 1935, CIVSEC 1/23/67. Act. CS, minute, 29 July 1935, CIVSEC 1/23/67. Dupuis to CS, 28 March 1929, CIVSEC 1/21/62. Dupuis to CS, 4 May 1930, CIVSEC 1/21/63; Campbell to governor Darfur, 24 May 1931, CIVSEC 1/22/64. Dupuis to CS, 30 December 1928, CIVSEC 1/20/61; 25 February 1929, CIVSEC 1/21/62.

Notes to pages 373-8

509

107 Dupuis to CS, 3 July 1929, CIVSEC 1/21/62. 108 Dupuis to CS, 2 July 1933, CIVSEC 1/23/66. 109 Dupuis to CS, 30 December 1929, CIVSEC 1/21/63; governor Darfur to CS, 4 June 1932; and Lampen ‘Native Administration in Southern Darfur’, October 1931, end. in Lampen to governor Darfur, 21 November 1931, CIVSEC 1/22/ 65; Dupuis to CS, 3 July 1933 and 2 June 1933, CIVSEC 1/23/66; ‘Extract from Darfur Province Diary August, 1933’, CIVSEC 1/12/40. no Maffey minute, 9 May 1927, CIVSEC 1/33/89. 111 Davies to ‘Brethren’, 16 February 1934, DP 72. 112 W. H. B. Mack, ‘Notes on a short visit to the Sudan, August 7-24, 1930’, 2 December 1930, FO 371/14653. 113 C. de Bunsen, ‘The regularization of the Kababish Tribal Administration’, 31 December 1933, end. in de Bunsen to governor Kordofan, 1 January 1934, CIVSEC 1/36/97. 114 Sarsfield-Hall to CS, 30 April 1927, CIVSEC 1/33/89; J. A. de C. Hamilton, ‘Further notes on Devolution in Northern Kordofan’, February 1931, SAD 534/3115 A. R. C. Bolton, ‘Handing-over notes on Eastern Kordofan’, n.d. [1934], SAD 624/2. 116 Balfour (act. governor RSP) to CS, 10 March 1927; MacMichael, ‘Note on Beja administration’, 3 April 1927; MacMichael to governor RSP, 17 May 1927, 1 June 1927; Baily to CS, 3 June 1927; Balfour to MacMichael, 13 June 1927; MacMichael to governors RSP and Kassala, 25 June 1927; ‘Note on conversa¬ tion at Salala regarding appointment of a Nazir for the Bisharin’, 15 February 1928, CIVSEC 1/40/107. 117 F. T. C. Young to governor RSP, 10 March 1928, CIVSEC 1/40/107; Baily diary, 28 November 1929. 118 Baily, ‘Budget Proposals 1930’, ‘Nomad Administration’, 14 October 1929, CIVSEC 1/41/109. 119 Baily to CS, 6 January 1932; Newbold, ‘The growth and structure of the Hadendowa Nazirate Staff since autumn of 1927’, 1 April 1932; MacMichael, minute, 26 April 1932; CIVSEC 1/42/110. 120 Baily to CS, 29 June 1932, CIVSEC 1/42/110. 121 Nalder to Craig, 20 September 1928; Craig to Nalder, 29 September 1928, CIVSEC 1/25/72. 122 Jackson to CS, 4 March 1930, CIVSEC 1/11/37; in 1931 MacMichael sug¬ gested that Jackson be ‘axed’ as an economy measure: MacMichael to FS, 2 March 1931, CIVSEC 20/29/141. 123 Report, n.d., enql. in Munro to CS, 20 November 1928, CIVSEC 1/32/86. 124 Gillan to CS, 22 October 1927, CIVSEC 1/40/106. 125 Huddleston to CS, 11 March 1927, Davies to CS, 26 October 1927, CIVSEC 1/16/50; see also Gaitskell, Gezira, 199-204. 126 Governor BNP to CS, 21 March 1933, CIVSEC 1/17/53. 127 ‘Mr Baily’s leaving notes’, Kassala Province records A.4, 1932; MacMichael minute to Bence-Pembroke’s ‘Proposals for the introduction of the policy of native administration . . . Darfur Province’. 128 ‘Points in a conversation with R. E. H. Baily Esq., Governor Kassala Province, Re Principles of Native Administration’, 27 November 1931, CIVSEC 1/11/38. 129 Baily minute, 29 November 1931, CIVSEC 1/11/38. 130 Baily diary, n November 1926 and 22 May 1932; ‘Mr Baily’s leaving notes’.

5io

Notes to pages 378-85

131 Baily diary, 17 June 1932. 132 Governor Dongola to CS, 18 August 1929, CIVSEC 1/25/71; Reid’s note dated 31 October 1933, KORDOFAN 1/1/1. 133 Remarks by Sterry enclosed in Sterry to acting high commissioner, 21 August 1924, FO 141/805/8100; Baily diary, 16 November 1924. 134 Winter, ‘Nomination of a successor to the secretary for education and health’, 11 January 1934, CIVSEC 1/5 5/150. 135 Forster to his wife, 15 May 1927, SAD 601/6. 136 Owen, ‘Sudan days’, 113. 137 G.F.R.B. (Bredin), ‘Note on the employment of Egyptian teachers in non Government schools’, 15 July 1929, end. in Davies to Controller, PSI, 23 July 1929; Craig, Note, 26 December 1926; Penney, ‘Propaganda by Egyptian “Woman” Teachers’, n.d.; G.R.F.B., Note; Fouracres to secretary of educa¬ tion and health, 28 October 1929, SECURITY 6/2/10. 138 Maffey to Loraine, 18 July 1930, FO 371/14650; Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 313-15 et passim. 139 Babikr Bedri et al, ‘Syllabus for study for state-aided khalwas’, 11 October 1926; governor Kordofan to director of education, 10 January 1927; governor Fung to director of education, 16 January 1927; governor Kassala to director of education, 19 January 1927; governor Dongola to director of education, 24 January 1927, CIVSEC 17/6/32. 140 Corbyn to governors and local inspectors of education, 27june 1927, CIVSEC 17/6/32. 141 ‘Note by Mr. R. Davies on further steps in Devolution’, 25 December 1929, Matthew to CS, 18 June 1930, CIVSEC 1/11/37; see also Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 240-1. 142 Udal, ‘Note on a few assisted khalwas in Dongola Province’, 14 December 1927, H. C. Jackson to secretary of education and health, 10 February 1928, Matthew to asst, director of education, 26 February 1928, CIVSEC 17/6/32; Winter to Dupuis, 5 February 1933, DARFUR 1/5/30. 143 C. A. Crawford, ‘Note on education in Southern Darfur District . . .’, 16 February 1933, end. in Crawford to Governor Darfur, 16 February 1933; Crawford, ‘Note on Mr. Wordsworth’s private letter to the Governor . . 7 July 1934, DARFUR 1/5/30. 144 Winter to FS, 17 April 1935; Rugman to director of education, 27 April 1935, CIVSEC 17/6/33. 145 Bardsley to CS, 23 November 1930, CIVSEC 1/11/38; C. E. Armstrong to Corbyn, 20 May 1927, CIVSEC 17/6/32; Dupuis to secretary for education and health, 27 April 1933, DARFUR 16/2/33; see also Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 230-1. 146 Act. Resident, Western Darfur, to governor Darfur, 20 January 1932, CIV¬ SEC 1/22/64. 147 Sandison to governor Darfur, 19 January 1933, CIVSEC 1/23/66; Keen (Resident Western Darfur), annual report for 1933, 12 February 1934, CIVSEC 1/23/67. 148 SSIR 23, 1 October 1928, FO 371/13127. For an account of the incident see Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2, 348—54. 149 Report on the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum, 1929; Beshir, Educa¬ tional, 199. 150 Atiyah, An Arab, 137-8; Lloyd to Chamberlain, 4 May 1929, enclosing Report

Notes to pages j 85-92

151 152 153

154

155 156 157 15 8 159 160

161

511

on the Gordon Memorial College', E. A. Balfour to his mother, 12 September 1936, SAD 606/5. Balfour to his mother, 9 October 1936, SAD 606/5. To his mother, 18 September 1936, SAD 606/5. Currie, ‘The educational experiment’; Report on the Gordon Memorial College-, Maffey to high commissioner, 2 March 1929, FO 141/825/1120; Currie to secretary, Gordon College Memorial Fund, ^January 1930, end. in secretary to Foraine, 17 March 1930, FO 141/656/180. Maffey to van de Linde, 19 February 1930, end. in secretary to Loraine, 17 March 1930, FO 141/656/180; Minute by Smart, 19 April 1934, FO 141/717/663. Minute by Smart, 19 April 1934, FO 141/717/663; Baily diary, 26 October 1926; Winter, ‘Nomination of a successor . . .’. Enclosed in Scott to director of education, 22 May 1932, repr. in Beshir, Educational, 219—36. Maffey to act. high commissioner, 3 April 1933, FO 141/705/604. Beshir, Educational, 82-4, citing Kitchener School of Medicine, annual report, 1924-25, 10. Beshir, Educational, 84-7. Willis to asst. CS, 8 February 1925; Udal (for director of education) to CS, 1 March 1925, citing LS to PS, 2 September 1916; Lyall to LS, 4 March 1925, CIVSEC 17/2/5. ‘Note of a meeting held at the palace, 10th November, 1929’, CIVSEC

!/34/93162 Memorandum end. in Maffey to Loraine, 18 July 1930, FO 371/14650. 163 ‘Proposals for the introduction of the policy of native administration . . . Darfur Province’. 164 MacMichael to governor NMP, 20 February 1927; Balfour to CS, citing Newbold’s views, CIVSEC 1/40/106. 165 Maffey, ‘Interview with Grand Kadi’, 4 December 1927; ‘Note to council on certain proposals in furtherance of the policy of Devolution’, 5 January 1928; LS to Grand Kadi, 16 December 1928, CIVSEC 1/12/41. 166 MacMichael to no. governors, 17 November 1929, CIVSEC 1/12/41; Davies to Davidson, 7 January 1929, CIVSEC 1/20/61. 167 ‘Note by Mr. R. Davies . . .’, 25 December 1929, CIVSEC 1/11/37; Dupuis to CS, 7 May 1931, CIVSEC 1/22/64. 168 Young (for CS) to Dupuis, 20 May 1931, CIVSEC 1/22/64. 169 Bell, ‘Sharia courts and Native courts’, 16 February 1932, CIVSEC 1/12/41. 170 ‘Note by Samuel Bey Atiyah on views held by the Grand Mufti regarding Native Courts’, 7 August 1928, CIVSEC 1/12/41. 171 Hillelson, ADI, ‘Agent’s report’, 11 October 1926; Hillelson, ‘Intelligence Note No. 2’, 26 March 1927, KORDOFAN 1/16/79. 172 See papers in the file CIVSEC 5/1/9. 173 Governor Fung to controller, PSI, 27 December 1928; H. R. Dibble to governor Berber, 8 July 1931, SECURITY 6/8/45. 174 Fouracres to governors, 27 July 1932; ‘Extract from informant’s report dated Omdurman 24/4/33’; ‘Informant’s report dated Omdurman 19/7/33’, SECURITY 6/8/45. 175 Untitled note, n.d., SECURITY 6/8/45. 176 ‘Distribution of Ratibs’, n.d. [1932]; Penney to governors, 15 April 1933; the

Notes to pages 393-402

512

view of the nazir was reported in DC Butana to governor Kassala, 7 November 1931, SECURITY 6/9/57. 177 Sarsfield-Hall to controller, PSI, 8 December 1929; Penney to Sarsfield-Hall, 11 December 1929; Young (?) to governors, 29 January 1930; Young to governors, 30 April 1932, KORDOFAN 1/16/80. 178 PSI, ‘Mahdism and El Sayed Abdel Rahman El Mahdi. . 28 April 1935, FO Ni/533/s°6179 Ibid. 180 Ibid. 181 Arkell, ‘Mahdism in Southern District, White Nile Province, 1927-29’, 21 February 1930, CIVSEC 56/2/18. 182 ‘Note of conversation between His Excellency the Governor General and Sayed Sir Ali el Mirghani at the Palace 23/1/26’, CIVSEC 2/6/24. 183 MacMichael, ‘Sayed Ali’, 20 April (1927); Hewison, ‘Note of interview with Sayed Sir Ali Mirghani at his house on 28th January, 1926’; Davies to FS, 25 February 1929, CIVSEC 2/6/24; see also other papers in the same file. 184 PSI, ‘Mahdism and El Sayed Abdel Rahman . . .’, 1935. 185 Ibid.-, see Bakheit, BA, 232-3.

10.

1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21

ADMINISTRATION IN THE SOUTHERN SUDAN, I92O-I933

London, 1934, 257. Sterry to governor Mongalla, 23 September 1920, CIVSEC 1/9/31. L. Phillips to Somerset, 24 April 1920, MECOX 13. To his godmother, 20 January 1920, SAD 636/12. To his godmother, 8 June 1920, SAD 636/12. Mark M. Abiem, Dinka responses to early British colonial rule, 1900-1922, University of London M.A., 1976, 36-8; Collins, Shadows, 28-9; cf. Fergusson,Fergie Bey, London, 1930, 140-2. Abiem, Dinka, 38-43; Collins, Shadows, 32-6. Collins, Shadows, 38-40, 1/30-5. Cf. Fergusson, Fergie Bey, 324-43. Quoted in Collins, Shadows, ry. Willis, ‘A brief survey of the policy of the Sudan Government in the Upper Nile’, n.d. [1927], SAD 212/10/1. See also Collins, Shadows, 23-4. Willis, ‘The present position in the Upper Nile Province’, n.d., [1927?], SAD 212/10/2. Willis to CS, 4 March 1927, CIVSEC 1/9/33. Willis to CS, 4 March 1927, 9 March 1927, and 22 March 1927; Schuster to Maffey, 3 April 1927; MacMichael minute, 15 April 1927; Maffey minute, 18 April 1927, CIVSEC 1/42/112. MacMichael to Maffey, 29 May 1927, CIVSEC 1/42/112. MacMichael minute, 22 June 1927, CIVSEC 1/42/112. Maffey to MacMichael, 20 May 1927, SAD G//s 469. Collins, Shadows, 123-4. Murray minute, 30 March 1928, FO 371/13873. Chamberlain minute, 3 April 1928; Webster, air ministry, to FO, 13 June 1928, FO 371/13873; Maffey, ‘Memorandum on the use of the Air Force’, 20 June 1928, end. in Lloyd to Chamberlain, 6 July 1928, FO 371/13126. Collins, Shadows, 136-7, 139-40. Willis, ‘Nuer Settlement, 1929’, 20 June 1929, end. in Hoare to Henderson, 20 July 1929, FO 371/13873.

Notes to pages 402-12

513

22 Maffey to Lloyd, 27 March 1929, end. in Lloyd to Chamberlain, 27 April 1929, FO 371/13873. 23 Willis, ‘Nuer Settlement’. 24 Maffey to Loraine, 24 November 1929, end. in Loraine to Henderson, 3 December 1929, FO 371/13873; Collins, Shadows, 124-7. 25 Collins, Shadows, 25-7. 26 Ibid., 86-111. 27 Ibid., 22-3, 117; Collins, Land, 206. For the Murle see B. A. Lewis, The Murle, red chiefs and black commoners, Oxford, 1972, 10. 28 ERP, 117. 29 Willis to PS, 26 June 1920, PS to Willis, 30 June 1920, INTEL 2/31/254. 30 Proclamation: ‘Permits to trade in Bahr El Ghazal, Upper Nile Province and Western Kordofan’, SG 64, 1 July 1904; SG 65, 1 August 1904; SG 143, 8 October 1908; ‘The Closed Districts Proclamation 1911’, SG 204, 1 Novem¬ ber 1911 31 ‘General statement of the policy in the Southern Sudan . . .’, 14 March 1922, CIVSEC 1/9/30; for closed districts cf. Collins, Shadows, 59. 32 Struve to CS, 3 March 1925, CIVSEC 36/4/12. 33 PS to CS, 20 March 1925; MacMichael to PS, 23 March 1925, CIVSEC 36/4/12. 34 Struve to CS, 8 April 1925, CIVSEC 36/4/12; Coriat to his wife, 8 January 1927, RHL, MSS. Afr. s. 1684, file 1. 35 MacMichael to high commissioner, 5 April 1931, FO 141/692/674; Hud¬ dleston to high commissioner, 4 June 1932, FO 141/544/679; cf. ERP, 120. 36 ERP, 134-6. 37 Ibid., 148-52. 38 Ibid., 127-32. 39 ‘Education in Bahr El Ghazal and Mongalla provinces’, n.d., end. in Crowfoot to CS, 10 January 1926, SAD 422/9/1; ‘Additional note on Southern educa¬ tion’, January 1926, SAD 422/9/12. See also ERP, 132-3. 40 Schuster, ‘Note of discussion with Crowfoot, Cairo, 14/4/1926’, end. in Schuster to MacMichael, 16 April 1926, SAD 422/10. 41 ERP, 134-5, 152-3; Beshir, Educational, 68. 42 ERP, 148, 153-7. 43 Ibid., 160; Beshir, Educational, 70-1. 44 Matthew to Hussey, 16 June 1928, CIVSEC 103/1/1; MacMichael, memorandum, 10 August 1928, FO 141/624/19768. A draft, with MacMichael’s amendations, is at SAD G//s 469. 45 E.L.D.,‘Note for council’, 27 October 1928, FO 141/624/19768. 46 Phipps to Wingate, 12 June 1905, SAD 276/6. 47 MacDonald to Henderson, 5 March 1930; minutes by Noble and Mack, FO 371/14607. 48 ‘Notes on current topics in Mongalla Province by Mr. A. W. Skrine (March 1929)’; Balfour to CS, 2 May 1929, enclosing Maynard to Balfour, n.d., and Lilley to Balfour, n.d.; Brock to CS, 22 April 1929, CIVSEC 1/11/36. 49 MacMichael to high commissioner, 5 April 1931, FO 141/692/674; Maffey to Loraine, 5 April 1931, end. in Loraine to Henderson, 14 April 1931, FO 371/ 15425; Huddleston to high commissioner, 4 June 1932, FO 141/544/679. 50 Maffey to Loraine, 5 April 1931. 51 Act. senior medical inspector Malakal to governor UNP, 10 December 1937;

Notes to pages 412-22

5 r4

‘Return showing classification to police U.N.P. on 1/12/1937’; district engineer, Malakal to governor UNP, 30 December 1937, CIVSEC 1/12/39; ERP, 176-7. 52 DC Shilluk to governor UNP, 30 December 1937; governor UNP to CS, 11 January 1938, CIVSEC 1/12/39.

53 DC Bor to governor UNP, 4 January 1938, CIVSEC 1/12/39. 54 Lloyd to Maffey, 27 March 1929; ‘Memorandum on educational policy in the Southern Sudan’, end. in Maffey to Lloyd, 30 March 1929; Maffey to Lloyd, 3 April 1929; Lloyd to Maffey, 13 April 1929; Maffey to Lloyd, 11 May 1929, FO 141/635/18821. 55 Lloyd to Henderson, 19 June 1929, FO 141/635/18821; ERP, 173-4. 56 Memorandum end. in CS to southern governors, 25 January 1930, repr. in Abdel Rahim, Imperialism, 245-9. 57 ERP, 176, 182. 58 Ibid., 182-5. 59 Field, note on his Sudan career, 9 December 1934, PALACE 4/4/21. 60 ERP, 126, 185. 61 Willis to CS, 3 December 1929, CIVSEC 31/3/9. 62 ERP, 126, citing Brock to MacMichael, 4 March 1930, 22 March 1930, MacMichael to Brock, 26 March 1930, CIVSEC/Bahr al-Ghazal 1/1/1. See also Collins, Shadows, 176-7. 63 ERP, 190. For an account of Brock’s policies in the Western Bahr al-Ghazal, see Collins, Shadows, 178-96. 64 ERP, 180. 65 Wheatley to CS, 20 April 1927, CIVSEC 1/13/43; Brock to CS, 4 July 1929, CIVSEC 1/11/36. 66 Davidson, ‘Note on chief’s court at Yei’, 7 May 1929, end. in LS to CS, 15 May 1929, CIVSEC 1/13/42. 67 Governor Bahr al-Ghazal to CS, 15 July 1933, CIVSEC 1/13/44. 68 ‘Bor disturbances. Sequence of events’, n.d. [April 1933]; R. T. J. to governor UNP, 19 March 1933, CIVSEC 5/5/17; Johnston, ‘Handing-over notes on Bor and Duk District’, 13 April 1934, SAD 639/12; see also Collins, Shadows, 162; cf. Baily diary, 10 February 1924. 69 Wheatley to governor Mongalla, 22 November 1929; Balfour to Whalley, 25 November 1929, CIVSEC 1/43/113. 70 Johnston, ‘Handing-over notes’; Patrick, Residency minute to Notables to GG, 10 June 1924, FO 141/806/8100. 71 Symes to high commissioner, 3 July 1934, FO 141/719/774. 72 See Symes to high commissioner, 3 July 1934, FO 141/719/774 (not ibid.). 73 Collins, Shadows, 174, citing interview with MacMichael, 15 January 1963.

II.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, 192O-I933

1 Sudan Government, Financial and trade statistics 1926—1948, Khartoum, 1939. 2 See Currie to director of agriculture, 10 March 1913; Cecil to Kitchener, 14 April 1913; Hutton to Wingate, 22 May 1913; minutes of ‘special conference of the council’ of the British Cotton Growing Association, 13 December 1916; FO to high commissioner, 8 November 1917; FO 141/578/540. 3 ‘Note on the capital required . . .’, 14 May 1917; ‘Note explanatory of the development works . . .’, n.d.; ‘Memorandum of meeting at the Foreign Office

Notes to pages 422-34

4

5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

515

. . n.d., FO 371/3201; and ‘Notes on the Sudan Guaranteed Loan . . 31 July 1919, FO 407/185. ‘Explanation of increase in estimate . . 26 March 1921;‘Further note on the increase . . 30 March 1921, end. in Allenby to FO, 30 May 1921, FO 407/189. Allenby to Curzon, 25 April 1921, FO 407/189. ‘Note on the revised estimates . . n.d., end. in Allenby to Curzon, 30 May 1921, FO 407/189. ‘Minutes of an inter-departmental conference on Soudan finance, June 24, 1921’, FO 407/189; ‘Memorandum respecting second conference on Soudan irrigation project’, 19 July 1921; and ‘Soudan irrigation projects’, 22 July 1921, FO 407/190. ‘Memorandum on the Gezireh irrigation scheme’, 3 August 1921, FO 407/190. Treasury to FO, 3 November 1921, FO 401/191. ‘Gezirah irrigation scheme, Soudan. Report by Mr. F. T. Hopkinson ...’,15 February 1922, end. in Allenby to Curzon, 2 March 1922, FO 407/192. See also notes by C. E. Dupuis and L. E. Bury in the same file. ‘Minutes of inter-departmental committee to consider present position of Gezira irrigation scheme ... on March 31, 1922’, FO 407/192. ‘Memorandum left with Lindsay at Foreign Office on 28/4/22’, FO 371/7753. B. P. Blockett (Treasury) to FO, 22 June 1922, FO 371/7754. Niemeyer to Lindsay, n.d. [June 1922], FO 371/7754. PD, HC, 159, 6 December 1922, 1872. Murray, ‘300,000 feddan limit imposed on the Blue Nile irrigation scheme’, 7 January 1924, FO 141/784/12311. Gaitskell, Gezira, 83-91; A. C. Bolton, ‘Land tenure in agricultural land in the Sudan’, mToxNiW, Agriculture, 191; E. Mackinnon, ‘Blue Nile Province’, ibid.,

77°-* • 18 Gaitskell to Manager, Sudan Plantations Syndicate, 14 March 1928; see also manager to Gaitskell, 25 March 1928, SAD 418/3. 19 CIB,AR, 1931—1932; Gaitskell, Gezira, 138-59, 270; Beshai, Export, 316-17; Financial and trade statistics 1926-1938. 20 CIB,AR, 1931-1932. 21 Kjell Hodnebo, Cotton, cattle and crises, a historical study of cash crop production in East Equatona province . . ., Derap Working Paper A245, Bergen, 1981, 23-36, 40. 22 CIB, ARs, 1920-1932; for the shaykh’s view, see Baily diary, 11 January 1926. 23 Beshai, Export, 103, 117, 119-21; Awad Abdalla El-Awad Radaf, Sudan gum, a history of its production and trade up to 1982, Bergen, 1983, 120; CIB,AR,

1931-1932. 24 CIB,AR, 1931-1932. 25 CIB, AR, 1927-28. 26 Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 405-6; Hill, Sudan transport, 102-5 5 Longfield, ‘The growth’ (in Hamilton, The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 337). 27 Sandes, The Royal Engineers, 436-8. 28 E, M. Dowson to Schuster, 28 February 1923; Residency minute, 28 October 1924, FO 141/777/2426. 29 Residency minute, n.d. [1926], FO 141/628/2426; see also ‘Note on financial control in the Sudan’, 1927, SAD 635/10. 30 Financial Adviser to Residency, 19 April 1931, FO 141/721.

516

Notes to pages 435-42

31 Schuster, ‘Note on payments made by Egypt to the Sudan since 1899’, July 1924, FO 371/10068; Murray, ‘Financial relations of the Sudan with Egypt’, 5 May 1922, FO 371/7753. 32 Schuster, ‘Note on taxation’, 3 February 1926, end. in Lloyd to Chamberlain, 14 March 1926, FO 371/11609; ‘The Sudan. Historical survey’, 1924, PALACE 1/3/63; RFACS for 1927; MacMichael, The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 210-11, 220, 226-30; Beshai, Export, 338. 33 Financial and trade statistics 1926-1938; RFACS for 1920; Beshai, Export, 338; Schuster, Budget Note, 1926, FO 371/11609. 34 Huddleston to governors and heads of depts., 27 April 1930, FS, ‘Note to council’, ^November 1930, CIVSEC 20/28/138; Financial and trade statistics 1926-1938. 35 Maffey to Loraine, 3 December 1930, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 36 ‘Record of resolutions adopted at governors’ meetings held at Khartoum on 4th and 6th December 1930’, n.d., CIVSEC 20/28/138. 37 Governor Haifa to FS, 14 November 1930, Huddleston, ‘Note to council’, 8 December 1930, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 38 ‘Provincial administrative staff, etc.’, n.d., CIVSEC 20/28/138; Maffey note, end. in MacMichael to governors, 16 April 1931, CIVSEC 1/11/38; Governor Khartoum to CS, 27 December 1930, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 39 Governor Khartoum to CS, 27 December 1930, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 40 ‘Note by Controller, Public Security Intelligence and Intelligence Officer on conversations with Native Officers and Officials regarding economy pro¬ posals’, 5 January 1931, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 41 MacMichael to governors and heads of depts., 10 June 1931, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 42 MacMichael to chairman, Retrenchment Committee, 6 January 1931, CIV¬ SEC 20/29/141. 43 Finance circular no. 124, 23 May 1931, CIVSEC 20/29/141; see FO minutes by Noble and Murray, 8 April 1931; and Palace to Loraine, 9 April 1931, end. in Loraine to FO, 9 April 1931, FO 371/15424. 44 Figures based on finance circular 124. 45 Maffey to Loraine, 9 February 1932, end. in Loraine to FO, 13 February 1932, FO 371/16107. 46 Huddleston to high commissioner, 4 July 1932, FO 141/695/32. 47 N. Peterson, ‘Retrenchment in the Sudan’, 15 January 1932, FO 371/16107. 48 Maffey to high commissioner, 24 December 1931, CIVSEC 20/28/139. 49 MacMichael to FS and Kaid, 14 January 1931, and ^January 1931, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 50 Financial and trade statistics 1926-1938. 51 See CS’s circular letter, 16 May 1918, INTEL 4/2/9. 52 Report of the Labour Committee, 1921, INTEL 4/4/19. 53 Hopkinson, ‘Gezirah irrigation scheme . . .’. 54 Palmer to Lethem, 6 September 1925, RHL, LP, 11/1. See also Lethem to Palmer, 13 September 1925, ibid. 55 Lethem to Palmer, 13 September 1925, RHL, LP, 11/1. 56 Ibid. 57 PS to Labour Committee, 2 January 1923; list, n.d. [1923]; and other papers in INTEL 4/3/12. 58 Willis to president. Labour Committee, 8 November 1923, Willis to governor Khartoum, 23 February 1924, INTEL 4/3/12.

Notes to pages 444-40

5i7

59 CS’s office to governor Khartoum and heads of depts., 10 June 1931, and Governor Khartoum to CS, 27 December 1930, CIVSEC 20/28/138. 60 Winter, act. CS, to governors and heads of debts., 24 August 1931, CIVSEC 20/29/142; for contingency plans see, e.g., draft proclamation, n.d. [October 1919]. See also papers in the file CIVSEC 36/4/11. 61 Hargey, The suppression, 254-63. 62 Ibid., 250-1. 63 Ibid., 268-77. 64 ‘Memorandum on slavery in the Sudan’, end. in Archer to FO, 18 July 1925; Sudan Government circular memorandum, ‘Slavery’, 6 May 1925, end. in Henderson to Chamberlain, 5 September 1925, FO 407/201; Hargey, The suppression, 275-6, 279-81. 65 Hargey, The suppression, 281-7. 66 Ibid., 288-93. 67 Baily diary, August 1925. 68 Mayall to governor Kordofan, 21 December 1928, CIVSEC 1/34/92. 69 ‘Extract from Kordofan monthly intelligence report March 1929’, CIVSEC 1/ 34/?2-

70 Squires, The Sudan, 48, 57; Bayoumi, The history, 92-94; Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, appendix 4. 71 Beshir, Educational, 82-84; Bayoumi, The history, 166, 343; Squires, The Sudan, 64-71. 72 Squires, The Sudan, 76; Bayoumi, The history, 95; Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, appendix 4. 73 Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, appendix 1, appendix 6; Financial and trade statistics 1926-1948. 74 Squires, The Sudan, 5 5-6; 117-18; Cruikshank and Bloss, ‘The Sudan’, 64, 66, 69. 7175 M. Wolff, Midwifery Training School, Omdurman, 1st Report, 1921, SAD 579/3/15; cf. Bente Torsvik, Receiving the gifts of Allah, the establishment of a modern midwifery service in the Sudan 1920-1937, University of Bergen hovedag, 1983, 41. 76 M. Wolff, annual reports for 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, SAD 579/3-4; Torsvik, Receiving, 39-64 77 M. Wolff, annual reports for 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933, SAD 581/1. 78 Squires, The Sudan, 11, 86, 89, m-12 79 Quoted in G. K. Maurice, The history of sleeping sickness in the Sudan, reprinted from Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, September-October I93°80 Maurice, The history, J. F. E. Bloss, The history of sleeping sickness in the Sudan, reprinted from Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 53,6, June i960, 421-6. 81 Bayoumi, The history, 195-204, 210-12, 225-9. 82 Ibid., 253-5, 265-71.

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a.

SUDAN GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES, KHARTOUM

The archives of the Sudan Government are kept in the National Record Office (previously the Central Record Office), Khartoum. In this study papers classified as follows have been used: CAIRINT, INTEL, PALACE, CIVSEC, SECURITY, REPORTS, KORDOFAN, MONGALLA, and DARFUR. Papers under the CAIRINT classification deal mainly with intelligence and general administration in the early years of the Condominium. INTEL contains the archives of the intelli¬ gence department, Khartoum. The PALACE designation is given to papers from the governor-general’s ‘private office’, that is, the private secretary’s office in the Palace. CIVSEC designates files of the civil secretary’s department, SECURITY contains papers of the public security intelligence branch, and REPORTS is a classification given to official but unpublished miscellaneous reports and drafts.

b.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES, PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE (PRO) LONDON

i. Foreign Office archives a. FO 78: Turkey (including Egypt), 1895-1905 b. FO 141: Egypt, consular correspondence, 1896-1934. This series comprises the archives of the Residency, Cairo c. FO 371: Egypt (political), 1906-1934. This series succeeds FO 78 d. FO 403: Confidential prints, north-east Africa and Sudan, to 1904 e. FO 407, Confidential prints, Egypt and the Sudan, up to 1934 f. FO 633: The papers of Lord Cromer g. FO 800: Miscellaneous papers of the following: A. J. Balfour, Austen Chamberlain, Eyre Crowe, Lord Curzon, Lord Grey, Nevile Henderson, Lord Lansdowne, J. R. MacDonald, Lancelot Oliphant, Sir John Simon 2. War Office archives a. WO 32: including papers on the Omdurman mutiny, 1900 b. WO 106: including papers relating to the defence of Egypt and the Sudan 518

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4. Miscellaneous a. PRO 30/57: The papers of Lord Kitchener b. T 176: The papers of Sir Otto Niemeyer

UNPUBLISHED SOURCES: B. OTHER ARCHIVAL AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

a.

UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM

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b. UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM LIBRARY (SUDAN ARCHIVE)

The following collections have been especially useful: 1. W. N. Allan: 589/10-12 2. R. S. Audas: 455/2 3. H. H. Austin: 635/1-2 4. H. F. Ayres: 635/6 5. R. E. H. Baily: 533/1-5 6. A. Balfour and E. A. Balfour: 606/3-6 7. F. C. C. Balfour: 303/1, 303/5-9 8. E. Barrow: 294/18 9. Bishop Blyth: 420/3 10. I. M. Bruce-Gardyne: 478/13 11. A. R. C. Bolton: 624/1-5 12. A. Cameron: 622/6 13. T. F. G. Carless: 634/6 14. R. Clay: 631/4 15. S. J. Claydon: 631/9 16. G. F. Clayton: 469/70 17. W. F. Crawford: 502/1-8 18. J. W. Crowfoot: 422/9-1 19. F. Crowther: 8/51 20. J. W. Cummins: 635/10-11 21. R. Davies: 627/1 22. A. J. Forster: 600/9-10, 601/1-7 23. G. McK. Franks: 403/2 24. A. Gaitskell: 418/3-5 25. A. N. Gibson: 602/2-13, 603/1-10, 604/1-12, 605/1-12, 606/1. 26. J. A. Gillan: 448/3 27. Gordon Memorial College: 543-58, 567, 572-76 28. H. H. Gordon-Clark: 631/5 29. K. D. D. Henderson: 534-35, 536/1, 536/5-10, 537/1-10 30. E. Hills Young: 631

5

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31. J. H. Ingram: 512-13 32. R. T. Johnston: 639/12 33. H. H. Kelly: 132/7,133/1-4 34. B. Mackintosh: 448/j 35. H. A. MacMichael: 402/3, 403/6-7, 403/10, 585/2-3, 586/4 36. J. G. S. Macphail: 403/9, 404/10 37. J. Marsden: 294/18 38. W. Mather: 404/8, 404/10 39. A. T. Matson: 635/1-2 40. J. Maxwell: 401/1 41. P. D. Mulholland: 479/7 42. L. F. Nalder: 631/11-12 43. T. R. H. Owen: 414 44. Mrs E. C. Palmer: 624/12 45. M. Parr: 427/1 46. A. Paul: 639/11 47. G. H. Piercy: 298/4 48. S. Redfern: 294/18 49. J. W. Robertson: 517-18, 531 50. A. E. Robinson: 609/1-6, 616/11-13 51. L. Rundle: 231 52. P. J. Sandison: 511/4 53. R. V. Savile: 427/2-8 54. W. Scott Hill: 466, 511/1 55. S. Shuqair: 494/7, 494/9-12 56. S. R. Simpson: 542 57. R. S. von Slatin: 431-41, 450—54 58. R. J. Smith: 495-501 59. G. R. Storrar: 49-57 60. Sudan Plantations Syndicate: 415—16 61. C. H. Thomson: 402/6, 404/1-3, 639/14 62. D. S. B. Thomson: 104/4, 122/12, 404/5-6 63. G. W. Titherington: 636/12 64. J. D. Tothill: 104/20 65. P. M. Tottenham: 635/5 66. N. H. Ure: 627/2 67. A. L. W. Vicars-Miles: 631/10 68. R.Wedd: 475/2 69. W. M. M. Williams: 626 70. C. A. Willis: 209 -ro,212 71. F. R. Wingate: 102/1 and 102/n (diaries); 232-244 (personal papers); 157-60, 163-205, 252, 256-67, 269-302 (correspondence, Egypt and Sudan); 101/2021, 102/12, 103-104/1-6, 106/1, 106/4-7, 108-10, 112, 115/1—13, 121, 126-30, 152, 156, 161-62, 215-19, 223-27 (miscellaneous subjects, e.g., campaigns, frontier affairs, Anglo-Egyptian relations, the Darfur campaign, regimental records, ecclesiastical affairs, publications, etc., etc.) 72. M. E. Wolff and G. L. Wolff: 579/3-9, 580/1-8, 581/1-2, 582/1-8, 588/4

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521

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The following collections have been used: 1. H. C. Bowman, diaries and personal letters, 1911-14 2. Harry Boyle, correspondence 3. Sir M. Cheetham, private letters, 1910—14; letters received concerning Egypt, 1919-20 4. Sir E. Gorst, autobiographical notes, 1886-1911 5. Mervyn Herbert, diaries 6. Sir A. Keown-Boyd, papers, 1914, 1919-22 7. Sir T. Russell, papers 8. P. M. Tottenham, notes and reports 9. Sir G. Schuster, letters 10. Lord Wavell, notes and correspondence concerning his biography of Allenby 11. Sir F. R. Wingate, letters to H. A. MacMichael 12. A letter from L. Phillips, 24 February 1920

d. RHODES HOUSE LIBRARY, OXFORD

1. Coriat papers, MSS. Afr. s. 1684 2. Correspondence of Sir R. Coryndon and J. C. T. Phillips, 1920,1923, MSS. Afr. s. 633, Box 12/2 3. Letters of Gladys Leak to her mother 4. Lethem papers, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 276: Boxes 9-11 (papers related to his journey to the Sudan, 1919-29); Box 12 (papers concerning intelligence work in the Sudan) 5. Miscellaneous papers of H. A. MacMichael 6. Milo Talbot papers, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 424 e. NEW

COLLEGE, OXFORD

The Milner papers (kept in the Bodleian), Boxes 152-77

f. CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

A letter from Cromer to A. Stanley, June 1899 (Ref. 39/2/3-4)

g. SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Papers of the Rev. Dr A. J. Arkell

h. UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH LIBRARY

R. Davies papers (ref. GEN 1899)

i. KENT ARCHIVES OFFICE, MAIDSTONE

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1. ROYAL GREEN JACKETS MUSEUM, WINCHESTER

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m. HATFIELD HOUSE

1. Papers of the third Marquess of Salisbury, MSS. 3M/A108-111, 113 2. Private correspondence, MSS. E

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l%99 10. Naval Staff Intelligence division. Handbook of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1922 11. General Staff, Handbook of the Egyptian Army, 1912, London, 1912 12. General Staff, Military report on the Sudan 1927

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Davies, Reginald, The camel’s back, London, 1957. Duffield, Mark R., Maiurno: capitalism and rural life in Sudan, London, 1981. Duncan, J. S. R., The Sudan, a record of achievement, Edinburgh, 1952. El-Erian, A. A., Condominium and related situations in international law, Cairo, 1952. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer, London, 2nd. ed, 1974. Facey-Crowther, David R., British military policy and the defence of Egypt 18821914, University of London Ph.D., 1969. Fergusson, V. H. et al., The story of Fergie Bey, London, 1930. Gaitskell, Arthur, Gezira, a story of development in the Sudan, London, 1959. Gleichen, Count (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan: a compendium . . ., London, 1905. Handbook of the Sudan, London, 1898. Gordon Memorial College, Report and accounts to 31st December, 1913, n.p., n.d. Report and accounts to 31st December, 1918, n.p., n.d. Gray, Richard, A history of the Southern Sudan 1839-1889, London, 1961. Hamilton, J. A. de C. (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from within, London, r93 5Hargey, T. M., The suppression of slavery in the Sudan, 1898-1939, Oxford D.Phil., 1981. Hasan Dafalla, ‘A note on the political prisoners of Wadi Haifa5, SNR. Hebbert, H. E., ‘The Port Sudan water supply5, SNR, 18, 1, 1935. Henderson, K. D. D., Sudan republic, London, 1965. Henderson, K. D. D. and Owen T. R. H. (eds.), Sudan verse, London, 1963. Hill, Richard, A biographical dictionary of the Sudan, London, 2nd. ed., 1967. Egypt in the Sudan 1820-1881, London, 1959. ‘Government and Christian missions in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1899-19145, MES, 1, 2, 1963. Slatin Pasha, London, 1965. Sudan transport, London, 1965. Hodnebo, Kjell, Cotton, cattle and crises, a historical study of cash crop production in East Equatoria Province . . ., Derap Working Paper A245, Bergen, 1981. Holt, P. M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan 1881-1898, Oxford, 2nd ed., 1970. ‘Modernization and reaction in the nineteenth-century Sudan5, in Polk and Chambers (eds.), Beginnings of modernization (see below). Holt, P. M. and Daly, M. W., The history of the Sudan, London, 1980. Hurewitz, J. C. (ed.). The Middle East and North Africa in world politics, a documentary record, New Haven and London, 2nd ed., 1975. Hussey, E. R. J., Tropical Africa 1908-1944, memoirs of a period, n.p., 1959. Issawi, Charles (ed.), The economic history of the Middle East 1800-1914, Chicago, 1966. Jackson, H. C., Behind the modern Sudan, London, 1935. Pastor on the Nile, London, i960. Sudan days and ways, London, 1934. Jackson, H. W., ‘Fashoda, 1898’, SNR, 3,1, 1920. Johnson, Douglas H., ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars: Nuer-Dinka relations in the Sobat and Zaraf Valleys, c. 1860-1976’,/^//, 23, 1982. Kapteijns, Lidwien, Mahdist faith and Sudanic tradition, history of Dar Masalit, 18J0-1930, University of Amsterdam Doctor of Letters thesis, 1982. Khojali, Mustafa Mohammed, The significance of the railway to the economic development of the Republic of the Sudan . . ., University of Wales M.A., 1964.

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Krotki, Karol J., Travellers’ and administrators’ guesses of population size in XIX and early XX century Sudan contrasted with quasi-stable estimates, n.p. [Calgary], n.d. Lewis, B. A., The Murle, red chiefs and black commoners, Oxford, 1972. Longfield, W. E., ‘The growth of Sudan communications’, in J. A. de C. Hamilton (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from within, London, 1935. Mackinnon, E., ‘Blue Nile Province’, in Tothill, Agriculture (see below). McLoughlin, P. F. M., ‘Economic development and the heritage of slavery in the Sudan Republic’, Africa, 32, 4, 1962, 335-91. MacMichael, H. A., The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, London, 1934. (ed.), Sudan Political Service, n.p., n.d. Magnus, Philip, Kitchener, portrait of an imperialist, London, 1958. Mangan, ‘The education of an elite imperial administration: the Sudan Political Service and the British Public School system’, IJAHS, 15,4, 1982. Martin, Percy, F., The Sudan in evolution, New York, 2nd ed., 1970. Maurice, G. K., The history of sleeping sickness in the Sudan, repr. from Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, September—October 1930. Micklem, H. A., ‘Report on construction of bridge over Atbara River’, Royal Engineers Journal 29, 1899. Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, Tarikh al-Khartum, Khartoum, 1979. O’Fahey, R. S., State and society in Dar Fur, Cambridge, 1980. Page, C. H. ‘Inland water navigation in the Sudan’, SNR, 2, 4, 1919. Pinckney, F. G. A., Sudan Government railways and steamers, London, 1926. Polk, W. R., and Chambers, R. L., Beginnings of modernization in the Middle East, the nineteenth century, Chicago, 1968. Rehfisch, F., ‘Omdurman during the Mahdiya’, SNR, 48, 1967, 33-61. Reining, Conrad, The Zande scheme, Evanston, 1966. Rose, Kenneth, The later Cecils, London, 1975. Sadiq al-Mahdi {ed.). Jihad fi sabil al-istiqlal, Khartoum, n.d. [1965]. Sanderson, G. N., England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 1882-1899, Edinburgh, 1965. Introduction to Babikr Bedri, Memoirs, v.2 (see above). Sanderson, L. M., Education in the Southern Sudan, 1898-1948, University of London, Ph.D., 1966. ‘Some aspects of the development of girls’ education in the Northern Sudan’, SNR, 42, 1961. and Sanderson, G. N., Education, religion and politics in Southern Sudan 18991964, London and Khartoum, 1981. Sandes, E. W. C., The Royal Engineers in Egypt and the Sudan, Chatham, 1937. Santandrea, S., A popular history of Wau, Rome, 1977. A tribal history of the Western Bahr El Ghazal, Bologna, 1964. Santi, Paul, and Hill, Richard (eds. and trans.), The Europeans in the Sudan 1834i8y8, Oxford, 1980. Sawer, E. R., ‘The agricultural problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, Central Research Farm, Bulletin No. 1, Pump irrigation in the Northern Sudan, n.p., I9I5Schuster, Sir G., Private work and public causes, a personal record, Cowbridge, 079Seikaly, Samir Menas, The Copts under British rule, 1882-1914, University of London Ph.D., 1967.

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i983

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Tothill, J. D. (ed.), Agriculture in the Sudan, London, 1948. Trimingham, J. S., Islam in the Sudan, London, 1949. Tvedt, T., Colonial technicians, the Sudan Veterinary Service, 1898-1936, Univer¬ sity of Bergen hovedag, 1983. Warburg, Gabriel, The Sudan under Wingate, London, 1971. Wellcome Research Laboratories, First Report . . ., 1904. Fourth report. . ., 1911. Wingate, F. R., The Sudan past and present, repr. from Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution, 19, 14, 1892. Wingate, Ronald, Wingate of the Sudan, London, 1955. Wright, Patricia, British public opinion and the rise of imperialist sentiment in relation to expansion in Africa, 1880-1900, University of Warwick Ph.D., 1968. Zulfo, Ismet Hasan, Karari, the Sudanese account of the battle of Omdurman, London, 1980.

'

Index

Aba Island, 283, 284, 285-6, 335, 336, 337, 338. 339> 392 'Abbas 'Abd al-Hamid, 371 'Abbas Hilmi I, 34, 36, 51 (fig.)’ 53, 106, 155,175,201 'Abd al-'Azim Khalifa, 280 'Abd al-Baqi 'Abd al-Wakil, 121 'Abd al-Hamid Ibrahim, 177, 188, 189, 370-1

'Abd al-Hamid Sulayman, 346 'Abd al-Qadir wad Habuba, 64, 69, 125-7, 205-6, 207, 235 'Abd al-Rahim Abu Daqal, 167 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, 120, 123, 164, 166-7, 168, 169, 270, 278-87 (fig. 280), 296, 330, 335-6, 337, 338, 339, 367, 388, 391, 392-5, 438 'Abd al-Rahman Subki, 247 'Abd al-Rahman Twenga, 375 'Abdallah Fadlallah, 128 'Abdallah al-Sihayni, 282, 283, 284 'Abdallahi al-Ta’aishi, 2, 4, 9, 10-11, 25, 29, 38-9, 119, 121, 171, 182, 183, 184,

. 197

Abiad, 180, 182, 183 Abu Dilayq, 29 Abu Hamad, 204, 208 Abujummayza, 171 Abu al-Khayrat, 171 Abu’l-Qasim Ahmad Hashim, 164, 247-8, 280 Abu Rauf, 375 Abu Shama 'Abd al-Majid, 296 Acholi, 407 Acland, Theodore, 260 Adam wad Muhammad, 125 'Adli Pasha, 300 Adonga, 147, 403 Agabria wad Ahauga, 133 agriculture, 21-3, 28-9, 192, 199-200,

212-14, 215-17, 227-8, 231, 232, 233, 420, 443 crops: cotton, 52, 217, 218, 221-3, 422> 424, 425, 426-8, 432; dom palm, 217; dukbn, 216; dura, 21, 28-9, 199, 216-17, 227~8, 428-9> 43°, 459-6°; groundnuts, 217; sesame, 21, 22, 217, 430 development of, 52-3, 195, 197, 205, 206, 208, 214-15, 218-23, 420, 440, 442 government organisation of, 214-15, 222, 420 see also Gezira Scheme Ahmad Fadil, 9, 11 Ahmad Fu’ad, 301, 308, 310-11, 346, 348 Ahmad Hadayat, 241 Ahmad al-Sharif, 179 Ahmad al-Sunni, 10 Ahmad Ziwar, 317, 318, 320 Ajaakir, 144-5 Akobo, 147 'Ali 'Abd al-Karim, 123-4 'Ali 'Abd al-Latif, 291-2, 293, 295, 296, 297> 3°i> 3°9, 329 'Ali Dinar, 10, 111, 164, 166, 171-2, 173, 174-5, 176-7, 178-89 passim, 284 'Alt wad Hilu, 11 'Ali al-Mahdi, 120, 165 'Ali al-Mirghani, 92, 122-3, 165—6, 174, 175, 270, 280-1, 285-6, 296, 299, . 336-7- 393. 394-5 'Ali al-Tum, 10, 165, 176-7, 178, 280 (fig.), 369, 373-4 Aliens Committee, 162, 258 All Saints’ Cathedral, 94, 98-9, 256 Allenby, Lord, 266, 268, 289, 299, 300, 301, 303, 305, 306, 307, 315, 316-17, 318, 319, 342, 422, 425

529

53°

Index

Amarar, 374 Andal 'Abdallahi, 141 Anglo-Egyptian relations, 125-7, 155, 195, 266-8, 276, 286, 296, 297, 302-7, 316-21, 325, 342-3, 344-9. 422, 423. 444 over Sudan 13, 18, 48-50, 52-3, 155-6, 195, 268-9, 275> 279-8o, 281, 297, 298-312, 313-15, 317-21, 344-5. 346-9, 424, 433; see also Condominium Agreement Reserved Points, 300-1, 302, 345-6, 433 animals, 223-7, 43° cattle, 22, 225, 227, 430 sheep and goats, 22, 225, 227, 430 Anti-slavery Society, 234, 444, 445 Anuak, 53, 146, 147, 148, 403-4 Arabic, in Southern Sudan, 254-5, 404, 405, 406, 408, 410, 414-15 Archer, Sir Geoffrey, 313, 314 (fig-). 315-16, 326, 329, 333, 334, 335-9, 341 Archibald, R. G., 449 Ariendhit, 398 al-'Arifi al-Rabi, 4 Armbruster, C. H., 88, 201 Armstrong, E. H., 141 Ashwol, 143 Atbara river, 3, 202, 203, 208 Atbara town, 203, 262, 293-4, 322, 387, 392 Atiyah, Edward, 358, 384-5 Atkey, O. F. H., 446 Austria, Austrians, 161, 162, 250, 251, 258 'Awad al-Karim Abu Sinn, 280 Azande, 134, 138-41, 257, 265, 415, 449-50 al-Azhar, 240, 247 Bahr al-Arab, 144 Bahr al-Ghazal, 8, 47, 113, 135, 136 Bahr al-Ghazal Province, 19, 44, 72, 73, 76, 81-2, 114, 115-16, 117, 134, 136, 138-45, 149, 209, 214, 224, 236, 252, 253-4, 255, 257, 258, 264, 265, 272, 322, 397-9, 408, 412, 414-15, 416, 449 Bahr al-Jabal, 76, 135, 136, 209, 399 Bahr al-Zaraf, 135, 253 Baily, R. E. H., 306, 308, 309, 311, 313, 315, 328, 330, 335, 356, 368, 375, 377-8, 379-80, 381 Baldwin, S., 305 Balfour, Dr (Sir) Andrew, 260-1, 264 Balfour, Arthur, 86 Balfour, E. A., 356, 358, 385 Balfour, F. C. C., 86, 132, 282, 411 Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 87

Bani Amar, 374 Bani Halba, 177, 373 Baqqara, 129, 130, 144, 171, 172, 189, 190, 283, 284-5 Bara, 211, 374 Baraka, 221 Bardsley, R. V., 276, 383 Bari, 150 Bassett, J. R., 178 Basungada, 140 Bedri, Babikr, 4, 29, 242, 243, 246, 247, 369, 381, 387 Beir, 148-9, 150, 400, 404 Beja, 374-5, 377 Belgium, Belgians, 87, 133, 139, 140, 141 Bell, B. H., 349, 390 Bence-Pembroke, 365, 389 Bennett, Ernest, 4 Berber Province, 72, 73, 79, 81, 92, 236-7, 362, 428, 431 Berber town, 7, 21, 193, 208, 240, 242, 243, 262 Bergid, 372 Bernard, E. E., 45-6, 50, 56, 57-8, 59, 64, 70, 78, 94, 153, 196, 201, 274-5, 350, 361, 422, 423, 433, 437 Bishariin, 374-5 Blewitt, A., 75, 76, 137, 146, 243 Blue Nile, 9, 21, 22, 205, 284, 392, 428 Blue Nile Province, 72, 73, 125, 127, 137, 167, 216, 234, 236, 237, 246, 264, 338, 367. 376, 384, 44i. 446 Blyth, Bishop, 251 ‘Bog Barons’, 271-2, 406, 411, 412, 415, 4J9 Bond, E. E., 94, 210 Bongo, 141 Bonham Carter, Sir Edgar, 38, 60-1, 62, 69, 70, 88, 89, 91, 121, 130, 153, 162, 19°—1, 234> 236> 24r> 273—4 Bonus, E., 214, 215 Bor, 146, 148, 209, 250, 253, 254, 417 Bor Yol, 398 Borgu, 125 Borton, Captain, 73, 201 Bosha 'Abd al-Gabbar, 370 Boulnois Bey, 140, 254-5 Bousfield, Leonard, 262, 265 Bowman, H. C., 243 Boyle, Harry, 94 Bray, H. A., 260 British (in the Sudan), social life of, 57-8, 64, 66, 93, 95-6, 98-9, 263, 354-60 British Cotton Growing Association, 222-3, 228> 424

Index Brock (governor, Bahr al-Ghazal), 412, 414-15, 416

53i

Cromer, Lord, 5, 6, 7, 20, 24, 27, 29, 35-6, 38, 40, 41, 72, 82-4, 85, 86, 87,

Broun, A. F., 149, 214-15

88, 89, 94, 106-7, •24-5. 13°. 133,

Browne, C. P., 287

UJ. 17°.

Browne, W. G., 192

172,

194-5.

216

relations with Kitchener, 16-17, 27, 29,

Brunyate, W. E., 38, 195

30-4, 42, 43, 97

Burleigh, B., 4

role in framing Condominium

Burri al-Daraysa, 128

Agreement, n-18, 24, 219, 232

al-Bushra al-Mahdi, 119—20, 121 Butler, A. L., 224

role in Sudan Government, 42-50, 197, 201, 219, 220, 232-3, 240-1, 242,

Butler, J. H„ 73

246-7, 250-2

Butros Ghali, 18, 112

Crowfoot, J. W., 153, 246, 247, 248, 249, 274, 325-6, 380, 408-9, 414

Cairo Military School,

see

Egyptian Army

Cambridge University, 84, 85, 86, 385 Camel Corps, 118, 128, 176, 179 Cameron (governor, Mongalla), 253

Currie, Sir James, 46, 78-9, 88, 126, 153, i83> 241 (fig-). 242-3, 245, 246-7, 248, 254. 352, 368> 385> 422, 424, 438 Curzon, Lord, 188, 300, 423

Canter Cremers, J. J., 318, 346 Carr, F. V., 226, 229

al-Damer, 128, 221

Cassel, Sir Ernest, 201

Danaqla, 22

Cecil, Lord Edward, 7, 44, 46-7, 55, 56,

Dar Gimr, 172, 187, 188

57, 62, 86, 90, 100, 155-6, 181, 186, 187, 214-15

Dar Masalit, 172, 173, 182, 187, 188, 283, 364, 366, 372

Cecil, Viscount, 444

Dar Sila, 172, 182

censorship, 161, 162, 164

Dar Tama, 172, 173, 182, 188

Chalmers, A. C., 261, 449

Darfung, 236

Chamberlain, Austen, 305, 316, 317, 318,

Darfur, 10, 110-11, 157, 166, 171-91, 192,

319-20, 321, 333, 346, 401

235, 236, 282-4, 285, 286-7, 322, 362,

Chenevix-Trench, R., 209

365, 366, 369, 370—3, 383-4, 389, 390,

Christopherson, J. B., 260, 263, 265

405, 415, 434, 450

Church Missionary Society,

see

missionaries

conquest of, 157, 163, 179-86, 283-4, 366, 432

Churchill, Winston, 3, 4, 101, 315

Darfur Field Force, 180, 182

Clayton, Gilbert, 66, 67, 89, 91, 112, 153,

Daroti, 172

154> U5. U6. 175» i79~8l> 273, 276, 341 Collinson, Col. J., 9, 73 colonisation schemes, 116, 233, 443 Comboni, Daniele, 250

Davidson, N. G., 349, 368-9, 389, 416 Davies, Reginald, 277, 278, 279, 282, 310, 332, 336, 361, 364, 365, 366, 368, 369, 37°. 373-4. 376. 384> 389> 39°. 39L

Comyn, D. C. E. ff., 114-15, 141-2

392 Dawkins, Clinton, 19

concessions, 47, 51, 219, 220-1

Daym al-Zubayr, 138, 141

Condominium Agreement:

Dengkur, 145, 146

origins, 11—14, 112

Detwok, 407

terms, 14-18, 40, 42, 44-5, 47, 72, 200,

Dickinson, Major, 125

269, 296, 303. 3U» 3U> 322- 347. 348 Congo, Congolese, 47, 138, 139, 142, 200, 257. 265

Dickson, F. D., 147 Didinga, 160, 403, 407 Diggle, P. G. W., 444

Connaught, Duke of, 100, 102, 108, 111

Dilling, 132, 162, 258

Conran, 132

Dinka, 87, 97, 98, 114, 134, 137, 138,

Copts, 246, 267

142-5, 146-7, 148, 149, 154, 398, 400,

Corbett, Sir V., 85

402, 407, 414

Corbyn, E. N., 273, 287, 361, 380 Coriat, Percy, 399, 405

subdivisions of: Agar, 142, 143; Aliab, 142-3, 144;

Craig, J. D., 286, 336, 338

Angai, 146, 147, 148; Atwot, 142-3,

Creed, T. P., 444

144; Bor, 148-9; Malwal, 398; Ol,

Crispin, E. S., 260, 446

146, 147, 148; Twi, 146-7

Index

532 Dinshaway incident, hi, 126

Department of Justice, 44

Diu, 145, 146-7

Finance Ministry, 16-17, 32, 45, 51, 155,

Doleib Hill, 252, 258, 262, 407, 409 Dongola, 207, 208, 240, 242, 246, 262 Dongola Province, 10, 11-12, 16, 19, 22-3,

i63’. 194

irrigation department, 51, 221, 222, 274, 318, 412, 422, 424, 440

37, 71-2, 73, 76, 79, 82, 12i, 164, 169,

Legislative Council, 50

197, 198, 199, 212, 213, 234, 236, 246,

Ministry of Public Works, 136, 221

378, 382, 428, 431

repression of slavery department, 234,

Driberg, J. H., 403

235-6

Drury, W. B., 210

Reserve Fund, 11-12, 202

Dual Diu, 402

subventions and grants to Sudan

Dueim, 22, 205, 207, 209, 211, 218, 245, 262, 387 Duk Fadiat, 402 Duk Faiwil, 402 Dumbell, Captain, 154 Dun, R. H., 153 Dupuis, C. E., 221, 222 Dupuis, C. G., 365, 369, 372, 373, 383, 390

Government, 46, 47-8, 49-50, 52-3, 194-6, 202-3, 205> 206, 2°8. 219, 301-2, 304, 313, 319, 320, 344-5,

433-4 War Office, 16, 294 Egyptian Army,'3, 31, 33, 34, 41, 67, 82, 83, 89, 91, 92, 105-18, 119, 152, 154, 158-9, 160, 195, 196, 206, 269, 271, 272, 290, 297, 299, 300, 303, 304, 305,

education, 53, 91, 153, 194, 24off, 288, 297, 325-6, 328, 354, 358-9, 367, 377, 378, 379-87, 436 elementary, 242-3, 246, 247, 249, 379, 407, 408, 409, 414 girls’, 246, 386, 387

khalwas,

240, 241, 243, 249, 381, 382-3,

384, 386, 389

kuttabs,

240, 241, 242-3, 249, 379, 381,

383-4, 386, 407, 408

306, 307-8, 309, 310, 321, 328, 329, 438 Cairo Military School, 34, 36, 71, 118, 163, 294 conscription, 44, 134 Egyptian officers, 33-6, 71-2, 83, 105-6,159, 163, 269, 288, 309 finance branch, 128 Sudan Section, 37 Intelligence Branch, 55, 62 Sudan Bureau, 37

missionary, 246, 249-59, 342, 380-1,

Khartoum Military School, 36, 118, 163,

387, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 413 primary, 241, 242, 243, 245, 381

292> 294> 295 (Eg-). 309. 3”. 328, 385 medical department, 259-60, 261

private, 387

old soldiers, 116, 233

secondary, 245

Omdurman mutiny, 31, 33-6, 82, 83,

Sudan Government policy towards, 241-2, 246-7, 248-9, 312, 354, 364,

379-87. 407-10> 4M teacher-training, 379, 387, 408, 409 technical, 242, 244-5, 254> 387, 407 Edward VII, 50, 101 Edward VIII, 357

Egypt. influence in the Sudan, 49-50, 52-3, 92-3, 112, 118, 269-70, 272, 288-9, 325-6, 362, 363, 366, 379, 388 and Nile waters, 47, 50, 133, 220-1, 299-300, 317-18, 319-20, 346 rights in the Sudan, 1, 8, 9, 11-18, 47-8, 49. 89, 91, 155, 156, 186, 269, 292, 293, 296-7, 301, 346, 350 trade with, 17, 192, 193, 200, 225, 228, 229, 232 Egypt, government of, Council of Ministers, 15-16, 44-5, 194, 206, 303, 433

91, 93, 105, 106 patrols in Nuba Mts., 129-33; *n S. Sudan, I29> 139-40, i42-4, i45, 14C 148,

149,

150, 397-9, 401, 402

Railway Battalion, 202, 203, 293-4, 295, 304, 328 Sudanese battalions, 34, 36, 104, 107, 113-18, 304, 308, 309, 321-2 recruitment for, 105, 113-18, 160, 191,

233 Sudanese officers, 36, 159, 163, 294, 297, 308, 309, 310, 311, 315, 323 veterinary department, 225-6 El Fasher, 10, 171, 172, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 207, 209,

373, 383 El Geneina, 172 El Obeid, 10, 94, 124, 176, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 218, 229, 235, 246, 262, 272, 322

Index English language (in Southern Sudan),

254-5, 405. 4i4 Equatorial Battalion, 87, 116-17, J42> iji>

164,

255, 323, 397, 402, 403

533

France, 12, 13, 72, 136, 138, 139, 172-4, 175, 180-1, 182, 186, 187, 188, 284

see also

Fashoda, Incident

Franciscans, 250

Erkowit, 93, 95, 104, 176, 335

Franco-British declaration, 173, 188

Ethiopia, 47, 146, 147, 192, 200, 226, 236,

French Equatorial Africa, 187, 236

237, 403, 444, 445 Europeans: interests in the Sudan, 13-14, 27-8, 47, 50, 51, 52, 219

14, 28, 77, 98-9, hi, 159, 161, 211, 219-20, 323-5 see also British in the Sudan Evans, J. D., 387 Ewart, J. M., 330-33 resident in the Sudan,

Frere, Sir Bartle, 28 Fung Province, 375, 391, 428, 443 Funj kingdom, 171, 192

fuqara,

121, 122, 123, 240, 283, 285, 381,

382 Fur, 171, 189, 190, 370-1, 372, 383-4

Gaitskell, Arthur, 426 Gallabat, 9, 19-20, 92

Ewart Report (1925), 292, 293, 294,

Gambeila, 207, 209

310

Game preservation,

exports, 193, 216-17, 227— 31, 458-60 animals, 192, 193, 224-5, 226-7, 228, 229 camels, 193, 229 cattle, 193, 228, 229

see

Sudan Government

Garayat, 375 Garayda, 172 Garluark, 398-9 Garstin, Sir W. E., 21-2, 102, 136, 222, 411

cotton, 223, 228, 460

Gash Delta, 206, 222, 374, 425, 427

dates, 230

Gedaref, 9, 75-6, 92, 205, 209, 262, 265,

grain, 216-17, 227-8> 229-3°> 429>

322> 44i George V, 280-1, 318, 322

459-60 groundnuts, 230, 430 gum, 192, 193, 194, 217, 218, 228,

229-3°, 459 ivory, 149, 192, 193, 194, 228, 230, 458 sesame, 229-30, 430 sheep, 193, 229

visit to Sudan, 53-4, 94, 97-8 Germany, Germans, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 176, 178, 180, 181, 183, 250 Geteina, 387 Geyer, F. X., 162, 252, 253-4, 255, 257 Gezira, 9-10, 119, 120, 166-7, r94> 205> 209, 213, 222, 264, 284, 392-3, 424, 443, 450;

see also

Blue Nile Province

Fadiet Kwai-Kong, 138

Gezira Research Farm, 215, 420

al-Fadil al-Mahdi, 119-20, 121

Gezira Scheme, 299, 307, 317, 324, 350,

Fafiti Yor, 415

376, 425, 426-7, 431, 434-5, 450

Fallata, 119, 169, 236, 237, 238, 283, 284,

construction of, 54, 222-3, 274> 299>

373> 393. 44°> 44i. 442 Falwal, 147

finance of, 52-3, 66, 223, 274, 275, 276,

Fashoda (Kodok), 1, 22, 43-4, 72, 73, 75, 94, 116, 135, 136-7, 209, 220, 251, 252, 258, 262 Incident (1898), 7-8, 13, 135, 136

306, 420, 422, 423-5, 440-1

301, 421-5, 416, 432, 435 origins and planning, 50, 52, 112, 222 Gillan, 351 Gleichan, Count, 55, 59, 94

Fass, H. E., 351, 437

Golo, 141

Feilden, R. M., 90, 153, 255, 257, 273

Gondal, 392

Fergusson, V., 398, 399, 404

Gondokoro, 95, 207, 209, 250, 407

Feroge, 141

Gordon, Charles George, 1, 18, 24-5, 97,

Fiki 'Ali Almi, 131-2

107-8, 128, 168, 171

'Fiki Awn’, 130

Gordon, G. H. H., 210

Fine Spinners Association, 222-3

Gordon, W. S., 5, 26, 202

Fitton Bey, 37

Gordon Memorial College, 24-5, 27, 52,

FitzGerald (a.d.c. to Kitchener), 157, 171,

175. l77

54, hi, 118, 163, 212, 140, 141, 242, 243-45, 247, 248-9, 261, 291, 326,

Foja, 208

328, 358, 364, 379-80, 384-5, 386,

Forster, A. J., 274-5, 276, 305-6, 335, 380

389> 395> 438’ 443> 446

Index

534 Gordon Memorial Mission,

see

Henry, St G. C., 64, 75-6 Henry of Battenberg, Princess, 98, 100

missionaries Gorringe, G. F., 25, 26, 27, 46, 74-5

Herbert, Mervyn, 320-1

Gorst, Sir Eldon,

Hewison, R., 214, 215, 422

as agent and consul-general, 48-52, 55,

Hickman Bey, T. E., 73, 87, 197

70, 86, in-12, 126, 127, 128, 194,

Hicks Pasha, 178

205, 206, 235, 343

Hijaz, 164, 184, 236, 240, 270, 392

as Financial Adviser, 26, 32, 48, 202 Government of the Sudan Loan Act, the, 53, 206, 222-3, 4^1, 424 Grey, Sir E., 48, 126, 127, 128, 157, 173, 174, 183, 186

Hillat Mustafa, 125 Hillelson, S., 408 Hopkinson, F. T., 423-4, 441 Howell, A. B. B., 153, 276, 378 Huddleston, Arthur, 306, 326-7, 336,

Griffith, G. R., 226

350-1, 361-2, 363, 367, 376, 435, 441,

Griffiths, V. L., 387

442

Grove, E. J. N., 407-8

Huddleston, Hubert, 186, 294, 308, 309,

Guek Wonding, 401

310-H, 313, 315, 321, 325, 335, 337,

gum, 192, 193, 199-200, 215, 217-19,

401, 402

429-30

Humr, 176, 236, 283, 373

Gwynne, Llewellyn, 98, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256

Hunt, Leigh, 221 Hunter, C. D., 260 Hunter, W. H., 142

Habbania, 177, 284, 373

Hunter, General, 9, 41

Hadandua, 295, 374, 375, 389

Hussayn, Sharif of Mecca, 184, 185

Hadarat al-Sudan,

Hussayn Kamil, 155

290-1, 292, 296, 334

Halanga, 374 Halawin, 125 Haifa Province, 81, 86, 234, 366, 375, 431;

see also see

Halfaya,

Hussayn Muhammad Sharif, 163, 290-1, 296 Hutton, J. A., 222

Wadi Haifa Khartoum North

Ibrahim 'Ali, 171

Hall, Dr A. C., 261

Ibrahim Badri, 291

Hall, D. K. E., 59

Ibrahim Farah, 280

Hamar, 167, 374, 445

Ibrahim Kamil, 247

Hamilton, General Sir Ian, 112

Ibrahim Malik, 121

Hardinge, Lord, 126, 156

Ibrahim Musa, 373, 375

Hardinge, 275

Ibrahim al-Saruq, 123

Harman, 37, 45

Ibrahim Tarjamawi, 285, 286

Harpur, F. J., 251

Idris 'Abdallahi, 191

Harvey, Sir Paul, 49, 57, 205-6

Ilemi Triangle, the, 403

Hashim Baghdadi, 447

imports, 230, 429, 431-2, 458, 461

Hayes-Sadler, W., 137, 201

coffee, 193, 230, 431, 461

Hayter, W. G., 156

cotton cloth, 230, 431, 461

health, 100, 194, 259-65, 449-50

sugar, 230, 431, 461

diseases: bilharzia, 259; cerebrospinal

tea, 230, 431, 461 Indirect Rule, 137-8, 188-91, 287, 288,

meningitis, 259, 265, 397, 450;

290, 297, 326, 328-9, 353, 354, 355,

cholera, 259, 265; influenza, 265;

359, 360-79, 381-2, 383, 384, 385,

Leishmaniasis, 264; leprosy, 259;

386, 388-91, 394, 395, 434, 436-7

malaria, 259, 261, 264, 450; relapsing

remuneration of shaykhs, 361-2, 369

fever, 265, 450; sanitation, 261;

in the Southern Sudan, 396, 398-9, 400,

schistosomiasis, 259, 261, 450; sleeping sickness, 257, 265, 449-50; smallpox, 259, 265, 450; tuberculosis, 259; typhoid, 259

405, 409, 410-11, 412-13, 414, 415-19 Islam, 121-2, 162, 232, 256, 287-8, 325, 351, 379, 388 Sudan Government policy towards, 63,

Henderson, Arthur, 348

116, 119, 121-9, 164-6, 169, 177, 178,

Henderson, K. D. D., 356, 357

246, 247-8, 250, 251, 253, 256, 258-9,

Henderson, Nevile, 316-17, 326

388-91

Index in the Southern Sudan, 116-17, 251, 253, 254, 255-6, 258, 404, 405, 406, 410-12, 414-15

535

Kawa, 22 Kawahla, 22 Kayango, 253-4, 408

Isma'il, Khedive, 134, 193

Keira sultanate, 171, 192, 370

Isma'il Ahmad, 121

Kelly, H. H., 204

Isma'il al-Azhari, 190, 191, 280, 322, 391

Kelly, P. J. V., 180, 184, 185, 186

Isma'il Sidqi, 320, 348-9

Kennedy, M. R., 204-5,

Isma'iliya

tariqa,

122

Italy, Italians, 178-9, 258-9 ivory, 141, 144, 149, 199, 224-5

M1

(fig-)

Kenya, 403 Keown-Boyd, A. W., 153, 157, 289-90, 309, 326, 411 Kerenik, 188

Ja'aliyin, 21, 22

Kerr, G. C., 64, 88, 90

Jabal Dayer, 129

Khartoum, 1, 7, 12, 13, 25, 77, 79, 93,

94,

Jabal Doma, 132-3

95-6, 98-9, 104, 164, 193, 201, 202,

Jabal Eliri, 20, 130, 209, 375-6

206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 219, 240,

Jabal Fanda, 131

243, 246, 251, 262, 263, 295, 322, 324,

Jabal Fassu, 131 Jabal Hilla, 179, 180 Jabal Kakara, 131 Jabal Katla Kurun, 131 Jabal Mandal, 129-30 Jabal Marra, 171, 184, 186, 190 Jabal Qadir, 130, 169 Jabal Shatt, 129 Jabal Tuluk, 132

356-8, 363, 395, 406, 450 defence of, 107-8, 111, 119 reconstruction of, 25-8, 251 Khartoum Gezira Province,

see

Blue Nile

Province Khartoum North, 25, m, 202-3, 205> 206, 208, 210, 211, 215, 229, 246, 262, 308, 322, 395, 473 ni57 Khartoum Province, 20, 41, 72, 73, 79, 81,

Jackson, H. C., 84, 375, 382

83, 90, 246, 248, 362, 366, 375, 384,

Jackson, H. W., 8, 33, 35, 36, 37-8, 45,

437

58-9. 73. 135» I3^~7> 169, 252

jallaba,

255, 404, 405-6, 411, 412-13, 414,

al-Khatim wad Musa, 120, 121 Khatmiya

tariqa,

92, 122-3, 286

Kinana, 119, 125, 375

4i5 Jima’, 373

King, H. E., 261

Jones, R. T., 201

King’s African Rifles, 114, 403

Juba, 408, 409, 447

King’s Day, 98, 322, 358

Jur river, 136

Kirinding, 172 Kitchener, Sir Herbert (Lord), 1, 2, 3, 5,6,

Kababish, 10, 165, 176-7, 178, 364, 369,

7, 13, 23-4, 31 (fig.), 40-1, 79-80, 107, 135, 152, 202, 203, 204, 209, 243, 251

373 Kadugli, 117, 130, 131-2 Kafia Kingi, 141 Kajo-Kaji, 265, 417, 450 Kaka, 22, 94 Kamlin, 125, 164, 169, 207, 216, 246

as agent and consul-general, 52-4, 89, 94, 102, 112, 152, 155, 174, 175, 195, 206, 223, 248, 256 appeal for Gordon Memorial College, 24-5

Kapoeta, 403

during Fashoda Incident, 7-8

Karam al-Din Muhammad, 372

‘Memorandum to Mudirs’, his, 28, 71-2,

Karari,

see

Omdurman, battle of

79, 80, 232-3, 360, 472 ni53

Karima, 203-4

methods of work, 30, 31, 32, 37

Karma, 203-4

during negotiations over Condominium

Kas, 186 Kassala, 7, 19-20, 125, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 222, 227, 244, 262, 281

Agreement, 16-17 policies as governor-general, 28-9, 197, 232-3

Kassala Cotton Company, 425

plans rebuilding of Khartoum, 25-8

Kassala Province, 72, 73, 75, 79, 81, 234,

relations with Cairo as governor-

322, 362, 374-5, 377-8, 384, 405, 422, 428 Kassala Railway Company, 432 Katfia, 125

general, 30-4, 45 as secretary of state for war, 152, 157, 160, 177, 181-2, 183, 248-9 Sudan Government under, 37-9

Index

536

Kitchener, Waiter, io Kitchener School of Medicine, 358, 446-7 Kitra, 130 Kodok, see Fashoda Kon Anok, 143 Kordofan, 10, 20, 72, 83, 97, hi, 113, 124, 128, 129-31, 164, 165, 172, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 193, 205, 208, 209, 214, 218, 229, 234, 235, 236, 237, 384-5, 294, 322, 362, 364, 365, 369, 370, 373-4. 383> 4°7. 443. 445 Kosti, 116, 206 Kreish-Hofra, 141 Kulme, 186 Kunjur Kilkun, 133 Kur Nyidhok, 137, 138, 415 Kurnutti, 133 Kwajok, 407

Labour, 26, 29, 32, 54, 69-70, 114, 115, 136, 149, 150, 160, 209, 216, 221, 222, 23 J-9. 387. 422. 439-43 wages, 114, 231, 237-8, 297, 365, 423, 430-1, 440, 443 without pay, 142, 143, 238 Lado, 95 Lado Enclave, 113, 116, 117, 136, 254-5, 257.

265

Lancashire, 222, 421, 424 Land, 38, 43, 80, 127, 210-14, 216 sales of, 38 tenure of, 38, 44, 197, 210-14, 425 Lansdowne, Lord, 124 Lasbery, Dr F. O., 261 Latuka, 411 Lau, 258, 298 law, 15, 38, 60-2, 160, 285, 367-9 Grand Kadi-ship, 61, 123, 345 mufti-ship, 61, 123 Native courts, 352, 362, 367, 374, 375, 389-91 Ordinances: Animals Export and Import, 226; Cattle Plague, 225; Chiefs’ Courts, 415; Civil Justice, 61; Deeds Registration, 211; Demarcation and Survey, 212; Education (NonGovernment Schools), 380; Gezira Land, 425; Governor-General’s Council, 70; Kassala and Kordofan Town Lands, 211; Khartoum, Berber, and Dongola Town Lands, 38, 211; Khartoum Town Lands, 211; Land, 425; Land Settlement, 212; Land Tax, 198-9; Magisterial and Police Powers, 61; Mining (Prospecting Licence),

219; Native Courts, 368; Passports and Permits, 405; Powers of Nomad Sheikhs, 297, 362-3, 372, 405; Powers of Sheikhs, 367-8, 374, 400; Suakin Town Lands, 211; Sudan Mohammedan Law Courts, 61; Taxation of Animals, 198; Title of Lands, 38, 212; Tribute, 198; Vagabonds, 234, 237; Wild Animals Preservation, 224 qadis, 61, 243-4 shari'a, 61, 122, 123, 213, 388-91, 444, 445

Sudan Code of Criminal Procedure, 38, 61 Sudan Penal Code, 38, 61, 292 League of Nations, 444-5 League of Sudan Union, 290-1, 292 Lee, J. M„ 399 Leopold, King of the Belgians, 47, 133, 136 Lethem, G. J., 287, 365, 441, 442 Leveson, C. H., 147 Lewis Bey, 73, 80 Liddell, J. S., 208-9, 210 Liechtenstein, Prince Henri, 101, 224 Lilley, Col., 411 Lloyd, Sir George (Lord), 320, 321, 334, 337. 33s. 34i-2. 344-5. 347. 35°. 3S5> 4U

Loa, 407 Logan, Captain, 115 Loka, 409 Lol river, 144, 398 London, Bishop of, 99, 256 London, University of, 85 Loraine, Sir Percy, 342-4, 345, 437 Lugard, Lord, 364, 365 Lui, 261-2, 407, 447 Lul, 162, 252, 254, 258 Lyall, C. E., 88, 273, 324, 333, 334, 362, 388-9 Macauley, G. B., 210 MacDonald, Sir Murdoch, 411, 422, 424, 440 MacDonald, Ramsay, 302, 304-5 MacGillivray, D. P., 221 MacGregor, R. M., 346 Machar Diu, 146-7 MacKey, Charles, 200-1 MacMahon, Sir Henry, 155, 156, 170, 180, 181, 183, 186, 249, 342 MacMichael, H. A., 80, 96, 178, 179, 184, 188-9, 190-L 273. 275> 2S5> 3U-I5. 324, 327-8, 329, 330, 333, 334-5, 336, 339. 347. 35i-3. 354. 361, 363-4.

Index 365-6, 367,369, 375, 377, 378,382, 389. 39°. 394> 4°9' 437- 439 and Southern Policy, 397, 400-3, 405, 409, 410, 413-14, 415, 417, 418 Madi, 398, 407 Maffey, Sir John, 224, 314 (fig.), 326, 341, 342, 343-4, 345, 347, 348, 349, 350, 353> 354- 365-6, 367, 368, 370, 373,

385, 387, 389, 390, 392, 400, 401, 402, 406, 409, 413, 416, 436-7, 438 Mahdia, Mahdist State, 12, 18, 39, 114, 122, 129, 134, 138, 139, 167, 171, 183, i93-4> !97, 203> 108, 210, 212, 232, 238, 240, 250, 259 Mahdism, 7, 63, 119-29, 166-9, 205, 278-87, 294, 335-9, 365, 388, 390, 391-5, 401, 405 resistance after the fall of Omdurman, 9-11 Mahmud Ahmad, 21 Mahmud Mukhtar, 35 Mahon, B. T., 73, 124 Mai Wurno, 238 Malakal, 209, 309, 412 Malek, 254, 255, 407 Ma'lia, 373 Malwal Mathiang, 143 Manaqil, 246 Mangi, 139, 140 Manifold, M. G. E., 208 Mansur Koti, 382 Marchand, Major, 8, 138 Maridi, 140, 407 Masalit, 282, 283, 284, 366, 373 al-Masallamiya, 22, 125, 246 Mashra' al-Riqq, 116, 136, 138, 207, 209 Mather, Sir William, 222, 244 Mather Workshops, 248 Matthew, J. G., 380, 410 Matthews, G. E., 75, 76-7, 78, 87-8, 94-5, 100, 101, 102, 137-8, 149, 150, 404 Mathias, H. B., 260 Maxwell, Sir John, 3, 4, 7, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 38, 39, 41-2, 59, 72-3, 80, 83, 99, ii4> i7°> 3°9 Mayawa, 140 Maynard, Major, 411, 416 M’Sili, 253-4 Mcllwraith, Sir Malcolm, 14 McKerrell, A. de S., 75 McMurdo, A. M., 235 McNeill, Tennent, 282, 283 Mecca, 119, 124, 185, 236, 285 medicine, 44, 67-8, 194, 197, 259-65, 436, 446-50; see also health; Kitchener School of Medicine

537

Mellit, 182 Melut, 258, 262 Merowe, 71, 208, 246, 262 midwifery, 448-9 Midwinter, E. C., 206, 210 Milner, Lord, 289, 290, 297, 299, 300 Milner Mission, 289-90, 309, 326, 362, . ,379> 417 Miri, 130, 131-2 Misiriya, 176, 373, 445 missionaries: American Presbyterian, 246, 250, 252, 253, 254, 258, 262, 407, 409 Church Missionary Society, 246, 250, 25!> 253> 254' 255. 256, 257> 258, 261, 387, 407, 408-9, 447 medical, 261, 262 Roman Catholic, 161-2, 246, 250-1, 252> 2S3_4' 256, 257> 258, 359 (%)' 387, 407, 408, 409, 415 Sudan Government policy towards, 46, 68, 161, 250-4, 255, 256-9 Sudan United Mission, 258, 262, 407 Moir, J. P., 210 Mongalla, 100, 115, 253, 262, 265, 397, 408 Mongalla Province, 72, 78, 81, 95, 102, 116, 117, 136, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150-1, 209, 322, 406, 408, 411, 416, 428, 449 Morant, H. H. S., 73 More, R. E., 276, 334 Muhammad 'Abd al-Hamid, 371-2 Muhammad Ahmad al-Hilu, 120, 121 Muhammad Ahmad al-Jabalabi, 123 Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, 25, 119, 120, 122, 166 tomb of, 2, 4-5 (fig.), 6, 121 Muhammad 'Ali Pasha, 192-3 Muhammad al-Amin, 124-5, U0 Muhammad al-Badawi, 247 Muhammad Bahr al-Din (Endoka), 188, 366 Muhammad Harun, 61 Muhammad Ibrahim Dabaka, 373 Muhammad al-Mahdi Ahmad, 121 Muhammad Mahmud, 346, 347 Muhammad Muhammad al-Amin Tirik, 375

Muhammad 388 Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad

Mustafa al-Maraghi, 61, 279, Nur, 169 Rasmy, 118 Sa'id Hamid, 281 Sanbu, 281 Shakir, 61

538

Index

Muhammad Sharif, 119-20, 121 Muhammad al-Sinnari, 191 Muhammad Taha Shajiddi, 120 Muhammad 'Uthman, 373 Muhammad al-Zaki 'Uthman, 120 Muhi al-Din Jamal Abu Sayf, 291 Mun’im Mansur al-Shaykh, 374 Murad Ibrahim, 141 Murle, see Beir Murray, Alick, 106 Murray, John, 318, 342, 347, 422, 425 Musa Ahmad, 125 Musa Hamid, 141 Musa Madibbu, 178 Mustafa Nahas, 346, 347, 348 Mvolo, 209 Myang Mathiang, 142 al-Nabi ‘Isa, 119, 123, 124, 125, 128, 169, 281, 285, 391-2, 395 Nahud, 167, 176, 178, 179, 180, 207, 209, = 262, 391 Na’man al-Karim, 345 Nasib Baz, 449 Nason, F. J., 9, 59, 60, 64, 124 Nassir, 136, 209, 254, 258, 262, 409 National Bank of Egypt, 128, 159, 206, 42\ nationalism: Egyptian, 49, 50, 52-3, 91, 108-10, 111-12, 118, 120, 126, 159, 161, 247, 248-9, 166-8, 270, 279-80, 284, 288-90, 292, 298-9, 301, 302, 303, 327, 345-6, 367, 388, 394-5 Sudanese, 270, 287-98, 309, 348, 379-80, 413, 414 Ndongo, 141 Neufeld, Charles, 161, 163 Newbold, Douglas, 351, 359-60, 374, 389 Niemeyer, Sir O. E., 422-3, 424 Nile waters, 47, 133, 299-300, 301-2, 304, 317, 319-20, 346-7, 422 Nile Waters Agreement, 346-7 Nimule, 160, 265 Northern Nigeria, 364-5, 376 Nuba, 129-33 Nuba Mountains, 20, 72, 78, 94, 128, 131, 236, 250, 258, 389, 407, 428, 443 Nuba Mountains Province, 72> 78, 131, 162, 169, 272, 285, 322, 369, 375 Nuba Territorial Company, 117, 132 Nubia, 204 Nuer, 114, 134, 136, 138, 145-8, 398-403, 407, 415 Gaweir, 146, 399 Jackaing, 147, 148; Gaajok, 148, 399

Jagai, 398 Lak, 399 Lau, 146, 147, 148, 150, 399, 401, 402 Nyuong, 398-9; Gaajok, 399 Thiang, 399 Nyala, 282, 283 Nyala rising (1921), 282-4 Nyamlall, 144, 145 Nyima Hills, 131, 132-3

O’Connell, J. R., 124 Ohrwalder, J., 250, 252 Okaru, 409 Okuwe, 140 Omdurman, 1-2, 3, 4, 6-7, 21, 22, 25, 28, 29. 73. 9°. 92. m. 114. no. 123, 128, 194, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 218, 227, 232, 236, 241, 243, 244, 246, 261, 262, 265, 387. 392, 395. 445. 447. 448 battle of, 2, 3-4, 10, 11, 31, 201, 202 looting after, 4, 462 ni6, 463 ni8; treatment of prisoners after, 3-4, 6-7, 26, 32, 105, 119-21, 136, 209 Opari, 407 ostrich feathers, 199, 200, 215, 224, 225 Ottoman Empire, 128, 155, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164-5, i67. 174—5. 178-9. 180, 181, 183, 187, 269, 284 rights in Sudan, 12, 13, 14, 201 Owen, R. C. R., 46, 55, 56, 63-4, 78, 95, 101, 102, iio-ii, 116-17, 150-1, 205 Oxford University, 84, 85, 86, 88, 385

Page, C. H., 210 Palmer, Sir Elwin, 16 Paris Peace Conference, 188, 266-7 Parker, A. C., 59 Pawson, A. G., 363 Peake, Malcolm, 135-6 Pease, Edward, 86 Phipps, P. R„ 49, 57, 59, 60, 66, 69, 70, 78, 86, 88, 91, 93, 94, 96, 101, 126, 14a, 257

Pibor Post, 149, 403-4 Pibor river, 136, 147, 149 population, 18-23 Port Sudan, 86, 90, 97-8, 159-60, 197, 201, 203, 209, 210, 262, 265, 295, 363,

387 construction of, 195, 200, 204-5, 237 opening of, 50, 204 posts, 54, 207, 210, 432 prices, local market, 216-17, 227. 229. 230^1,428-9,430-1 Pridie, E. D., 446

Index public schools, English, 85, 86, 379-80, 384-5 Purves, W. D. C. L., 286-7 Quz Abu Guma, 206, 209 Raga, 265, 415 Rahad, 383 ratib, 121, 167-8, 279, 282, 392 Ravenscroft, H. V., 73, 236 Red Sea Hills, 93, 322 Red Sea Province, 81, 90, 237, 354, 374-5, 384; see also Suakin Reid, John, 378 Rejaf, 207, 397, 407, 409 Renk, 8, 29, 94, 209 Renzi, 140 Rifaat Pasha, 308 rifle clubs, m, 323-4 Riketa, 140 Riketa (town), 257 Rizayqat, 177, 178, 284, 373 roads, 207 Roberts, Lord, 101-2 Rom, 262, 407 Roosevelt, Theodore, 102, 103 (fig.), 112 Roseires, 9, 128, 207, 209, 235 Rothschild, Lord, 201 Roveggio, A M., 250-1, 252 Royal Air Force, 399, 401, 402 Royal Army, 17, 33, 35, 36, 37, 105, 106-7, i°8, hi, 112, 113. 158—9, 225-6, 259, 322 Rufa'a, 21, 125, 242, 243, 246, 387 Rumbek, 138, 142, 209, 398 Rundle, H. M. L., 41 Sa’d Zaghlul, 266-7, 296, 300, 3% 303, 305, 306, 307, 318, 320, 345 Sagar, 362 Salisbury, Lord, 5, 7, 12-17, 31, 34, 37, 251 Sammaniya tariqa, 167, 168 Sanussiya tariqa, 176, 179, 180, 183, 187, 284 Sarwat Pasha, 346 Savile, 76, 97, 176-7, 178, 187, 235, 282, 284 Sawer, E. R., 215 Saxony, King of, 102-4 Schuster, Sir George, 275-6, 304, 305, 306, 315, 3i6> 3 j9> 333> 334. 337> 338> 341.

347, 350, 361, 400, 409, 437 Scott, G. C., 386-7 Scott-Barbour, Captain, 142 Scott-Moncrieff, C. C., 121, 126

539

Sennar, 9, 209, 246 Sennar Dam, 421, 423, 425, 432, 440-1 Sennar Province, 20, 44, 72, 73, 74-5, 79, 80, 81, 125, 128, 169, 205, 213, 234, 237, 246, 362 Shaiqiya, 22 Shambat, 215, 420 Shambe, 138, 142, 250 al-Sharif Mahmud, 128 Sharif Mukhtar, 128 Sharif 'Uthman, 376 Shaw, Archibald, 255, 409 Shaw, Tom, 42^ Shaykh Barghut, 203, 204 Shaykh Khojali, 236 Shellal, 206, 207 Shendi, 21, 202, 215 Shilluk, 22, 87, 94, 101, 114, 134, 137-8, 252, 254, 407, 412, 414, 415 Shukkaba incident, 119-20, 121 Shukriya, 367, 376, 392 Singa, 125, 128, 246, 281, 358 Sinkat, 98, 127, 203 Sitt Amna, 236 Skrine, A. W., 411 Slatin, Rudolf von, 4, 10, 57, 58, 60, 62-6, 65 (fig-). 75-6. 77. 9°. 92> 94. 9G 97. 99-IOO, IOI, 102, 104, IIO, 120, 121, 12 6, 128, 137, 149, 153-4, 161, 164, 166,168,171,173,198, 205, 219, 224, 233,234,235,236,260,271,276,277, 285,350,391 slave trade, 18, 134, 141-2, 192, 193, 231-2, 234, 236, 239, 267, 443, 445-6 slavery, 18, 23, 46, 115, 129, 130, 141-2, 191, 192, 231-7, 238-9, 284, 440, 443-6 Smith, G. de H., 74 Smith, H., 73 Smith, Dr Norman, 446 Smyth, N. M., 73 Sobat river, 8, 135, 136, 146, 147, 207, 252. 399 Sons of the Sacred Heart, see Verona Fathers Source Yabu, 265, 449-50 Southern Policy, 397, 400-3, 405, 410, 4I3-J9 Sparkes, W. S., 73, 137, 138, 139 Stack, Sir Lee, 59, 142, 314 (fig.) as civil secretary, 153, 162, 169, 190-1, 270. 273

as governor-general, 93-4, ijo-i, 157-8, 164, 168, 267-8, 270-1, 272, 274-8, 279, 280, 285, 288-9, 290. 296, 299, 301, 302, 303-4, 305, 306, 309, 328,

Index

54o

Stack, Sir Lee—cont as governor-general—cont 329, 330, 333, 335, 347, 362, 363, 366, 367, 399, 422, 424 relations with Allenby, 268-9 as Sudan Agent, 56-7, 66, 112, 153 Stack Laboratories, 358, 449 Stanton, E. A., 73, 74 Sterry, Wasey, 61, 70, 88, 89, 153, 234, 248, 257, 273, 274, 311, 312, 313, 315, 317, 318, 326, 329, 333, 335, 337, 338, 397. 444 Steuart-Menzies, W., 224 Stigand, C. H., 143, 150, 404 Struve, K. C. P., 170, 399, 405 Suakin, 7, 15, 72, 79, 81, 86, 159-60, 161, 193, 201, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 225, 235, 238, 243, 250, 262, 265 sub-ma’murs' training school, 327, 385 Sudan Building and Agricultural Company, 394 Sudan Experimental Plantations Syndicate, see Sudan Plantations Syndicate ‘Sudan for the Sudanese’, 291, 292, 296, 299 Sudan Government: Board of Ulema, 63, 122, 123, 164, 280, 388 budget, 45-6, 195-6, 197, 207-8, 248, 344-5. 379. 420. 433. 435. 436> 447 Central Economic Board, 69-70, 192, 230 Central Government Board, 68-9, 260 Central Sanitary Board, 67-8, 261 civil secretary’s dept., 37, 55, 56, 58-60, 161, 273, 332-5, 351, 368 civil service, 82-4, 85, 86, 88, 89, 120,

U2 committees, 67-70, 257 customs, 17, 70, 200-1 defence, 36-7, 105-11, 127-9, 158-60, 208, 321-5, 401-2 Defence Bureau, 160, 181; Defence Committees, 111 education dept., 379-80, 385-6, 414 finances, 16-17, 32> 45-6, 47-8, 49-50, 51. 52-3. 57. 91. I28, 194-201, 207-8, 218, 299, 319, 343, 350, 422-5, 433-9, .457 . Financial Regulations, 45, 51, 57, 58, !94. 274, 304, 319, 350, 433 financial secretaryship and financial dept., 37, 57-8, 60, 153, 201, 274-6, 350-1

game preservation, 44, 68, 224-5 governor-generalship, 15-17, 30, 44-6, 47. 50-U 58, 7°-i. 9°-i. 93. i°8, 194,

244, 267-8, 303, 315-16, 339, 341-2, 343-4, 348 governor-general’s council, 50-1, 67, 7°-i, 78, 271, 333, 334, 335, 337, 338, 339, 35°, 439, 446 inspector-generalship, 62-6, 76, 276, 330 inspectors (district commissioners), 73, 79, 80—2, 87, 88, 92, 144, 354, 361, 381-2 duties of, 61, 80-1, 135, 272-3 intelligence dept, 55, 56, 63-4, 121, 153-5, 161, 168, 276-8, 297-8, 312, 329-33, 334-5 labour bureau, 237-8, 332, 440 labour committee, 440, 442 land settlement service, 212-14 legal secretary’s dept., 38, 44, 60-2, 153, 273-4, 349-50, 368-9 ma’murs, 79-80, 81, 92, 115, 143-4,

190-i, 255, 273, 326-7, 353-4, 363-4, 371, 406, 411-12, 413, 418 duties of, 61, 71, 135, 272-3 medical dept., 68, 69, 260, 446 medical service, 446, 447 mudirs, 71, 73, 75, 76-9, 81, 91, 272, 35.2, 354, 356 duties of, 73-4, 76-8, 135 police, 71, 80, 119, 236, 323 political service, 82-90, 152-3, 271-2, 335, 338> 351-2, 353, 355-6, 357, 358, 368, 378, 384-5, 436, 437 private secretaryship, 66-7, 153, 271,

276, 333, 334-5 provincial administration, 38-9, 59-60, 61, 66, 71-82, 89, 91, 94, ioo, hi, 129—33, 134-5, 136, 137, i38, I4°, i4i-5i> 236, 272-3, 326-7, 331, 351, 352, 356, 357-8, 361, 362, 368-9, 370, 377, 397, 436; see also Indirect Rule public works dept., 27, 86 reserve fund, 196-7, 207, 212, 226, 435 retrenchment, 435-9, 442-3, 457 steamers and boats dept., 206-7, 210 sub-ma’murs, 81, 327, 353-4, 363, 385, 406, 411 Sudan Agency (Cairo), 46, 55-7, 59, 63-4, 153, 154, 156, 276 Sudan Government Railways, 50, 83, 94, 127, 130, 195, 200, 201-4, 205-6, 207, 210, 218, 223, 237, 432, 434, 435 Sudanese staff, 117, 244, 247, 263, 272, 297, 326-9, 353-4, 355 (%), 356, 358-60, 361, 362, 363, 370, 378, 379-8o, 385, 388, 395, 409, 412, 413, 418, 436, 437-9 survey dept., 212-13

Index Sudan Defence Force, 319, 320-5, 327, 401, 433, 438 (fig.), 443, 446 organisation, 321-3 origins, 54, 117-18, 155, 290, 294, 299, 304, 306, 307, 316, 317, 319 Sudan Plantations Syndicate, 221, 222, 223, 228, 324, 376, 421, 425, 440 Sudan Selection Board, 85, 87 Sudan Union, League of, see League of Sudan Union sudd, 32, 135-6, 411 Suez Canal, 108, 112, 299, 302 Sulayman wad al-Bashir, 125 Sulayman Kisha, 291 Sutherland, Duke of, 224 Sutherland Bey, 76 Symes, G. S., 65, 66, 67, 123, 153, 157,

54i

Toposa, 403 Torit, 397, 407, 409 tourists, 27, 77, 94, 99-104, 356-7 trade, 51, 171, 192, 193, 194, 200-1, 203, 208, 228-9 Trade Facilities Acts, 424 transport and communications, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201-10, 218, 432-3 Trenchard, Sir Hugh, 401 Turkana, 403 Turkiya, 15, 22, 71, 79, 81, 122, 129, 133—4> i38- 139» i62> 165, 171, 192-3. 194. 197» 208, 221, 231-2, 240, 250, 259, 296, 465 n94 Turner, E. V., 210 Tweeddale, Lady, 87 Tyrrell, William, 187

168, 189, 224, 257, 314 (fig.), 378, 418

Ta'aisha, 295, 358, 373 Tagassi, 382 Talbot, Milo, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32-3, 37, 42, 80, 154 Talha, 169 Talodi, 130, 131, 132, 209, 235, 308 Tapley, J. J. B., 229 Taqali, 124, 128 tariqas, 121, 122, 165, 167, 365 Tawfiq Salih Jibril, 291 Tawfiqia, 95, too, 209 taxation, 43, 45, 53, 141, 146, 147, 149-50, 165, 169, 192, 197-200, 201, 215-16, 284, 361, 434 taxes: animal, 197, 198, 199, 361, 434; date, 197, 199, 361; education, 246; herd, 149, 197, 283; hut, 434; land, 197, 198- 9, 361, 434; poll, 434; royalties, 199- 200, 201, 218, 224-5; traders’, 197; tribute, 137, 149, 197, 198, 361, 434; ushur, 43, 149, 197, 198, 199, 200, 283, 361, 428, 434 Tayara, 211 Tayiba, 222 al-Tayyib Ahmad Hashim, 61, 280 telegraph, 29, 195, 208-9, 210, 432 wireless, 209, 432-3 Tembura, 139, 140 Tembura (town), 117, 257, 265, 449 Tippetts, S. A., 87-8 Titherington, G. W., 397-8 Tokar, 16, 79, 203, 221, 222, 374, 422, 4a3» 4^7 Tombe, 209 Tonga, 95, 162, 209, 252, 254, 258, 407 Tonj, 138, 209

'Ubayd Hajj al-Amin, 291, 292 Udal, 382, 385 al-Udayya, 178, 179 Uganda, 160, 200, 254, 265, 316, 403, 450 ‘ulama’, 122, 123, 164-5, 240, 247-8, 280, 388-9, 390-1 Umm Diwaykarat, 10-11 Umm Ruaba, 383 Umm Shanqa, 180 Unading, 398 United Kingdom: public opinion in, 12, 46, 52 rights in Sudan, 13, 14-15, 18, 49, 267 and Upper Nile, 7, 8, 47, 133, 135, 139 ‘Unity of the Nile Valley’ 292 Upper Nile Province, 20, 44, 72, 76-7, 81, 87-8, 94-5, 100, 101, 102, 104, 116, 133, 136, 147, 148, 162, 163, 199, 209, 224-5, 226, 236, 253, 262, 322, 332, 399-403, 404, 405, 412, 428, 446 'Uthman Diqna, 11, 120 'Uthman Shaykh al-Din, 120 Vandeleur, C. F. S., 29, 73 Vansittart, 344, 353 Verona Fathers, 246, 407 veterinary, 215, 225-7, 228-9 Victoria, Queen, 97, 233 Wad Habashi, 21 Wad Medani, 9, 10, 22, 23, 125, 167, 206, 207, 209, 215, 242, 243, 262, 420, 429 Wadai, 172, 173, 174, 181, 182, 187, 236 Wadi Haifa, 15, 72, 79, 120, 123, 161, 169, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 225, 229, 243, 262, 265 wafd, 266-7, 292> 302> 3°3. 3:7> 320> 345’ 346, 347, 346-9

Index

542 Wang Lei, 262 Wau, 136, 138, 139, 141, 144, 207, 209, 253, 254, 255, 265, 309, 397-8, 408, 409 Wau Industrial School, 254, 258 Wellcome, H. S., 260-1 Wellcome Laboratories, 241, 248, 260-1, 449

Whalley, R. C. R., 417 Wheatley, M. J., 153, 276, 404, 416 White, R. F., 143 White Flag League, 292-3, 295, 296, 298, 309, 329-30 White Nile, 7, 22, 29, 136, 205, 206, 209, 428 White Nile Province, 72, 170, 246, 285-6, 367, 378, 405, 431, 443, 445 Willis, C. A., 63, 71, 88, 90, 154-5, 162, 166, 167-8, 234, 235, 276-8, 279, 281, 283, 284, 285, 287, 297, 309, 310, 329~32> 393» 399~4OI> 404~5> 4N> 44r> 442> 445

Wilson, R. S., 78, 132, 146 Wingate, Sir F. R., 31 (fig.) as adjutant-general, Egyptian Army, 24, 26, 29, 30, 32 and Darfur, 172, 173, 174-86, 187, 189, 190-1 his propaganda, 182-3, 184 and defence policy, 106-18, 119, 129, 130-1, 142, 159, 160, 161, 162, 205-6, 208 as director of intelligence, Egyptian Army, 3, 7-8, 18, 19, 135 and Egyptian Army mutiny, 34-7 estimates population of Sudan, 18-21 as governor-general, 40-2, 48, 58-9, 66-7, 93-I°4> N2- H9> D0’ i52“3> 157-8, 162, 197, 201, 219, 224, 234-5, 236, 253, 254-6, 257, 258, 260, 269, 270, 276, 278, 288, 355 as high commissioner, 59, 151, 153, 157, 158, 266, 267-8, 270-1, 342 inspections, 94-5, 115, 116, 137, 142 and Islam, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 126 personality, 40, 42, 57-8, 93-104, 156, 157-8, 170-1, 244, 355 relations with: council, 70-1; Cromer, 42-50, 55, 56,

58, 59, 62, 90-1, 93, 95, 101, 204, 220; Gorst, 48-52, 56-7, 70, 112, 126; Kitchener, 40-1, 43, 52-4, 56-7, 58, 112, 157, 248; MacMahon, 155-6, 170, 179-82, 186-7 and subordinates, 37, 46, 56-61, 62-71, 73-9, 88, 150-1, 201, 235, 246-7, 248, 274; see also under individuals and Sudan Political Service, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90 and tourists, 28, 77, 94, 99-104, 224 at Umm Diwaykarat, 10-11 Winter, R. K., 380, 385-6 Wolff, Gertrude, 448 Wolff, Mabel, 448 Wood, Sir Evelyn, 41, 101, 105 Wood, Major, 139-40 Woodland, V. R., 144, 397, 404 World War I, 88-90, 114, 133, 152-8, 160-71, 186, 195, 206, 223, 224, 227-8, 236, 248, 258, 266-7, 27r> 278-9, 297, 379, 420, 446 enemy propaganda, 131, 160, 161, 162, 163-4, 169, 174, 176, 177, 178 government propaganda, 162-3 security measures, 159-64, 236, 258 Wyld, J. W. G., 402, 415 Yambio, 139, 140 Yambio (town), 117, 164, 257, 258 Yei, 257, 258, 265, 411, 416, 450 Yol, 97 Young, N. E., 439 Young, F. T. C., 374-5 Yoynyang, 407 Yubu, 407 Yunus wad al-Diqaym, 120, 121 Yusuf al-FIindi, 165, 174, 270, 280, 285 Yusuf Ibrahim, 171 Zaghawa, 190 Zaghlul, see Sa’d Zaghlul Zakariya 'Ali Dinar, 186 Zalingei, 370-2, 383, 391 Zandeland, 257, 265, 407, 415, 449-50 Zaraf river, 146 Zeidab, 221, 222 al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, 134, 171, 371

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