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