190 Scarcity and Surfeit
While Islam had already gained significant ground in the Sudan prior to
this period, the Turkish-Egyptian rule facilitated the spread of Christianity
through missionaries and explorers from Europe and America who came to
voyage the length of the Nile and its tributaries, the White and Blue Niles.
Slave trade peaked during this period, until it was abolished in 1847. The
centralised nature of the Rrkish-Egyptian administration was unfamiliar and
unpopular both in north and south Sudan. This gave rise to the Mahdist
Revolution in the late 1800s.
The Mahdi declared a Jihad and set out to spread Islam not only in the
north but also in the south, aggravating southern tribes who were mainly ani-
mist and did not embrace Islam. Consequently, the southern tribes support-
ed the British against the Mahdists in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. In
1899, Britain and Egypt established a joint condominium rule, with the
British first among equals in wielding political control.
Increasing tensions between the north and south over resources, ethnic,
religious and cultural differences complicated the condominium regime. The
Milner Report of 1922 resulted, from 1930-1944, in a southern policy with a
'Closed Districts Ordinance' whose aim was to:
reduce the wanton exploitation of resources in the south;
abolish the slave trade;
preserve cultural diversity of the black southerners;
check the spread of Islam in the south and into central Africa; and
initiate the separation of African Sudan from Arab Sudan.As part of this effort to divide the north from a strengthened south, the south-
ern policy also implemented the 'Permit to Trade Order'. This order sought to
exclude Egyptian, northern Sudanese and other Muslims from trading in and
with the southerners, but encouraged southerners to trade with East Africans
and Christian traders from Greece and Syria.
Egypt and the northerners greatly resisted the southern policy. The rising
movement among Eastern African countries towards independence could not
include southern Sudan, which was comparatively under-developed and frac-
tured by intertribal differences. Consequently, the British introduced a 'New
Southern Policy', promoting integration of the south with the north as equal
partners, a reverse of policy by the colonial masters. Many southern Sudanese
deemed this effort at unifying north and south a fatal blow to the stability of the
country.
In 1947, the British proposed a legislative assembly to unify the north
and the south. Recognising the absence of political structures in the south
and the need to secure the rights of the south to manage their affairs and
resources, the Juba Conference was convened to rationalise the participa-
+:-- -4 *ha on..th ;n n=tinnllI nnlitim Tt w;ls m~irklv established that while