The Sudan Handbook

the ambitions of the state 109

so few they relied on cooperation with local figures of authority. They

sought out individuals through whom they could work, and the abuses

suffered by the populace were the work of these local agents, as well as

of the ‘Turks’.

The combined effect of these impositions was enough to encourage a

substantial migration away from the riverain areas of the north, where

communications were most developed, and administration at its most

effective – and taxes were at their highest. Some of these migrants pressed

south, beyond the uncertain boundary of Turco-Egyptian authority, along

the line of the river into areas populated by people who were neither

Muslim nor Arab. Here these migrants sought to recoup their fortunes

through trade in ivory and slaves – the international demand for which

increased substantially up to the 1870s.

From the early 1860s, the central state – hitherto restricted to the

largely Muslim and Arab communities of Kordofan and Sennar – began to

play an ineffectual game of catch-up with these traders. There were two

motives. One was the desire to tax this developing trade more effectively

to remedy the chronic financial deficit of the state. The other, ironically,

was the pursuit of imperial respectability, coupled with a new ambition:

Egypt, still ruled by the descendants of Muhammad Ali, was attempting

to create an African empire, but it was doing so under the eyes of a

Europe which was committed to abolishing the slave trade. So from the

end of the 1860s the agents of the state, pressing further south along the

river towards Uganda, and south-west into what was becoming known as

Bahr al-Ghazal, relying on their superior firepower as they did so, were

ostensibly suppressing the slave trade. A motley assemblage of European

adventurers joined the Circassian administrative elite as officers in the

Turco-Egyptian army. But suppression of the slave trade was beyond their

capacity: it was too important a source of income for the administration;

and many of their own foot soldiers were themselves slaves.

The Turco-Egyptian state was a clear example of an authoritarian

polity whose internal weakness prevented it from realizing its ambitions.

Its expansion was interrupted in the 1880s by a complex movement that

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors has^ come^ to^ be^ called^ Mahdism.^ At^ the^ centre^ of^ this^ movement^ was^

(www.riftvalley.net).