The Sudan Handbook

294 thE sudan handbook

Egypt. Its supporters were mainly drawn from Nuba and southern

Sudanese living in northern Sudan. Although the League was clearly

experimenting with national ideas, its formal aim was union with Egypt.

Tactical use of Egyptian-inspired political objectives was a characteristic

of radical nationalism over the next three decades. Challenges to British

power were articulated as support for union with Egypt, but this idea

had no real support – union was rejected unanimously by Sudan’s first

parliament.

Another problem for Sudanese politicians seeking to articulate visions

for the future of their country is the disjunction between the experiences

of educated elites and ordinary people. Many Sudanese leaders rejected

the White Flag League’s attempt to deploy the dislocated peoples of the

periphery in order to articulate a Sudanese identity. A newspaper editorial

of the day (quoted by Fatima Babiker Mahmoud in The Sudanese Bourgeoisie)

dismissed them as ‘the scum of society’ who ‘disturbed people of status,

merchants, businessmen and men of good origin’. Instead, the elites

sought inspiration for Sudanese nationalism in the cities of Egypt and the

Arabian peninsula, which were unintelligible places to many Sudanese.

‘People of status’ were benefiting from the small but powerful export

economy that the British set up to finance their administration, based

overwhelmingly on cotton. The British concentrated investment in the

irrigable areas of the Nile valley, creating sharp regional imbalances and

entrenching the distinction between the centre and the periphery. The

first Sudanese cabinet was dominated by the beneficiaries of this British

development policy, and it ruled out any redistribution of wealth and

power. Government intervention was restricted to land grants for a few

wealthy clients of the elite. Sudan’s rulers preferred the inherited order,

even though it exposed them to the uncertainties of the world economy.

Just as the nationalists were taking over, the Korean war ended, bringing

an end to the considerable profits for Sudanese cotton on which Sudan

depended for its foreign currency. The price shift generated by competi-

tion from East Asia set the scene for the fall of the first parliamentary

regime a few years after independence.

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors The dictatorship that took over fell in 1964, and the second parliamentary

(www.riftvalley.net).