Imperial Culture and the Sudan: Authorship, Identity and the British Empire by Lia Paradis

Author:Lia Paradis [Paradis, Lia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Letters, Great Britain, Europe, Imperialism, Literary Collections, 20th Century, Literary Criticism, Political Science, History, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, General
ISBN: 9781788319003
Google: cC_aDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 48842182
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2020-05-14T10:03:57+00:00

Part Three

Remembering the Sudan

8

Writing the return1

In 1948, the Legislative Assembly of the Sudan, made up of northern Sudanese leaders of the various political factions, proposed a resolution of Sudanese self-determination. Egypt subsequently exacerbated the situation in 1951 by abrogating the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty that reiterated the Co-Dominion nature of the Sudan. Hoping to distract from a political crisis that would eventually lead to a coup, the new King Fauk declared himself sovereign of Egypt and the Sudan. This made the status quo in the Sudan untenable as far as the British members of its government were concerned. They had no choice but to declare themselves in favour of Sudanese self-determination and self-government at the earliest possible date despite the fact that this sentiment flew in the face of Whitehall’s position, which was – simply put – to sacrifice the Sudan if necessary to maintain relations with Egypt and control of the Suez Canal. Margery Perham, seeing this process beginning in 1946, weighed in with a letter to the Times that summed up the post–Second World War situation.

While Britain and Egypt have been arguing about the interpretation of a still undisclosed agreement, the Sudanese have been kept in a state of feverish suspense about their fate. If Britain has signed away her share of sovereignty and given it solely to Egypt, how can it honestly be maintained that there will be no change in the administrative status quo? The heart of that status quo is the guidance of the Sudanese towards full self-government by British officials; this will not easily survive either the penetration of Egyptian influence or the loss of faith in the British by the Sudanese, both of which are likely to follow upon the concession which Britain is said to have made.2

The raison d’être of British authority in the Sudan is, with Perham’s help, being refashioned as stewardship towards a fairly rapid transfer of power. ‘Everything must be done’, she exhorts, ‘to re-create the conditions in which the Sudan Government as at present constituted, will be free to give, and the Sudanese willing to accept, the last 10 or 20 years’ service that is needed to round off half a century of skilful and devoted administration that has brought the Northern Sudanese within sight of full self-government’.3 In this estimate, Perham imagines the shortest time span of any of the officials in the Sudan at the time, really. And she’s not far off – nine years instead of ten.

As with the Mutiny in 1924, and Gordon in 1884, Perham notes that the Sudan is coming into the British public’s consciousness only as an adjunct to Britain’s relationship with Egypt. ‘It is the misfortune of the Sudan that, neither a colony nor a foreign country, but lying in the twilight of its embarrassing status, it has been kept almost deliberately out of the public eye.’ The implication, for Perham and others, is that the British public have a clearer idea about Egypt and the advantages gained by close relations with it in 1946 than with the Sudan.

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