The Ecology of Survival: Case Studies From Northeast African History by Douglas H Johnson & David M Anderson

Author:Douglas H Johnson & David M Anderson [Johnson, Douglas H & Anderson, David M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367306953
Google: jti9zQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 54996739
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Condominium period

Compared to the earlier period, the years of the British rule in the Nuba Mountains brought profound changes. Two such changes were the pacification of the area and the abolition of slavery. The British strategy, finding the Nuba in their hills and the Arabs on the plains, was first to bring the Arabs under control. They posed the most serious military threat but were also of immediate economic interest to the British since they had cattle, the only cash commodity of the day. After the Arabs had been pacified the Nuba were brought under control, often through punitive patrols and forced down-migration from their hills into the plains where they could be more easily controlled.17

The British presence also brought changes to the economic environment of the area. To rule the region the British established military and administrative towns; centres which also grew into markets where the expanding exchange of goods could take place. Talodi, Kologi and Liri were all such market-places. The contact between these towns and others was improved by the construction of new roads and the introduction of motorised vehicles. The development was thus towards an opening up of the earlier closed area. But this development was counteracted by another element of British policy, which was to keep the Nuba apart from the Arab populations to avoid processes of Arabisation and Islamisation. The main tool to achieve this was the introduction of the Closed District Ordinance in 1922. This ordinance restricted and regulated travel in Darfur, Bahr el-Ghazal, Mongalla, and most of the Nuba Mountains and Upper Nile Provinces.18 The aims of British policies in the area thus appear to be contradictory, and they led to several changes in strategies for developing the area.19 Here I shall highlight a few examples that are of importance to our economic discussion.

One important need of the British in their early period in the Sudan was to build the Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile to get water for the Gezira irrigation project. To do this they needed a lot of labourers, and some of these came from the Nuba Mountains. The people of the southern region, especially from Liri, were among the first to go.20 But after some time the British saw that this created ‘detribalised’ Nuba. The migrants settled elsewhere in the country, they took up Arab and Islamic customs, and showed several signs of culture change which the British wanted to avoid. In relation to this the Closed District Ordinance was introduced to regulate movements of people, but another element was the British awareness of the fact that if they wanted the Nuba to stay at home they had to create economic opportunities in their home areas. This need, as well as the general need for revenue, led to the introduction in the early 1920s of the cultivation of cotton as a cash crop. The Nuba were already cultivating some cotton, short in staple and poor in quality, but one which suited their looms and one which required little work in the fields.

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