The Sudan Since Independence

Abstract

In the three decades that have elapsed since the end of World War II, the overseas empires created by the European powers have almost all come to an end, and a wide range of new states, large and small, has taken their place. Now, when many of these nations are approaching the 25th anniversaries of their independence, it is a fitting moment to ask how well they are doing, not in any spirit of paternalistic chauvinism, but rather in order to see how far the hopes and expectations of the last years of dependence have been fulfilled in the first years of freedom, and whether a modern polity, modelled essentially on the nations of Europe, can be created and sustained by peoples of very different traditions, working within arbitrarily imposed boundaries that were not of their own choosing.