Sudan Notes and Records and Sudanese Nationalism, 1918–1956

Abstract

Sudan Notes and Records (hereafter SNR or simply “the journal”) was a leading African scholarly journal on Sudanese studies established by the British administration of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1918. Perhaps because of the high scientific standards it upheld throughout its life span, the political underpinnings that accompanied its foundation might not be so apparent. This study argues that, from its founding until the late 1940s, when the British administration was paving the way for a transfer of power to the Sudanese, SNR had ostensibly political orientations as reflected, among other things, in the editorial policy of the journal. The political leanings of SNR had two dimensions: internal and external.On the internal level, editorial policy in the 1920s favored notables and tribal chiefs, rather than the intelligentsia, by allotting space in this periodical to articles “written” by Sudanese sheikhs, a phenomenon occurring at a time when the policy of Indirect Rule figured most prominently in the calculation of the administration. In the late 1930s the administration courted the intelligentsia, offering them greater opportunities in the civil service and higher education abroad. The editorial policy of SNR favored these educated elements by publishing articles and correspondences written by the intelligentsia, including Sayyed Abd el-Rahman el-Mahdi, the patron of a prominent Sudanese political party—the Umma. Until independence in 1956, the Sudanization of contribution to the journal became one of the focal points of editorial notes.On the external level, the political bias of SNR was directly linked to the British policy vis-à-vis Egyptian claims of sovereignty over the Sudan. The study contends that one of the tactics the British used to separate the Sudan from Egypt was to foster the concept of nationalism among the Sudanese through archeological research. One of the prime vehicles for the spread of this concept was in fact SNR, whose very nature was questioned in the late 1940s by its own subscribers.