6 - “Closed District”

Summary

REACTION WITHOUT MODERNIZATION

When Anglo-Egyptian forces entered El Fasher in May 1916, the history of Darfur entered a new phase. But in describing and evaluating this period, we recall that the Condominium regime in Khartoum had begun its formal existence in 1899; immediately upon its occupation, Darfur became a special case, and it would remain one until the Sudan's independence in 1956. Few territories in Africa experienced a shorter period of colonial rule.

By 1914, the Sudan Government had become complacent. The north had been pacified after the upheavals of the Mahdiyya, and the Egyptian army and British garrison easily quelled the incidents of crypto-Mahdism that arose from time to time. The colonial regime conciliated both orthodox Muslim leaders and leading sufi shaykhs and left tribal rule in place in the vast rural areas. Legal codes, adapted from India and Egypt, had been enacted, but the Shariʿa, applied by government-trained and salaried qadis, regulated personal and family matters. Taxes were low, but thanks to loans and annual subventions from Egypt, basic infrastructure had been put in place: a railway system extended from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum, the Gezira, El Obeid, and, on the Red Sea, the new Port Sudan; government steamers plied the Nile to Uganda and into the Bahr al-Ghazal; the telegraph connected even the most remote regions to Khartoum, Cairo, and Europe.