2 - Colonial frontiers and the emergence of government chiefs, c. 1900–1920

Summary

The average Bari or Dinka Sheikh [chief] is not a person possessed of any authority, being as a rule merely the headman of a village, whose population obey him or not as suits their individual fancy. There are a few who seem to be strong men, and the policy adopted has been to raise the status of the Sheikh as far as possible in the eyes of his people by trying to impress on them (and on him) that he is the representative in his own village of Government, and must act and be treated as such.

The defeat of the Mahdist state by British and Egyptian forces in 1898 led to the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium of the Sudan in 1899. The new government immediately sought to secure its control of the upper Nile against both a brief French incursion and the forces of the Belgian Congo already occupying Rejaf in the far south. The vegetation blockages in the Sudd region of the Nile, however, delayed effective occupation of Equatoria for several years. Sudan-Congo relations remained extremely tense, until an agreement to lease the ‘Lado Enclave’ to King Leopold II of Belgium during his lifetime; the southernmost Sudanese province of Mongalla was meanwhile established to the north and east of the Enclave. The British report quoted above was written in 1906, well before the formulation of ‘Indirect Rule’ and ‘Native Administration’ as colonial policy.