Many educated Sudanese question whether there ever existed a coherent and comprehensive British policy toward the Sudan. The changes in attitude noted in the preceding chapter which had affected Anglo-Egyptian relations after 1924 caused the foreign Office to devote more attention to sub-Egyptian Africa in the 1930s. This began to coalesce into a "Sudan policy" only with the approach of World War II. As for the South, a much clearer case can be made for the existence of a policy, during the first decades of the twentieth century and articulated in a series of secret memoranda from the offices of the Governor-General and the Civil Secretary during the 1930s and 1940s. The essence of what came to be known as the "Southern Policy" was one of preservation, that is, the maintenance of the traditional tribal lifestyles which had predominated for centuries and their protection from enslavement, exploitation, or Islamization from the North. The concerns which gave rise to this policy were generated by the condition of the South at the time of the Reconquest and after the disastrous years of the Turkiyya and Mahdiyya campaigns (discussed in Chapter II).

     The philosophical foundations of the Southern Policy were the product of the conditions which the British discovered in the South after the Reconquest. These conditions impacted on a

group of men who were mainly Oxford graduates with good but not great degrees; they were young, Victorian, and devoutly Anglican. The tasks which confronted them were "Restoration" and "Civilisation." The Sudan had been conquered by Anglo-Egyptian arms so the myth of the Condominium was underpinned with that of restoring Egyptian's hegemony, thus the task of "Restoration." This was a complicated problem in that the British found themselves as co-dominus with an Islamic state over another Islamic polity, yet opposed to the spread of Islam into the Southern provinces of that Islamic polity. Domestic pressures from England and political pressures from Cairo demanded an imaginative solution while the task of "Civilisation" compounded the problem.

     The Mahdi had left a vivid and negative impression of the worst excesses of reactionary conservative Islam on the English public. The sancitification of Gordon, the lionization of Kitchener and the exotic appeal of uncorrupted savages who had been subjected to the "convert or die" campaigns of the Mahdist forces, all of these factors aroused in England a feeling of fascination and revulsion. [1] The South and its inhabitants were to be taken under the wing of British protection:

The aim was to create a barrier against exploitation of the simple, uneducated inhabitants of the South ..and thus prevent the continuation of hatred between North and South. It was hoped that behind such a barrier the Southern peoples would develop until they were able to stand on their own feet . . . [2]

     This remained a persistent theme in British thinking until World War II, Subtly over those years the initially anti-Mahdist spirit evolved into one of anti-Islam.

     A dilemma emerged from these two British tasks and religion was close to its center. Restoration of Egyptian hegemony, appeared to be impossible to reconcile with the civilizing mission in the shattered but non-Muslim South. The problem was also one of differing outlooks on politics and religion. In English society the western concern for the separation of Church and State prevailed while in the Muslim worlds of Egypt and northern Sudan there was no such separation. In the memoirs of an admittedly biased former Governor of Bahr al-Ghazal Province, the British approach is described in the following comments:

The British idea of unifying a country is to leave minorities plenty of rein and as much self-determination as possible and to let the parts grow together. The Arab idea is diametrically the opposite and based on the motto 'Cujus Regio, Ejus Religio'--a unity coerced by one language, one civilization, one religion . . . [3]

     This is a fairly representative expression of the attitudes of most of the British men serving in the South during the period covered in this dissertation. There was a strong bias against Islam which was very difficult for the British to reconcile with political realities of the Condominium. The restoration of civil society in the South was to be shaped by these conflicting moral and political principles.

     While the Mahdi had left impressions on the attitudes of the English public, its impressions on the Southern Sudan were much more tangible and physical. The chronology of Mahdist rule in the South and the campaigns directed against It have already

been discussed and are fixed in history; the impact of Mahdist rule remains the subject of controversy among the British and the Sudanese, North and South. The British consensus is that the South was a wreck after the Reconquest. Tribes had been decimated, enslaved, and stripped of all leadership; a general depopulation and regression was the result of Mahdist "misrule." [4] The Sudanese view is somewhat different. The Northerner. was ignorant of his Southern counterpart; if he saw anything it was through an Islamic lens and the vision was one of an alien and pagan culture which was a potential increase to the Dar ul-Islam. [5]

     The Southerner was, and always would be, Abeed, or slave. There is no Southern literature for this period, but the oral responses to inquiries concerning conditions in the South at the time of the Reconquest tend to play down the issue of destruction and chaos and emphasize the South's hatred and fear of the North. [6] The Anglo-Egyptian victory and the elimination of the slave trade meant that thousands of former slaves became a component of tribal Southern society. Their memories were vivid and long. As late as 1945-1950, surviving slaves continued to keep the memories of Mahdist raids alive.

     The British view prevailed in the South as far as post-Mahdist government was concerned. The first instruments for carrying out the new policy were soldiers. Mostly seconded from British posts in Egypt, they were a direct and simple group of men, usually without a university degree, who saw their mission in terms of

erasing the horrors of the immediate past and re-establishing their image of what the social conditions had been prior to the Mahdiyya. These men came to be known as the "Bog Barons." [7] This original contingent of British rule found that:

After centuries of suffering from northern governments and northern slavers the people might be divided into those. who ran away at the sight of a stranger and those who liquidated him with spears. 1t took the new government every bit of thirty years to win their confidence or even their submission. Naturally enough the men who won that confidence wanted to reward it with the material benefits of schools and hospitals and resented the Central Government's control over the purse strings ... [8]

     The slave trade was the prime moral concern of the "Bog Barons." A second and related concern was the apprehension that Islam was on the march in Africa and must be resisted. Since the slave trade had been associated with the North and the North was Muslim, protection from one implied protection from the other. The anti-Muslim aspect of British policy was much more covert than the anti-slavery theme; this was inevitable in a setup where one condominus was Muslim and the Condominium itself was populated by a Muslim majority. John Spencer Trimingham, Secretary of the Church Missionary Society during much of the period covered by this dissertation and a Christian missionary who commanded great respect from the expatriate Christian community in the Sudan, described the governmental dilemma as it influenced educational development:

The Government itself for a long while made no attempt to do educational work in this area (the South), but in 1926. a scheme of education in

collaboration] with the missionary societies was undertaken, an, inspector appointed and subsidies granted to missions. Since there were no educated Southerners the alternative would have been to send Muslim teachers and this, because of the unsuitability of Northerners on the grounds of standards of pay and housing and of the morally disintegrating forces of Islam, could not be considered. [9]

     This was a touchy issue both within the Sudan Political Service (SPS) and with the Muslim notables in Khartoum. Running through the memoirs and recollections of most of the high-ranking Khartoum-based members of the SPS is a paradoxical tension. Most of these members--MacMichael, Gilian, Symes, Newbold, and Robertson--considered themselves Arabists, yet their fascination, respect and long study of Arab culture did not include a toleration for lslam. [10] As an aspect of culture Islam was examined and as a revealed religion, a worthy equal of Christianity, it was deplored. Thus the SPS saw as its duty the protection of the non-Muslim South from the spread of Islam and the evils the rigid and zealous practices of the Mahdi.

     The intention to exclude Islam from the South compounded the problems of restoration and relief in that region. The SPS wished to avoid sacrificinq the South to saw only two feasible alternatives: (1) the reconstruction of pre-Mahdist Southern Sudan or (2) a civilizing, mission manned by In what some would describe as a -typically British approach, a mixture of (1) and (2) was attempted and ultimately failed. This failure was the product

of a complex of problems, some local, some regional, some inter-national, which confronted the British in the Sudan from 1928.

     Many of the respondents interviewed during the course of the research for this dissertation discussed the persistence of Victorian attitudes of morality and Christianity in the SPS of the early twentieth century. [11] The men who administered the South were a homogeneous group sharing not only similar moral and religious values but also other important personal attributes. All of this led to a general agreement as to their role in the government of their charges. The homogeneity of the SPS is an important consideration in understanding the slow evolution of British policy in the South. The selection process was informal, as vacancies were created, whoever happened to be in England on home leave simply contacted his university or Whitehall contact and interviewed their recommended candidates. The intake was usually no more than two to five per year.

     After initial selection - a review board in London confirmed the candidacy and the young man was on his way. [12] The SPS was a small, tight-knit group described by various observers and commentators, official, and private, as "... the best in Africa, even better than Nigeria." [13] Most of these men cam out to the Sudan in their early twenties, immediately after completion of their university degrees, usually at either Oxford or Cambridge. By 1928, the seconded soldiers or "Bog Barons" had been almost completely replaced by these "Oxbridglans." During

the period covered herein, Oxford graduates outnumbered those from Cambridge, 116 to 57, and "others," that is, non-university or non-"Oxbridgian," 116 to 61. [14] Oxford, during the early 1900s, was an island of Victorianism, the ideas of duty, of rectitude, of an arrogant sort of Christian mission, and of the "White Man's Burden," could still be found and the graduates from this era were marked with that "Victorian hangover." [l5] The new recruits were not the cream of their colleges, they were men with good "seconds, "thirds," or in some cases, "passes," but almost all of them were distinguished by a "Blue" or the equivalent of a varsity athletic letter. They had attended England's best public schools and most had pursued college degrees focused on Classics and History. These young, physically fit scholars, tinged with noblesse oblige, racism, and Victorian moral arrogance, tended to see themselves as a sort of "secular missionary." [16] According to one of the more outspoken members of the SPS during this period, the new. recruit arrived expecting to serve the Empire and the "savages," usually in that order. They were the light of civilization and destined by God to light up this dark corner of Britain's dominions. [17] In England and the U.S. the period from the early 1900s until 1920s was the last era of large-scale public support for scion work. The combination of the moral arrogance of the late Victorian Oxford graduate and the popularity of the widespread mission undertakings throughout the world were to have their

influence in the Southern Sudan. In Britain the spirit of utter rectitude tempered by Christian sacrifice and class obligations had shaped the generations of men who sought the opportunity to serve their disadvantaged African brother. Kipling's-poem, "The White Man's Burden" fits the descriptions of the times -- evoked in interviews with most of the surviving members of the SPS. These men knew they were the "best and the brightest," knew they had a moral obligation to commit themselves to an altruistic cause, knew of the horrors of life in the "Dark Continent" and were prepared to meet the challenge. In the particular case of the Sudan, another powerful influence can be found in the work and public relations campaigns of the Anti-Slavery Society. The excesses of slave-raiding in the Southern Sudan during the Turkiyya and especially the Mahdi, became the topic of journal articles and public lectures. Kitchener's abolition of slavery, qualified though it was, touched a tender nerve in educated British society. This intensified the appeal of the Sudan as a worthy target for the civilizing mission of Britain's finest. [18]

     British attitudes in the newly reconquered Sudan and the world-view of Oxford in the early 1900s, are useful in explaining what philosophical characteristics determined the decisions taken In setting up administration and government in the Southern Sudan.` The options were limited. The Arabists in the SPS had to face the fact of a Muslim co-dominus. The Bog Barons were giving way to Oxford graduates whose attitudes were shaped by a different sense

of mission and by different career goals. These attitudinal traits of the British serving in the Sudan interacted with a series of external problems all of which had important effect on the shaping of the government's policy in the South. These events from 1928 to 1946 compelled the SPS to give increased attention to non-Sudanese affairs as they influenced polity. At the very beginning of the period severe economic pressures were brought to bear on the government as a consequence of the collapse of the American stock market and the ensuing Depression. Funds for development, never plentiful, all but disappeared. Condominium governments had consistently invested little in the South but this was to have changed in the 1930s because of the restoration of peace and order. Because of the world financial crisis, the anticipated increase in financial support for development in the South was cancelled and the Khartoum government was forced into a program of retrenchment, salary reductions and a general holding of the status quo until around 1940. Denys Hibbert, a prominent figure in education in the South, was shocked by the "piddling amount" of money spent. by the government in the South during the 1930s and early 1940s. [19]

     This drying up of development funds was even more severely felt by the missionary societies as they had depended primarily on support from their home churches. In this respect the Presbyterians and CMS were hardest hit and by the early 1930s had sharply reduced their operations. The world depression had a

milder] effect on the Roman Catholic effort which was much more self-sufficient. [20]

     In 1928 a program of government subsidies for the missions had been initiated which would have eased the burden on mission finances-but this was virtually suspended for the duration of the crisis. [21] With virtually no money coming in either from supporting congregations overseas or the Sudan government, mission. activities were curtailed, personnel strength reduced, home leaves were cancelled or abbreviated, and school construction halted throughout the 1930s.

     The drop in education and development funding in the South was part of a general revenue problem throughout the Condominium. This led to increased pressure from Khartoum via Whitehall on the Egyptian government to increase the Egyptian contribution to the Sudan budget. [22] This was a risky step which led to the reopening of the whole question of Egyptian participation in the government of the Condominium, a question which had lain dormant since 1924. BY 1936 the Sudan had begun the austerity programs of the government were eased. In the South, though, little improvement in government funding occurred before 194O. Generally speaking, there was "no money" for anything except "care and maintenance" requirements in the three southern provinces from 1929 until 194O. [23]

     By going to Egypt for increased financial support to offset the scarcity created by the Depression, the Sudan government was compelled to reverse its twelve years of anti-Egyptian policy. By 1936 a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty was in force and something closer

to joint rule went into effect. [24] This created no immediate changes in the administration of the South, but the monopoly of Christian bodies in education and of the British in government became more subject to exposure. This was a likely problem area, especially if the terms of the Southern Policy were to become public knowledge. The reluctant readmission of the Egyptians raised the question of Islamic rights in the South. This question was not one of what was best for the South but rather how the Egyptians could challenge British power anywhere in the Sudan. The Muslim leadership both in Khartoum and Cairo saw the South as political and cultural terra incognita and also as a vast area for expanding the Dar ul-Islam. [25]

     As a consequence of the renewed Egyptian interest in the Sudan, the Khartoum government's reluctance to share and the need for Egyptian development funds, an embarasslng situation began to develop in 1937. That year began in Cairo with intense agitation in the press and al-Azhar against the suspected Christian the monopoly on education in Southern Sudan. [26] In a letter from Shaykh al-Azhar to the Egyptian Prime Minister, the question of Muslim revenue being expended for Christian education was raised.

If it is true that taxes levied on Sudanese, the majority of whom are Mohammedans, serve partly to subsidize the Missionaries for the propagation of their religion, this should be a cause for deep meditation. [27]

     Al-Azhar would have been even more concerned had he realized that not only the taxes but also those

of Egyptian Muslims were subsidizing the operation of Christian mission schools in the South.

     This whole issue ultimately resulted in enhancing the prestige of the Shaykh al-Azhar in Cairo politics and little else. As the translated press clippings began to trickle in at Whitehall, a minor cause celebre resulted and remedial correspondence was directed to the Khartoum government. Anxious to maintain the myth of the Condominium, the Khartoum government entered into negotiations with the Shaykh al-Azhar to resolve the problem of Muslim funds being disbursed for Christian schools. The Shaykh was not particularly concerned with an actual resolution but more with the appearance of resolution. In negotiations between the Shaykh and the Department, a quid pro quo was arranged In return for an undisclosed concession from Khartoum. The Shaykh was allowed to publicly propose an Islamic mission to the South with Egyptian financing. This would ease the public pressure from Egypt on the Khartoum government and Whitehall. Secretly the Shaykh agreed that he would not push the issue but let it die on the vine after Khartoum conceded publicly his right to send the mission. In the intense political arena of late 1930s Cairo, the Shaykh al-Azhar would have improved his standing, the British would have affirmed the joint nature of the Condominium by yielding on an emotional issue to their co-dominus and the South would not be affected. [28] Suspicion of Egyptian ambitions remained a concern for the British and continued to influence policy.

     The question of education was developing into a public political issue which both the Egyptian and Sudanese press exploited. This tempest in a teacup subsided in Cairo after the events discussed above and in the Sudanese press as a result of government pressure and the emergence of the Graduates Congress, a problem discussed later in this chapter. The politicization of the education question had been a fear in the Foreign Office since the 1920s. In a prescient memorandum authored by a Mr. Pink in 1936, the issue was raised:

Unless something effective is done in the near future, the Sudan Government will lay themselves open to the same criticism as was levelled at Lord Cromer's regime in Egypt, namely that they have neglected the education of the natives and have instead concentrated on just and efficient government without taking adequate steps to educate the Sudanese to the standards necessary if they were ever to govern themselves. It is one of the cardinal principles.of British Imperialism that the territories administered by H.M.G. are held in trust for the native inhabitants, who should be encouraged to develop so they may be fit one day to take over the government of their own country. The failure of the Sudan Government to provide this education w111 therefore give rise sooner or later to the criticism that in intentionally retarding the development of the Sudanese H.M.G. are actuated by motives of self-interest and do not really wish to relax their control over the Sudan at any future date. This criticism is unjust if applied to the intentions of the Sudan Government; but when we consider the practical aspect of their educational policy it is at least partially justified. [29]

The Foreign Office was often ahead of the Sudan Government in terms of the future outcomes of the Southern Policy.

     In the late 1930s international events began to intrude into the conduct of government policy in the South. The most challenging of these was the Italian invasion of Abyssinia which caused internal problems in the Sudan and also regional problems in the Nile Valley and East Africa. The internal problem was one of administrative attitudes rather than policy and is discussed elsewhere, The Fascist government in Abyssinia began to expel all non-Catholic missionaries in 1937 which became an issue in the British community. Many of those expelled were British or Commonwealth citizens whose sense of outrage was echoed in a speech delivered by Anthony Eden in the House of Commons.

Mr. Eden stated that the prolonged negotiations with Italy with a view to enabling missionaries to resume their work in Abyssinia had proved unsuccessful. He explained that no foreigner is to be allowed to establish schools in Abyssinia. He concluded that in view of the Italian action we reserve the right to consider taking similar action relating to Italian missionaries in Territories under British administration. [30]

     One expelled mission society, the Sudan Interior Mission, made application to the Sudan Government and in 1938 began working in Upper Nile Province. [31]

     A provocative supposition discussed in several interviews fits into the description of external considerations at this point. The Governor General of the Sudan in the period 1934-1940 was Sir Stewart Symes, a career soldier without a public school and university background. His wife was Roman Catholic and one of her parents was a member of the Italian nobility. After Italy's conquest of Abyssinia, the Duke of Aosta, by all accounts an

     As Italy's Abyssinian forces grew more threatening, Symes was first extended past his requested retirement and then, within six months, precipitously retired on what were apparently fabricated medical grounds. Whether the closed files will more directly support the above allegations must await their declassification. It is safe to say that the Governor General was despised, by his subordinates, suspected of treasonous pro-Catholic/Italian sympathies, and summarily removed from office when the military situation went from bad to worse. The possibility that Symes and the Duke may have reached an Anglgo-Italian modus vivendi may not have been uncommon during these times b intensified the hostility of his subordinates to himself and his policies. This was to have effect on the conduct of wartime policy toward certain groups of potential Italian sympathizers.

     The coming of World War II, the early Nazi victories In Europe and the campaigns in North Africa galvanized the Egyptians

and the level of anti-British feeling in Cairo rose appreciably. The growth of nationalist political activity frightened the generally conservative SPS, especially since one of the slogans which had become popular just before the outbreak of war had been the "Unity of the Nile." The idea of the Nile basin as a political unit had enjoyed some popularity in the nineteenth century, especially after the Battle of Umdurman and at the time of the Fashoda Crisis in 1898. The headwaters, watershed, and basin were all seen by the British as constituting their sphere of influence as guarantors of Egyptian sovereignty and opponents of the French. The boundary decisions which grew out of this concept delineated the Anglo-French frontiers in Central Africa. What problems were created by the: application of this concept of geopolitical unity became apparent only in the mid-1930s when disputes over tribal rights, customs payments, and sleeping sickness regulations frequently plagued the various European rulers of Uganda, the Sudan, the Belgian Congo, and French Equatorial Africa. [33]

     The developing rift between British imperial interests and those of Egyptian nationalists rekindled the old idea of the political unity of all the peoples. bound by the Nile. Since the Khedive's expansion toward the equator in the mid-nineteenth century, this had been an aspect of Egyptian foreign policy and in in the 1930s it returned to complicate the already difficult Anglo-Egyptian relationship. Egypt could use the "unity" concept as a persuasive rationale for territorial aggrandizement at the expense of the British, but

there were risks. The "Unity of the Nile" concept could cut both ways. The British, accepting the validity of Egypt's claims to hegemony over the peoples bound together to interpret this identity in specifically Islamic terms, i.e., the unity of all Muslims living in the Nile basin would be subject to Egypt. The British response might then have been to concede Islamic Sudan to Egypt but to detach the South and graft it onto British East Africa, probably to Uganda. This would have been a serious deterrent to the Egyptian scheme since the Nile's sources would have remained outside the only partially unified Nile basin.

     A unified Nile Valley would also have posed major strategic and moral problems for the British as well. Strategically, such a large, potentially hostile political state would be a threat to Britain's rich East African possessions. There is a good deal of Foreign Office and missionary rhetoric which raises the spectre, of a creeping Islamic cancer,spreading through the Sahara into the vulnerable pagan areas of European-ruled East and Central Africa, As early as 1929 this threat was the subject of a Foreign Office memorandum.

..the other issue is that of language. It is, I think, hardly too much to say that the ultimate destiny, of the country (Sudan) may depend to a considerable extent on the decision taken . . .(what was to be the lingua franca in the South?) To encourage, or permit, the spread of Arabic involves. . . the spread of Islam. It has also a further implication. As a result of it, the cleavage between the negroid areas of the Southern Sudan and the Arab regions in the North of the country_ will tend to diminish, The Western Sudan already has a certain cultural and religious connexion with Egypt . . . .

and it is, I think, by no means fantastic to suggest that the extension of Islam and the Arabic language might ultimately make inevitable the fusion of the whole Nile valley from the Mediterranean to the Great Lakes into a single political unit. [34]

     What the British feared as an abstraction in 1929 they perceived as a distinct threat in the late 1930s. The other strategic considerations such as air routes to South Africa, retreat from Cairo, and invasion from Abyssinia, were more directly related to the next international problem and are discussed in that context. The moral problem.contained within the unity of the Nile idea was the spread of Islam. After forty years of protecting the South from exploitation by jellaba and from enslavement by itinerant opportunists, nomads, the poor and unsophisticated inhabitants of the region would be inevitably subjected to Islamic conversion. [35] This fear surfaces frequently in the statements of policy makers quoted below in the section on Southern Policy.

     How did one articulate Arab see the likelihood of a scheme such as the Nile Valley idea with its promise of early independence from British rule? In the mid-1930s, Edward Atiyah, an Oxford-educated Syrian, teacher at Gordon College, member of the Sudan Government Intelligence Department, and no lover of British Imperialism, had this analysis:

In the Sudan, at least, it was obvious that there was no satisfactory alternative to British rote for the time being, and that there would be none for a good many years to come. It was obvious, however one might hate the spectacle of an arrogant foreign dominion, that British ruke was, on balance, doing the

country much good and that the Sudanese were not by a long way yet ready for anything like- independence .... The Sudan was still very backward--scarcely a nation yet. [36]

     This puts the idea of Nile Valley Unity in a realistic and probably correct context. Rather, than a liberating idea, it was a technique for replacing British control over the Southern Nile Valley with Egyptian. The Sudanese nationalists of the 1940s and early 1950s often had the feeling that Egyptians were just as likely to sacrifice Sudanese interests for self-interests as were the British. Perhaps they were right, for there were several attempts by the Egypt4ans after World War It to subvert Sudanese nationalism in favor of Egyptian dominion. [37]

     The final international problem which influenced the shaping of British Policy was the outbreak of World War II. Three inter-locking strategic considerations resulted from the state of war between Britain, Italy and later Germany, in Africa: (l) The Cape to Cairo dream of Cecil Rhodes was, to a certain degree, a reality in the routes of the Imperial Airways network. (2) The fact that Abyssinia was under Italian occupation posed a serious threat to the flow of personnel and supplies from Southern Africa to Egypt and the North African theatre of the war. The Southern Sudan was contiguous to Abyssinia and therefore of strategic value. (3) The threat to the Southern Sudan became a reality in 1940 with a limited incursion by Italian-led Abyssinian forces who got-as far as Kassala which they occupied for a year. [38] On August 23, 1940, two American missionaries resident in a Sudan

Interior Mission station were killed during an Italian air-raid. [39] In addition to this local problem, the Sudan was viewed by Britain as having great value (l) as the keystone to British East Africa policy, and (2) as a fallback position in the event Rommel succeeded in his push on Egypt in 1941-1942. Contingency plans for the latter possibility existed and until Montgomery's victory at El-Alamein, were in the stages of preliminary implementation. [40] After mid-1942, the Sudan diminished in strategic significance with the collapse of the Italian effort in Abyssinia and the retreat of Rommel to the Western Desert.

     Within the Sudan the most pressing question of these early war-years was that of Roman Catholic reliability. This was a concern in the minds of the Southern Province Governors. and in those of the Governor General and his Intelligence Department in Khartoum. The question of a link between "the Quirinal and the Vatican" plagued the Foreign Office. [41] Many members of the Khartoum government suspected that Fascism and Roman Catholicism posed the threat of a Fifth Column wherever concentrations of Roman Catholics existed.42 In a letter from the Governor from the Governor of Equatoria, written after, the Italian expulsion of non-Catholics from Abyssinia and Eden's speech threatening non-Roman Catholics from Abyssinia a retaliation, the problem was raised:

. . . Though it is outside the question you ask you probably do know that in the R.C. areas the native speaks of 'the Government' and 'the Government of the Priests.' Some chiefs have asked Capt. Richards why we allow these foreign priests to remain. [43]

     This information had been produced in response to a note which had noted evidence of "semi-subversive" activities being undertaken by Italians resident in Sudan and requesting that Governors ascertain the exact nature of relations between "...Italian Missionaries in our province and the general Fascist organization. The question of Roman Catholic freedom of movement in the strategically important South was a strongly-argued issue in Foreign Office meetings at Whitehall with the Governor General, Sir Stewart Symes. By 194O the situation had become fairly serious. K. D. D. Henderson, wartime director of Public Security is convinced there was subversion emanating from the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Khartoum since he had discovered pieces of a short-wave radio concealed in the building during an unannounced inspection visit. [45] By August 194O, for military reasons, the Roman Catholic Mission stations on the Nimule-Juba road, the JubaTorit-Kapoeta road, and around the town of Wau, were ordered closed: "potential centres of enemy... intelligence and fifth Column activities." In fact, the Governor General modified this order since its execution would have closed two of the three intermediate Schools in the South. [46] Reports trickled in during 194O-1941 of pro-Italian feeling in areas of the Roman Catholic educated Zande tribe, of leaflets distributed in schools, and In expressions of a failure to understand, why enemy agents (priests) continued to enjoy a free hand. However, little substance indicating subversion comes to light. [47]

     A specific policy was developed during the 1928-1946 period to deal with the three Southern Provinces. This was known as the Southern Policy and can be traced to a secret memorandum written by MacMichael, then Civil Secretary, in 1930. [48] Education was an important aspect of the policy and, since the Government had begun to develop an active interest in funding schools and contributing to curriculum development as early as 1928, an analysis of the Southern Policy should begin just before MacMiehael's memorandum. The antecedents for the memorandum are rooted in the contrasting conditions prevailing in the North and the South which confronted - the British immediately after the Reconquest. The basic criticisms levelled by the Sudanese against this policy were:

(l) It was divisive.
(2). It impeded the achievement of national unity.
(3) It was a device to keep North and South separate in the interests of British Government.
(4) It envisaged the possibility on detaching the South from the Condominium and grafting it onto British East Africa, specifically, Kenya or Uganda. [49]

     The Southern Policy was evolving throughout the period and there were a number of important personalities involved in the decision-making which affected this evolutionary process. Generally, the Southern Policy formalized administrative practices which had been in effect for 3O years. Contrary to more modern systems o policy-formulation and decision-making which tend to be more objective and pragmatic, strong philosophical currents often had a more powerful effect on these processes than did purely political considerations. The sense of virtuous morality and Christian duty that was a part of the "Victorian hangover" caused the young "Oxbridge" member of the SPS to see the realities of Anglo-Egyptian, Anglo-Sudanese, and British East African politics from a crusading as well as a bureaucratic point of view. )n the words of the man who governed Equatoria Province during most of this period: Government officers do feel their responsibility under God for the Africans in their charge. More and more they realise that they erect a scaffolding in which a Christian community and Church can be built by others; the scaffolding must to a great extent, determine the shape of the building, and both are part of God's plan for Africa. [50]

     The development of the Southern Policy was also influenced by the principle of "indirect rule" as propounded by Lord Lugard. This idea was at the peak of its popularity in the British-ruled areas of Africa at the close of the 1920s. [51] The Governor-General of the Sudan saw this technique as a solution to the destabilizing effects of modernization brought on by the imposition of British rule and influence. He had served most of his career in India and had witnessed the impact of modernization first-hand. In a minute of early 1927, the Governor-General, Sir John Maffey, follows a picturesque and- metaphorical discussion of the merits of indirect rule with these words:

. . . In this manner (indirect rule as an 'antidote to democracy') the country will be parcel-led out into nicely balanced compartments,-protective glands against the septic germs which will inevitably be passed on from the Khartoum of the future. [52]

     Further on in the same document the question of devolution is discussed in terms of advisory councils to support some of the local organs of government which would be created in an indirect rule system. Sir John's comments illustrate the prevailing opposition in the SPS to democratic forms of local government which could fall under the control, of a "effendiyya" or native intelligentsia:

. . . Advisory councils cropped up as a means to our end but the proposal was not well received and I think there were good grounds for hesitation. Later on in certain intelligentsia areas, when we have made the Sudan safe for autocracy, such councils may be innocuous or even desirable. Also advisory councils to chiefs would be in keeping with the broad principle. Otherwise advisory councils contain the seeds of grave danger and eventually present a free platform for capture by a pushful intelligentsia. [53]

     Obviously, the Sudan Government was primarily interested in stability, not political advancement. One cannot help but agree with Sudanese critics in their accusations that the British had no intentions of creating a political consciousness among their subjects which would be oriented toward the idea of independence at some foreseeable future date. The British perspective was long term. Sir John's Civil Secretary, Sir Harold A. MacMichael, began reforming education in the South in 1926. He appointed a Resident Inspector of Education for the South, initiated arrangements for a program of direct subsidies to approved mission schools and began to exercise some control over curriculum and pedagogy. [54] At this time there was hardly what one could call a "system" of education In the South. The Education Report. for 1928 under "Education in

the South" lists three intermediate and 27 elementary vernacular schools with a combined attendance of 1600 students in which the object of the schools was described as

.. to train boys for Government employment as clerks and accountants and for medical and other services, and also to produce teachers for the Elementary Vernacular Schools. Some boys from the Elemenary Vernacular Schools are required as clerks to Chiefs' Courts, dressers in hospitals, etc., but their real aim is to produce a certain number of literate boys in areas where trade and communications are developing rapidly. [55]

     Thus the picture in the early part of this period is that of a limited system-in-formation with a small scope and fairly straightforward objectives. As early as 1929 the question of the Government's tack of concern for expanding the educational effort in the South was raised by a Foreign Office critic .. it is clearly a mistake that education should remain entirely in the hands of the missionaries even though the government maintain a degree of control ... if Kenya and Uganda have been able to make a start in this direction, there seems to be` nothing impossible in the Sudan's doing so. [56]

     The foundations for MacMichael's 1930 Memorandum can be seen n the discussions held in the preceding year which attempted to come to grips with the changing government emphases in. the South. The South was different racially, culturally, historically and administratively, but the character of government concerns was shifting from "safety and security," i.e. pacification, to "care and maintenance." As a consequence, custom and practice had to be revised to reflect the new patterns of rule. Sir John Maffey,

the Governor-General, Lord Lloyd and Sir Percy Loraine both in Cairo, addressed themselves to the question of new policy objectives in the South in 1929 in a lengthy series of correspondence. The political problems of indirect rule and separate development toward future equality between North and South were overshadowed by the philosophical problem vividly described in a memorandum written by K. D. D. Henderson in 1929:

. . . England as a Christian country could not consistently with her profession of faith become associated with a policy which deliberately . . . aimed at encouraging the conversion to Islam of a population of more than three million pagans . . . if dangerous Islamic fanaticism is more likely to manifest itself among recent converts . . . the encouragement and spread of Islam in the Southern Sudan can only be regarded as hazardous. [57]

     In his letter to Sir Percy Loraine, Lord Lloyd's successor in Cairo, Sir John Maffey raised the issue of "...the spread of Islam in, the South" and associated government remedies." Then he goes on to discuss the early educational policy in the South in terms of language, control, cooperation and socialization. [58]

     Dr. Muddathir Abdel-Rahim overstates the developing system in his critique where he alleges that the policy was so sort-sighted that the employment of local boys taught in the mission schools was a "vital feature of general policy" and that they were hired even though less qualified than a non-Southern Sudanese. [59] He goes on to accuse the British of policy objectives which included the total exclusion of Islam and Arabic; they were "being erased throughout the Southern provinces." [60] In late 1929-early 1930,

the shape of what was to be policy until 1946 began to emerge.

     Dr. Abdel-Rahim overstates his case but, as the following discussion shows, much of his error is of degree, not of fact. Three men dominate the internal political affairs in the Sudan during the period of this study: Sir Harold A. MacMichael, Civil Secretary from 1926 until 1934; Sir Stewart Symes, Governor General 1934-1944, and Sir James Robertson, Assistant, then Deputy Civil Secretary 1941-1945 and Civil Secretary 1945-1953. These men and their educational experts were responsible for the general development of the Southern Policy and the specific articulation of the educational goals of that policy.

     MacMichael looms large in the memories of all who served with him; a powerful, knowledgeable and committed Christian civil servant, his will dominated the direction of government policy during his tenure of eight years in the office of Civil Secretary. Much of his early career was, spent in the unpacified areas of western Sudan and his attitudes toward the primitive practices of the Muslim tribes must have been formed during these years. military and governmental pursuits were only part of MacMichael's background; he was also one of the most prolific authors to have served in the Sudan and some of his published works are still recognized as authoritative. [61] His rise to Civil Secretary coincides with the changing conditions in the South discussed In Chapter II, especially the passing of the "Bog Barons" and the shift from military campaigns of restoration to civilian rule of

maintaining the peaceful conditions of regional and intertribal harmony. Because of the Government's success in stabilizing the South, it was confronted with increasing requests from Northern traders and merchants who saw in the naivete and simplicity of the Southern tribesman a virtual goldmine. MacMichaei expressed the concerns of the British in a series of memoranda and letters throughout the early 1930s. In a particularly revealing one we read MacMichael's thinking:

The resultant danger (Islam following trade into the South) too is double-edged; for not only would the Arabs, in the event of a rising, be able to call upon the South in the name of a common religion, for assistance, but, if there were trouble between the Government and the negroes in the South, these same Arabs of the North and the intelligentsia of the towns would not fail to assume a pose of sympathy and interest which might become a serious embarrassment. [62]

     MacMichael, Symes, Newbold, all of the powerful occupants of high office in Khartoum from the Reconquest through World War It, describe themselves as "Arabists" and were evidently sincere and respectful students of the history of the Arabization of Sudanese culture. With the exception of Newbold and Henderson these Arabists rejected the power and appeal of Islam, the primary root of the Arab identity and an inseparable component of the concept of "Arabism." MacMichael's concerns gave rise to the much-discussed Secret Memorandum of 1930 spelling out the Government's Southern Policy.

(1) The organization of the South into racial or tribal units operating within the context of indirect rule. (2) De-Arabization of administration and replacement by locally recruited staff. (3) English to be the language of government. (4) "Every encouragement should be given to those in charge of mission schools to co-operate. . . by sending boys into Government service." (5) "Every effort should be made to make English the means of communication ...to the complete exclusion of Arabic." (6) "Apart from the fact that the restriction of Arabic is an essential feature of the general scheme, it must not be forgotten that Arabic, being neither the language of the governing nor the governed, will progressively deteriorate." [63]

     This became the official but secret policy of Government for the next 16 years; it was to be a provocative, controversial and demanding undertaking. The Important points of policy were the emphasis on closing off the South from Northern traders and the Arabic language, the emphasis on hiring local boys from missions schools, and the beginning of a linguistic policy which came to be interpreted as encouraging the spread of English as a lingua franca. [64] Language had been a problem in the South for years with dozens of tribal dialects rendering the task of government and education extremely difficult. In 1928 a

conference had been convened by the government consisting of Professor Westermann, an English linguist under contract to the Sudan Government; educators from Uganda where similar problems were being dealt with; representatives from the Sudan Government; and representatives from the Church Missionary Society, Presbyterian, and Verona Fathers Missions. This Rejaf Language Conference determined questions of orthography, pronunciation and designated six "group languages" plus English as the languages to be employed in elementary and intermediate education. Initial instruction would be in a "group language" or vernacular followed by higher instruction in English; thus the concept of English as a regional lingua franca was introduced to the missions in a Government Conference. Trimingham, one of the high-ranking Anglican missionaries, describes this decision and its subsequent effect in his memoirs thus: "Had Arabic been chosen (as a lingua franca), nothing could have stopped the spread of Islam.," [65]

     English was chosen for practical and political reasons. On the practical side, there was no single group language spoken throughout the South. The British members of the SPS usually had been instructed in Arabic as a second language but this was not acceptable as a lingua franca because of the terms of MacMichael's memorandum. Language and nationalism are powerfully linked in the context of colonial Africa's painful struggle toward independence. In the South either English or Arabic would have been foreign elements superimposed on the structure of tribal dialects. The exclusion of Arabic, the imposition of

English, or the introduction of Swahili (which was proposed) would have had political ramifications outside the South. [66]

     The opponents of Arabic were reacting to pressure from the Islamic North not in favor of non-existent English-speaking elites in the South. The lingua franca had to reflect the perceptions of the SPS members in the South who, in the 1930s, still saw the North in terms of Mahdist slave raids. In the words of Martin Parr, the lingua franca "had to be English. Any man whose mother tongue is Arabic is warped from birth." [67] Neither Trimingham nor Parr represent the mainstream thinking of the Khartoum government which was more politic than devout. The language policy was not aimed specifically, at the exclusion of Islam but more at the encouragement of English. This created or intensified linguistic division which still complicate North-South relations today. [68]

     In 1930 MacMichael's-superior, Sir John Maffey, described the developing policy as follows:

Our main purpose in the South is to spread education of an elementary type by means of vernacular schools and to make the young more useful members of the society to which they belong, fitting them to compete with the changing conditions of a life which, as trade develops and communications improve, must be constantly subject to novel impacts . . . [69]

     Sir John was going to see to it that what education there was available to the Southerner was not going to be destabilizing. He was opposed to what he considered as education for its own sake and felt that non-utilitarian schooling was a prime cause of the effendi whom he so thoroughly despised In the North. Education for existing

jobs and nothing more was his ideal. [70] Sir John's views appear to have been much more influential in the shaping of the Southern Policy than has been realized. The following illustrates that his thinking on the matter predates MacMichael's memorandum which may have been nothing more than the Civil Secretary's echoing of the Governor-General's desires.

The Rejaf Language Conference held in April 1928, though convened primarily to discuss the problems of orthography, and languages, marks a definite stage in the progress of our, educational policy for the South. The adoption of the recommendation of that conference for a uniform orthography and the development of certain, group languages for use in schools really postulated a continuation of the system of recognition of the mission schools, for without the co-operation of those in charge these schools the attainment of these objectives would have been almost impossible. It may, therefore, be said that the conference set the seal on the experimental policy of the preceding years. [71]

     Thus the foundations of the Southern Policy predate the Memorandum setting it forth. Sir John Maffey and Sir Harold MacMichael had been considering the questions of language, religion, and efficient government for some time prior to 1930. An interesting sidelight to the question of this Policy and its aims is found in a memorandum submitted by the Southern front to a meeting of the O.A.U. in 1965. This was part of the Southern attempt to get the issue of the civil war which had been going on for a decade before a larger section of African public opinion. [72] In the memorandum to the Southern Front alleges:

The object of 1930 south Policy was to give the people of the South both a chance to develop and a positive help In developing their own culture and social system. The adoption and implementation of

such a policy becomes imperative and a necessity when one recalls the untold suffering of the African tribes in the Sudan at the hands of alien marauders: the slave-traders, the Turco-Egyptian Regime and the Mahdists. The slave-traders were not of course in the Southern Sudan for the good of the Southern Sudanese . . . This administration (the Turco-Egyptian) disrupted (the) African way of life and imposed Islam and Islamic culture. . . . The Mahdist invasions in the Southern Sudan were for the... imposition by sword of Islamic religion.... These latter two regimes had no social or economic policies designed to improve the conditions of the people of the Southern Sudan. [73]

     After MacMichael's policy memorandum had been in force for two years, the Director of Education, R. K. Winter, was sent to the South on a tour of inspection to evaluate the Government's policy aims. His report is voluminous and generally critical; most Directors of Education reports submitted within the Government rather than those going forward to Cairo and Whitehall were similar in tone. This particular report by Winter will be quoted extensively in amplification and explication of the Government's aims and how mission education fit into those aims. A concerned expressed by Winter and one which was to be -a persistent aspect of subsequent criticisms of Southern Policy was the problem of detribalization. As will be discussed in Chapter VI, the demands of Native Administration inevitably produced small groups of alienated youth with a growing awareness of themselves as being above and detached from tribal society as a consequence of their mission-school education.

     Director of Education Winter raised what proved to be an

insoluble problem: how to educate "boys" but keep them integrated into a tribal society which either, rejected their new values or found them useless and irrelevant in the tribal context. Winter, Director of Education from 1932 to 1936, spanned the transition from MacMichael, the powerful Civil Secretary, to Symes, the powerful Governor-Generals He and his successor as Director were consistently nipping at the heels of the mission educators and insistently emphasizing the policy aspects of their service.

     Winter stated:

I raised the question and emphasized the desirability of checking the inevitable tendency of education to disintegrate the tribe and of avoiding the danger of an educated class in rivalry with the accepted rulers of the people. [74]

     Winter was one of the more perceptive members of the Political Service and saw instability in the future if more effective policy control over the missions were not maintained; in his words:

I consider the discussion of this problem at an early date to be of outstanding importance. Within the next ten years, at a rough computation, the majority of Province subordinate staff should have been found from the three Intermediate schools . . . Within the next ten years technical schools and the Teachers' Training Centres will have found all the necessary departmental staff. We shall require only a small yearly entry to repair wastage. At the present rate we may be turning-out 50 or 60 English speaking boys in ten years time, to say nothing of the output (sometimes quite intelligent) from the Elementary Vernacular Schools . . . fear that we may quickly build up a class of aggrieved and detribalised loafers is justified . . . a personal study should be made of the growth of the mission schools in Uganda in order that we may avoid the mistakes made in that country .... The present view is, however, that we should limit Intermediate education strictly to meet Government and

professional requirements, i.e., to turn out the minimum number of boys who can be readily absorbed. We should concentrate on Elementary Vernacular - education taking care that the teaching given sends the boy back happily to his tribal environment. [75]

     Policy had developed into an emphasis on separation, preservation and conservation. Separate the North from the South, preserve the tribal societies from any modern influences conserve the Government's resources by educating only those required to replace subordinate staff and then only educate to the minimum degree necessary for competence--these were the goals. These goals may have been possible but, as will be seen, none of them were achieved. Limiting education, educating those most deserving and/or useful, absorbing the educated into government or the educational system, all of these aspects of policy were complicated by the conservative and suspicious character of the Southern tribes who often refused to send any of their "boys" to school. [76] District Commissioners were accused of press-gang tactics to fill out the classes. The following quotation illustrates a common Political Service attitude toward this problem:

In negroid Africa education must be confined to the few, but these few are going to obtain an immense power over their uneducated bretheren; it is therefore obvious that careful selection is all important and this is not possible under present conditions . . . . I realise that missions are primarily religious institutions, and as such are bound to be in opposition to the policy laid down to the first paragraph of part one of the Civil Secretary's memorandum (on Southern Policy). [77]

versus Government personnel requirements which runs throughout the relevant correspondence in the 1930s. In the Winter note cited above, the observation was made that "I do not think the Missionary Societies as a whole would oppose the limitation of higher learning. They would have better opportunity for the evangelization of the masses," [78]

     During the next era of significant policy-making we find Sir Stewart Symes filling an unusual role as Governor-General when he actively shapes and directs the educational effort. Prior to Symes the Governor-General served primarily as the national figure representing the Sudan Government in its external affairs. The Civil Secretary had been the primary source of domestic policy. Sir Stewart came to high office from outside the informal "Oxbridge" recruitment system which had given the Political Service its Public School/Oxford-Cambridge character. He was clever, intelligent, unpopular and dynamic. [79] In his own words, his interest in educational affairs was stimulated "because my own schooling was very scanty." [80] This interest was manifested in his forward-looking reforms in a period complicated by several factors:

(1) A secret Southern Policy.
(2) An assetive Italy.
(3) An Italian-occupied border ruled by his friend, the Duke of Aosta.
(4) A potentially large Fifth Column of Roman Catholics in the South sympathetic to Mussolini's rhetoric, and

(5) A Roman Catholic wife.

     Let us examine the development of policy during Symes' regime. Sir Stewart had spent the period 19O8-1916 in staff, positions in Khartoum and thus accepted the basic humanitarian rationale for the Southern Policy when he returned to Khartoum from the Governorship of Tanganyika Territory. His six years as Governor General saw the most stable and consistent execution and testing of the policy.

     MacMichael may have set it in motion, but his years from 1930-1934 were concerned with overcoming "start-up" problems. Newbold and Robertson, Civil Secretaries from 1939-1945 and 1945-1953 respectively, were more concerned with wartime and post-war change than with Southern Policy; so it was Sir Stewart who gave it the most sustained attention. Symes' interpretation tended to emphasize the preservative and static features of the Policy; keeping the South free of Northern and "modern" influences was a major concern. In his report for 1935 he stated:

The general requirements of the people and the local policy of the Government have been explained to Missionaries and the importance of preserving the best elements in tribal life has been pointed out where necessary. [81]

     In 1936 Sir Stewart sent Assistant Director, C. W. Williams on an inspection tour of the South. Upon his return Williams produced an extensive report of his findings which is an important source of information for the reforms Symes sponsored in the 1936-1938 period. This report signalled a departure from the essentially completed task of providing local staff for

administrative, police, and medical posts and a facing up to the more difficult question of the role of education in the evolving politics and society of the South. Williams contended:

Our task in education must be to enable the ordinary native to withstand the impact of modern civilisation, to equip him with sufficient understanding and practical knowledge; to meet change before it overwhelms him, remembering that the pace of change is apt to be swifter than the pace of learning.... It is desirable to leave him contented with his tribe and material environment, while at the same time making him a better tribesman and villager. [82]

     The government was acting now to structure educational policy so that schools would have an influence on the southern Sudanese. This was a shift from a passive willingness to accept the status quo to an activist concern with the impact of change on the traditional structures of Southern life. Rather than trying to prevent change and keep the south as an unspoiled corner of British Africa, the creation of a flexible and stable citizen was becoming a concern. This was not a consensus view. Symes was more conservative than WiIIiams in his analysis of the aims of Southern Policy. He felt that:

... Southern societies are being reformed along indigenous patterns in accordance with their natural capacities and material requirements. This has been the purpose of the so-called "Southern Policy." It recognized that southern genius is distinctively African and negroid. [83]

     The debate over an activist policy designed to meet change and deal with it as reflected in Williams' thinking or to respond to it as much as possible as reflected in Symes continued until after world War II. The more liberal, open-ended view to it and

held by Williams can be seen in the following:

When trained teachers are available, these should be recognized as the foundation of the educational system. They will provide the rudiments of education-for the masses ... education must be a training for life--far a fuller life--it must have, not the narrow aim of were literacy, but the wider one of the moral and social uplift of the village and the community. [84]

     This emphasis was at odds with the economic realities of the Depression and the consequent retrenchment schemes which the Government had been compelled to adopt. Until there was sufficient revenue for a substantial increase in government funds for development in the South, ambitious schemes for the "uplift of the village and community" would have to wait.

     Symes had a long-term and broad-based perspective and he raised questions which conflicted with Williams' more liberal and modernizing attitudes. The Governor-General had to balance political, financial, and social needs for the whole Sudan while Williams needed only to consider his particular purview. Symes questioned whether education should be expanded at all--the needs of government were being met, there was little demand for expansion from the southern Sudanese, and it was a tine of "limited demand for clerks, hack of funds and uncertainty as to what may become the lingua franca of the region." [85] As far as Symes was concerned, the South was one of several regions to deal with and a policy had been developed by his predecessors as an administrative convenience to enable the Governor-General to more effectively cope with specifically Southern problems. He claimed Southern Policy

had been a de facto set of practices during his initial tour of duty before World War I and was a natural outgrowth of deep-rooted historical differences. [86]

     He felt little concern for the "uplift," protection, or salvation of the South.

     Apparently the Governor-General and the Director of Education were able to reach a compromise over the question of educational expansion and in the Education Report for 1936 the proposal for a reorganization of the system, such as it was, in the South offered the following main points: (1) Central schools for each group language were to be established. (2) Training for employment outside the community was to be deemphasized. (3) Central schools would become centres for the improvement of native life in the area by training teachers and tribal officials to work in it and farmers and craftsmen to supply its needs ... the requirements of the non-native community are at present few and scarcely justify special schools to supply personnel for them. [87]

     This plan never became a reality for several reasons: Symes acquired a new Director of Education in 1937, educational reform was developed on a much broader front, and the missions sharply opposed any government attempts aimed at consolidation. The second factor is worth further examination.

     An aspect of the political considerations affecting educational development in the South which has not been discussed in the context of Southern Policy surfaces in Symes' problems with sectarian competition within the missionary community. The Sphere System (discussion in Chapter IV) caused little serious difficulty to the early Governments

but this situation changed in the mid-1930s. As government support for educational efforts increased, the missionary societies began to expand, especially the Roman Catholics. Disputes over "border violations," poaching and "body-snatching," became increasingly common toward the mid-1930s. [88]

     These problems became so serious that the Governor-General was finally compelled to intervene and make the Sphere System the subject of additional policy directives

The government policy is to maintain the sphere system in principle but to provide for the gradual interlacement of mission activities on the boundaries. This means that the activities of a mission within the sphere of another mission (hitherto forbidden) may be permitted near to the boundary and in response to a. genuine local popular demand. [89]

     The question of expanding the "Italian Sphere" was complicated by the events in Abyssinia and the hostility toward Roman Catholics as potential agents of the Italian government. The Sudan Government was subjected to pressure from several points. The Southern Governors wanted the Italians replaced or put under some sort of governmental watchdog. [90] The Church Missionary Society, and the Foreign Office advocated expulsion. Symes was caught in the middle. An interesting sequence of documents details a meeting held at Whitehall while Symes was on home leave in 1937. He was fed up with Sphere problems, the Vatican was questioning any secular Government's power to limit evangelism and the Foreign Office was now quite apprehensive over Italy's intentions vis a vis the Abysslnia/Sudan frontier regions and the presence of this large

potential Fifth Column enmeshed in he local affairs of a substantial sector of the population of the Southern Sudan.

     The question of expelling the Italian missionaries on political grounds was introduced into the meeting and a spirited discussion ensued. Symes spoke out strongly in favor of the welfare of the Sudanese. [91] This was to become the dominant characteristic of his last years in office and was a contributory factor in his condemnation by his subordinates as a traitor. He based many of his final policy decisions on the welfare of the Sudanese, not the interests of His Majesty's Government, the interests of the co-domini, or the interests of the Sudan government if they proved to be at variance with the welfare, of the Sudanese. If the Italians were to be expelled, they could not be replaced with a like number of non-Italian Roman Catholics and the government could not afford to step in with a secular replacement. Neither the personnel nor the funds were available to the Government. [92] Expulsion was pushed by the Foreign Office advocates, but Symes stoutly refused to concede the primacy of political concerns over humanitarian ones. He declined to be the Instrument for expelling Italian Roman Catholic missionaries, stating, "he could not, in fact, do so and remain Governor General. He thought that the Secretary of State should know this." [93] If Roman Catholics were completely expelled from the South and it was impossible to replace them, then there would have been a major breakdown in the educational effort. Symes felt

that this would have meant sacrificing the welfare of the South to the interests of British diplomacy. The setback which would have occurred with the cessation of schooling in the Roman Catholic sphere would have made it impossible for this area of the South to achieve equality with the North. This would have meant that the Southern Policy had failed. No Roman Catholics would have meant no schools in most of the South.

     Symes was the last significant governmental advocate of Southern Policy and the civilizing role within that policy played by mission education. The increasingly difficult task of stemming the tide of Islamic inundation of the South persisted as an aspect of administrative concern well into World War II. The emergence of an articulate Sudanese nationalist movement in the Graduates' Congress made Southern Policy a difficult fact of political life for the British but mainly in Khartoum and Cairo. In the South little apprehension over a Northern-dominated emerging national consciousness was apparent until the 1946-1947 period. The main concern seems to have been the difficulty in preventing contacts between Muslim Northerners and non-Muslim Southerners during their nomadic migrations. Attempts had been made to create buffers between the tribes but as the following quotation from a District Commissioner in Bahr al-Ghazal Province indicates, Northern influences were still penetrating the wall erected by Southern Policy. !n his words:

.. it requires more work to pump water uphill than to guide its natural flow. Arabian influence has breached the natural channel of

Western District's tribal development and the leak has seeped to a veritable Slough of Despond. We have set ourselves no less a task than to pump it back, and dam the breach, and guide the channel to a better outlet. The pump must be manned. [95]

     The separation issue remained as the most persistent aspect of Southern Policy during the war years. Language questions, licensing of traders, etc. were submerged beneath wartime concerns, but keeping the two peoples apart was still important enough to warrant reiteration. As the war wound down and postwar plans for educational expansion were developed, the Director of Education discussed the question of developing a Government-staffed alternative school system in the South. Even at this late date the question of a Government school, specifically the recommendation that a Government Intermediate School be established in Upper Nile Province with an African staff and a European headmaster, was only considered under the conditions that "the school of course should be, geared to the Southern and not the Northern system." [96] This was a dying hope due to the opening up of the Sudan and the South to modernizing ideas as a result of the war. The South could no longer be maintained as a "Whipsnade" with no influences being permitted from the outside. The final phase of Southern Policy reflects, the slowly dawning realization In the minds of forward-thinking and practical members of the Political Service that separation and preservation had become impossible.

     In 1944, shortly before his death, the Civil Secretary, Douglas Newbold, described this shifting attitude toward the

South in a discussion with Scrivener, a Foreign Office visitor who had been sent to the Sudan to assess postwar policy. Scrivener gives the following description of his meeting with Newbold.

Broadly speaking the intentions of the Sudan Government (which have not yet, I think, been crystallised into a definite policy)... (are) to launch as soon as possible a major educational drive with the object of placing the inhabitants on a footing where progress on the lines of that recently initiated in the North will become possible. [97]

     This, of course, was a significant modification of the Maffey/MacMichael Southern Policy of 1930 as carried out by the latter and Sir Stewart Symes throughout the 1930s. The most significant feature of the change is the recognition of the South's ultimate integration with the North rather than the continuation of a separation with no expressed final goal.

     Newbold's successor, Sir James Robertson, is the final actor in the formulation and execution of British policy in southern Sudan. Sir Jams was a career civil servant who had come directly from Balliol College, Oxford, to Khartoum in 1933. After almost 20 years in the provinces, none of them in the South, he was assigned to the Civil Secretary's office in 1941 and succeeded Newbold upon his death in 1945. [98] He has become an enigmatic figure to those who try to evaluate the causes for change in the Government's Southern Policy, His memoirs and interview do not coincide with views held by his colleagues as to the reasons for decisions emanating from the office of Civil Secretary during his tenure and affecting that policy.

     In 1944 Robertson went on an extended tour of the South and saw at first hand the conditions produced by 15 years of Southern Policy. [99] While in Khartoum and on tour in the South, he had been exposed to the various schemes and hopes for the future of the South. Two years later the Sudan Administrative Conference was convened by the Governor-General to consider increasing Sudanese participation in all levels of government. [100]

     One of the immediate consequences of this undertaking was a reconsideration of the Southern Policy. According to Robertson, there had been no long-term plan for the South's development until after World War II. Until then the problem of financial stringency had prevented the Sudan Government from expending revenue generated in the North for development in the South. [101] Nationalist and Muslim pressures were also building at this time and a particularly difficult one was the continuing question of revenue from Muslim taxation going to support Christian education in the South while excluding Muslim schools and missions from that region. [102]

     In 1946 a five-year plan for developing the South was approved by the Khartoum Government. This plan included proposals for the establishment of government schools in the southern provinces. [103]

     The Education Department had begun to move into the South In 1944 with the establishment of a government experimental school at Abwong in Upper Nile Province. The information gained from that undertaking confirmed suspicions which had been held by government education experts for years: the mission schools were not providing

the quality of education expected by the Education Department. In the words of one of the officials:

Our two years' experience of running a Government school at Abwong has proved of immense value in that it has enabled us to assess, on a first hand knowledge, the average scholastic standard of the present product of the Mission Elementary Vernacular schools in Upper Nile Province and to measure the boys' progress and mental capacity to learn beyond the elementary level, when given instruction in a school whose organisation and technical ability of its staff. are of a quality higher than that hitherto available to them. [104]

     It would be unfair to suggest that the Khartoum Government community was unaware of the conditions in the South after the war. There is a thin thread of criticism and suggestion directed toward educational policy which can be traced from the mid-1930s to the period under discussion. [105] (These criticisms and suggestions are thoroughly discussed in Chapter VI and are only mentioned at this point.) In 1945, during the transition from Newbold to Robertson, major changes in the administration of the southern provinces were proposed by the Governor-General. Education, administration, finance, and provincial boundaries in the South were to be revised to enable the Government to close the "widening gap" in the social and economic development of the North and South, now so painfully apparent, not only to concerned British administrators, but to their Sudanese critics and counterparts as well. [106]

     These proposals were immediately productive:

In 1945 a new era began for the schools. The erection of the Education Department South, with its Headquarters in Juba with the Assistant Director at the head of It ... gave new Impetus to the educational work. [107]

     The "gap" in development was most visible to the British as a shortage in the connected fields of education and native administrative personnel. In MacMichael's original policy the schools were to have trained a Southern administrative cadre free of any Northern taints. Richard Owen, a Province Governor with extensive experience in the South described the Government's sudden reaction to a looming "Southern Problem" in the following words:

During the War it became apparent that Independence was much nearer than most of us ever guessed... the result was ... almost a crash programme of expenditure on education and development.... Northern officials were posted to help with this (and with a few exceptions regarded the South.as exile). The Southern official was kept on less well-paid terms than the Northerners. This caused natural resentment, but in my experience was not wholly unjust since the Southerner was for the most part less well educated, less sober and less reliable and therefore of inferior calibre ... the work went forward ... and had Independence come in 1965 instead of 1955, all might have been well. [108]

     One of the strange aspects of this gap in development which can be traced to Southern Policy was the concern with establishing English as a lingua franca. The emphasis on English as the lingua franca had been forgotten during the stagnation of the early 1930s. The lingua franca issue became a concern again after the war when it was discovered that Arabic had made significant gains. This became one of the focal points of nationalist criticism during Robertson's term as Civil Secretary. How successful had Southern Policy been in creating a truly Southern lingua franca out of English? In the often-cited Williams Report this topic was discussed:

Outside the schools, a determined drive seems to have been made some years ago to set up English in place of Arabic as the lingua franca of the South. It has now petered out ... there does not seem much to choose between a bastard or pidgin English and a bastard or pidgin Arabic. They are both equally obnoxious to the purist. The bastard Arabic is already there and firmly established. [109]

     English had a long way to go before it became the common language of southern discourse, even of southern administration. Cutting the South off from the North through language was not working according to the Williams Report:

There must always be intercourse between North and South so that it will be impossible to stamp out Arabic. It appears that the people in the South look upon Arabic more as the language of Government than as the language of Islam .... At present the policy in regard to the spread of English seems to lack definition. [110]

     It was beginning to dawn on the British after World War II that their days as masters of the Sudan would be coming to an end much sooner than their predecessors who had made policy in the 1930s had expected. The British knew that they had not succeeded in equipping the South for the challenge of the future; they weren't even sure what the nature of the challenge was. Government offices in Khartoum argued with their southern counterparts as to what was to be done with the South. It had become painfully obvious that Southern Policy had failed to create a mission-educated southern elite capable of running the affairs of the region. As early as 1944 the former Director of Education, Sir Christopher Cox, had identified this serious deficiency. In a flying inspection of

educational operations throughout the Empire, he included a visit to Khartoum and the South. His report, sent to Newbold even before Cox returned to London, was extremely blunt and critical.

One of my strongest impressions on this visit is of the urgency of speeding up development in the South, if it is to stand any chance of being able to hold its own on anything approaching equal terms when it comes in (as most of it obviously must do, sooner or later) under a Moslem government at Khartoum in an approaching future . . . the South is being left further and further behind. [111]

     The Southerners who were leaving the mission schools and pursuing their education continued to be sent to Uganda in continuation of the policy which had prevailed since the Government stepped into education in the late 1920s. [112] This continued to limit their ability to deal with the future as described above by Sir Christopher. North-South relations after the War continued to be founded on ignorance, suspicion and hostility. Education could be turned from its role in perpetuating the differences to one of emphasizing harmony. The Southerner was going to be in desperate straits if something did not alter his fear of the North or his lack of competence in managing his own region or the structure of the Sudan as a political entity. Sir Christopher recommended the educational solution. He stated that:

Full secondary education for some Southern Sudanese is urgently necessary and post-secondary education at Makerere should be given without fail to any recommended for it by the Uganda authorities. Unless the importance of this is realized in the South ... the South has no chance whatever of making up leeway of establishing its claims vis-a-vis a

Moslem Khartoum in 15 years time. It will go the way of Nyasaland rather than Uganda. I was much impressed to find in Uganda that a Southern Sudanese would be head boy at Nabumali next year and should walk into the Medical School at Makerere and disturbed to sense that this was not apparently regarded as by any means his obvious destiny, or even as an exciting contingency, by all those on the Sudanese side of the border. [113]

     The Southern Sudan had yet to grasp the fact that education was essential to the creation of a regional infrastructure capable of meeting the North on the basis of equality. Their failure to grasp that fact was not shared by the British. After Cox's inspection, the realization that nonexistent secondary schooling had created a lack of local leadership began to drive the Education Department toward remedial programs. The then current Director of Education asserted:

You may take it as certain that increased pressure will be brought to increase the flow to Uganda for as long as we have no post-intermediate schools and even thereafter to watch carefully for suitable candidates for Makerere. [114]

     The irony of this post-war effort was that while attempting to overcome deficiencies in the system of mission schools, the Government was perpetuating the deep sense of difference which Southerners felt toward Northerners. If they were to receive a higher education, it was to be in British East Africa, not in the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium of the Sudan. This is an important aspect of the official policy of separation which lasted from the mid-1930s through the late 1940s.

     In a sense, the entire history of relations between the Muslim and the pagan or Christian components of what came to be the Sudan argued for some sort of separate identities. From the Turkiyya through World War II the two regions had been distinct, and usually mutually hostile. The Southern Policy merely gave an administrative logic to the status quo. Until World War 11 the general British view of their tenure in the Condominium was essentially long-term. [115] During the 1930s the question of the future of the Sudan began to provoke both apprehension and creativity in the projections made by southern Province Governors and District Commissioners.

     These projections made during the 1930s seemed a bit unrealistic and had to be reconsidered as the possibility of a British departure became much more likely in the British view. [116] Rather than an open-ended tenure measured in decades, the Khartoum Government was forced to contemplate departure within a decade or less. Uncertainty over Eritrea made decisions concerning the future of the Sudan even more complex. The terrible losses suffered by the British troops at the Battle of Keren in Eritrea tempted some in Whitehall to consider an Eritrea-Southern Sudan arrangement administered as a part of British East Africa. [117] This appears to have been only a suggestion which never gained widespread support within the British community in the Sudan.

     As early as 1931 the Idea of detaching the southern provinces from the Condominium had been proposed. MacMichael, In a secret memorandum, suggested that eventually the divergent directions of

development produced by British rule would result in a de facto partition.

     The discrepancies would become so great that the North would achieve independence and the South would be annexed by Great Britain and attached to British East Africa. [118] Throughout the 1930s there was an undercurrent of opinion in the SPS for detaching the South from the Condominium at some future date. It was felt by men like Martin Parr that this would have to be the logical outcome of the Southern Policy. The most common scheme envisioned the attachment of the three southern provinces to Uganda since the tribal, religious, and linguistic affinities between the two areas were extensive. During the 1930s and 1940s Uganda was a thriving colony and viewed by the British as their most successful African venture. Most of the men discussing detachment of the South were career southern administrators and were unaware of any sympathy for their ideas in Khartoum. In 1933 the Foreign Office was noting the hostility of "some officials in the South against the central administration." [119]

     While the Southern Policy had protected the South from northern influence, and thereby enhanced the prospects for separation, nothing more than fantasizing seems to have been going on at the Province and District levels. According to the late Ja'afar Bakheit, the number of northern traders had been halved between 1921 and 1938 with only 416 remaining in the latter year. [120] However, while removing the Northerners, the British were not pushing forward on any long-range plan for the South's separation. Martin Parr, then Governor of Equatoria Province, proposed the most ambitious plan--

a unification of the southern provinces with Uganda, leaving only the Shilluk tribe (he felt they could resist any pressures to Islamicize) in the Sudan. Parr was convinced that this plan would have to have been completed before World War II ended. He had gone far enough in his proposals that he had the private support of Huddleston, the wartime Governor-General. [121] There was also opposition to the idea of separating the South. Sir Stewart was quoted by one of his personal friends as having said, "This country looks North, not to Uganda. This country belongs to the Basin of the Nile. It would be unviable to cut the South off for attachment elsewhere." [122] Most of the members of the SPS at the Khartoum level of the Government felt that by the mid-1930s "no one in Khartoum was seriously considering the South's annexation to Uganda." [123] Except for dedicated pro-South SPS men who were counting on the construction of a Uganda-Southern Sudan rail link, the question of separation never seems to have been developed beyond conversation and conjecture. Shortly before he left the Sudan, even Martin Parr seems to have had second thoughts which he spelled out in a letter to one of his colleagues in the South.

The issue is, as you say, separation until the South is strong enough to stand upon its own feet, and to develop in accordance with its own ethos. But our policy of separation must be conditioned by the limits of what is possible. [124]

     The realization that Uganda was not developing toward the southern Sudan, the increased strategic significance of the Nile Valley, together with growing nationalist pressures In Khartoum and Cairo probably all combined to defeat the hopes of even the most diehard

separatists.

     There is no documentary evidence to support the existence of a plan for the annexation of the South by the British. MacMichael, Parr, and Owen thought about it and hoped it might happen but no one took positive steps to set the process in motion. Many of the SPS personnel and missionaries had "heard" about the idea but that seems to have been the extent of the threat of separation. As of 1946, separation of the South and its attachment to Uganda had never been officially proposed or even studied; it was a forlorn hope of a few SPS men in the South.

     By 1946 Robertson was convinced that decisions as to the future of the South could no longer be postponed. In a decision which is still debated by his critics, Robertson reversed 15 years of Southern Policy and lumped the South's future in with that of the North as plans for independence began to take shape. There are differing views as to Sir James' qualifications for the office of Civil Secretary and for the making of decisions for the future of the South. In the post-Condominium literature dealing with the Southern Policy, Robertson tends to be the subject of vilification by both northern and southern writers. He is criticized by Northerners for his slowness in responding to demands for autonomy and independence and by Southerners for the "sellout" of the Juba Conference. [125] In his memoirs, Robertson explained his reversal of the Southern Policy and defended the decision In these words:

. . . the decision of 1947 was right. The Southern Sudan had to be opened up and brought into touch

with reality. The people there could not be segregated any longer into a kind of human zoo. The tragedy was that political independence impinged on an unsophisticated people before they were adequately prepared, or even fully understood what was taking place, and the early removal of the British District Officers in accordance with the Sudanisation clauses of the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1953 left them without one of the safeguards I thought necessary. Few people in 1947 could have foreseen the sudden change in the world situation which led to the rapid colonial emancipation of the 19505 and 1960s. I certainly never guessed in 1947 that the Sudan would be independent less than a decade later. [126] (my emphasis)

     The future of the South was a difficult question which required a more creative political imagination than Robertson's. He was confronted with a cluster of factors which influenced his decision: the South was severely underdeveloped due to financial stringencies brought on by depression and war; Eritrea's status was uncertain; the Graduates' Congress was becoming more openly nationalistic, and new Anglo-Egyptian negotiations were in progress. [127] Thus Robertson was not able to consider the South's future on its own merits but had to develop options within the context of this cluster. He settled on three possible courses of action:

1. Separation of the South and attachment to Uganda.
2. Autonomy leading to independence for the North while maintaining British administration in the South until "some future time" when a plebiscite would be held to determine the South's independent status.
3. Termination of the Southern Policy and the unification of the South with the North as an eventually Independent entity. [128]

     Robertson felt that the only realistic. option was the third. His knowledge of the South was limited and he "couldn't really be bothered with the South, he was bored with it, didn't know the answer and didn't care." [129] While this is certainly overly harsh, it does seem clear that the South was far down on his list of concerns. The rail link with Uganda had been scrapped, thus the first option was not practical. The Anglo-Egyptian negotiations were focusing on redefining Egypt's rights in the Condominium while, at the same time, avoiding any concessions which would offend growing nationalist sentiment in the Sudan. The Foreign Office was more concerned with Egypt than with the Sudan and if conceding the South to a northern-dominated unitary arrangement suited these concerns, then pressure would be brought to bear on the Governor-General and Civil Secretary toward that end. One of Robertson's colleagues has alleged that he was susceptible to this kind of pressure since he was more concerned for his career than for the welfare of the South. Others feel he was being "practical" or that he was "not pliable" in his consideration of the options. [130]

     In the years after independence and the outbreak of civil war, Sir James realized that the wrong choice from among the options open to him had been made. In a conversation with the Reverend O. C. Allison, Sir James remarked when queried as to his decision to reverse the Southern Policy: "We were wrong." [131]

     In any case, the Southern Policy ceased to exist in 1947 as a result of Sir James Robertson's decision which he presented as the only realistic course of action from among the possible options.

     In the relatively brief span of 20 years, a policy had been conceived, developed, partially implemented, sometimes ignored and, finally, terminated. The Southern Policy had failed in what Martin Parr and others had desired--giving the South the ability to "stand on its own feet." The Governor-General described the results in these words:

At present any idea of federation or financial responsibility is beyond their (the Dinka in Upper Nile Province) comprehension. In spite of more clothes among the Dinkas of Renk and their close contact with the Arabs, they retain fully their tribal characteristics and customs. [132]

     The interview with Sir James Robertson produced little new information. Understandably reticent due to the harsh criticism_ he was subjected to by his colleagues (and friends) in the South, his memoirs are evidently as far as he wishes to go in shedding light on the reasons for his policy decisions. He did recognize a certain lack of justice in the formulation of development and administrative policy both for the country as a whole and the South in particular. "it is true that the assumptions on which we worked were based on a paternalistic outlook towards the people we ruled, and the changes that we sought for them were what we, and not they, thought were good." The sense of duty creeps in again. In addressing himself specifically to Southern Policy he made some revealing observations:

The aim (of the Policy) was to create a barrier against exploitation of the simple, uneducated Inhabitants of the South ... and thus prevent the continuation of hatred between North and South. It was hoped that behind such a barrier the Southern peoples would develop until they were able to

stand on their own feet and meet the Northeners on equal terms. The trouble was however, that right up to the time of the Second World War very little seemed to be happening behind the barrier. [134]

     Realizing that the Policy had failed, he then discussed the choices he felt were open to consideration. His final assessment is characteristic of the unimaginative and narrow perspective he seems to have had toward the complex problem of the South:

Looking back on the subsequent troubled history of the South, and with the hindsight of more than twenty years, I still think that the decision of 1947 was right. The Southern Sudan had to be opened up and brought into touch with reality.... I certainly never guessed in 1947 that the Sudan would be independent less than a decade later. [135]

     There were articulate opponents of Robertson's decision to reverse the policy. The most outspoken of them was a fellow Oxford man and one of Robertson's personal friends: T. R. H. (Richard) Owen. Owen kept up the fight against Robertson's policies until they both left the Sudan in 1953 and remained active in the discussion of Southern development until the late 1960s. During the civil war he occasionally wrote articles for Grass Curtain, the irregular magazine of the Southern Liberation Front. Owen felt that Government policy toward the South tended to be based on ignorance of conditions there. That the Southerner had different capabilities: "...they were not equal to the North in terms of ability and training." He supported Robertson's second option and felt that separation was not possible as It would "drive the North into the arms of Egypt." Robertson's

reversal was "a very bad decision. His conscience still bothers him.... His career was uppermost in his mind .... We were aiming at eventual independence--not as quickly as It happened." [136] Owen still holds Robertson responsible to a great degree for making a bad decision based on limited knowledge for personal aims.

     It can be said that throughout the 1928-1946 period, the British were not involved in systematic, long-ranged, Sudan-oriented policy formulation. The regional and international conditions rendered such formulation difficult, if not impossible. This was also the case in the specific field of Southern Policy. From MacMichael to Robertson, the external facts tended to prevent the implementation of the Government's plans. As Chapter V will show, no one outside the SPS was positively aware of the Southern Policy; some suspected while others remained completely ignorant. There remained until Robertson's reversal a wide gap between the stated intentions of the Southern Policy and its actual implementation. Robertson's words seem to have been accurate: "very little seems to have been happening behind the barrier." [137]

1. Gordon literature is extensive. See: John Marlowe, Mission to Khartoum; A. Preston, In Relief of Gordon; B. M. Allen, Gordon and the Sudan; and the indispensable R. L. Hill's, "The Gordon Literature," Durham University Journal, XLVII (1955), pp. 97-103.
2. Sir James Robertson, Transition in Africa (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1974), p. 10 .
3. Richard Owen, "Background to the Southern Sudan," Grass Curtain, 1 (197O), pp. 7-9.
4. John Hartley, former Education Inspector in Southern Sudan, interviewed at University of Reading, England, on January 15, 1976. Sir James Robertson, former Civil Secretary of the Sudan, interviewed at his home in Cholsey, Berkshire, England, December 3, 1975.
5. Luigi Adwok, former member of Sudan National Assembly, . interviewed at his home in Khartoum on March 23, 1976.
6. Ibid. and Bona Malwal, Sudan's Minister of Culture and Information, private interview at his office in Khartoum, March 27, 1976.
7. Robertson interview and Martin Parr, former Governor of Equatoria, private interviews at his home in London, December 2 and 1O, 1975 and January 27, 1976.
8. K. D. D. Henderson, The Making of the Sudan (London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., 1952), p. 106.
9. J. S. Trimingham, The Christian Approach to Islam in the Sudan (London: O. U.P., 19 , pp. 38-39.
10. Especially Sir Harold MacMichael whose History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922 is still considered authoritative by some.
11. T. R. H. (Richard) Owen, former Governor of Bahr al-Ghazal Province, interviewed at his home near Hereford, England on December 12-13, 1975. D. M. H. (David) Evans, former Assistant District Commissioner of Aweil then District Commissioner of Wau, interviewed at his club in Lymington, England on December 9, 1975. Evans used the phrase "Victorian hangover" to describe these attitudes.

12. Sir Harold MacMichael, Sudan Political Service (Oxford: Oxonian Press,n.d.), pp. 2-5.
13. Odette Keun, A Foreigner Looks at the British Sudan (n.p. n.pub., n.d.), for a critical view of the SPS from and outsider and PRO FO 371.17O28 no. 827 for the quotation.
14. MacMichael, Sudan Political Service, p. 7.
15. Evans interview.
16. Sir Christopher Cox, former Secretary of Education for the Sudan, interviewed at his lodgings in New College, Oxford, on February 5, 9, and 27, 1976.
17. Ibid.
18. MacMichael, Sudan Political Service, pp. 1-5, Sir Stewart Symes, Tour of Duty London (Collins, 1946), Introduction and Chapter-[, K. D. D. Henderson, Making of Sudan, Chapters II and III.
19. Denys Hibbert, former Director of Education (South) for the Sudan, interviewed at his home in Gods Hill, Hampshire, England, on February 11, 1976.
20. American Mission in the Sudan, Minutes of Annual Meeting for 1933 (microfilm in Archives of the Presbyterian Church in the _ U.S.A., Philadelphia, Pa), p. 229.
21. See Chapter IV for the chart illustrating patterns of government subsidies during the 1928-1946 period.
22. For details of Egyptian and British financial contributions to the Sudan's budget, see R. Davies, "Economics and Trade," in The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from Within, ed. by J. A. de C. Hamilton London: Faber % Faber, Ltd., 1935), pp. 294-309.
23. M. O. Beshir, The Southern Sudan, pp. 52-53.
24. P. M. Holt, A Modern History, pp. 141-142.
25. Interview with Luigi Adwok.
26. PRO FO 371. 20870 nos. 254, 711, 1148 and 561O of June 4 July 27, 1937.
27. Ibid. no. 254 of June 4, 1931.
28. Ibid. no. 561O of July 27, 1937.

29. PRO FO 371 20150 no. 7705 of Sept. 7, 1936.
30. Sudan Government Archives, Aweil file 1, book 2, no. 7, June 16, 1937 (hereafter cited as SGA, name of department, then file, book and number).
31. Sudan Government, Annual Report for the Department of Education 1938. (Khartoum: McQuorquodale and Co., Ltd.., 1928), pp. 21-22 hereafter cited as Education Report For....)
32. Respondents request anonymity; all are former SPS personnel.
33. Sudan Government, Report to the Governor General on the Administration, Finances and Conditions of the Sudan (Khartoum: McQuorquodale and Co., Ltd.), appropriate years); see entries under "Borders" for 1934-1936. (Hereafter cited as Governor-General's Report for...)
34. PRO FO 371.13865 number 1851 of July 1, 1929.
35. Slaving continued sporadically until World War II, according to Taj Hargey.
36. Edward Atiyah, An Arab Tells His Story (London: John Murray, 1946), p.157.
37. Holt, A Modern History, pp. 155-158, 161-163.
38. G. N. Morrison, "The Upper Nile and the War, 1940-1941" (pamphlet, Information Office, Civil Secretary Department, Sudan Government, 1944), p. 5. A short and picturesque description of the little-known campaign successfully waged by a handful of British amateurs leading poorly equipped Sudanese troops against seriously incompetent Italo-Ethiopian forces resulting in the liberation of all invaded Sudan by 1941.
39. Ibid. Also Governor General's Report for 1940-1941. "Upper Nile," p. 1 82.
40. Robertson, Transition, p. 87.
41. This issue was ventilated in a long exchange of notes between Whitehall and the Foreign Office agent at the Vatican which can be found in the FO 371 file of the PRO under "Relations with the Vatican">of the PRO under "Relations with the Vatican."
42. The treatment of Roman Catholic missionaries in the South during the war is discussed in Chapter IV. The influence their presence had on policy is at issue to this chapter.

43. SGA Equatoria 2/15/58 of 17 November 1937. The information was being transmitted from the Province Governor, Martin Parr, to the Director of Public Security in Khartoum.
44. Ibid. of 19 October 1937.
45. K. D. D. Henderson, Wartime Director of Public Security, interviewed at his home near Salisbury, England on January 13, 1976.
46. SGA Equatoria 2/15/58 of 12 August 1940.
47. SGA Equatoria 1/15/58 of 22 June 1941.
48. Much stronger indications of pro-Italian activity can be found in the FO 371 file containing reports on the affairs of the Roman Catholic clergy in Cairo. This fact had been communicated to Khartoum and, according to K. D. D. Henderson, was the reason for the intensification of suspicion there. After discussing this with several long-term Roman Catholic priests who had served in the Sudan during the war, it appears there was no concerted subversion emanating from Khartoum or the South.
49. The Sudanese critics are well-represented by Muddathir Abdel-Rahim, Fourteen Documents on the Problem of the Southern Sudan (Khartoum: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1965. Limited distribution).
50. Martin Parr, Speech given at CMS Farewell Meeting in Juba on September 21, 1943. (Transcript in author's possession).
51. Lord Lugard. Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (5th ed.; London: Frank Cass, 1965). The definitive work in "indirect rule" by its original practitioner).
52. MacMichael Papers, (MSS in Sudan Archive, Durham University), Box 4O3, no. 9, p. 3 (hereafter cited as SAD, then box number and page).
53. Ibid., p. 2.
54. Lillian Sanders on, "Educational Development in the Southern Sudan," Sudan Notes and Records XLII (1962), pp. 112-113.
55. cation Report for 1928 9.
56. PRO FO 371.13865 number 1851 of July 1, 1929. Handwritten marginal notes by Mark Patrick.
57. PR0 FO 407.209, number 257 of October 2, 1929.
58. PRO FO 407.210, number 5265 of December 17, 1929. (This is an essential document and is reproduced in its entirety as Appendix B).
59. Mudathir Abd al-Rahim, rteen Documents 10.
60. Ibid., pp. 16-17.
61. MacMichael was discussed at length in interviews with K. D. D. Henderson, Sir Angus Gillan and Martin Parr. His papers are deposited in the Sudan Archive, Durham. The author has conducted a lengthy correspondence with his daughter.
62. PRO FO 371.13865, number 1851 of July 1, 1929.
63. M. A. Rahim, rteen Documents. 20-25.
64. The lingua franca issue was.one of the most controversial aspects of the Southern Policy, inspiring dozens of pages of correspondence.
65. J. S. Trimingham, Christian Approach to Islam in the SudanOxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 39.
66. Parr interviews. Parr thought Swahili might have been a compromise acceptable to both sides.
67. Ibid.
68. During a trip to the South in May 1977, the author spoke Arabic in the markets, English to Government officials and was unable to communicate with tribes-people who spoke neither.
69. PRO FO 371.14639, number 224 of January 22, 1930.
70. SAD 403.9, P. 3.
71. PRO FO 371.14639, number 224 of January 22, 1930.
72. The war and the missions' contributions to Its beginning are discussed in Chapter VII.
73. "The Southern Front Memorandum to the Organization of African Unity on Afro-Arab Conflict in the Sudan," (Sudan file in Rhodes House Annexe of the Bodleian, Oxford, 1965), pp. 8-9.
74. SGA Equatoria 1/5/19. April 16, 1932.
75. Ibid.
76. Interviews with John Hartley and Martin Parr.
77. SGA Aweil 1/1/4. n.d.

78. SGA Equatoria 1/5/19 of April 16, 1932.
79. Sir Angus Gillan, Civil Secretary during Sir Stewart Symes' tenure as Governor-General from 1934-1940, interviewed at the Commonwealth Club in London on November 28, 1975. Also Cox, Parr, and Henderson interviews.
80. Symes, Tour of Duty, p. 225.
81. Governor-General's Report for 1935, P. 123.
82. SGA Equatoria l/4/16 of February 9, 1936, P. 3. (Hereafter cited as Williams Report)
83. Symes, Tour of Duty, p. 220.
84. Williams Report, pp. 3-4, 26.
85. PRO FO 371.20150, number 3542 of October 13, 1936.
86. Ibid.
87. Education Report for 1936, P. 115.
88. SGA Equatoria 1/10/51 of February 3, 1937.
89. Ibid. While the Sphere System was designed around the Christian denominations in the South, the Roman Catholic Sphere was often called "Italian."
90. Interviews with Martin Parr.
91. PRO FO 371.20870, number 2653 of April 6, 1937.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. George Janson-Smith, former Director of Education (South) for the Sudan, interviewed at his home in Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, England, on January 4, 1976.
95. SGA Bahr al-Ghazal 1/l/2 of June 30, 1941.
96. PRO FO 371.41320, no. 15 of February 11, 1944. This was a long report prepared by Sir Christopher Cox after an inspection trip to the South. Cox was no longer the Director of Education but was a travelling expert for the Education Department of the Colonial Office. Hereafter cited as Cox Report.

97. PRO FO 371.41363, no. 185 of March 20, 1944.
98. MacMichael, Sudan Political Service, p. 39.
99. Robertson, Transition, p. 89.
100. Ibid., p. 94.
101. Interview with Sir James Robertson.
102. Ibid., and Robertson, Transition, p. 104.
103. Education Report for 1946, p. 23.
104. SGA Equatoria 1/5/21 of January 24, 1946.
105. This came from the Directors of Education, SPS members in the South, and Whitehall.
106. PRO FO 371.45985, no. 2866 of August, 1945.
107. A. C. Beaton, "Equatoria Province Handbook, vol. II 1936-1948" (Government pamphlet, Sudan Collection, University of Khartoum, 1949), p. 103.
108. Owen, Grass Curtain (1970), pp. 7-9.
109. Williams Report, p. 30.
110. Ibid., p. 31.
I11. Cox Report, p. 14.
112. American Mission in the Sudan, Minutes of Annual Meeting for 1931 (Archives of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Philadelphia, Pa., 1931), p. 267. (Hereafter cited as Presbyterian Minutes for...)
113. Cox Report, p. 68.
114. SGA Equatoria 1/4/23 of April 1944.
115. Interview with K. D. D. Henderson. "We didn't expect to be completely out until the end of the century."
116. Interviews with Sir Christopher Cox. In 1942 Cox felt the British days in the Sudan were growing short.
117. Interviews with Martin Parr.

118. SAD 403.7, P. 3.
119. PRO FO 371.17028, no. 827 of March 31, 1933.
120. Ja'lafar Bakheit, "British Administration and Sudanese Nationalism 1919-1939," (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 1966), p. 219.
121. Interviews with Martin Parr.
122. Interview with George Janson-Smith.
123. 1nterviews with Sir Christopher Cox.
124. SGA Bahr al-Ghazal 1/1/2 of April 29, 1941.
125. Dunstan Wai, ed. The Southern Sudan: The Problem of National integration (London: Frank Cass, 1973), pp. 16--17.
126. Robertson, Transition, p. 110.
127. Holt, A Modern History, p. 142, ff.
128. Interview with Sir James Robertson.
129. Interview with Denys Hibbert.
130. Respondents are all former members of the SPS and request anonymity.
131. Reverend Oliver C. Allison, Assistant Bishop and later Bishop of the Sudan for the Anglican Church from 1948 to 1974, interviewed at Inkpen Rectory, Inkpen, Berkshire, England on January 21, 1976.
132. Governor-General's Report for 1945, p. 191.
133. Robertson, Transition, p. ix.
134. Ibid., p. 104.
135. Ibid., p. 122.
136. Interview with Richard Owen. The second option was a modified federal arrangement with the British governing the South while the North progressed to Independence.
137. Robertson, Transition, p. 104.