International African Institute oct 16...are imbued with the attitudes which supported slavery in pre-colonial Africa. If the policy of economic development demands an increase in

International African Institute

Economic Development and the Heritage of Slavery in the Sudan RepublicAuthor(s): Peter F. M. McLoughlinSource: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 1962), pp.355-391Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1157439 .

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[355]

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND THE HERITAGE OF SLAVERY IN THE SUDAN REPUBLIC'

PETER F. M. McLOUGHLIN

A. INTRODUCTION-GENERAL

THIS paper suggests that important economic problems in the Republic of the Sudan (the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan untilindependence in 19 5 6) arise from attitudes

associated with the heritage of slavery. After briefly outlining the nature of indigenous slavery, and the essential interrelatedness of its economic and social characteristics, it uses primarily official documents to analyse the economic effects of slavery abolition in the northern Sudan. Present-day economic ramifications of the slavery heritage are then discussed.

The economist appraising the development of African nations is interested in

understanding values for two main reasons. He must advocate policies which dis-

courage most quickly attitudes resistant to increases in productivity, and promote, as far as possible, those likely to contribute to the rapid introduction and use of more efficient tools, techniques, and institutions. Political, tribal, and religious factors, as well as the nature and availability of resources, all affect the speed and direction of

development, and long-term development for the greatest number occurs when

strongly entrenched resistances are most quickly broken down. Conversely, social and economic change may defeat their own ends if the means of development en-

courage the survival of negative traditional values; though output rises initially, its very increase may then create a network of interrelated resistances to further growth and the rate of progress will decline. A Marxist might describe such development as one containing the seeds of its own eventual destruction. Such is the situation in northern Sudan.

Documents describing the more strongly centralized traditional African societies almost invariably stress, in one way or another, their hierarchical nature. Status, prestige, and power structures result from mutually interacting ethnic, social, economic, political, and religious factors, whatever may be the type of society. Wars and conquest and domination of one group by another, owing to superior arms, numbers, or organization, have produced a wide range of status structures in African societies. One characteristic common to them all appears to be that the lowest social

groups-normally in domestic slave or serf capacities-were economically involved in work which the community considered both distasteful and dishonourable.

Regardless of how they were obtained (raiding, debt-bondage, pawning, born to slavery, &c.), whatever the religion (pagan, Christian, or Islam in their many forms) and the manumission customs (freedom obtained through own purchase, being the

grandchild of a slave, or the child of a free father and slave woman, or by the master's

religious obligation), the work of slaves was regarded as onerous and degrading. Thus, though it took many forms, a close correlation has developed over the years

I We are grateful to the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, University of California, Los Angeles, for a grant towards the printing of this long article.



ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND THE HERITAGE OF

between lowest social status, relatively restricted freedoms, dependence upon someone of higher position for basic economic and social securities, and specific forms of economic activity.

African policy-makers desiring maximum and increasing rates of economic development are thus obliged to examine carefully their nation's cultural history. Not to do so, or to neglect introspective findings, may prove economically dis- astrous in the long run. Not only is such 'economic status' research in its infancy, but the conception tends to be suppressed when recognized. ' Democracy ', ' freedom ', and other avowed objectives of egalitarian policy are incompatible with suggestions of inherent social and economic inequality, particularly if policy-makers themselves are imbued with the attitudes which supported slavery in pre-colonial Africa. If the policy of economic development demands an increase in certain types of labour which are traditionally considered to be inferior and only for lower social groups, who will perform them voluntarily? To engage in them is to lose social status, simultaneously and automatically. Social objectives conflict directly with economic. Under these conditions workers tend to be persons whose parents and grandparents were culturally ' out', or migrant groups from other societies where that particular form of labour was not regarded as dishonourable.

European administrative policies (of all kinds) in a given area resulted from two interacting factors-what the European brought to the area, and what he found there. Labour policy therefore depended on (a) European socio-economic goals-particular conceptions of what should be developed, who should do what work, and who should benefit-and (b) local socio-economic conditions. Recruitment practices, labour levies, taxation systems, and other administrative measures varied in type and degree over time depending on changes in these two variables. Wage labour in some regions provided relief from an historically sanctioned social inferiority. If enough persons sought this form of economic manumission, then the need for compulsion was obviously lessened (compulsion would still be required if demand for workers was inordinately high, but not to the same degree). Where relatively few persons came forward to perform work which was culturally distasteful, then more severe administrative measures, such as levies through chiefs, were introduced. These need not have been direct pressures. Insufficient rural investment which forces labour migration is still standard behaviour. The breadth, depth, and longevity of political, religious, and other African-European relationships have been permanently affected by initial and succeeding European administration labour policies. But these in turn partly result from traditional values regarding labour, types of work, and who performs them-themselves products of the many and various forms of indigenous labour patterns, particularly forced servitude.

African nations are normally composed of a variety of cultures, ethnic groups, religions, languages, political systems, and economic patterns. Certain regions of heavy investment stand out as exceptions to the normal economic conditions under which most Africans live, and tend to be less culturally clear-cut than the rural regions of little investment which still have comparatively inefficient production tools and techniques. A given geographic zone of non-investment is quite likely to have several patterns of economic utilization, each a result of its own special cultural and social adaptations to that environment.

356



SLAVERY IN THE SUDAN REPUBLIC

A policy-making body planning national economic development is therefore

obliged to study a variety of value systems and their underlying economic institutions. But it has the further duty of co-ordinating inter-group development. Should one

particular society be developed and not others? How will development affect inter-

group relationships economically, politically, socially-five, twenty, fifty years hence ? The making of such rational and basic decisions demands social information which is

typically absent.

B. INTRODUCTION-SUDAN

It is felt that the institution of slavery and its attendant values, intrinsic to pre- Anglo-Egyptian administration society, are still affecting economic and social attitudes, and hence behaviour and productivity. If it can be shown that recent policy for economic development is breaking down efficiency-resisting traditions, then such

policy and the engendered development are 'good'. Conversely, if it can be indicated that both policy and economic results are reinforcing values which inhibit increasing long-term efficiency, then they are 'bad'. While both occur, the latter outweighs the former in northern Sudan.

The evidence clearly indicates that in Sudan (and elsewhere in Africa) it is these traditional attitudes, based upon slavery, which now and increasingly influence the

pace and direction of economic development. This appraisal may be regarded as a case study, not only of these socio-economic relationships, but also of the utility of this approach to solving economic development problems. It also indicates how closer examination of government reports, especially those of administration (political) departments, may support like studies elsewhere. Certainly such official material has its biases, omissions, and errors, particularly for the early years of European administration, but they are recognizable and may be allowed for accordingly.

The northern two-thirds of the Republic of the Sudan encompasses the eastern end of the Sudan geographic zone, a belt of savannah grassland, 3,500 miles wide and 300-700 miles deep, which borders the southern edge of the Sahara and Libyan deserts.' This was one of the most active slave-dealing regions in Africa, a natural trans-continental highway which permitted violation by nomadic peoples (mostly but not all Moslem) of the sedentary populations in the heavier rainfall areas to its south and the mountain kingdoms across its width (mostly Negroid and Sudanic pagans). As elsewhere in this underdeveloped zone south of the deserts, social groups of the

Republic of the Sudan have adapted to their varying physical environments. Camel nomads occupy semi-desert regions immediately adjoining the deserts; rainland farmers and cattle nomads are found in the heavier rainfall zones to the semi-desert's south; and shifting (forest) agriculture and cattle-owning but sedentary populations are located where rainfall is more reliable and heavier. There will tend to be some form of irrigated agriculture wherever water sources are permanent, e.g. along the Nile and its tributaries. Certain mountainous, heavier rainfall districts have highly developed agricultural economies, though they may be in the middle of otherwise fairly dry regions. Examples are the mountains of western Darfur (especially Jebel Mara) and the Nuba Mountains in Kordofan Province.

I The nation's best geographical description is K. M. Barbour, The Republic of the Sudan-a Regional Geo- graphy, University of London Press, 1961.

357



358 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND THE HERITAGE OF

There tend also to be correlations between type of economic endeavour and ethnic

group. Northern Sudan nomads, both camel and cattle, are heavily Arab and Arab mixtures. Nomads who are not Arab, such as certain Hadendowa peoples, are never- theless not 'blacks '-Negro, Negroid, or Sudanic. The northern riverain peoples will be either Arab or Arab mixtures, though important exceptions occur, such as the Nubians.

The main northern Sudan unifier is the Moslem faith.I Groups which are not

racially pure Arabs (through centuries of mixture with Sudanic Negro peoples) are still Islamized. Sudanic and other northern peoples who were engulfed by Arab, Turkish, and Egyptian civilizations tend to be heavily Islamized or have values which are similar to those of Islamized peoples. Thus one may draw a firm cultural line across the southern edge of the medium rainfall, cattle-nomadic, rainland cultivation area which is also the division between Islam and non-Islam.2 Shifting cultivation and

animal-owning economies in the wetter and more heavily forested regions south of this line tend to be populated with Nilotic, Sudanic, Hamitic, and Negroid pagans. There are therefore mutually supporting economic, social, and religious reasons for

inter-group antipathies. Agriculture (especially forest, shifting agriculture), paganism, dark skin colour (even heavier facial features), and use of poor Arabic, all tend to be combined in mentally juxtaposed contrast to nomadism, Islam, lighter skin colour (and sharper features), and use of good Arabic. Not all these conditions need be

present at any one time for any given group, however; overlaps and exceptions occur.

Heavily camel-nomadic non-Islamized Beja look down on Islamized farmers, not

necessarily because they are Muslims, but because they are farmers. The Baggara, cattle-owning, originally Arab, nomadic tribes in the medium-rainfall central and west central Sudan, have for centuries mixed extensively with Negroid and Sudanic

peoples-their darker colour and heavier features reflecting such admixtures.3 But

they scorn the agriculturalists, often ex-camel nomads of more pure Arab stock who have been forced to farm because they lost their herds before the turn of the century in inter-tribal and religious wars. These farming groups still look to the day when

they will have herds again. On the other hand, such central and west Sudan farmers and nomads have less

orthodox religious attitudes, their Arabic is poor, and their standard of literacy low. Sudan-Nile farming civilizations have a recorded history of centuries, practise their

I ' A common basis of Arabic race and language, and Islam, with their resulting unity of social and political ideas have fused the northern Sudan into a single whole. The District Commissioner who is transferred from Berber to Bara, from Kassala to Kordofan finds that he is dealing, in different local conditions, with the same kind of people, the same mental outlook' (L. F. Nalder, 'The Two Sudans: Some Aspects of the South ', article in J. A. de C. Hamilton, ed., The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan From Within, London: Faber & Faber Limited, I935, pp. 94-95). See also Saad ed Din Fawzi, 'Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in the Sudan ', article in Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in Inter-tropical Communities, Report of the 3oth Meeting held in Lisbon, April, I9y7, of the Inter- national Institute of Differing Civilizations, Bruxelles, I957, pp. 393-402; and Ruth McCreery, 'Moslems

and Pagans of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan', Moslem World, vol. xxxvi, no. 3, July 1946, pp. 252-60.

2 The tsetse fly also provided an effective barrier to the southward movement of savannah warriors and nomads. Cf. Jean Boulnois and Boubou Hama, L'Empire de Gao - Histoire, Coutumes et Magie des Sonrai, Paris: Librairie d'Amerique et d'Orient, 1954, p. 181. Commerce carried Islam through tsetse flies, however.

3 Cf. K. M. Barbour, Peasant Agriculture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Khartoum: University Col- lege, 1953, p. 17; W. J. Berry, ' The Arabs of Kor- dofan: a Study of Adaptation ', Scottish Geographical Magazine, vol. xliv, I928, p. 279; G. D. Lampen, ' The Baggara Tribes ', in J. A. de C. Hamilton (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan From Within, London: Faber & Faber, I935, p. 131.




religion more thoroughly, speak better Arabic, have cultured scholars, and consider their sophistication superior to that of their non-riverain fellow Moslems. Riverain landowners, and commercial, religious, and political leaders have supported over a long period a class structure based on various forms of slave, serf, and bound

tenantry workers.' Agriculture as such is honourable, but to perform farm labour is not. Traditionally, to own land was a prerequisite to independence, integrity, and social citizenship. To perform menial labour on it precluded all three. The riverain

region has been historically the Sudan's dominating political, military, and administrative hub. Though occasionally there have been important exceptions, what has

happened on the Nile normally affected surrounding peoples: the river has been the

physical and cultural avenue through which outsiders have conquered the Sudan. Thus there has developed a series of mutually supporting and interacting social

and economic forces which has given the northern Sudanese a very clear bias against most menial labour, and almost invariably against menial agricultural labour. The route to higher social status has been historically to relieve oneself of performing menial labour even on one's own land. This is combined with a concept of independence which must not be violated by working for someone else. To do so is socially humiliating. Thus the ultimate in socio-economic degradation is to work at someone else's agricultural labour.

Over the centuries, therefore, other peoples were subjugated to perform the northern Sudan's menial and socially undesirable economic functions. The existence of a fairly easy slave supply naturally reinforced the inclination not to do one's own work. As elsewhere in Africa, three forms, or types, of slaving and slavery were extant: the active raiding and capture of hostages; domestic slavery; and serfdom. There is no argument about the nature and definition of slave raiding (either to get slaves for oneself or for sale to someone else).2 But the considerable literature on domestic slavery and serfdom indicates a range of sub-classifications and shades of

meaning. Forms of servitude may be classified according to the type of work being done by

the indentured person, by the means of slave acquisition, by relating acquisition and manumission processes to religious beliefs, and so on. Regardless of these various factors, however, economically a domestic slave was attached very closely to a master's household, and performed the socially degrading and routine economic tasks. In addition, domestic slaves (particularly the men) would in all probability be responsible for certain agricultural work. Here one comes up against concepts of serfdom, a compulsory relationship more normally associated with some form of land- holding and division of the proceeds of output.

It must be emphasized, however, that while certain forms of servitude have been associated with Islamic civilization, they occur also in Christian and pagan societies. Islamic doctrine, conceived and solidified for the most part centuries ago in an area

I The main riverain group which is the exception 2 Organized tribal slave-hunts by Arab or Isla- to this pattern is the Nubian. 'At the same time there mized nomads would often be rationalized as part is a very remarkable absence of theft and a readiness of the Holy War being carried to the Pagan. Nor- to work unusual in the Sudan, both of which may be them Nigeria Fulani, for example, made slave- attributed to the absence of a slave class . . .' hunting under this guise a standard dry-season (W. D. C. L. Purves, 'Some Aspects of the Northern practice. Province ', article in Hamilton (ed.), op. cit., p. 17I).

359




whose economic and social conditions were not much dissimilar from the northern Sudan, does not necessarily condone slavery. The economic conditions of deeply Moslem and Arab regions are permissive to slavery, but the same is true for pagan and Christian, for Bantu, Negro, and Hamite. And Islamic slavery theory and practice are not necessarily identical. For example, doctrine precludes a Moslem enslaving another Moslem under most conditions.' But there are numerous examples of this

happening. The Prophet carefully indicated progressive and non-socially disrupting slave manumission directions. This is in complete contrast to Ethiopian church ethos which actively supports such socio-economic divisions.2 Because this paper is concerned with slavery in the strongly Islamic Sudan, this should in no way be taken to mean that these are the only groups in the Sudan (or elsewhere) which have featured (or still feature) such practices.

The form which slavery took in any given northern Sudan region and the various reactions to its abolition, depended upon a number of conditions: (a) whether or not it was a raiding or raided zone, or both; (b) whether the region bought, sold, or

transported slaves, or all three; (c) whether the people involved were Arab Moslem, Arabicized and Islamized Sudanic and other peoples, or pagans, or any combination; (d) whether the people were nomadic, partly nomadic and partly agriculturalist, or

entirely agriculturalist; (e) whether, if agriculturalist, the people were in riverain

irrigated regions or away from the rivers on extended rainland cultivations; (f) whether the people involved were in cities and towns, or in rural areas.

Northern Sudanese obtained slaves from non-Moslem and non-Arab groups, some in the northern Sudan itself, others from southern Sudan, still others extra-nationally. There were several main slave-supply sources:

I. Sudanic people of the Nuba Mountains (Kordofan Province). 2. Sudanic people of western Sudan mountain districts (which in I916 became

Darfur Province). 3. Sudanic peoples in the central-eastern Sudan near the Ethiopian border. 4. Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic, Negroid, and other southern Sudan peoples. 5. Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). 6. Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa, Kenya, Uganda (along the White

Nile and Bahr el 'Arab; through Bahr-el-Ghazal Province; and over several main routes which entered north-western Sudan).

7. The pilgrimage from West Africa to Mecca.

Main slave-receivers may also be listed:

i. Nomads: (a) Central and western Sudan cattle (and some camel) Arab nomads; (b) Hadendowa peoples in eastern Sudan.

2. Moslem agriculturalists along the Nile north of Khartoum to the Egyptian border.

From the wealth of literature on this subject themselves to abolish a system so deeply rooted in see, for example, the recently published policy pro- their social and economic structure; and one which nouncements of Usuman dan Fodio, founder of is upheld by a powerful and barbaric church claim- the Sokoto Sultanate (born c. 1754) in A. D. H. ing guardianship of the Mosaic Law and regard- Bivar, 'A Manifesto of the Fulani Jihad ', Journal of ing slavery as an institution decreed by Jehovah' African History, vol. ii, no. 2, I96I, pp. 235-43, esp. (E. W. Polson Neuman, 'Slavery in Abyssinia', pp. 239-4I. Contemporary Review, vol. cxlviii, December I935,

2 '. .. it is quite impossible for the Abyssinians p. 42).

360




3. Moslem agriculturalists along the White and Blue Niles south of Khartoum; 4. Urban Khartoum and Omdurman. 5. Outside Sudan: (a) slaves shipped to Arabia (pilgrimage was also used for this

purpose); (b) extended North Africa markets-Egypt, Tripoli, &c., even Palestine;' (c) West Africa; slaves captured in Kordofan, Darfur, and south of the Bahr el 'Arab would be passed to Northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania.

There are no estimates of northern Sudan's population percentage in domestic slave and serf capacities at the turn of the century when Anglo-Egyptian administration began. By inference from like societies elsewhere under equivalent socio- economic conditions, it could have been an overall 20 to 30 per cent. Cattle nomadic groups had a great number of household (particularly women) slaves, and others (mainly men) performing their agricultural tasks, in all perhaps 40 per cent. of the total society. Camel nomads would be one-twelfth to one-eighth slave peoples.2 Riverain farming communities would be one-sixth to one-quarter indentured groups, and at least 5 to 20 per cent. of town and urban area populations were in slave capacities.

Because slaves performed the bulk of all agricultural labour, Anglo-Egyptian administrators had a difficult choice: either forcibly to abolish all slavery (and satisfy their own ethical, moral, and perhaps religious values), or to experience immense immediate and medium-run economic dislocations. This deliberation must be viewed through administrators' eyes in I898-9. The northern Sudan was a chaos of deserted and burned villages.3 Inter-tribal, inter-kingdom conflict had been standard activity for centuries. During the latter part of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries, depredations under Turkish and Egyptian regimes became more organized and concerted, and extended themselves into southern Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of Sudanic, Negro, and other non-Moslem, non-Arab peoples were enslaved, some remaining in northern Sudan, others sent elsewhere.4 Organized raiding depopulated entire regions in both north and south. The last several decades of the nineteenth century saw the rise of the Mahdiya; this period of bloodshed ended in Anglo-Egyp- tian administration.5 The last twenty years of the nineteenth century are estimated to have cost the northern Sudan approximately three-quarters of its population: from an estimated 8 5 million before Dervish (Mahdist) rule to i-9 million in 1903. Some 3*2 million perished through warfare and 3*4 million through attendant diseases (see Appendix, Table i). From this social and economic desiccation the

Italian, French, and British reports to the Anti- annual military expeditions by 1839. See G. F. March, Slavery Committee of the League of Nations detail ' Kordofan Province (Agriculture) ', in J. D. Tothill slave incidence, sources, and social relationships. (ed.), Agriculture in the Sudan, London: Oxford Uni-

2 For thorough discussion of equivalent cattle and versity Press, 1948, p. 828. camel nomad slavery across West African savannah 5 On southern slaving see especially Richard Gray, areas, see J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in West A History of the Southern Sudan, I89-I889, London: Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press, I959. Oxford University Press, 196I; and Allan Moore-

3 One turn-of-the-century traveller measured the head, The White Nile, New York: Harpers, I96I, incidence of desolation by counting hyenas-see esp. part iii. Certain northern Sudan areas such as Oscar T. Crosby,' Notes on a Journey from Zeita to Dar Fung have not yet recovered from Mahdiya Khartoum', Geographical Journal, vol. xviii, July- brigandage. See, for example, E. E. Evans- December I90I, pp. 46-61. Pritchard, 'Ethnological Survey of the Sudan',

4 From the Nuba Mountains alone it was esti- article in Hamilton (ed.), op. cit., pp. 79-93, esp. mated that 200,000 slaves had been captured in pp. 92-93.

Aa

36I




administration had to reconstruct order and peace over i million square miles in an aura of suspicion and animosity.

Anti-slavery procedures were adopted similar to those elsewhere in European- administered Africa. Basic policy encouraged the gradual development of a wage- labouring (from a slave-labouring) population.' But rapid transformation could be effected only at the risk of alienation of Sudanese political and religious leaders, drastic output reductions in agriculture and livestock, and a growing social problem of released slaves inundating towns to form parasitic communities:

The Government had to choose between almost equally distasteful alternatives: the temporary sanction of slavery or the immediate liberation of the slaves, the latter a course which might bring economic ruin upon the country. Liberation would have resulted in the abandonment of most of the cultivation along the riverbank, a loss of many of the flocks and herds of the nomad Arabs and the consequent death of thousands of innocent individuals who, through no fault of their own, had been brought up under a social system that was repugnant to Western ideas, but accepted as an indispensable condition of their everyday lives.... To have freed all the slaves would have meant letting loose upon society thousands of men and women with no sense of social responsibility, who would have been a menace to public security and morals.2

Two inter-related administration policies were effected. Any slave was allowed to leave his master if he chose, and the master had no legal recourse to force his return. Many slaves had already fled during pre-Anglo-Egyptian administration fighting. Simultaneously, through its regulations and day-to-day performance, the administration attempted to induce as many slaves as possible to remain with their masters, providing they were content, and not ill treated.3 The other policy was to prevent further enslavement and cut off the supply of new slaves. An Anti-Slavery Depart- ment was established for this purpose (actually an extension of Egypt's Slavery Department).

Stabilized civic conditions soon promoted population mobility on a scale heretofore impossible.4 Administrators aimed to channel this movement into expanding railway, building, utilities, and other employment. Public Works labour demands attracted away even more of the scarce agricultural workers, most of whose employers could not pay the rapidly increasing wages.5 A Central Labour Bureau was established

I One of the positive strong points of northern Sudan administrator policy was their abstention from forced or unpaid labour. See Odette Keun, 'A Fo- reigner Looks at the British Sudan', The Nine- teenth Century, vol. cviii, no. 643, September 1930, pp. 292-309.

2 H. C. Jackson, Behind the Modern Sudan, London: Macmillan, 1953, pp. 93-94. Early general problems are also discussed in John Stone, Sudan Economic Development, 89y-191y3, Khartoum: Sudan Economic Institute, 1955.

3 Not all were in favour of this slow process. One ex-administrator, P. R. W. Diggle, claimed that cultivation would not cease, but 'even if I am wrong I do not believe that cultivation in the Northern Sudan or anywhere else is worth all the misery and cruelty that slavery involves '. See his 'Slavery in

the Sudan', Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigine's Friend, ser. v, vol. xv, no. 2, July I925, p. 84.

4 Here and right across the Sudan Zone. See, for example, D. B. Mather, 'Migration in the Sudan', Geographical Essays on British Tropical Lands, Steel, R. W., and Fisher, C. A. (eds.), London: George Phillip & Son Ltd., 1956, pp. II5-43.

5 'The urgent nature of this (Public Works) demand, coupled with the impetus given to private enterprise by the ensuing land boom, set up com- petition and wages rose immediately to a rate that the native agriculturalist could not afford to pay.' Memorandum from Lieutenant-General Sir R. Vingate to Sir Eldon Gorst on the Finances, Administration and Condition of the Sudan for Io08, Cairo, 1909, p. 70. Socio-economic problems are naturally the main topics of early administration reports, both from




in 907 (based closely on the ex-slave registration system adopted earlier in Northern Province-discussed later) which was relatively successful. Wage worker supply is still difficult in 1962. But the problem of finding sufficient agricultural wage workers is increasing. It has not been solved in sixty years' and administrators have constantly suggested foreign labour importation (Indians, Chinese, even American Negroes). Foreign labour is now, and has been from the turn of the century, the most productive segment of the development wage labour force. Egyptians, Yemenese, Eritreans and

Abyssinians have all been imported for specific canal, dam, dock, railway, ginnery, and other employment from time to time. The most numerous and important foreigner is the Westerner, the primarily Moslem economic descendant of the slave, discussed at more length later.2

It is proposed to detail the particular reactions to slavery abolition and slave raiding in the following areas: (i) Central and west-central Sudan (Kordofan and Darfur). (2) Northern Sudan, along the Nile north of Khartoum. (3) White Nile and Blue Nile

region south of Khartoum, and the Ethiopian border area (the old Provinces of White Nile, Blue Nile, Fung, Sennar, and Gezira). (4) Eastern Sudan: Kassala, Suakin and Red Sea Provinces. (5) Khartoum and Omdurman. Not all quotations from official reports are given, only sufficient to indicate the economic effects of abolition, and the tenacity of slave labour values. Most information and all statistics are from official reports.3 Particularly for the early years a certain margin of error is thus expected. There appears to be a general tendency among administrators to under- estimate the extent and force of the slavery heritage on values and behaviour. Out-

right ignorance of Islamic law is also encountered; for example the I926 statement that slavery was recognized under 'Mahometan [Mohammedan] law which ... in its essence is immutable and cannot be abrogated'.4 True, perhaps, but the law

provides for slave manumission!

C. REGIONAL DETAIL

i. Central, West-Central, and Western Sudan (Kordofan and Darfur) In 193 5, only a generation ago,' three cases occurred of the kidnapping of negroid

children from Central Darfur by [these] Arabs. In only one case was it possible to secure a conviction, although all but one of the kidnapped children were rescued '.5 This quotation summarizes the two main slavery features of this region-the tenacity of the habit and the difficulties in securing evidence sufficient to punish the slavers. Kordofan came under Anglo-Egyptian Government in 1900, and Darfur Province

Sudan (Wingate, 1904-14) and Cairo (the Consul- Sudan ', Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, General of Egypt, from 1898 through 1920, reported vol. xxviii, 1912, p. 20.) Egypt and Sudan together. From 1921 to I951-2 2 Omdurman residents are quoted in 1909 as the Sudan reported directly to the Foreign Office). saying 'Allah took away our slaves, but sent us the These Egyptian reports will be referred to as Egypt Fellata.' (Wingate, 1909, p. 55.) and the Sudan's as Sudan. 3 Appendix Tables 2 and 3 attempt to summarize

1 In spite of early optimists such as L. Emerson conviction and certain other slavery statistics of Mather: ' The natives-both Arabs and Sudanese- Legal and Slavery Departments. are not industrious, indeed they have never found 4 'Memorandum on Slavery in the Sudan', En- the need to be so until British rule was firmly esta- closure 3 to Papers Relating to Slavery in the Sudan, blished, but there is no reason to doubt that they will London: H.M.S.O., Cmd. 2650 (Sudan no. i, 1926); advance with the times and realize that work means Sudan Government Confidential Circular, p. 13. prosperity.' ('Five Weeks in the Anglo-Egyptian s Sudan, I935, p. II9.

363




in 1916 (the last Sudan area to be brought under such administration). During those seventeen years, Darfur was led by Ali Dinar, though he did pay tribute to the Sudan Government. Ali Dinar was killed during his First World War anti-Sudan revolt, and Darfur became the Sudan's most western Province.

The region contains both camel and cattle nomadic groups, almost entirely Arab and Moslem. The several primarily agricultural societies were mostly nomadic peoples until nearly the end of the nineteenth century. During the Mahdiya, however, many Arab nomads lost their herds, through warfare and disease, and had to become farmers. Some have rebuilt livestock holdings, but the bulk are rainland farming still. Because of continual (and forced) association of Moslems with non-Moslems, great numbers of Sudanic peoples (mostly farmers) have been Islamized. While nomads had been raiding sedentary peoples for centuries, Mohamed Ali's 1821 Kordofan con-

quest turned tribal and localized slaving into organized business, Egyptian envoys in Kordofan accepting slaves in lieu of cash, grain, or cattle. Many were shipped over the Dar el Arbain.I Over the years Arab cattle nomads have mixed with Sudanic slaves and with Negroes captured south of their grazing areas (which extend to the Bahr el 'Arab). But nomadic groups would also raid one another, not often to enslave fellow Moslems, but to capture someone else's slaves. Slaves were used for herding activities, as household menials, and as food producers, often remaining with cultivations while their masters proceeded on the annual dry-season search for better

grazing and more reliable water-supplies. These nomads played an important role in slave merchandizing, buying and selling within their own communities, from West Africa, and stealing pilgrims. They passed slaves on to internal markets-Sudan cities

(especially Khartoum and Omdurman), White Nile and northern Nile regions-and to Egypt and West Africa. They were jobbers.

Because domestic slavery was such an important economic ingredient (and slave

raiding one of the 'manly' diversions), the Anglo-Egyptian 1900 orders against slavery at first went almost unheeded. In I901 it was reported that 'slave raids, accompanied by bloodshed, still occasionally take place in the southern districts of Kordofan and along the Bahr-el-Arab '.2 Such slaves were passed westwards, or east to Abyssinia. Darfur groups (not yet under direct Anglo-Egyptian administration) would also raid southwards and send captives to Gezira, Dongola Province, and

Tripoli.3 A 1902 report describes the state of affairs in the Nuba Mountains: At the same time, a deplorable state of internecine conflict between the Nuba Meks of the

various mountain districts has been revealed, whilst these unfortunate blacks are in turn the object of constant raids on the part of the Nomad Arabs, who carry off their women and children into slavery.4

Jebel Om Heitan . . . The Howazmas raided and took some people, also burned their crops.

Jebel Ghawai ... Howazmas raided them and prevented them cultivating; also captured some of their people.

I This ' 40-day road ' is mentioned in numerous Desert ', Journal of the Royal Africa Society, vol. xxxv, documents. It ran from Kubbe, near El Fasher, no. cxl, July 1936. 2 Egypt, I901, P. 33. Darfur, to Asyut, Egypt (half-way between Wadi 3 Egypt, I902, p. 89. Halfa and Cairo on the Nile). See the interesting map 4 Ibid., p. 92. A 'mek' is a chief. The officer facing page 294 in R. A. Bagnold, 'The Libyan probably meant small tribal or hill groups.

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Jebel Kownma ... Howazma and Talodi Arabs raided them and captured I90 of their people two months ago.

Jebel Tera Mandi . .. The Howazma and Talodi Arabs raided and captured ten people.I The writer, Major O'Connell, suggested that 'if we cannot have posts at various

places, I think we ought to take away all their horses, as on foot the Nuba is as good a man'.2 This was not done. A Captain McMurdo appears pessimistic in I904: '... No information which I have received leads me to suppose that Slave Traffic has increased in Kordofan. On the other hand, I doubt there being any great decrease. The riverain Arabs certainly carry on their trade.'3 Seventeen persons were arrested and sixteen of these convicted on slavery charges in i905.4

But by I905 the nomadic tribes' material conditions were improving. Herds were noticeably on the increase:

But it is to be feared that many of them are forced to change their habits from their being unable to obtain a supply of slaves, on whose labour they were formerly dependent for almost everything, the simple method of raiding being no longer feasible with impunity. At the same time it is to be noted that the area cultivated by the Baggara tribes has increased enormously this year and most of the labour is done by the Arabs themselves. I mention this to show the absurdity of the statement made from time to time that Arabs cannot perform agricultural labour.5

One of the immediate effects of European administered civic stability (here and elsewhere in Sudan and Africa) was to increase the demand for slaves. While it is true that long-run economic expansion of opportunity was, and is, the economic means of abolishing the slavery status, the initial opening up of transportation routes, organization of cash markets for produced and collected products, and the like, had the effect of increasing the demand for labour. Land and livestock owners needed even more labour to take advantage of these expanding economic opportunities. If such labour had traditionally been slave labour, then this enlarging economic framework was a force prolonging slave raiding, debt-bondage, child-sale, and the other forms of slave acquisition. A severe economic depression had this same effect, in that people would pawn children and themselves to obtain food or cash, though one finds little record of this in Sudan.

A serious Tolodi Arab uprising took place in 1906, one of many shows of resentment. Two basic and related reasons were (a) dissatisfaction with the forced pro- hibition of their raiding the Nuba for slaves, and (b) that they had to return the

z20 Nuba women and children they had stolen in I90 .6 This was all the more

galling as Nuba were still raiding one another for adult slaves, and selling on the Arab market their own unprotected people such as orphans, widows, and other destitutes.7

As a partial description of the confused and constantly moving I906 situation, Major Ravenscroft is quoted:

After the battle of Omdurman (I898), before Kordofan was reoccupied, many Arabs and

I Egypt, 1902, p. 97. 4 Wingate, 905, p. 104. 5 Ibid., p. III. 2 Ibid. 6 Egypt, I906, p. II8. 3 Egypt, I904, p. I33. 7 Ibid., p. I31.

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Sudanese, when returning to their old homes, were captured by Nubas and Kababish, and are still their slaves or concubines. These people cannot be got hold of as they are hiding away in the hills.

Gallabas (travelling merchants), many of them traders in salt, first of all barter for the slaves, sell them to ... Arabs of Western Kordofan (Kababish, Kawahla, and Magnin) who detain them till they learn Arabic, and then pass them north gradually, the eventual goal being often Mecca.

Arab horsemen (Howazmas, Messeria, and Homr) kidnap Nubas while cultivating, or with flocks out grazing, and pass them later east to the river, and on across the Ghezireh.'

This Arab resentment was understood by the administration ...

. . . To expect a brave, war-like, and war-loving people to give up their old habits, and surrender what they regard as their right, much less to give up their property without a struggle, is manifestly to expect the impossible.

There is much more hope for the future development of such a race than for a people who accept every change with passive docility.... It is to be hoped that people who think that enough is not done in this province to oppress slavery will now realize that the matter is not so easy or simple in practice as it is in theory.... The Baggara and other tribes are short of slaves, and both feel and resent the loss.2

While the Messeria3 appeared to adjust rapidly to the 'no-new-slaves' economy- crops improved, and herds increased rapidly-' the Hawazma are the most idle, and the Homr the poorest and most troublesome'.4 The attitudes of leaders contributed to the pace of readjustment in that energetic Nazirs encouraged production increases. But many nomads spurned agriculture, and found 'peace, when continued year after

year, rather a bore than otherwise '.5 Slaves were still being imported into this region from West Africa, through the Congo and northwards through Kafia-Kingi and

Kabalugu in Bahr-el-Ghazal Province.6

By 1912 administrative measures were decidedly reducing the frequency and

severity of slave dealing. A certain amount was still going on in Kordofan, especially among the Homr, but a government post was established in Dar Homr in 1 9 which

helped a great deal.7 And punishment of convicted slave dealers was enough to make a man hesitant:

There is no doubt still a certain amount of abduction for the purposes of forced labour in the Province, especially among the nomad Arabs of the southwest and northwest of the Province, but, owing to the heavy sentences inflicted, it is not common.8

By the First World War even many of the slaves who had stayed with their masters (particularly men) were striking out on their own, establishing farms, building up herds, and picking their own gum arabic. Some moved to the Nuba

I Egypt, 1906, p. 131. economic and labour problems see, for example, Ian 2 Ibid., p. 143. On Tolodi Arab thievery and Cunnison, 'The Social Role of Cattle ', Sudan Journal

slave dealing see Wingate, I906, p. 672 (Kordofan of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, vol. i, Province). no. I, March I960, pp. 8-25. Cattle-owning Arab

3 A fine three-century historical summary of this tribes across the Sudan Zone have similar problems tribe's economics is K. D. D. Henderson, 'A Note of adjustment to agriculture and wage labour. on the Migration of the Messiria Tribe into South 5 Wingate, I907, p. 317. West Kordofan ', Sudan Notes and Records, vol. xxii, 6 Egypt, I907, p. 59. part I, I939, pp. 49-77- 7 Wingate, I910, p. 335.

4 Wingate, I906, p. 677. For present-day Baggara 8 Wingate, 19I2, vol. i, p. I75.

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Mountains, not only for their rocky security, but because a great number had originally come from there. This left the nomad Arabs with continually fewer hands to crop and herd-there was no labour for hire.'

When Darfur came under direct Sudan administration in I916, a new set of

problems arose: In Darfur and Western Kordofan traces remain of the domestic slavery which was pre-

valent under the rule of Ali Dinar. When Darfur was conquered and Ali Dinar killed, a great number of slaves, principally women, were cast adrift, and in the confusion which ensued before the country began to settle down under our administration there was a general scramble for the possession of these masterless slaves, both inside Darfur and in the remoter parts of Western Kordofan when bands of Arabs went across the border to try to get a portion of the loot. The slaves settled down willingly in new homes, but there has resulted a certain amount of internal traffic which is not yet eradicated. The matter is being thoroughly dealt with and there is no doubt that cases will soon be as rare in that region as in other parts of the Soudan.2

In I9I9 Darfur had nineteen convictions on more serious slavery cases: in 1920

this had dropped to fourteen.3 In Kordofan the average number of convictions

during 1920-2 was twenty-two, dropping to an annual average of four during the three years I925-7.4 In 193 there were three convictions,5 and one in I935.6

A 1934 report commented on this sporadic slave-dealing: The continuation of investigation and preventive work has resulted in the discovery of

a few cases of kidnapping, mainly among the nomad tribes of the Western Sudan. The persons involved in these cases have been punished under the Penal Code. In some instances, it was found that the actual abduction had taken place outside Sudan territory. In these cases, also, prosecutions were directed against any native of the Sudan who had failed to help in the pursuit and apprehension of known kidnappers, or who was suspected of con- cealing knowledge of the whereabouts of kidnapped persons.... The cooperation of tribal authorities was again enlisted for the suppression of this type of case.7

2. Northern Sudan, along the Nile north of Khartoum to the Egyptian border

Historically this riverain economy based agricultural production on slave and serf utilization, though an equal number of slaves, mainly women, were assigned household duties. The extent of each family's cultivation was often determined, where land and water were otherwise plentiful, by the number of slaves which the householder could maintain. This would often run from 20 to 200 slaves.8 Many slaves absconded after i898, went to towns, returned to their central or southern Sudan homelands, joined the army, or found Public Works employment. It went hard with landowners:

I Wingate, 1913, p. 187. sheikhs, and government food and other support. 2 Egyp, 920, p. 134. See Communications of 7 March 1936, Document no. 3 Ibid., p. I27. C.C.E.E. 105, para. 7; of 5 December I936, Docu- 4 Sudan, 1927, p. III. ment no. C.C.E.E. I57 (i), paras. 3 and 4; of I5 Feb- S Sudan, 1931, p. 127. ruary 1938, Document no. C.C.E.E. 196, para. 2. 6 Sudan, I935, p. II9. This last contained the comment that ' there is ... 7 Communication, dated 15 April I935, from the evidence of the increasing realization by nomad

Government of the Sudan to the Secretary-General Arabs that friendliness with their darker brethren of the League of Nations, Document no. C.C.E.E. 60, is beneficial, and that slave labour is not economic'. para. 5. Reports to the League detailed the settle- This is only twenty-five years ago. ment of released Kordofan slaves into their own 8 See especially Wingate, I907, . i88 (Berber Pro, villages, their administration under their own vince) for details.

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'. . . the feudal families of the Arab tribes found their serf households dwindling and themselves unfit for manual labour on the land '.' Even children were working prematurely to make up for the deserted labour force. And it was the presence of slaves doing the work at home which permitted adult male migration to Egypt and elsewhere to seek household and commercial employment.

The area was heavily involved in the slave traffic, passing slaves on to Egypt, Red Sea ports for shipment to Arabia, and so on. In the middle and latter nineteenth

century, organized groups would hunt slaves along the Dinder and Rahad rivers to the Ethiopian border,2 and in southern and western Sudan. Because it has been a slave-based economy for at least three millennia it is somewhat naive to assume that the values associated with this form of labour have disappeared in two generations. Though ' much lip service is paid to Western ideas of social reform . . . there is practically no indigenous movement aiming at effecting anything '.3

The first official report of Colonel Jackson, Mudir of Berber, in 1899, comments that ' the habit of depending on slave labour, which has so long been part of the custom of the country, is gradually being eradicated, and people realize that they must

depend upon their own industry'.4 This was premature optimism, as by I 904 it was

necessary to establish a registration system for all ' Sudanese Blacks ' in Dongola Province, which 'makes their abduction difficult '. By I908 it was reported that the Berber labour supply was generally sufficient, 'crime has diminished, and there have been no slavery cases .6 And by 1909 the registration system seems to have stabilized Berber labour markets:

It is a most remarkable thing that since the system has been adopted of only registered men being accepted for work on Government works, the number of runaway servants has fallen off in the most marked manner. During the last four months there have only been about four cases which have come to light.7 But the success of the registration system was not universal, as the 910o Halfa report indicates:

The registration of labourers referred to in last year's report has not proved an unqualified success. Muggaddams will not produce their gang-books for private employers to make entries therein, and the labourers themselves likewise invariably neglect to get their books made up. The private employer of labour naturally does not trouble himself about doing this, and it entirely depends upon Muggaddams and labourers themselves whether their books are to show any record of their work or not. The gang-book and labourers' registration are, in fact, more in the nature of identification cards than anything else, and presumably now that a registration has been introduced of all 'blacks ' throughout the Sudan-who are not landowners-this is the only purpose that they are required to serve.8

It was a habit in riverain Sudan to use the slave as a cash-seeker: . . Often he is allowed to go away, or he is sent away, to seek more profitable work.

I C. B. Tracey and J. W. Hewison,' Northern Pro- in Post-War Sudan, London: World Dominion Press, vince (Agriculture)', in J. D. Tothill (ed.), op. cit., 1949, p. I2.

p. 737. 4 Egypt, I899, p. 60 (Berber Province). 2 The 1820's Turkish occupation of this region, 5 Wingate, I904, p. 56.

and its suppression of intertribal wars, allowed cer- 6 Egypt, 1908, p. 70 (Berber Province). tain groups such as the Jaalin to expand their slave- 7 Wingate, 1909, p. 625 (Berber Province). raiding. 8 Wingate, I910, p. 244 (Halfa Province).

3 J. Spencer Trimingham, The Christian Church




Under such circumstances he is allowed to keep part of his earnings, sometimes half, sometimes more.'

The records indicate that adjustment gradually continued from this first disturbing decade and by I932 the Dongola Provincial Report included the following:

Cultivation is now being carried on without being dependent upon domestic serf labour. This changeover, which has taken about a generation to effect, has been brought about without any economic dislocation. The Sudanese themselves have either drifted away and found employment elsewhere or have fitted themselves into local conditions by working on the land for a part-share of the crops. Inevitably some have collected in the more important centres, but without becoming a menace to law and order.2

Referring particularly to this northern Nile region, the Sudan Government informed the League of Nations in 1936 that

It is not easy for the domestic slave to acquire, save rarely by purchase, registered land or date-trees, but then most of such registerable property has been registered before Govern- ment policy and action with regard to slavery was fully operative. They do acquire rights in cultivable land, which will lead eventually to prescriptive possession, and they do acquire possession of animals and other movable property, where twenty or even ten years ago they would have had nothing but the usufruct of their master's property at best. Those who continue to live propertyless in their masters' families do so on rather better terms and a rather higher standard of living than formerly, their safeguard being their knowledge, and their masters' knowledge, of the ease with which the serf can leave the master if discontented. It is no longer the master only who has the whip-hand... .3

3. White Nile and Blue Nile region south of Khartoum, and the Ethiopian border area (old Provinces of White Nile, Blue Nile, Fung, Sennar, and Ghezireh)

This region's slavery and adjustment to abolition has two aspects, one internal to Sudan, and the other in relation to Abyssinia (now Ethiopia-the old title will be used to remain consistent with early Administration reports).4 Between the White Nile and the foot of the Abyssinian Mountains is a medium to light rainfall area peopled by severely' mixed' Arab, Sudanic, and other nomads and agriculturalists. As in northern Nile districts, slaves were the bulk of the farming labour force- reactions to abolition were practically identical. But the eastern foot-hill edge was raided from several directions: by Arab nomads from Kordofan; by groups from northern Nile regions and Khartoum-Omdurman;5 and by organized slave parties from Abyssinia who 'would descend in parties of oo-200z'.6 This latter raiding

I Louis C. West,' Dongola Province of the Anglo- chaps. 2 and 20.

Egyptian Sudan', Geographical Review, vol. v, 5 An 1899 traveller comments on Beni Shangul January-June I918, p. 30. District that '... The district... was inhabited by

2 Sudan, 1932, p. I4 (Dongola Province). black races.... Control was apparently in the hands 3 Communication, dated 5 December I936, op. of a few families of Sudan Arabs (Jaalin) who had

cit., para. Ii. established themselves there in the time of the old 4 Literature on Ethiopia also describes this Sudan Egyptian Government. What I did not realize at the

slavery relationship, not only in this specific area, time was that these men ... were nothing more than but also among the camel nomadic tribes which are slave raiders' (Charles Gwynn, ' The Frontiers of common to Ethiopia (including Eritrea) and Sudan. Abyssinia ', Journal of the Royal Africa Society, vol. See in particular Margery Perham, The Government of xxxvi, no. cxliii, April I937, p. 153). Ethiopia, London: Faber & Faber, 1948, especially 6 Egypt, 902, p. 89 (Blue Nile Province).

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was difficult to stop both because of its remoteness, and because the Abyssinian authorities were not particularly co-operative.

The Mudir of Sennar reported in 190I that ninety-one slaves were officially freed in that year, and there were nine convictions.' Because the slaving habit was as

deeply entrenched here as elsewhere, securing evidence sufficient to convict was often impossible. A recurring problem was that ' you get the murder of anticipated witnesses '.2 Abyssinian border police patrols attempted to prevent raiding and

smuggling. Mr. Gorrings, Slavery Department Inspector, comments in I903:

I am strongly in favour of paying my men good rewards on captures. For there is no denying the fact that the majority of the natives, certainly south of Wad Medani, are in favour of slavery and their sympathy is with the slave-traders.3

One of the main forces activating slaving was the relative cheapness of slave

(compared with free) labour:

As regards the relative cost of slave and free labour, I am informed that, on the Abyssi- nian frontier, a strong lad of 5 years old can be purchased for LE 12, that he can be main- tained for about LE 2/8/- a year, and that a hired man would cost about LE 7/4/- a year. If these figures are correct, the cost of free labour-supposing the amount of work done by the slave and the free man to be the same-is considerably in excess of that of slave labour.4

Because of their 'convenient' location, certain tribes such as the ' Borun ' would be raided from across the border with greater frequency than others.

It is pitiable to read of the devastation wrought by Ibrahim Wad Mahoud among the Borun people. In the sphere which he raided, there are no children left, the proportion of adults is about seven men to one woman, and the villages were devoid of sheep, goats, poultry and cattle.5

In I904 this Ibrahim Wad Mahoud, one of the most important raid-organizers, was

caught and executed: sixteen others were convicted under the slavery laws.6 Anuak suffered similar depredations. After a trip up the Sobat and Baro rivers to Gambela at the foot of the Abyssinian Mountains, the inspector wrote: 'All along this portion of the frontier slave-trading is carried on with all its attendant horrors.'7 Abyssinian raiders killed 113 persons and carried off I5o women and children from Abu Gilud

village in I906. These captives were later returned by the authorities.8 In 1907 the 'Borun' people of Jebel Boraia were 'again attacked from across the border, and women and children carried off '.

The riverain Arab found it difficult to adjust to slaveless shaduf and saqiya agriculture.10 There is considerable evidence that during the first few such years total agricultural production dropped, though it is naturally difficult to separate 'normal' crop failure due to locusts, drought, &c., from those decreases associated with reduced

I Egypt, 190I, p. 71 (Sennar Province). 7 Egypt, 1905, p. I4I (Blue Nile Province). 2 Egypt, I904, p. 133 (Blue Nile Province). 8 Egypt, 1906, p. i 8 (Blue Nile Province). 3 Egypt, 1903, p. 90 (Blue Nile Province)-for a 9 Egypt, 1907, p. 49 (Blue Nile Province).

brief history of the Slavery Department, see Sudan, IO A shaduf is a hand-operated hanging bucket for I922, p. 65. lifting water. The counter-balancing weight is typi-

4 Egypt, I903, p. 91 (Blue Nile Province). cally clay. A saqiya is the Persian water wheel, nor- 5 Egypt, 1904, p. 33 (Blue Nile Province). mally turned by animal power. Such primitive agri- 6 Ibid., p. I34. cultural equipment demanded numerous workers.




labour supply and the disinclination of landowners to work.I A I906 report on a White Nile, more nomadic, Arab group stresses a similar theme:

They [Beni Gerar] are less dependent on slavery, and the impossibility of obtaining slave labour has forced them to recognize that personal manual labour, even if they still think it somewhat derogatory, is necessary to their prosperity.12

Administration reports throughout I 907-9, from all relevant Districts and Provinces, highlight these readjustment problems. The reader should be reminded that it was

primarily these groups which received Gezira Scheme tenancies in the 920o's.

It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that there is a strong feeling of discontent among the Arabs at the loss of their Sudanese servants. This undoubtedly hits them very hard, as, apart from domestic discomfort, it greatly reduces the area which they can bring under cultivation. Hired labour is scanty and too expensive for their pockets. Any feeling which may exist against the Government, where it is not inspired by mere religious fanaticism, is due to this cause more than to any other.3

The Abyssinian traffic was still active in 1912:

It would appear that there is an extensive traffic in slaves between Arabs from the Sudan and Sheikh Khogali El Hassan and other Abyssinian subjects. The Kenana and Rizeigat seem to be the principal offenders, and in most of the feriks of the nomad Arabs new slaves are to be found, but unless caught red-handed it is almost impossible to obtain sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.4

In spite of extended efforts, the trade continued to flourish in the late I920's.

Abyssinian areas adjoining Sudan were controlled by petty chiefs of Arab descent, who had 'reduced the older negroid population to a state of serfdom'.5 These chiefs' families would inhabit separate regions, including Sudan Districts, in order to carry out their operations more effectively. Sheikh Khogali el Hassan was active for two decades, aided by his wife, Sitt Amma, who resided in Fung Province. She was even-

tually arrested and convicted in I928. Slaves would be passed primarily from the Watawit country in Abyssinia across to the White Nile Arabs and even farther to Kordofan and Darfur. A concerted White Nile Province campaign in I928 almost

tripled the number of convictions from 263 in I927 to 653 in I928.6 The I929 White Nile Province Report contained the statement that 'the intensive campaign against the slave trade from Abyssinia has been brought to a successful conclusion'.7 The issue of freedom-papers continued in White Nile and Fung Provinces.8 Ex-slave villages were established, many being Abyssinian refugees who had fled from ' high taxation and cruelty'9 in their own country. In Fung Province alone, approximately

' See Wingate, 1905, p. 25 (Blue Nile Province). also have been a reluctance to go officially on record 2 Wingate, I906, p. 740 (White Nile Province). that one had been a slave. On the other hand, a 3 Wingate, I908, pp. 487-8 (Blue Nile Province). heavy issue might be attributed, as it was in Moslem 4 Wingate, I912, p. 245 (Sennar Province); Per- Nigera, to the fact that a certificate was more impor-

ham, op. cit., pp. 326-7, gives interesting details tant than a bare declaration in a 'white man's law' on Sheikh Khogali El Hassan. (Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, Report

5 Sudan, I928, p. 17 (Blue Nile Province). of the Second [I9g$] Session, League of Nations Docu- 6 Sudan, 1928, p. 84 (Blue Nile Province). ment no. CI59. M. II3. I935. VI, p. 28). 7 Sudan, 1929, p. 133 (White Nile Province). 9 Sudan, 1933, p. I09 (Fung Province). Authorities 8 'Freedom-papers' were certificates making in Kenya's Northern Frontier and Turkana Pro-

freedom official. The fact that any domestic or other vinces in 1933 had to issue rifles to selected tribesmen slave could obtain such documentation at will un- in defence against Ethiopian raiders (1935 League of doubtedly reduced the number issued. There may Nations Slavery Committee Report, op. cit., p. 23).

37I




200 freedom-papers were issued annually between I928 and I933. Though Kurmuk became a centre of escaping slaves and serfs, it was reported that they, and the resettled slaves in White Nile Province, were 'living among, and in amity with, their former Arab masters '.'

In 1932 some 6o0 Anuak raiders from the Gila area of Abyssinia killed 27 Beir men and captured 27 women, 5 children, and 800 head of cattle; the Beir villages were some 50 miles inside the Sudan border. This raid was the subject of protracted correspondence between the two governments, and over the next few years most of the damage, as far as possible, was made good.2 In 1933 252 freedom-papers were issued in Fung Province, 227 to Ethiopian refugees.3 Slaves were settled in Gezira

villages, as well as in Fung Province, often assisted with non-recoverable government loans. Raids took place until 1938, and the issue of freedom-papers continued. Second World War hostilities between Sudan and Italian forces and the Sudan Defence Force occupation of many border districts reduced raiding.4

4. Eastern Sudan-Kassala, Suakin, Red Sea Provinces

Stretching eastwards from the Nile to the Red Sea ports, this region was highly involved in slave-dealing. As well as being active participants in slave-trading on their own behalf, these nomadic peoples were an important link in the movement of slaves from riverain areas and east-central Sudan to the ports (including the traffic from Abyssinia). As these sources of supply dried up, so too did this region's slave-

dealing. Early anti-slaving activity was concentrated here. When Egypt's Slavery Department was extended to the Sudan in 901 , an English inspector was immediately posted at Khartoum, and ... the country between Berber and Kassala [will be] constantly patrolled by a portion of the camel corps, whilst another portion, whose headquarters will be at Suakin, will deal with the country lying between that port and Kassala.5

In I900 the nomads were 'constantly buying and selling amongst themselves '.6 In the same year Kassala's Governor reported that eleven persons were convicted under the Penal Code and 'fifty three slaves have been released ',7 and in Suakin district I 3 convictions and 66 freedom-papers had been issued by the Administration and 129 freedom-papers by the Slavery Department.7 But the freed slaves '. . . once they feel themselves free, do not readily take to work, although labour is much in demand '.8 Side-effects of the slavery heritage were obvious in I901 when a census was attempted:

The black population of Gedaref has increased by immigration, but I do not trust the returns, as these people are very shy and suspicious when questioned as to their numbers, owing to their dread of being handed over to the Arabs as servants.9

I Sudan, 1929, p. I33 (White Nile Province). owners, as late as I955.' (C. W. W. Greenidge, 2 Papers Concerning Raidsfrom Ethiopian Territory Slavery, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958,

into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, London: H.M.S.O., p. 202.) I found no Sudan documentation of this, Foreign Office, Cmd. 4153 (Ethiopia no. i), I932. though rumour indicated the continuation of

3 Communication (to the League of Nations) dated 'refugee' flow. x6 April I934, op. cit., para. 3. 5 Egypt, I898, p. 41.

4 'There are, moreover, the well-authenticated 6 Egypt, 1900, p. 78. 7 Ibid. stories of slaves escaping from the Province of 8 Ibid., p. 79. Wallega in Ethiopia into the Sudan, pursued by their 9 Egypt, 1901, p. 74.




As elsewhere in Sudan (especially Kordofan and Darfur) the need to cover vast areas with poor transportation and communication facilities hindered anti-slavery enforcement:

In the eastern Soudan, a certain amount of kidnapping is still going on, and the extent of the country to be guarded is so great that it is very difficult to put an entire stop to this practice. From Kassala to the Red Sea, there is a continuous range of rugged mountains, inhabited by the Gemaleb tribe, who are very old offenders, and the facility with which they can harbour slaves encourages the kidnapping traffic.I

Post-9o04 reports hardly comment on the slavery situation, except that in 1931: In the course of searches for arms a newly-kidnapped boy was discovered with his master.

The absence of any other trace of slavery in raids which surprised about one-sixth of a once notorious tribe confirms the belief that, save for an occasional deal with an Abyssinian poaching party, the traffic is practically dead.2

5. Khartoum and Omdurman

Frequent comments on the slave trade in this urban complex are found in both official and non-official literature. Apart from the numerous slaves in more wealthy merchant and agriculturalist households, these cities organized slave raids into other Sudan regions, particularly the south. In addition, slave-buying from West Africa, Kordofan-Darfur, and Abyssinia was co-ordinated from these centres. The market would be not only within the cities but along the Nile's northern reaches, Mecca, and North Africa. In the fifty years preceding Anglo-Egyptian administration, 'the whole river valley (White Nile) from the Uganda border northwards became parcelled out among various groups of slave hunters employed by wealthy native merchants in Khartoum and elsewhere'.3 In 1899 forty-seven persons were 'brought to justice for kidnapping, buying and selling slaves',4 and it is remarked in 904 that '. . . it is very probable that in Omdurman there is a considerable remnant of the old slave- trading community who do not lose a chance of trafficking whenever possible'.5

Here, as with the deeply Moslem northern riverain Sudan, children quickly became slave substitutes. Lt.-Col. Stanton writes in I907:

The great difficulty is to get them to let children complete their studies. As soon as a father thinks his child has learned enough to enable him to earn money he wants to remove him from school. At a meeting lately held in Omdurman, a queer objection was made to the boys being taught stone cutting. On inquiry I find that anything to do with stone is considered a work only fit for slaves, while carpentering and blacksmith's work is considered highly honourable. I pointed out the fallacy of this supposition, but, although they agreed for the time, I have not been able to remove the superstition against this form of industry.6 This and kindred 'superstitions' are still very much part of the Sudanese value system.7

' Egypt, 1904, p. I33. 2 Sudan, 1931, p. ii8. administration) into the Sudan. For the total picture 3 J. Stevenson-Hamilton, 'The Dinka Country the reader is again referred to Allan Moorehead,

East of the Bahr-el-Gebel ', Geographical Journal, vol. op. cit. 4 Egypt, 1899, p. 53. lvi, no. 5, November 1920, p. 390. In fact it is not 5 Egypt, 1904, p. 133. unrealistic to state that anti-slavery sentiment was a 6 Egypt, 1907, pp. 64-65 (Khartoum Province). major factor in bringing Britain (through Egyptian 7 'To take a minor example, we tried to get a

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Urban discontent with slavery abolition was as vociferous as elsewhere, and for similar reasons:

A good deal of land has gone out of cultivation as a consequence of the slaves having left to find more remunerative employment in the Railways or Works Department. The people own that they are contented and happy, with this one bar, that now their children have to work where formerly their slaves did all that was required. So long however as the taxation is kept light and they can afford to pay the same with moderate ease they consider that the benefits bestowed on them by the Government balance the great drawback of losing their slaves.

6. The Pilgrimage No extended mention has yet been made of the Mecca Pilgrimage as a vehicle

through which slaves from West Africa, and those acquired in Sudan, were moved both to Sudan markets and to Arabia. As with regional slavery references selectively quoted earlier, official document notations regarding this traffic are legion. Such

slaving is another example of the 'non-enslavement of fellow Muslims' dictum not

being applied, as most of these slaves were Moslem (though rarely of pure Arab stock, and therefore less ' pure ').

Less easy to detect and eradicate than the raiding and plundering variety, this more subtle slaving was combated in several ways:

... the system by which all travellers from the west must be in possession of a pass from their country of origin showing the numbers of the party and the relationship to one another, coupled with the organization of the Slavery Police in Darfur on the western frontier, and on the Red Sea littoral and the Abyssinian frontier on the east, is undoubtedly a deterrent to those who might otherwise engage in this traffic.

The ordinary police force of the country deals with many cases that occur in the interior, but it would be almost impossible for them to carry out this special work of checking attempts to use the Soudan as a slave route between West Africa and Arabia.2

The most typical traffic which this registration system was designed to prevent was that of a pilgrim family selling their children or young dependants in Mecca, or

perhaps in Suakin, Port Sudan, or Jedda. French and British administrations of the several Sudan Zone countries co-operated in this registration process. Pilgrims also

go through quarantine controls at exit and entry points, and secure a deposit with the authorities against their return. These measures have made the practice more difficult since discrepancies in numbers are more easily located. But, because the pilgrim needed income while en route, the kidnapping and selling of slaves was a normal method of

obtaining it:

... as the Fellata Sheik is usually in league with the local natives, it is very difficult to detect these transactions, or stop them.

simple form of metal-work (using tin) into the tion in the Sudan', Oversea Quarterly, vol. i, no. 2, schools. We trained teachers and got tools supplied June I958, p. 5I-reprint of a lecture published in to the schools, and we stuck at it, I think, for five RuralLife, March I958 (produced by Department of years. But it never caught on. There was too much Education in Tropical Areas, University of London, public prejudice against tinsmiths and even though Institute of Education).) we introduced new designs we could never over- ' Wingate, 1908, p. 556 (Khartoum Province). come it.' (V. L. Griffiths,' An Experiment in Educa- 2 Egypt, 1914-19, p. 123.




The confidence of a young man or girl is obtained, he or she is persuaded to go to his host's farm or house: on the way he is knocked on the head, and before morning he finds himself on a camel miles away from anybody but Bedawin: again bogus claims for lost relatives are made and by forged evidence proved before Egyptian officials or even in some cases before an unsuspecting European: all sorts of dodges are resorted to to cover transactions which are, in essence, pure slave dealings.I

D. SUMMARY OF PRESENT-DAY EFFECTS

How does this value heritage affect economic activity in I962? Across northern Sudan, foreign labour (particularly Westerners-discussed in more detail below) has filled most wage jobs. And between Sudanese groups historical relationships continue. In western and west-central Sudan, Nuba and Southerners (Dinka and Shilluk

especially) still work for cattle nomads, tending food cultivations and, more recently, working at rainland short-staple cotton production.2 Though they are wage labourers, not slaves or serfs, social relationships appear unchanged: they are still regarded as

culturally inferior.3 But the economic effect has been to stimulate trade between these groups along the Bahr el Arab and in the Nuba mountains. Southerners will

normally take part of their wages in both grain and cattle, as well as cash and manufactured goods. The net effects are positive, stimulating movements of wage workers out of the Nuba Mountains and the south, and redistributing gradually increasing incomes (between groups and geographically).4

In northern, riverain Sudan, the absence of slaves, increasing per capita shortage of irrigable land, gradual diminution of the size of family plots (through hereditary division), and the expansion of commercial, household, teaching, and white-collar

employment opportunities in the Three Towns and Gezira, have meant that an

increasing percentage of a rather parasitic land-owning and commercial community has been forced and able to move elsewhere.5 Roughly half of this region's cash

I R. H. Palmer, Report on a Journey from Maidugari, Nigeria to Jeddah in Arabia, London: Colonial Office, African (West) no. I072, August 1919, p. 15.

2 (. . it is no exaggeration to say that most of the cattle-owning tribes regard cultivating as unpleasant, degrading work, which within living memory was performed by slaves bought with the wealth derived from their cattle.' (S. C. J. Bennett, E. R. John, and J. W. Hewison, 'Animal Husbandry', article in J. D. Tothill (ed.), op. cit., p. 65I.)

3 These traditional relationships still apply right across the Sudan Zone wherever Baqqara (Baggara) dwell. 'Most inhabit fixed villages during the rainy season where cultivation is done by Negro serfs and clients' (J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in West Africa, op. cit., p. I7).

4 Administration and Agricultural Department District and Province monthly and annual reports document this worker pattern thoroughly. See also R. C. Colvin, Agricultural Survey of the Nuba AMoun- tains, Khartoum: Ministry of Agriculture, I939, esp. p. II.

5 Here again official and non-official literature historically support these patterns. Population den- sity in this riparian strip was recently estimated at 428 persons per square mile: '. .. although this does not equal the 495 persons to the square mile of over- populated Egypt, there is some foundation for the opinion that the Northern Province is uneconomic and should be regarded only as a reservoir to populate less densely settled parts of the Sudan.' (E. F. Aglen, 'The Economic Limitations to Future Develop- ment', article in Food and Society in the Sudan-Pro- ceedings of the r9a3 Conference of the Philosophical Society of the Sudan, Khartoum, I955, p. 272.) But Norther- ners resist moving to otherwise available rainland farming central clay plains regions because a heavy percentage of the population in those areas is Wes- terner or Sudanic-'Blacks '. See, for example, K. M. Barbour, Khor El Atshan, A Geographical Account of a Scheme of Agricultural Development in the Central Sudan, Khartoum: Gordon Memorial College, 1951, p. 10.

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income is remitted to it from its cooking and clerking 'expatriates'.' This is not to say that all traces of slavery are gone: they are not, but now take the form of binding land-rents, credit controls over renters, and other almost feudal financial and social obligations.2 As in nomadic western and west-central societies, it is estimated that perhaps 20 per cent. of the region's population is still performing some kind of forced labour, not the least part being female children and grandchildren of female household slaves.

Evidence of current economic effects of the slavery heritage is less abundant for eastern Sudan nomads. For at least 4,000 years the Beja (Bisharin, Hadendowa, Amarar, Beni Amer, and others) have occupied north-east and eastern Sudan and parts of Eritrea, have been moved through a series of pagan, Christian, pseudo-Christian, and Moslem faiths, and have a social structure which reflects strict political, ethnic, and

occupational divisions.3 Serf populations normally had more rights than slaves. Socio-economic stratifications were extremely complex, particularly among the Beni Amer, and several recent studies indicate that these still exist.4 The logic of the situation would also suggest that it is the serf and slave groups who entered railway and dock construction wage employment in the past, who are now engaged in Port Sudan dock and warehouse work, and cotton-picking in the Gash and Tokar flood- irrigated deltas. Wage employment has become economic manumission.5

But it is in the Gezira Scheme that the slavery heritage is affecting economic development most adversely, both because development effort is concentrated there, and because rising incomes permit realization of the economic and social goals of traditional values. This short paper cannot describe with justice the social and economic scope of this gravity-flow irrigation economy, identified by the area irri-

gated from the Sennar dam which spans the Blue Nile 250 miles south of the Three Towns. The land so utilized is the upside-down 'V' created by the junction of the White and Blue Niles (' Gezira' is equivalent to 'island '). It totals i million feddans (just under 2,000 square miles).6 The Manaqil Extension, another 830,000 feddans (thus almost doubling the size of the total unit), will use an enlarged Sennar

I The writer's Ph.D dissertation was entitled The Methodology of Regionalizing and Distributing African Income: the Sudan. The nation was divided into nine economic regions and Census and National Income Accounts data (based on administrative partitions -Districts and Provinces) reoriented to describe these more homogeneous policy-making units. Socio-economic group (and per capita) output and expenditure profiles, and regional labour force incomes, were computed. It is hoped that these more useful economic statistics will be published in the not too distant future.

2 Cf. W. K. Campbell, Report on Cooperative Possibi- lities in the Sudan, Khartoum: Sudan Government, 1946; M. W. Wilmington, 'Aspects of Money- lending in Northern Sudan', Middle East Journal, vol. ix, no. 2, spring I955, pp. 139-46.

3 A concise history is A. Paul, A History of the Beja Tribes of the Sudan, Cambridge University Press, I954.

4 Detailed slave and serf material may be found in S. F. Nadel, 'Notes on Beni Amer Society'. Sudan

Notes and Records, vol. xxvi, part I, 1945, pp. 51-94; A. Paul, ' Notes on the Beni Amer ', Sudan Notes and Records, vol. xxi, part i, I950, pp. 223-45.

s For effects of economic change on Beja peoples see, for example, D. Newbold, 'The Beja Tribes of the Red Sea Hinterland', article in J. A. de C. Hamilton (ed.), The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan From Within, op. cit., pp. 140-64; C. G. and B. Z. Selig- man, ' Note on the History and Present Condition of the Beni Amer (Southern Beja) ', Sudan Notes and Records, vol. xiii, part i, I930, pp. 83-97. For Port Sudan Beja socio-economic patterns see B. A. Lewis, Report of a Social Survey of Deim El Arab and the Beja Stevedores of Port Sudan, Khartoum: Ministry of the Interior, Lands Department, I954. Lewis (p. 19) felt that poverty drove many to port employment because 89 per cent. had no animals back home. The fact of poverty I agree with, but suggest that they had no traditional wealth because they were in slave or serf capacities. Herd-owners rarely enter wage employment-they do not need to.

6 One feddan = 10o38 acres = 0-420 hectares.

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dam system but will rely primarily on a new Blue Nile dam now almost completed at Er Roseires near the Ethiopian border. The first several thousand Extension tenancies are already operating and the entire project is scheduled for completion in

I963. Thus, potential cotton and grain output, exports, government income, income

generated within the economy, and employment will all be markedly increased and in many instances doubled in a few years.

Officially opened in I925, the Gezira has been the core of Sudan's economic

development. Its exported long-staple cotton and cotton seed provide roughly three-

quarters of the foreign exchange which permits importation of the nation's development tools, most of its skilled and technical manpower, manufactured consumer goods, and certain essential foods (e.g. sugar). As goes Gezira, so goes Sudan.I Gezira (in I956) contained 7-I per cent. of the nation's population but produced

8 i per cent. of the national income-64 per cent. of the region's output (by value) was farm products. Some 56 per cent. of all Gezira spending emanated from Govern- ment, and this amount was 76*7 per cent. of all Government expenditure. Average per capita income was approximately 37I and average labour force member annual income ?232. These are second highest of any of the Sudan's nine economic regions, the only region higher being the Three Towns urban complex (Khartoum, Khartoum North, and Omdurman) with I 10 and ?315 respectively. These must be compared with national average figures of ?28 per capita and ?75 per labour force member. The Gezira has the highest agricultural income in the nation (the Gash and Tokar

flood-irrigated cotton-growing areas have per capita and labour force member

average incomes of ?41 and ?III respectively).2 There are approximately 3I,000 official tenants, which Manaqil will expand offi-

cially to 5o,ooo in several years. But there are in fact nearly 5o,ooo already, owing to

tenancy-splitting. While the typical tenant has approximately 40 feddans, these have been parcelled out (privately) into plots of 20, Io, and 5 feddans. In some cases, however, combination has effected much larger tenancies managed by often absentee tenants. Each tenant is responsible for providing the wage labour necessary to sow, weed, and pick his crop. Theoretically, such wage workers should only be needed to perform tasks with which the tenant and his family are physically unable to cope, especially during extra-busy weeding and picking periods. But deeply ingrained social attitudes vitiate such economics-tenants employ labour to the limit of their income because agricultural labour is 'slave labour' and socially demeaning.

The Scheme had to transform the Moslem nomad, semi-nomad, and rainland farmer into a tenant. He had heretofore been geared to traditional modes of economic behaviour, and accustomed to clear-cut social and economic relationships wherein respective duties and obligations were historically defined, and' the tradition of slave labour for agricultural purposes had been well established for several generations '.3

' The Gezira is the social laboratory of the 2 Data from dissertation, op. cit.; tenancy, labour Sudan: ithas been said that "what fails in the Gezira force, and other Gezira statistics which follow are must be regarded as a general failure; what succeeds from standard Gezira Board or Department of there may be a widespread success ".' (W. E. Styler, Statistics publications unless otherwise noted. 'Adult Education in the Sudan', African Affairs, 3 C. W. Beer, 'The Social and Administrative vol. lvi, no. 225, October I957, p. 291.) If this is the Effects of Large-scalePlanned Agricultural Develop- case, the ensuing comments will indicate clear ment', Journal of African Administration, vol. v, no. 3, grounds for economic pessimism. July 1953, p. 114. ' I existe en effet dans la vall6e

Bb

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These relationships were based on an economic system no longer operating. He was

ignorant of modern technology, the intricate timing of processes, and the essential interrelatedness of many small but equally important operations. He was unaccus- tomed to receiving directions about practically every aspect of his economic (and social) affairs, and entirely uneducated in the accounts and documentation implicit in an integrated capitalized operation. To expect such a person (in Sudan or anywhere else) to adjust into a modern agricultural factory overnight is patently unrealistic. The attempt has been made to remould his attitudes to property-ownership, manual and agricultural labour, employer-employee relationships, government, and organized agriculture (with its immobility implications) as a way of life.'

Gezira's co-ordinated economic patterns-communications and transport; shops, markets, and housing; relatively well-dressed population; and its bustle-all provide evidence that thirty-five years of concentrated investment and research have performed economic miracles. But present-day ramifications of this earlier value system are governing cumulatively the economic behaviour of tenants and most of the wage- labour force. As incomes have risen it has become increasingly possible to finance those social activities, those aspects of ostentation and conspicuous consumption, which the (pre-Scheme and) present culture considers intrinsic to self-esteem and social advancement. The most desired ingredient in this ambition pattern, now as in the past, is relief from manual agricultural labour. This withdrawal of effort by both tenants as profits rise, and most workers as total wage income expands, has resulted in the economic fact that twice as many people (at far more than twice the cost) are needed to produce the same bale of cotton or ton of grain as were required twenty years ago.2 In other words, rising income levels, the result of several decades of technical and other research and investment, are simultaneously the vehicle

through which a diminishing rate of increase in total and per capita income is effected. Production (and therefore selling) costs are artificially swollen. Sudan cotton does not have a world monopoly. As in so many raw-commodity markets, cotton is highly price-competitive; the slightest price increase affects the sale of a considerable portion of the crop.3

du Nil une tradition solide de contemption du travail manuel en general et du travail du sol en parti- culier, qui de tout temps a 6te r6serve a des esclaves. Aussi les attributaires du Gezira Scheme... n'ont-ils pas cru devoir exercer eux-m6mes le metier d'agri- culteur.' (A. Hauser, 'Colons africains au Soudan', Le Monde non chretien [nouvelle s6rie], no. 37, janvier- mars 1956, p. 7I.)

I The strong nomadic background shows itself in many ways, including the constant attempt to keep animals in entirely unsuitable places. While fodder is grown, fencing is practically absent. ' The patriarchal tradition of flocks and herds as the foundation of social position is still a living reality, and men invest their cotton profits in them regardless of the economics of the situation.' (G. M. Culwick, Diet in the Gezira Irrigated Area, Sudan, Khartoum: Sudan Government, Survey Department Publication no. 304, I951, para. 65.)

2 Mrs. Culwick's carefully compiled sample data

support gross output volume-number of workers data:

Picking Season Pickers per Pickers per (avg.) S.U.a 0oo Kantarsb

1934-8 43 II 1939-43 5'5 13 1944-8 7-0 I8 I949-53 8'9 19

(a) Ten feddans of cotton (part of tenancy fallow, part in food and other crops, in any given year).

(b) I kantar of cotton in Gezira is 3 I oI pounds of unginned cotton. For other commodities in other places the kantar has different pound-weight equivalents.

(G. M. Culwick, A Study of the Human Factor in the Gezira Scheme, Barakat (Sudan), I958, para. 347. Type- script used with her kind permission.)

3 The Sudan Government increasingly attempts to barter its cotton, not sell it on the open market-

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Approximately 40 per cent. of the 200,000 person wage labour force is domiciled within the scheme. These workers secure year-round employment in agriculture, with the Gezira Board, the Irrigation Department, other official agencies, and in town and village commerce. Seasonal immigrants are the other 6o per cent. Half (of the 6o per cent.) are nomads from adjoining semi-desert and drier (more northern) Central Clay Plains regions. The remainder are of two kinds-Sudanese farmers (Sudanic and Arab) from Qoz Sands and Central Clay Plains districts; and Westerners. This former group is growing in numbers as soil erosion, overcrowding, and declining productivity force them into acquiring income other than from their farms. Like the nomad, they come to the scheme primarily for food. Participation at all and length of stay in wage markets are dependent upon the success of their own rainland crops, the level of Gezira money wages (and real income in the form of grain), and the strength of the desire to return home. They may not arrive at all if rains are satisfac- tory, no locusts appear, and no bugs and diseases consume their food supply. Thus, between the nomads and the reluctant farmer, over half the picking wage-labour force (on which the entire Scheme depends, not to mention national development via government income and investment) is a fluctuating variable, and unpredictable in terms of both appearance and duration of stay.

This unreliability makes the resident wage-worker's role, and the Westerners', of the utmost importance. Gezira Westerners come from various places.' Some are domiciled within the Scheme and are included in the above-mentioned 40 per cent. Others leave Qoz Sands and Central Clay Plains rainland cultivations, both east and west, to earn the high picking wages. Others are on active pilgrimage from West Africa to Mecca, and use Gezira (as well as cash cropping and Three Towns, Gash and Tokar labour markets) to obtain travel money. Still others, classed as Westerners in Census and other official materials, are from Darfur, either pushed out permanently because of declining fertility and other factors, or on a one year or longer work trip away from home to increase incomes. The Westerner is more of an 'economic man' than the typical Northern Sudanese, who regards Westerners as the natural economic descendants of the slaves. The Westerner increases income by moving between wage labour markets and cash cropping. He will undertake tasks which the Northern Sudanese either cannot or will not perform-jobs such as canal cleaning which are essential to the Scheme's progress. The tenant's active propensity to hire labour up to the limit of his income has found a willing co-operator, but it costs the tenant as much as the Westerner can extract. He is the most efficient, durable, and reliable member of the Sudan wage-labour force. Though in numbers less than a quarter of Gezira labour supply, he is responsible for half of the wage-worker output. In spite of the recognized fact that without his performing certain tasks no cotton would be exported, anti-Westerner resentment reached the point where he was disallowed

the rising costs, and attendant lower profit margins in the Gezira', Sudan Notes and Records, vol. xxxiii, per ton, in fact explain the main forces which insist 1952, pp. 64-IIo; and D. B. Mather, ' Migration in on producing more tons. the Sudan ', op. cit. It is important to recognize that

I Of the considerable Westerner literature see in the Westerner, though Moslem, is heavily Sudanic particular Memorandum on the Immigration and Distri- and Negroid, and from predominantly agricultural bution of West Africans in the Sudan, Khartoum: Sudan cultures. Farming is not dishonourable. Fifteen per Government, n.d. (probably 1947); Isam Ahmed cent. of Sudan's population is Westerner, and 40- Hassoun, ' " Westerner " Migration and Settlement o5 per cent. of its wage-labour force.

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tenancy-holding in the mid-I95o's.' While they still have a few, the percentage of Westerner-held tenancies is declining-new tenants are Northerners.

Thus the entire framework of economic development, the whole motivation of past and present Sudan Governments in trying to promote commercialized agricultural industries, has run directly up against one of the most deeply felt social values- few want to be agriculturalists. The typical farmer, in Gezira and elsewhere, is more interested in increasing his income for social reasons than as proof of his farming ability. The number of workers he can hire is, per se, an indication of his importance. The economic result is that he does less and less himself.

. . . With this tendency towards less and less personal work, the tenants complain that 'The tenancy eats all the profits '. A period of plentiful money, culminating in a season (1950-195 I) when the farmer's dream came true and a bumper crop coincided with soaring prices (the average amount paid out per S.U. was about LE 800) has intensified the traditional attitude towards field work and emphasized the low status of the field labourer.2 ... the word ' slave' is freely used shorn only of its connotation of ownership, for paying wages does not of itself alter the social relationship. The trend is, of course, most marked in the upper social economic levels, but these set the standards towards which others strive.3

Another observer comments, on the peak demand for labour in weeding and picking periods, that these

... automatically result in an acute shortage of family-labor necessitating an appeal to the labor markets. The bigger the size of the farm, the more urgent the need for extraneous help, the relative importance of the labor (of) the tenant's family simultaneously suffering a proportionate minimization and devaluation. This increasing necessity for hired labor actually stimulates the social aversion to a personal preoccupation with tillage; an aversion whose growth keeps pace with the pomp attendant upon the status of 'big landowner '. The final result is for one completely to abstain from any tillage whatsoever. The growing money-income in prosperous cotton-years is therefore well matched by a steep increase in the quantity of hired labor, an increase far exceeding the surplus in crops.4

Other economic effects of this value system relate to consumption habits, debt, income redistribution, taxation, and labour shortages elsewhere in Sudan. The typical tenant attempts to duplicate the consumption habits of those with higher incomes. While this occurs in most societies, such copying almost invariably means more 'conspicuous consumption', more purchasing of goods and indulging in services to satisfy social objectives, items which are irrelevant to higher physical living standards. Diet and education are normally not improved, housing remains much the same,

Peak Westerner holdings were in 1946 just over 2 G. M. Culwick, ' Social Change in the Gezira 3,000 tenancies (I2-5 per cent.). Westerners were Scheme', Civilisations, vol. v, no. 2, I955, p. I77. given tenancies in the early days of the scheme as 3 G. M. Culwick, A Study of the Human Factor.. not enough Northerners came forward, particularly op. cit., para. io8. See also E. A. Stanton, ' The during the 1930's depression. It is not coincidental Anglo-Egyptian Sudan ', Journal of the Africa Society, that the demands to bar Westerners came in a prospe- vol. xi, no. 43, April I912, p. 263, for a similar rous period, when tenant income was at its height. quotation. In view of the Westerner's superior productivity, 4 G. H. Van Der Kolff, The Social Aspects of the disallowing his tenancy holding cannot be considered Gezira Project in the Sudan, Khartoum, 1958, p. 8 as an economic (as against a political) decision. (mimeographed).

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female drudgery is little relieved, and so on.' High-income years witness a considerable shift of transport, retail, and service resources to Gezira from Khartoum and Omdurman. Low-income years disturb such patterns again-I have no wastage measurements, but wastage there is.

Debt is another important economic aspect of this picture. The tenant goes into debt (a) to attract and hold workers, and (b) to buy goods and services he feels

necessary to self-esteem. Workers go into debt to buy goods and services. Because the tenant-employer insists on guaranteeing himself labour supplies, he advances cash and goods to his workers, often a year ahead, binding them in every way possible through economic, social, and moral persuasion, so that he (and his family) will not have to stoop to the work of weeding or picking. The tenant, therefore, is

simultaneously both debtor and creditor, and almost invariably unable (or inclined) to keep records in either direction. This tenant-worker relationship cannot be called serfdom or peonage, as there is no effective way in which the tenant can recover

unpaid worker debts, nothing to force the worker to reappear next season, and

nothing (except high wages) to prevent a worker leaving a particular employer mid-

way through the season-wages rise daily, almost frantically, as the season progresses and picking and cleaning deadlines draw closer. Such advances, credit, and perquisites are an unrecorded but essential part of the wage bill. For the Westerner and a great number of the non-nomadic and resident workers, wages are cash, in advance when

possible, and often at contract or piece rates. But with the majority of workers, particularly the White and Blue Nile nomads and their families, the relationship with tenants is more traditionally oriented, the paterfamilias holding himself responsible for accommodating, entertaining, feeding, &c., the hired family (and their animals). Such workers are almost invariably less efficient than 'economic men' employees, but must be hired in ever greater numbers per feddan and per ton for both social and economic reasons: there are not enough 'economic men'.2 The few Westerner and other 'economic men' tenants employ far fewer workers.3

Another important, and in many ways positive, economic effect of this value

system is that it redistributes income. A greater number of persons within the Scheme receive a larger percentage of the region's total income. Income is diffused geographically as well, in that wage workers carry Gezira cash, food, and other products back to their rural homes. Gezira has the most evenly distributed income of any of the nine Sudan economic regions.4 This fact has implications on the volume and type of

I See in particular G. M. Culwick, Diet in the 2 'In general... they [nomad picking workers] do Gezira ..., op. cit., and her' Social Factors Affecting not like hard work; they are improvident, and their Diet', article in Food and Society in the Sudan . . ., necessaries few. Perhaps the most important problem op. cit., pp. 173-212; Norah G. Spelman,' Women's of the Irrigation Scheme as a whole is not an engi- Work in the Gezira, Sudan', Oversea Education, vol. neering or an agricultural, but a psychological one.' xxvi, no. 2, July I954, pp. 66-69; J. R. Hyslop, (A. R. Lambert, 'The Sudan Gezira, the Land and 'Egypt and the Sudan', Contemporary Review, no. the People', Geographical Magazine, vol. ix, no. i, 1030, October I95I, pp. 2o5-Io. On the I950/I 1939, pp. I42-3.) bumper crop and soaring Gezira income, Hyslop 3 Reliable picking-labour and tenant statistics by states (p. 208): '. . . This sudden access to wealth number, sex, tribe, size of tenancy, and so on, are has created serious danger of inflation, for the now available. See in particular Survey of Labour Sudanese does not save money in banks, invest it, Conditions in the Gezira, Khartoum: Sudan Govern- buy insurance or houses on mortgage. He spends ment, Department of Statistics, Occasional Statistical it on rich foods, drinks, gold bangles for his women- Paper no. i, September 1959. folk.' 4 Clearly shown in the writer's dissertation.

38I




consumer goods and services purchased, and through this on Government's indirect tax revenue (increasing it). It also affects the demand for imported goods, putting pressure in two directions simultaneously: on foreign exchange balances (an adverse effect), and on the need to manufacture more consumer goods domestically (positive effect on employment, productivity, and reduced pressure on foreign exchange balances).

There are also important implications regarding direct personal taxation. The Sudan Government, attempting to increase the volume of development revenue, is

considering such taxation.I In Gezira (as compared to the Three Towns, for example) there are relatively fewer extremely high incomes, and relatively more middle-income earners. Other factors are naturally relevant to considerations of personal income taxation. It may very well be necessary to tax tenant income directly to reduce the demand for 'extra' labour (assuming that a Government overwhelmingly composed of persons with values similar to those of the tenants will do such a thing). This is a pressing consideration. The serious shortage of wage labour owing to tenancy expansion is increasingly aggravated (some say caused) by' surplus' labour on existing tenancies-new Manaqil tenants are ex-Gezira labourers. These deliberations natu-

rally carry political implications. The writer's impression is that, while this entire business of too much labour being demanded and used is clearly recognized, just as

clearly recognized is the cultural, social, and economic demarcation between 'ins' and 'outs'-the present 'ins' being the past 'ins'; and the present 'outs' being the

past 'outs'. Economic development and rising incomes are not reducing these basic historical antipathies-they are reinforcing them.2

This slavery value system also prejudices rising average output in the rainland

grain-growing districts. These medium-rainfall regions annually provide riverain, urban, and nomadic Sudan with the bulk of its grain, and increasingly export greater quantities. Moslem, northern, rainland employers (not Westerners) are as deeply conscious of the degrading nature of 'slave' farming labour as their Gezira equivalents. They too depend on Westerner labour. This problem was discussed in the 947 meetings of the Administrative Council for the Northern Sudan by Mustafa Effendi Abu Ela:

It appeared from Mr. Macintosh's report that the majority of Sudanese farmers in the Gedaref area employed labour and did not cultivate for themselves. He traced this dislike

I Cf. Z. M. Kubinski, ' Indirect and Direct Taxa- tion in an Export Economy: A Case Study of the Republic of the Sudan', Public Finance (Holland), vol. xiv, nos. 3-4, 1959, pp. 316-43.

2 Northern Sudanese politicians and senior civil servants have a habit of talking their way around this issue. It takes many forms, such as pride in development funds spent in southern Sudan, and so on. A favourite claim is that in Gezira 'the evils of feu- dalism have been liquidated' (Syed Hammed Tew- fik, 'The Sudan Today', Pakistan Horizon, vol. viii, no. i, March 1955, p. 297). Non-Sudanese do the same-' Imagine a country in Africa . . . without either a foreign or indigenous Kulak class . . (L. Silberman, 'State Socialism in the Sudan', Libertar (Johannesburg), vol. v, no. I I, October 1945,

pp. 42-43.) The concept of ' Kulak', Gezira style, is discussed in J. D. M. Versluys, 'The Gezira Scheme in the Sudan and the Russian Kolkhoz: a Comparison of two Experiments ', Economic Develop- ment and Culture Change, vols. i and ii, 1954: no. I, pp. 32-59; no. 2, pp. 120-35; no. 3, pp. 216-35. C. W. Beer raises the concept of tenants as Kulaks in a consumption sense: '. . . Do they form a rich "Kulak" class who by their standard of living excite the envy of the less fortunate?' ('Social Development in the Gezira Scheme', African Affairs, vol. liv, no. 214, January I955, p. 50). Northern Sudanese attitudes towards Westerners are perhaps the most indicative of this economics versus politics split personality, discussed in the next foot- note.




of manual labour to the fact that slaves had previously done this type of work, which was therefore considered as menial.'

The Sudan Government has been attempting to increase grain production in under- utilized rainland districts (especially near Gedaref) by establishing mechanized farms.

Apart from technical problems associated with machinery operation and maintenance, crop strains, and so on, the most important obstacle has been labour

shortage. A series of partnership arrangements-partly participating-partly working, tenant-employee, and so on-have been attempted, but with limited success. The local householder much prefers his own cultivation to becoming involved with (to him) cumbersome, complicated, and onerous 'big-scheme' operations. When he is a tenant, he will not work, but cannot get labourers !2

In addition, Gezira attracts away any otherwise available labour force. The fact that so many 'extra' workers are absorbed in Gezira because of this value system means a denudation of the labour of other Sudan regions. Development projects initiated in deserving Sudan areas are prejudiced because the otherwise available labour force is in Gezira. Even urban and industrial labour forces (since the Scheme began) leave their ' secure' employment for the much higher, but seasonal, cotton-

picking wages. Such wages would not be so high (and hence so disruptive) if demand for workers was not inordinately inflated.

E. CONCLUSION

I have no statistics to support the contention that there are some 200,000 domestic slaves and serfs in northern Sudan. To quantify in I962 a group which was not measured in 1900 is obviously hardly possible with any accuracy. Legally, these conditions of dependency have been banned for six decades. But in view of the continuance of

Advisory Councilfor the Northern Sudan, Proceed- ings of the Seventh Session (held at the Palace, Khartoum, from the 20th to the 24th of May, r947), Khartoum: Sudan Government, n.d. (1948?), para. 7298. Mr. Mac- intosh, Labour Officer, presented a report on agricultural labour shortages, and the essential role of Westerners in achieved agricultural levels to that time. The entire discussion by these Northern Suda- nese leaders indicated clearly that, politically, the Westerner was considered a trouble-maker, disease- carrier, &c., and should be discouraged from Sudan residence (pilgrimage passage only). But they agreed that to the economy he was indispensable. It is interesting to notice that one of the Sudan's most able leaders, Mekki Abbas, one-time head of the Gezira Board, was a most outspoken anti-Westerner. Even Sudanese social researchers studying Wester- ners, such as Hassoun (op. cit.), tend to put the shoe on the wrong foot: '. . . Native tenants have been persuaded by cheap labour offering itself to sacrifice a considerable portion of their profits to satisfy their disposition for slackness and vanity by sitting back and employing casual labourers to do the work on their tenancies . .' (p. 89-italics mine). There is no doubt that rainland agricultural production suffered when slaves were allowed to leave.' The other factor

which made this type of grain production (terus) more significant formerly than now is labour. Slaves were widely employed on the rainlands by wealthy landowners and the total area under cultivation was probably larger than it is today' (John R. Randell, 'El Gedid-a Blue Nile Gezira Village', Sudan Notes and Records, vol. xxxix, 1958, p. 31). Terus (Teras) are hand-made banks for catching rainwater.

2 Cf. R. G. Laing, Mechanization in Agriculture in the Rainlands of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, I948-i9yi, Khartoum: Sudan Government, Survey Department Publication no. 750, I953 (esp. pp. 7, 60); Report of the Sorghum Mission to Certain British African Terri- tories, London: H.M.S.O., Colonial Office, Colonial Advisory Council of Agriculture, Animal Health, and Forestry, Publication no. 2, I95I (esp. pp. 20-21); and Working Party's Report on the Mechanical Crop Production Scheme, Khartoum: Sudan Government, Survey Department Publication no. 922, 1954 (esp. p. i6). The reader is reminded of an earlier comment that these rainland areas could be settled by northern riverain surplus population, thus providing more marketed grain, and seasonal labour for Gezira, Gash, and mechanized schemes. But they will not move to be neighbours to groups they historically consider inferior.

383




the cultural, political, economic, and social factors which surrounded and supported domestic slavery and serfdom systems, it cannot be assumed that these forms of servitude have vanished completely. Patterns of life, culture, religion, and values

generally, are similar now to what they were sixty years ago for most Sudanese. It would be necessary to illustrate with concrete examples that the economic and cultural foundations on which the servitude systems rested have changed so mar-

kedly that domestic slavery and serfdom are no longer commensurate with the rest of an altered value system.

To declare that this social phenomenon is extinct, and then find examples to prove that it is not, is an incorrect analytical procedure. It assumes that the systems have been legislated out of existence, which is not possible. It also assumes that all early Administration measures were directed towards active abolition of the status of

slavery, which is equally incorrect. Such a declaration also violates the very essence of the nature of social change. A society continues to function within a patterned and cohesive system of values until such time as an insistent economic, political, or social force necessitates alteration in that framework. This in turn gradually fosters new attitudes and new values. The long process entails integrating the new concept with other aspects of the social scene-it must be co-ordinated with the already existing subtle and intricate webs of attitudes and opinions which function as tenuous and unwritten regulators of activity. Though change is of course obvious in certain

heavy investment regions, the majority of Sudanese still live and work as their

grandparents did. The social institutions, the attitudes, the values, remain. In view of the rather conservative nature of these institutions, their intrinsic ability to resist the as yet relatively weak and inconstant stimuli to change, and the length of time

required to alter the value system, even in more dynamic societies, the theoretical contention that slavery values are still strong seems entirely logical.

There are other African regions which have been subjected to far greater impact from new ideas, techniques, and methods. These still have slaves, and concepts supporting the continuation of a class of masters and a separate class of servants or workers.I There is no reason to assume that Sudan society is different from other African groups in this respect, nor an exception to the basic forces which have in the

past governed and still govern social change, in the Sudan or anywhere else. The

fact of slavery will be part of the past when economic and social systems have so altered as to make the fact untenable; when the ideas of personal independence and

personal motivation, as distinct from the group's, are paramount; when levels of education and sophistication are such that each person can view himself as an isolated social unit whose wishes markedly affect his own economic and social fate.2

Most domestic slaves after the advent of organized Anglo-Egyptian administration were women and children. Effective and continuing formal education for women is still practically non-existent-female ignorance is as relatively unchanged as the

I The writer is (slowly) attempting to document historical lethargy due to the slave-labour legacy equivalent studies for the whole of Africa. Research could be remedied by a revision in the educational undertaken over the last several years clearly indi- system (Advisory Councilfor the Northern Sudan, Pro- cates the universal nature of this slavery concept, ceedings of the Second Session (held at the Palace, Khar- and its pertinence to African economic development. toum, from the pth to the loth of December, 1944),

2 The I944 Sudanese leader discussions regarding Khartoum: Sudan Government, n.d. (1945 ?), paras. Gezira tenants indicated that they thought that the 2214-17). No details were given.

384




cultural and social world in which they live. The child of a slave is a slave. A domestic slave's female offspring would have no reason to assume that her life would not be conducted on a similar pattern to that of her mother. She would fit into the network of social and economic relationships as she found them. Have there been powerful enough forces at work to increase her legal knowledge, her awareness that she does not have to be like her mother and grandmother, that she can break away from the accustomed patterns she grows up in; that by personal initiative and self-deter- mination she may assume a different life? Such questions raise doubts-the words themselves are probably not even in her vocabulary.

It must be remembered, too, just what a domestic slave is, for the motivation to abandon the status probably does not come from the situation itself. This is not a person who has no rights whatsoever, or one who can be treated with disdain or contempt. As a rule, the domestic slave is responsible for performing the more mundane domestic and agricultural duties which are essential to the household's proper maintenance and functioning. The domestic slave's physical standard of living is not measurably lower than his master's, or that of his master's wives.I The fact that the Administration, for economic reasons, did not enforce the rule that a master must rid himself of his slaves, but adopted instead the policy of encouraging domestic slaves to stay on if they were not being ill treated, must certainly have retarded the slave exodus. Persons who might have left at that time, in the prevailing circumstances of doubt and insecurity, if persuaded to remain, might not have thought of leaving when social conditions became more stable, civic peace established, and their particular household's economic position more firm. That household, then and now, would be more secure in every respect than an unknown and foreign outside world.

The effects of the legacy of slavery are most obvious in those areas where economic development is forcing structural and social changes; where efficient systems and machines are bringing new social and economic problems. These are the cities and, more especially, those regions where planned agricultural development is in process. But one must also include any region experiencing continuing economic and social pressures from the advent of cash crops, the increasing effects of labour migration, and the influences of expanding systems of transport. Labour situations in which the person who did the work was socially and economically dependent upon the employer, bound by a network of social and other obligations, are gradually being supplanted by more commercialized arrangements where the pre-arranged and mutually agreed-upon reward for the expenditure of labour power is economic only, either goods or cash. But it is slow.

Sudanese economic development hinges upon an increasing supply of wage workers in commercial, export-oriented agriculture. The historical values attached to agricultural employment (slave's work) mean that typically most northern Sudanese will not do it unless forced. The bulk of the Sudan's agricultural labour has traditionally

' Slaves generally speaking do not have a very and Records, vol. xxiii, part i, 1940, p. 183). ' One bad time and do not object to being taken into a finds the ex-slave rearing his master's children and town family, where they live in more comfortable marrying his own to them without occasioning more surroundings than they would have in their native than a passing comment, and often from their appear- land .. .' (W. E. Jennings-Bramley, 'Tales of the ance one would be hard put to it to say which was of Wadai Slave Trade in the Nineties (told by Yunes slave blood and which of free' (G. D. Lampen, 'The Bedris of the Majabra to the Author)', Sudan Notes Baggara Tribes ', op. cit., p. 131).

385




been performed by non-Northern, non-Moslem, non-nomad Sudanese, or foreigners. While these used to be slaves, such groups, now legally free agents, have not been increasing rapidly enough for the requirements of an expanding investment programme. Thus breaking down the value system connected with the slavery heritage (to obtain more wage-workers in agriculture) has become one of the Sudan's main economic problems. Because of this stigma, the Sudan Government's emphasis on the growth and export of long-staple cotton is automatically encountering a highly entrenched cultural resistance. Patterns of land allocation in the irrigated areas

(gravity-flow, flood, and pump schemes) and in mechanized grain districts, and a tenantry with custodianship of the productive areas who employ workers to help them, provide the basis for the increasing reinforcement of slavery attitudes. As incomes rise (wages and profits), the supply of effort tends to fall. Demand for labour rises simultaneously with a decrease in supply. This means a greater relative labour

'shortage' at lower levels of per capita output. Policy measures to solve this labour supply problem might include taxing away

that part of tenant income which provides the ' extra ' demand for labour. This might not only encounter political resistance, but also entail a reduction in incentives to become a tenant for a Northern, Moslem Sudanese, since he is using the system as a means to improve his status as defined in the traditional manner, a non-worker.

Why not let ' economic men' become the new tenants in the expansion areas, such as Southerners, Westerners, and others ? This would not only reduce the labour cost in each ton produced, but would also tend to distribute income back to those parts of the Sudan where it is most badly needed. In addition, there is a tendency for these

groups (Westerners and Southerners) to establish colonies wherever they settle.

They become self-perpetuating, and provide their own labour supply, both by the

process of natural population growth and by the attraction to them of others entering labour markets for the same reason-more income.

But it is also felt that a more constructive labour supply for the irrigated (and the

urban) areas would be encouraged by raising the living standards of the typical Qoz Sands and Central Clay Plains rainland farmer. If some of his economic insecurities were reduced (stabilized cash-crop prices, more secure water-supplies, more transport and communications, reduced insect-infestations, and so on), he would be more will-

ing, as his level of economic and social awareness increases, to enter wage employment, not merely to maintain income if his own crops are insufficient, but to satisfy a gradually rising level of wants. This is a mutually reinforcing process. The more often he enters wage-labour markets and encounters ' civilization ', the more rapidly does he become an ' economic man '. There are typically enough workers, at least to date, for the non-agricultural investment which does take place. Another policy measure might make non-agricultural investment relatively more important than at the present level of some 10 per cent. of total development investment. While wage labour is not popular in any case, it is agricultural wage labour which carries the lowest

prestige. But the Government is Moslem Sudanese, and perhaps automatically likely to

adopt policies which do not prejudice deeply felt cultural needs. The attempt is

being made to ' Islamize ' the Sudan; Arabic is being taught in all schools, and Islamic values injected into non-Moslem cultures. The insistence upon Moslem, Northern



SLAVERY IN THE SUDAN REPUBLIC 387

Sudanese tenants in the agricultural development schemes is per se an insistence upon reinforcing Northern Sudanese conceptions of an ideal socio-economic system. This means perpetuation of masters and servants, of elite and non-elite, of upper and lower classes.' While this cannot automatically be condemned, it must be pointed out that the economic base supporting class differences mitigates against rapid economic development and the maximization of human resources. An outsider has no right to suggest alterations in a people's value system. But given the Sudan's poverty, and the overwhelming problems of raising these low living standards, this value system means increasingly costly and less rapid economic change.

APPENDIX

TABLE I

Sudan: Estimated Population Prior to Dervish Rule, Losses During Dervish Rule (by Cause) and 190o Estimates of Population by Province

Populo Approximate loss during Population Dervish rule prior to o903

Province Dervish rule Disease Warfare Population

Bahr-el-ghazal . . .. i ,500,000 400,000 700,000 400,000 Berber . . . . . . 800,00,000 , 250,000 I00,000 Dongola . . . . . . 30,000 I I0,000 80,000 0o,0ooo Ghezireh . . . . . 550,00 275,000 125,000 I50,000 Wadi-Halfa . . . . . 55,0ooo 2,000 13,000 30,000 Kassala . . . . . . 500,000 300,000 I20,000 80,ooo Khartoum . . . . . 700,000 400,000 210,000 90,000 Kordofan . . . . . I,800,000 6oo,ooo 650,ooo 550,000 Sennar . . . . . oo,ooo 00,000 450,000 150,000 Suakin (town) . 20,000 4,000 5,500 10,500 Suakin (Arabs) . . . . . 300,000 I00,000 150,000 50,000 Kodah (Upper Nile Province) . . 900,000 300,000 450,000 150,000

Approximate total . . . . 8,525,ooo 3,451,000 3,203,500 1,870,500

Source: Egypt, I903, p. 79.

I .. but we must make sure that self-determina- tion for the north does not mean exploitation of the south. When one hears even an educated Northerner let slip, in an unguarded moment, the phrase "balad el abid"-the country of the slaves-one realizes

that the Arab predatory instinct is not yet dead.' (Angus Gillian, 'The Sudan: Past, Present, and Future', African Affairs, vol. xliii, no. 172, July I944, p. I24.)




TABLE 2

Sudan: Number of Persons Arrested and Number Convicted in Slave Cases, 190 o-I

Regions (Provinces)

Khartoum Berber Kassala White Nile Bahr-el-ghazal

Dongola Suakin Blue Nile Nuba Mts. Upper Nile Year Halfa Red Sea Sennar Kordofan Mongalla Sudan

AI C2 A C A C A C A C A C I905 .. .. I4 2 48 I3 17 I6 6 6 85 47 I906 .. .. 15 8 35 o 8 5 .... 68 23 1907 3 I 3 3 17 9 6 4 4 4 33 2I 1908 .. .. .. .. 25 3 .. 8 8 34 i

1909 4 4 I I 6 5 o 6 4 4 24 20 I9Io0 .. I.. 3 3 22 15 IO Io 36 28 191 .. .. 4 4 17 II 23 i6 I I 45 32 1912 .. .. .. 33 29 8 8 .. .. 41 37 1913 3 3 3 3 Io 7 8 6 4 4 28 23

Total II 8 40 31 194 90 112 76 37 37 394 242

I Number arrested. 2 Number convicted.

Source: Compiled from Legal Department Annual Reports, 1905-13 (typically attached to Wingate). Statistics in this form beyond 1913 could not be located (if they exist).

TABLE 3

Sudan: Number of Slave Cases Brought before Sudan Government Offcials During Selected Quartersfrom i October i9io to 3o September I9r3

Regions (Provinces)

Berber White Nile Kassala Dongola Blue Nile Red Sea

Quarter Year Halfa Sennar Suakin Sudan3

Ml F2 M F M F M F 4th I9I0 6i 8i 38 68 7 8 145 22i 1st I9I1 70 97 Ioi 76 17 2I 230 248 2nd 1911 107 i22 77 83 13 26 207 271 3rd 1911 89 I1o 35 24 4 7 I28 145 4th 1912 98 io6 34 52 13 I3 178 215 ist I9I3 72 IO8 59 69 22 i6 2I0 244 2nd I9I3 44 66 9? II3 I9 3I 247 276 3rd 19I3 69 63 II 3 i8 9 oI0 90

Totals 610 753 445 488 113 131 1480 I713

Males. 2 Females. 3 Sudan totals larger than sum of constituent Provincial statistics given as data for other Provinces either

not clear or not separately reported. I cannot explain the almost invariably greater female rates, unless they were more often the ' fall-guys '?

Source: Compiled from Slavery Department Annual Reports, and typically attached to Wingate. These quarters were chosen as others were either unobtainable, or did not contain Sudan-wide statistics. The difference in coverage of these data and those of Table 2 is essentially that these are persons suspected of slave trading (dealt with by the Slavery Department), while data of Table 2 are arrests and convictions by regular Police, Administration and Legal Departments for domestic slavery offences.

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TABLE 4

Selected List of Repatriated Slaves who took Refuge in the British Legation, Jedda (i93 0-7), and whose Initial Capture occurred in the Republic of the Sudan

Place and approximate Means by which brought Name date of enslavement to this country

Jamula Bint Muhammad Khairullah Ibn Qasam Saad Ibn Abdulkhair Maryam Bint Ash-Sheykh Farajullah Khadija Bint Hasanain

Abdullah Ahmed ibn Bashir

Saidi Bint Farajallah Mubarrak ibn Abdul Monin

Sa'dullah Ibn Abdurraham

Sa'ida Bint Huseyn

Jaber Ibn Darraj Abu Anja

Said Ibn Bakhit

Musa Ibn Nanlubi

Jaber Ibn Idha Ali ibn Adam Saad Ibn Salem

Abdul Razzaq Ibn Bakhit

Jabir Ibn Idha

Abdullah Ibn Muhammad Saidi Bini Ali

Rihan Faraj

Nasra ?

Bakr Uzzeyn

Berber, 1892 Dongola, I895 Tokar, 910o El Fasher, I890 Khartoum, 1896 Suakin, I 9

El Obeid, I890

El Obeid, 1900 Sudan, 1878

Kassala, I875

Khartoum, 1924

Khartoum, 1892

Dongola, 900o

Nuba Mountains, 1892

Nuba Mountains, 1903 Darfur, I900 Omdurman, 1898

Dongola, 1894

Nuba Mountains, 1904

Khartoum, 1920 El Fasher, I894

Hadda, Arabia, born in slavery about 1916

Kidnapped from Dar Wadai about 1916

El Fasher, 1911

Stolen with mother Stolen from his home Stolen with parents Stolen when a child Stolen as a child Stolen by a Nigerian and brought to

Medina Stolen and brought to the Hejaz via the

Farsan Islands Brought to the Hejaz via Qunfidha Stolen and brought by sambuq via

Massawa to Qunfidha Taken by Tokar and Hitaim and then by

sambuq to Lith Brought from Khartoum to coast, whence

by sambuq to Hejaz Taken to Suakin, whence by sambuq to

Jedda Brought up the Nile to Omdurman,

whence to Port Sudan (Suakin ?) and by sambuq to Jedda

Brought to Khartoum, Tokar, and sambuq to Jedda

Sambuq to Lith Sambuq from Suakin Brought with 3 5 other slaves to Tokar and

by sea to Jedda Sold at Berber, taken to Suakin, whence

by dhow to Jedda Taken to Hitaim, whence by sambuq to

Lith By dhow to north of Yanbu' Traded across the Sudan to Suakin,

whence by dhow to Jedda about 1904 (?)

Son of a Sudanese slave kidnapped from the Sudan and sold at Hadda

Taken overland to Suakin and then by dhow to Jedda

On death of her parents she was acquired by a man who claimed to adopt her but who sold her to another who brought her to the Hejaz by dhow

Source: Comprehensive lists of all slave refugees reaching the Jedda British Legation were submitted as Appendices to the Government of the United Kingdom's various reports to the Slavery Committee of the League of Nations. The above highly selected list is taken from U.K. Government reports to the League, League Documents nos. C. I89 (i). M. I45. 1936. VI and C. 188. M. I73. I937. VI. This is not all reported from the Sudan, merely a sample which attempts to show variations of capture, route, and dates. West African slaves were brought through Sudan on pilgrimage as late as I931.

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Resume

LE DWVELOPPEMENT PICONOMIQUE ET L'H?RITAGE DE L'ESCLAVAGE DANS LA RIIPUBLIQUE DU SOUDAN

LES economistes qui s'occupent du developpement des nations africaines reconnaissent de plus en plus que des politiques economiques realistes devraient etre basees sur une estima- tion approfondie des valeurs afin de prevenir les reactions a de telles politiques et de se rendre compte des forces economiques susceptibles de creer le changement le plus rapide en favorisant des attitudes positives et en rendant nulles celles qui resistent les impulsions vers un rendement effectif. Les attitudes envers la participation de la main-d'ceuvre salariee constituent un des aspects les plus importants de cette etude de valeurs.

Les nations africaines consacrent la plupart de leurs ressources economiques a la production de denrees destinees a l'exportation dans un effort d'obtenir davantage d'importations. Une penurie de la main-d'ceuvre est, par consequent, susceptible d'entraver le progres dconomique. Cependant, l'entree africaine sur les marches de la main-d'oeuvre salariee est associee, ici comme ailleurs, avec certaines attitudes envers le travail et le revenu (niveaux et composition). Le travail agricole - notamment dans le projet pour la culture du coton a fibre longue par irrigation dans le Gezira, qui regoit trois quarts des investissements a titre de developpement - est considere comme culturellement indesirable dans le Soudan

septentrional, parce qu'il etait autrefois le travail des esclaves. Les tenanciers du Gezira et d'autres Arabes musulmans du Soudan septentrional qui sont des employeurs prives (agricoles ou autres) subissent une perte de prestige et de position sociale s'ils s'abaissent a faire du travail dans les champs ou d'autre travail manuel lorsqu'ils possedent les moyens pecu- niaires d'employer d'autres personnes pour le faire.

Les ouvriers agricoles salaries d'une importance cruciale sont les peuples negroides du Soudan, les groupes soudaniques provenant des nations de l'Afrique Occidentale (des Occidentaux ostensiblement en cours de route d'un pelerinage a Mecca, qui ont besoin de

moyens pour payer les frais de voyage aller et retour, et qui souvent passent le reste de leur vie dans le Soudan), et certains autres groupes non-arabes. Les Arabes nomades et autres recolteurs saisonniers de coton ont egalement une importance pour le Gezira, bien qu'ils soient loin d'etre aussi nombreux ou aussi capables que les peuples soudaniques, et qu'ils aient tendance a ne rester dans un emploi que le temps necessaire pour gagner la somme visee. En d'autres mots, les meilleurs ouvriers salaries appartiennent a des groupes ethniques similaires ou identiques a ceux qui etaient autrefois des esclaves. Une situation mutuellement aggravante existe, par consequent, dans le marche de la main-d'ceuvre qui est lie a des niveaux de revenus avec paiement en especes. Pendant les annees quand les recoltes, les prix et les exportations sont satisfaisants, les revenus plus eleves des employeurs prives permettent une demande de main-d'ceuvre qui est augmentee d'une fagon disproportionnee. Simultanement, parce que les salaires sont eleves, les nomades et les autres ouvriers arabes obtiennent les sommes desirees rapidement et la main-d'ceuvre disponible diminue. Actuellement, il faut deux fois le nombre d'ouvriers par unite de production et par exploitation tenanciere moyenne en comparaison avec le nombre qui etait necessaire il y a deux decades. L'accroissement des depenses par unite de production entraine des benefices par tonne plus faibles, car les prix de vente sur le marche mondial n'ont pas augmente aussi

rapidement. Il en resulte que des efforts plus grands sont faits pour augmenter la production, ce qui aggrave la situation de la main-d'ceuvre.

Utilisant principalement les archives officielles, on a pu demontrer les effets economiques de l'abolition de l'esclavage par l'administration anglo-egyptienne parmi les groupes soudaniques septentrionaux les plus importants. La documentation de cet arriere-plan




historique avait trois objectifs. Le premier en etait d'indiquer la continuite des valeurs et des attitudes de la main-d'ceuvre salariee ayant des affiliations d'esclavage - elles ont peu change, et le developpement economique a renforce ces tendances negatives, retardant ainsi le taux de la croissance. Un autre but etait de demontrer l'utilite pour les recherches economiques de ces archives et rapports historiques locaux qui, jusqu'ici, ont ete a peine recueillis. Le troisieme but etait de suggerer que l'histoire recente de la main-d'ceuvre esclave dans le Soudan septentrional, pour autant qu'elle porte atteinte au developpement economique actuel, et d'apres sa documentation dans ces archives administratives classiques, pourrait fournir un modele ou une etude de cas d'un phenomene socio-psychologique ou culturel qui exerce une influence sensible sur le developpement economique dans la plupart des regions africaines.

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS NUMBER

P. C. C. EVANS. Lecturer in Education, University of London Institute of Education; formerly Education Officer, Kenya; late Chief Education Adviser, Government of Jamaica.

J. VANSINA. Associate Professor, Departments of Anthropology and History, State University of Wis- consin, Madison; carried out fieldwork among the Kuba (Kasai, Kongo), Ruanda and Rundi as research officer of IRSAC; author of Les Tribus Ba-Kuba et les peuplades apparentees (Ethnographic Survey), De la tradition orale, Esquisse de grammaire Bushong, L't8volution du royaume rwanda des origines a I9oo, and of various papers on the Kuba, Rwanda, Rundi and the history of Central Africa.

JOAN WESCOTT. Graduate Research Student, Department of Anthropology, University College, London; at present engaged in writing up field material on the art and religion of the Yoruba; author, in collaboration with P. Morton-Williams, of' The Symbolism and Ritual Context of the Yoruba Laba Shango ' (ournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 92, pt. i, I962) and other papers.

PETER F. M. McLOUGHLIN. Assistant Professor of Industrial Relations, University of California, Los Angeles; sometime District Officer (Cadet), Lake Province Administration, Tanganyika; and Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Khartoum, 1959-60.

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