But Were We Really Colonized, Sir Mayor?

Abdallah Ali Ibrahim

(He recounts that our friend al-Tayyib Mabyou‘ once climbed the sycamore fig tree of Mayor al-Surour, the mayor of Atbara, in al-Dakhilah to pick its fruit. The mayor’s watchman—who had banned such acts outright—caught him high up among the branches. The mayor shouted: “By God, I’ll rip out your nails! What are you doing up that sycamore?” Al-Tayyib replied: “I’m coming down now, sir mayor!”)

A prevailing view among our opinion elites is that independence was not a happy event for the nation—and that “God bless the English.” I once described this political mood as a “repudiation of independence,” an unfortunate repudiation indeed. I cannot fathom how God could blind the sight and insight of those who once demanded independence to the emancipatory force it unleashed—or how they would demand it today if they truly belonged among its seekers. Would they even recognize it if it came to them now? If they deny its occurrence in the past, they have forfeited both the taste for it and the passion it inspires.

One common argument advanced by the repudiators is that we were not colonized “in the real sense.” They claim we were not part of the British Colonial Office, and that Britain honored us by entrusting our affairs to an elite of Oxford and Cambridge graduates.

I do not see how these repudiators turn a bureaucratic arrangement within the colonial household—whereby Sudan was administered by the British Foreign Office rather than the Colonial Office—into a badge of pride. India, after all, was administered neither by the Colonial Office nor by the Foreign Office, but by a separate India Office headed by a governor who held a seat in the British Cabinet. This was because India was Britain’s oldest colony—indeed, the jewel in the crown—and Britain saw no reason to fold it into the later-established Colonial Office. Yet India’s pioneering postcolonial scholars did not take pride in this distinctive colonial status. On the contrary, they laid the foundations of postcolonial studies on the premise that we have not studied colonialism sufficiently to understand how profoundly it corrupted our lives.

Sudanese had no special standing with Britain that would set them apart from other colonies administered by the Colonial Office rather than the Foreign Office, which oversaw Sudan. The reason is simple. Sudan was considered an Egyptian possession and was invaded in 1898 under the pretext of reclaiming it from the clutches of the Mahdist state for the Khedivate. Egypt itself had been a British protectorate since 1880 and thus fell under the British Foreign Office, not the Colonial Office. Under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement, which organized Sudan’s administration after its “reconquest,” Britain secured the lion’s share of authority, leaving Egypt with scraps. Yet even those scraps required Britain to deal with Egypt, which was administered by the Foreign Office. These included:

1. The Khedive’s appointment of the Governor-General of Sudan upon Britain’s recommendation;

2. An actual presence of the Egyptian army;

3. Senior judicial posts allocated to Egypt;

4. A large cadre of Egyptian ma’murs serving under British inspectors;

5. Egypt’s continued coverage of Sudan’s budget deficit until the mid-1910s.

Egypt’s claim to Sudan remained an administrative obsession for both Egypt and a segment of Sudanese—one that vexed the British. This led them to suspend that foundational claim and expel the Egyptian army after the 1924 uprising, under well-known circumstances. Egypt later regained its position under the 1936 treaty and then renewed its insistence on full rights over Sudan, backed by a substantial portion of the Sudanese national movement. Matters went so far that the Americans intervened in the 1950s to secure, in one form or another, Egypt’s claim to Sudan within their early Cold War diplomacy.

It is clear that placing Sudan under the Foreign Office was a bureaucratic measure shaped by Egypt’s historical claim and by Egypt’s own subordination to the British Foreign Office since 1880—some twenty years before Sudan’s “reconquest.” On the other hand, none of Britain’s other colonies exhibited the dual complexity that characterized Sudan. Moreover, our subordination to the Foreign Office was hardly exceptional or a mark of distinction bestowed upon us by Britain. India had earlier been granted an even higher, standalone administrative status reflecting its seniority within the empire. Self-governing colonies (such as Canada, Australia, and South Africa) likewise enjoyed distinct administrative arrangements within the Colonial Office, shaped by their own particular circumstances.

Have we sunk so low as to count a British constitutional arrangement—by which we were subordinated to the Foreign Office rather than the Colonial Office—as a symbol of honor and pride?

We are perched in the crotch of colonialism’s sycamore tree, yet we protest: But were we really colonized, sir mayor?