In January 1899, an Anglo-Egyptian agreement restored Egyptian rule in Sudan but as part of a condominium, or joint authority, exercised by the United Kingdom and Egypt. The agreement designated territory south of the twenty-second parallel as Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Although it emphasized Egypt's indebtedness to Britain for its participation in the reconquest, the agreement failed to clarify the juridical relationship between the two condominium powers in Sudan or to provide a legal basis for continued British governing of the territory on behalf of the Khedive. Article II of the agreement specified that
the supreme military and civil command in Sudan shall be vested in one officer, termed the Governor-General of Sudan. He shall be appointed by Khedival Decree on the recommendation of Her Britannic Majesty's Government and shall be removed only by Khedival Decree with the consent of Her Britannic Majesty's Government.
The British governor-general, who was a military officer, reported to the Foreign Office through its resident agent in Cairo. In practice, however, he exercised extraordinary powers and directed the condominium government from Khartoum as if it were a colonial administration. Sir Reginald Wingate succeeded Kitchener as governor-general in 1899.
In each province, two inspectors and several district commissioners aided the British governor (mudir). Initially, nearly all administrative personnel were British Army officers attached to the Egyptian Army. In 1901, however, civilian administrators started arriving in Sudan from Britain and formed the nucleus of the Sudan Political Service. Egyptians filled middle-level posts while Sudanese gradually acquired lower-level positions.
Condominium period
In the condominium's early years, the governor-general and provincial governors exercised a great deal of freedom in governing Sudan. After 1910, however, an executive council, whose approval was required for all legislation and for budgetary matters, assisted the governor-general.
The governor-general presided over this council, which included the inspector-general; the civil, legal, and financial secretaries; the General Officer Commanding the Troops (The Kaid);[1] and two to four other British officials appointed by the governor-general. From 1944 to 1948 there existed also an advisory council for northern Sudan whose functions were advice and consultation. This advisory council had 18 members representing province councils, 10 members nominated by the Governor-General and 2 honorary members.[2] The executive council retained legislative authority until 1948.
Law and order
After restoring order and the government's authority, the British dedicated themselves to creating a modern government in the condominium. Jurists adopted penal and criminal procedural codes similar to those in force in British India. Commissions established land tenure rules and adjusted claims in dispute because of grants made by successive governments. Taxes on land remained the basic form of taxation, the amount assessed depending on the type of irrigation, the number of date palms, and the size of herds; however, the rate of taxation was fixed for the first time in Sudan's history.
The 1902 Code of Civil Procedure continued the Ottoman separation of civil law and sharia, but it also created guidelines for the operation of sharia courts as an autonomous judicial division under a chief qadi appointed by the governor-general. Religious judges and other sharia court officials were invariably Egyptian.
There was little resistance to the condominium. Breaches of the peace usually took the form of intertribal warfare or banditry. Mahdist uprisings occurred in February 1900, in 1902–1903, in 1904, and in 1908 but these revolts were of short duration. In 1916, Abd Allah as Suhayni, who claimed to be the Prophet Isa, launched an unsuccessful jihad.
Undefined borders
Bird's Eye View of the Soudan and Surrounding Countries, 1884
The problem of the condominium's undefined borders was a greater concern. A 1902 treaty with Ethiopia fixed the southeastern boundary with Sudan. Seven years later, an Anglo-Belgian treaty determined the status of the Lado Enclave in the south, establishing a border with the Belgian Congo (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo).
The western boundary proved more difficult to resolve. Darfur was the only province formerly under Egyptian control that was not recaptured during the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan. When the Mahdiyah disintegrated, Sultan Ali Dinar reclaimed Darfur's throne, which had been lost to the Egyptians in 1874 and held the throne under Ottoman suzerainty, with British approval on condition that he pay annual tribute to the khedive. When World War I broke out, Ali Dinar proclaimed his loyalty to the Ottoman Empire and responded to the Porte's call for a jihad against the Allies. Britain, which had declared a protectorate over Egypt in 1914, sent a small force against Ali Dinar, who died in subsequent fighting. In 1916, the British annexed Darfur to Sudan and terminated the Sultanate of Darfur.
Economic development
During the co-dominium period, economic development occurred only in the Nile Valley's settled areas. In the first two decades of condominium rule, the British extended telegraph and rail lines to link key points in northern Sudan but services did not reach more remote areas. Port Sudan opened in 1906, replacing Sawakin as the country's principal outlet to the sea.
In 1911 the Sudanese government and the private Sudan Plantations Syndicate launched the Gezira Scheme (Gezira is also seen as Jazirah) to provide a source of high-quality cotton for Britain's textile industry. An irrigation dam near Sennar, completed in 1925, brought a much larger area in Al Jazirah under cultivation. Planters sent cotton by rail from Sannar to Port Sudan for shipment abroad. The Gezira Scheme made cotton the mainstay of the country's economy and turned the region into Sudan's most densely populated area.
Egyptian independence, fate of Sudan
In 1922, Britain renounced the protectorate and approved Egypt's declaration of independence. However, the 1923 Egyptian constitution made no claim to Egyptian sovereignty over Sudan. Subsequent negotiations in London between the British and the new Egyptian government foundered on the Sudan question.
Inflamed by the failure of the talks, nationalists rioted in Egypt and in Sudan where a minority supported union with Egypt. In November 1924, Sir Lee Stack, governor-general of Sudan and Sirdar, was assassinated in Cairo. Britain ordered all Egyptian troops, civil servants, and public employees withdrawn from Sudan. In 1925, Khartoum formed the 4,500-man Sudan Defence Force (SDF) under Sudanese officers to replace Egyptian units.
Indirect rule
Sudan was relatively quiet in the late 1920s and 1930s. During this period, the colonial government favored indirect rule, which allowed Britain to govern through indigenous leaders.
In Sudan, the traditional leaders were the shaykhs (of villages, tribes, and districts) in the north and tribal chiefs in the south. The British first delegated judicial powers to shaykhs to enable them to settle local disputes; then, gradually, they allowed the shaykhs to administer local government under the supervision of British district commissioners. The number of Sudanese recognizing these leaders and the degree of authority they wielded varied considerably.
The mainstream of political development, represented by other local leaders and Khartoum's educated elite, disapproved of indirect rule. In their view, it prevented the country's unification, exacerbated tribalism in the north, and in the south served to buttress a less-advanced society against Arab influence. Indirect rule also implied government decentralization, which alarmed the educated elite who had careers in the central administration and envisioned an eventual transfer of power from British colonial authorities to their class.
Nationalists and the Khatmiyyah opposed indirect rule, but the Ansar (the followers of the Mahdi) supported the British approach since many of them enjoyed positions of local authority.
Britain's policy towards the South
From the beginning of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, the British sought to modernize Sudan by applying European technology to its underdeveloped economy and by replacing its authoritarian institutions with ones that adhered to liberal English traditions.
Southern Sudan's remote and undeveloped provinces—Equatoria, Bahr al Ghazal, and Upper Nile—received little official attention until after World War I, except for efforts to suppress tribal warfare and the slave trade. The British justified this policy by claiming that the south was not ready for exposure to the modern world. To allow the south to develop along indigenous lines, the British, therefore, closed the region to outsiders. As a result, the south remained isolated. A few Arab merchants controlled the region's limited commercial activities while Arab bureaucrats administered whatever laws existed. Christian missionaries, who operated schools and medical clinics, provided limited social services in southern Sudan.
The earliest Christian missionaries were the Verona Fathers, a Roman Catholic religious order that had established southern missions before the Mahdiyah. Other missionary groups active in the south included Presbyterians from the United States and the AnglicanChurch Missionary Society. There was no competition among these missions, largely because they maintained separate areas of influence. The government eventually subsidized the mission schools that educated southerners. Because mission graduates usually succeeded in gaining posts in the provincial civil service, many northerners regarded them as tools of British imperialism. The few southerners who received higher training attended schools in British East Africa (present-day Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania) rather than in Khartoum, thereby exacerbating the north–south division.
"Closed-door" ordinances
British authorities treated the three southern provinces as a separate region. The colonial administration, as it consolidated its southern position in the 1920s, detached the south from the rest of Sudan for all practical purposes.
The period's "closed door" ordinances, which barred northern Sudanese from entering or working in the south, reinforced this separate development policy. Moreover, the British gradually replaced Arab administrators and expelled Arab merchants, thereby severing the south's last economic contacts with the north. The colonial administration also discouraged the spread of Islam, the practice of Arab customs, and the wearing of Arab dress. At the same time, the British made efforts to revitalize African customs and tribal life that the slave trade had disrupted. Finally, a 1930 directive stated that blacks in the southern provinces were to be considered a people distinct from northern Muslims and that the region should be prepared for eventual integration with British East Africa.
Although potentially a rich agricultural zone, the south's economic development suffered because of the region's isolation. Moreover, a continual struggle went on between British officials in the north and south, as those in the former resisted recommendations that northern resources be diverted to spur southern economic development. Personality clashes between officials in the two branches in the Sudan Political Service also impeded the south's growth.
Those individuals who served in the southern provinces tended to be military officers with previous Africa experience on loan to the colonial service. They were usually distrustful of Arab influence and were committed to keeping the south under British control. By contrast, officials in the northern provinces tended to be Arabists often drawn from the diplomatic and consular service. Whereas northern provincial governors conferred regularly as a group with the governor-general in Khartoum, their three southern colleagues met to coordinate activities with the governors of the British East African colonies.
Rise of Sudanese nationalism
Sudanese nationalism, as it developed after World War I, was an Arab and Muslim phenomenon with its support base in the northern provinces. Nationalists opposed indirect rule and advocated a centralized national government in Khartoum responsible for both regions. Nationalists also perceived Britain's southern policy as artificially dividing Sudan and preventing its unification under an arabized and Islamic ruling class.
Ironically, a non-Arab led Sudan's first modern nationalist movement. In 1921, Ali Abd al Latif, a Muslim Dinka and former army officer, founded the United Tribes Society that called for an independent Sudan in which power would be shared by tribal and religious leaders. Three years later, Ali Abd al Latif's movement, reconstituted as the White Flag League, organized demonstrations in Khartoum that took advantage of the unrest that followed Stack's assassination. Ali Abd al Latif's arrest and subsequent exile in Egypt sparked a mutiny by a Sudanese army battalion, the suppression of which succeeded in temporarily crippling the nationalist movement.
In the 1930s, nationalism reemerged in Sudan. Educated Sudanese wanted to restrict the governor-general's power and to obtain Sudanese participation in the council's deliberations. However, any change in government required a change in the condominium agreement. Neither Britain nor Egypt would agree to a modification. Moreover, the British regarded their role as the protection of the Sudanese from Egyptian domination. The nationalists feared that the eventual result of friction between the condominium powers might be the attachment of northern Sudan to Egypt and southern Sudan to Uganda and Kenya. Although they settled most of their differences in the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, which set a timetable for the end of British military occupation, Britain and Egypt failed to agree on Sudan's future status.
Nationalists and religious leaders were divided on the issue of whether Sudan should apply for independence or for union with Egypt. The Mahdi's son, Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, emerged as a spokesman for independence in opposition to Ali al Mirghani, the Khatmiyyah leader, who favored union with Egypt. Coalitions supported by each of these leaders formed rival wings of the nationalist movement. Later, radical nationalists and the Khatmiyyah created the Ashigga, later renamed the National Unionist Party (NUP), to advance the cause of Sudanese-Egyptian unification. The moderates favored Sudanese independence in cooperation with Britain and together with the Ansar established the Umma Party.
The road to independence
As World War II approached, the Sudan Defence Force assumed the mission of guarding the Sudanese frontier with Italian East Africa (present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea). During the summer of 1940, in what became the first moves of the East African Campaign, Italian forces invaded Sudan at several points and captured the railway junction at Kassala and other villages along the border. While Port Sudan was raided by irregular Eritrean forces in August 1940, the SDF prevented an Italian advance on the Red Sea port city.
In January 1941, the SDF, expanded to about 20,000 troops, retook Kassala and participated in the Empire offensive that routed the Italians in Eritrea and liberated Ethiopia by the end of the year. Some Sudanese units later contributed to the Eighth Army's successful North African Campaign.
In the immediate postwar years, the condominium government made a number of significant changes. In 1942 the Graduates' General Conference, a quasi-nationalist movement formed by educated Sudanese, presented the government with a memorandum that demanded a pledge of self-determination after the war to be preceded by abolition of the "closed door" ordinances, an end to the separate curriculum in southern schools, and an increase in the number of Sudanese in the civil service. The governor-general refused to accept the memorandum but agreed to a government-supervised transformation of indirect rule into a modernized system of local government. Sir Douglas Newbold, governor of Kurdufan Province in the 1930s and later the executive council's civil secretary, advised the establishment of parliamentary government and the administrative unification of north and south. In 1948, over Egyptian objections, Britain authorized the partially elected consultative Legislative Assembly representing both regions to supersede the advisory executive council. The Legislative Assembly had its own executive council consisting of five British and seven Sudanese members.[1] A number of elected local government bodies gradually took over the responsibilities of the former British local commissioner, starting with El Obeid, the centre of the Gum arabic industry. By 1952 it was reported that Sudan had 56 local self-governing authorities.[1]
The pro-Egyptian NUP boycotted the 1948 Legislative Assembly elections. As a result, pro-independence groups dominated the Legislative Assembly. In 1952, leaders of the Umma-dominated legislature negotiated the Self-Determination Agreement with Britain. The legislators then enacted a constitution that provided for a prime minister and council of ministers responsible to a bicameral parliament. The new Sudanese government would have responsibility in all areas except military and foreign affairs, which remained in the British governor-general's hands. Cairo, which demanded recognition of Egyptian sovereignty over Sudan, repudiated the condominium agreement in protest and declared its reigning monarch, Faruk, King of Egypt and the Sudan.
After seizing power in Egypt and overthrowing the Faruk monarchy in late 1952, Colonel Muhammad Naguib broke the deadlock on the problem of Egyptian sovereignty over Sudan. Cairo previously had linked discussions on Sudan's status to an agreement on the evacuation of British troops from the Suez Canal. Naguib separated the two issues and accepted the right of Sudanese self-determination. On February 12, 1953, London and Cairo signed an Anglo-Egyptian accord, which allowed for a three-year transition period from condominium rule to self-government.[3] During the transition phase, British troops would withdraw from Sudan. At the end of this period, the Sudanese would decide their future status in a plebiscite conducted under international supervision. Naguib's concession seemed justified when parliamentary elections held at the end of 1952 gave a majority to the pro-Egyptian NUP, which had called for an eventual union with Egypt. In January 1954, a new government emerged under NUP leader Ismail al-Azhari.
The south and the unity of Sudan
During World War II, some British colonial officers questioned the economic and political viability of the southern provinces as separate from northern Sudan. Britain also had become more sensitive to Arab criticism of the southern policy. In 1946, the Sudan Administrative Conference determined that Sudan should be administered as one country. Moreover, the conference delegates agreed to readmit northern administrators to southern posts, abolish the trade restrictions imposed under the "closed door" ordinances, and allow southerners to seek employment in the north. Khartoum also nullified the prohibition against Muslim proselytizing in the south and introduced Arabic in the south as the official administration language.
Some southern British colonial officials responded to the Sudan Administrative Conference by charging that northern agitation had influenced the conferees and that no voice had been heard at the conference in support of retaining the separate development policy. These British officers argued that northern domination of the south would result in a southern rebellion against the government. Khartoum therefore convened a conference at Juba to quell the fears of southern leaders and British officials in the south and to assure them that a post-independence government would safeguard southern political and cultural rights.
Despite these promises, an increasing number of southerners expressed concern that northerners would overwhelm them. In particular, they resented the imposition of Arabic as the official language of administration, which deprived most of the few educated English-speaking southerners of the opportunity to enter public service. They also felt threatened by the replacement of trusted British district commissioners with unsympathetic northerners. After the government replaced several hundred colonial officials with Sudanese, only four of whom were southerners, the southern elite abandoned hope of a peaceful, unified, independent Sudan.
The hostility of southerners toward the northern Arab majority surfaced violently when southern army units mutinied in August 1955 to protest their transfer to garrisons under northern officers. The rebellious troops killed several hundred northerners, including government officials, army officers, and merchants. The government quickly suppressed the revolt and eventually executed seventy southerners for sedition. But this harsh reaction failed to pacify the south, as some of the mutineers escaped to remote areas and organized resistance to the Arab-dominated government of Sudan.
"Sudan Archive". UK: Durham University Library. Archived from the original on 2015-09-10. Retrieved 2014-09-01. The Sudan Archive was founded in 1957, the year after Sudanese independence, to collect and preserve the papers of administrators from the Sudan Political Service, missionaries, soldiers, business men, doctors, agriculturalists, teachers and others who had served or lived in the Sudan during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium
Related Research Articles
The history of Sudan refers to the territory that today makes up Republic of the Sudan and the state of South Sudan, which became independent in 2011. The territory of Sudan is geographically part of a larger African region, also known by the term "Sudan". The term is derived from Arabic: بلاد السودان bilād as-sūdān, or "land of the black people", and has sometimes been used more widely referring to the Sahel belt of West and Central Africa.
Equatoria is the southernmost region of South Sudan, along the upper reaches of the White Nile and the border between South Sudan and Uganda. Juba, the national capital and the largest city in South Sudan, is located in Equatoria. Originally a province of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, it also contained most of northern parts of present-day Uganda, including Lake Albert and West Nile. It was an idealistic effort to create a model state in the interior of Africa that never consisted of more than a handful of adventurers and soldiers in isolated outposts.
The flag of Sudan was adopted on 20 May 1970 and consists of a horizontal red-white-black tricolour with a green triangle at the hoist. The flag is based on the Arab Liberation Flag of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, as are the flags of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine and formerly of the United Arab Republic, North Yemen, South Yemen, and the Libyan Arab Republic.
Ismail al-Azhari was a Sudanese nationalist and political figure. He served as the first Prime Minister of Sudan between 1954 and 1956, and as Head of State of Sudan from 1965 until he was overthrown by Gaafar Nimeiry in 1969.
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was a condominium of the United Kingdom and Egypt between 1899 and 1956, corresponding mostly to the territory of present-day South Sudan and Sudan. Legally, sovereignty and administration were shared between both Egypt and the United Kingdom, but in practice the structure of the condominium ensured effective British control over Sudan, with Egypt having limited local power and influence. In the meantime, Egypt itself fell under increasing British influence. Following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, Egypt pushed for an end to the condominium, and the independence of Sudan. By agreement between Egypt and the United Kingdom in 1953, Sudan was granted independence as the Republic of the Sudan on 1 January 1956. In 2011, the south of Sudan itself became independent as the Republic of South Sudan.
Ibrahim Abboud was a Sudanese military officer and political figure who served as the head of state of Sudan between 1958 and 1964 and as President of Sudan in 1964; however, he soon resigned, ending Sudan's first period of military rule. A career soldier, Abboud served in World War II in Egypt and Iraq. In 1949, Abboud became the deputy Commander in Chief of the Sudanese military. Upon independence, Abboud became the Commander in Chief of the Military of Sudan.
The First Sudanese Civil War was fought from 1955 to 1972 between the northern part of Sudan and the southern Sudan region which demanded representation and more regional autonomy. The war was divided into four major stages: initial guerrilla warfare, the creation of the Anyanya insurgency, political strife within the government, and establishment of the South Sudan Liberation Movement. Around a million people died over the course of the nearly 17-year long war.
The Republic of the Sudan was established as an independent sovereign state upon the termination of the condominium of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, over which sovereignty had been vested jointly in Egypt and the United Kingdom. On December 19, 1955, the Sudanese parliament, under Ismail al-Azhari's leadership, unanimously adopted a declaration of independence that became effective on January 1, 1956. During the early years of the Republic, despite political divisions, a parliamentary system was established with a five member Supreme Commission as head of state. In 1958, after a military coup, General Ibrahim Abboud was installed as president. The Republic was disestablished when a coup led by Colonel Gaafar Nimeiry founded the Democratic Republic of Sudan in 1969.
On 25 May 1969, several young officers calling themselves the Free Officers Movement seized power in Sudan in a coup d'état and started the Nimeiry era, also called the May Regime, in the history of Sudan. At the conspiracy's core were nine officers led by Colonel Gaafar Nimeiry, who had been implicated in plots against the Abboud regime. Nimeiry's coup preempted plots by other groups, most of which involved army factions supported by the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), Arab nationalists, or conservative religious groups. He justified the coup on the grounds that civilian politicians had paralyzed the decision-making process, had failed to deal with the country's economic and regional problems, and had left Sudan without a permanent constitution.
The Emblem of Sudan was adopted in 1985.
Throughout its history, Darfur has been the home to several cultures and kingdoms, such as the Daju and Tunjur kingdoms. The recorded history of Darfur begins in the seventeenth century, with the foundation of the Fur Sultanate by the Keira dynasty. The Sultanate of Darfur was initially destroyed in 1874 by the Khedivate of Egypt. In 1899, the government of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan recognized Ali Dinar as the Sultan of Darfur, in exchange for an annual tribute of 500 pound sterling. This lasted until Darfur was formally annexed in 1916. The region remained underdeveloped through the period of colonial rule and after independence in 1956. The majority of national resources were directed toward the riverine Arabs clustered along the Nile near Khartoum. This pattern of structural inequality and overly underdevelopment resulted in increasing restiveness among Darfuris. The influence of regional geopolitics and war by proxy, coupled with economic hardship and environmental degradation, from soon after independence led to sporadic armed resistance from the mid-1980s. The continued violence culminated in an armed resistance movement around 2003.
The Sudan Defence Force (SDF) was a British Colonial Auxiliary Forces unit raised in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1925 to assist local police in internal security duties and maintain the condominium's territorial integrity. During World War II, it also served in East Africa as part of the East African campaign and in North Africa during the Western Desert campaign.
Contact between Egypt and Sudan goes back to trade and conflict during ancient times. In 1820, the British conquered Sudan after they had conquered Egypt, and the Egyptians entered Sudan through the British as officials, but they did not have any authority over Sudan. The British continued to occupy the country until Sudan declared independence in 1956. Sudan later joined the Arab League, of which Egypt is a founding member. Relations between successive governments in Egypt and Sudan have warmed and cooled at various times. Relations today are cordial, but tensions remain.
William Deng Nhial was the political leader of the Sudan African National Union (SANU), from 1962 to 1968. He was elected unopposed. He was one of founders of the military wing of the Anyanya fighting for the independence of southern Sudan. He was ambushed and killed by Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on 9 May 1968 at Cueibet, on his way from Rumbek to Tonj. The Sudanese government denied having authorised his assassination. Although no investigation was conducted, eyewitnesses at Cueibet village and an SANU investigation committee confirmed the SAF's part in his death.
The Liberal Party, at first called the Southern Party and later the Southern Liberal Party, was formed in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan before Sudan became independent in January 1956. Until the military coup of November 1958 the Liberals were one of the main parties representing the southern Sudanese constituencies in parliament.
Both Diu or Böth Diew was a politician who was one of the leaders of the Liberal Party in Sudan in the years before and after independence in 1956. His party represented the interests of the southerners. Although in favor of a federal system under which the south would have its own laws and administration, Both Diu was not in favor of southern secession. As positions hardened during the drawn-out First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972) his compromise position was increasingly discredited.
Sir Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, KBE was one of the leading religious and political figures during the colonial era in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898–1955), and continued to exert great authority as leader of the Neo-Mahdists after Sudan became independent. The British tried to exploit his influence over the Sudanese people while at the same time profoundly distrusting his motives. Throughout most of the colonial era of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the British saw Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi as important as a moderate leader of the Mahdists.
Gordon Muortat Mayen Maborjok (1922–2008) was a Sudanese revolutionary and politician and advocate for Southern Sudan's independence. He was the President of the Nile Provisional Government (NPG) which led the Anyanya during the First Sudanese Civil War. Muortat also served as Vice-President of the Southern Front (SF) and Foreign Minister in the Southern Sudan Provisional Government (SSPG).
The Torit mutiny was an insurrection that took place in August 1955 in and around Torit, Equatoria, but quickly spread to other southern cities such as Juba, Yei, and Maridi. The rebellion began when a group of officers from No. 2 Company, Equatoria Corps, led by Daniel Jumi Tongun and Marko Rume, both of the Karo ethnic group, mutinied against the British administration on August 18. The immediate causes of the mutiny were a trial of a southern member of the national assembly and an allegedly false telegram urging northern administrators in the South to oppress southerners. Although the insurrection was suppressed, it ushered in a period of instability characterized by guerrilla activity, banditry, and political tensions between north and south that eventually escalated to full-scale civil war with the Anyanya rebellion in 1963.
Philemon Majok Kuong (1905–1982) was a South Sudanese politician who advocated for Sudan unity. Majok was born in Ador, Yirol, with a Nuer father and a Dinka Ciec mother. He achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant in the British Police Force during Anglo-Egyptian rule. During World War II, he fought for the British in Ethiopia. Majok's post-war contributions included urban planning and tree planting in Lakes State.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
