British attitudes to Sudanese labour: the foreign office records as sources for social history
Titel:
British attitudes to Sudanese labour: the foreign office records as sources for social history
Auteur:
Cross, Peter
Verschenen in:
British journal of Middle Eastern studies
Paginering:
Jaargang 24 (1997) nr. 2 pagina's 217-260
Jaar:
1997-11
Inhoud:
In the absence of any satisfactory full-length history of the small but historically important Sudanese working class, the present paper attempts to evaluate the records of the British Foreign Office as one source among many for such a study. In particular, it attempts to reveal the attitudes held by British officials in the Sudan towards labour and related issues. These attitudes evolved during the Condominium, falling roughly into four periods. From the reconquest to around 1904, Sudanese were generally held to be incapable of working productively for wages. From around 1904, when infrastructural development began in earnest, to the end of World War II, it became clear that wage labour could be found locally, and there was an overriding concern with preventing too many hands being drawn away from agriculture. The sudden eruption of the Sudanese labour movement in 1946 shocked the country's British rulers, who sought external political forces manipulating the supposedly disorganized Sudanese workers. From around 1948 onwards, however, the labour movement's existence came to be accepted and, under pressure from London as well as from local events, there were even attempts, albeit unsuccessful, to co-opt it.
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