What is the difference between Sudan & South Sudan? How does the geography of the land shape the people who live there? What religions and customs are practiced there? What is the history of this area from 1800s until 1978? How does the religion of Islam affect Sudan? Why was the slave trade a critical part of the history? How do the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and Egypt all influence Sudan? How does Sudan gain its independence? What happens during the war?
During the first civil war in Sudan and how does it end? When was oil discovered? We will answer these questions and many more in today's episode, Sudan & South Sudan 101 Part 1 of 3. Welcome to Wiser World, a podcast for busy people who need a refresher on all things world. Here we explore different regions of the globe, giving you the facts and context you need to think historically about current events. I truly believe that the more we learn about the world,
the more we embrace our shared humanity. I'm your host, Alli Roper. Thanks for being here. Find the scenes in the tumultuous US-China relationship. Find face-off wherever you get your podcasts.
I can't speak for all education systems, especially in other nations, but here in the United States, it's pretty uncommon to learn a whole lot of African history at school. The transatlantic slave trade or apartheid inside Africa, those are usually taught absolutely. But a whole lot of African history? Not super common. And in college, here in the States, you really have to take specialty classes on African history if you'd like to learn about it.
So, Sudan and South Sudan, for example, have been in crisis for a long time, without a whole lot of coverage or education, at least here in the States. And this is why I wanted to research it and create these episodes. I feel that it's important we know more about this area of the world and the people who live there.
And so these episodes are going to be a little bit longer for that reason. There's just a whole lot of ground to cover here. And I designed these episodes so that people who know nothing about Sudan or South Sudan can develop a more firm family.
And they can develop a more firm foundation for learning. So the information that you learn in these episodes is going to be basic level. I'm by no means an expert here. I'm only going to give kind of a soft glaze over of the history. Don't get me wrong. What you're going to learn here is substantial. We did a ton of research and worked months on these episodes. But just understand there's a lot that I'm not covering. And as always, please do independent research from other sources.
I need help to find some good options. I'll be sharing those through my Patreon, which you can sign up for at patreon.com slash wiserworldpodcast. I also want to acknowledge right away that it's tricky to find information on Sudan and South Sudan outside of a Western context. For example, there's much more written in English about South Sudan than Sudan in the North.
I don't know about the difference between the two in a second. But most of the history in the North is written in Arabic, which I do not speak. And getting written records for this area of the world prior to like the mid 1800s even 1900s is hard because these are countries with low literacy rates.
I think it makes record keeping a completely different ballgame. So based off of the resources that I have at my disposal, I did my best to look at multiple sides of things and I'm certainly trying to show multiple perspectives. But I am definitely coming at these episodes from a Western lens simply because of the options that I have available to me. I do my best to give both facts and opinions openly so you can tell the difference.
And again, just please don't let this be your only research on Sudan and South Sudan. Lastly, I want to say that some of the information in these three parts in this three part series is pretty difficult to hear. There will be mentions of war crimes, assaults, harm being done to children, challenging topics, especially in parts two and three.
Do you believe these are critical stories for us to know just fair warning that I recommend giving this a listen yourself before you hand it over to teenagers and I don't really recommend it for kids. All right, let's let's get into this. Let's start off by talking about the difference between Sudan and South Sudan. So these are different countries, but only recently South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan in 2011.
And super recently, making it the world's newest nation as of this recording in March 2024. So naturally South Sudan's history is deeply intertwined with Sudan in the North. So it makes sense to cover both histories at the same time, but they are currently distinct countries and we'll go over how they separate.
So if you can right now go to Google Maps or find maps and I want you to look up Sudan by the way, the official name of Sudan is the Republic of Sudan. And also South Sudan's official name is the Republic of South Sudan, but I'm just going to call them Sudan and South Sudan. Anyway, Sudan is in North Eastern Africa right underneath Egypt part of the east coast of Sudan is the Red Sea.
So if you're going east across the Red Sea, you're going to get to Saudi Arabia. So if you're thinking, OK, this feels like desert, this feels like Sahara. Yeah, you've got it. OK, Sudan also shares an eastern and southeastern border with Arochria and Ethiopia and a border with Libya in the North.
So Western border is with Chad and the Central African Republic. So lots of countries around it. South Sudan is just underneath Sudan and it shares borders with Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So South Sudan is more of Central Eastern Africa and it is landlocked while Sudan in the North does have a bit of coastline. If you're still on maps, you might notice the map starts to turn green as you go down into South Sudan.
This is important to notice because geography makes a huge difference in cultures and resources and definitely in the history of these two nations. So we'll get to that in a second. The Nile River has two major tributaries that start down below South Sudan in Uganda and they are called the White Nile and the Blue Nile and they flow North and they come together to make the major Nile River that we've all heard of at Cartoum, which is the capital city of Sudan.
It makes sense that the capital city would be found where two rivers meet together. Civilizations throughout history have grown up around river valleys and this is no different. Just a quick side note, the capital of South Sudan is Juba, which is also located pretty close to the Nile.
But why rivers? Why are rivers so important to civilizations? Well, because of water, which humans and animals need to survive, obviously, but also because of transportation and the fertile Nile Valley and its surrounding flood plains supported agriculture and that led to trade.
And because of the Nile River, there is evidence of very early human communities in these areas, their stone age tools and pottery that have been found and it's possible that people have been living in Sudan as far back as like 8,000 BC. So very rich old history. Sudan is one of the largest countries in Africa and has both deserts and mountains. It's a pretty diverse landscape and the river, obviously.
A lot of northern Sudan is covered by the Sahara Desert, really barren sand. Further south we have the Savannah and Grasslands area, which is more diverse. And the further south you go, the more tropical of a climate it becomes. This differentiates northern Sudan and southern Sudan, which will become south Sudan. Author Zach Burton said, quote,
south Sudan has a rain fed swamp the size of England, forming a formidable geographical barrier, limiting external influence for centuries in the progressively greener and more fertile south Sudan. End of quote. In 1862, explorer Samuel Baker said quote, it is a fever-stricken wilderness. It is not surprising that the ancients gave up the exploration of the Nile. It is a heaven for mosquitoes and a damp hell for man. End of quote.
So I hope you're getting a sense here that the north is much more dry and barren and much more deserts, mountains. The further south you go, you're starting to get into swamp land and things change. Now, since I'm talking about Sudan thousands of years ago up until about 1978 in this episode and south Sudan and Sudan didn't separate until 2011, I'm just going to call it Sudan for the rest of this episode.
Since that's what it was back then, they were not separated into their modern borders. So I'm going to talk mostly about Sudan as one group in this episode and just differentiate them as northern and southern Sudan because hopefully that will just make it easier to digest. So this geographical barrier that we just talked about, these swamp lands, they're the largest wetlands in Africa and it's often called the Sud, SUDD, which is Arabic for barrier.
These swamps could not be crossed easily so most outsiders for many years couldn't even make it there. Author Peter Martell wrote quote, the south was as distant and remote as almost anywhere on the planet. End of quote. Because of the Sud, the people living in southern Sudan for generations did not establish formal systems of central government in their vast territory.
But instead ordered, ordered themselves loosely kind of based on family and tribe. It was a more horizontal way of organizing rather than top down and they lived in traditional subsistence lifestyles mostly in cattle hurting or seasonal agriculture and cattle hurting tribes were and still are kind of semi nomadic.
They move around right the agricultural tribes were more centered in specific locations and these tribal structures and lifestyles largely remain intact today and we'll talk about how people in south Sudan and Sudan live in part three. But let's go back up to the northern part of Sudan for a little bit to check out some early civilizations around 3000 BC, a civilization known as Nubia developed in modern day Egypt and Sudan along the Nile.
Pretty advanced society with agriculture and trade into the Mediterranean world and in Egypt and for thousands of years ancient rulers established kingdoms in Nubia, traded or influenced by Egyptian pharaohs up in the north and Sudan connected the land below the Sahara desert to the Mediterranean world. It was a really strategic location for trade.
One of the last remnants of this time was that part of the Sahara desert is still called the Nubian desert and now you know why the Nubians are the ancient people of the land and the Sudanese are really proud of that ancient heritage. From 350 to 600 AD a kingdom that we now call Ethiopia conquered Sudan and it became a big center for trade and culture trade routes from the Middle East where Christianity was born led to more exposure to Christianity over time.
Christian missionaries and traders spread Christianity to the Nubians and Nubia became a predominantly Christian state for a time. For example, there are remnants of the Dungola Cathedral in the middle of the desert from the sixth century like the 500s.
There's like an excavated medieval Christian church in the middle of the desert in northern Sudan which I find fascinating. The religion of Islam was formally founded in 610 AD in Saudi Arabia and because of all of these trade routes Arab traders and Islamic influence began to spread down the Nile during this time.
Hundreds of years the Nubian Christian kingdoms faced a lot of pressure from Arab forces but it wasn't until about 1500 or so that Sudan transitioned from a Christian kingdom to an Islamic Sultanate. Assultanate is a government that is run by a Sultan and a Sultan is an absolute ruler. This term is mostly used in Arab areas or areas that have strong Islamic influence and Sudan has strong Islamic influence.
This was the beginning of a new era because Islam spread even more throughout the region and again it's a huge role in the history. For over 300 years different powerful Sultanates faced different issues from outside groups wanting to come in and take over Sudan.
For example the Ottoman Empire also in Islamic Empire wanted to extend its borders into Sudan but for the most part Sultanates were able to remain separate. Islamic architecture, law, education all spread especially in large towns the Arabic language and culture blended with the indigenous traditions Islamic schools and mosques were built.
In the Nino schools and religious buildings are always really important to notice when you study history because these become centers not only for learning but also for social gathering and community life. We meet around schools and religious buildings. So most of these buildings were built in the northern part of Sudan because of the sud that those wetlands that kind of separated northern and southern Sudan.
The Eiffism which is a more mystical and less orthodox form of Islam also became really popular in Sudan and they built lodges all over Sudan. Over time Islam became the dominant religion in the northern part of Sudan which means that the elites and the higher up merchant classes were usually muslims.
In the western part of Sudan a Sultanate called Darfur started up in the 1600s and it began to be a pretty major player in regional politics and trade for many years and we're going to talk about Darfur in the next two episodes because it's pretty important but just keep that in mind it's in the western part of Sudan.
From the 1500s to 1800s trade grew a lot again because of Sudan's access to the Red Sea. It was also along the Trans-Saharan trade routes and these are the days of camel caravans crossing the massive Sahara moving goods like gold ivory and slaves to different trade stops like Timbuktu in Mali. So hopefully this is giving you kind of a vision of this area this region. From my research it seems as though most of the slaves that were traded out of Sudan targeted people in the southern area.
Because of the sud you know that that physical swamp like barrier right the people in the south had a different way of life with less Islamic influence. In many ways the north was seen as more Arab in physical features such as lighter skin as well as in culture while there were different tribes and religions Islam was definitely the dominant faith in the north.
In the southern part this was not the case with more tribal religions that more closely linked them to central and southern Africa also in physical features such as darker skin as well as cultural customs that just felt more traditionally African than in the northern part. Again I don't love generalizing since these areas have many different ethnic groups but I think to understand broad scale history.
The basic idea is that the majority in the north felt more Arab and the majority of southern Sudanese were felt more African and as we know sadly people do not always get along when they are different from each other and that's definitely the case here. So the type of community organization that had worked for southerners for many years also open them up for challenges during this time as Zach Burton writes in quote in time it also made them vulnerable to organized outsiders with big appetites.
And so many generations of black Africans in the south were targeted by part of a massive slave trade first by Egyptian and newbie and rulers and later by their Arab successors end of quote. Author Peter Martell writes quote. Slavers used Islamic law to justify their plunder of nonbelievers flying black flags painted with chronic exhortations to jihad or holy war.
There was no attempt to convert people to Islam for if the slaves were Muslim that would prohibit their capture and so stop the dark trade end of quote. Since the north was mostly converted to Islam by this time the slave trade focused primarily on the south and the southerners obviously hated slave traders and if they ever caught them they enforced the greatest punishments that they could as Martell writes quote so many from the south came through for the sale for sale in cartoon.
That soon the very appearance of a southerner became associated with that of a slave end of quote so the slave trade was alive and well in Sudan during these islamic sultanates trading black southerners up into Egypt and other parts of the Middle East for manual labor as well as service labor such as concybines cooks porters soldiers.
Sadly from what we know about slaves traded across the islamic empires there was double the amount of female slaves to male slaves which indicates sexual exploitation there's also evidence of racism so definitely discrimination based on skin color seems to be happening here which is why many areas across the Middle East darker skin was seen as an indication of slavery.
So for about 300 years powerful sultanates rule Sudan islam became the dominant religion average ordinary people are living hand to mouth this time making what they eat living in some urban centers but mostly small villages run by local leaders who have strong familial and cultural ties there was still Christianity and other indigenous religions yes but islam was dominant especially in the north.
And it's generally true that any group of people that rules for more than 300 years starts to fail over time and this happened in Sudan the fun sultanate began to decline and in 1821 Sudan was conquered by the Ottoman governor of Egypt now since the Ottoman empires headquarters were in turkey this is often called the turco Egyptian conquest of Sudan because Sudan was ruled by the Ottoman Empire but Egypt in particular ruled over Sudan.
And the goal of the conquest was to control Sudan's resources mostly slaves and gold and ivory and also to secure the Nile so this here is where modern Sudanese history begins and it's already painful but it's sadly going to get more painful with the turco Egyptian administration taking things over they now called Sudan Egyptian Sudan so new systems were put into place laws administration of laws taxation.
So the administration of laws taxation systems you get it likewise islam continued to spread the Arabic language became the most popular language in the region and Sudan became more linked to the wider islamic world during this time they also wanted to modernize agriculture trade infrastructure and cartoon the capital of Sudan grew in size ivory sugar cotton all traded there
things were changing in Sudan during this time even in below the sud parts of southern Sudan were getting more and more outside influence if you listen to any of my other 101 episodes you know by now that the 1800s was a massive time of change in a pebble and conquest throughout the world and this usually leads to discontent and local resistance average ordinary people who aren't calling the shots in government usually don't like a lot of change right largely because they're exploited by these
systems and that's definitely what happened here the Ottoman Empire expanded the slave trade enormously during its rule Sudan became a major source of slaves especially from the south it's estimated that from 1840 to 1860 more than 40,000 people were sold each year from cartoon that's over 800,000 people to give this some context the transatlantic slave trade which took people from Africa to the Americas had about 12.5 million people
over roughly 340 years so if you divide that out year for year that's about 35,000 people a year so the Ottoman Empire and these 20 years in Sudan right on scale with the transatlantic slave trade absolutely horrific the Sudanese communities resisted this of course but their revolts were brutally suppressed another theme we've seen as we've studied other countries a lot of resistance to foreign rule right nobody is going to be able to do that
in the rule right nobody loves it but it creates a feeling of nationalism you know accompanied with kind of a swelling of self determination from foreign rule because even if that rule belongs to the same religion nobody really loves an outsider coming in and calling the shots and that's definitely what happens here and that continues to grow that Sudanese nationalism more and more throughout the years
let's pause here for a second and talk about Egypt because it fits into the broader history here so for hundreds of years if Europe wanted to get anything shipped on a boat from India or Asia the boat had to go all the way down underneath the tip of Africa and then back up the other side to Europe right well in 1869 that changed the Suez Canal was completed and this canal changed everything because it allowed shipping to connect from the red sea
which goes into the Arabian Sea which is right there by India right and then pop those boats right into the Mediterranean Sea much faster trip so the Suez Canal is like really important which means that the British were right up in that business because it was in their best interest to have stability in that region and British control and Egypt officially began in 1882 technically Egypt was under the Ottoman Empire but Britain really ran it and in 1914 and so that's very important
in 1914 the beginning of World War One Britain declared Egypt a protectorate so why do I tell you this well let's think about this Sudan is right there next to Egypt right and Egypt in the 1880s was influenced by Britain and Egypt was influencing Sudan in Sudan in 1888 right before the British more or less started taking power in Egypt
a group of Sudanese people started a political and religious movement against Egypt and also British forces and they advocated for a jihad or a holy war against these powers they wanted a golden age of Islam in Sudan called the modest state and this is called the modest movement it lasted from 1885 to 1898 a British Egyptian counter offensive ended it
this I share with you because it's the beginning of a strong anti-colonial sentiment in Sudan this pushback against Britain pushback against Egypt for the next 56 years Sudan became a condominium of British and Egyptian rule from 1899 to 1956
this is pretty recent history so what's a condominium in international law it basically means that two or more states exercise joint sovereignty over a territory so two states are kind of ruling over Sudan's the territory Britain and Egypt rule it if you think about it this is a tricky situation we've got British and Egyptian interests trying to find that balancing act but also the Sudanese are aspiring for more self determination
and seeds have been planted they're starting to grow into plants right from the start Britain had a lot more control over Sudan it was not an equal partnership with Egypt any uprising in the north was quickly suppressed pacified and modernization began a lot more quickly in the north while in the south the British governors were more interested in just keeping the peace and then in making any serious attempts at modernizing
from everything that I read it seems like the government foundation felt more British but the Islamic aspects like religious sharia judges or Sharia court officials were more Egyptian taxation was fixed for the first time in Sudan's history during this time
there were short bursts of resistance to all of this nothing was successful or long lasting it also appears like things were quite different in the south the sud shielded the south from a lot of modernizations and it was a simpler life from a governing perspective because it was very very underdeveloped in both places the colonial government governed largely through indigenous leaders like a chic in the north or a tribal chief in the south
when Johann Raul received the letter on Christmas day 1776 he put it away to read later maybe he thought it was a season screening and wanted to save it for the fireside but what it actually was was a warning delivered to the Hessian colonel letting him know that general George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces
the next day when Raul lost the battle of Trenton and died from two colonial boxing day musket balls the letter was found unopened in his vest pockets as someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox I feel like there's a lesson there well this is the constant history of getting things wrong I'm Mark Chrysler every episode we look at the bad ideas mistakes and accidents that miss shaped our world find us at constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts
I think this is a good time to stop and talk about different tribal and ethnic groups in both the north and the south because they're going to play a big role in upcoming politics the next two parts of these episodes
so keep in mind again that Sudan is very ethnically diverse there are 19 major linguistic groups in Sudan but I do believe generalizations can help us to frame the history so in the northern part of Sudan as we've mentioned before the term Arab is often used to describe an Arabic speaking Muslim
there are ethnically mixed people who descend from both Arab and African tribes while Arabic is the dominant language there are still local languages that tie with tribal heritage but when we're talking about modern Sudan a lot of the things that apply to modern Sudan today also apply in the 1900s so I'm going to share a quote from cultural atlas explaining north Sudan today
quote historically most Arabs were divided into tribes and sub tribes on the basis of people's descent from common ancestors the traditional life leoids of tribes were usually centered on agricultural production or nomadic livestock hurting these traditional lifestyles have been dismantled mostly in cities however they continue in rural areas and settled villages
agricultural tribes remain in a specific territory usually along the central Nile meanwhile tribes whose lives center on livestock rearing are generally nomads in the plains and are known as Bedouins or Badu ultimately Sudanese Arabs don't make a Haji's group today the social landscape is so diverse that the term Arab can be descriptive of both the Camelier and the plains that's someone who raises camels by the way
and a businessman in the city end of quote again they're talking about modern Sudan it applies in the 1900s too there are also non Arab ethnicities in the north who speak languages other than Arabic some of those groups are the Nubians the Beja the Fur and the Nuba and these groups have close ancestry to the Egyptians and the Arah trans so their physical features are going to show this
in the south things are a bit different cultural atlas says quote the further away from the Nile one travels in Sudan the more quote African the social demographic and customs of the tribes become some African tribes have adopted Islam over time for example the four and Zagawa people practice Islam but also incorporate some traditions specific to their ethnicity
however many African ethnic tribes practice Christianity or follow a traditional animist religion instead the vast majority of non Muslim tribes live in the Nuba mountains or the southern regions of Sudan end of quote so southern Sudan from everything I was able to gather is much more Christian
south Sudan has over 60 different ethnic groups but there are kind of under the umbrella of six main groups the biggest ethnic group in south Sudan is the Dinka about 35% of the population and the second big biggest group is the Nueh which is spelled N-U-E-R in case you're curious
that's about 16% there are other tribes as well subdivisions within each group all with different dialects and traditions but the Dinka and the Nueh are come up the most in the history that I studied so I want to focus on those two major groups just a fun fact about Dinka people is they are often recognizable for being very tall and lean the average height of a Dinka person is six feet tall
this includes women and anything under seven feet is considered like pretty standard for Dinka and there are people who are over seven feet tall a fun fact about the Nueh tribe is they do tribal markings or scars across the forehead so typically these are six lines that mark a man to be Nueh from the Nueh tribe and these distinctions do come up in parts two and three so I just wanted to point them out
both of these tribes and other tribes in the southern region are generally cattle herders for their living and they use cattle as a form of payment even today and very much so back in the day like a bride price is still paid through cattle for example tribal rivalries and territory disputes have been long standing between tribes in the south particularly between the Dinka and Nueh they are rivals
let's stop there and go back to the history so we are in Anglo Egyptian Sudan this is 1899 to 1956 this is the time when great Britain and Egypt are co-ruling Sudan there's a couple of big things to note here the first is that during this time they more or less forced the population to see themselves as a unified nation before this they were more of self governing tribes
and so circumstances birthed kind of a more Sudanese national identity and the idea of like unified cultural things cultural dress for example became a thing while before people just wore their clothing that indicated their tribe they still do this but this idea of a unified cultural Sudanese identity started becoming a thing during this time
there again still remained a strong distinction between the north and south but things are becoming a little bit more defined Christian missionary efforts also increased into southern Sudan during this period an Italian missionary made his way to southern Sudan and pretty intensive missionary work followed from 1901 to 1964 Christianity grew a lot in southern Sudan and again distinguished it further from its Arab and Muslim population in the north
another key event during British Egyptian time was that major infrastructure projects developed like the Sudan railways in many senses again that interior region of Sudan was largely unknown to outside groups paved roads didn't exactly grow in Sudan during the 1800s and early 1900s
so any military campaigns trying to get into central or southern Sudan were really difficult until railroads were made and railways allowed resources to be taken out of these areas and exported which obviously benefited colonial powers
direct route from the interior of Sudan to the red sea at port Sudan was a huge deal especially as cash crops became more and more important to the economy a huge irrigation project that launched in 1911 started mainstreaming cotton in Sudan cotton became the central focus of the region
all of these things I've talked about have pros and cons it really depends on how you want to look at it right railroads often disrupted local communities cut through lands and areas that have been used in other ways for generations they'd also provided more jobs for building railways as well as working in agricultural cash crops also could be seen as a benefit they required tribes and cultures that had not previously worked together to have more close contact which led to conflict
even with all of this infrastructure growth there still wasn't a whole lot of development in southern Sudan and because it has no ports and it's landlocked that made Britain and Egypt not want to invest in much into the southern part of Sudan addition Egyptians also wanted to reform Sudan's education system today in 2024 southern Sudan south Sudan for example has the lowest literacy rate for women in the world
only 16% of women are able to read today in south Sudan and only 34% of all south Sudanese are literate think about that right that means 70% of south Sudanese people do not know how to read and write today Sudan in the north has 60% as its literacy rate so much higher so you can see that in the early 1900s where we are in history
it was likely worse the British set up a system that segregated schools along racial and class lines so the wealthy elite which again were a very very small percentage of people were often the people who were most friendly to the British and they were more well educated while the larger population was not English was introduced in schools
they are also influenced by Egypt Arabic became a major language spoken in the north but speaking English immediately put a person in a higher position of power they focused on training people in vocations that served the needs of the colonial economy right so agriculture and railway maintenance were a major education focus and providing a broader education was not this absolutely affects the people of Sudan for years to come we'll get into that in parts two and especially in part three
Egypt also supported a lot of teacher training that spread Arabic and Islamic education throughout the country and indigenous languages or cultural traditions really were not a priority diminished heavily the first college ever was established in cartoon in 1902 overall the majority of studentese people received little to no education during this time had a massive impact on the country
and that affects the way that Sudan and South Sudan are able to compete on the world stage today building nations and governments does require literacy education is also a huge confidence booster let's be real here like a lack of literacy puts people in a position where they can be more easily influenced by others because it's harder to verify or question information when it's learned through word of mouth
word of mouth information is really dependent on the trustworthiness and memory of the person passing that information and so I just feel like the power of independent learning granted by literacy right literacy leads to independent learning I just think it cannot be understated it's so important
in the middle of all of this we have world war one 1914 to 1918 world war one affected Sudan because great Britain was a key player in the conflict because Sudan made cotton and that was needed for uniforms and all kinds of you know wartime needs the British colonial administration
really ratcheted cotton production up this obviously affects the people additionally many Sudanese were conscripted or required to join labor or military units in world war one Sudanese did fight in the war mostly in the Middle East and in East Africa if you want to learn more about the theaters of world war
one I have an episode on it episode 36 but moving all of these people and resources around required a lot more infrastructure so Sudan railways was expanded even more into the country there was also a famine during the war which led to again bad harvest which led to food shortages that affected the
everyday life of people on a huge scale also during world war one most of the Sudanese who had left for the war became exposed to more anti-colonial ideas from other nations and brought them back to Sudan at the end of the war this started laying the foundation for independence movements there was an uprising in 1919 with people showing great dissatisfaction with British policies wanting more self determination
and as we've learned world war one the end of world war one led to many boundaries being redrawn and changed we talk a lot about that in the 101 episodes and this redrawing of boundaries kind of indirectly affected Sudan one way was when Egypt gained independence from the
British in 1922 so shortly after world war one separate administrations continued over Sudan so Egypt and Britain were still running it but it did shake things up for sure politics began to shift in the region and in the 1930s Egypt began to assert more power over Sudan which made Sudanese nationalism grow which made workers organized trade union movements against poor working conditions low wages again the Sudanese felt like they were being exploited for foreign interests
and there's that pushback that we've talked about Sudan was also drawn into world war two which was from 1939 to 1945 again because of mostly the British pretty much the same things that happened in world war one happened again cotton was needed more agricultural products were needed for the war and so real ways and roads were built to move troops and supplies from here to there depending on how you want to look at it
this can be seen as positive improvements to Sudan's development but also meant more exposure to outside ideas and lifestyles as well as local suffering as resources are diverted to the war the vast majority of Sudanese still had little to no contact with the outside world though so the fact that they're getting more and more ideas as during these world wars it's significant
after world war two as we know from many of the other 101 episodes this was a time of massive decolonization many independence movements happened around the world after world war two and Sudan is no different more political activity and Sudanese nationalism all on the rise after world war two because of Sudan's strategic location again right by the Suez Canal right by the red sea
it had become a logistical hub for the allies in world war two and this made it tricky Sudanese nationalists wanted more political representation but it also wanted independence and hopefully we know by now that they were not all in agreement on how this was to be done right just think about your country where you live if your country reached independence did everyone in your country agree on how it should be done no right different groups have different ideas on how independence should happen
what it should look like and there was a serious divide in Sudan between the north and the south in 1947 there was a conference in juba under the British Sudanese leaders from the north and the south met to kind of sort out Sudan's future author Peter Martell said quote after a century of outside rule the June 1947 conference was the first time anyone had asked the south Sudanese what they wanted
the British brought in true in chiefs from across the south as well as a small but vocal crowd of the educated including teachers and government clerks and quote this is 1947 and it's the first time that the southerners are getting involved in the politics on like a larger scale the British wanted to unite the north and the south of Sudan and the southern leaders were not interested in that
unfortunately from what I could gather it seems like the British had basically made up their minds before the conference and the southern suit needs chiefs were more or less informed that the British were going to hand control of the south over to the north and that's how it was going to be now the question of the north and south of Sudan had always existed but because Britain decided to leave south Sudan relatively untouched by modernity
they didn't have the south didn't have a unified political class it didn't have one leader to kind of rally behind and while Britain toyed with the idea of adding southern Sudan to Britain's other African colonies southern Sudan really wasn't a high priority for the British because it was very underdeveloped southerners later called this conference the abominable conference
they felt like they had not been truly consulted and they were worried about how the northern Sudanese people would treat the southerners if the northerners were allowed to rule national agitation continued political parties began forming in the north and in the south all influenced by global trends against colonialism and one of these parties favored actually unity with Egypt
Egypt was very in favor of Sudan no longer being under British control because they wanted Britain out of the Suez Canal and they were upset with the British because of the British involvement with allowing the state of Israel to be created
so getting Britain out of Sudan was really important to Egypt and in 1953 the British and Egyptian governments finally signed an agreement that they would grant Sudan the ability to self govern and a transitional period was agreed upon that would hopefully lead to full independence in time
and Sudan held its first parliamentary elections in 1953 which led to forming kind of a coalition government and this government was tasked with organizing a constitutional conference and preparing the country for independence and in October of 1954 250 leaders from the south met in juba and they organized their own meeting to discuss rule by cartoon like how do we feel about being ruled by the north and again the capital of the north is cartoon
they wanted Sudan to become a federal system giving them more freedom from the north and they decided that if a federal system wasn't possible then they wanted full independence with Sudan being divided between the north and the south but this did not happen on December 19th, 1955 the Sudanese Parliament unanimously passed a resolution declaring Sudan as independent from Egypt and Britain
and this was followed by a formal declaration of independence on January 1st 1956 again that marked the end of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium and Sudan is now an independent nation
it was a pivotal moment to be sure but unfortunately it left a lot of things unresolved particularly again that tenuous relationship between the northern and southern regions that was absolutely not resolved and as you've probably guessed during all of these political changes a civil war had already erupted between the northerners and the southerners
January 1st 1956 the first day of Sudan becoming an independent nation already a civil war from the get-go the government experienced a lot of political instability and power struggles there was a series of coups that means attempted government takeovers multiple changes to the government and most of it again had to do with these issues between the north and the south and the first Sudanese civil war lasted from 1955 to 1972 so let's talk about it for a minute
the south was suspicious and fearful of rule by cartoon but the south wasn't very unified because they had been left fairly untouched by modernity except to be raided for slaves and also because of the simple geography of the swampland that made their region much more difficult to develop their lives and society weren't as developed as the northern counterpart
since in the past the north had treated them as subhuman and independent Sudan that included the south really was never going to go well the southerners didn't necessarily trust each other either but they had one common enemy and that was the northern Arabs of Sudan
and the beginning of the war actually came as an attack from the south to the north and honestly it was pretty disorganized in Martell's book first raised a flag which I've quoted a few times he talks about how there was one sergeant named Sergeant Aboyo and he knew that he was going to be the vehicle for a southern revolution and he sent messages to others throughout the south that they should assassinate northern officers while they slept
and there was a few problems with this plan the foremost issue was that the southerners didn't have access to guns so the first shot of the first Sudanese civil war was actually a bone arrow Aboyo did try to assassinate a northern officer but he was arrested and tensions grew because the north knew that most of the south aligned with Aboyo and his opinions
a few days later a more organized rebellion took place southerners against northerners as northerners were shot and beaten to death by machetes then then southern troops would come in and break into the armory and distribute weapons among themselves there wasn't much of centralized leadership just general purpose that serving the north was not going to happen and eventually this lack of organization meant they were defeated by the northerners and began begging the British for help
but all of this violence had really spooked the British and local British leaders in the south they did side with the south politically but they didn't it didn't change the resolution that independent Sudan was going to include both the north and the south and the northerners were ruthless in ending these rebellions so southern soldiers were rounded up 150 or more were sent to death thousands were imprisoned by 1963 anger was growing even more the politicians were demanding change
and opposition leaders in the south Joseph Adouho and William Dang wrote open segregation marks the relationship between northern and southerners we demand nothing short of self determination after which we shall be good friends and of quote you'll remember that all of this is happening during the cold war when the US and the Soviet Union were using other countries as proxy wars between them
and cartoon leaned toward the Soviets and southerners leaned towards the United States over time the southerners became more strategic about their rebellions feeling like the north was not operating fairly it was ruling the south more like a colony and one south Sudanese rebel rebel group called the Anyanya started to plant explosives and due to their lack of weapons they started getting creative with gas bombs and blocking roads and ambushing and digging holes
and cartoon in the north did not like this one bit they were quote merciless and retaliation captured fighters were hanged or shot and whole villages were burned hundreds were arrested people disappeared and suspected fighters were tortured one guy said I was stripped naked my feet tied and hung upside down end of quote the USA didn't help the Anyanya that's the again that rebel group in the south as much as they wanted and neither did other African nations
and so finally they went to Israel Israel agreed largely because if you remember from that one-on-one series on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict Israel has a lot of enemies on all sides in the region and wanted to broaden its influence in non-Arab entities in the Middle East and Africa and northera Sudan was allied with Egypt which was not Israel's friend at the time and so in 1969 the Israel decided to support the southern rebel fighters
and the first group of Anyanya fighters again that's the south Sudanese rebel fighters they arrived in Israel for military training weapons and support and Israel's intelligence community community Masad spent time during doing trainings in southern Sudan with these rebel armies and one particular man named John Garang was trained by Masad during this time
and his name becomes very very important in part two around the same time in 1969 the north of Sudan begins to be ruled by an authoritarian leader who experimented with a lot of socialist policies again the north was friendly with the Soviet Union in the early 1970s and the Soviets provided the north with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons and machinery and this particular man's government nationalized many industries and also introduced more Islamic laws in the north
in 1972 the war officially ended with what's called the Addis Ababa agreement basically a peace agreement between the government and cartoon in the north and the separatist southern rebels the Anyanya and it allowed for a creation of what was called the southern Sudan autonomous region basically allowed for a regional assembly that could be based in Juba in the south
so the central government would still be in cartoon but in the south they would have some more autonomy in their own region could have some governing power that was the idea the Anyanya was actually integrated into the Sudanese army and police force and while everyone was happy that it ended the conflict most northerners were pretty dubious about giving the south more autonomy and they worried that other regions that they controlled might do the same thing
while in the southern the southern region they were generally glad they had more representation but they felt like it wasn't enough and they wanted more autonomy than what was given however over the next 10 years there were a lot of disagreements on how this agreement would be implemented and that caused more challenges between the two groups and then in 1978 Chevron which is the US oil giant of the time discovered oil in Sudan
and most of it was found in the southern part this cranked up tensions between the north and the south a lot so not only did we have political and religious disagreements between the two but now we have oil which has the potential to bring a lot of wealth to an extremely poor nation that's now all on the table
let's stop there we just covered from the dawn of time until 1978 a major gloss over definitely a lot to digest feel free to print out the transcription for this episode which you can find in my show notes
reread it listen again part two will be coming out in two weeks so if you're listening to this right away that will hopefully give you some time to digest but let's do a quick summary make sure we've got this so the land we now call Sudan and south Sudan is in north eastern Africa underneath Egypt
in the north we have desert further south you go becomes more green ancient civilizations existed for many many years Christianity spreads through the region then Islam Islamic Sultanates rule the land for many years there's a turco Egyptian administration under the Ottoman Empire for a time during that time the slave trade which focused on southern Sudan affects everything
Britain begins to have more power in the region because of the Suez Canal from 1899 to 1956 Britain and Egypt jointly rule Sudan it becomes something called a condominium Britain had a lot of power during this time developed much of northern Sudan but because of that swamp like barrier the southern region of Sudan becomes much less developed
World War One World War Two all happened during this condominium period but as Sudanese people learn of anticholonial ideas nationalism and hopes for more freedom begin to take hold by the end of World War Two the global order is shifting Sudan's a part of that and in 1955 Sudan becomes independent well end of 1955 early 1956 however a civil war is now called the first Sudanese civil war begins right away between the government in the north and the southern rebels it lasts until 1972
after this the south begins to have a bit more autonomy though this wasn't handled exactly like the agreement said and in 1978 oil is discovered in Sudan that is the basic basic overview I want to end on one quote by Peter Martell he says quote Sudan is a crossing point and a melting pot of people between the continents and the Middle East it is a bridge between African and Arab Muslim and Christian north and south this is where two worlds collide
at the best of times they blend together at the worst and there have been a lot of bad times they fray and split turning differences of race religion language and ways of life into violence and quote and boy does it heat up even more in the coming years that we're going to talk about in parts two and part three I'm going to save my personal takeaways for parts two and three because this episode is long enough already
and there are a lot more human details in parts two and three because they cover a lot less time and so I'll save it I'll save it but if you've learned anything from this episode please consider sharing it with someone you know send a text shared on social media I really appreciate it
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