The British remember Sudan for one man, General Gordon, killed at Khartoum in 1885. The Sudanese remember a revolution that drove out foreign rule, a battle in which machine guns cut down thousands, and a "shared" government that Britain ran alone for half a century and left divided between north and south.
From 1820 the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, conquered the Nile valley south of Egypt, and his successors pushed deep into the south. Egyptian rule was harsh: heavy taxes and a slave trade that raided the southern peoples for captives. In the 1870s the Khedive employed Europeans to run the Sudan, among them a British officer, Charles Gordon, as governor-general.
In 1881 a religious teacher from the Nile island of Aba, Muhammad Ahmad, proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the redeemer expected by many Muslims. His movement joined faith with anger at foreign rule and taxation. His armies destroyed one Egyptian force after another. After Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, an Egyptian army under a British officer, William Hicks, was wiped out in 1883.
Gladstone's government did not want to fight in the Sudan. It sent Gordon back in early 1884 to evacuate the Egyptian garrisons, not to hold the country. Gordon instead stayed in Khartoum. The Mahdists besieged the city from March 1884. After months of public pressure in Britain, the government sent a relief expedition under Sir Garnet Wolseley. Its desert column fought its way through at Abu Klea in January 1885.
On the night of 25–26 January 1885 the Mahdists stormed the starving city. Gordon was killed, the garrison was wiped out, and at least 4,000 civilians were massacred. The relief column's steamers came within sight of Khartoum on 28 January, two days too late. The manner of Gordon's death is disputed. His head was taken to the Mahdi.
In Britain, Gordon became a Christian martyr in the popular imagination, and the government was blamed. In the Sudan, Khartoum's fall marked the victory of an African revolution against foreign rule. The Mahdi died months later, in June 1885, and his successor, the Khalifa Abdallahi, ruled from Omdurman for 13 years.
In 1896 Britain decided to reconquer the Sudan, partly to "avenge Gordon", partly because France and Italy were moving towards the upper Nile. General Herbert Kitchener advanced up the Nile, building a railway across the desert as he went. He beat a Mahdist force at the Atbara in April 1898 and reached Omdurman on 1 September.
The next morning about 50,000 Mahdist fighters attacked his army in the open plain outside the city. They faced massed rifles, artillery, machine guns and gunboats on the river. Thousands were killed in a few hours; the Anglo-Egyptian army lost fewer than a hundred dead. The young Winston Churchill rode in the charge of the 21st Lancers that day. Many wounded Mahdists were killed where they lay.
Before the battle, Kitchener's gunboats shelled Omdurman, and the dome of the Mahdi's tomb was destroyed. After the battle, on Kitchener's orders, the tomb was blown up, the Mahdi's body was dug up, and his remains were thrown into the Nile. Kitchener reportedly kept the skull for a while. The episode caused an outcry even in Britain.
Britain did not want to annex the Sudan outright, because the reconquest had been paid for largely by Egypt. Instead, on 19 January 1899, Lord Cromer and the Egyptian foreign minister Boutros Ghali signed an agreement in Cairo creating a joint rule, or condominium. The British and Egyptian flags would fly side by side. The governor-general would be appointed by Egypt on Britain's recommendation, and he was always British.
In practice the Sudan was run by a small, elite British Sudan Political Service. Egyptians filled the lower posts until 1924. That year Sudanese nationalists led by Ali Abd al-Latif, a former army officer, organised the White Flag League and demonstrated for unity with Egypt. On 19 November 1924 the governor-general, Sir Lee Stack, was assassinated in Cairo. Britain used it to force all Egyptian troops and officials out of the Sudan, and crushed a Sudanese battalion that mutinied in their support.
Britain then ruled through tribal leaders and the heads of the big religious orders, including, ironically, the Mahdi's son Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, who became a wealthy cotton grower. The Gezira cotton scheme between the Blue and White Niles, irrigated from the 1920s, became the colony's money-maker.
Britain ran the mainly Muslim, Arabic-speaking north and the mainly Christian and traditional-religion south almost as two countries. From 1922 "Closed District Ordinances" restricted northerners from entering the south, and under the "Southern Policy" of 1930 the south was left to Christian missions, English and local languages, while Arabic and Islam were discouraged. The south was barely developed.
In 1946 Britain suddenly reversed course and decided the Sudan should be one country. Southerners had almost no say and few educated leaders. When the Sudanisation of government jobs began in the 1950s, nearly all posts went to northerners.
In August 1955, months before independence, southern soldiers of the Equatoria Corps mutinied at Torit, fearing northern rule. The mutiny spread through the south and was put down, but survivors took to the bush. It is usually counted as the start of the first Sudanese civil war, which lasted until 1972.
After the Egyptian revolution of 1952, Britain and Egypt agreed in 1953 that the Sudanese should choose their own future. Elections brought Ismail al-Azhari's National Unionist Party to power, and he became the first Sudanese Prime Minister in January 1954. His party had campaigned for union with Egypt, but once in office he moved to full independence instead.
On 19 December 1955 the Sudanese parliament voted unanimously for a fully independent sovereign state. Britain and Egypt recognised it two weeks later. A British diplomat reported to London how, on the morning of Sunday 1 January 1956, shortly before 8 a.m., the British and Egyptian representatives handed al-Azhari the documents of recognition in a brief, almost private ceremony in his office in Parliament. Later that morning the new Sudanese flag was raised. The Condominium had come to an end.
"By this act, the Condominium of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan came formally to an end and the independent and sovereign Sudan was born."British Chargé d'Affaires, Khartoum, to the Foreign Secretary, 6 January 1956, The National Archives
Long before Egypt or Britain, the Sudan was home to the kingdoms of Kush and Meroë, whose pyramids still stand north of Khartoum, and later the Christian Nubian kingdoms and the Funj sultanate of Sennar. Our partner sites cover the Nile valley and Africa's independence stories:
The National Army Museum in Chelsea has objects from the Sudan campaigns, including Mahdist arms and shields. Gordon's statue stands in Victoria Embankment Gardens in London. The Sudan Archive at Durham University holds the papers of many British officials who served there. Foreign Office files on the Condominium are at The National Archives in Kew.
Sudan is at war. Most governments, including the UK, currently advise against all travel there. In peacetime, visitors see the rebuilt Mahdi's tomb and the Khalifa's House Museum in Omdurman, the meeting of the Blue and White Niles at Khartoum, and the pyramids of Meroë. Much of Sudan's heritage has been damaged or looted in the current war.
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome. There are no tours in Sudan at present. Nubia's history continues across the border in southern Egypt, and Gordon's story begins in London:
The occupation that dragged Britain into the Sudan.
The other Horn of Africa territory, and its own long resistance.
Where Gordon and Kitchener are remembered.
All of Britain's African territories, country by country.
Britain Adventures is an independent partner website. Our partner sites on Africa and its history are where the stories on this page continue:
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