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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Nomads of Northern Kordofan and the State: From Violence to Pacification
Author:Beck, KurtISNI
Year:1996
Periodical:Nomadic Peoples
Issue:38
Pages:73-98
Language:English
Geographic terms:Sudan
Great Britain
Subjects:political change
colonial conquest
nomads
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
colonialism
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/43123474
Abstract:Archival data presented in this contribution has been collected intermittently during an extended period of time since 1980 in an effort to understand the evolution of the political system in northern Kordofan (Sudan). Fieldwork was carried out among the Hawawir and the Kawahla. In the years preceding World War I, raids of the Kordofan nomads had spread to cover a huge area. Politically, the twenty years following World War I and the final inclusion of Darfur into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1916 are considered as the decisive formative period. During this period the foundations of the later political structure were laid in the course of colonial pacification and institution-building. This paper analyses the state of violence on the edge of the State and accounts for the process of colonial pacification from the Nile Valley outwards. The argument is built around the enforcement of the State's monopoly of power and the limitation of its own use of violence. The greatest outburst of violence was set into motion by the approaching colonial State itself. But it was also tamed by the State when it developed beyond the capacities of the nomads' political institutions. This points to the colonial State's capacity for pacification by introducing its law and by building political institutions to defend the rule of law. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and Spanish.
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