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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Reinventing the wheel? Local government and neo-traditional authority in late-colonial northern Sudan
Author:Vaughan, ChrisISNI
Year:2010
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies (ISSN 0361-7882)
Volume:43
Issue:2
Pages:255-278
Language:English
Geographic term:Sudan
Subjects:local government
indirect rule
1940-1949
1950-1959
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/25741430
Abstract:The introduction of 'local government' in the British Empire was part of a wider project of postwar imperial policy to make 'other' political cultures look less 'other' and more like the metropole itself. Imperial subjects sitting on councils were now ordering their business in line with metropolitan models of ritualized council meetings, thus partially entering what was still a privileged sphere of whiteness. Local government was envisaged as both a disciplinary training ground for future political independence as well as a bulwark against the spread of nationalism among local communities. However, according to the present paper - which looks at the case of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Sudan -, this local government was a cosmetic change, intended to buy time for colonial government to make more effective bargains with an ever more demanding educated elite, while real power remained in the hands of the established allies of the State, so-called 'traditional' notables or chiefs. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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