A History of Modern Sudan (review)

For the past half-century Robert O. Collins has been the dean of American Sudan scholars. His dozen books — mostly on modern history and Nile waters, with emphasis on the Southern Sudan — and countless articles and short monographs have informed both the Sudanese and those foreigners intent on seriously studying them and their country. His stated purpose of this final book is to offer “a comprehensive and readable history for the general public” (p. xiii), a sort of synthesis which only experience and wisdom can provide, both of which the author possessed in great measure.

In this effort, Collins succeeded in the main. His grasp of information, especially details of meetings, decisions, and military maneuvers on the part of an astonishing number of actors is breathtaking; yet his interpretation of the motivations of Sudanese leaders is not always convincing.

The book includes a series of useful maps, a glossary, and a five-page list of abbreviations. The bibliography is comprehensive, as one would expect from this author; however, there are less than two pages of footnotes, presumably in keeping with an essayist approach for the “general public” rather than Collins’s usual detailed documentary style.

The author covers the past 185 years from the Turkiyya (1821–85) through the Mahdiyya, the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium and the post-independence (January 1, 1956) regimes, and the three parliamentary democracies and three military juntas. Each chapter almost overflows with events, personalities, problems to be solved, and failures to do so, as in his final chapter on the “Disaster in Darfur.”

Collins is strongest when he provides the geographic and historical contexts for each period. The actors and their idiosyncracies are presented masterfully, and there are also insightful summaries of the author’s critiques in the last several sentences of each section. One wonders if the goal of “a comprehensive and readable history” would not have been better achieved with less detail — surely confusing for all but the deep specialists — and through more elaborations on his very useful and thought-provoking themes.

And yet, this is an uneven book. On the stylistic front the reader would expect that the many place names, especially of battles, be visible in the 14 maps interspersed throughout the text. Also, the rather promiscuous use of Arabic terms tends to distract from the flow of reading, especially when their incorrect usage reveals the author’s understandably limited familiarity with Arabic. He uses shura when meaning majlis (p. 222), kafirin instead of kuffar (p. 228 inter al.), nas when he means sha’b, etc.

There was never a doubt about Robert Collins’ mastery of the intricacies of Southern Sudan, its leaders, factions, intra- and intertribal quarrels, and this mastery is displayed here once again. However, when he examines Northern politicians, and especially their motivations, and sectarian and inter-personal quarrels, his analysis often falls short; one cannot but wonder to what extent his half-century of affiliating closely with South Sudan and its leaders and ordinary people have colored his perspectives. Thus, President Jaafar Numayri is simply presented as another (typical) Northerner, when, in fact, he was quite atypical given his background and conduct. More seriously, the author’s very visible antipathy toward Islamic movements leads him to misunderstand the rise of Islamism worldwide during the last quarter of the 20^th century, and the concomitant demands for Shari‘a law in many countries as a response to failed models of Westernization being equated with modernization.

Similar to accounts in the popular media, Khartoum’s rulers, be they civilian or military, “secular” or “Islamist,” are frequently depicted as sinister, trying to harm Southerners and/or Darfurians when indifference or benign neglect would seem to have been attributable characteristics. Was it not Southerners and Darfurians who initiated all three (violent) rebellions against the center? And did not the John Garang and SPLM/A-led rebellion of 1983 precede the...