Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Model City: Fact and Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Khartoum

  • Chapter
The British Abroad Since the Eighteenth Century, Volume 2

Part of the book series: Britain and the World ((BAW))

  • 221 Accesses

Abstract

In mid-November of 1909, Brenda Seligman and her husband, Charles Gabriel Seligman, future professor of ethnology at the London School of Economics, stopped in Cairo, Egypt, en route to Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan.1 Preparing for the first of two stints of anthropological research they would undertake for the Sudan government between 1909 and 1912, they met with officials employed by the British regime in Egypt to which the Sudan was formally subordinate. They also mixed pleasure with business, as they did when they revisited Cairo, then a tourist mecca offering the attractions of both high-minded recreation and extravagant consumption. They saw the pyramids; cruised the Nile; heard an opera performed by a Sicilian troupe; shopped for Persian carpets, silver tableware and fine china; visited the field sites of the prominent Egyptologist (later Sir) William Flinders Petrie; and complained about British and American ‘tourists of the most virulent type’ – intent on frivolous pursuits, with no interest in ancient Egypt.2

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Harold MacMichael (1955) The Sudan (New York: Praeger), pp. 91–7.

    Google Scholar 

  2. E.E. Evans-Pritchard in 1973, quoted in D. Johnson (1988) ‘The Sudan Under the British’, Journal of African History [JAH], 29, 541.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. A.H.M. Kirk-Greene (1982) ‘The Sudan Political Service: A Profile in the Sociology of Imperialism’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 15, 21–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. R. Collins (1972) ‘The Sudan Political Service: A Portrait of the “Imperialists”’, African Affairs, 71, 293–303.

    Google Scholar 

  5. E.A. Stanton (1914) ‘Progress in the Sudan’, Journal of the Royal African Society, 13, 365–8.

    Google Scholar 

  6. J. Willis (May 2011) ‘Tribal Gatherings: Colonial Spectacle, Native Administration and Local Government in Condominium Sudan’, Past and Present, 211, 243–68, quotation 245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. R.O. Collins and R.L. Tignor (1967) Egypt and the Sudan (Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall), pp. 59–63, 84–8.

    Google Scholar 

  8. The many – popular and scholarly – accounts of these events include B. Farwell (1989) Prisoners of the Mahdi (New York: W. W. Norton).

    Google Scholar 

  9. M. Asher (2006) Khartoum. The Ultimate Imperial Adventure (London: Penguin Books).

    Google Scholar 

  10. British officials were consulted about such major decisions as large-scale military expeditions and international treaties, but the Sudan government otherwise acted in consultation with the Consul-General in Egypt, reporting to London after the fact. The Sudan’s Governors-General were officially appointed by the Khedive, but were in practice appointed by Britain. The Consul-General and British advisors in Egyptian ministries managed Egypt’s role in the Sudan affairs. But officials in the Sudan (notably Wingate) acted to create effective autonomy. The Sudan’s dual administration virtually ended after Egyptian independence in 1922 but officially ended in 1953. See, for example, M.W. Daly (1983) ‘The Development of the Governor-Generalship of the Sudan, 1988–1934’, JAH, 24, 77–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Gabriel Warburg (1970) ‘The Sudan, Egypt and Britain, 1899–1916’, Middle Eastern Studies, 6, 163–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. The last quote is from John Lee Anderson (23 July 2012) ‘A History of Violence’, The New Yorker, 49. In 1930 a border was drawn between north and south, designed to protect the south from subversive influences, which northerners needed visas to cross. The regime’s attention to the south grew after the Second World War. H.J. Sharkey (2003) Living with Colonialism (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press), p. 81.

    Google Scholar 

  13. See G.S. Eissa (2005) Review essay on Ahmed Ibrahim AbouShouk and Anders Bjorkelo, ‘The Principles of Native Administration in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898–1956’, Intellectual Discourse, 13, 95–9.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kitchener memo of 1899, quoted in H. MacMichael (1934) The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (London: Faber and Faber), p. 73.

    Google Scholar 

  15. C.G. Seligman (1916) ‘Presidential Address’, Section H — Anthropology, Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 85th meeting, 1915 (London: John Murray), 651–65.

    Google Scholar 

  16. H.H. Johnston, E. Torday, T.A. Joyce, and C.G. Seligman (1913) ‘A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa: And the Formal Racial and Tribal Migrations in That Continent’, JRAI [Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute], 43, 375–421, quotation on 405.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Henrika Kuklick(1991) The Savage Within. The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press), esp. pp. 182–241.

    Google Scholar 

  18. A.H. Keane (1885) ‘Ethnology of Egyptian Sudan’, J[R]AI, 14, 91–113.

    Google Scholar 

  19. C.G. Seligman (1966) Races of Africa, 4th edn (London: Oxford University Press), p. 8.

    Google Scholar 

  20. C.G. Seligman (1913) ‘Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, JRAI, 43, 593–705.

    Google Scholar 

  21. For just some examples, see H.S. Lewis (1963) ‘The Hamites of Africa’, JAH, 4, 463–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Wyatt MacGaffey (1966) ‘Concepts of Race in the Historiography of Northeast Africa’, JAH, 7, 1–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. E.R. Saunders (1969) ‘The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origins and Functions in Time Perspective’, JAH, 10, 521–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Wyatt MacGaffey (2005) ‘Changing Representations in Central African History’, JAH, 46, 189–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. R. Oliver and J.D. Fage (1962) A Short History of Africa (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin), pp. 44–52.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Harold MacMichael (September 1907) ‘Notes on the History of Kordofan Before the Egyptian Conquest’, printed government document, in Seligman 3/4/11.

    Google Scholar 

  27. M.J. Herskovits (1941) ‘Charles Gabriel Seligman’, American Anthropologist, 43, 437–39, quotation 437.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. C.G. Seligman (1924) ‘Anthropology and Psychology: A Study of Some Points of Contact’, JRAI, 54, 13–46.

    Google Scholar 

  29. E. Linstrum (2011) ‘A Dream Dictionary for the World: Charles Gabriel Seligman and the Globalization of the Unconscious’, unpublished paper.

    Google Scholar 

  30. See N. Pevsner (1976) A History of Building Types (London: Thames & Hudson), p. 293.

    Google Scholar 

  31. J. Burns (1911) ‘Inaugural Address’, in Royal Institute of British Architects, Transactions of the Town Planning Conference, (London: Royal Institute of British Architects), 62–76.

    Google Scholar 

  32. See, for example, M. Doyle (2008) ‘The Sepoys of the Pound and Sandy Row: Empire and Loyalty in Mid-Victorian Belfast’.

    Google Scholar 

  33. P. De Figueiredo (2003) ‘Symbols of Empire: The Buildings of the Liverpool Waterfront’, Architectural History, 46, 229–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. T.R. Metcalf (1989) An Imperial Vision. Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press).

    Google Scholar 

  35. T. Mitchell (1989) Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press), esp. pp. 161–3.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Intelligence Branch, Quartermaster-General’s Department, Horse Guards, War Office (1884) Report on the Egyptian Provinces of the Sûdan, Red Sea, and Equator (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office), p. 122.

    Google Scholar 

  37. On the long-established fixation of colonial medicine on Europeans only, see, for example, David Arnold (1993) ‘Colonial Enclaves: The Army and the Jails’, in his Colonizing the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 61–115.

    Google Scholar 

  38. J.W. Cell (1986) ‘Anglo-Indian Medical Theory and the Origins of Segregation in West Africa’, American Historical Review, 91, 307–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. W.H. McLean (1913) ‘Town Planning in the Tropics, With Special Reference to the Khartoum City Development Plan’, The Town Planning Review, 3, 226. See also W.H. McLean, ‘The Planning of Khartoum and Omdurman’, 575–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. A. Balfour (1908) ‘Sanitary Notes, Khartoum’, in Balfour, Third Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum (London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox, for the Department of Education, Sudan Government), pp. 63–4.

    Google Scholar 

  41. See David Ottewill (1979) ‘Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951): An Arts and Crafts Architect’, Architectural History, 22, 88–115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Unsigned news story (1912) ‘Khartoum Cathedral’, The Architectural Journal, 19, 3rd series, 231.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Robert W.S. Weir (19 May 1916) ‘The Cathedral of All Saints, Khartoum, Sudan’, The Builder, 110, 371–3.

    Google Scholar 

  44. A.A. Abdel-Hameed (1997) ‘The Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories in Khartoum (1903–1934): An Experiment in Development’, Medical History, 41, 30–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Ryan Johnson (2008) ‘Tabloid Brand Medicine Chests: Selling Health and Hygiene for the British Tropical Colonies’, Science and Culture, 17, 249–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Andrew Balfour (1904) First Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum (London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox for the Department of Education, Sudan Government), pp. 7–9.

    Google Scholar 

  47. George Rosen’s (1993) A History of Public Health, Expanded Edition (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Liam Greenslade, Moss Madden, and Maggie Pearson (1997) ‘From Visible to Invisible: The “problem” of the health of Irish People in Britain’, in Lara Marks and Michael Worboys (eds.) Migrants, Minorities and Health (London: Routledge), pp. 147–78.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Michael Worboys (1988) ‘Manson, Ross and Colonial Medical Policy: tropical medicine in London and Liverpool, 1899–1914’, in R. MacLeod and M. Lewis (eds.) Disease, Medicine and Empire (London: Routledge), pp. 21–37.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Philip Manson-Bahr (1927) The Life and Work of Patrick Manson (London: Cassell and Company), p. 210.

    Google Scholar 

  51. A. Balfour (1906) Second Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum (London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox, for the Department of Education, Sudan Government), pp. 10–11.

    Google Scholar 

  52. A. Balfour (1920) War Against Tropical Disease (London: Baillière, Tyndall and Cox for the Wellcome Bureau of Tropical Research), p. 35.

    Google Scholar 

  53. W. Anderson (1997) ‘The Trespass Speaks: White Masculinity and Colonial Breakdown’, American Historical Review, 102, 1351–5.

    Google Scholar 

  54. D.N. Livingstone (1999) ‘Tropical Climate and Moral Hygiene: The Anatomy of a Victorian Debate’, British Journal of the History of Science, 32, 93–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. A. Balfour (1926), ‘Acclimatization of the White Man in the Tropics’.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Ryan Johnson (2009) ‘European Cloth and “Tropical” Skin: Clothing Material and British Ideas of Health and Hygiene in Tropical Climates’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 83, 530–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Ray Lankester (1905), Nature and Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

    Google Scholar 

  58. A. Balfour (1921) Report on Medical and Sanitary Matters in Mauritius (London: Waterlow and Sons for the Colonial Office).

    Google Scholar 

  59. Balfour (1923) Report on Medical and Sanitary Matters in Bermuda (London: Waterlow and Sons for the Colonial Office).

    Google Scholar 

  60. Balfour et al. (April 1905) Further Report on Tuberculosis and Sleeping Sickness in Equatorial Africa, submitted to the Health Committee of the League of Nations at its Fourth Session.

    Google Scholar 

  61. D. Fisher (1978) ‘Rockefeller Philanthropy and the British Empire: The Creation of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’, History of Education, 7, 129–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. L. Schumaker (2008) ‘Slimes and Death-Dealing Dambos: Water, Industry and the Garden City on Zambia’s Copperbelt’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 823–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. A. Spielman and M. D’Antonio (2001) Mosquito (New York: Hyperion), pp. 218–20.

    Google Scholar 

  64. See R.S.F. Hennessey (who retired as Assistant Research Director of the Wellcome Foundation in 1970) (22 April 1983) ‘Learning About Disease in Uganda: 1929–44 and 1949–55’, typescript, MSS Afr.s.1872, Box XVIII, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, 5–6.

    Google Scholar 

  65. See, for example, H.C. Aspengren (2010) ‘Sociological Knowledge and colonial power in Bombay around the First World War’, British Journal for the History of Science, 43, 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Henrika Kuklick
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University, UK

    Martin Farr

  2. Department of History, University of Winchester, UK

    Xavier Guégan

Copyright information

© 2013 Henrika Kuklick

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Kuklick, H. (2013). Model City: Fact and Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Khartoum. In: Farr, M., Guégan, X. (eds) The British Abroad Since the Eighteenth Century, Volume 2. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304186_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304186_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45444-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30418-6

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation