Kenneth J. Perkins - Port Sudan: The Evolution of a Colonial City

Series Editors

John P. Entelis, Fordham University

Michael Suleiman, Kansas State University

The states and societies of Arab North Africa have long been neglected in the scholarly literature dealing with the Arab world, the Middle East, and Islam, except in the context of dramatic international events. Yet this region has a rich historical and cultural tradition that offers important insights into the evolution of society, the complexity of cultural life, forms of social interactions, strategies of economic development, and patterns of state formation throughout the developing world. In addition, as the region has assumed more importance in geopolitical terms, both the United States and Europe have become more directly involved in its economics and politics. Few books of a scholarly or policy nature, however, analyze and interpret recent trends and changes in the constellation of relations between regional and global powers. This new seriesthe first in English to focus exclusively on Arab North Africawill address important conceptual and policy issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, giving special emphasis to questions of political culture and political economy.

Development and Disenchantment in Rural Tunisia; The Bourguiba Years, Mira Zussman

State and Society in Algeria, edited by John P. Entelis and Philip C. Naylor

Polity and Society in Contemporary North Africa, edited by I. William Zartman and William Mark Habeeb

Port Sudan: The Evolution of a Colonial City, Kenneth J. Perkins

First published 1993 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge

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A CIP catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28392-6 (hbk)

To

Margaret, Amanda, and M. E., for whom the road to Port Sudan began on the banks of the Nile and ended on the shores of the Gulf

Documents from the Sudan Central Records Office (now officially the National Records Office) are cited by an abbreviation identifying their series (e.g., CIVSEC, CAIRINT, Intelligence, Education) followed by a number indicating class, file, and subject. Where no series identification appears, the document is part of the PORT SUDAN series.

Papers from the Sudan Archives of Durham Universitys Oriental Library are cited by box and file numbers.

Material from the Public Records Office in London is cited by class (e.g., FO 371), series, and file.

The following abbreviations have been used in the end notes:

In transliterating Arabic words, the system employed by the International Journal of Middle East Studies , but simplified by the omission of all diacritical marks except for to indicate the letter ain and to indicate the guttural stop hamza, has been adopted. Scholarly interest in Sudan spans the fields of African and Middle Eastern studies, bringing together experts with an array of linguistic skills. Readers conversant with Arabic will easily recognize transliterated words; those who are not might well find full-scale transliterations a needless formality. For Arabic plurals, the convention of adding -s to the transliterated form has been used in preference to a transliteration of the Arabic plural. For the names of geographical features, the form most commonly used in the contemporary documentation has been adopted (for example, Khor Arbaat and Khor Mog rather than the more technically correct Khawr Arbaat and Khawr Mawj). Arabic words included in standard English dictionaries (shaikh, effendi, qadi, for instance) retain the spellings given therein. Personal names are always cited as they appear in the original reference. Finally, in direct quotes and in documentary citations in the notes, the original spellings have been retained.

I owe my interest in the Sudan to Professor L. Carl Brown. The subject of this book bears very little resemblance to the topics he had in mind when he first proposed that the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan offered a rich field of comparison and contrast with French colonial North Africa, but without his suggestions, I doubt I would have begun my exploration of Sudanese history.

Grants from the University of South Carolinas Research and Productive Scholarship Fund (1979) and the Fulbright Islamic Civilization Program (19821983) enabled me to conduct research in the Sudan and the United Kingdom. I am also grateful to the University of South Carolinas Office of Sponsored Programs and Research for providing, on several occasions, air transportation to Washington to consult sources in the Library of Congress. David Chesnutt, editor of the Henry Laurens Papers, provided very much appreciated advice and assistance in the compilation of the index.