Full Length Research Paper
Abstract
This paper explores the extent to which the British colonial administration was responsible for the post-colonial conflict between North and South Sudan. Throughout the Anglo-Egyptian regime, British administrators continuously separated the Northern and Southern regions on a socio-economic basis while maintaining political unity. The combination of these policies was likely the root cause behind the postcolonial conflict between the Northern and Southern Sudanese. To show evidence of this assertion, the following paper will assess pre-colonial tensions within the region and illustrate how the British’s decision to unite the North and South despite its preexisting divisions only furthered tensions between the Sudanese. Next, the paper details the inconsistencies in early colonial policy and its role in creating the Northern Sudanese hegemony. The study will analyze the motivation behind a series of regional separatist policies and how these policies pushed the North and South on separate paths of development, furthering the socio-economic divide. The paper details the self-serving motives that influenced the British to politically unify the region at the time of independence, despite the consequences this decision had on the Southern Sudanese. It also describes the decolonization period, in which the combination of forced political unification, Northern hegemony, cultural division, and pre-colonial tensions caused the beginning of a half-century-long war.
Key words: Sudan, South Sudan, British colonialism, ethnic conflict.
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