How did colonialism, and the British in particular, lay the basis for division in Sudan and Darfur?
Colonialism laid a foundation through history-writing, conducting a census and implementing a system of laws. It wrote a history of Sudan as one of Arab settlers conquering native tribes. As early as the 1920s, the British began to prepare a census for Sudan, which was ultimately carried out in the mid-1950s. The census was driven by three categories: tribe, groups of tribes (really language groups) and race. Arab and Negroid were defined as separate races in the census. It is legislation that gave teeth to the categories in the census. Though racialisation was important at an ideological level, it was tribalisation – not racialisation – that drove administrative practice. Both land and administration were tribalised. To have “customary” access to land and to be appointed to “customary” positions like that of “chief”, you needed to belong to a “native” tribe. The result was systematic discrimination against non-native tribes on a tribal basis. Tribe became the basis of discrimination i
