‘Demonstrating the Machine Guns’: Rebellion, Violence and State Formation in Early Colonial Darfur

Abstract

Recent literature on British colonial rule in Africa has increasingly emphasised the ways in which relatively cautious colonial states were formed in processes of engagement and accommodation with local societies. This article uses the example of a major rebellion against colonial authority in southern Darfur in 1921 to demonstrate the ways in which these processes of local engagement might themselves feed into rebellion against state authority, rather than secure colonial rule. The rebellion was inspired by Mahdist millenarian belief, but the involvement of local societies in both the rebellion and its repression was also shaped by patterns of local rivalries into which the colonial state had entered as an additional actor. The article also reminds us, more broadly, that spectacular violence and local accommodation were not distinct modes of colonial governance but rather continually intertwined in processes of colonial state formation.