Government and Christian missions in the Anglo‐Egyptian Sudan, 1899–1914

Abstract

From the foundation of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium in 1899 to this day relations between governments and Christian missionary bodies in the Sudan have been ambiguous and, since 1956, tragic. The paper which follows deals with the earliest phase of this unhappy relationship; it does not touch upon the current problems of the Southern Sudanese or upon the wider theme of the behaviour of a modern Muslim ruling institution towards non-Muslim minorities among its subjects. The sources used here represent a mere scratching of the evidence, and the examination even of this fragment requires the exercise of particular caution.t Public statements so often deceive the inquirer into private motives. For instance, Dr. Roland Oliver in his Missionary Factor in East Africa, 1952, on p. 192, correctly wrote that the Gordon Memorial Mission of the Church Missionary Society started work in the Southern Sudan at the invitation of Lord Cromer, British agent and consul general in Egypt. What Dr. Oliver did not state was that Cromer's invitation was issued with exceedingly bad grace. In order to discern the real relations between government officials and missionaries we must go behind the fa,ade of the printed word to the freer world of private correspondence. Above all, we must continually remember how easy it is to be wise after the event. The dispute over the freedom to preach and teach Christianity and Islam in the Southern Sudan was inevitable in the presence of