Luxury, Status, and the Importance of Slavery in the Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Northern Sudan

Abstract

Almost immediately after official abolition of slavery in 1899, Condominium administration began to worry about exodus of slaves from farmlands of their owners and corresponding slump in northern Sudan's overall agricultural output.1 In an influential article entitled Economic Development and Heritage of Slavery in Sudan Republic, McLoughlin comments on this period's labor shortage and hardship that it created. He explains that pains of social and economic adjustment were not surprising, since the Sudan has been a slave-based economy for at least three millennia.2 McLoughlin's portrayal of slavery in Sudan is open to question on two grounds: he suggests that slaves had indeed been cornerstone of Sudanese economy for millennia, and implies that demand for slaves over that time span had primarily reflected a demand for their productive labor. Both conclusions, though containing some truth, are essentially flawed. It is true that territories of Sudan had exported slaves for millennia. One of earliest extant written sources, dating from fourth millennium B.c., indicates that Egyptians under Pharaoh Seneferu penetrated Nubia up to fourth cataract and collected slaves from area between Abu Hamad and Khartoum. Later Ptolemaic