Pomp, circumstance, and wild Arabs: The 1912 royal visit to Sudan

Abstract

This article examines the use of British-imperial symbolism in public life throughout the period of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. The visit of George V to Port Sudan in 1912 proved the catalyst for large-scale imperial display, which was subsequently reworked into the unique annual commemoration of King's Day. Through such overt imperial pageantry, the British-dominated Sudanese government actively promoted its own position within Sudan at the expense of its Egyptian co-rulers, a strategy which illustrates the political tensions along the Nile Valley. Demonstrating the government's dominance over the landscape and people of Sudan to both the metropolitan and Sudanese audiences, these imperial events aimed at consolidating Britain's hold over the country throughout the Condominium. Sudanese political elites soon became active participants in imperial displays, seeing an opportunity to secure their position through demonstrations of loyalty, and using the propagated values of imperialism and monarchy in imaginative and selective ways. Although it was a valuable tool in creating a focal point of Sudanese unity in an otherwise culturally diverse territory, British imperialism was at the same time always a limited instrument, constrained as it was by Egypt's legal claims to the territory.