The Nation after the Colony

Abstract

There were assumptions that described colonial states and nation states. As pieces of empires, colonial states had been maintained for the sake of a distant metro-pole, while the nation states were meant to be autonomous, dependent, and responsible to the collectives of people within them. This chapter examines efforts to define the nation, in theory and practice, during and after colonialism. By tracing the career and plight of Sudanese nationalism over the course of the twentieth century—as its ideas first originated in literary debates, later gained application in government policies, and finally became ensnared in civil war—one can really appreciate how the colonial state evolved into the nation state, with far-reaching social consequences.