Sur les rives du Nil : les transformations dans l'agriculture soudanaise durant la colonisation égyptienne de 1821 à 1881

This thesis explores the impacts of Egyptian colonialism on the Sudanese agrarian society following the 1821 conquest of the Funj Sultanate until the beginning of the Mahdist Revolution in 1881. This research goes against the Western conventional historiographical consensus affirming that the agricultural sector in Sudan suffered a long and painful decline during the whole Egyptian colonial occupation. In fact, it is the complete opposite: after the 1844 Egyptian failure to impose their plantation system, the local Sudanese elites composed of former Funj aristocrats, traders and nomadic lords, are going to reappropriate this agrarian structure for their own ends. We are, in fact, witnessing the resurgence of Sudanese agriculture under a new hybrid system. This agrarian revival is going to have major consequences on the regions of Gezira and oriental Sudan and also on all the strata of the population. It will lead to an exponential rise in the use of agricultural slavery, the collapse of the free peasant and nomad, the building of a new network of cities and the decline of the environment. During that period, the Egyptian colonial government, confined to its garrison-cities, will limit its interaction with the rural world by inefficiently trying to extract the maximum of riches with the use of violence.

Accepted: 2024-03-22T18:25:17Z