Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Glossary
- General introduction
- Part One FROM ZARIBA TO MERKAZ: THE CREATION OF THE NODAL STATE FRONTIER, c. 1840–1920
- Part Two FROM MAKAMA TO MEJLIS: THE MAKING OF CHIEFSHIP AND THE LOCAL STATE, 1920s–1950s
- 3 Constituting the urban frontier: chiefship and the colonial labour economy, 1920s–1940s
- 4 Claiming rights and guarantees: chiefs' courts and state justice, c. 1900–1956
- 5 Containing the frontier: the tensions of territorial chiefdoms, 1930s–1950s
- 6 Uncertainty on the urban frontier: chiefs and the politics of Sudanese independence, 1946–1958
- Part Three FROM MALAKIYA TO MEDINA: THE FLUCTUATING EXPANSION OF THE URBAN FRONTIER, c. 1956–2010
- Conclusion
- Interviews
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastern African Studiues
5 - Containing the frontier: the tensions of territorial chiefdoms, 1930s–1950s
from Part Two - FROM MAKAMA TO MEJLIS: THE MAKING OF CHIEFSHIP AND THE LOCAL STATE, 1920s–1950s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Glossary
- General introduction
- Part One FROM ZARIBA TO MERKAZ: THE CREATION OF THE NODAL STATE FRONTIER, c. 1840–1920
- Part Two FROM MAKAMA TO MEJLIS: THE MAKING OF CHIEFSHIP AND THE LOCAL STATE, 1920s–1950s
- 3 Constituting the urban frontier: chiefship and the colonial labour economy, 1920s–1940s
- 4 Claiming rights and guarantees: chiefs' courts and state justice, c. 1900–1956
- 5 Containing the frontier: the tensions of territorial chiefdoms, 1930s–1950s
- 6 Uncertainty on the urban frontier: chiefs and the politics of Sudanese independence, 1946–1958
- Part Three FROM MALAKIYA TO MEDINA: THE FLUCTUATING EXPANSION OF THE URBAN FRONTIER, c. 1956–2010
- Conclusion
- Interviews
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastern African Studiues
Summary
It is hoped that in these more peaceful times a purely territorial unit (comparable to a small English village) may come to be accepted in native eyes as a genuine coherent group. [1938]
The ideal of the village community as a territorial, social and administrative unit was imported by colonial officials from their British homeland, and in some areas imposed forcibly upon the indigenous geography of southern Sudan. During the 1920s and 1930s, such visions had interacted in tension with the emphasis of Indirect Rule on tribal units of Native Administration, culminating in the mid-late 1930s in the Equatoria Province policy of harnessing units of descent and kinship, in the hope ultimately of building tribes. By this time, however, the Condominium government was already moving away from Indirect Rule ideologies and beginning to promote territorial ‘Local Government’ on the model of English counties and parishes, governed by local councils. In the southern provinces this was expected to be a very gradual process, and administrators tended to modify the terminology rather than the basis of Native Administration, turning the existing chiefs' B courts into councils. But they did adopt the new policy with some relief, as justification for their previously pragmatic efforts to create territorial units of administration. Largely abandoning their quest for the elusive ‘tribe’, they concentrated now on the further ‘amalgamation’ of chiefships into larger territorial chiefdoms.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dealing with Government in South SudanHistories of Chiefship, Community and State, pp. 107 - 124Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013