Former southern Sudanese slaves formed a new urban political class under British rule

Evidence

As a political entity, the descendants of these slaves—Alï Abd al-Latïf being one important example—were a recent phenomenon. These former slaves and their children, known to the British as “negroid but detribalized” had met the demand for unskilled labor in the larger cities of the Sudan shortly after the establishment of the condominium. Employed in the building trades and other works promoted by the British-run government, these black workers remained in the cities, much to the concern of British officials, who saw in them a threat to the Sudan’s traditional groupings and thus to social stability on the whole. Many of them took advantage of opportunities in the military academies, one of the few means of upward social mobility available to them. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 1029

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader study of how colonial labor policies created new social categories and detribalized urban classes across colonial Africa, echoing works on colonial urbanism and labor migration.