The Sudan

The photographs reproduced in this book mainly cover the years between 1899 and the 1950s, when the Sudan, Africa's largest country, was ruled by a nominal Condominium of Britain and Egypt. They comprise a pictorial record -- however impressionistic, subjective, and incomplete -- of an era. The authors have selected the 240 photographs in the book from the many thousands held in the Sudan Archive at the University Library, Durham, UK. The selection has been made with an eye to both historical interest and artistic merit. Consequently there is an emphasis on older photographs, many of which are probably unique, and less representation of the later years, for which the photographic record is more extensive. This is not, therefore, a photographic history, but rather a collection of historical photographs. Mainly taken by British officials and tourists, the photographs emphasise British subjects. Although it is important to bear in mind that the British were a tiny minority in the Sudan and that their style of life there was exotic in the extreme, it is nonetheless useful to see in black and white something of the way they lived. The photographs reproduced here record a broad span of human experience and achievement: events of historical or military significance, feats of engineering, and the daily life and recreation of the Sudanese and their temporary rulers.