A country classified as a condominium! What?

Sudan’s history of kingdoms, powerful women, missionaries and messianic revolutions, civil wars and diversity

Sudan’s flag is superimposed on its map, and the Mahdist War, in which Muslim dervishes who ruled much of Sudan fought the British Empire. Public Domain images.

Did you know… that from 1899 to 1956, Sudan was a condominium of Britain and Egypt. And I am not using the term condominium as opposed to being a single-family residence. No! You see, in international law, a condominium is a political territory over which multiple sovereign powers agree to share equal power. But as my guest in this episode explains, that wasn’t the case in Sudan, which was effectively the colony of a colony. In practice, what this meant is that Egypt paid, and Britain ruled.

As another civil war looms in Sudan, we review its history of kingdoms, powerful women, missionaries and messianic revolutions, civil wars and diversity.

According to ⁠UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres⁠, Sudan is on the brink of a full-scale civil war, the consequences of which may be calamitous, destabilizing a wide region, including the Horn of Africa and parts of the Middle East. Sudan itself is in a state of disaster. For example, in a country of less than 50 million, about 3 million people have been displaced from their homes. There are many reports of indiscriminate killings, mass graves, and towns razed to the ground in Darfur, where the…