Reverend Andrew C. Wheeler is a specialist on Christianity in Sudan, African church history, and the modern history of Sudan. He is the author of Day of Contentment, Day of Devastation: The History of the Sudanese Church across 2,000 Years and Bombs, Ruins, and Honey: Journeys of the Spirit with Sudanese Christians, both published by Paulines Publications – Africa, among other works.  After more than two decades in south Sudan, Egypt, and Kenya, he has now returned to ministry in the United Kingdom.

The interview was conducted with Dr. Matthew Anderson, executive editor for Dialogue Across Borders, in May 2024 and touches on aspects of Rev. Wheeler’s personal experience, Sudanese colonial history, environment and geography, the spread of Christianity in Sudan, the two major civil wars, the formal separation of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan in 2011,  Christian-Muslim dynamics, and the present unfolding crisis in northern Sudan, among other subjects.

Interview Excerpt

Could you provide a brief overview of the colonial period in Sudan as you understand it?

Sudan was never part of the British Empire in the traditional colonial sense. It was always under the Foreign Office and that was because it was theoretically a “condominium” that was to be jointly ruled by Egypt and Britain. This followed the reconquest of Sudan in 1898 by a joint Anglo-Egyptian army under General Herbert Kitchener (d.1916). What was set up in 1900 was a condominium theoretically governed by a joint Egyptian and British administration. However, the relationship between Egypt and Britain did not run smoothly and it increasingly became an administration dominated by Britain. There was a revolt in 1924 by Egyptian troops which resulted in most Egyptian troops being expelled. Although some Egyptian junior colonial officials remained, it was essentially a British administration from then on.

The British ruled Sudan as two quite distinct entities. What is now essentially Sudan, the northern part, was what the British preferred. They enjoyed the desert atmosphere and Arab culture. A number of the British officers were significant Arabic scholars and archaeologists and there was a love affair between British colonial officers and the desert and Arabism. They had very little interest in southern Sudan. A different kind of administration was set up there. It was run by a series of military men who were recruited mainly from the British Army in India. And they ran south Sudan on what was technically called a “Care and Maintenance” basis, which was essentially benign neglect. These officers ruled their territories in south Sudan with a high-hand and were known colloquially in Khartoum as the “Bog Barons,” because of the vast territories they governed with sole authority.

Southern Sudan is a vast area. It was, at that point, rather lightly populated. The government approved Christian missions entering south Sudan because they were seen as a way of providing enough education to produce clerks and servants for the colonial system. South Sudan has a long history of neglect and the missions were, in many ways, quite heroic because it is a tough environment. The distances are huge and they had this awkward relationship with government which had no real interest in building Christian communities. What they wanted was a network of basic elementary schools that could produce some low-level local officials. It's a little more complicated than that. Well, it's considerably more complicated than that. But that's the general picture, which I think a lot of southern Sudanese would feel was essentially the situation. So Christian communities throughout the colonial period in south Sudan, were very small, whether Catholic or Protestant. The great swathes of southern Sudan essentially continued traditional patterns of life, pastoral or agricultural, with very little development or modernizing taking place.

The difference between southern and northern Sudan seems to be clear throughout the entire modern period. One question is whether this is mainly a cultural difference, a language difference, that the north was Arabized and the south was not, or are their geographical divisions too? Why is the north-south distinction such a given?

There are a number of aspects to a distinction between north and south. One is geographical, as you suggest. In the south, there are some natural boundaries with the rivers, the Baḥr el Ghazāl to the West and the Sobat River to the East. The Nile, of course, runs through both countries and, in a sense, ties them together. There is the Sudd swamp, the vast, seasonal flooded area in the heart of southern Sudan, which was a great obstacle to travel throughout the 19th century. South Sudan has much more rain and there are extensive grasslands in the northern part which belong to the great pastoral people, such as the Dinka, the Nuer, and the Shilluk. And then as you move further south, you move into woodlands and eventually into dense tropical forests on the borders with Central Africa, Congo, and so on. So from northern Sudan through to southern Sudan, you have the whole swathe of African environments and African ecological systems. And there is something of a boundary between north and south created by those rivers. And in the north the land is much drier and eventually shades into the Sahara. There are historical distinctions in that, in the 19th century, the Nuba Mountains - which are now in the north - and south Sudan were heavily raided for ivory and slaves. Southern Sudan has known considerable social violence for 200 years.