INTRODUCTION.

THE AGEICULTUEAL PEOBLEM IN THE

ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN.

A PERIOD of fifteen years devoted to the pacification of our vast areas and heterogenous population, to land settlement, administrative organisation and railway construction has brought the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to the threshold

of a new era of economic development, the results of which must both justify

a necessarily costly foundation and furnish a political raison d'etre for our occupation of the country. In the absence, however, both of minerals of

industrial value and indigenous fuel supplies, no prospects for the early establish- ment of manufactures can be entertained, and the Sudan is consequently

destined to stand or fall by agriculture.

The completion of a system of land settlement and the granting, or

confirmation, of titles embracing the larger part of the area available for

cultivation in the Northern Sudan, establish the native land-owner as the

typical agriculturist through wJiose agency effect must be given to any

suggestions for the improvement of indigenous agricultural systems. The

character and capacity of the local cultivator will consequently largely determine

future progress and call for careful examination. At the outset it should be

recognised that the mark of slavery is on the land. For centuries the negroid

tribes of the south have furnished slave labour for the work of cultivation in

the north, and the recent manumission of slaves has destroyed the very

foundations of an established system, and has brought into being all the

problems of a social revolution.

Lack of initiative reflected by the most primitive methods of agriculture,

a strong and inherited objection to work for a daily wage, intolerance of control

and an intense conservatism are the legacy of slavery to the land-owner, who

is now called upon to bear the unaccustomed burden of field labour. " That

he does not yet appreciate the Government's attitude towards slave holding is,

in the circumstances, a cause for little surprise, and the dictum of Adam Smith

that

' the experience of all ages and nations demonstrates the work done by

slaves to be in the end the dearest of any,' leaves him unconvinced, dissatisfied