ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ‘impact’ of the First World War on international business and economic development in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from three perspectives. First, the effect on an important firm-the Sudan Plantations Syndicate-that operated in Sudan across the period; second, the impact on business-government relations; and third, how the delays to a large-scale infrastructure project changed the political-economy of the colonial state and in many ways conditioned the developmental trajectory of the country for decades to come. The chapter begins with a discussion of the historiographical context of business and economic activity in Sudan, noting the wider investment climate that prevailed before and after the First World War. The second section of the chapter examines the delays and rising costs of the capital-intensive infrastructure project to build the Gezira Scheme, and the changing role of the Sudan Plantations Syndicate, the Sudan government, and the Imperial government in London to the provision of capital for the project. The third section of the chapter offers a brief firm-level history of the Sudan Plantations Syndicate across the war years. The broader contribution of the chapter is to highlight that the First World War period was, interpretively, a liminal phase which seems to exist between two distinct and identifiable periods. In recognising this liminality, we can better avoid narratological and historiographical whiggism, a danger inherent in pre-supposing that the war must have had ‘impact’. Indeed, as I will show, the main ‘impact’ that the First World War had on business and economic development in Sudan was to delay previously planned projects. As
the actors involved (state and business) did not know how long the war would last or what the outcome would be, one of the mains effects of the war was to create stasis. As disabling as this was, I conclude that there was no sharp periodological divergence caused by the war or sudden change to the business environment. Rather, they were an artefact of the continuities and gradual changes of the war period itself.
