Iris Seri-Hersch

Vezzadini Elena, Seri-Hersch Iris, Revilla Lucie, Poussier Anaël, Abdul Jalil Mahassin (eds).
This book starts from the premise that the study of "exceptionally normal" women and men – as conceived by microhistory – has radical implications for understanding history and politics, and applies this notion to Sudan. Against a historiography dominated by elite actors and international agents, it examines both how ordinary people have brought about the most important political shifts in the country’s history (including the recent revolution in 2019) and how they have played a role in maintaining authoritarian regimes. It also explores how men and women have led their daily lives through a web of ordinary worries, desires and passions.
The book includes contributions by historians, anthropologists, and political scientists who often have a dual commitment to Middle Eastern and African studies. While focusing on the complexity and nuances of Sudanese local lives in both the past and the present, it also connects Sudan and South Sudan with broader regional, global, and imperial trends.
The book is divided into two volumes and six parts, ordered thematically. The first part tackles the entanglement between archives, social history, and power. The second focuses on women’s agency in history and politics from the Funj era to the recent 2018-2019 revolution. Part 3 includes contributions on the history and global connections of the Sudanese armed forces. In the second volume, part 4 intersects the themes of urban life, leisure, and colonial attitudes with queerness. In part 5, labour identities, practices, and institutions are discussed both in urban milieus and against the background of war and expropriation in rural areas. Finally, part 6 studies the construction of social consent under various self-styled Islamic regimes, as well as the emergence of alternative imaginaries and acts of citizenship in times of political openness.

Book Discussion & Review:
- Livres & MAM online discussion (in English): https://youtu.be/97nyoit-zc4
- Review by Aḥmad al-Ṣādiq in Atar al-Usbūʿiyya, vol. 11, 4 January 2024, p. 51-63 (in Arabic): https://www.facebook.com/Factsudan/

Cet article propose une réflexion critique sur le champ des études soudanaises à la lumière de la scission du Soudan en deux États en 2011. Il retrace la genèse des études soudanaises en tant que domaine de recherche distinct, soulignant le décalage important entre les débuts d’une production à prétention savante sur le Soudan et le moment où apparaissent les labels “Sudan Studies”/“dirāsāt sūdāniyya”. La pertinence actuelle d’un champ d’études soudanaises “transnational” est interrogée, amenant l’auteur à suggérer différents critères légitimant ou non l’existence d’un domaine soudaniste distinct si ce n’est unifié. Enfin, l’article envisage l’évolution future de la production historienne sur les Soudans, à la fois dans le nouveau contexte politique et idéologique qui se dessine depuis 2011, et sous un angle plus proprement historiographique.

This article offers a critical reflection on the field of Sudan Studies in light of the partition of Sudan into two states in 2011. It charts the emergence of Sudan Studies as a distinct research field, emphasising the temporal gap between the beginning of scholarly writing on Sudan and the moment when the labels “Sudan Studies” and “dirāsāt sūdāniyya” appeared. The current relevance of a “transnational” field of Sudan Studies is questioned, leading the author to suggest various criteria that may legitimise the existence of a distinct -if not unified- “Sudanist” field. Finally, the article envisions the future evolution of the historical scholarship on the two Sudans, both in the new political and ideological context that has been taking shape since 2011, and from a more specifically historiographical perspective.

This paper deals with "modernity" as an analytical category, investigating how it has been used by scholars of modern Sudan in the last fifty years. Keeping in mind the heuristic distinction between analytical and normative categories, the study goes back to European conceptualizations of modernity before examining how it has been constructed and used across a wide range of Sudanist academic writings. Despite significant differences in their approaches and subjects of study, most of the works under review explicitly or implicitly adopt either modernization or dependence theories. The paper ultimately argues for the necessity of avoiding the epistemological dead ends of both "modernizing" and "multiple" modernities."

Cet article propose une réflexion critique sur les usages de la catégorie modernité dans l'historiographie du Soudan contemporain. Attentive à la distinction heuristique entre catégories analytiques et catégories normatives, l'étude revient sur des conceptualisations européennes de la modernité avant d'examiner ses usages dans la production académique soudaniste des cinquante dernières années. En dépit de la diversité de leurs approches et de leurs objets, la plupart des travaux analysés endossent explicitement ou implicitement l'une ou l'autre des théories de la modernisation et de la dépendance. L'argumentaire débouche sur la nécessité, pour les chercheurs en sciences sociales, de sortir des impasses épistémologiques de la modernité "modernisatrice" et des modernités "multiples".

In the first half of the 20th century, Sudan, which included the territories of present-day Sudan and South Sudan, was ruled by a dual colonial government known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899–1956). Britain was the senior partner in this administration, Egypt being itself politically and militarily subordinated to Britain between 1882 and 1956. During most of the colonial period, Sudan was ruled as two Sudans, as the British sought to separate the predominantly Islamic and Arabic-speaking North from the multireligious and multilingual South. Educational policy was no exception to this: until 1947, the British developed a government school system in the North while leaving educational matters in the hands of Christian missionaries in the South. In the North, the numerically dominant government school network coexisted with Egyptian schools, missionary schools, community schools, and Sudanese private schools. In the South, schools were established by the Anglican Church Missionary Society, the Roman Catholic Verona Fathers, and the American Presbyterian Mission. Whereas Arabic and English were the mediums of instruction in Northern schools, the linguistic situation was more complicated in the South, where local vernaculars, English and Romanized Arabic were used in missionary schools.
The last colonial decade (1947–1957) witnessed a triple process of educational expansion, unification, and nationalization. Mounting Anglo-Egyptian rivalries over the control of Sudan and the polarization of Sudanese nationalists into “pro-British” independentists and “pro-Egyptian” unionists led the British authorities in Khartoum to boost government education while giving up the policy of separate rule between North and South. In practice, educational unification of the two Sudanese regions meant the alignment of Southern curricula on Northern programs and the introduction of Arabic into Southern schools, first as a subject matter, then as a medium of instruction. Missionary and other private schools were nationalized one year after Sudan gained independence from Britain and Egypt (1956).

This paper aims at contributing to ongoing historiographical debates  on cooperation and cross-cultural relations in imperial/colonial settings through a specific case study of education in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899-1956). As an "in-between" space between the Arab Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, as a frontier area between Arabic-speaking and English-speaking Africa, and as a legal anomaly within the British Empire, the Sudan has drawn little attention among scholars of imperialism and colonialism. Despite this relative marginality, several important studies dealing mainly or partly with the issue of collaboration/cooperation in colonial Sudan have been produced since the 1980s.  Among them, Heather Sharkey's thorough analysis of Sudanese civil servants as "human bridges" between colonialism and nationalism relies both on Ronald Robinson's political study and on more recent works by postcolonial or "new imperial" historians, hinting at continuities -or at least compatibilities- between these various approaches.

During the first half of the 20th century, the Sudan was theoretically ruled by a dual Anglo-Egyptian administration known as the "Condominium". The country was not a colonial territory in the legal sense, being attached to the British Foreign Office rather than to the Colonial Office in London. Besides, it was never the home of any significant British or European settler community. In practice, however, Britain detained all decision-making powers in the Sudan, for Egypt was herself subject to British subordination to varying degrees from 1882 to 1956. The Sudan Government was dominated by the British Sudan Political Service, an elite corps modelled upon the Indian Civil Service. This did not mean that the British ran the country alone; as in most other territories under imperial/colonial rule, they had to rely on the collaboration and work of thousands of local clerks, translators, tax-collectors, judges and teachers. In the Sudanese case, these local or regional actors were mostly Northern Sudanese, Egyptians and "Syrians" (a category that usually included all Levantines). Cross-cultural mechanisms of cooperation existed both within the Khartoum central government and between the central government and local or provincial administrations , as well as between the colonial state apparatus and Sudanese organizations (Sufi orders and later political parties). After the Second Word War, in the context of a heightened Anglo-Egyptian dispute over the Sudan, the British authorities in Khartoum decided to speed up the Sudanization of the administration, namely the replacement of British with Sudanese officials. This process significantly affected cooperation dynamics, as more and more key positions were taken up by (mostly Northern) Sudanese between 1946 and 1954. Power relations, social hierarchies and mutual perceptions between British and Sudanese in and outside the government service were reshaped to a considerable extent.

The paper seeks to shed new light on the politics of cooperation in colonial Sudan by focusing on education, an understudied field of cross-cultural interaction. Colonial education is both relevant and fascinating because it involved at once collaborative processes, unequal power relationships, disciplining mechanisms and emancipating dynamics. Moreover, the paper provides a detailed analysis of historical dimensions of cooperation that have not hitherto been adequately or fully addressed: specific modes of collaboration, concrete results produced by joint work, difficulties and obstacles to cooperation, mutual perceptions of the collaborating actors.

In a first part, two important methodological issues are tackled, namely terminological choices and the use of primary evidence. In order to avoid value judgments and possible anachronisms carried by terms such as "collaboration" and "cooperation", it is argued, historians should look for the words used by historical actors themselves, bring to light these "indigenous categories"  and try to specify their meaning in relation to the historical context in which they were deployed. With regards to evidence, the problem of dissonant or contradicting sources (sometimes produced by a single author) and its implications for analyzing cooperation in imperial/colonial settings is briefly discussed. Moving to the core subject of inquiry, the paper identifies historical factors that facilitated cooperation between British and non-British (Sudanese, Egyptian, Syrian) individuals within the colonial administration of the Sudan. Various considerations and interests on both sides allowed –sometimes actively pushed– for cooperation despite political antagonisms and cultural gaps. In the Sudanese educational field of the 1940s and 1950s, collaborative mechanisms operated at different levels. Specific examples of cross-cultural cooperation at macro (broad educational planning), meso (publication of pedagogic materials) and micro (writing and experimentation of history textbooks for elementary schools) levels are provided to show the importance of multilayered cooperative dynamics in late colonial Sudan. Based on empirical evidence, the paper not only highlights significant achievements and limits of cross-cultural cooperation in a colonial context that was both incorporating and differentiating social groups ; it also points out at various ways in which the actors themselves (both colonizers and colonized) perceived and experienced collaboration in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

This article explores the politics of literacy in late colonial Sudan. Drawing upon hitherto untapped archival sources in English and Arabic, it focuses on two key-questions: what were the purposes and uses of literacy in the eyes of colonial authorities? What means were used to spread Arabic literacy skills among Sudanese people? Replacing these issues in the context of British imperial policy in Africa, I argue that mixed teams of British and Sudanese educationalists came to view literacy as a central tool to foster social progress and political modernity. The analysis puts special emphasis on literacy campaigns and follow-up literature as experimental means used to promote and perpetuate Arabic literacy in the Northern Sudan. Examining both "nation-wide" and provincially based magazines, it highlights their multifaceted role as pedagogic materials, vehicles of political, cultural and ideological representations, social networks, as well as public platforms of expression for young Sudanese literates.

Situating late colonial Sudan within the wider British Empire, this book chapter explores an understudied field in the scholarship on Sudan and empire: history teaching, namely history as a school subject that was theorized by educators and practiced by teachers and pupils in the 1940s and 1950s. Although not a colonial territory stricto sensu, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899-1956) was closely connected to other British dependencies in the educational sphere. Knowledge, debates and opinions on educational matters circulated through colonial journals and publications. A significant number of British officials serving in Sudan had past -or would have future- work experience in other parts of the Empire. Books published by British metropolitan, as well as American, pedagogues in the first half of the 20th century inspired colonial educators across the Empire. Paying attention to the crucial distinction between prescribed and taught curricula, this chapter investigates conceptions and practices of history teaching at a time when the British Empire was rapidly dismantling. It maps out the position of Sudanese school history in relation to contemporary school histories in other (ex-)British territories and in the metropole. Comparative insights are drawn with regards to the purposes of history teaching, curriculum contents, the ideological framing of historical narratives, teaching materials and methods, and teaching staff. Based on the analysis of textbooks, handbooks, reports, and journal articles from the period under review, the chapter highlights significant, though largely overlooked, commonalities between Sudan and various categories of territories within the crumbling post-war British Empire: colonial dependencies (British Africa), a semi-independent country (Egypt) and sovereign states (India, Britain).

This paper investigates the impact of decolonization on history teaching in Sudanese elementary schools. Drawing on successive editions of a fourth-grade history handbook (1949, 1957, 1958), it analyzes how notions of “friends” and “enemies” were constructed and transformed against the background of British disengagement, Sudanese-Egyptian relations, and politics of cultural homogenization in late colonial and early post-independence Sudan. The evolution of textbook content, it is argued, needs be scrutinized in the light of political processes, ideological needs and material constraints. This approach allows appreciating both the relevance and the limits of categorizations such as “friends” and “enemies”. Incoherencies within the handbook and ambivalent representations of historical characters are not spared by the analysis, which seeks to recontextualize them in a web of ideological and practical considerations.

Scholars have depicted the Arabization and Islamization of Sudan either as two parallel, centuries-long processes or as a set of interrelated state policies in the postcolonial era. This article contributes new chronological and empirical insights into the growing conflation of Arabic, Arabness and Islam in twentieth-century Sudan. First, it locates state efforts at Arabizing and Islamizing the South one decade before independence (1956) within the context of British imperial retreat and Northern Sudanese empowerment. Second, it examines how language and religion were increasingly enmeshed in cultural representations and school practices, even if the two were strategically distinguished in political discourses. The article assesses Southern Sudanese experience of forceful Arabization and Islamization, suggesting that cultural definitions of the nation and the access to educational, political and economic resources remain at the heart of the current citizenship crisis in Sudan and South Sudan.

Ouvrage consultable en ligne: https://www.cairn.info/enseigner-l-histoire-a-l-heure-de-l-ebranlement--9782811119706.htm

Alors que les combats de la Seconde Guerre mondiale achevaient de dissoudre le mythe de la supériorité de l’homme blanc, le Soudan était disputé par ses deux maîtres officiels, la Grande-Bretagne et l’Égypte. Le territoire s’acheminait-il vers l’indépendance ou une union politique avec son voisin méditerranéen ? La rivalité anglo-égyptienne, couplée à un impérialisme britannique soucieux de « préparer » les sociétés africaines à la souveraineté nationale, déboucha sur l’unification hâtive du Nord et du Sud-Soudan en 1947. Parvenues à des positions de pouvoir une décennie avant l’indépendance (1956), les élites du Nord s’attachèrent à faire du Soudan, pays à forte pluralité ethnolinguistique et religieuse, un État-nation arabe et musulman.
Dans ce contexte, un nouvel enseignement d’histoire fut élaboré pour les écoles élémentaires soudanaises. Quels en étaient les acteurs, les récits, les pratiques ? Cet ouvrage décortique les représentations, les apprentissages et les rapports sociaux sous-tendant la production et l’usage de manuels en langue arabe dans le Soudan colonial tardif. L’auteure propose également un éclairage comparatif sur l’histoire enseignée dans d’autres territoires de l’empire britannique en voie d’émiettement.
Ce livre offre de nouvelles clés de compréhension d’une séquence charnière dans l’histoire du monde contemporain. Au regard de l’actualité plus récente, il montre quel rôle l’histoire scolaire a pu jouer dans l’éclatement du cadre national soudanais après 1956, aboutissant à la scission du Soudan en deux États en 2011.

Cet article examine l’histoire enseignée dans les écoles soudanaises durant les trois premiers quarts du XXe siècle. Englobant les ères coloniale et postcoloniale, l’analyse scrute l’évolution d’un certain nombre de variables (le statut de l’histoire comme matière scolaire, la formation des enseignants, les supports d’enseignement et d’apprentissage, les approches didactiques) pour identifier des continuités et des ruptures dans l’histoire scolaire soudanaise. L’appréhension de cet objet restreint sur le temps long permet de renouveler la périodisation classique, à dominante politique, du Soudan contemporain. L’étude montre en particulier qu’une rupture didactique majeure était à l’œuvre dans la décennie qui précéda l’indépendance du pays en 1956. La décolonisation politique n’induisit aucune transformation substantielle des textes et des pratiques, ce au moins jusqu’aux années 1970. Les manuels d’histoire de l’époque coloniale tardive (élaborés entre 1944 et 1956) bénéficièrent bien plutôt d’une étonnante longévité, dont l’article s’attache à élucider les raisons matérielles, financières et idéologiques.

The last decade has witnessed the proliferation of discourses on globalization, both by critics and apologists, in political, economic and academic forums all over the world. In Arabic-speaking countries, intellectuals and writers have engaged in journalistic and scholarly debates about what is perceived as an unfolding, inevitable process, carrying a range of challenges and opportunities. Often considered a periphery in the Arab world, the Sudan has not remained outside these discussions on ʿawlama (Arabic term for globalization). Drawing upon Frederick Cooper's heuristic distinction between indigenous categories and analytical categories, this article investigates how Sudanese scholars of education and state officials have used and conceptualized globalization in recent academic research and publications by government bodies, including the National Center for Curriculum and Educational Research and the Ministry of General Education. What does ʿawlama refer to and what functions does it fulfil in Sudanese public debates? The study highlights connections between globalization and colonialism (istiʿmār), two important discursive resources that have been mobilized to support state policies and promote educational reforms. At first sight, their ideological use looks very similar, insofar as both terms are central to discourses denouncing, or warning against, foreign threats and cultural invasion. However, a closer enquiry shows that intellectual assessments of developments labelled as colonialism or globalization are much more ambivalent. History textbooks for secondary grades quite inconsistently depict colonialism at once as an abstract “abominable” phenomenon and as a set of concrete British policies whose overall impact was not entirely negative. Moreover, the adjective “imperialist” serves to discredit European countries that are also referred to as “advanced nations” in other instances. Globalization is alternatively or simultaneously conceived as a mixture of technological revolution, cultural imposition and economic competition, an ongoing process which currently challenges the Sudanese educational system and Sudanese society as a whole. Some scholars stress the secularization aspect of globalization, seeing it as a threat to Sudanese culture, whereas others address the “global” issue of human rights, advocating new pedagogic initiatives in this field. The latest information and communication technologies are frequently praised by enthusiastic proponents of curricula Islamization. In contrast with recent studies on the Sudanese educational system and discourse, this research seeks to explore the multiplicity of perspectives, the educational dilemmas and the ideological contradictions within scholarly works and history schoolbooks produced in the Sudan during the last decade. The state's authoritarian character and the “Islamist” orientation of the current ruling elite do not automatically entail a single, unified, “pro-NIF” discourse in the educational sphere. In addition, the actual impact of textbook contents as “weapons of mass instruction” should be relativized in the light of increased access to other sources of information and knowledge, such as radio broadcasts, television programs, and the World Wide Web. It is all the more crucial to point out at the plurality of Northern Sudanese voices at this critical juncture in Sudanese history, when fierce “wars of visions” and harsh competition for political and economic resources may well translate into a regional reconfiguration of power with the establishment of two separate Sudanese states after 2011.

Cet article questionne la violence comme catégorie emic et etic en la mettant à l'épreuve d'un contexte officiellement apaisé sur le plan militaire mais politiquement incertain: celui du Soudan de 2005 à 2011, pays engagé dans une "transition" après l'accord de paix signé entre le Nord et le Sud (Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA), qui mit fin à la guerre civile la plus longue qu'ait connu le continent africain à l'ère post-coloniale (1955-1972 et 1983-2005). Le CPA prévoyait la tenue d'un référendum sur l'indépendance du Sud-Soudan au terme d'une période transitionnelle de six ans. Le vote des Sud-Soudanais, massivement favorable à l'indépendance, conduisit à la sécession effective du Soudan du Sud le 9 juillet 2011. Au milieu des années 2000, le Soudan semblait donc "sorti" de deux grands épisodes de guerre civile qui avaient opposé le gouvernement central de Khartoum à des mouvements rebelles sud-soudanais (Anya-Nya puis SPLM) durant des décennies. C'est dans ce contexte qu'apparut l'expression "Soudan post-conflit" pour désigner l'après 2005. Cette expression a été employée par des acteurs politiques, des bailleurs de fonds et certains chercheurs. Pourtant, la période transitionnelle fut marquée par un conflit meurtrier dans l'ouest du Soudan, au Darfour, qu'une partie des observateurs et chercheurs n'ont pas hésité à qualifier de génocide. En outre, alors qu'une nouvelle ère de paix était censée s'ouvrir à partir de 2005, un enseignement de "sciences militaires" (ʿulūm ʿaskariyya) était prodigué dans les lycées soudanais. Ainsi, la notion d'un Soudan "post-conflit" s'est davantage apparentée à un discours à visée performative qu'à une réalité de terrain caractérisée par des violences armées, politiques et sociales. Le CPA intégrait-il des dispositions précises relatives au système éducatif soudanais à l'issue de la guerre civile? Quelles étaient les finalités de l'enseignement militaire dans ce contexte transitionnel et quel était le public visé? Dans quelle mesure cet enseignement dialoguait-il ou non avec les différents conflits internes du Soudan? Enfin, comment s'articulent militarisme, légitimation de la violence et habituation à la violence?
L'article s'attache à répondre à ces questions à travers l'analyse d'un manuel de "sciences militaires" publié en 2006 à destination des lycéens soudanais de 1ère année (15 ans). Il fait partie d'une série de trois manuels en usage non seulement durant la période transitionnelle, mais également après la partition du pays en deux États (2011) et la révolution qui renversa le président ʿUmar al-Bashīr (1989-2019). L'étude linguistique et sociohistorique du texte scolaire permet de mettre en lumière une dissociation intéressante entre guerre et violence; une stratégie de légitimation de l'armée via la représentation de celle-ci comme vecteur de paix et de démocratie dans l'histoire soudanaise; et un silence assourdissant autour des guerres civiles qui ensanglantèrent le Soudan dans le passé et au moment même où les élèves étaient abreuvés de cet enseignement. À partir de l'analyse empirique, l'article développe une réflexion théorique sur la violence tantôt décrite, tantôt produite et légitimée par un texte scolaire supposé faire autorité. Outre la violence physique à laquelle prépare un discours diffusé aux futures recrues de l'armée et plus largement à des citoyens en devenir, il s'agit aussi de repenser différentes définitions de la violence symbolique et d'évaluer l'opérabilité de celles-ci pour les recherches en histoire et sociologie de l'éducation.

English Abstract:
Situating the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the wider frame of British imperial history, this dissertation investigates school history in late colonial Sudan. Didactic materials, prescribed contents and pedagogic practices are analyzed against the background of five major developments of the 1945-1953 period: the shifting of British imperialism in Africa towards “paternalist-progressive” policies aiming at preparing colonial peoples for self-government; the polarization of British and Egyptian positions on the Sudanese issue; mounting rivalries between the independentist and unionist wings of Sudanese nationalism; the hasty unification of Northern and Southern Sudan after more than half a century of separate rule; and Northern Sudanese policies of Arabization and Islamization in the South as a tool for achieving “national unification.
In a second part, the innovative character of post-WWII history teaching in Sudan is assessed by examining earlier patterns of Sudanese school history. History teaching in late colonial Sudan is then compared with history teaching in other territories of the (ex-)Empire (Uganda, North Rhodesia, Nigeria, Egypt, India, Great Britain). Two central postcolonial issues are further explored, namely the decolonization of school historical narratives after independence (1956) and the role of history teaching in fuelling the North-South conflict in Sudan.

This article deals with the Sudanese–Ethiopian conflict (1885–89) from a Mahdist perspective, in the wider context of the European scramble for Africa. Focusing on Sudanese representations of Ethiopia as well as on the causes underlying the conflict, I confront a Mahdist chronicle of particular historiographical significance with a range of historical sources. Departing from a purely jihadist framework of analysis, I highlight various Mahdist conceptualizations of Christian Ethiopia as well as historical, political, military, and economic processes conducive to the outbreak of an armed confrontation between the two independent African states. I argue that the Sudanese ruling elite resorted to jihadist discourse as a legitimizing device rather than as an inflexible policy and examine more specific rhetoric instruments meant to justify Mahdist attitudes toward the Christian kingdom. Whereas prophetic visions were used to make the khalifa's Ethiopian policy acceptable to Mahdist eyes, the ambivalent legacy of early Muslim–Aksumite contacts was reactivated in the framework of a dialogue with the Ethiopian enemy.

This article explores the intertwined history of late 19th century Sudan and Ethiopia from a transboundary perspective. Focusing on a specific border zone in a period of growing tensions between the newly-established Mahdist state and the expanding Christian kingdom (1885-1889), the study analyzes how various patterns of commercial, military and diplomatic interactions shaped and were shaped by the Sudanese-Ethiopian conflict. That the ruling elites used religious arguments to legitimize military operations did not prevent intense flows of people, things and representations in the borderlands northwest of Lake Tana. A precise historical enquiry into the changing conceptualizations of the border, trade dynamics in goods and human beings, war booty practices, and diplomatic epistolary exchanges allows assessing the complex role of this portion of the border zone in the evolution of Sudanese-Ethiopian relations. The research is based on previously untapped Mahdist archives, European travel accounts, and scholarly works in Arabic, English, French and German. It is meant to contribute to the rapidly expanding field of border studies, as well as give new insights into the entangled history of African societies which retained their political sovereignty in the early years of the European scramble for Africa.

Cet article examine les pratiques patrimoniales développées autour de la Mahdiyya soudanaise (1881-1898) durant le condominium anglo-égyptien (1899-1956). Tout en tenant compte de l’évolution sémantique des concepts de patrimoine et de turâth, il vise à montrer que cette période controversée de l’histoire soudanaise fut l’enjeu de processus de patrimonialisation, de dépatrimonialisation et de contre-patrimonialisation déclenchés par des acteurs aux intérêts politiques et idéologiques très divergents : les néo-mahdistes qui avaient pour objectif l’accession du Soudan à une indépendance totale ; les unionistes qui préconisaient l’union politique du Soudan avec l’Égypte ; et les administrateurs britanniques pour qui l’établissement d’un système colonial effectif impliquait l’anéantissement matériel et symbolique du régime mahdiste.

Guignard Didier and Seri-Hersch Iris (eds.). TOC and Introduction.

This book provides fresh insights into colonial and imperial histories by focusing on spatial appropriations. Moving away from European notions of property, appropriation encompasses the many ways in which social actors consider a space as their own. This space may be physical or immaterial, public or intimate, lived or imagined.
In modern empires, spatial appropriations amounted neither to a material and violent dispossession orchestrated by European or Japanese powers, nor to an ongoing and unquestioned resistance by subaltern peoples. They were rather sites of complex interactions, in which the part of each actor owed as much to “foreign” domination as to other political, social, economic and environmental factors.
Cutting across common historiographical boundaries, the chapters of this book bring to light the declination and conjugation of various forms of spatial appropriation in the modern imperial age (1820-1960), taking readers on a journey from Russia to China, from the United States to South America, and from the Mediterranean world to Africa.
Scientific Editors: Didier Guignard and Iris Seri-Hersch
Contributors: Jean-Marie Bouron, Anna Bruzzone, Clélia Coret, Emmanuel Falguières, Didier Guignard, Lydia Hadj-Ahmed, Odile Hoffmann, Didier Inowlocki, Agnès Lainé, Qieyi Liu, Hinnerk Onken, Heloisa Rojas Gomez, Iris Seri-Hersch, Isabelle Surun.
Publisher's website: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/spatial-appropriations-in-modern-empires-1820-1960

20 mai 2022, Aix-en-Provence, MMSH, salle Georges Duby et en visioconférence
Lien Zoom: https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/95470471526?pwd=elJ1dDd6MWlQNUU2VHF1eVhrQTQvZz09

Organisateurs: Antonin Plarier (Université Lyon 3) et Iris Seri-Hersch (Aix-Marseille Université)
Programme en ligne: https://iremam.cnrs.fr/fr/journee-detudes-articuler-lhistoire-sociale-et-environnementale-proche-orient-maghreb-afrique-xixe

Cette journée a pour objectif de rassembler des historien-ne-s contemporanéistes spécialistes du Proche-Orient, du Maghreb et de l’Afrique travaillant dans une optique environnementale. Si la trame politique globale de l’histoire moderne et contemporaine de ces régions est bien connue (domination impériale ottomane ou monarchique locale, tutelle coloniale européenne, accession à la souveraineté nationale), les dynamiques sociales, juridiques et environnementales sont sous-documentées. Cette rencontre ambitionne de renforcer les liens entre des « aires » habituellement séparées tout en englobant une diversité de zones climatiques et d’écosystèmes, des côtes méditerranéennes aux forêts tropicales, en passant par les milieux désertiques. Afin de permettre un dialogue heuristique, il s’agira de réfléchir plus particulièrement aux manières d’articuler histoire sociale et environnementale, à partir de cas précisément situés et dans une approche comparatiste attentive aux sources mobilisées.

https://www.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/orient-hebdo/20231014-revue-moyen-orient-jisr-al-zarqa-village-palestinien-en-isra%C3%ABl

Dans son dernier numéro qui sort en kiosque ce mois-ci, notre partenaire, la revue Moyen-Orient, propose un focus sur les Palestiniens. Israël, Cisjordanie, Gaza, c’est un dossier complet qui, évidemment, a été construit avant l’attaque terroriste du Hamas, le samedi 7 octobre 2023. Parmi les articles, et à quelques jours d’un scrutin municipal qui devait avoir lieu le 31 octobre, nous plongeons avec Iris Seri-Hersch, du Département d’études moyen-orientales de l’Université Aix-Marseille, dans le quotidien des habitants de Jisr al-Zarqa, près de Césarée, seul village restant sur la côte méditerranéenne après 1948.

En bordure de l’autoroute qui relie Tel-Aviv à Haïfa se trouve le village arabe/palestinien israélien de Jisr al-Zarqāʾ, unique village arabe resté sur la côte de la Palestine après la guerre israélo-arabe/nakba de 1948. Aujourd’hui, Jisr al-Zarqāʾ est l’une des localités les plus pauvres d’Israël. Ses habitants semblent être dans une situation de « marginalité multiple » : en tant que population musulmane arabophone au sein de la société israélienne, majoritairement juive et hébréophone ; en tant que population stigmatisée au sein de la société palestinienne du fait de ses origines –réelles ou imaginées– “soudanaises”, serviles ou ancrées dans des zones marécageuses ; en tant que population suspectée d’avoir noué des liens trop étroits avec les colons sionistes au temps du mandat britannique, jouissant du privilège d’avoir été épargnée par les destructions israéliennes de 1948 ; en tant que population pauvre dont l’expansion démographique rapide aggrave son état d’assiègement géographique (le village est circonscrit par la mer à l’ouest, le kibboutz Maʿagan Michaʾel au nord, l’autoroute à l’est et un remblai de terre le séparant de la riche commune de Qesarya au sud). Durant des décennies, les Jisrāwīs ont été labellisés, souvent stigmatisés, en tant que « noirs » ou « Soudanais » parmi les Israéliens arabes comme juifs. S’appuyant sur des archives écrites et des sources orales, cet article remet en question le « paradigme soudanais » en pointant la variété des origines de la population jisrāwīe. Il analyse plus particulièrement la façon dont les migrations des ancêtres sont souvenues, mises en récit et inscrites dans des temporalités plus ou moins mythologiques ou historiques par des Jisrāwīs appartenant à différentes familles, générations et classes sociales.

À l’heure où une résolution politique du conflit israélo-palestinien semble toujours plus utopique, Efrat Ben-Ze'ev propose, dans un ouvrage dense et synthétique, de réexaminer l’un des épisodes charnières du conflit : la guerre de 1948, considérée comme une guerre d’« indépendance » (milḥemet ha-atsmaʾut) ou de « libération » (milḥemet ha-shiḥrûr) par la société israélienne, comme un acte de dépossession total et une catastrophe (nakba) par la société palestinienne. Anthropologue au Centre académique Ruppin et à l’Université hébraïque de Jérusalem, Ben-Ze'ev entreprend d’aller au-delà des récits nationaux « officiels » palestiniens et israéliens de 1948. Elle s’intéresse aux récits individuels de trois catégories d’acteurs ayant personnellement vécu les événements : villageois palestiniens, membres des forces armées juives et policiers britanniques...