Sudanese People
THE Nuba Mountains occupy roughly the south-east quarter of the present administrative province of Kordofan in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The block of country in which Nuba hills occur may be put at about 30,000 square miles, their fomiations varying from small isolated hillocks jutting out of the plain to ranges of twenty to thirty miles in extent. Broadly speaking the " Nuba " occupy the hills and Arabs of various tribes live or move in the plains. The Nuba problem is a dual one. In a monograph on Nuba administration written in 1931 I asked:— "How many reasonably well informed outsiders are there who realise that there is no 'Nuba' tribe or race, but an as yet unknown number of entirely different stocks, of different cultures, religions and stages of cultivation, speaking as many as perhaps ten different languages and some fifty dialects more or less mutually unintelligible? It is these factors that constitute in broad outline half the Nuba problem' . . . the other half being their contiguity with the Arab. If we were dealing with one solid and separate pagan race there might still be a problem, but its solution would be comparatively simple and
would not be urgent. We should only have to isolate it within a metaphorical %vall and deal with it at our convenience. But the Nuba problem is far different. Can we evolve a structure or a series of structures to fit all these cultures and stages of civilisation? Can we at the same time preserve all that is best in the Nuba side by side with an Arab civilisation? "
In the early days of pacification the problem, of course, existed in the background. But pacification in itself was the main problem of the administration, and in any case conditions were not favourable for scientific investigation. But in the 'twenties the Nuba Moun- tains began to change in almost revolutionary degree. The Arab menace, though still present in the minds of the more backward Nuba, no longer kept them from cultivating the plains. Roads were opened up. Rain-grown cotton cultivation was introduced. Every year more young men went " abroad " in search of work. The people began to waken to the value of money. "Can the Nuba," I asked, "maintain his traditions and culture in the face of these new conditions, and what steps can the Government take to help him ? "
One of the answers by my successor as Governor of Kordofan, the late Sir Douglas Newbold, was to apply for the services of Dr. Nadel to carry an extensive anthropological survey of the Nuba tribes. This book is the result ; and, though it is dedicated to the memory of C. G. Seligman, who had carried out an earlier investigation among the tribes of the southern fringe, friends of the Nuba will look on it also as a fitting memorial to Douglas Newbold, who was its primary inspiration and who, alas, did not live to see it in print. The field survey was carried out in 1938-39, and most of the book was written at El Obeid in 1940-41 until in the course of the latter year Dr. Nadel was called away to take up an appointment as political officer in the British Military Administration in North Africa. Pub- lication was inevitably delayed until this year. Newbold, as an amateur anthropologist of some distinction, was not uninterested in the purely scientific aspect of the study. But his primary objective was to get factual data and skilled inferences which would help the administrator in the solution of political and economic problems, and Dr. Nadel has loyally observed his brief.
"This book," he says in his introduction, "falls to some extent in the category of 'applied anthropology ': its primary purpose is to provide an anthropological study which should prove helpful to the practical tasks of government. . . . The practical bias of this book does not, in my view, preclude or overrule strictly scientific standards. On the contrary, only the most careful scientific examination can justify the adoption of anthropological data as a basis for practical decisions of so far-reaching consequence."
I am not competent, even if I had the space, to comment on the purely scientific aspects of the examination ; I surmise an enhance- ment of Dr. Nadel's already high reputation as an anthropologist. From a fairly intimate knowledge of the whole area, however, I can testify to the faithfulness and vividness with which he presents the background to his studies. And from long practical experience of the problems concerned I commend his suggestions for the " appli- cation " of his anthropological findings to the earnest consideration not only of Nuba administrators but of all who are charged with
the care of backward peoples. Would that this volume had been at our disposal in the political and economic Nuba evolutions of the 'twenties and early 'thirties.
The book contains a wise and weighty foreword by the late Governor General, Sir Hubert Huddleston, who speaks not only with the authority of his high office but with the experience of a " bimbaski " in the Camel Corps in Nuba patrols of thirty and forty years ago. It contains some well selected photographs of appropriate scenes and incidents of Nuba life and activities and some useful diagrams. The map of the area, even in days of austerity, might have been made more worthy of the book both in content and
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