Transforming Sudan
Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation

This book traces the formation of the Sudanese state following the Second World War through a developmentalist ideology.

Alden Young (Author)

9781107172494, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 December 2017

194 pages, 1 b/w illus. 2 maps
24.1 x 16.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.41 kg

'… the book powerfully illuminates how discussions regarding economic policy cannot be disentangled from broader questions of meaning of nationalism and legitimate political order as well as how political and economic marginalization is rationalized with purportedly neutral justifications.' Zhe Yu Lee, Journal of Economic Geography

Following the conclusion of the Second World War, the nature of inequality in Africa was dramatically altered. In this book, Alden Young traces the emergence of economic developmentalism as the ideology of the Sudanese state in the decolonization era. Young demonstrates how the state was transformed, as a result of the international circulation of tools of economic management and the practice of economic diplomacy, from the management of a collection of distinct populations, to the management of a national economy based on individual equality. By studying the hope and eventual disillusionment this ideology gave to late colonial officials and then Sudanese politicians and policymakers, Young demonstrates its rise, and also its shortfalls as a political project in Sudan, particularly its inability to deal with questions of regional and racial equity, not only showing how it fostered state formation, but also civil war.

Introduction: the economizing logic of the state
1. From colonial economics to political economy 1820–1940
2. Planning and the territorial perspective, 1945 until 1951
3. Calculable development, 1951 to 1954
4. The new finance officials
5. The nation, in whose name they could act: the military and national income accounting
6. A nation-state alone cannot transform its destiny
Conclusion: towards a new African economic history
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Politics & government [JP], African history [HBJH], Regional & national history [HBJ], History [HB]