A trip to the zoo

Colonial sightseeing and spectacle in Sudan (1901–1933)

Bibliographic Data

ID9397265
AuthorsBrendan Tuttle (0000-0003-4370-7412, Children’s Environments Research Group (CERG) at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume11
Issue3
Pages217-242
Publication date2019-08-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Tourism History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1755-182X • E-ISSN: 1755-1838
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1755182x.2019.1642962
OpenAlexW2967794944
LanguageEN
Citations received2

During the early years of British colonial rule in Sudan, ‘notables’ from the colony's southern provinces travelled to Khartoum on diplomatic missions and to visit friends and family. Sightseeing became a regular part of these diplomatic visits, which helped to establish and maintain colonial relations. By the late 1920s, tourism practices in Sudan offered British officials a way to reassert colonial distinctions and place more distance between themselves and their subjects. Tourism in Khartoum, with its characteristic way of focusing on difference and authenticity, offered officials a way to simplify relationships and to rewrite history by staging and restaging ‘first encounters’. Drawing on contemporary sources, this paper examines sightseeing tours organised for chiefs from places like Nasir, Bor, and Yambio (in what is today South Sudan) in the 1920s and 1930s, and how these visits contributed to the construction of images of the remoteness of South Sudan

Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonial rule · Colonialism · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Political science · Spectacle · Tourism · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law