Africa · Independence and the modern states
Sudan
Republic · 1956–2024
Sudan, Africa's largest country until 2011, became independent on 1 January 1956, ending the Anglo-Egyptian condominium of 1899. The territory's deep history includes the Kingdom of Kush, medieval Christian Nubian kingdoms, the Islamic Funj Sultanate of Sennar and the Sultanate of Darfur, Turco-Egyptian conquest from 1820, and the Mahdist state (1885–1898) destroyed at Omdurman by Kitchener.
- Type
- Republic
- Existed
- 1956–2024
- Shown on the map
- 1956–2024
- Peak area
- 2.5M km²
- Region
- Africa
Overview
Sudan, Africa's largest country until 2011, became independent on 1 January 1956, ending the Anglo-Egyptian condominium of 1899. The territory's deep history includes the Kingdom of Kush, medieval Christian Nubian kingdoms, the Islamic Funj Sultanate of Sennar and the Sultanate of Darfur, Turco-Egyptian conquest from 1820, and the Mahdist state (1885–1898) destroyed at Omdurman by Kitchener. Britain then ruled Sudan as a de facto colony, administering north and south separately — a division that poisoned the new state's politics from birth.
Later history and present status
Even before independence, southern soldiers' mutiny in 1955 opened the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972), pitting the Arabised, Muslim north against the largely Christian and animist south. Parliamentary governments alternated with military rule: Gaafar Nimeiry seized power in 1969, signed the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement granting the south autonomy, then imposed sharia law in 1983, triggering the Second Civil War (1983–2005) led by John Garang's SPLA, which killed some two million people. In 1989 Omar al-Bashir and the Islamist National Islamic Front took power in a coup; his thirty-year dictatorship was marked by the Darfur genocide (from 2003), which killed an estimated 300,000–400,000, US sanctions, and an ICC arrest warrant. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement led to South Sudan's secession in July 2011, taking most of the oil wealth. Mass protests toppled Bashir in April 2019, and a fragile civilian-military transition was aborted by a 2021 coup; since April 2023 the Sudanese Armed Forces under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan have fought the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in a catastrophic civil war producing the world's largest displacement crisis. Sudan is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and Arabic-speaking, with an agricultural economy devastated by war; Khartoum remains the nominal capital while rival administrations claim legitimacy.
Common questions
- What was Sudan?
- Sudan, Africa's largest country until 2011, became independent on 1 January 1956, ending the Anglo-Egyptian condominium of 1899. The territory's deep history includes the Kingdom of Kush, medieval Christian Nubian kingdoms, the Islamic Funj Sultanate of Sennar and the Sultanate of Darfur, Turco-Egyptian conquest from 1820, and the Mahdist state (1885–1898) destroyed at Omdurman by Kitchener.
- When did Sudan exist?
- Sudan existed 1956–2024. On this map it is drawn 1956–2024.
- How large was Sudan?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Sudan covered about 2.5 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
- What is the present status of Sudan?
- Even before independence, southern soldiers' mutiny in 1955 opened the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972), pitting the Arabised, Muslim north against the largely Christian and animist south.
Sources
Every source below was consulted while writing this entry.
- Wikipedia — Sudan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan
This entry was written from the sources above and last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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