At first glance, the much discussed ‘second colonial occupation’ – whereby after World War II Britain invested unprecedented levels of resources and manpower into development efforts across its African empire – appears to have passed Darfur by altogether. Martin Daly has convincingly evidenced Darfur's relative ‘underdevelopment’ compared to wealthier regions of Sudan, and has shown that the province was in some respects even worse served than the ‘famously neglected south’ in terms of development. British officials, administrative or technical, remained very few in number in Darfur, and the provision of services compared to other regions was extremely limited. Yet a focus on relative under-development, and the fatal economic and political marginalization of Darfur as a result, obscures ways in which the ambitions of officials – and chiefs – in Darfur did shift in important ways in these years. Development in the sense of large-scale economic and social ‘modernization’ was clearly not on the agenda, but the administration was interested in bringing about a degree of change which it could itself control and direct. Educational, health and livelihood provisions were all increased in this period, together with efforts to encourage more commercial agriculture and sale of cattle. All this was symptomatic of a broader concern common across colonial Africa to re-legitimize empire in the post-war world by providing economic and social goods to imperial subjects, whilst simultaneously boosting the economic value of the colonies to their imperial masters.

Alongside this increased concern with economic and social development ran reforms which claimed to liberalize local politics. From 1937, the Sudan Government had officially recognized the necessity of creating local level administrative structures within which educated Sudanese could take a representative role: legislation allowed for the creation of partially elected councils in urban areas, and for nominated councils in rural areas. It was hoped such accommodation of the ambitions of the educated would defuse political tensions that might otherwise undermine imperial control. The new structures were also intended as a means of ensuring that ‘traditional’ leaders and the newly educated might cooperate as partners rather than rivals: Douglas Newbold, Civil Secretary of Sudan in the late 1930s hoped that ‘under the ample folds of [Local Government’s] respectable cloak, the sons of sheikhs and the sons of effendia could lie down together.’