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Schuver in the Sudan (1881 - 1883) Accused of arms traffic In the middle of June, Schuver and Mondo arrived back in Famaka, where Schuver met with misfortune. The local governor, an Austrian, accused him of selling weapons to followers of the Mahdi's fundamentalist rebels in the Sudan, who had just begun the siege of El Obeid. As luck would have it, Schuver did indeed have a veritable arsenal of rifles and revolvers, because he intended to hire local warriors to protect him en route. He had over fifty of the most modern rifles and twenty thousand rounds of ammunition. Schuver's little private army would easily have vanquished the Egyptian troops encountered in the area. In itself the accusation of arms dealing was no mere invention on the part of the authorities. Members of Western scholarly expeditions of that time actually hoped to sell arms in the area, in order to secure the cooperation of local rulers. Schuver, however, always emphatically refused either to sell firearms or to give them as presents, even when the minor local potentates he encountered on his travels attempted to persuade him to do so. The Dutchman was very aware of the shifts in the regional balance of power and the increase in violence resulting from arms trading. He therefore avoided this practice right from the beginning. On the only occasion on which he was genuinely unable to avoid giving someone a rifle, he failed to provide the necessary ammunition, rendering the weapon unusable. In October 1882 Schuver was obliged to return to Khartoum in order to report to the authorities. He spent the new year in the city. In January 1883, El Obeid fell to the Mahdi and his followers. Schuver's official business took an immense amount of time, and during this enforced rest he worked on three books about his travels, and explored his immediate surroundings. | |
