Colonial Professionalism and Nation Building : The Case of Midwifery in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

In precolonial Sudan, dāyāt al-habl (midwives of the rope, referring to birthing methods used then) were tasked with what was considered a divine duty: facilitating childbirth. Dāyāt were a part of a sociocultural system responsible for the organization of sexuality, reproduction, and family formation. In 1921, the British colonial government established the Midwifery Training School (MTS) to create a class of trained professional midwives to rival dāyāt, seeking to increase the population to secure more labor power for their extractive projects. They also had no access to Sudanese families, and this opened a door into their private households. The MTS made the hereditary practice into an institutional centralized profession, changing the socioeconomic interests of the dāyāt, their workplace (homes to clinics), payment, and birthing techniques. This article aims to investigate the transition from the dāya to the trained midwife, by analyzing the relationship between such professionalism and the colonial project, the economic and political interests that governed and directed this process, and the surrounding broader shift in social relations. The article argues that the centralized midwifery profession was a constitutive element of nationalism and state-building.