Geoffrey Francis Archer
Encyclopedia
Geoffrey Francis Archer (c. 1882 – 1 May 1964) was a British
ornithologist, big game hunter and colonial official. He was Commissioner and then Governor of British Somalia between 1913 and 1922, and was responsible for finally eliminating the menace of the Mad Mullah. He was appointed Governor of Uganda from 1922 to 1925, and then Governor-General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
between 1925 and 1926. In the Sudan he paid a formal but friendly visit to Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi
, son of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad
whose forces had killed General Gordon in 1885. Abd al-Rahman was leader of the neo-Mahdists in Sudan. Archer was forced to resign due to the resultant flap, and spent the remainder of his career organising salt works in India.
and the Rwenzori Mountains, discovering over twenty species and subspecies that had been previously unknown to science.
He went to Baringo
in 1904 where he conducted extensive surveys.
Archer was almost tempted to become a professional big game hunter.
On the basis of his survey work, Archer was appointed District Commissioner of the Northern Frontier district in Kenya.
The district was treated as a closed zone with little contact with the rest of Kenya. It was basically a buffer against the Ethiopians, and was not considered to have any other value.
In 1920, Archer said of northern Kenya: "There is only one way to treat the northern territories and that was to give them whatever protection one can under the British flag and otherwise leave them to their own customs. Anything else is certainly uneconomic".
Archer was able to supplement his District Commissioner salary by money earned from an annual elephant hunt. An official in his position was allowed to take two elephants per year, and the sale of their tusks could be worth several hundred pounds.
Much later, when he introduced hunting stories into an address to the Royal Geographical Society
, Archer was informed by the President that "gentlemen hunt only with the camera".
He was also Commander in Chief of the forces in Somaliland.
Mohammed Abdullah Hassan
was a religious leader with a following of 10,000 dervishes whom the British called the "Mad Mullah".
Abdullah Hassan had been causing trouble to the British in Somaliland since 1900 despite four expeditions sent out against him. In 1919 the British government decided on a final push to eliminate the problem, but the army was reluctant to undertake yet another campaign. Archer proposed using air power as a way to reduce the cost of ground troops, a suggestion that was greeted with scorn by the army. However, in January 1920 a flight of RAF bombers attacked the Mullah's headquarters and nearby forts, causing panic. Camel corps
troops helped by the King's African Rifles
rounded up the Dervish forces by mid-February. Abdullah Hassan fled to Ethiopia and caused no further problems.
On 5 June 1920 Archer was made an ordinary member, second class, of the Knights Commanders of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.
While in Somaliland Archer collected 3,000 skins and 1,000 clutches of eggs. He discovered three new bird species and several new races.
His collection and observations were basis for a later book on the birds of the region co-authored with Miss Eva Godman.
In 1921 the Colonial Secretary Sir Winston Churchill
called a conference in Cairo attended by experts on the Middle East. Sir Geoffrey Archer brought along two young lions who were being sent to the London Zoo. They broke loose at a reception held at the British residency and almost caught the pet stork that belonged to General Edmund Allenby, the high commissioner.
Archer was appointed Governor of Uganda in 1923, and made his first priority the control of 19,000 highly destructive elephants in the colony.
In both Somaliland and Uganda Archer took an interest in education of the native people, asking for advice on the curriculum, buildings, organization and so on, although he was limited in what he could achieve by shortage of funds.
Archer founded a department of education in Uganda and appointed a director,
but due to doubts that Africans could handle higher education the establishment at Makerere Hill
in Kampala
only gave training for low-level clerical work. Archer himself wanted Africans to gain the higher education needed for senior positions so the administration would have to depend less on Indians.
Archer's theories of education were typical of the British colonial administration. He wrote: "For Native Administration the qualities of scholarship and academic attainment are not to be prized so highly as the leadership of men. Brilliance in debate can hardly equal the initial advantage gained in youth by having led in the field a body of well trained and disciplined young men of similar age".
He replaced Sir Lee Stack
, who had been murdered.
Archer travelled overland from Uganda to Sudan to take up his new appointment, walking from Nimule
to Rejaf
and then travelling by steamer down the Bahr al Jabal
to Khartoum
.
Ceremonial etiquette was in flux.
In Uganda Archer had travelled up-country by car informally dressed. In one district that he had not visited before the locals saluted his chauffeur, the only person in uniform.
When Archer reached Khartoum in January 1925 he landed in frogged uniform, with sword and plumes, to be greeted on the quay by the members of his council in business suits.
In 1924 there had been a crisis in Egypt when a government hostile to the British was elected. Egyptian army units in Sudan, bound by their oath to the Egyptian king, refused to obey British orders and mutinied. The British violently suppressed the mutiny, removed the Egyptian army from the Sudan and purged the administration of Egyptian officials.
One of Archer's early decisions was to initiate the formation of the Sudan Defence Force, with a command completely separate from the Egyptian army. He dropped the Egyptian title "Sirdar" for the supreme commander, and did not wear the Egyptian tarboush.
He made it very clear that he was commander in chief of a purely Sudanese army, while reassuring Sudanese officers who had served in the Egyptian army that they would be retained if they had not taken part in the mutiny.
In the aftermath of the upheaval the British saw educated Sudanese as potential propagators of "dangerous" nationalist ideas imported from Egypt.
During Archer's tenure the main concern of the government was to reduce the power of the local intelligentsia and to transfer greater authority to traditional rulers.
Archer did little about the issue of whether southern administration should be "Arabicized" or given a more English and Christian flavour.
However, he deferred to Lord Lloyd, the British High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan, who stated in a memo to the Foreign Office that "on political, educational, religious, and administrative grounds it is desirable that Arabic as a general language should disappear from the Southern provinces".
Archer was enthusiastic about the massive scheme to damm the Blue Nile
at Sennar
so as to irrigate the Gezira
plain for cotton cultivation. He described the plan as the application of "western science to native economic conditions".
In March 1926 Archer ignored the advice of the Sudan Political Service and made an official visit to the Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi
on Aba Island
accompanied by a full escort of troops and officials.
Abd al-Rahman was the son of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad
(1844–1885) and was leader of the Ansar
movement.
When Archer arrived on 14 February he was formally welcomed by Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman with 1,500 Ansar supporters.
Escorted by horsemen, the dignatories went on by car to a reception at the Sayyid's house.
Replying to a speech by the Sayyid, Archer said his visit marked "an important stage forward in the relations" between the Sayyid and his followers and the government. Archer said he had come to cement the ties of friendship and understanding.
Archer's visit precipitated a crisis in the colonial administration.
Archer was forced to resign, replaced by Sir John Maffey.
.
Archer settled in the south of France when he retired, dying at Cannes
on 1 May 1964.
Archer made significant contributions to the study of birds and their breeding and migration habits in British East Africa, while considering a professional career as a big-game hunter.
He rightly saw that air power could make a decisive impression on the Somali warriors.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he thought that Africans were fully capable of holding senior administrative positions.
He was willing to work with the Mahdists, Britain's former enemies, and this open-minded attitude put an end to his career.
Archer was a tall and imposing man, and had a forceful personality.
A young man who met Archer in 1939 said of him: "When I talk to him I experience the feeling one gets when one walks out of a very stuffy room full of tobacco smoke into the open air and is greeted by a heavy buffeting wind, which pushes one back a step but which exhilarates and invigorates."
Archer's Buzzard
, Archer's Lark
(endemic to Somalia) and Archer's Robin-chat
, a species in the Old World flycatcher
family, carry Archer's name.
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
ornithologist, big game hunter and colonial official. He was Commissioner and then Governor of British Somalia between 1913 and 1922, and was responsible for finally eliminating the menace of the Mad Mullah. He was appointed Governor of Uganda from 1922 to 1925, and then Governor-General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan referred to the manner by which Sudan was administered between 1899 and 1956, when it was a condominium of Egypt and the United Kingdom.-Union with Egypt:...
between 1925 and 1926. In the Sudan he paid a formal but friendly visit to Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi
Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi
Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi was one of the leading religious and political figures during the colonial era in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan , and continued to exert great authority as leader of the Neo-Mahdists after Sudan became independent...
, son of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah was a religious leader of the Samaniyya order in Sudan who, on June 29, 1881, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi or messianic redeemer of the Islamic faith...
whose forces had killed General Gordon in 1885. Abd al-Rahman was leader of the neo-Mahdists in Sudan. Archer was forced to resign due to the resultant flap, and spent the remainder of his career organising salt works in India.
Early career
In 1901 the nineteen-year-old Archer joined his uncle Frederick John Jackson, the acting high commissioner in Uganda. His uncle sent him on an ornithological collecting trip the next year. He visited Lake Albert, the Semliki valleySemliki River
Semliki River is a major river in Central Africa. It flows northwards from Lake Edward in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, across the Uganda border, through western Uganda in Bundibugyo District, near the Semuliki National Park. It empties into Lake Albert at...
and the Rwenzori Mountains, discovering over twenty species and subspecies that had been previously unknown to science.
He went to Baringo
Baringo District
Baringo District is an administrative district in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya. Its capital town is Kabarnet. The district has a population of 264,978 and an area of 8,646 km² ....
in 1904 where he conducted extensive surveys.
Archer was almost tempted to become a professional big game hunter.
On the basis of his survey work, Archer was appointed District Commissioner of the Northern Frontier district in Kenya.
The district was treated as a closed zone with little contact with the rest of Kenya. It was basically a buffer against the Ethiopians, and was not considered to have any other value.
In 1920, Archer said of northern Kenya: "There is only one way to treat the northern territories and that was to give them whatever protection one can under the British flag and otherwise leave them to their own customs. Anything else is certainly uneconomic".
Archer was able to supplement his District Commissioner salary by money earned from an annual elephant hunt. An official in his position was allowed to take two elephants per year, and the sale of their tusks could be worth several hundred pounds.
Much later, when he introduced hunting stories into an address to the Royal Geographical Society
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...
, Archer was informed by the President that "gentlemen hunt only with the camera".
Somalia and Uganda
In 1913 Archer was appointed Acting Commissioner in British Somaliland, later becoming Governor from 1919 to 1922.He was also Commander in Chief of the forces in Somaliland.
Mohammed Abdullah Hassan
Mohammed Abdullah Hassan
Sayyīd Muhammad `Abd Allāh al-Hasan was a Somali religious and patriotic leader...
was a religious leader with a following of 10,000 dervishes whom the British called the "Mad Mullah".
Abdullah Hassan had been causing trouble to the British in Somaliland since 1900 despite four expeditions sent out against him. In 1919 the British government decided on a final push to eliminate the problem, but the army was reluctant to undertake yet another campaign. Archer proposed using air power as a way to reduce the cost of ground troops, a suggestion that was greeted with scorn by the army. However, in January 1920 a flight of RAF bombers attacked the Mullah's headquarters and nearby forts, causing panic. Camel corps
Somaliland Camel Corps
The Somaliland Camel Corps was a unit of the British Army based in British Somaliland from the early 20th century until the 1960s.Camels are a necessity in East Africa, being as important as ponies are in Mongolia...
troops helped by the King's African Rifles
King's African Rifles
The King's African Rifles was a multi-battalion British colonial regiment raised from the various British possessions in East Africa from 1902 until independence in the 1960s. It performed both military and internal security functions within the East African colonies as well as external service as...
rounded up the Dervish forces by mid-February. Abdullah Hassan fled to Ethiopia and caused no further problems.
On 5 June 1920 Archer was made an ordinary member, second class, of the Knights Commanders of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.
While in Somaliland Archer collected 3,000 skins and 1,000 clutches of eggs. He discovered three new bird species and several new races.
His collection and observations were basis for a later book on the birds of the region co-authored with Miss Eva Godman.
In 1921 the Colonial Secretary Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
called a conference in Cairo attended by experts on the Middle East. Sir Geoffrey Archer brought along two young lions who were being sent to the London Zoo. They broke loose at a reception held at the British residency and almost caught the pet stork that belonged to General Edmund Allenby, the high commissioner.
Archer was appointed Governor of Uganda in 1923, and made his first priority the control of 19,000 highly destructive elephants in the colony.
In both Somaliland and Uganda Archer took an interest in education of the native people, asking for advice on the curriculum, buildings, organization and so on, although he was limited in what he could achieve by shortage of funds.
Archer founded a department of education in Uganda and appointed a director,
but due to doubts that Africans could handle higher education the establishment at Makerere Hill
Makerere University
Makerere University , Uganda's largest and second-oldest higher institution of learning, , was first established as a technical school in 1922. In 1963 it became the University of East Africa, offering courses leading to general degrees from the University of London...
in Kampala
Kampala
Kampala is the largest city and capital of Uganda. The city is divided into five boroughs that oversee local planning: Kampala Central Division, Kawempe Division, Makindye Division, Nakawa Division and Lubaga Division. The city is coterminous with Kampala District.-History: of Buganda, had chosen...
only gave training for low-level clerical work. Archer himself wanted Africans to gain the higher education needed for senior positions so the administration would have to depend less on Indians.
Archer's theories of education were typical of the British colonial administration. He wrote: "For Native Administration the qualities of scholarship and academic attainment are not to be prized so highly as the leadership of men. Brilliance in debate can hardly equal the initial advantage gained in youth by having led in the field a body of well trained and disciplined young men of similar age".
Governor-General of Sudan
At the age of forty-two, Sir Geoffrey Francis Archer was selected for the post of Governor-General of Sudan in December 1924, the first time a civilian had held this office.He replaced Sir Lee Stack
Lee Stack
Sir Lee Oliver Fitzmaurice Stack was a British army officer and Governor-General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. On 19 November 1924, he was shot and assassinated while driving through Cairo....
, who had been murdered.
Archer travelled overland from Uganda to Sudan to take up his new appointment, walking from Nimule
Nimule
Nimule is a town in South Sudan, immediately north of the International border with Uganda.-Location:Nimule is located in Magwi County, Eastern Equatoria State, South Sudan, adjacent to the border with the Republic of Uganda. This location lies approximately , by road, southeast of Juba, the...
to Rejaf
Rejaf
Rejaf, also Rajjāf or Rageef, is a community in Central Equatoria State in South Sudan, on the west bank of the White Nile.The Lado Enclave was an exclave of the Congo Free State that existed from 1894 until 1910, leased by the British to King Leopold II of Belgium for the period of his lifetime...
and then travelling by steamer down the Bahr al Jabal
White Nile
The White Nile is a river of Africa, one of the two main tributaries of the Nile from Egypt, the other being the Blue Nile. In the strict meaning, "White Nile" refers to the river formed at Lake No at the confluence of the Bahr al Jabal and Bahr el Ghazal rivers...
to Khartoum
Khartoum
Khartoum is the capital and largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia. The location where the two Niles meet is known as "al-Mogran"...
.
Ceremonial etiquette was in flux.
In Uganda Archer had travelled up-country by car informally dressed. In one district that he had not visited before the locals saluted his chauffeur, the only person in uniform.
When Archer reached Khartoum in January 1925 he landed in frogged uniform, with sword and plumes, to be greeted on the quay by the members of his council in business suits.
In 1924 there had been a crisis in Egypt when a government hostile to the British was elected. Egyptian army units in Sudan, bound by their oath to the Egyptian king, refused to obey British orders and mutinied. The British violently suppressed the mutiny, removed the Egyptian army from the Sudan and purged the administration of Egyptian officials.
One of Archer's early decisions was to initiate the formation of the Sudan Defence Force, with a command completely separate from the Egyptian army. He dropped the Egyptian title "Sirdar" for the supreme commander, and did not wear the Egyptian tarboush.
He made it very clear that he was commander in chief of a purely Sudanese army, while reassuring Sudanese officers who had served in the Egyptian army that they would be retained if they had not taken part in the mutiny.
In the aftermath of the upheaval the British saw educated Sudanese as potential propagators of "dangerous" nationalist ideas imported from Egypt.
During Archer's tenure the main concern of the government was to reduce the power of the local intelligentsia and to transfer greater authority to traditional rulers.
Archer did little about the issue of whether southern administration should be "Arabicized" or given a more English and Christian flavour.
However, he deferred to Lord Lloyd, the British High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan, who stated in a memo to the Foreign Office that "on political, educational, religious, and administrative grounds it is desirable that Arabic as a general language should disappear from the Southern provinces".
Archer was enthusiastic about the massive scheme to damm the Blue Nile
Blue Nile
The Blue Nile is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. With the White Nile, the river is one of the two major tributaries of the Nile...
at Sennar
Sennar
Sennar is a town on the Blue Nile in Sudan and capital of the state of Sennar. For several centuries it was the capital of the Funj Kingdom of Sennar. It had an estimated population of 100,000 inhabitants in the early 19th century. The modern town lies 17km SSE of the ruins of the ancient capital...
so as to irrigate the Gezira
Al Jazirah (state)
Al Jazirah , also spelled Gezira, is one of the 15 states of Sudan. The state lies between the Blue Nile and the White Nile in the east-central region of the country. It has an area of 27,549 km². The name comes from the Arabic word for peninsula. Wad Madani is the capital of the state.It is...
plain for cotton cultivation. He described the plan as the application of "western science to native economic conditions".
In March 1926 Archer ignored the advice of the Sudan Political Service and made an official visit to the Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi
Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi
Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi was one of the leading religious and political figures during the colonial era in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan , and continued to exert great authority as leader of the Neo-Mahdists after Sudan became independent...
on Aba Island
Aba Island
Aba Island is an island on the White Nile to the south of Khartoum, Sudan. It is the original home of the Mahdi in Sudan and the spiritual base of the Umma Party...
accompanied by a full escort of troops and officials.
Abd al-Rahman was the son of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah was a religious leader of the Samaniyya order in Sudan who, on June 29, 1881, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi or messianic redeemer of the Islamic faith...
(1844–1885) and was leader of the Ansar
Ansar (Sudan)
The Ansar , or followers of the Mahdi, is a Sufi religious movement in the Sudan whose followers are disciples of Muhammad Ahmad , the self-proclaimed Mahdi....
movement.
When Archer arrived on 14 February he was formally welcomed by Sayyid 'Abd al-Rahman with 1,500 Ansar supporters.
Escorted by horsemen, the dignatories went on by car to a reception at the Sayyid's house.
Replying to a speech by the Sayyid, Archer said his visit marked "an important stage forward in the relations" between the Sayyid and his followers and the government. Archer said he had come to cement the ties of friendship and understanding.
Archer's visit precipitated a crisis in the colonial administration.
Archer was forced to resign, replaced by Sir John Maffey.
Later life and legacy
After leaving the Sudan, Archer spent most of the next fifteen years organizing the salt industry in Kutch, IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
Archer settled in the south of France when he retired, dying at Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
on 1 May 1964.
Archer made significant contributions to the study of birds and their breeding and migration habits in British East Africa, while considering a professional career as a big-game hunter.
He rightly saw that air power could make a decisive impression on the Somali warriors.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he thought that Africans were fully capable of holding senior administrative positions.
He was willing to work with the Mahdists, Britain's former enemies, and this open-minded attitude put an end to his career.
Archer was a tall and imposing man, and had a forceful personality.
A young man who met Archer in 1939 said of him: "When I talk to him I experience the feeling one gets when one walks out of a very stuffy room full of tobacco smoke into the open air and is greeted by a heavy buffeting wind, which pushes one back a step but which exhilarates and invigorates."
Archer's Buzzard
Archer's Buzzard
The Archer's Buzzard is a 50–55 cm long African bird of prey. The taxonomy on this species is confusing, with some taxonomists considering this species, the Jackal Buzzard, and the Augur Buzzard to be the same superspecies. Many taxonomists consider them all to be distinct, having different...
, Archer's Lark
Archer's Lark
The Archer's Lark is a species of lark in the Alaudidae family. It is endemic to Somalia. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry shrubland and subtropical or tropical dry lowland grassland. It is threatened by habitat loss.-References:* BirdLife International 2005. . Downloaded...
(endemic to Somalia) and Archer's Robin-chat
Archer's Robin-chat
The Archer's Robin-chat is a species of bird in the Muscicapidae family.It is found in Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda....
, a species in the Old World flycatcher
Old World flycatcher
The Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae is a large family of small passerine birds mostly restricted to the Old World. These are mainly small arboreal insectivores, many of which, as the name implies, take their prey on the wing.-Characteristics:...
family, carry Archer's name.