Sudan, 1955 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 18 August 1955 soldiers of the No. 2 Company of the Equatoria Corps of the Sudan Defence Force mutinied at Torit in southern Sudan, and in the following days the revolt spread to Juba, Yei, and Maridi, in a rising against the northern dominated self-government of Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari on the eve of Sudanese independence. Southern soldiers, resentful that the Sudanization of senior posts had gone overwhelmingly to northerners, were inflamed by an allegedly forged telegram attributed to al-Azhari urging northern administrators to suppress southern demands for federation, and by a deadly shooting of workers at Nzara.
The mutineers killed northern officers and officials, but the government airlifted northern troops south and, with British Governor General Sir Alexander Knox Helm brokering a surrender on false assurances of leniency, the rising was suppressed by late August. The scattered survivors fled into the bush, and the Torit mutiny is widely regarded as the opening of the First Sudanese Civil War.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
62508181955
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari and the Sudanese self-government survived the mutiny, which was suppressed.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Powell and Thyne
New York Times
Chicago Tribune
Washington Post
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →