Richard Leslie Hill Explained

Richard Leslie Hill (18 February 1901  - 21 March 1996) was an English civil servant and historian of Sudan, "one of the great pioneers in the study of the modern history of the Sudan".^[1] Lecturer in Near Eastern history at Durham University from 1949 to 1966, he established the Sudan Archive there, "one of the most remarkable initiatives by any British university".^[2]

Works

Hill's books fall into three main classes: reference works, editions of 19th-century memoirs or travel journals, and synthesising monographs.^[1]

• Toryism and the people, 1832-1846, 1929
• A bibliography of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, from the earliest times to 1937, 1939
• A biographical dictionary of the Sudan, 1951. 2nd ed., 1967
• Egypt in the Sudan, 1820-1881, 1959
• Slatin Pasha, 1965
• Sudan transport; a history of railway, marine and river services in the Republic of the Sudan, 1965
• (ed.) On the frontiers of Islam: two manuscripts concerning the Sudan under Turco-Egyptian rule, 1822-1845, 1970
• (ed. with Elias Toniolo) The Opening of the Nile Basin: writings by members of the Catholic Mission to Central Africa on the geography and ethnography of the Sudan, 1842-1881, 1975
• (tr. and ed. with Paul Santi) The Europeans in the Sudan, 1834-1878: some manuscripts, mostly unpublished, 1980
• (ed.) The Sudan memoirs of Carl Christian Giegler Pasha, 1873-1883, 1984.
• (with Peter C. Hogg) A Black corps d'élite: an Egyptian Sudanese conscript battalion with the French Army in Mexico, 1863–1867, and its survivors in subsequent African history, 1994

Notes and References

1. R. S. O'Fahey, Richard Leslie Hill 1901-1996, Sudanic Africa 8 (1997), pp. 1-15. This has a comprehensive bibliography, including book reviews and miscellaneous contributions.
2. Nicolas Barker, Richard Hill: Obituary, 3 April 1996