In Darfur, the British encountered a history of state formation which defied their perception of the region as an isolated, static backwater. The Darfur Sultanate functioned as an independent state for two centuries before colonial interventions in the region – and this state was built by Fur elites: the Keira descent group. Claims by the Sultans of partial Arab descent and the adoption of Arabic as the written language of the state (although with Fur continuing as the spoken language at court) would facilitate the avoidance by colonial officials of the intellectual challenge that Fur state-building posed to their ideas of racial hierarchy, ideas which persistently positioned Arabs above non-Arab Africans (or ‘negroids’ as the British referred to these peoples). Later, from the late-19th century, Darfur experienced a brief period of rule by the Turco-Egyptian colonial administration in Sudan (1874–1885), followed by attempts by the Mahdist state to assert its authority in Darfur (1885–1898), and the restoration of the Sultanate under Ali Dinar (1898–1916).

Existing historical scholarship on precolonial Darfur has emphasized the significance of the state-building processes led by the Fur Sultans, and the functioning of a bureaucratic administration which allowed the state to exercise regularized authority over its subjects. Mamdani has celebrated the ‘detribalising’ impact of central government by the Sultans and condemned the re-tribalization of Darfur by the British. This emphasis on the growing unity of Darfur under the Sultans, and therefore the existence of such a thing as a Darfuri identity in the region, has been influential in both scholarly and activist fields in recent years. Such arguments also fit with a wider body of (quite venerable) work in African history that sought to identify ‘states’ in precolonial Africa and thereby provide evidence of African political creativity and sophistication in order to counter western images of timeless stagnation or primitivism.

Yet Sean O’Fahey's authoritative work on the Sultanate, despite its overall emphasis on the existence of a functioning state, has also demonstrated the uncertainty and fluidity of governmental and administrative arrangements in Darfur, and the limits to the reach of the Sultan's authority.