This masterful history of the ‘Khartoum Springs’ of 1964 and 1985 provides a refreshing corrective to scholarship that has too often elided histories of opposition politics in both Africa and the Middle East. This is particularly true of the period of the Cold War, which is generally characterised as an era of immovable authoritarianism. In particular, scholarship has overlooked the success of civil uprisings in bringing down military regimes not once, but twice, in postcolonial Sudan. In the wake of another resounding electoral ‘triumph’ for Omar al-Bashir this year, Berridge's study restores a sense of possibility to Sudanese history and politics, even as her clear-eyed analysis of the constraints on and failings of opposition movements in 1964 and 1985 present warnings for those working for political change in the present.

Berridge's book opens with compellingly written chapters outlining the events of 1964 and 1985. The chapter on the 1964 revolution is particularly successful in capturing the spontaneity of events, and the contingency of the outcome of the uprising against Abboud, Sudan's first military ruler: nobody expected the regime to be brought down as quickly as it was by the strength of largely non-violent public protest. The chapter on 1985 makes it clear that, in contrast to 1964, Nimeiri's downfall was more predictable and was, to a significant extent, an act of self-destruction prompted by Nimeiri's descent into paranoia and his alienation of all his erstwhile allies.

Following chapters analyse the role of the various groupings (political parties, professional, labour and student unions, and the armed forces) involved in the uprisings in a manner that demonstrates that no one grouping was ever able to control developments to the exclusion of others. Moreover, Berridge shows that the leadership of these groups – including the military – shared a common identity as part of Sudan's riverine educated elite. This common identity both facilitated cooperation among diverse opposition groups (elite Khartoum wedding parties provided a key setting for the planning of demonstrations) and, crucially, limited the willingness of the security forces to use violence against civilian demonstrators. Berridge also repeatedly demonstrates that attempts to draw binary distinctions between secularists and Islamists, and between Sudan's ‘modern forces’ and so-called ‘traditionalists’ collapse in the face of the circulation of leading individuals between these groupings, and significant overlap in their political agendas.

The ambiguity of Hasan al-Turabi's politics in the 1964 uprising provides a fascinating example of this: Berridge shows how Turabi's experience of study in Paris, and exposure to secular rationalist philosophy allowed him to pitch a message of political liberty to educated elites whilst projecting his more commonly known religious and moralistic messages to a wider audience. Whilst the differing interests of leftists, Islamists, and the sectarian political parties went on to shape the increasingly fractious politics of transition following both uprisings, which form the focus of the last section of the book, Berridge continues to show that alliances and enmities amongst the various groupings remained fluid and unpredictable. She is particularly alive to the shared contradictions in Islamist, leftist, and Arab nationalist approaches to democracy, the apparent goal of the uprisings. These ‘modern’ forces were highly suspicious that a one man, one vote system would allow democracy to be ‘stolen’ by ‘anti-democratic forces’, identified as the sectarian parties that commanded huge support in rural northern Sudan, and that did indeed later dominate Sudanese parliamentary democracy.

Indeed, Berridge argues the critical failure of the leaders of both uprisings was their inability to fully incorporate the peoples of marginalised areas of Sudan, and especially rural populations, into their political projects. The failure to fully engage with the ‘southern question’, or to address the neglect of large parts of northern Sudan, was the flip-side of the strength of these movements: the cohesive riverine elite that worked together to depose military rulers also subscribed to an exclusivist definition of the Sudanese nation. They claimed nationalist credentials and heritage for their uprisings – which did indeed enjoy significant support in northern provincial towns and, in 1985, from westerners and southerners living in peri-urban Khartoum and Omdurman – but never transcended a vision of the nation that facilitated the continued domination of the Sudanese state and economy by a small number of riverine Arab ethnic groups.

This rigorously argued, thoroughly documented, and clearly written text deserves a wide readership. Berridge's forensic treatment of contradictory and politicised accounts given by actors involved in events and their triangulation with Arabic language press and documentary sources is deeply impressive. (There is, perhaps, another book on memory and the uprisings to be written that would use very similar evidential material to that empirically tested here.) It might be said that the book's structure, though very successful from the perspective of drawing out comparisons between the events of 1964 and 1985, is quite demanding, and the level of detail, impressive in its depth and precision, may at times overwhelm the general reader. The book also focuses principally on the role of leading individuals and organisers; whilst bottom-up perspectives do periodically emerge, this is, perhaps inevitably, an elite-focused work. Whilst its engagement with Africanist scholarship might have been somewhat developed (for example, comparisons with Miles Larmer's work on opposition politics in postcolonial Zambia, amongst others, might have been worthwhile), Berridge's application of wider comparative work on revolutions and political change to the case of Sudan make this a book of significant value for anyone working on African or Middle Eastern history and politics, and for those teaching and writing about revolutions more generally. It also sets a new standard for the writing of Sudan's postcolonial history.