Cecil Stephen Northcote

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox officeholder

|honorific-prefix = Major

|name = Cecil Stephen Northcote

|honorific-suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CBE|size=100%}}

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|order =

|office1 = Governor of Mongalla Province

|term_start1 = 1918

|term_end1 = February 1919

|predecessor1 = Roger Carmichael Robert Owen

|successor1 = Chauncey Hugh Stigand

|office2 = Governor of Nuba Mountains Province

|term_start2 = 16 March 1919

|term_end2 = 7 March 1928

|predecessor2 = R.S. Wilson

|successor2 = James Angus Gillan

|birth_date = 1878

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|death_date = 1945

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Major Cecil Stephen Northcote {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CBE}} (1878–1945) was a British military officer who was the governor of Mongalla Province in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from 1918 to 1919, and then of the Nuba Mountains province from 1919 to 1927.{{cite book |title=The Dilemma of British Rule in the Nuba Mountains, 1898–1947 |year=1985 |last1=Ibrahim |first1=A. U. M. |publisher=Graduate College, University of Khartoum |page=90 |isbn=978-0-86372-053-6 |oclc=15322971}}

Northcote served in the Cape Mounted Rifles as a private during the Second Boer War, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Bedfordshire Regiment in 1902.{{cite news |title=Military Notes |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000749/19280713/303/0015 |url-access=subscription |via=the British Newspaper Archive |work=Bedfordshire Times and Independent |date=13 July 1928}} Northcote joined the Egyptian army in April 1909.{{cite book |pages=11, 113 |title=Papers by Command, Volume 23 |author=Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. |publisher=HMSO |year=1929}}{{full citation needed|date=March 2023}} He was seconded to the Sudan Political Service in February 1912, and was posted to Bahr al-Ghazal.{{cite book |last1=Badrī |first1=B. |title=The Memoirs of Babikr Bedri |date=1969 |translator-last1=Bedri |translator-first1=Y. |translator-last2=Scott |translator-first2=G. |volume=2 |page=330 |place=London |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19211-194-4 |oclc=46605}} For his time in the Sudan during the First World War, he was mentioned in despatches.

Northcote was appointed Governor of Mongalla from 1918 until 1919.When he took office in Mongalla he was advised by his predecessor, R.C.R. Owen, to exclude all northern merchants from the province. Owen explained that "if a Jihad is ever started in the Sudan and Northern Africa, it would be a great thing if the countries south of the Sudd were free from it and if we could link up with Uganda which is practically entirely Christian and so have an anti-Islam buffer or bulwark in this part of Africa".{{cite book |last1=Ruay |first1=D. D. A. |title=The Politics of Two Sudans: the South and the North, 1821–1969 |year=1994 |page=38 |publisher=Nordiska Afrikainstitutet |place=Uppsala |url=http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:nai:diva-312 |isbn=978-9-17106-344-1 |oclc=651830563 |id={{URN|nbn|se:nai:diva-312|urn-access=free}}}}

When Northcote was appointed governor in 1918, the fifteen provincial governorships in the Sudan under Governor General Reginald Wingate were held by eight army officers, or former officers, and severn civilians. By 1924, when Wingate's successor Sir Lee Stack died, Northcote and M.J. Wheatley in Bahr al-Ghazal were the only governors with military backgrounds.{{cite book |last1=Daly |first1=M. W. |date=2003 |orig-year=1986 |title=Empire on the Nile: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898–1934 |edition=1st pbk |page=272 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |ISBN=978-0-52189-437-1 |oclc=320527594}} Northcote was transferred to the Nuba Mountains in 1919, and was succeeded in Mongalla by Chauncey Hugh Stigand. He was governor of the Nuba mountains province until he retired in 1928.{{cite book |last1=Daly |first1=M. W. |last2=Hogan |first2=J. R. |title=Images of Empire: Photographic Sources for the British in the Sudan |date=2005 |page=175 |place=Leiden |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-9-00414-627-3 |oclc=60826657}} His successor was Mr. J.A. Gillan.