[1][note 1] The idea for the journal was suggested by the Director of Survey, Lt. Col. Milo Talbot, to Edgar Bonham-Carter (later Sir), then the Legal Secretary of the Sudan government.

Crowfoot, the Director of the Education Department, and a meeting chaired by Sir Lee Stack was held where it was decided to start a journal.

[3] A committee was formed to address the problems of printing, financing, and finding contributors.

[1] Early on, the Journal published the ethnographic observations of British district officials, whose interest in social anthropology and ethnology was encouraged by their need to find out about the people that they administered.

[5] SNR also regularly published papers on linguistics, archaeology, agricultural practices, the navigability or rivers (and edibility of their fish), the histories of towns and places, big game hunting, sport and a miscellany of other topics.