Expanded third edition of this key text on the complex underlying conditions of the civil war from the 1960s to the present day, including a new chapter on the current wars in Sudan's new south and South Sudan. Sudan's post-independence history has been dominated by political and civil strife. Most commentators have attributed the country's recurring civil war either to an age-old racial divide between Arabs and Africans, or to recent colonially constructed inequalities. This book attempts a more complex analysis, briefly examining the historical, political, economic and social factors which have contributed to periodic outbreaks of violence between the state andits peripheries. In tracing historical continuities, it outlines the essential differences between the modern Sudan's first civil war in the 1960s and today, including an analysis of the escalation of the Darfur war, implementation of the 2005 peace agreement and implications of the Southern referendum in 2011 and the new war in Sudan's new south and South Sudan. The author also looks at the series of minor civil wars generated by, and contained within, the major conflict, as well as the regional and international factors - including humanitarian aid - which have exacerbated civil violence. This introduction is aimed at students of North-East Africa, and of conflict and ethnicity. It will be essential reading for those in aid and international organizations who need a straightforward analytical survey which will help them assess the prospects for a lasting peace in Sudan. Douglas H. Johnson isan independent scholar and former international expert on the Abyei Boundaries Commission.

Africa's newest nation has a long history. Often considered remote and isolated from the rest of Africa, and usually associated with the violence of slavery and civil war, South Sudan has been an arena for a complex mixing of peoples, languages, and beliefs. The nation's diversity is both its strength and a challenge as its people attempt to overcome the legacy of decades of war to build a new economic, political, and national future. Most recent studies of South Sudan's history have a foreshortened sense of the past, focusing on current political issues, the recently ended civil war, or the ongoing conflicts within the country and along its border with Sudan. This brief but substantial overview of South Sudan's longue duree, by one of the world's foremost experts on the region, answers the need for a current, accessible book on this important country. Drawing on recent advances in the archaeology of the Nile Valley, new fieldwork as well as classic ethnography, and local and foreign archives, Johnson recovers South Sudan's place in African history and challenges the stereotypes imposed on its peoples.

This is the first major study of the Nuer based on primary research since Evans-Pritchard's classic Nuer Religion. It is also the first full-length historical study of indigenous African prophets operating outside the context of the world's main religions, and as such builds on Evans-Pritchard's pioneering work in promoting collaboration and dialogue between the disciplines of anthropology and history. Prophets first emerged as significant figures among the Nuer in the nineteenth century. They fashioned the religious idiom of prophecy from a range of spiritual ideas, and enunciated the social principles which broadened and sustained a moral community across political and ethnic boundaries. Douglas Johnson argues that, contrary to the standard anthropological interpretation, the major prophets' lasting contribution was their vision of peace, not their role in war. This vision is particularly relevant today, and the book concludes with a detailed discussion of events in the Sudan since independence in 1956, describing how modern Nuer, and many other southern Sudanese, still find the message of the nineteenth-century prophets relevant to their experiences in the current civil war.

The Nuer people of South Sudan hold a special if unwanted place in imperial history as the object of Britain's last 'pacification' campaign in Africa. Territorial conquest was completed with the annexation of the independent sultanate of Darfur in 1916, but military pacification continued throughout the first thirty years of the twentieth century, culminating in 'the Nuer Settlement'. These campaigns are important for another reason: they were the cause of the Sudan government redirecting the anthropologist, E.E. Evans-Pritchard (against his will) to study of the Nuer, which he did in a succession of field visits between 1930 and 1936. The trilogy of monographs that he published were formative in the development of British social anthropology and are one of the main reasons why the Nuer are so well-known internationally today. This volume consists of twenty-five administrative reports, supplemented by transcripts of five interviews with Nuer and Dinka participants. Together these cover the significant events in the contact, conquest, and pacification of the Nuer from 1898 to 1930. The documents contain some of the earliest twentieth-century ethnographic descriptions of the Nuer and their Dinka and Mabaan neighbours. Together these sources provide an historical context for further understanding Evans-Pritchard's ethnography, as well as a more detailed understanding of the events that led to incorporation of the Nuer into the colonial state. The final document is an abstract of a talk given by Evans-Pritchard to the Oxford Summer School on Colonial Administration in 1938. This contained observations, based in part on his fieldwork among the Nuer, which are relevant today to understanding the post-independence history of South Sudan. This book is a significant contribution to the source materials on the history of South Sudan and for the study of the relationship between colonial states and the development of the discipline of social anthropology.