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.

Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Politics & Social Sciences

Johnson, Douglas H.

Anthropology

Oxford University Press

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.

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Sudan’s post-independence history has been dominated by long, recurring, and bloody civil wars. Most commentators have attributed the country’s political and civil strife either to an age-old racial and ethnic divide between Arabs and Africans or to colonially constructed inequalities. In The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, Douglas H. Johnson examines historical, political, economic, and social factors to come to a more subtle understanding of the trajectory of Sudan’s civil wars. Johnson focuses on the essential differences between the modern Sudan’s first civil war in the 1960s, the current war, and the minor conflicts generated by and contained within the larger wars. Regional and international factors, such as humanitarian aid, oil revenue, and terrorist organizations, are cited and examined as underlying issues that have exacerbated the violence. Readers will find an immensely readable yet nuanced and well-informed handling of the history and politics of Sudan’s civil wars.

The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (African Issues), Updated to the Peace Agreement

History

Africa

The International Africa Inst./ Indiana Univ Press

Sudan's post-independence history has been dominated by long, recurring, and bloody civil wars. Most commentators have attributed the country's political and civil strife either to an age-old racial and ethnic divide between Arabs and Africans or to colonially constructed inequalities. In The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars, Douglas H. Johnson examines historical, political, economic, and social factors to come to a more subtle understanding of the trajectory of Sudan's civil wars. Johnson focuses on the essential differences between the modern Sudan's first civil war in the 1960s, the current war, and the minor conflicts generated by and contained within the larger wars. Regional and international factors, such as humanitarian aid, oil revenue, and terrorist organizations, are cited and examined as underlying issues that have exacerbated the violence. Readers will find an immensely readable yet nuanced and well-informed handling of the history and politics of Sudan's civil wars. A well-balanced account of the numerous and complex forces involved in one of Africa's most intractable conflicts.

The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (African Issues)

Indiana University Press

The Ecology Of Survival: Case Studies From Northeast African History

Anderson, David M.

Reference

Routledge

Westview Press

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 durée, 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.

South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation (Ohio Short Histories of Africa)

Ohio University Press

This book is dedicated to every person who has gone through, or is going through the traumatic experience of physical and emotional pain. Whether it is your own challenge with illness or physical harm, or the overwhelming sadness of a friend or loved one's sickness or passing, this book will help you overcome the fears and solitude of grief. 
Life's Little Lessons is a guide and a tool to get your life back on track, and to help you maintain a healthy outlook of hope, faith, and love. It is meant to help you understand and get on with life after the experience of a tragic event.

Life's Little Lessons

Agape Echo

This collection of articles first appeared in The Pioneer weekly newspaper. Its founding editor, Atem Yaak Atem, invited me to contribute a weekly column of historical pieces that we decided to entitle “Past Notes and Records”. Back in the early 1980s when we were colleagues in the Regional Ministry of Culture and Information I had written a series of articles called “The Streets of Juba” for The Southern Sudan Magazine, which Atem had also founded. In those articles I gave brief biographies of some of the famous South Sudanese after whom some of Juba’s main streets had been named, and in many ways “Past Notes and Records” is a continuation and expansion of that earlier series. 
The pieces are intended to inform and to stimulate discussion and debate. The history of South Sudan has been a neglected subject. Much of the academic history about South Sudan has been written about foreign rulers rather than about South Sudanese communities and individuals. The history of South Sudan and South Sudanese was not included in the Sudan school syllabuses and is usually excluded from the general political histories of Sudan. There is still no reliable textbook on South Sudanese history for use in its schools. South Sudanese may know something about the past of their own communities, but few have had the opportunity to learn much about the broad history of their nation or how it fits into the wider region. 
The columns in this collection were originally addressed to a South Sudanese readership, and it is primarily for that readership, both at home and abroad, that they are republished here. This book is neither a comprehensive overview of South Sudan’s past, nor a record of the most important events or historic personalities. It is more like a selection of snapshots from a family album. The re-discovery of the past and the writing of history is a never-ending process. This booklet is only a beginning, a small offering to mark South Sudan’s achievement of independence. It is an open invitation to South Sudanese to research and write more about their own past. 
The author 
Dr Douglas H. Johnson is a scholar specialising in the history and affairs of Sudan and South Sudan. He is a Fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. Dr Johnson’s contacts with the two countries go back to more than four decades ago, beginning with time as a graduate student of prophecy among the Nuer people in the 19th and 20th centuries. His field work concentrated in central Upper Nile Province. In mid-1970s young Johnson joined the Regional Ministry of Culture and Information in Juba as assistant director for archives, a position in which he collected and classified documentary material from provincial capitals of the Southern Region. The files were later housed in Juba. Over the years, the historian has tirelessly worked with institutions and recently with the Government of South Sudan for the establishment of a national archive in Juba. Dr Douglas Johnson became a member of the Abyei Boundary Commission following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the Sudan’s armed conflict in 2005. He is an author and editor of several books on Sudan and South Sudan. Among these are The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, Nuer Prophets: A History of from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, The Upper Nile province Handbook (editor). The last tome has been reissued as a paperback by the African World Books, the publisher of this volume.

South Sudanese Past Notes & Records

Professionals & Academics

Africa World Books Pty Ltd

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Johnson, Douglas H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Johnson, Douglas H.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Johnson, Douglas H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (African Issues), Updated to the Peace Agreement

The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (African Issues)

The Ecology Of Survival: Case Studies From Northeast African History

The Ecology Of Survival: Case Studies From Northeast African History

The Ecology Of Survival: Case Studies From Northeast African History

South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation (Ohio Short Histories of Africa)

Life's Little Lessons

South Sudanese Past Notes & Records