Sudan's Blood Memory: The Legacy of War, Ethnicity, and Slavery in Early South Sudan

Stephanie Beswick

University Rochester Press, 2004 - History - 277 pages

This book shows how the modern-day Sudan has been haunted by the distant past and presents the voices of two hundred peoples of South Sudan, a region which according to some "has no history." Many societies, worldwide, particularly those that have been non-literate, possess oral histories reaching back many centuries. They possess long memories, especially about wars and events of great trauma. Labeled "blood memories" in this book, the author presents a pre-colonial history of Southern Sudan. Beginning in the fourteenth century, the book follows the region's largest ethnic group today, the Dinka, from their original homelands in the central Sudanese Gezira between the Blue and White Niles, into their more recently adopted homelands in Southern Sudan. The book demonstrates how fierce wars, ethnic struggles, and expansion shaped the "inner" history of the south today. External slave trades by Muslim cattle nomads from West Africa, the Baggara, further shaped the socio-political and military culture of the region. The book ends at the dawning of the Egyptian colonial era in 1821. Then, by way of an epilogue, it demonstrates how these earlier pre-colonial stresses have come to play a critical role in modern-day South Sudan, in what has since become the world's longest civil war, presently fought externally against the fundamentalist Islamic Northern Sudanese government as well as internally within the south itself. Stephanie Beswick is Professor of History at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. She was born in Khartoum, Sudan.

What people are saying

User Review -

Paul Mabor Aliab was my father,he died in 1996 i would like to read this book..i was only 6 1/2 but now am 30 turning 31.. I want to know what he did for his country.

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History of south sudan

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Geography and Brief History of Sudan: 9
• The Changing Nilotic Frontier: 15
• Slave Raids Wars and Migrations: 29
• Grain Cattle and Economic Power: 91
• Totemic Religion: 98
• Human Sacrifice Virgins and River Spirits: 108
• Priests Politics and Land: 124
• Ethnic Expansion by Marriage: 134
• Sovereign Nations within the Dinka: 143
• EighteenthCentury Slavers and Traders: 153
• Dinka Nuer Atwot and Anyuak: 164
• Politics and Stratification among Stateless Peoples: 175
• Summary and History: 185
• Legacy of the Precolonial Era: 198

About the author

Stephanie Beswick is a professor of history at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Sudan's Blood Memory: The Legacy of War, Ethnicity, and Slavery in Early South Sudan; Rochester Studies in African H; Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora, ISSN 1092-5228
• Author: Stephanie Beswick
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: University Rochester Press, 2004
• ISBN: 1580461514, 9781580461511
• Length: 277 pages
• Subjects: History / Africa / East; History / Africa / North; History / World