Book Description

THE UPPER NILE PROVINCE HANDBOOKA Report on Peoples and Government in the Southern Sudan, 1931 compiled by C.A. Willis edited byDouglas H. JohnsonThis account of what used to be one of Sudan's remotest provinces provides the historical context forthe early classics of British social anthropology. It contains descriptions of local life by some of thefirst British officials to become conversant in the languages of the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk and Anuak ? ata time when the anthropologist, E.E. Evans-Pritchard's fieldwork in the province had only just begun.It also includes documentation on the origins of the Jonglei Canal, one of the most controversialenvironmental engineering projects in modern Africa. With many of the region's previousgovernmental structures now obliterated by war, this record of the beginnings of civil administrationwill be of immense value to South Sudanese and the new nation of South Sudan.'While some of the detail of the Handbook'will appeal only to very dedicated Sudan experts, the textas a whole has a much wider colonial significance. It replicates, on a grand scale, many of the featuresof the (unpublished) District Books and handing-over notes of other colonial territories. Reading theHandbook reminds one of just how much British administration depended on the collection, collationand even the manufacture of information about the peoples over which it ruled'.The key documentswhich contain the ethnography of administrators and on which historians rely for their analyses aretoo rarely available outside the archives. We all owe a debt to Johnson and the British Academy formaking the handbook available, not merely as a source but also as a memorial to a world whosecontradictions remain even while its substance is fast being overlaid or destroyed by forces moreruthless than amateur ethnographers and ex-military administrators.' Journal of African History Cover illustration: Captain Romilly (Gaweir March 1928) with ?daughter of sword of honourbloke [Chief Guer Wiu]? (Romilly). Sudan Archive Durham University 788/1/28.AFRICA WORLD BOOKSISBN 978-0-9943631-0-7