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.
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.
“With its call for better use of existing sources and a stronger historiographical approach,South Sudan: A New History for a New Nationis a timely addition which speaks directly to South Sudan’s mixed experience of nation building and which challenges existing misconceptions about South Sudan and its history.…Johnson picks apart the singular paradigm of South Sudan’s perennial exploitation by various intruders, offering instead a rich exposition of a diverse region.”—Sudan lĂ*
![South Sudan A New History for a New Nation [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/4/0/8/2_295972.jpg "South Sudan A New History for a New Nation [Paperback] xxx")