A study of Nuer expansionism with implications for research into the relationship between social and material causes of change

The documents edited here cover the significant events in the contact, conquest, and pacification of the Nuer from 1898 to 1930. They contain some of the earliest 20th-century ethnographic descriptions of the Nuer and their Dinka and Mabaan neighbors. Together these sources provide a 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.

Winner of the 1995 African Studies Association Text Prize (now the Paul Hair Prize)Percy Coriat was the first Nuer-speaking British official to produce a substantial body of informed and detailed reports on the Nuer. This volume brings together all of his most substantial writings found in Sudanese, South Sudanese and British archives to date, and makes them available for the first time to a wider audience interested in the history and ethnography of the Nuer. These papers give the most comprehensive account yet published of Nuer life in the 1920s, describing the events that preceded and led to Evans-Pritchard's own fieldwork in the 1930s and providing a much-needed historical context for his famous Nuer trilogy.'Appointed at a time when ?character? was thought the important quality in a Sudan Political Service officer, Coriat'was a man of action who recorded what he did, what he saw and what he understood. It is this first hand observation which gives the collection its greatest value as a primary source. Anyone concerned with Nuer ethnography or history will find these documents indispensable and Johnson's introduction and detailed notes provide clear guidance to them.' ? African Affairs

From the Victorian period to the present, images of the policeman have played a prominent role in the literature of empire, shaping popular perceptions of colonial policing. This book covers and compares the different ways and means that were employed in policing policies from 1830 to 1940. Countries covered range from Ireland, Australia, Africa and India to New Zealand and the Caribbean. As patterns of authority, of accountability and of consent, control and coercion evolved in each colony the general trend was towards a greater concentration of police time upon crime. The most important aspect of imperial linkage in colonial policing was the movement of personnel from one colony to another. To evaluate the precise role of the 'Irish model' in colonial police forces is at present probably beyond the powers of any one scholar. Policing in Queensland played a vital role in the construction of the colonial social order. In 1886 the constabulary was split by legislation into the New Zealand Police Force and the standing army or Permanent Militia. The nature of the British influence in the Klondike gold rush may be seen both in the policy of the government and in the actions of the men sent to enforce it. The book also overviews the role of policing in guarding the Gold Coast, police support in 1954 Sudan, Orange River Colony, Colonial Mombasa and Kenya, as well as and nineteenth-century rural India.

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.