In 1863 slaves and conscript soldiers from Sudan landed in Mexico. What has happened? The Egyptian Khedive has sent them on the request of Napoleon III to fight for the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian ...against the Mexican republican troops of Benito Juarez of Zapotec origin. Although the story of this military adventure is so multi-facetted and connects a mosaic of diverse identities it is largely forgotten. Based on personal experience, literary translations, interviews, and the exploration of other repositories, David E. Long and Sebastian Maisel bring back the life-stories of those brave Sudanese men and their descendants and their ultimate fight for freedom and independence.
David E. Long was a foreign service diplomat, professor of Islamic and Security Studies, and international consultant on the Middle East and international terrorism.
Sebastian Maisel is professor for Arabic language and translations at Leipzig University (Germany). His research focus is on language pedagogy and sociolinguistics with an emphasis on identity studies of minority groups.
South Sudan became independent in 2011 after decades of rebel wars with the Government of Sudan. Independence prompted discussions about South Sudanese identity and shared history, in which material ...objects and cultural heritage featured as vitally important resources. However, the long-term effects of colonialism and conflict had largely precluded any concerted attempts to preserve material culture within the country; museums remained in Khartoum, the capital of the formally united Sudan. Furthermore, tens of thousands of objects had been removed from what is now South Sudan during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to museum and private collections around the world. Up to now there have been few attempts to reconnect the history of these South Sudanese museum collections with people in or from South Sudan. Pieces of a Nation is the first extended study of South Sudanese material cultural heritage in museum collections and beyond. The chapters discuss a range of different objects and practices - from museum objects taken from South Sudan in the context of enslavement and colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to efforts by South Sudanese to preserve their country's cultural heritage during recent conflicts. With essays by 32 contributors in Europe, South Sudan, Uganda and Australia, this book delivers a unique range of perspectives on museum objects from South Sudan and on heritage practices in the country and among its diaspora. Written by curators, academics, heritage professionals and artists in accessible and engaging style, it is intended for scholars, museum professionals and a wide range of individuals interested in South Sudan, African arts and cultures, the history of museum collecting and colonialism and/or the role of material heritage in peacebuilding and refugee contexts. At a time of widespread, prominent debates
over the provenance of museum collections from Africa and calls for restitution, this book provides an in-depth empirical study of the circumstances and practices that led to South Sudanese objects entering foreign museum collections and the importance of these objects in South Sudan and around the world today.
South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State is likely to achieve its objective of stimulating debate about the future of South Sudan as a viable polity. The hope is that ...readers, through the debate generated by this book, will rediscover the commonality that marked the struggle for freedom, justice, and fraternity, and abandon ethnic ideologies as a means of constructing a modern state in South Sudan. South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State is a must-read for South Sudanese intellectuals who want to reshape the socioeconomic and political development trajectory.
Amidst a catastrophic civil war that began in 1983 and ended in 2005, many Dinka people in Sudan repudiated their inherited religious beliefs and embraced a vibrant Anglican faith. Christianity and ...Catastrophe in South Sudan chronicles the emergence of this grassroots religious movement, arguing that Christianity offered the Dinka new resources that allowed them to cope with a rapidly changing world and provided answers to the spiritual questions that war raised. Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan is rooted in extensive fieldwork in South Sudan, complemented by research in the archives of South Sudanese churches and international humanitarian organizations. The result is a detailed profile of what Christianity means to a society in the middle of intense crisis and trauma, with a particular focus on the roles of young people and women, and the ways in which the arrival of a new faith transformed existing religious traditions. Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan stakes out a new field of inquiry in African Christianity. Jesse Zink has written a must-read for all interested in the ongoing crises in Africa and, in particular, the vexed relationship between violence and religion.
South Sudan Johnson, Douglas H
2016, 2016-11-15, Volume:
39
eBook
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.
* From acclaimed best-selling author of Kill Anything That Moves * With troops withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan the US shifts its attention to the resource rich continent of Africa. Those who ...wish to understand the next major military operation of the US will learn much from this book. * It's Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda meets Dave Eggers' What Is the What; a searing work of reportage about life and loss in wartime. Readers interested in South Sudan, Africa in general, and modern war will no doubt be engrossed by this book, but Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead will appeal to anyone interested in human drama, powerful emotion, and crisp writing. * For six weeks in the Spring of 2015, award-winning journalist Nick Turse traveled on foot as well as by car, SUV, and helicopter around war-torn South Sudan talking to military officers and child soldiers, United Nations officials and humanitarian workers, civil servants, civil society activists, and internally displaced persons -- people whose lives had been blown apart by a ceaseless conflict there.
The story of a nation in turmoil on its way to splitting in two: "Thoroughly absorbing" ( The Wall Street Journal ). In recent decades, the situation in Africa's largest country, Sudan, progressively ...deteriorated into a failed state, with a war in Darfur claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. President Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court, and after South Sudan became independent in 2011, it was plagued by ethnic violence and human rights abuses. In this fascinating and immensely readable book, the Africa editor of the Economist gives an absorbing account of Sudan's descent into failure and what some have called genocide. Drawing on interviews with many of the main players, Richard Cockett explains how and why Sudan has disintegrated, looking in particular at the country's complex relationship with the wider world. He shows how the United States and Britain were initially complicit in Darfur—but also how a broad coalition of human-rights activists, right-wing Christians, and opponents of slavery succeeded in bringing the issues to prominence in the United States and creating an impetus for change at the highest level. "Accessible, informative... Numerous maps and an impressive bibliography add credibility to this fine work." — Publishers Weekly
"For over half a century, since its independence on January 1, 1956, the Sudan has been at war with itself. Through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, the North-South dimension of the ...conflict was seemingly resolved by the independence of the South on the 9th of July 2011. However, as a result of issues, which were not resolved by the CPA, conflicts within the now two independent countries have reignited conflict between them because of allegations of support for each other's rebels. In Bound by Conflict: Dilemmas of the Two Sudans, Dr. Francis M. Deng and Daniel J.M. Deng critique the tendency to see these conflicts as separate and to seek isolated solutions for them, when, in fact, they are closely intertwined. The policy implication is that resolving conflicts within the two Sudans is critical to the prospects of achieving peace, security, stability, and cooperation between them, with the potential of moving them to some form of meaningful association. The conflicts in the two Sudans call for internal self-determination by distinct identifiable groups and regions through various forms of self-administration within the context of an integrated national framework. This requires that traditional values and institutions be harmonized with the norms and practices of modern constitutionalism, thereby bridging tradition and modernization. The international community, at sub-regional, continental, and global levels, is called upon to support this strategic framework through the three pillars of the Sovereignty as Responsibility, now recast as the Responsibility to Protect: the primary responsibility of the state, support for state capacity, and a more robust international involvement when states manifestly fail to discharge their primary responsibility to ensure protection for their populations. "
This book explores the emergent character of social orders in Sudan and South Sudan. It provides vivid insights into multitudes of ordering practices and their complex negotiation. Recurring patterns ...of exclusion and ongoing struggles to reconfigure disadvantaged positions are investigated as are shifting borders, changing alliances and relationships with land and language. The book takes a careful and close look at institutional arrangements that shape everyday life in the Sudans, probing how social forms have persisted or changed. It proposes reading the post-colonial history of the Sudans as a continuous struggle to find institutional orders valid for all citizens. The separation of Sudan and South Sudan in 2011 has not solved this dilemma. Exclusionary and exploitative practices endure and inhibit the rule of law, distributive justice, political participation and functioning infrastructure. Analyses of historical records and recent ethnographic data assembled here show that orders do not result directly from intended courses of action, planning and orchestration but from contingently emerging patterns. The studies included look beyond dominant elites caught in violent fights for powers, cycles of civil war and fragile peace agreements to explore a broad range of social formations, some of which may have the potential to glue people and things together in peaceful co-existence, while others give way to new violence.
