Description: The pieces are intended to inform and to stimulate discussion and debate. The history of South Sudan has been a neglected subject. Much of the academic history about South Sudan has been written about foreign rulers rather than about South Sudanese communities and individuals.
Review Quotes: Dr Douglas H. Johnson is a scholar specialising in the history and affairs of Sudan and South Sudan. He is a Fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. Dr Johnson's contacts with the two countries go back to more than four decades ago, beginning with time as a graduate student of prophecy among the Nuer people in the 19th and 20th centuries. His field work concentrated in central Upper Nile Province. In mid-1970s young Johnson joined the Regional Ministry of Culture and Information in Juba as assistant director for archives, a position in which he collected and classified documentary material from provincial capitals of the Southern Region. The files were later housed in Juba. Over the years, the historian has tirelessly worked with institutions and recently with the Government of South Sudan for the establishment of a national archive in Juba. Dr Douglas Johnson became a member of the Abyei Boundary Commission following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the Sudan's armed conflict in 2005. He is an author and editor of several books on Sudan and South Sudan. Among these are The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars, Nuer Prophets: A History of from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, The Upper Nile province Handbook (editor). The last tome has been reissued as a paperback by the African World Books, the publisher of this volume.