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Political Ecology in the Upper Nile: the Twentieth Century Expansion of the Pastoral ‘Common Economy’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Douglas H. Johnson
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The enduring ethnographic image of the pastoral Nilotes of the Upper Nile of the Sudan is that of peoples structurally opposed to each other with only limited social and economic ties between major ethnic groups. This image is derived from Evans-Pritchard's study of the Nuer, which was based on field work in the early 1930s. This was a time when both the Nuer and the Dinka of the region were subjected to a series of extreme natural calamities (floods, cattle disease, locusts, and crop failures), but were limited in their responses to these challenges through the restrictions on movement and social intercourse imposed on them by government pacification policies. By comparing the 1929–36 period with preceding and succeeding periods of great environmental stress, it is possible to discern a pattern of developing interdependence between contiguous Nuer and Dinka groups, as each sought the resources of the other in reconstructing their economic lives. Evans-Pritchard's description of a ‘common economy’ among the Nuer can be applied to the wider pastoral community in analysing this expansion of social and economic networks.

Type
Economy and Ecology in the Southern Sudan
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , November 1989 , pp. 463 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Srl, Mefit-Babtie., Development Studies in the Jonglei Canal Area. Technical Assistance Contract for Range Ecology Survey, Livestock Investigations and Water Supply. Final Report, vol. 1 (Glasgow/Khartoum/Rome, 1983) [Mefit-Babtie 1983], 34.Google Scholar

2 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer (Oxford, 1940)Google Scholar; Jonglei Investigation Team [JIT], The Equatorial Nile Project and its Effects in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 4 vols (Khartoum, 1954) [JIT 1954]Google Scholar; Mefit-Babtie 1983, 9 vols; Howell, P., Lock, M. & Cobb, S. (eds), The Jonglei Canal: Impact and Opportunity (Cambridge, 1988).Google Scholar

3 Johnson, D. H., ‘On the Nilotic frontier: Imperial Ethiopia in the southern Sudan, 1898–1936’, in Donham, D. and James, W. (eds), The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia: -Essays in History and Social Anthropology (Cambridge, 1986), 219–45Google Scholar; ‘The historical approach to the study of societies and their environment in the eastern upper Nile plains’, Cahiers d'études Africaines, xxvi, 101–102 (1986), 131–44Google Scholar; ‘Adaptation to floods in the Jonglei area: an historical analysis’, in Johnson, D. H. and Anderson, D. M. (eds), The Ecology of Survival: Case Studies from Northeast African History (London/Boulder CO, 1988), 173–92Google Scholar; ch. 9, ‘Environment and the history of the Jonglei area’, in Howell, , Lock, and Cobb, , The Jonglei Canal.Google Scholar

4 Evans-Pritchard, , The Nuer, 81–93.Google Scholar

5 The data for this article were derived mainly from sources found in the Upper Nile region: interviews collected in 1975–6 and 1981–2, and local government documents collected and deposited in Juba in 1981–3 when I was employed as Assistant Director for Archives in the Regional Ministry of Culture and Information in Juba. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a workshop on African pastoralism, sponsored by the C.N.R.S., in Paris on 26–7 August 1985. Revisions are based on workshop discussions and comments by the workshop co-organizer, Dr John Galaty of McGill University. I am also grateful to Dr P. P. Howell for his extensive comments on the earlier draft, and for additional information he provided. I do not wish here to become involved in the complexities of the Nuer-Dinka debate in anthropology. The interests of the principal participants in that debate have been mainly theoretical. None have been able to familiarize themselves with a comprehensive range of historical sources (both oral and documentary). Whatever their contribution to the refinement of anthropological discourse, all have inevitably misunderstood, and unintentionally misrepresented, the history and ecology of the Upper Nile region; therefore, they cannot be reliably used as a starting point for an historical study of ecological change. I feel that no useful purpose would be served by charting either my disagreements or agreements with the points raised by previous authors and have confined my use of secondary materials to those based on fieldwork or local historical research.

6 Except where specifically noted this section is based on: Winder, J., ‘Notes & queries’, 1946–1947, Sudan Archive, University of Durham (SAD) 541/9Google Scholar; JIT, Report on the Jonglei Scheme. Third Interim Report (Khartoum, 1948) [JIT 1948]Google Scholar; JIT 1954; and Howell, Lock and Cobb, The Jonglei Canal.

7 D. H. Johnson: ‘The historical approach to the study of societies and their environment’; ‘Adaptation to floods in the Jonglei area’; and Howell, Lock and Cobb, The Jonglei Canal, ch. 9.

8 Johnson, , ‘Adaptation to floods in the Jonglei area’, 183.Google Scholar

9 R. T. Johnston, ‘Handing over report on Bor & Duk district, 13/3/1934’, National Records Office, Khartoum (NRO) UNP 1/51/3 & SAD G/S 586.

10 JIT 1954, vol. 1, 357.

11 Except where specifically cited this section is based mainly on materials deposited in the Southern Records Office, Juba (SRO). These are: the Upper Nile Province Monthly Diaries and the Bor District Monthly Reports in files BD 57.C.1 and BD 57.D.1; the Nuer Settlement and Nuer-Dinka Intertribal files UNP 66.B.10, UNP 66.B.11, BD 66.B.1/3 and BD 66.B.3. A number of taped interviews in the ‘Ecology and History of Jonglei Province’ (EHJP) series have also been used. These interviews were undertaken by Philip Diu Deng and myself in April 1981 and May 1982, financed by a Fulbright-Hayes senior research grant. Those used in this paper are: EHJP-i, Rut, Thoi and Luac Dinka elders; EHJP-2, Lueth Ayong Yor & Malok Lam (Luac Dinka); EHJP-3, Luac Dinka elders; EHJP-4, Ruot Rom, Cuol Macar & Gai Thung (Gaawar Nuer); EHJP-5, Ruot Diu (Bar Gaawar); EHJP-6, Cuol Cany Bul, Pok Tuot & Jal Wang (Gaawar Nuer); EHJP-7 and 8, Kulang Majok (Bar Gaawar); EHJP-11, Family of Moinkuer Mabur (Ghol. Dinka); EHJP-12, Twic Dinka elders. The table in JIT 1954, vol. i, 239 has also been used.

12 Johnson, D. H.: ‘Colonial policy and prophets: the ‘Nuer Settlement', 1929–30’, J. Anthropological Society of Oxford, x (1979), 1–20Google Scholar; ‘History and prophecy among the Nuer of the southern Sudan’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles (1980)Google Scholar; ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars: Nuer-Dinka relations in the Sobat and Zaraf valleys c. 1860–1976’, J. Afr. Hist., xxiii (1982), 183–201.Google Scholar

13 Johnson, , ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars’, 198–201.Google Scholar

14 Johnston, ‘Handing over report on Bor & Duk district’, NRO UNP 1/51/3 and SAD G/S 586.

15 Southern Development Investigation Team, Natural Resources and Development Potential in the Southern Provinces of the Sudan (Khartoum, 1954) [SDIT 1954], table 49.Google Scholar

16 JIT 1954, vol. i, 292.

17 Johnson, , ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars’, 197.Google Scholar

18 A. H. Alban to Governor Upper Nile Province, 25 April 1933, SRO UNP 66.B.11.

19 Upper Nile Province Monthly Diary (Jan. and Feb. 1935), SRO BD 57.C.1.

20 SDIT 1954, table 49.

21 Evans-Pritchard, , The Nuer, 50, 57, 69–70, 78, 81–93.Google Scholar

22 Except where specifically stated this section is based on: interviews SRO EHJP-i to 8, 11–12; Winder, ‘Notes & queries’, SAD 541/9; and contemporary corroboration of some points in ‘Report on Lau patrol 1917’ and ‘Diary of political officer “C” column Lau patrol 1917’ (both in SRO UNP SCR 15.10), and Sudan Intelligence Reports: 268 (Nov. 1916), 3; 283 (Feb. 1918), 3; 291 (Oct. 1918), 3; and 292 (Nov. 1918), 2.

23 Hurst, H. E., Short Report on Nile Gauge Readings and Discharges (Cairo, 1920), 30–2. JIT 1954, vol. 1, 30.Google Scholar

24 Johnson, , ‘Tribal boundaries and border wars’, 185.Google Scholar

25 Bacon, C. R. K., ‘The Lau Nuers’ (Khartoum, 1917) (mimeo).Google Scholar

26 Lewis, B.A., ‘Beir notes’ (n.d.), B.A. Lewis Mss., Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford University.Google Scholar

27 JIT 1948, 99.

28 Lewis, ‘Beir notes’.

29 Johnston, ‘Handing over report for Bor & Duk district’, NRO UNP 1/51/3 and SAD G/S 586.

30 JIT 1954, vol. 1, 212.

31 Winder, ‘Notes & queries’, SAD 541/9.

33 Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 85.

34 Ibid. 87–8.

35 Johnson, , ‘On the Nilotic frontier’, 231–7.Google Scholar

36 Winder, ‘Notes & queries’, SAD 541/9. Coriat, Governing the Nuer, documents 1.3 and 2.1.

37 This section is based mainly on: Howell, Lock and Cobb, The Jonglei Canal; Jonglei Socio-Economic Research Team, An Interim Report (Khartoum, 1976) (mimeo)Google Scholar; Elsammani, Mohamed Osman & Elamin, Farouk Mohamed, The Impact of the Extension of the Jonglei Canal on the Area from Kongor to Bor (Khartoum, 1978) (mimeo)Google Scholar; Payne, W. J. A. & el Amin, Farouk Mohamed, An Interim Report on the Dinka Livestock Industry in the Jonglei Area (Khartoum, 1977) (mimeo)Google Scholar; and interviews SRO EHJP-2, 3, 5, 8, 12.

38 The 1955/56 census gave a figure of 1,842 Bor Dinka, but this must be taken as a minimum estimate rather than a precise count: Population Census Office, First Population Census of Sudan 1955/1956. Final Report, vol. 3 (Khartoum, 1962), 165.Google Scholar

39 See especially Sahlins, M., ‘Segmentary lineage, an organization of predatory expansion’, American Anthropologist, xliii (1961), 322–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kelly, R., The Nuer Conquests (Ann Arbor, 1985).Google Scholar Neither is based on comprehensive archival or field research. Sahlins constructs his theory from no more evidence than can be selectively taken from Evans-Pritchard. Kelly has read more widely, but still not systematically. He does use some colonial primary sources, but only those which randomly found their way to Britain. As a result he presents a distorted and false picture of Nilotic history, demography, bridewealth exchanges, and ecological relationships.

40 Johnson, ch. 9 in Howell, Lock and Cobb, The Jonglei Canal.

41 Elsammani, and Elamin, , The Impact of the Extension of the Jonglei Canal, 8.Google Scholar

42 SRO EHJP-12.

43 Johnson, ‘The historical approach to the study of societies and their environment’.