Empire and the Nuer: A Review

Book Review By Stephen Par Kuol,

June 11, 2023 —  Oh my voracious habit of craving for books has once again landed my eye on another fascinating read!! The book is entitled: Empire and the Nuer: Sources on the Pacification of Southern Sudan from 1898 to 1930. The eye-opening book was edited and published by Dr. Douglas Hamilton Johnson, a renowned American historian specializing in the History of South Sudan and Northeast Africa. Dr. Johnson is an academic publisher and archivist with passionate emphasis on curating archived ethnographic literature authored by the scholars of the colonial era and administrative reports compiled by the colonial administrators. The documents he used to publish this book cover the significant events, contact, conquest and the pacification of the Nuer from 1898 t0 1930. According to him, most of the documents he used for this work were collected between 1974 and 1983. Through his archival research and curation, he published other very informative books like Governing the Nuers, The Nuer Prophets and The Upper Nile Province Handbook.

This particular publication has seriously exposed colonial pacification as the most inhumane hallmark of the British Colonial Empire. Empire and the Nuer is untold tale of brutal mass homicide by the Barons of the British Colonial Empire. Dr. Johnson narrates and analyzes the painful accounts of that genocidal conquest with vividness that amazingly captures the human toll it took on the Nuer society over three decades. The authenticity of those tragic stories is syndicated by the salient fact that the colonial overlords themselves documented and archived them as properties of their colonial empire. The editorial and analytical quality of his work makes this book one of the greatest scholarly works of all times. With his modest approach to scholarship, Dr. Johnson does not claim absolute authority on all those good books he published from colonial archives, but the substantial analysis he put into those works presents him well as the sole author of those books. The man is brutally honest with historical facts and that always makes his scholarly works educative and intellectually intriguing. I read the book from cover to cover and took notes to discern the factual information and the stories I used to critique its content as underlined in the threads hereunder.

The Traumatic Memories of the British Pacification

“The Nuers have been described as the object of the last pacification of the British Pacification Campaign and that gives Nuer special unwanted but honorable position in the Imperial History”, wrote Dr. Douglass Johnson. The First contact between the Nuer and the Anglo-Egyptian Colonial Government was first established in December 1898 in a village called Waratong (Wangdiing ), the fiefdom of Chief Yoi Beniang of Gajiok section in Eastern Jikanyland. The stream boat they used to navigate through the Sobat and Pibor rivers was called Abuklea. It was the first mission to spy the Nuerland and launch the pacification. What would ensue in earnest was a protracted campaign of brutal genocide spanning three decades. The rest was; a history of prejudice, bigotry and inhumanity. Among the most notorious human butchers of that killing spree were: H. H. Wilson, G.E. Mathews, C.A. Willis, Major Owein Roger Carmichael, Willis Charles and Arm Strong Cyril who captured Prophet Dual Diew in 1930.

“South Sudan was conquered by force and ruled by force, the threat of force and the memory of force” Wrote Evans Prichard.

“True, the traumatic memories of the British Pacification against the Nuers are emotionally permanent, as the trauma has been passed down to various generations over time. The elders who physically lived the miserable experience of that three decades genocidal violence described it as the most ruinous abyss in the history of the Nuerland.” AMB. STEPHEN PAR

The Empire used all the lethal weapons at its disposal to achieve the maximum goal of conquest and plunder. The British Royal Air Force was used for the first time against unarmed civilians in the history of colonial pacification on the African continent. The Nuerland was militarily obliterated, plundered, pillaged and vandalized beyond description. Most of the heinous atrocities were committed in the following major retributive campaigns: the Gawar Tax Revolt in 1913-14 Eastern Jikany in 1919, Dokland and Jageiland in 1926, Nyuong Nuerland after the killing of Commissioner Ferguson in 1927, Thiang Bar of Mut Dung in 1920, and Lou Nuer in 1927-30 culminating in the murder of Prophet Guek Ngundeang in 1928. By the year 1931, All the Nuer Prophets were either killed or detained to achieve what the colonial barons had called Nuer Settlement. Dual Diu was captured and detained in 1930. Gatluka Nyak and Kulang Ket were captured at the battle of Khor Yir on January 6, 1925 and imprisoned. The Oral Literature has it the aging Kulang was buried a live by the colonial stooge called Cath-hoak Bang. The Nuers were hunted down like wild preys within their own indigenous land and forced to concentration enclaves called Settlement Areas resembling Jews Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany.

In defiance of that barbaric onslaught, the Naath Nation courageously took massive casualties without any shred of fear in the face of superior gunpowder. It was a scorch- earth campaign of mass murder, plunder and the pillage of the Nuerland. The Traditional and cultural artifacts, such as Rot (Dang Ngundeang), Ngundeng’s Brass Pipe (Tony Deang), the drums including Jiok-lual Deang and forked stick of Diu were stolen. Ngundeang’s Mound (Bieh) and other religious symbols were vandalized. More than a quarter of the Nuer population perished in that pacification but the colonial empire failed break the soul of the warrior nation to live like vanquished. In their moral view, using warplanes to kill cattle, women and children was a sheer cowardice. In another word, committing atrocities against helpless civilians does not make one a gallant warrior in the Naath worldview.

Dehumanization, Prejudice and Bigotry

Organized genocidal violence is a psychosocial engineering that turns sane humans into killing machines. Criminal Psychology has it that killing your own kind (homicide) is difficult to spontaneously commit without emotional preparation. That is why the social engineers of genocide always set the stage of mass killing by coining dehumanizing language against the targeted ethnicity to make the act of genocide less aversive and less morally reprehensible. From the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, Cambodian Genocide, to Rwandan genocide and many other cases, the victim groups were labeled as vermin, cockroaches, rats or snakes. In the case of Nuers Versus the Empire, they were labeled as archetypical ‘savages’: nude, and akin to monkeys. To politically and morally legitimize the genocidal project, the Nuer nation was presented as an intractable problem that impeded the peaceful establishment and efficient running of the colonial administration. As Dr. Douglas Johnson wrote, ” the last major punitive campaign against Nuers ostensibly was fought to protect the Dinka”. That means their local conflicts with their neighbors were used to justify the pogrom. Their erstwhile enemies were used as spies and interpreters to fight their proxy wars through the colonial pacification.” In fact, the so-called interpreters were responsible for the death of all our prophets including Guek and Kulang..

As espoused by Ernest Renan, “the colonial pacification was conceived as extension of the European civilization presented as moral reformation of the Nuer lesser culture (primitive society)”. Hence, the colonial governors and administrators were solemnly convinced of the legitimacy of that mass killing as sanctioned from London and Cairo. Pacification in their vocabulary meant imposition of law and order on the unruly natives. The so-called Nuer Settlement meant bringing them to the colonial rule through that crude and brute force of seasonal patrols.

Whatever the moral verdict, those strenuous military campaigns were justified by the results: The Nuers learned their lessons. From excessively arrogant, uncooperative, and suspicious people, the Nuer rapidly became what they are today: still very proud, intensely democratic with fine spirit of independence but essentially friendly, wrote, Dr.P. P. Howell. This narrative of Dr. Howel ( Choatweah) who was himself a colonial administrator exposes the monstrous nature of the beast. It was a policy of conquest by coercion to subdue a free and independent nation.

Evans Prichard wrote that “the moral relationship between the natives and the colonial government provided the most fundamental problem for the natives had to integrate into the social and political system that has no moral value to them” That means the colonial administrators arbitrarily used illegitimate power that the natives could not understand to pay them what they called tributes (taxes). To add wound to insult, the Nuers were prejudicially described as suspicious and uncooperative people. The mind-boggling question is: who can humanly cooperate with phantoms or aliens on a mission to torment? The so called pacifists did not even provide room for dialogue to understand that the memories of interaction with the first Turuk (Turks) who came for slave hunt and trade were still bitterly fresh in the minds of the Nuers. So, the Nuers were suspicious for a genuine reason, that was proven by the agony that pacification brought upon them in due course.

Victors, not the vanquished, often write history. That is why it is always fraught with prejudice as the American historian, Will Durant correctly observed. As written by Eurocentric scholars, the history of colonial pacification prejudicially described the Nuer man as a truculent, aggressive warrior, stubborn and warlike. Where is the justice in scurrilously describing the victim of colonial conquest as warlike when the said war was imposed upon him by invading foreign powers? The British Colonial Barons defined Pacification as an act of bringing peace to a place or ending war in a place by violent mean. Which peace did they bring to the Nuerland?. To the contrary, the so-called pacification disturbed peace of peaceful people in harmony with themselves and with the Mother Nature. As evidenced by the scourge it inflicted on the Nuer Society, Pacification was an act of forcibly eliminating a considered to be hostile ethnic group, which confirms it as a criminal enterprise against the humanity of the Nuer ethnicity. In another word, the Mens rea (criminal intent) was destroying the Nuer ethnicity in part or in whole. Hence, beyond any reasonable doubt, the colonial state of the United Kingdom was and is guilty of war crimes, crime against humanity, genocide, plunder, pillage, and grand theft of the Naath traditional artifacts.

Towards Restitution and Reparation

Restitution is the process through which objects stolen by colonial powers can be returned to their communities of origin and reparation is compensation for the material and human lives lost during the colonial wars. The Nuer community deserves both like all the African communities that lost countless human lives and the cultural artifacts during the colonial plunder of Africa. Numerous works of African art, artifacts, and human remains are still held in the collections of European museums. Thus, it’s essential for the Naath people to join the league of fellow Africans who suffered similar fate during the pacification of Africa. The Nuer Community must build on the works of other African brethren who for generations have advocated for return of the African properties stolen since the European Scramble for Africa.

The Nuer Community received Ngundeang Rot in 2009 and that was an exciting moment for us as a people. Thank to Dr. Douglas Johnson who bought it in an auction market some where in England and returned it to us. The remaining ones must be returned. It goes without informing the records that a tremendous progress has been made in the last four years along this struggle. The African Union has led the way by referencing restitution in its Agenda 2063. ECOWAS has established a five-year Action Plan to move this forward. The African Research and Policy Development Foundation) AFFORD) has also laid out clear pathway for returning looted African cultural heritage held in the United Kingdom. The Sarr-Savoy Conference Report published in 2018 is another important stipulation to advance this noble cause. France is currently reviewing legislation to officially return 26 looted artifacts to Benin and the sword of El Hadj Tall to Senegal a welcome move for redressing France’s role in colonialism and repatriating some of its more than 90,000 artifacts from sub-Sahara African nations. The United Kingdoms of the Great Britain must also pay reparation of that war of 30 years they imposed on the Nuer Community.

Empire and the Nuer can be summarized as a monographic collection of primary sources that cover the major events of the British Pacification against the Nuer People culminating in what they called Nuer Settlement. It is a well-researched publication that authentically presents historical facts as documented and archived. Dr. Evans Prichard was very honest when he wrote that “the challenge facing anthropologists was one of translation or finding way to translate one’s own thoughts another culture. Dr. Johnson’s research method resolved that dilemma by using interviews with local experts and intellectuals. I particularly admire his effort to translate and publish all the views of Dinka and the Nuer in both vernaculars. That gives balanced voices to both sides of the dichotomy. He also presented the reports authored by the colonial administrators and the scholars exactly as documented. In any case, Dr. Johnson’s engagement with the past to inform this and the next generation is highly educative. I intellectually enjoyed his engaging analysis based on the records at hand. Hopping that this humble piece of work will bring out the panache it deserves, I strongly recommend the book to scholars, public administrators, diplomats and practicing politicians.

As for me, I took it upon myself to make the case for redress of that genocide against the Nuer as a people. The point Iam driving home to the colonialists and the leaderships of my dear Nuer Community is that those wrongs must be righted for us (the aggrieved) to see justice done for the ancestors whose blood still run in our veins. As goes the adage, justice delayed is justice denied. Hence, I leave it to the Nuer Community worldwide to take it up like other African communities that have done the same to pursue justice for the wrongs and excesses of the colonial past. The British Government must not only return our traditional and cultural artifacts but also pay reparation for all the damages inflicted on the Nuer Society during the pacification period of 30 years. Here, I rest my case.

Stephen Par Kuol is a freelance writer on Issues Pertinent to Human rights, Peace and Justice. He can be reached on electronic mails via: stephenpaulkuol@gmail.com

References Cited

1. Front Cover. Percy Coriat(. JASO, 1993 – Ethnology – 208 pages). Governing the Nuer: Documents in Nuer History and Ethnography, 1922-1931.

2. C.A.Willis, Douglas H. Johnson (1931) The Upper Nile Province Handbook: A Report of Peoples and Government in the Southern Sudan.

3. E. E. Evans NS-Prtichard (1957): Nuer religion. xii, 336 pp., front., 15 plates. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. 42s. Professor Evans-Pritchard’s studies of the. Nuer .

4. Douglas H. Johnson 1898-1954) Judicial Regulation and Administrative Control: Customary Law and the Nuer,

5. The Journal of African History. Vol. 27, No. 1 (1986), pp. 59-78 (20 pages). Published By: Cambridge University Press,

6. Evan Prichard (1902–73) The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People I By) first published in 1940,

7. AU Agenda( 2063) : The Africa We Want.