language communities. The Luo-speaking Pari and Acholi of eastern Equatoria, along with the Anuak of the Sobat-Pibor system, might at one time have formed a near-continuous band of Luo peoples before becoming separated from each other by, and intermingled with, Eastern Nilotic (Bari and Lotuho)-, Central Sudanic (Madi)-, and Surma (Murle and Didinga)-speaking groups. “Far from being a collection of neatly arranged, different ethnic communities each with its own language, culture and migration history,” Simonse proposes, “the east bank of the Nile proves an area where processes of cultural assimilation between various groups of peoples have gone on for a considerable period of time” (1992, 50–59). Chief among these exchanges have been age-class systems and forms of kingship.
The peoples of eastern Equatoria have complex and sophisticated systems of age-classes and age-grades, unlike age-sets among the Dinka and Nuer that established a loose hierarchy of generations creating social solidarity between men of a specific age-range, provided a limited structure for the exercise of political power by older age-sets over younger ones, and created a basic military organization whereby age-mates joined together when called on to fight. But both the political and the military roles were minor, there was no formal progression of age-sets from junior to elder status, and there were no rites for the transfer of authority. The monyomiji age-class system that originated among the Lotuho involved more structured age-grading in the allocation of military and political tasks within a society and a more formal advance from one stage in a generation’s life to the next. It has been adopted and adapted by many other Eastern Nilotic communities, including Lokoya and the eastern Bari, but also by the Central Sudanic Madi-speaking Lolubo, the Surma-speaking Tenet, and the Luo-speaking Pari and Acholi (Simonse 1992, 46–47; 1998, 52; Kurimoto 1998).
States and Antistates
Southern Sudanese peoples have been described as living in “pristine anarchy” (Collins 1962)—archetypical models of stateless societies, totally unprepared for their encounter with powerful states to the north (Gray 1961, 8–9). There was in fact a more dynamic set of power relations along what is now the borderland between South Sudan and Sudan. From the sixteenth century through to the mid-nineteenth century this region was dominated by a series of kingdoms: the Funj Sultanate of Sinnar on the Blue Nile, the Shilluk Kingdom on the White Nile, the Kingdom of Taqali in the Nuba Mountains, and the Darfur Sultanate in the west. A network of nonstate southern Sudanese societies along the waterways flowing into the White Nile both challenged and contained contemporary states, even offering sanctuary to refugees from state demands. The cultural, social, and political distance between the peoples of what are now known as two different countries was then very narrow. Further south other nonstate peoples lived sometimes in opposition to and sometimes in symbiosis with a variety of kingdoms.
The kingdoms of Sinnar, Shilluk, and Taqali shared many characteristics of their population and their royal customs. The founding of the Sinnar sultanate might have been part of a Nubian revival, but some historical traditions credit the Shilluk with either founding the sultanate or contributing greatly to its expansion (O’Fahey and Spaulding 1974, 24–26). The populations of both the Funj and Shilluk kingdoms included many peoples indigenous to the region along and between the two Niles: Koman, Nuba, Luo, and other Western Nilotes, among others. In all three kingdoms royal succession depended on the support of the maternal kin of the new king (Lienhardt 1955, 29–30; Ewald 1990, 68–69; O’Fahey and Spaulding 1974, 46). The Nuba of Jebel Fungor are classificatory “sister’s sons” to the Shilluk reths through an ancient marriage into the royal clan and continue to play a role in the investiture of each new reth (Lienhardt 1955, 35; Howell and Thompson 1946, 38; Ewald 1990, 36).
A number of royal systems devolved from the separation of the Shilluk and Anuak, represented above as resulting from a quarrel between two founding kings, Nyikang and Dimo. Each of these systems displayed some aspect of sacral kingship mentioned in chapter 2. In both the Shilluk on the White Nile and the Anuak along the Sobat-Pibor system, kingship descends through a single clan (Lienhardt 1955, 30–31). No Shilluk reth can reign until formally installed at Pachodo, where the spirit of Nyikang enters his body. The reth is not allowed to die a normal death, being either assassinated by a rival or “helped” to die when ill. The Anuak kingship is more symbolic than political and is determined by the possession of certain royal regalia, whose transmission was often decided by regicide (Evans-Pritchard 1940b, 87). In eastern Equatoria kings (Acholi rwot and Pari rwath) were often associated with rainmaking, and there are also Luo rainmaking clans among the Bari, Lulubo, and Madi (Simonse 1992, 54–56).
A far different form of kingship was introduced by the Azande from the Mbomu river system in what is now the Central African Republic. Their kingdoms were organized around families of Avongara aristocrats who created assimilationist states, built on the strength of converting subject peoples into servants of the king and the court as conscripts into the king’s regiments and as cultivators enabling the king to amass surpluses of food for redistribution. Internal justice was maintained through the kings’ monopoly of a type of poison obtained in long-distance trade and used as an oracle to determine guilt or innocence in life-or-death issues. The Azande began moving out from between the Mbomu and Shinko rivers in the first half of the eighteenth century, entering the Nile-Congo watershed region around the beginning of the nineteenth. A king’s son would be given his own frontier province, and the princes expanded their holdings or created new kingdoms by destabilizing and conquering their neighbors. The terror the disciplined Zande regiments inspired was enhanced by their reputation—whether deserved or not—of being cannibals, a reputation physically reinforced by the practice of filing their teeth to sharp points. Conquest brought assimilation, and the Zande language spread as the kingdoms incorporated communities originally speaking Sudanic, Bantu, and Nilotic languages throughout territories now contained within the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan (Evans-Pritchard 1971a, 23–25, 269–78).
The most powerful kingdoms and states had a severe impact on their neighbors. Both the sultanates of Sinnar and Darfur were slave-raiding states, making regular forays into the hills of the Blue Nile hinterland, the White Nile plain, and the forests of western Bahr el-Ghazal. Along the White Nile the Shilluk countered and even at times checked the advances of Sinnar through fleets of canoe-borne raiders (Mercer 1971). An alternative to all these states was provided by the Padang Dinka.
The Padang Dinka tribes (including the Abialang, Paloich, and Dungjol on the White Nile and the Rueng and Ngok along the Bahr el-Ghazal and Kiir/Bahr el-Arab systems), being segmentary societies, had an ability to form social alliances across communities and developed as antistates, providing alternatives for peoples fleeing state authority. The Abialang, Paloich, and Dungjol established themselves on the east bank of the White Nile throughout the seventeenth century and by around 1775 had decisively defeated the forces of Sinnar as far north as present-day Renk and Jebelein (Westermann 1970, lv; Hofmayr 1925, 66–68; Bedri 1948, 40–42; O’Fahey and Spaulding 1974, 61–63, 98). Farther west, Rueng sections dominated the grazing areas between the Bahr el-Ghazal and lakes Keilak and Jau/Abiad, while the Ngok Dinka settled along the Ngol and Kiir/Bahr el-Arab rivers toward the end of the first half of the eighteenth century, assisting the Humr Baggara Arabs in clearing the area of its original inhabitants and offering refuge to both the Rizeigat and Humr Baggara when they fled the demands of the sultan of Darfur (El-Tounsy 1845, 129–30; Henderson 1939, 58–59, 61–64, 76; O’Fahey 1980, 99). By the beginning of the nineteenth century the main powers along the northern waterways were not the Muslim sultanates of Sinnar and Darfur but the states and antistates of the Shilluk, Anuak, and Dinka.
4
Trade and Empires, Tribal Zones and Deep Rurals
The former slave Salem Wilson recalled witnessing raids conducted by well-armed miniature armies against villagers armed only with bows and spears. “We need not dwell on the attack,” he wrote, “I have too vivid a recollection of the reality,” but he was explicit about the fate of the survivors. “We leave the slain and the dying, and watch the treatment dealt out to the poor prisoners. . . . The men are yoked with leather thongs to long poles, and their hands tied behind them.