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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Reconstructing a History of Local Floods in the Upper Nile Region of the Sudan |
Author: | Johnson, Douglas H. |
Year: | 1992 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 25 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 607-649 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Sudan |
Subjects: | floods chronology History and Exploration Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/219027 |
Abstract: | The author has plotted the chronology of local variations in flooding along the Bahr al-Jabal, Bahr al-Zaraf, and Sobat rivers of the Sudan during the 19th and 20th centuries. He has done this both to establish fixed points of reference in the oral history of the Nuer and the Dinka in the 19th century, and to assess the impact of ecological changes on the social, economic, and political history of the peoples of that region. In this article he presents a chronology of the floods (1800-1991) and discusses the oral and contemporary sources used in the reconstruction. Four major floods of the 19th century (those of the 1820s, 1878, 1896, and c. 1899-1903) are described in more detail, as well as the two major floods of the 20th century (1916-1919 and 1961-1964) and a number of other smaller floods that are remembered by those who lived through them. The summary of floods and their effects demonstrates that the viability of permanent settlements and the pattern of seasonal movement in the Upper Nile region are strictly dependent on the distribution of water. Notes, ref. |