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Book | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Governing the Nuer: documents in Nuer history and ethnography, 1922-1931 |
Author: | Coriat, Percy |
Year: | 1993 |
Issue: | 9 |
Language: | English |
Series: | JASO occasional papers |
City of publisher: | Oxford |
Publisher: | JASO |
ISBN: | 1870047451 |
Geographic term: | Sudan |
Subjects: | Nuer colonial administration historical sources |
Abstract: | The editor of this book first came upon the Coriat papers when he was beginning his own research on Nuer prophets in 1972. He was immediately struck by their quality, a view only reinforced after his own field experiences. Percy Coriat served in the Sudan Political Service during the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the few officials in that service who could speak Nuer. His main posting was among the Central Nuer in Upper Nile Province. The groups of Nuer with whom he had the most intensive contact were the Gaawat and the Lou, with a fair amount of interaction with the Lak and Thiang Nuer on Zeraf Island. His writings are described by the editor as 'those of the archetypical district commissioner', in other words he was not an amateur ethnographer nor did he theorize. He came to know the Nuer before they were fully integrated into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He was a source of information to Evans Pritchard. Among the papers included in this volume are descriptions of the Central Nuer, an account of the settlement of the Ol Dinka-Gaweir Nuer boundary dispute (1925), patrol reports through his district, and a couple of accounts of the Western Nuer. |