Basin but of the gradual penetration of southern Sudan by pastoral communities during the transition from wetter to drier periods.
There are links to be made between different stories of migration, but weaving them all into one grand narrative has produced varying results. The closeness of the different Luo languages in eastern Africa suggests a very recent spreading of peoples and languages, but attempts to locate a Luo cradle land from different versions of the spear and the bead stories have produced no consensus. Father J. P. Crazzolara, who worked among Luo speakers in the southern Sudan and northern Uganda, located his cradle land along the border of the two countries. The Kenyan Luo historian B. A. Ogot placed his cradle land firmly in Kenya, while Evans-Pritchard and Simon Simonse, working in eastern Equatoria, postulated a Luo homeland there (Crazzolara 1951; Ogot 1967; Simonse 1992, 56–57). Tracing the itineraries of the Luo migrations through southern Sudan, the Great Lakes, and East Africa does at least highlight southern Sudan’s engagement with, rather than isolation from, neighboring regions and is why, for instance, a Kenyan Luo guest at the independence celebrations could say, “This is our home.” The itineraries are not necessarily only mythical. The Pari, an offshoot of the Anuak, established a route from lowland Ethiopia to Jebel Lafon in eastern Equatoria several centuries ago. It was through this route that they acted as middlemen in precolonial trade between western Ethiopia and the equatorial Nile, expanding their links in the nineteenth century to include the Great Lakes (Kurimoto 1995). The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) later followed this same route when infiltrating eastern Equatoria from its Ethiopian bases in the 1980s.
The main historical point to emphasize here is that stories of migration do not tell the whole story, and possibly not even the most important story. People move, but not necessarily all at once. A people can expand its population and territory through the incorporation of smaller groups, through intermarriage, and through the adoption of individuals. Ethnic identity is not fixed; a person from one group can become a member of another. The clan histories of the Anuak, Pari, Bari, and Mandari, among others, record many with foreign origins (Evans-Pritchard 1940b, 31–33; Simonse 1992, 54–56; Buxton 1963, 18–19, 32–33; Leonardi 2013a, 22), and a number of Shilluk clan names are shared with more distant peoples (Westermann 1970, 128–33; Crazzolara 1951, 156–59; 1954, 391–92). Languages also spread, sometimes farther and faster than people. As Noel Stringham acutely observes, “‘Nilotic migrations’ had more to do with people changing who they were than where they were” (2016, chap. 1). The Western Nilotic words for village or territory, pa and pan, are found in a variety of forms (fa/fam/fan, and possibly ba/bam/ban) well beyond the current area inhabited by Western Nilotes: Fanyar in Kordofan, Basham in White Nile, Fazoqli and Bani Mayu in Blue Nile, and Bambashi, Fadasi, and Famaka in western Ethiopia. Mabaan is currently classed as a Western Nilotic language related to Shilluk, Dinka, and Nuer, yet the Mabaan are socially and culturally closer to their Koman-speaking Uduk neighbors (they are both matrilineal) than to the nearest Western Nilotic speakers (who are all patrilineal). The as yet unanswered question is: Are the Mabaan an offshoot of the ancestral Western Nilotes who were influenced by the surrounding Koman people, or are they Koman-speakers who adopted a Western Nilotic language? And could the answer be: a bit of both?
There have been many other types of reciprocal influences and borrowing between 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,
