War and Slavery in Sudan (The Ethnography of Political Violence) [Hardcover]

Jok Madut Jok (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Ethnography of Political Violence | Publication Date: April 18, 2001

Slavery has been endemic in Sudan for thousands of years. Today the Sudanese slave trade persists as a complex network of buyers, sellers, and middlemen that operates most actively when times are favorable to the practice. As Jok Madut Jok argues, the present day is one such time, as the Sudanese civil war that resumed in 1983 rages on between the Arab north and the black south. Permitted and even encouraged by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government, the state military has captured countless women and children from the south and sold them into slavery in the north to become concubines, domestic servants, farm laborers, or even soldiers trained to fight against their own people. Also instigated by the Khartoum government, Arab herding groups routinely take and sell the Nilotic peoples of Dinka and Nuer.

Jok emphasizes that the contemporary practice of slavery in Sudan is not the result of two decades of civil war, as conventional wisdom in the media would have one believe. Instead he revisits the historic hostilities between the Islamic world to the north and, to the south, the Black African peoples, many of whom are Christian converts.

For Arab traders "the nation of the blacks," or Bilad Al-Sudan, has traditionally been the source of slaves. When the slave trade developed into corporate enterprise in the nineteenth century, the slave-takers articulated distinctions based on race, ethnicity, and religion that marked the black, infidel southerners as indisputably inferior and therefore "natural" slaves. Such distinctions have survived for decades and have fueled various forms of oppression of the black south, even during those periods when slavery has not been authorized by the government. When it is authorized, as it is today, slavery then becomes the extreme form of this systemic oppression.

War and Slavery in Sudan exposes the enslavement of black peoples in Sudan which has been exacerbated, if not caused, by the circumstance of war. As a black southerner and a member of the Dinka, a group targeted by Arab slave traders, Jok brings an insider's perspective to this highly volatile subject matter. He describes the various methods of capture, explores the heinous experience of captivity, and examines the efforts of slaves to escape. Jok also assesses the efforts of Dinka communities to locate and redeem, or buy back, slaves through middlemen, a strategy that has been supported by Western antislavery groups and church-based humanitarian agencies but has also been the subject of great moral debate. Throughout the book, Jok stresses that the search for settlement of the north-south conflict must be made in conjunction with a campaign to end slavery. He challenges the international community to move beyond diplomatic measures to take more coordinated action against the slave trade and bring liberation to the people of Sudan.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most comprehensive account of the practice of slavery in contemporary Sudan."—Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"A distressing account of the tragic phenomenon of slavery and forced labor emerging from the civil war in Sudan."—Anthropos

"A shocking account of Sudanese slavery."—Crime and Justice International

About the Author

Jok Madut Jok was trained as an anthropologist and teaches history at Loyola Marymount University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (April 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812235959
• ISBN-13: 978-0812235951
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,808,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great insight, December 13, 2004

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: War and Slavery in Sudan (The Ethnography of Political Violence) (Paperback)

This wonderful account blends modern day events with the burden of the past to explain the ongoing genocide in the Sudan and the issue of race and slavery in the conflict. Here we learn not only of the roots of Slavery in the Sudan where the Arab Muslim north has been enslaving the African south for more then a thousand years but we also learn of the role of race in the conflict as well as the more interesting role of the English in denying slavery. One chapter in particular shows how the English, sent to abolish slavery, actually upheld it by reclassifying household slaves as 'domestic servants'. Thus slavery was never legally abolished in the Sudan the way it was in Egypt and the Ottoman empire. Rather the average person today in the Sudan sees nothing morally wrong with owning slaves or raping slave girls.

This book is an impassioned plea to the world to wake up to the reality of the Sudanese genocide, the racist fascist civil war that has gone on for 40 years. Yet one knows the track record of the world, of humanity, when it comes to stopping genocide. That record is 0-4(Rwanda, Cambodia, The Holocaust, the Sudan). In fact the Sudan was recently picked by the U.N to head the human rights commission. This is why books like this are so important, to perhaps help one ignorant person realize that horror, genocide, slavery and racism are not just what one reads in the history books, rather they are happening today and have a burden of history attached to them. An important book, the best book on the Sudanese civil war.

Seth J. Frantzman

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book, But Confusing on the Issue of Racism, February 7, 2003

By 

Jeffery Steele (Taipei, Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: War and Slavery in Sudan (The Ethnography of Political Violence) (Paperback)

...Of the half-dozen books I've read on Sudan, this is my favorite. Although it is not a general work on the country, it does focus on two of its most well-known issues: the ongoing civil war and slavery.

Jok Madut Jok is a South Sudanese historian based in the United States. His educational background and interviews with countless South Sudanese about their experiences with Arab slave raids makes this a scholarly book, while his perspective as a South Sudanese gives it an edge not usually associated with scholarship. He clearly is pained by what is happening in Sudan, and does not attempt to give a balanced account here. But whatever the book loses in objectivity, it more than makes up for in passion.

"War and Slavery in Sudan" is well-written and its concepts clear -- with one major exception. I'm unsure what the author means when he talks about the role racism plays in the conflict and how racial ideology is the foundation of the slave trade in Sudan. He appears to mean that the cultural arrogance of the Arabs in the north -- many of whom are black -- allows them to enslave and make war against some of the non-Muslim tribes in the south, but I'm not entirely clear on this point. Despite this major lapse, however, this is still an excellent book for anyone interested in Sudan.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AN INTRIGUING STUDY OF MODERN SUDAN'S SLAVERY ROOTS..., June 19, 2005

By 

mfradin42 "Murray S. Fradin" (New York City (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: War and Slavery in Sudan (The Ethnography of Political Violence) (Paperback)

Author Jok Madut Jok does a a fine job of revealing the historical roots of the slave trade in Sudan in his book, WAR AND SLAVERY IN SUDAN. He makes the exact same point that I do in my book, JIHAD: The Mahdi Rebellion in the Sudan (2003), that the modern Civil Wars between the North and the South can be traced back to the 19th century when Britain moved her forces into the region to establish commercial control of the Eastern Mediterranean via the Suez Canal. Slavery had been an institution in this area for hundreds of years, particularly in the provinces of Darfur and Kordofan; and especially in the region of the Bahr al-Ghazal, the old slave-trading station. For centuries, as Jok points, the Northern Arabs considered the Southern inhabitants as inferior and therefore, to be relegated to menial tasks and jobs. Their lands were called the "Bilad al-Sudan or "Land of the African." This racial and tribal warfare has persisted until well into the 20th century. Even now, at the dawn of the 21st century, this sociological and historical phenomenon manifests itself openly before the world. The Genocide taking place in Sudan today is a reminder that "old attitudes" and prejudices die hard. Mr. Jok's book, WAR AND SLAVERY IN SUDAN is a much-needed volume in a world that needs vast humanitarian change. Highly-rated! Murray S. Fradin, Author of JIHAD: THE MAHDI REBELLION IN THE SUDAN