Governing the Nuer
Cód:
491_9780994363152
PrefaceI first came across Percy Coriat’s neglected writings on the Nuer in 1972 when beginning research on the history of the Nuer prophets. They appeared to me then, even in the early stages of my research, to be of a quality quite different from other contemporary administrative reports. I came to appreciate his work all the more after doing fieldwork among the Gaawar and Lou Nuer in 1975—6, when I met many persons who had known Coriat well. My research on Nuer history then brought me in touch with persons in Britain who knew either Coriat or his work, and I was particularly pleased to meet his widow, Mrs. Kay Coriat, in 1977. She allowed me full access to her husband’s few remaining papers and photograph collection before donating these papers, and some of her own, to Rhodes House, Oxford.This volume presents all of Coriat’s known major writings on the Nuer, with the exception of his 1939 article on Guek (Coriat 1939). A preliminary list of his reports was published in JASO in 1981 (Johnson 1981b). I later discovered a number of his other papers in the Sudan, some in Khartoum, but most were in Malakal and Bor before I transferred them to the Southern Records Office in Juba. It is possible that more documents may be found, but the prospect is not hopeful. His reports on the Lou were transferred from Abwong to Akobo in 1937 but were destroyed when the Akobo office burned down in 1939. Some of his writings on the Gaawar may still be in Fangak. None had been transported to New Fangak when I visited the office there in my capacity as Assistant Director for Archives in the Regional Ministry of Culture and Information in 1981. I was told that some of the oldest district reports had been left in a storeroom in old Fangak when the administrative headquarters was moved in 1976. I subsequently learned that many of those papers were damaged or destroyed when old Fangak was attack and looted by ‘Anyanya II’ guerrillas late i
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