It also includes documentation on the origins of the Jonglei Canal, one of the most controversial environmental engineering projects in modern Africa. With many of the region’s previous governmental structures now obliterated by war, this record of the beginnings of civil administration will be of immense value to South Sudanese and the new nation of South Sudan.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“fascinating book … admirably researched’ Philip Lyon Roussel, African Affairs, July 1997

"Willis’s Handbook is … more than most, both a political and a personal document, a swan-song to defend his policies as much as an objective description of his province … a welcome addition to the historical record of the Condominium. Half a century late, as the editor notes, it provides striking commentary on events in a region even now in the throes of civil war.‘ M.W. Daly, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Vol. 60, No. 2 '97

"It replicates, on a grand scale, many of the features of the (unpublished) District Books and handing-over notes of other colonial territories. We all owe a debt to Johnson and the British Academy for making the handbook available, not merely as a source but also as a memorial to a world whose contradictions remain even while its substance is fast being overlaid or destroyed by forces more ruthless than amateur ethnographers and ex-military administrators.’ Richard Waller, Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA, Journal of African History, Vol. 38 - 1997

About the Author

Douglas H. Johnson, Research Fellow, St Anthony’s College, Oxford.