South Sudan

The Nilotic peoples and ancient kingdoms of the upper Nile

South Sudan's Nilotic peoples (Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Acholi, Azande) — among the oldest continuously settled populations in sub-Saharan Africa, whose pastoral cattle cultures extend 5,000 years — developed distinctive social and political organisations: the Shilluk Kingdom (c. 1490 – present) is one of Africa's oldest surviving monarchies, its divine king (Reth) believed to embody the spirit of the legendary founder Nyikang.

Ottoman and Egyptian expansion — the Nile pushed south

Egyptian-Ottoman expansion into South Sudan (1821–1885 CE) — Khedive Muhammad Ali's conquest of Sudan (1821), extended south by his successors to reach Equatoria by the 1870s — brought the first systematic external administration to the upper Nile, along with the ivory and slave trade that depopulated vast regions of what is now South Sudan.

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the southern policy

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899–1956 CE) — the condominium that administered Sudan jointly under British and Egyptian flags while British officials made all real decisions — governed the predominantly non-Arab, non-Muslim south under a deliberate "Southern Policy" (1930–1946) that isolated it from the north, promoted Christian missionary education, and left it profoundly underdeveloped when independence came.

Two civil wars — the making of South Sudan

The First and Second Sudanese Civil Wars (1955–2005 CE) — fifty years of conflict between the Arab-Muslim Khartoum government and the African-Christian/Animist south — killed an estimated 2.5 million people in the second war alone (one of the 20th century's bloodiest conflicts), displaced 4 million internally, and created the political conditions for South Sudan's eventual independence.

Independence — the world's newest nation

South Sudan's independence referendum (9–15 January 2011 CE) produced a 98.83% vote for secession from Sudan; independence was declared on 9 July 2011, making South Sudan the world's newest internationally recognised nation — welcomed by US President Obama, African Union heads of state, and even Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir (under ICC indictment for Darfur genocide) in a ceremony at Juba's John Garang Mausoleum.

Civil war and famine — independence's betrayal

South Sudan's civil war (2013–2020 CE) — triggered by a political dispute between President Salva Kiir (Dinka) and former Vice President Riek Machar (Nuer) that became an ethnic war killing 400,000 people, displacing 4 million internally and 2.5 million as refugees, and producing famine conditions for 7 million people — is the most catastrophic post-independence implosion in African history.