As America watches its troops battle the war in Iraq, there is another war that has been raging for as long as many of its country's people remember. The war in Africa's Sudan between an Islamic North and Christian South has become one of the world's longest civil wars, lasting from 1955 to 1972 and then being renewed again in 1983 and continues through today.
Stephanie Beswick, assistant professor of history, knows the tale well.
"I was born in Sudan and grew up there during a rather turbulent period," said Beswick, whose father, a native of New Zealand, was hired by the British government to work in south Sudan as an agriculturalist. At that time, the Sudan was a British colony.
It was Beswick's familiarity with the area that guided her to pursue African history, and she decided to write a book on southern Sudan history with its focus on the Dinka tribe.
"I started doing it because I was interested in the civil war; (the south Sudanese) don't want to be Muslims," Beswick said.
Beswick returned to the south Sudan war zones in 1996 to gather information for the book she wanted to write about the area's history beginning in the 20th century, when it came under colonial rule. However, what she found ran much deeper.
"What I discovered however, upon interviewing numerous south Sudanese were answers that delved far beyond the 20th century," Beswick said in the recently published book "Sudan's Blood Memory: The Legacy of War, Ethnicity, and Slavery in Early South Sudan."
"I have been able to uncover the past by branching out into a series of disciplines," Beswick said. "I've cross-checked oral histories with linguistics, archeology and (historical) weather patterns." There aren't written records of early Sudan history so Beswick relied on more indirect means of gathering information.
Beswick said she began interviewing people in 1990. She has spoken with about 300 people from many countries and continents as one way of gathering the information for her book.
Because she spoke with so many people, Beswick was able to use converging lines of evidence.
"People could be 300 miles away from each other. If someone said the same thing someone said in Kenya, that's converging lines of evidence. It gets stronger with three people."
Richard Aquila, history department chairman, said that Beswick's use of oral histories, what she calls the African voice, provides a non-traditional approach.
"What it does is gets you away from a Eurocentric approach," he said. "It introduces a new perspective. Looking at it at the perspective of the Sudanese is going to give you a very different perspective than if you look at it from the British. It's very important."
Beswick dedicated four chapters of her book to the African voice.
"Instead of speaking for them, I let them speak," she said." They've been part of the history."
Beswick said that historians don't write about Sudan's pre-colonial history because many believe "there is no point in going back that far." She disagrees with this notion.
"Pre-colonial history in Africa is critically important," Beswick said. "The history that takes place before any (colonial) arrivals is still significant. Africans weren't waiting for others to write their history."
Aquila agrees.
"It gives us a better understanding of how people get to be who they are and what brought us to where we are today," he said. "The more information we have, the more informed our decisions will be."
Now that Beswick has published "Sudan's Blood Memory," she is working on a second book about Sudan's thriving slave trade and the slave raids of the Dinka.
"People assume slavery is over, and they don't realize that in Africa, the slave economy is live and well," Beswick said. "The southern Sudanese have been victims of the slave trade since 1770."
Aquila said he feels that these books fill a void in the history books.
"It fills in a gap in our knowledge, and by filling in these gaps, we get a greater understanding of the past," he said. "We are extremely proud."
But Beswick doesn't seem too concerned with prestige.
"The (Dinka) elders aren't going to last forever. Eventually I'll have a record," she said. "Before I die, I'll give them everything I have."
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