The last decade has witnessed momentous events in the history of the Sudan. Having harboured Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, the Sudanese government was directly affected by changes in US foreign policy after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. The long-running humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the enduring North-South civil war have attracted the world’s attention, but the negotiated end to the war opened up the prospect of radical political and constitutional change, while the emergence of the Sudan as a major oil producer and its partnership with China have created possibilities until recently hardly realised.

All of these and other recent events are examined in this new edition of A History of the Sudan - still the only comprehensive history of Africa’s largest country. The book has been fully revised and updated, with expanded coverage of recent events and entirely new sections on the Darfur crisis, the last years of the civil war and changes to the country’s domestic politics and international relations.

Written by two of the world’s leading authorities on the subject, the 6th edition of A History of the Sudan provides the historical background essential for a proper understanding of these complex developments, and ensures that this book will remain the definitive introduction to the Sudan for students, scholars and the general reader.

The late P.M. Holt was Professor of the History of the Near & Middle East in the University of London, whose many important works on Sudanese history included most notably The Mahdist State in the Sudan (Oxford, 2nd edition 1970)

M.W. Daly is the author of some fifteen books on the history of the Sudan, including most recently Darfur’s Sorrow: The forgotten history of a humanitarian disaster (2nd edition 2010).