Agenda

Dr. Carol Berger

This lecture examines the history of contact between northern Italy, particularly Venice, and late pre-colonial Sudan. This contact included priests and nuns who traveled from northern Italy to Sudan as part of the 19th- century missionary movement. Pre-dating the arrival of the Catholic missionaries, Mediterranean trade to north Africa brought simple goods, including Venetian glass beads, and weapons from the armaments production center of Brescia. It is noted that Venetian trade networks, with agents operating out of the Egyptian cities of Alexandria and Cairo, are well documented from the Medieval period.

Dr. Carol Berger is a Commonwealth Scholar and the holder of a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford. She is the author of The Child Soldiers of Africa’s Red Army: The Role of Social Process and Routinised Violence in South Sudan’s Military (London: Routledge, 2022). Dr. Berger lived for many years in Sudan and South Sudan, and currently resides in Cairo, Egypt.