Egypt, under the rule of
Khedive Isma'il Pasha, first attempted to colonise the region in the 1870s, establishing the province of
Equatoria in the southern portion. Egypt's first governor was
Samuel Baker, commissioned in 1869, followed by
Charles George Gordon in 1874 and by
Emin Pasha in 1878. The
Mahdist War of the 1880s destabilised the nascent province, and Equatoria ceased to exist as an Egyptian outpost in 1889. Important settlements in Equatoria included
Lado,
Gondokoro,
Dufile and
Wadelai. In 1947,
British hopes to join the southern part of Sudan with
Uganda were dashed by the
Juba Conference, to unify northern and southern Sudan.
Civil war The region was affected by two civil wars since Sudanese independence – the Sudanese government fought the
Anyanya rebel army from 1955 to 1972 in the
First Sudanese Civil War and then SPLA/M in the
Second Sudanese Civil War for almost twenty-one years after the founding of SPLA/M in 1983 – resulting in serious neglect, lack of infrastructural development, and major destruction and displacement. More than 2.5 million people were killed, and more than 5 million were externally displaced while others have been internally displaced, becoming
refugees as a result of the civil war and war-related impacts.
Peace agreement and autonomy On 9 January 2005, a peace treaty was signed in
Nairobi,
Kenya, ending the Second Sudanese Civil War and reestablishing Southern autonomy.
John Garang, then leader of the
Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement, feted the treaty, predicting, "This peace agreement will change Sudan forever." The treaty provided for a referendum on South Sudanese independence to be held on 9 January 2011, six years after the original signing. It also divided
oil income evenly between the North and the South. Use of
sharia law continued in the
Muslim-majority North, while in Southern Sudan, its authority was devolved to the elected assembly. Southern Sudan ultimately rejected implementation of
sharia law. In late 2010, Sudanese President
Omar al-Bashir announced that if Southern Sudan voted for independence, Sudan would fully adopt
sharia as the basis for law. President
Salva Kiir Mayardit and the SPLA disputed the results of the 2008 Sudanese census, which claimed Southern Sudan accounted for 21 percent of the population. The SPLA insisted that Southern Sudan included closer to one-third of the national population and that Southern Sudanese had been undercounted.
Referendum for independence (2011) A
referendum on independence for Southern Sudan was held from 9–15 January 2011. Preliminary results released by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission on 30 January 2011 indicate that 98% of voters selected the "separation" option, with 1% selecting "unity". Southern Sudan became an independent country on 9 July 2011, a date set by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. On 31 January 2011, Sudanese Vice-President
Ali Osman Mohamed Taha stated the Sudanese Government's "acceptance" of the referendum results. On 23 January 2011, members of a steering committee on post-independence governing told reporters that upon independence the land would be named the
Republic of South Sudan "out of familiarity and convenience." Other names that had been considered were
Azania, Nile Republic,
Kush Republic and even Juwama, a
portmanteau for
Juba,
Wau and
Malakal, three major cities. ==Government and politics==