28o AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
At the present time, Nuer are to the west and south bordered by Dinka, who appear to have very much the same kind of political system as their own, i.e. they comprise a congeries of tribes without centralized government. From the earliest times the Nuer have been fighting the Dinka and have been generally on the
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offensive. We know that during the first half of the last century waves of Nuer broke from their homeland to the west of the Nile on to the Dinka lands to the east of that river and that they conquered and absorbed the inhabitants in most of what is now eastern Nuerland (the Nuer distinguish between Nath cieng, the 'homeland*, or western Nuer, and Nath doar, the 'migrated', or eastern Nuer). Fighting between the two peoples has continued till the present time but there does not appear, if maps made by early