The introductory section relates Evans-Pritchard’s survey visits to Nuer territory and provides an initial description of the main features of Nuer culture. At the time of its writing, Nuer territory was located in the south-central region of what was then called Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (and would later become part of Sudan in the late 20th century and South Sudan in the 21st). Evans-Pritchard already had some familiarity with the geography and cultural milieu of the region through his previous work with the Azande people and was requested by the Anglo-Egyptian government to conduct a survey of the Nuer. A few earlier colonial explorers had left some scant notes on the Nuer, but no full anthropological survey had ever been undertaken.

Evans-Pritchard places the Nuer as a subsection of the Nilotic culture type, sharing a branch and geographical proximity with the nearby Dinka people, Evans-Pritchard commenting: “Nuer and Dinka are too much alike physically and their languages and customs are too similar for any doubt to arise about their common origin, though the history of their divergence is unknown” (3). The Nuer (whose own name for themselves is the Nath) numbered about 200,000 at the time of Evans-Pritchard’s survey and lived in the swampland and savannah at the confluence of the Nile with several of its tributaries, including the Bahr el-Ghazal and the Sobat River.