 Following the opening of the White Nile waters for navigation in the early 1840s, bands of European, Levantine, and northern Sudanese traders began to rush to the South.Eager to appropriate the resources of these virgin lands, these traders dominated the region by combining military power, political alliances, slave incorporation, and the judicious organization known as the" zariba "system.An Arabic word meaning 'thorned enclosure', the zariba in the Sudanese context referred to the small fortified settlements that were erstablished by the traders"."