Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-203) and index.

1. Independent Darfur : land, people, history -- The economy and the lie of the land -- Population : a complex ethnic mosaic -- The independent Darfur Sultanate -- Umm Kwakiyya, the time of the bandits -- Ali Dinar and Darfur's last independent years (1898-1916) -- 2. Darfur and Khartoum (1916-1985) : an unhappy relationship -- Colonial benign neglect : romanticism and underdevelopment -- On the margins of history : Darfur and Sudanese nationalism -- Reaching for the centre : the frustrations of democratic politics in Darfur -- The Chadian-Libyan factor : a fundamental element of destabilization -- From maladministration to famine : the 1984 catastrophe -- 3. From marginalization to revolt : manipulated "Arabism" and "racial" anarchy (1985-2003) -- Consequences of the 1984 famine -- Khartoum's "democratic" politics and the Chadian conflict -- Libya's "victory" in Chad, a new Darfur famine and the Daud Bolad insurrection -- Centre versus periphery : Darfur in a global Sudanese perspective -- 4. Fear at the centre : from counter-insurgency to quasi-genocide (2003-2005) -- Centre versus centre : the Islamists' internal quarrels and their spillover into Darfur -- Naivasha and the "feel good factor" -- Khartoum wakes up to the danger -- "Counter-insurgency on the cheap" -- Improvising a "final solution" -- Foreign intervention and death by attrition -- 5. The world and the Darfur crisis -- Media coverage : surfing on the horror charts -- Embattled humanitarianism -- "Shuffling papers while Africans die" : the international community and the Darfur crisis -- Was there a genocide in Darfur or not? -- 6. Conclusion : Darfur and the global Sudan crisis. "Prunier's elucidation of Rwanda's history seems to me to be beyond praise. Hehas reconstructed the entire process by which a through modern genocide was planned. He has read all the documents. He has interviewed both perpetrators and survivors. He has anatomized the cold process of mass murder in both theory and practice." Christopher Hitchens, Washington Post.