Steven Serels holds a joint appointment as Research Fellow at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien at Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, and as Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, USA. His first monograph is titled Starvation and the State: Famine, Slavery, and Power in Sudan, 1883-1956 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

1. Introduction: Becoming Poor

2. Survival by Conversion, 1640-1840

3. Divided and Conquered, 1840-1883

4. War, Disease, Famine, Destruction, 1883-1893

5. An Unequal Recovery, 1893-1913

6. The Cost of Living Becomes Unaffordable, 1913-1945

7. Conclusion: Being Poor