In most accounts of warfare, civilians suffer cruelties and make
sacrifices silently and anonymously. This volume details the dismal
impact war has had on the African people over the past five hundred
years, from slavery days, the Zulu War, World Wars I and II, to the
horrific civil wars following decolonization and the genocide in
Rwanda. In most accounts of warfare, civilians suffer cruelties and
make sacrifices silently and anonymously. Finally, historians turn
their attention to those who are usually caught up in events beyond
their control or understanding. This volume details the dismal
impact war has had on the African people over the past five hundred
years, from slavery days, the Zulu War, World Wars I and II, to the
horrific civil wars following decolonization and the genocide in
Rwanda. Chapters provide a representative range of civilian
experiences during wartime in Africa extending from the late
eighteenth century to the present, representing every region of
Africa except North Africa. Timelines, glossaries, suggested
further readings and maps are included, and the work is fully
indexed. The book begins with Paul E. Lovejoy's study of the
ubiquitous experience of African slavery which has so profoundly
affected the development of the continent and the lives of its
people. John Laband then examines the rise of the Zulu kingdom in
the early nineteenth century and its subsequent conquest by
Britain, thus charting the fate of civilians during the formation
of an African kingdom and their experiences during colonial
conquest. The Anglo-Boer War is situated at a crucial crossroads
between colonial and modern warfare, and the concentration camps
the British set up for Boer and African civilians pioneered a new
form of modern savagery. Bill Nasson examines this war's complex
effects on various categories of non-combatants in South Africa.
Because it was under colonial rule, Africa was dragged into the two
World Wars. Tim Stapleton shows in the fourth chapter that while
the African civilian response to the war of 1914-1918 was often
contradictory and ranged from collaboration to revolt, the effect
of the conflict was only to confirm colonial rule. In the following
chapter, David Killingray explains how and why the impact of the
Second World War on African civilians was rather different from
that of the First in that it undid colonial rule, and paved the way
for the future independence of Africa under modernized African
leadership. The Portuguese held on to their African empire long
after the other colonial empires had relinquished theirs in the
1960s. Angola, the subject of Chapter six, passed seamlessly out of
an independence struggle against Portuguese rule into civil war
that soon involved Cold War rivalries and interventions. Inge
Brinkman describes the dismal sufferings and displacement of
Angolan civilians during four decades of interminable fighting.
Liberia and Sierra Leone declined from relative stability and
prosperity into horrific civil war, and in Chapter seven Lansana
Gberie traces the deadly consequences for civilians and the efforts
to stabilize society once peace was tentatively restored. The Sudan
has suffered decades of ethnic and religious strife between the
government and the people of the southern and western periphery,
and in Chapter eight Jane Kani Edward and Amir Idris analyze what
this has meant, and still means, for the myriad civilian victims.
Chapter nine concludes the book with the most horrific single
episode of recent African history: the Rwandan genocide. Alhaji Bah
explains its genesis and canvasses the subsequent search for
reconciliation. The chapter ends with his discussion of African
mechanisms that should - and even might - be put in place to ensure
effective peacekeeping in Africa, and so save civilians in future
from the swarm of war's horrors.
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