WARFARE IN AFRICAN HISTORY

1-199160

This book examines the role of war in shaping the African state, society, and economy -- the different patterns of military organization through Africa's history; the evolution of weaponry, tactics, and strategy; and the increasing prevalence of warfare and militarism in African political and economic systems. Traces shifts in the culture and practice of war from the first millennium into the era of the external slave trades, and then into the nineteenth century, when a military revolution unfolded across much of Africa. The repercussions of that revolution, as well as the impact of colonial rule, continue to this day. The frequency of coups d'etats and civil war in Africa's recent past is interpreted in terms of the continent's deeper past.

Includes:
* The contours of violence: environment, economy, and polity in African warfare
* Arms in Africa's antiquity: patterns and systems of warfare, to the early second millennium CE
* The military foundations of state and society, to c.1600
* Destruction and construction, c.1600-c.1800
* Transformations in violence: military revolution and the 'long' nineteenth century
* Revolutions incomplete: the old and the new in the modern era.