Warfare in African History

by Richard J. Reid

• ISBN13: 9780521123976
• ISBN10: 0521123976
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-16
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines the role of war in shaping the African state, society, and economy. Richard J. Reid helps students understand 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. He 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'états and civil war in Africa's recent past is interpreted in terms of the continent's deeper past.

Table of Contents

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

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