Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-27T10:18:26.423Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reflections on Political Conflict, Rebellion, and Revolution in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

The great upheavals that Africa has witnessed since the turn of the century have stimulated a flourishing variety of historical writings on revolution, rebellion, guerrilla warfare, conflict, and various other forms of collective political action. It would, therefore, be both useless and presumptuous for me to attempt to rewrite the history of these great turmoils in the light of a number of new studies, some of which are excellent. However, it is in order to recall that this ‘tearing and battering’ happened while the new states were fast transforming themselves from a ‘traditional’ to a ‘modern’ political life, when commercial expansion began to draw Africans into national and international markets, and when communal groupings gradually began to give way to broader associations.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Page 75 note 1 See Nkemdirim, Bernard, Social Change and Political Violence in Colonial Africa (Ilfracombe, Devon, 1975).Google Scholar

Page 76 note 1 Cabral, Amilcar, ‘Practical Problems and Tactics’, in Revolution in Guinea: selected texts (New York edn. 1969), p. 159.Google Scholar

Page 76 note 2 Quoted by Blackey, Robert, ‘Fanon and Cabral: a contrast in theories of revolution for Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XII, 2, 06 1974, p. 193.Google Scholar

Page 76 note 3 Macfarlane, Leslie, Violence and the State (London, 1974), p. 66.Google Scholar

Page 77 note 1 Cf. Gurr, Ted, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, 1969)Google Scholar, Rotberg, Robert (ed.), Rebellion in Black Africa (London, 1971)Google Scholar, Gann, Lewis, Guerrilla in History (Stanford, 1971)Google Scholar, Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York edn. 1968)Google Scholar, and Higham, Robin (ed.), Civil Wars in the rwentieth Century (Lexington, 1972).Google Scholar

Page 77 note 2 Gann, op. cit. pp. 74–5.

Page 77 note 3 Rotberg, op. cit. p. xiii.

Page 77 note 4 Ibid. pp. 159–60.

Page 78 note 1 Fanon, op. cit. p. 129.

Page 78 note 2 See Nkemdirim, Bernard, ‘The Place of Collective Violence’, in The Nigerian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology (Ibadan), I, I, 09 1974.Google Scholar

Page 78 note 3 Weiss, Herbert, Political Protest in the Congo (Princeton, 1967), p. 22.Google Scholar

Page 78 note 4 Atmore, Anthony, ‘The Moorosi Rebellion: Lesotho, 1879’, in Rotberg, Robert I. and Mazrui, Ali A. (eds.), Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York, 1970), p. 34.Google Scholar

Page 79 note 1 Mazrui, Ali A., ‘Violent Contiguity and the Politics of Retribalization in Africa’, in Journal of International Affairs (New York), XXIII, 1, 1969, p. 94.Google Scholar

Page 80 note 1 Cf. Welch, Claude E., ‘Soldier and State in Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, V, 3, 11 1967, p. 318Google Scholar, where he argues that the successful seizure of control in one state may precipitate a series of coups: ‘The Zanzibar uprising helped to trigger off the East African mutinies; similarly, the intervention of Soglo in December 1965 helped to touch off coups in the Central African Republic, Upper Volta, and Nigeria.’

Page 80 note 2 Humphrey J. Fisher, ‘Elections and Coups in Sierra Leone, 1967’, in ibid. VII, 4, December 1969, p. 636.

Page 81 note 1 Mazrui, loc. cit. p. 99.

Page 82 note 1 Higham (ed.), op. cit. pp. 57 and 63.

Page 82 note 2 Welch, Claude E. Jr, ‘Continuity and Discontinuity in African Military Organisation’, in The Journal of Modem African Studies, XIII, 2, 06 1975, p. 229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 82 note 3 Gann, op. cit. p. 15.

Page 82 note 4 Ibid. p. 74.

Page 82 note 5 Robert Rotberg, ‘Psychological Stress and the Question of Identity: Chilembwe's revolt reconsidered’, in Rebellion in Black Africa, op. cit.

Page 83 note 1 Quoted by Rotberg (ed.), ibid. p. 143.

Page 83 note 2 Leites, Nathan and Wolfe, Charles Jr, Rebellion and Authority: an analytic essay on insurgent conflicts (Chicago, 1970), pp. 12 and 151.Google Scholar

Page 85 note 1 M. Crawford Young, ‘Rebellion and the Congo’, in Rotberg (ed.), op. cit. pp. 215, 218, and 220.

Page 85 note 2 Ibid. p. 221.

Page 86 note 1 Ibid. pp. 224 and 236–7.

Page 86 note 2 Barnett, Donald and Karari, Njama, Mau Mau From Within: autobiography and analysis of Kenya's peasant revolt (London, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 86 note 3 Ibid.

Page 87 note 1 Dunn, John, Modern Revolutions: an introduction to the analysis of a political phenomenon (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 153–4.Google Scholar

Page 87 note 2 Ibid. p. 167.

Page 87 note 3 Gibson, Richard, African Liberation Movements: contemporary struggles against white minority rule (London and New York, 1972).Google Scholar

Page 88 note 1 Piao, Lin, Long Live the Victory of the People's War (Peking, 1965), p. 64.Google Scholar

Page 88 note 2 Lofchie, Michael, ‘Party Conflict in Zanzibar’, in The Journal of Modem African Studies, 1, 2, 1963, pp. 185207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 88 note 3 Clarence C. Clendenen, ‘Tribalism and Humanitarianism: the Nigerian–Biafran civil war’, in Higham (ed.), op. cit. p. 164.

Page 89 note 1 E. Wayne Nafziger, ‘Economic Aspects of the Nigerian Civil War’, ibid. pp. 185–6.

Page 89 note 2 See Post, Kenneth and Vickers, Michael, Structure and Conflict in Nigeria, 1960–1966 (London, 1973), especially ch. 10.Google Scholar

Page 89 note 3 Dunn, op. cit. p. 7.