API tools faq
paste
jonstond2

Gunpowder & Colonial Campaigns in Africa (Military History)

jonstond2
Apr 19th, 2017
208
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 72.96 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. By around 1880, European colonial intrusion in Africa consisted of a series of coastal enclaves and settlements in the Cape in the far south and Algeria in the far north. Up to that point, Europeans had been kept out of most of the interior of Africa by deadly tropical diseases for which they had little immunity and powerful African states. Most Africans lived in independent societies that ranged from highly centralized kingdoms to decentralized “stateless” groups. This changed rapidly from around 1880 to 1914 when, in a process called “the Scramble for Africa,” European powers conquered all of Africa except for Ethiopia, which defended itself from Italian invasion, and Liberia, which was a settlement of freed slaves from the United States. On the European side, important factors which facilitated this process included superior firepower from new magazine-fed rifles and machine guns, extreme racism, and nationalistic competition. Since they had planned the conquest at the 1884 Berlin Conference, the European powers did not fight each other over parts of Africa. On the African side, rulers did not perceive the European invasion as a common threat and reacted separately, some cooperating and others resisting. While the initial colonial conquest was often achieved by privately owned chartered companies with commercial interests in a particular area, financial problems meant that the respective European governments took over the colonies within a few years. Over the years, various theories have sought to explain this dramatic conquest, including Hobson 1902, which sees it as related to the rise of greedy ultrarich businessmen; Lenin 1963, which claims it represented the last stage of the capitalist system which was beginning to tear itself apart; Robinson and Gallagher 1961, which explains it in terms of European powers trying to secure points of strategic important; and Hopkins 1973 (all cited under General Overviews), which demonstrates that the European desire to secure sources of raw materials related to industry motived the scramble for West Africa. In Southern Africa, the discovery of valuable minerals, diamonds in the late 1860s and gold in the 1880s, prompted the British to secure the interior, which led to a series of wars and eventually the creation of the self-governing and white settler–dominated Union of South Africa in 1910.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6.  
  7. There are a number of broad overviews of European colonial conquest in Africa. Hobson 1902 offers a contemporary view, Robinson and Gallagher 1961 explain colonialism in strategic terms, Lenin 1963 places colonialism within a Marxist framework, Hopkins 1973 looks specifically at West Africa, Farwell 1985 focuses on the British role, Boahen 1990 offers a broad synthesis of the scholarship up to that time, Pakenham 1991 presents an epic narrative, and Vandervort 1998 emphasizes the military aspects of the conquest by condensing the relevant literature.
  8.  
  9. Boahen, A. Adu, ed. General History of Africa, VII: Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935. London: James Currey, 1990.
  10. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11. A broad but detailed overview which constitutes part of a much larger chronicle of African history assembled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
  12. Find this resource:
  13. Farwell, Byron. Queen Victoria’s Little Wars. London: W.W. Norton, 1985.
  14. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. Originally published in 1973, this book presents a concise overview of Britain’s colonial wars during the mid- to late 19th century, many of which happened in Africa.
  16. Find this resource:
  17. Hobson, John. Imperialism: A Study. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1902.
  18. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. The first attempt to explain the Scramble for Africa, published when it was still happening. A British social reformer, Hobson saw the new imperialism of his time as resulting from the decline of wholesome small-scale capitalism and the rise of greedy magnates like Cecil Rhodes.
  20. Find this resource:
  21. Hopkins, A. G. An Economic History of West Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.
  22. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  23. A scholarly and highly regarded study that sees the conquest of West Africa as rooted in the economic depression of the 1870s, which made European merchants want to cut their costs by undermining African intermediaries in the old coastal trade and gaining direct control over the sources of raw materials.
  24. Find this resource:
  25. Lenin, V. I. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963.
  26. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27. First published in 1917, Lenin’s pamphlet should be seen within the context of the First World War and his revolutionary agenda. He regarded the Scramble for Africa as evidence that the capitalist system was pulling itself apart in the search for new areas to invest surplus capital.
  28. Find this resource:
  29. Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa: White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent, 1876–1912. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.
  30. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  31. A popular history told in epic style.
  32. Find this resource:
  33. Robinson, Ronald, and John Gallagher. Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. London: Macmillan, 1961.
  34. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. Rejecting Lenin’s economic approach, these British historians saw the Scramble as happening because of the desire by European powers to secure points of strategic importance such as the Cape and the Suez Canal, which resulted in a domino effect of similar territorial seizures.
  36. Find this resource:
  37. Vandervort, Bruce. Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830–1914. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
  38. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  39. A scholarly yet accessible overview of the European military conquest of Africa.
  40. Find this resource:
  41. Journals
  42.  
  43. Articles on the European colonial conquest of African can be found in peer-reviewed academic journals related to both African and military history. The Journal of African History and the International Journal of African Historical Studies were founded in the 1960s in the United Kingdom and United States, respectively, and represented the beginning of the professionalization of African history. The Southern African Historical Journal, Journal of Natal and Zulu History, and African Historical Review are based in South Africa. As the leading academic military history journals, the Journal of Military History is published in the United States and War and Society in Australia.
  44.  
  45. African Historical Review. 1969–.
  46. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  47. Founded in 1969 as Kleio: A Journal of Historical Studies and based at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.
  48. Find this resource:
  49. History in Africa. 1974–.
  50. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  51. Published by the African Studies Association in the United States, this journal focuses on research methodology and historiographical issues related to African history.
  52. Find this resource:
  53. International Journal of African Historical Studies. 1968–.
  54. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  55. This journal was founded in the late 1960s to publish scholarly work on African history.
  56. Find this resource:
  57. Journal of Natal and Zulu History. 1978–.
  58. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  59. This academic journal publishes articles on the military history of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, which was the scene of numerous colonial wars.
  60. Find this resource:
  61. Journal of African History. 1969–.
  62. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  63. The establishment of this journal in 1960 represented an important step toward the professionalization of African history as an academic field.
  64. Find this resource:
  65. Journal of Military History. 1937–.
  66. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  67. The leading scholarly journal in the field of military history.
  68. Find this resource:
  69. Southern African Historical Journal. 1969–.
  70. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  71. A well-established venue for the publication of scholarly articles on the history of Southern Africa.
  72. Find this resource:
  73. War and Society. 1983–.
  74. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  75. Published by the Australian Defence Force Academy, this journal broadly focuses on the theme of war and society.
  76. Find this resource:
  77. Dutch-Khoi Wars
  78.  
  79. The establishment of the Dutch East Indian Company station on the Cape Peninsula in 1652 and the arrival of white settlers in 1657 led to a series of conflicts with indigenous Khoisan communities over land, livestock, and labor. In these wars, fought in 1659 and 1673–1674, the Dutch had the advantage of firearms and horses, while the Khoikhoi lacked iron weapons and suffered from disease and division. As settlers expanded into the Eastern Cape, Khoisan guerrilla warfare and rebellion continued throughout the 1700s and early 1800s. Elphick 1977 offers a scholarly history of the Khoikhoi, Penn 1989 and Newton-King 1999 examine the Khoisan experience of Dutch colonial conquest, Guelke and Shell 1992 looks at Khoisan population decline, and Boozaier, et al. 1996 presents a synopsis of Khoikhoi history.
  80.  
  81. Boozaier, Emile, Penny Berens, Candy Malherbe, and Andy Smith. The Cape Herders: A History of the Khoikhoi of Southern Africa. Claremont, South Africa: David Phillip, 1996.
  82. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  83. A concise overview of Khoikhoi history, including their conquest by the Dutch.
  84. Find this resource:
  85. Elphick, Richard. Kraal and Castle: Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.
  86. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  87. A scholarly history of the Khoikhoi, including the Dutch-Khoi Wars.
  88. Find this resource:
  89. Guelke, Leonard, and Robert Shell. “Landscape of Conquest: Frontier Water Alienation and Khoikhoi Strategies of Survival, 1652–1780.” Journal of Southern African Studies 18.4 (1992): 803–824.
  90. DOI: 10.1080/03057079208708339Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  91. A scholarly article which claims that it was not imported European disease but eviction from water sources that led to a decline in the Khoikhoi population during the conquest period.
  92. Find this resource:
  93. Newton-King, Susan. Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier, 1760–1803, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  94. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  95. An academic history of late-18th-century labor in the Eastern Cape which includes Khoisan resistance to colonial domination.
  96. Find this resource:
  97. Penn, Nigel. “Labour, Land and Livestock in the Western Cape during the Eighteenth Century: The Khoisan and the Colonists.” In The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape. Edited by W. G. James and M. Simons, 2–19. Claremont, South Africa: David Phillip, 1989.
  98. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. A scholarly chapter examining the relationship between settlers and Khoisan in the Western Cape.
  100. Find this resource:
  101. Cape-Xhosa Wars, 1779–1878
  102.  
  103. During the second half of the 18th century, eastward-moving Dutch settlers called Trekboers encountered westward-moving Xhosa communities in what is now the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Between 1779 and 1803, the Trekboers and Xhosa fought three inconclusive wars, separated by periods of raiding, over control of the rich grazing area called the Zuurveld. The British seizure of the Cape Colony in 1806 meant the arrival of a standing army and tipped the balance toward the colonial side. In 1811–1812 the British expelled the Xhosa east of the Fish River in a futile attempt to create a border, in 1819 the Xhosa were slaughtered when they attacked the colonial settlement of Grahamstown, in 1834–1835 the British at the Cape conquered the western section of the Xhosa but then withdrew on orders from London, and in 1846–1847 the British once again brought the western Xhosa under their control. Colonial oppression led to a major rebellion by Xhosa, Thembu, and Khoisan from 1850 to 1853, the second longest war in South African history, and in 1877–78 another Xhosa rebellion was crushed and the Gcaleka Xhosa finally brought under colonial control. This “Hundred Years War” between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa has been the subject of numerous books. General overviews include Smithers 1973, Milton 1983, and Mostert 1992. Peires 1981 and Peires 1989 presented scholarly histories of the Xhosa, including the Cape-Xhosa wars. Maclennan 1986 describes the early British campaigns against the Xhosa, Stapleton 1994 is a biography of the most prominent Xhosa war leader, and Smith 2012 looks anew at the Cape-Xhosa War of 1850–1853.
  104.  
  105. Maclennan, Ben. A Proper Degree of Terror: John Graham and the Cape’s Eastern Frontier. Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986.
  106. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  107. Extremely well written, this popular account of the Cape-Xhosa wars of 1811–1812 and 1819 remains one of the best books in the field.
  108. Find this resource:
  109. Milton, John. The Edges of War: A History of Frontier Wars. Cape Town: Juta, 1983.
  110. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  111. A comprehensive military history of the Cape-Xhosa wars aimed at a popular readership.
  112. Find this resource:
  113. Mostert, Noel. Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
  114. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  115. Over 1,000 pages long, this is an impressive popular history of the colonial conquest of the Xhosa.
  116. Find this resource:
  117. Peires, Jeff. The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of their Independence. Johannesburg: Ravan, 1981.
  118. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  119. A scholarly history of the Xhosa people up to their conquest during the Cape-Xhosa War of 1846–1847.
  120. Find this resource:
  121. Peires, Jeff. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856–57. Johannesburg: Ravan, 1989.
  122. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  123. A scholarly study of the millenarian Cattle-Killing movement which fatally weakened much of Xhosa society during the period of colonial conquest.
  124. Find this resource:
  125. Smith, Keith. Harry Smith’s Last Throw: The Eighth Frontier War, 1850–1853. London: Frontline, 2012.
  126. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  127. Based on the unpublished manuscript of the late amateur historian Neville Mapham, this popular account of the Cape-Xhosa War of 1850–1853 ignores much of the previous academic literature and favors the colonial perspective.
  128. Find this resource:
  129. Smithers, A. J. The Kaffir Wars, 1879–1877. London: Leo Cooper, 1973.
  130. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  131. An outdated popular account with a title that now appears racist.
  132. Find this resource:
  133. Stapleton, Timothy. Maqoma: Xhosa Resistance to Colonial Advance. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1994.
  134. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  135. A scholarly biography of the most accomplished military leader in Xhosa history, who fought three wars against the British and died imprisoned on Robben Island.
  136. Find this resource:
  137. Boer Conquest of the Ndebele and Zulu, 1830s
  138.  
  139. During the late 1830s, thousands of Boers, frustrated by aspects of British rule and attracted to new opportunities, left the Cape Colony and moved to the interior of what is now South Africa and the Indian Ocean coast of KwaZulu-Natal, where they defeated local African powers and established independent republics. In 1836, the Boers routed the Ndebele Kingdom in the interior at the Battle of Veg Kop and forced it to move north into what is now southwestern Zimbabwe, and in 1838 the Boers inflicted a terrible defeat on the Zulu at the Battle of Blood River. Later Afrikaner nationalist historians would see these conflicts as important events in what they called the “Great Trek,” which represented the foundation of their nation and the triumph of civilization over barbarism. Becker 1979a and Becker 1979b are biographies of key African leaders that are now dated; Walker 1965 and Ransford 1972 look at Boer expansion into the South African interior; Morris 1965 and Laband 1995 review Zulu history, including defeat by the Boers; and Rasmussen 1978 explores the history of the Ndebele up to and including their defeat by the Boers.
  140.  
  141. Becker, Peter. Path of Blood: The Rise and Conquests of Mzilikazi, Founder of the Matabele Tribe of Southern Africa. New York: Penguin, 1979a.
  142. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  143. First published in 1966, this is a popular though dated biography of the founding Ndebele leader.
  144. Find this resource:
  145. Becker, Peter. Rule of Fear: The Life and Times of Dingane, King of the Zulu. New York: Penguin, 1979b.
  146. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  147. First published in 1965, this is a popular though dated biography of the Zulu king at the time of the Battle of Blood River.
  148. Find this resource:
  149. Laband, John. Rope of Sand: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1995.
  150. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. A scholarly and comprehensive history of the Zulu Kingdom from its origins around 1815 to its defeat by the British in 1879 and collapse during the civil war of the 1880s. The book devotes considerable detail to the major battles of Zulu history, including those involving the Boers in the 1830s.
  152. Find this resource:
  153. Morris, Donald. The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation under Shaka and its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.
  154. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  155. Although it has been superseded by more recent works, this first comprehensive history of the Zulu Kingdom enjoys a continuing popularity, partly because of its stirring writing.
  156. Find this resource:
  157. Ransford, Oliver. The Great Trek. London: John Murray, 1972.
  158. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  159. A popular account which is sympathetic to the Boers.
  160. Find this resource:
  161. Rasmussen, R. K. Migrant Kingdom: Mzilikazi’s Ndebele in South Africa. London: Collings, 1978.
  162. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  163. A scholarly history of the Ndebele Kingdom before it moved into what is now Zimbabwe.
  164. Find this resource:
  165. Walker, Eric. The Great Trek. London: Black, 1965.
  166. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. Originally published in 1934, this book presents a pro-British account of the Boer departure from the Cape.
  168. Find this resource:
  169. French Conquests
  170.  
  171. French colonial conquest in Africa during the 19th century was often motivated by problems at home, such as the restored monarchy’s search for legitimacy, which led to the invasion of North Africa and military defeat in Europe, which prompted empire-building across vast areas of West Africa.
  172.  
  173. North Africa
  174.  
  175. Initiated by restored French king Charles X to bolster his legitimacy at home, the French conquest of Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1847 and was tenaciously resisted by the remnants of Ottoman administration and local Muslim leaders. The French seized Tunisia in 1881 and Morocco in 1911. While the Algerian war of independence in the 1950s and early 1960s has received considerable attention from historians, less has been written on France’s conquest of North Africa during the 19th century. Specialized studies include Blunt 1947 and Danziger 1977, which are biographies of the most famous Algerian resistance leader; Heggoy 1986, which uses oral history to reconstruct the French occupation of Algiers; and Clancy-Smith 1997, which looks at Sufi notables as resistance leaders. Broader studies of conquest include Porch 1982 on Morocco and Sessions 2011 on Algeria. The overviews Abun-Nasr 1987 and Ageron 1991 offer sections on French conquest.
  176.  
  177. Abun-Nasr, Jamil M. A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  178. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511608100Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  179. A scholarly and definitive history including the French invasion and conquest of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
  180. Find this resource:
  181. Ageron, Charles-Robert. Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present. Translated by Michael Brett. London: C. Hurst, 1991.
  182. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  183. A concise overview of Algeria’s history from the beginning of the French conquest.
  184. Find this resource:
  185. Blunt, Wilfrid. Desert Hawk: Abd el Kadir and the French Conquest of Algeria. London: Methuen, 1947.
  186. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  187. A biography of a prominent leader of Muslim Algerian resistance against French occupation.
  188. Find this resource:
  189. Clancy-Smith, Julia A. Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
  190. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  191. An examination of the role of Sufi notables in leading protest against French colonialism.
  192. Find this resource:
  193. Danziger, Raphael. Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians: Resistance to the French and Internal Consolidation. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977.
  194. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  195. A scholarly biography of the famous Algerian resistance leader.
  196. Find this resource:
  197. Heggoy, Alf Andrew. The French Conquest of Algiers, 1830: An Algerian Oral Tradition. Athens, OH: Ohio Center for International Studies, 1986.
  198. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  199. A study of the French occupation of Algiers based on four Algerian oral accounts.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Porch, Douglas. The Conquest of Morocco. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
  202. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. Emphasizing the French military, this is a popular account of the French conquest of Morocco.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Sessions, Jennifer E. By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.
  206. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  207. This book represents a meticulously researched study of the French colonization of Algeria that looks at various themes such as art and literature.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. West Africa
  210.  
  211. While the French had colonized coastal Senegal during the “slave trade” period in the 1600s and moved inland along the Senegal River, it was during the late 19th century that they pushed inland to conquer a vast territory in Saharan and Sahelian West Africa. Between 1888 and 1893, the French, prompted by their 1870–1871 defeat in Europe by the Prussians, invaded the Tukolor Tukulor Empire along the Niger River using artillery to destroy forts and turning the subject Bambara population against their rulers. To the south, around the upper Niger, the French fought a series of campaigns from 1883 to 1898 against Samori Toure who attempted to shift his Mandinka Empire east but was blocked by the British conquest of Asante. Along West Africa’s forested southern coast, the French moved inland in 1892 by dispatching an expeditionary force that invaded and defeated the Dahomey state. Uniting their territories in West and Central Africa, the French sent several converging expeditions to Lake Chad, where, in 1900, they defeated the Borno state under Sudanese slaver Rabih ibn Fadl Allah. Surprisingly, the literature in English on France’s wars of conquest in Africa is relatively small. Kanya-Forstner 1969 looks at French military expansion in West Africa, Oloruntimehin 1972 focuses on the Tukolor Empire, Echenberg 1991 investigates the experience of African soldiers in the French colonial army, Aldrich 1996 surveys the history of French oversees empire-building, Klein 1998 studies slavery in colonial French West Africa, Alpern 1998 examines the female fighters of Dahomey, and Porch 2005 offers a popular account of the French conquest of the Sahara.
  212.  
  213. Aldrich, Robert. Greater France: A History of French Oversees Expansion. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996.
  214. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. An introductory overview of French empire-building, including conquests in Africa.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Alpern, Stanley. Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
  218. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  219. A thoroughly researched examination of female warriors in the Dahomey Kingdom, including their resistance to French invasion.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Echenberg, Myron. Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. A meticulously researched study of the experience of African soldiers in French West Africa.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Kanya-Forstner, A. S. The Conquest of the Western Sudan: A Study in French Military Imperialism. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
  226. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  227. A pioneering scholarly study of French colonial expansion in West Africa.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Klein, Martin. Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  230. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511584138Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  231. An academic study of local slavery in French West Africa that includes the colonial conquest period.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Oloruntimehin, B. O. The Segu Tukulor Empire. New York: Humanities, 1972.
  234. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  235. A scholarly and detailed history of the Tukolor Empire and its conquest by France.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Porch, Douglas. The Conquest of the Sahara. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
  238. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  239. Originally published in 1984, this is a well-written popular history by a professional historian.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Pedi Wars, 1876–1879
  242.  
  243. Between the 1850s and 1870s, the Boers of the Transvaal republic were opposed by the independent Pedi state, which possessed firearms and was ensconced in a mountain stronghold. In 1876, the Boers staged a major but unsuccessful campaign against the Pedi. Subsequently, the British attempted to give the Boers confidence in a confederation of South African territories by conquering the Pedi in 1879. In historiographical terms, this campaign has been largely overshadowed by the Anglo-Zulu War of the same year, with only Smith 1969, Kinsey 1973, and Delius 1984 covering it.
  244.  
  245. Delius, Peter. The Land Belongs to Us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers and the British in the Nineteenth Century Transvaal. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.
  246. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. An academic and definitive history of the Pedi, including their conflicts with the Boers and British.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Kinsey, H. W. “The Sekukuni Wars.” South African Military History Journal 2.5 (1973).
  250. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. An amateur military historian’s account of the colonial conquest of the Pedi. Continued in Part II, South African Military History Journal 2.6 (1973).
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Smith, K. W. “The Fall of the Bapedi of the North-eastern Transvaal.” Journal of African History 10.2 (1969): 237–252.
  254. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700009506Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. The first scholarly work on the British conquest of the Pedi.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Anglo-Zulu War, 1879
  258.  
  259. With the discovery of diamonds in the Northern Cape in the late 1860s, the British set out to gain control of the interior of what is now South Africa by annexing the Boer republics in 1877 and subjugating the remaining independent African states, including the Zulu Kingdom. In January 1879, after the British issued an impossible ultimatum to the Zulu king Cetswayo Cetshwayo, three British military columns invaded the kingdom from the north, center, and south. The British seriously underestimated Zulu military capability and had inaccurate information and maps. This led to the northern and southern columns being held up while the central column was destroyed at the famous Battle of Isandlwana. Subsequently, the British regrouped and inflicted a major defeat against the Zulu in the north at the Battle of Kambula, relieved the siege of Eshowe in the south, and then advanced upon Cetswayo’s capital of Ulundi, where the Zulu made one last but ultimately failed attack on a British square. The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 remains one of the most popular African military history topics, with a large popular and academic literature, films and documentaries, and well-attended battlefield tours. Overviews of Zulu history that cover the 1879 conflict include Morris 1965, Taylor 1994, and Laband 1995. More specific books include Binns 1963, on Cetswayo; Duminy and Ballard 1981, which points toward future research; Guy 1994, on the Zulu civil war; and Knight 2010, on the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift.
  260.  
  261. Binns, C. T. The Last Zulu King: The Life and Death of Cetshwayo. London: Longmans, 1963.
  262. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. A dated biography of Cetshwayo, the Zulu king at the time of the war.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Duminy, Andrew, and Charles Ballard, eds. The Anglo-Zulu War: New Perspectives. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of Kwa-Zulu/Natal, 1981.
  266. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  267. A collection of scholarly papers on aspects of the Anglo-Zulu War.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Guy, Jeff. The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War in Zululand, 1897–1884. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of Natal Press, 1994.
  270. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. A scholarly exploration of the impact of the 1879 defeat on the Zulu Kingdom, which was plunged into a disastrous civil war between royalists and supporters of British-appointed chiefs.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Knight, Ian. Zulu Rising: The Epic Story of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. London: Macmillan, 2010.
  274. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  275. A popular history of the most famous battles of the Anglo-Zulu War.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Laband, John. Rope of Sand: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1995.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. A scholarly and comprehensive history of the Zulu Kingdom from its origins around 1815 to its defeat by the British in 1879 and collapse during the civil war of the 1880s. The book devotes considerable detail to the major battles of Zulu history.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Morris, Donald. The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.
  282. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. Although it has now been superseded by more recent works, this first comprehensive history of the Zulu Kingdom enjoys a continuing popularity, partly because of its stirring writing.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Taylor, Stephen. Shaka’s Children: A History of the Zulu People. Johannesburg: Harper Collins, 1994.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. An overview of the history of the Zulu Kingdom.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Thompson, P. S. Black Soldiers of the Queen: The Natal Native Contingent in the Anglo-Zulu War. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.
  290. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. A scholarly examination of the Africans who served as British colonial soldiers during the conflict.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Rebellions in South Africa, 1880–1881
  294.  
  295. Prompted by the diamond discoveries in the Northern Cape in the late 1860s, the British attempted to create a confederation of South African territories by annexing the Boer republics and defeating remaining African states such as the Pedi and Zulu in the late 1870s. However, a series of rebellions by the Transvaal Boers, Basotho of Lesotho, and Mpondomise of the Transkei in 1880–1881 led to the failure of the confederation scheme and the reassertion of Boer independence. Although the Lesotho and Transkei rebellions have been studied in Saunders 1976, Beinart 1987, Crais 2002, and Eldredge 2007, those historians were not primarily interested in the military aspects of these conflicts. Military histories such as Ransford 1967, Lehman 1972, and Laband 2005 have shown more interest in the Transvaal Rebellion (also known as the First Anglo-Boer War), in which the British were defeated at the famous Battle of Majuba Hill.
  296.  
  297. Beinart, William. “Conflict in Qumbu: Rural Consciousness, Ethnicity and Violence in Colonial Transkei.” In Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa. Edited by William Beinart and Colin Bundy, 106–137. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. This scholarly chapter looks at the Transkei rebellion as an example of rural resistance to colonization in South Africa.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Crais, Clifton. The Politics of Evil: Magic, State Power and Imagination in South Africa. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  302. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303. Maintains that the Transkei rebellion was related to African beliefs that colonial policies represented a supernatural threat.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Eldredge, Elizabeth. Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007.
  306. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. An overview of Lesotho history, including the Gun War, which set the stage for the British territory’s eventually becoming an independent country separate from South Africa.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Laband, John. The Transvaal Rebellion: The First Boer War 1880–1881. Harlow, UK: Pearson/Longman, 2005.
  310. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. A thoroughly researched and beautifully written examination of the Boers’ first major conflict with the British, including a detailed look at the battles.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Lehman, Joseph. The First Boer War. London: Jonathan Cape, 1972.
  314. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. A history of the Transvaal rebellion.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Ransford, Oliver. The Battle of Majuba Hill: The First Boer War. London: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967.
  318. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. A popular history of the Battle of Majuba Hill.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Redding, Sean. “Sorcery and Sovereignty: Taxation, Witchcraft and Political Symbols in the 1880 Transkei Rebellion.” Journal of Southern African Studies 2.2 (1996): 249–270.
  322. DOI: 10.1080/03057079608708490Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. This article claims that spiritual beliefs were behind the Transkei rebellion.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Saunders, Christopher. “The Transkeian Rebellion of 1880: A Case Study of Transkeian Resistance to White Control.” South African Historical Journal 8 (1976): 32–39.
  326. DOI: 10.1080/02582477608671518Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. The first academic study of the Transkei rebellion.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. British Conquests
  330.  
  331. With an established global empire, Britain’s role in the late-19th-century “Scramble for Africa” often represented the imposition of formal rule over areas of economic or strategic importance to prevent their falling into the hands of newly emerging imperial competitors like Germany and France. Many British Empire builders were motivated by the dream of establishing British rule in Africa from Cape to Cairo. The British often focused on economically valuable territories such as the Great Lakes region of East Africa, the imagined “Second Rand” in Southern-Central Africa, and the raw material–producing regions of West Africa. Since the British had occupied Egypt to secure the Suez Canal as a key point in the shipping route to India, they struggled to secure neighboring Sudan from an Islamist movement.
  332.  
  333. East and Central Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Nyasaland)
  334.  
  335. The British conquest of East Africa centered on control of agriculturally rich Uganda, which was home to the source of the strategically important Nile River. During the 1880s, Buganda, a powerful kingdom in the south of present-day Uganda, experienced civil war between local converts to the newly arrived religions of Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism. In 1889, the military forces of the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) intervened in this conflict to place in power the Protestants who subsequently assisted the British in conquering neighboring areas, which became the territory of Uganda. To build and maintain a railway from the Indian Ocean coast to Uganda, the IBEAC and then the British government itself had to subdue tenacious resistance from decentralized Nandi pastoralists. Around nearby Lake Nyasa, the British used Sikh and local African soldiers to fight numerous small wars against Yao, Arab-Swahili, and Ngoni groups which were justified as ending the slave trade in the region; they then formed the colonial territory of Nyasaland. The history of Uganda during the conquest period is well developed and is described by Kiwanuka 1971, Low 1992, and Twaddle 1993. There are fewer specialized works on the British conquest of Kenya and Malawi, though Moyse-Bartlett 1956, Matson 1972, and McCracken 2012 are important.
  336.  
  337. Kiwanuka, Semakula. A History of Buganda; From the Foundation of the Kingdom to 1900. London: Longman, 1971.
  338. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. A pioneering scholarly history of Buganda.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Low, D. A. Fabrication of Empire: The British and the Uganda Kingdoms, 1890–1902. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. An academic history of the British conquest of what became Uganda.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Matson, A. T. Nandi Resistance to British Rule, 1890–1906. Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House, 1972.
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347. A pioneering scholarly history of Britain’s difficult conquest of the Nandi.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. McCracken, Jon. A History of Malawi, 1859–1966. Woodbridge, UK: James Currey, 2012.
  350. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. A comprehensive and scholarly history of Malawi (formerly Nyasaland), including a chapter on colonial conquest.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Moyse-Bartlett, H. The King’s African Rifles: A Study in the Military History of East and Central Africa, 1890–1945. Aldershot, UK: Gale and Polden, 1956.
  354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355. This regimental history includes a section on the colonial conquest of Nyasaland, Kenya, and Uganda, which saw the formation of African colonial units by the British that were eventually amalgamated into the King’s African Rifles.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Twaddle, Michael. Kakungulu and the Creation of Uganda. London: James Currey, 1993.
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. A scholarly and detailed biography of one of Buganda’s most successful Protestant military leaders.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Southern Rhodesia (1890–1897)
  362.  
  363. With a fraudulently obtained concession from the Ndebele king Lobengula, in 1889 Cape premier and mining magnate Cecil Rhodes received a royal charter for his British South Africa Company (BSAC), which occupied Mashonaland (the eastern part of what is now Zimbabwe) the next year without encountering much resistance. When anticipated gold resources were not found, the BSAC orchestrated the invasion of the neighboring Ndebele kingdom in Matabeleland (western present-day Zimbabwe) in 1893 and Lobengula’s armies were shot down by British machine guns mounted on wagons for mobility. In 1896 and 1897, some Ndebele and Shona, frustrated by colonial taxation and oppression, staged separate rebellions against the BSAC. The Ndebele now had guns; they fought from the cover of the rocky Matopo Hills and eventually negotiated a peace with Rhodes himself. This allowed the BSAC, with some imperial assistance, to crush the Shona rebels, who were dynamited in their caves. During the 1960s and 1970s, within the context of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, there was a debate between the nationalist work of Ranger 1967, which saw the 1896–1897 rebellion as united and protonationalist and as having been directed by a new religious leadership, and Cobbing 1977 and Beach 1986, which revealed that these were separate uprisings conducted by existing leaders. Selous 1968 offers a firsthand account of the Ndebele rebellion from a colonial perspective. Overviews of the British conquest of Zimbabwe include Hole 1967, Galbraith 1974, and Keppel-Jones 1983. Glass 1968 remains the only history of the 1893 Anglo-Ndebele War.
  364.  
  365. Beach, D. N. War and Politics in Zimbabwe, 1840–1900. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo, 1986.
  366. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. A compilation of Beach’s previously published scholarly articles on the colonial conquest of Zimbabwe, including a 1979 paper on the Shona part of the 1896–1897 rebellion that refused Ranger’s claims.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Cobbing, Julian. “The Absent Priesthood: Another Look at the Rhodesian Risings of 1896–97.” Journal of African History 28.1 (1977): 61–84.
  370. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700015231Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. A scholarly article on the Ndebele portion of the 1896–1897 uprising that counters Ranger’s claims.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Galbraith, John S. Crown and Charter: The Early Years of the British South Africa Company. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
  374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. Based on thorough archival research, this pioneering history of the British South Africa Company moved away from the hitherto popular hagiography of Rhodes and placed the topic within a broad imperial context.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Glass, Stafford. The Matabele War. London: Longmans, 1968.
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. A well-researched though unexciting history of the 1893 conquest of the Ndebele.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Hole, Hugh Marshall. The Making of Rhodesia. London: Frank Cass, 1967.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. A typical Rhodesian settler account of the territory’s creation.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Keppel-Jones, Arthur. Rhodes and Rhodesia: The White Conquest of Zimbabwe, 1894–1902. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983.
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. A thoroughly researched history of the colonial conquest of Zimbabwe.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Ranger, T. O. Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896–97: A Study in African Resistance. London: Heinemann, 1967.
  390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. Despite its refutation by scholars working in the 1970s, this nationalist interpretation of the Ndebele and Shona uprisings of 1896–1897 has an enduring influence in Zimbabwean historiography and society.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Selous, F. C. Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia: Being a Narrative of Events in Matabeleland Both Before and During the Recent Native Insurrection Up to the Date of the Disbandment of the Bulawayo Field Force. Bulawayo, Zimbabwe: Books of Rhodesia, 1968.
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. Initially released in 1896 (freely available online), this is a firsthand account of the Ndebele rebellion by one of the most prominent colonial conquerors of Zimbabwe.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Sudan, 1884–1898
  398.  
  399. In 1884 a Muslim revitalization movement led by the Mahdi, a savior-like figure, expelled the Egyptians and British from Sudan. Concerned about a possible French-Ethiopian intervention, the British reinvaded Sudan in 1896 with an expeditionary force slowly proceeding up the Nile. In 1898, at the famous Battle of Omdurman, the British under Horatio Kitchener defeated the Mahdist army and imposed their rule over the territory. Since the account of a young Churchill was published in 1899, British military campaigns in Sudan have attracted attention from popular and academic historians. Zulfo 1980, Neillands 1996, and Butler 2007 represent overviews, Lewis 1987 looks at the Fashoda Incident, Meredith 1998 tells the story of Omdurman through the accounts of four British soldiers, Spiers 1998 presents a collection of scholarly papers, and Lamothe 2011 explores the experience of Sudanese slave soldiers in Egyptian service.
  400.  
  401. Butler, Daniel Allen. The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam. Drexel Hill, PA: Casemate, 2007.
  402. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. A popular history that looks at the Sudan conflict as an example of early conflict between Christianity and Islam.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Churchill, Winston. The River War. London: Longmans, 1899.
  406. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  407. A journalistic account of the last phase of Kitchener’s campaign in Sudan, including Omdurman.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Lamothe, Ronald. Slaves of Fortune: Sudanese Soldiers and the River War 1896–1898. Woodbridge, UK: James Currey, 2011.
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. A scholarly social history of the slave soldiers from southern Sudan who served in the Egyptian army.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Lewis, David Levering. The Race to Fashoda: Colonialism and African Resistance. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987.
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415. A popular retelling of the standoff between British and French forces at Fashoda in southern Sudan in 1898.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Meredith, John. Omdurman Diaries, 1898: Eyewitness Accounts of the Legendary Campaign. Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 1998.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. A reconstruction of the Omdurman campaign through the firsthand accounts of four British soldiers.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Neillands, Robin. The Dervish Wars: Gordon and Kitchener in the Sudan, 1880–1898. London: John Murray, 1996.
  422. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423. A military history of the British campaigns in Sudan.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Spiers, Edward M. Sudan: The Reconquest Reappraised. London: Frank Cass, 1998.
  426. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. Published on the centenary of Omdurman, this collection of scholarly papers looks at a variety of themes, including the living conditions of ordinary British soldiers during the campaign; competition among different British officers; diplomatic issues involving Italy, France, and Germany; and the Mahdist state.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Zulfo, Ismat Hasan. Karari: The Sudanese Account of the Battle of Omdurman. Translated by Peter Clark. London: Frederick Warne, 1980.
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. Written by a Sudanese military officer, this book examines the military history of the British conquest from the Mahdist perspective. First published in Arabic in 1973.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. West Africa (Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Gambia)
  434.  
  435. Although the British fought numerous wars to conquer the West African territories of Nigeria, Gold Coast (today’s Ghana), Sierra Leone, and Gambia, comparatively little has been written on these campaigns. Within this theme, the British conquest of Asante in 1874 has attracted the most attention, including Lloyd 1964, Wilks 1975, and Edgerton 1995. For the conquest of Nigeria, see Ikime 1977, Falola and Heaton 2008, and Falola 2009. For Sierra Leone, see Crowder 1970.
  436.  
  437. Crowder, Michael. “Bai Bureh and the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War of 1898.” In Protest and Power in Black Africa. Edited by Robert Rotberg and Ali Mazrui, 169–212. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. A scholarly paper on the Sierra Leone rebellion of 1898.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Edgerton, Robert B. The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred Year War for Africa’s Gold Coast. New York: The Free Press, 1995.
  442. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. A popular history of the 19th-century conflicts between the British and Asante over control of coastal trade.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Falola, Toyin. Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. A specialized history of colonial conquest in Nigeria.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Falola, Toyin, and Matthew M. Heaton. A History of Nigeria. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  450. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511819711Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. A scholarly overview of Nigerian history which includes concise accounts of colonial conquest.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Ikime, Obaro. The Fall of Nigeria. New York: Africana, 1977.
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. A popular history of the colonial conquest of Nigeria.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Lloyd, Alan. The Drums of Kumasi: The Story of the Ashanti Wars. London: Longmans, 1964.
  458. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. A popular history of the wars between the British and Asante.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Wilks, Ivor. Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
  462. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  463. A scholarly study of Asante history, including some information on the colonial conquest.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. German Conquest of East Africa
  466.  
  467. The first phase of the German conquest of East Africa, the mainland part of what is now Tanzania, including the suppression of the Abushiri Rebellion by coastal Arab-Swahili in the late 1880s and the defeat of the Hehe of the central interior during the 1890s, has not received much attention from historians. While German conquest of the Hehe represented a major colonial war, there was little written about it between Redmayne 1968 and Pizzo 2007. However, there is a large literature, mostly in journal article form, on the 1905 Maji Maji Rebellion, named after magic water which the rebels believed would protect them from German bullets, in which a number of different groups attacked the colonial presence and perhaps as many as 100,000 people perished. During the decolonization era of the 1960s, when Tanzania became independent, nationalist histories such as Iliffe 1967 and Mapunda and Mpangara 1969 portrayed Maji Maji as a struggle for freedom and a forerunner of the modern nationalist movement. Beginning in the 1990s, a new generation of scholars deconstructed the nationalist myth to reveal the complexity of Maji Maji in books such as Sunseri 1997, Monson 1998, and Becker 2004 and the papers in Giblin and Monson 2010.
  468.  
  469. Becker, Felicitas. “Traders, ‘Big Men’ and Prophets: Political Continuity and Crisis in the Maji Maji Rebellion in Southeast Tanzania.” Journal of African History 45 (2004): 1–22.
  470. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853703008545Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. This scholarly article relates the Maji Maji uprising to trade and warfare in 19th-century Tanzania and claims that in some ways it represented a struggle of the interior against the coast and represented the end of “Big Man” politics, which had rejected dynastic authority.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Giblin, James, and Jamie Monson, eds. Maji Maji; Lifting the Fog of War. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  474. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004183421.i-325Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. The result of several academic conferences on Maji Maji in the 2000s, this collection of specialized papers addresses various issues such as the role of African hunters and colonial soldiers in the conflict, archaeological research, the war in various areas, and its aftermath.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Iliffe, John. “The Organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion.” Journal of African History 8.3 (1967): 495–512.
  478. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700007982Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. A nationalist interpretation that sees Maji Maji, brought on by a German attempt to enforce cotton growing, which cut into food production, as an attempt by a new and forward-looking religious leadership to enlarge the scale of African resistance.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Mapunda, O. B., and G. P. Mpangara. The Maji Maji War in Ungoni. Dar es Salaam: East Africa Publishing House, 1969.
  482. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  483. A pamphlet produced by an early research project on the Maji Maji rebellion among the Ngoni people.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Monson, Jamie. “Relocating Maji Maji: The Politics of Alliance and Authority in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, 1870–1917.” Journal of African History 39 (1998): 95–120.
  486. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853797007123Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. A scholarly article that sees Maji Maji as part of a long and complex series of wars in what is now Tanzania.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Pizzo, David. “‘To Devour the Land of Mkwawa’: Colonial Violence and the German-Hehe War in East Africa c. 1884–1914.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007.
  490. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. A doctoral thesis that expands the study of the German-Hehe conflict.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Redmayne, Alison. “Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars.” Journal of African History 9.3 (1968): 409–436.
  494. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700008653Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. An early scholarly reconstruction of the German conquest of the Hehe.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Sunseri, Thaddeus. “Famine and Wild Pigs: Gender Struggles and the Outbreak of the Majimaji War in Uzaramo (Tanzania).” Journal of African History 38.2 (1997): 235–259.
  498. DOI: 10.1017/S0021853796006937Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  499. Rejecting the 1960s view of Maji Maji as a protonationalist freedom struggle, Sunseri maintains that it was a local attempt to reverse German colonial policies that hampered agriculture by taking away men to work on colonial projects and allowing wild animals to devour food crops.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Congo Free State
  502.  
  503. While the horrors of Belgian king Leopold II’s private colonization of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo in the late 19th century are well known through books such as Hochschild 1999, the military aspects of the conquest have not received much attention. Brode 1907 is an early biography of an Arab-Swahili slaver who controlled the upper Congo River area and became Leopold’s first governor of the area. The 1998–2002 Congo Civil War, described as “Africa’s World War” because of the many other African countries involved, stimulated the publication of several overviews of Congo’s history such as Edgerton 2002, Gondola 2002, and Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002 that contain chapters on colonial conquest. Hinde 1897 remains the only book-length account of the conflict between Leopold’s Force Publique and Arab-Swahili slavers in eastern Congo. Jacquij, et al. 2010 shows the potential of the Force Publique as a topic for future research.
  504.  
  505. Brode, Heinrich. Tippoo Tib: The Story of His Career in Zanzibar and Central Africa. London: Arnold, 1907.
  506. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  507. Based on an earlier autobiography written in Kiswahili, this book examines the life of the Arab-Swahili warlord who dominated the area around present-day Kisangani during the late 19th century and became Leopold II’s governor of the region.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Edgerton, Robert. The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002.
  510. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  511. A concise historical overview that includes the era of Leopold II’s conquest.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Gondola, Ch. Didier. The History of Congo. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002.
  514. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  515. An overview of the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, including colonial conquest.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Hinde, Sidney Langford. The Fall of the Congo Arabs. London: Methuen, 1897.
  518. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  519. A colonial account of the Belgian conquest of the Arab-Swahili slavers in the eastern Congo.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York: Mariner, 1999.
  522. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  523. A well-written popular history of Leopold II’s colonization of the Congo.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Jacquij, Philippe, Pierre Lierneux, and Natasja Peeters. Lisolo no Bisu, 1885–1960: “Notre histoire”: Le soldat congolais de la Force publique = “Onze geschiedenis”: De Congolese soldaat van de Openbare Weermacht = “Our history”: The Congolese Soldier of the “Force Publique.” Brussels: Royal Army Museum, 2010.
  526. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  527. Although it is a slightly celebratory history of the Force Publique, this richly illustrated book contains fascinating information on the daily lives of its African soldiers. It was published as a companion to a display at the Belgian Royal Army Museum.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. London: Zed, 2002.
  530. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. An overview of the troubled history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which included Leopold’s colonial conquest and African resistance.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Portuguese-Gaza War, 1895
  534.  
  535. After an Anglo-Portuguese treaty in 1890 formalized the border of Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique), the Portuguese became determined to extend their rule from the coast to the interior, much of which was dominated by the independent Gaza state. The 1895 Portuguese conquest of the Gaza state in Mozambique has attracted little attention from historians, with Newitt 1995 an important exception.
  536.  
  537. Newitt, Malyn. A History of Mozambique. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
  538. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  539. This overview of Mozambique’s history offers an important account of the conquest of Gaza.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Italian Invasion of Ethiopia, 1896
  542.  
  543. Continuing their colonization in the Horn of Africa, Italian forces invaded the kingdom of Ethiopia in 1896 and were decisively defeated at the Battle of Adwa. As a result, Ethiopia was the only African state to successfully defend itself from European invasion. Historians have explained this in terms of Italy being one of the weaker European colonial powers and Ethiopia being one of the most powerful independent African states. The story of Ethiopian military victory in 1896 would inspire future generations of Pan-Africanists and African nationalists struggling for African freedom from European colonialism. Bates 1979 looks at an earlier British incursion into Ethiopia. Numerous histories have been written about the Adwa campaign, from Berkeley 1902 to Jonas 2011. Brown and Yirgu 1996 and Milkias and Metaferia 2005 are collections of essays on the campaign. Zewde 1991 and Pankhurst 1998 are broader histories of Ethiopia which include the 1896 Italian defeat, and Marcus 1975 examines the life of the Ethiopian ruler at the time.
  544.  
  545. Bates, Darrell. The Abyssinian Difficulty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
  546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. Written by a former British colonial official, this book examines the British punitive expedition against Ethiopia in 1867–1868.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Berkeley, George F. The Campaign of Adowa and the Rise of Menelik. Westminster, UK: Constable, 1902.
  550. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. An early account of the failed Italian invasion of Ethiopia that wondered if the battle would inspire a general African rejection of European rule.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Brown, Pamela S., and Fassil Yirgu, eds. One House: The Battle of Adwa, 1896. Chicago: Nyala, 1996.
  554. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  555. A collection of essays on Adwa published on the centenary of the battle.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Jonas, Raymond. The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
  558. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674062795Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559. This book makes the ambitious claim that Adwa represented a turning point not just for Ethiopia, which remained independent, but for global history, as it eventually led to the European withdrawal from Africa half a century later.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Marcus, Harold G. The Life and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia, 1844–1913. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
  562. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  563. A groundbreaking scholarly biography of the Ethiopian ruler who defeated the Italians.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Milkias, Paulos, and Getachew Metaferia, eds. The Battle of Adwa: Reflections on Ethiopia’s Historic Victory against European Colonialism. New York: Algora, 2005.
  566. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  567. A collection of scholarly essays on aspects of the battle, many of which strongly criticize the current Ethiopian government.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Pankhurst, Richard. The Ethiopians: A History. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
  570. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571. A masterful overview of Ethiopian history, including the Italian invasion of 1896.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Zewde, Bahru. A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1974. London: James Currey, 1991.
  574. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. A scholarly survey of Ethiopian history, including the Adwa campaign and its legacy.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Anglo-Boer War, Second (South African War), 1899–1902
  578.  
  579. Although the British had withdrawn from the interior of what is now South Africa following the rebellion of the Transvaal Boers in 1880–1881, the discovery of gold in the Transvaal later in the same decade resulted in tensions between the British, in their coastal colonies of the Cape and Natal, and the inland Boer republics. The emerging mining industry in the Transvaal wanted a more business-friendly government, and demands to enfranchise the many British subjects moving there to work in the gold mines, which would have led to unification with the neighboring British territories, were vigorously resisted by the Boer republican administration of Paul Kruger. An attempt by Cecil Rhodes, mining magnate and premier of the British Cape Colony, to overthrow the Transvaal republic in 1895 further enflamed tensions. This led directly to the Second Anglo-Boer War or South African War of 1899–1902, which began with a preemptive strike by the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State on the Cape and Natal and bogged down in a series of sieges at Kimberley, Mafeking, and Ladysmith. Consequently, the British landed expeditionary forces which advanced directly against the Boer defenses and were defeated in a series of battles known as “Black Week” in December 1899. Bringing several hundred thousand soldiers to South Africa from Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the British forces eventually overwhelmed the outnumbered Boers, who suffered from problems of desertion. By 1901, the two republics had been occupied by the British, but the remaining Boer fighters resorted to guerrilla warfare, which in turn prompted the British to herd many of their women and children into squalid concentration camps where around 25,000 died from disease. In 1902, with the very existence of their nation threatened and African communities beginning to resist them, the Boers surrendered and accepted a form of self-government under the British. This set the stage for the bringing together in 1910 of the Cape, Natal, and former republics as the Union of South Africa, which was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire similar to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, dominated by the white minority. Related to the broader historiography on the Scramble for Africa, debates over the causes of the South African war ranged from the British need to secure the Cape as a vital point for shipping from Asia to a contest over who would control the capitalist development of South Africa. There is a large literature on this conflict, with examples of relatively recent works including collections of academic papers such as Gooch 2000 and Lowry 2000, social histories of groups impacted by the war such as Nasson 1991 and Pretorius 1999, the wartime experience of black South Africans as illustrated by Warwick 1983 and Nasson 1991, overviews of the conflict such as Pakenham 1979 and Nasson 1999, and studies of the war’s causes such as Smith 1996.
  580.  
  581. Gooch, John, ed. The Boer War: Directions, Experience and Image. London: Frank Cass, 2000.
  582. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583. Published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the conflict, this collection of scholarly essays focuses on numerous themes, including individual leaders, the experience of different groups such as Zulus and Irish, and images of the war, and points to areas for future research.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Lowry, Donal, ed. The South African War Reappraised. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000.
  586. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587. A collection of scholarly papers presented at a 1996 conference with themes including origins and results, journalism, nationalism, and imperialism.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Pretorius, Fransjohan. Life on Commando during the Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902. Cape Town: Human and Russeau, 1999.
  590. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  591. This pioneering book explores the daily experience of Boer fighters during the conflict.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. Nasson, Bill. Abraham Esau’s War: A Black South African War in the Cape 1899–1902. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  594. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  595. Focusing on a mixed race or “coloured” leader who resisted Boers in the Cape, this scholarly book represents a social history of the impact of the war on blacks in the Cape.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. Nasson, Bill. The South African War 1899–1902. London: Hodder Arnold, 1999.
  598. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  599. An overview of the conflict based on a synthesis of the specialized literature.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Pakenham, Thomas. The Boer War. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1979.
  602. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  603. A popular history of the conflict related in epic fashion.
  604. Find this resource:
  605. Smith, Iain. The Origins of the South African War 1899–1902. London: Longman, 1996.
  606. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  607. Part of a series on the origins of modern wars, this book argues that the British were primarily interested in securing their dominance of the region and that control of the gold mines was secondary.
  608. Find this resource:
  609. Warwick, Peter. Black People and the South African War, 1899–1902. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
  610. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523908Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  611. Although previously seen as a “white man’s war,” this important work illustrated the role and experience of South African blacks in the conflict.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Herero and Nama Rebellion, 1904–1907
  614.  
  615. In 1904, the Herero rebelled against German rule in South West Africa (today’s Namibia). In response, the German commander issued an extermination order and German soldiers forced Herero into the Kalahari Desert, shot them on sight, and prevented them from accessing water sources. These practices were extended to the Nama when they joined the rebellion. This is widely recognized as the first genocide of the 20th century. Bley 1971 presents a history of German rule in the territory, Dreschler 1980 offers a pioneering study of the genocide, Bridgman 1981 looks at military issues during the rebellion, Gewald 1999 examines Herero history during the early colonial era, Gewald and Silvester 2003 presents an edited version of a British report on German atrocities in the territory, and Olusoga and Erichsen 2011, Sarkin 2011, and Schaller 2011 focus on the genocide.
  616.  
  617. Bley, Helmut. South West Africa under German Rule, 1894–1914. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971.
  618. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  619. An early scholarly history of German rule in South West Africa that portrays the 1904–1907 genocide of the Herero and Nama as foreshadowing the Holocaust of the Second World War.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Bridgman, Jon M. The Revolt of the Hereros. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
  622. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  623. Employs German colonial records to focus on military aspects of the Herero rebellion, particularly the key Battle of Waterberg.
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Dreschler, Horst. Let Us Die Fighting: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama Against German Imperialism (1884–1915). London: Zed, 1980.
  626. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  627. Written by an East German Marxist historian and first published in German in 1966, this pioneering scholarly work looks at Herero and Nama resistance and the genocidal response of the German colonial regime.
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Gewald, Jan-Bart, and Jeremy Silvester, eds. Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic, 2003.
  630. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631. An edited account of the British report on German atrocities in South West Africa which some in Germany criticized as justifying the takeover of their colonies. It represents a key source in the study of the genocide.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Gewald, Jan-Bart. Herero Heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890–1923. Oxford: James Currey, 1999.
  634. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  635. A thorough and important academic account of Herero history during the early colonial period which includes the conquest and genocide, as well as the reconstruction of Herero society.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Olusoga, David, and Casper Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.
  638. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  639. A thorough examination of how Germany’s genocide in South West Africa, particularly the death camp on Shark Island where a German doctor collected Herero skulls, foreshadowed Nazi Germany’s quest for “living space” in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust.
  640. Find this resource:
  641. Sarkin, Jeremy. Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers. Woodbridge, UK: James Currey, 2011.
  642. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  643. Written by a law professor who has represented the modern Herero in legal claims against Germany, this scholarly study claims that the genocide was not simply the result of a rogue German commander but was approved by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
  644. Find this resource:
  645. Schaller, Dominik J. “Genocide in Colonial South West Africa: The German War against the Herero and Nama, 1904–07.” In Genocide of Indigenous Peoples. Edited by Samuel Totten and Robert Hitchcock, 37–48. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011.
  646. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  647. A concise scholarly chapter on the genocide in South West Africa that places it in a broader context.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Zulu Rebellion, 1906
  650.  
  651. In 1906 some Zulu communities rose up against taxation and colonial violence and were crushed by the ambitious settler state of Natal. Stuart 1913 represents a colonial account of the rebellion, Marks 1970 was the first academic study, Redding 2000 focuses on the causes of the revolt, Thompson 2003 and Thompson 2004 look at the uprising’s leadership, and Guy 2005 examines the suppression of rebellion.
  652.  
  653. Guy, Jeff. The Maphumulo Uprising; War, Law and Ritual in the Zulu Rebellion. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005.
  654. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  655. An academic history that focuses on the suppression of the rebellion and the trials of accused rebels.
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Marks, Shula. Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906–08 Disturbances in Natal. Oxford: Clarendon, 1970.
  658. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  659. The first scholarly study of the Zulu rebellion.
  660. Find this resource:
  661. Redding, Sean. “A Blood-Stained Tax: Poll Tax and the Bambatha Rebellion in South Africa.” African Studies Review 43.2 (2000): 29–54.
  662. DOI: 10.2307/524983Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  663. This article offers an alternative explanation for the rebellion: that the Zulu believed the new poll tax would offend their ancestors.
  664. Find this resource:
  665. Stuart, James. A History of the Zulu Rebellion 1906 and of Dinuzulu’s Arrest, Trial and Expatriation. London: Macmillan, 1913.
  666. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  667. A colonial account of the rebellion by a Natal official.
  668. Find this resource:
  669. Thompson, P. S. Bambatha at Mpanza: The Making of a Rebel. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: P. S. Thompson, 2004.
  670. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  671. A scholarly study of Bambatha’s role as a rebel leader.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Thompson, P. S. “The Zulu Rebellion of 1906: The Collusion of Bambatha and Dinuzulu.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 36.3 (2003): 533–557.
  674. DOI: 10.2307/3559433Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  675. A scholarly examination into the alleged cooperation between rebel leader Bambatha and rightful Zulu king Dinuzulu, who was convicted of treason in the wake of the uprising.
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Public Pastes
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!