Introduction

Summary

This chapter introduces the study and its approach to examining African peacekeeping. The book is framed around two central arguments. The first is the importance of emphasising and understanding historical legacies and the European colonial enterprise when exploring and analysing African peacekeeping. The second is that African peacekeeping is best understood through the lens of practice theory, an approach which allows the authors to demonstrate just how deeply embedded in both domestic and foreign policy-making peacekeeping has become across the continent over time. The introduction then goes on to outline the data and source material which the book draws on – which includes over ten years’ worth of fieldwork data collected by the authors – and provides a chapter-by-chapter summary of the book’s structure and argument.