Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T19:38:20.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

18 - Strategy in the Wars of Pre-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2025

Isabelle Duyvesteyn
Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Beatrice Heuser
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Get access

Summary

As noted by Richard Reid, African military history remains ‘perhaps the last bastion of the kind of distorted Eurocentric scholarship that characterised African studies before the 1960s’. This is especially true of the pre-colonial period, on account of both the dearth and the inherent limitations and biases of the sources available for study. The purpose of this contribution is to show that, in both tactical and strategic terms, African pre-colonial warfare was as complex as warfare in any other historical setting. We propose to substantiate our argument by exploring a number of regional case studies organised in a loose chronological order: warfare in the medieval empires of the Sahel, Asante warfare in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, Zulu and Ngoni warfare in southern Africa and east-central African warfare in the age of warlords. The driving questions that the collection proposes to address will be briefly explored in these different contexts, each of which highlights specific strategic dynamics and priorities.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×