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Pre-Colonial Military Studies in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

G. N. Uzoigwe
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Extract

The study of the military as an agent of societal change began to attract the serious attention of western social scientists after World War II. Since then the independence of the African states has given rise to many coups d'état, thereby awakening the concern of Africanist scholars in the rôle of the military in contemporary society. Predictably, this interest has largely been confined to recent military developments, including the liberation movements in Southern Africa and Guinea–Bissau.

Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 469 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

Page 469 note 1 See, for example, First, Ruth, Power in Africa (New York, 1970);Google Scholar and Miners, N.J., The Nigerian Army, 1956–1966 (London, 1971),Google Scholar who devotes only three pages to the early history of the military.

Page 469 note 2 Uzoigwe, G. N., ‘The Military in Politics in Precolonial Africa: a case study of the interlacustrine states of Bunyoro Kitara and Buganda’, annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 28–30 12 1974.Google Scholar

Page 470 note 1 It must be pointed out, however, that anthropologists have generally provided us with accounts of the military organisations of their pet ‘tribes’ as part of their larger studies. Together with oral tradition, archaeological evidence, as well as contemporary European and Arab written sources, they form the basis of African military studies. Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Smith, Robert, for example, profited immensely not only from Samuel Johnson, The History of the Torubas from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate (London, 1921, reprinted 1969),Google Scholar but also from the 1861 report on the Egba army by Captain Arthur Trefusis Jones, reprinted as an appendix to their Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 129–40.Google Scholar Without Nyakatura's, JohnAbalcama ba Bunyoro Kitara (1947),Google Scholar translated and edited by Uzoigwe, G. N. as Anatomy of an African Kingdom:a history of Bunyoro Kitara (New York, 1973),Google Scholar the several anthropological works by John Roscoe on the interlacustrine states of East Africa, as well as the contemporary accounts by J. H. Speke, J. A. Grant, Sir Samuel Baker, H. M. Stanley, Emin Pasha, and G. Casati, it would have been impossible to undertake my East African military studies.

Page 470 note 2 Among those so actively interested in this field that they might be called ‘African military historians’ are Smaldone, Uzoigwe, Boniface I. Obichere, Sam C. Ukpabi, Bethwell A. Ogot and, perhaps, A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, D. J. M. Muffet, and Claude E. Welch, Jr.

Page 472 note 1 Johnson, op. cit. pp. 131–2. This book was written in the early 1890s.

Page 472 note 2 Ajayi, and Smith, , Yoruba Warfare, p. 53.Google Scholar

Page 472 note 3 See Uzoigwe, G. N., ‘Kabalega and the Making of a New Kitara’, in Tarikh (London), III, 2, 1970, pp. 5–21.Google Scholar

Page 473 note 1 Uzoigwe, G. N., Revolution and Revolt in Bunyoro Kitara: two studies (Kampala, 1970), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

Page 473 note 2 Ukpabi, S. C. has published a short monograph, Military Involvement in African Politics: an historical background (New York, 1972),Google Scholar which traces the political role of the African military establishment from pre-colonial times to the present, and lends weight to my interpretation of the rôle of the Abaruura in the politics of Bunyoro Kitara. See also Welch, Claude E., ‘Continuity and Discontinuity in African Military Organisation’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XIII, 2, 06 1975, pp. 229–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 473 note 3 I am presently engaged in writing a full-length biography of the life and times of Omukama Chwa II Kabalega, a great African leader.

Page 474 note 1 Ogot, Bethwell A. (ed.), War and Society in Africa: ten studies (London, 1972), p. 2.Google Scholar

Page 475 note 1 See Uzoigwe, Revolution and Revolt, pt. I.

Page 475 note 2 See, for example, Michael, Crowder (ed.), West African Resistance: the military response to colonial occupation (London, 1971).Google Scholar

Page 475 note 3 See, for example, the following studies by Ranger, T. O.: Revolt in Southern Rhodesia,1896–1897 (London, 1967);Google Scholar‘The Nineteenth Century in Southern Rhodesia’, in (ed.), Aspects of Central African History (London, 1968);Google Scholar‘Connections between “Primary Resistance” Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa’, Part I, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), IX, 3, 1968, pp. 437–53;Google Scholar‘The Role of Ndebele and Shona Religious Authorities in the Rebellion of 1896 and 1897’, in Eric Stokes and Richard Brawn (eds.), The Zambesian Past (Manchester, 1966);Google Scholar and ‘African Reactions to the Imposition of Colonial Rule in East and Central Africa’, in L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan (eds.), Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960, Vol., (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 293–324.Google Scholar See also Iliffe, John, ‘The Organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion’, in The Journal of African History, VIII, 3, 1967, pp. 495–512;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Uzoigwe, Revolution and Revolt, pt. 2; and the various writings of G. C. K. Gwasa on the Maji Maji.

Page 476 note 1 See The Journal of African History, especially Vol. XII, No. 2, 1971.Google Scholar Cf. also J. P. Smaldone, ‘Firearms in the Central Sudan: a revolution’, ibid. XIII, 4, 1972, pp. 591–607.

Page 476 note 2 Tarikh, III, 2, 1970, pp. 5–21, reprinted in Obaro, Ikime (ed.), Leadership in Nineteenth Century Africa (London, 1974), pp. 85–102.Google Scholar

Page 476 note 3 Uzoigwe, G. N., ‘Succession and Civil War in Bunyoro Kitara’, in The International Journal of African Historical Studies (Boston), VI, I, 1973, pp. 49–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 476 note 4 Uzoigwe, G. N., ‘Conflict Resolution in Precolonial Uganda: the interlacustrine region’, annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Syracuse, 31 10 to 3 11 1973.Google Scholar

Page 476 note 5 A Current Bibliography on African Affairs (Westport, Conn.), IV, 3, N.S., 05 1971, pp. 177–90.Google Scholar

Page 476 note 6 Smaldone's major military study is expected to be published shortly as Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate: historical and sociological perspectives (Cambridge, 1975).Google Scholar

Page 476 note 7 Obichere, B. I., ‘Military Dependence in Historical Perspective: the case of Nigeria’, in The Conch (New Paltz, N.Y.), V, 1–2, 1973, pp. 82–104.Google Scholar

Page 480 note 1 Baker, S. W., Ismailia (London, 1874), pp. 255–6.Google Scholar

Page 480 note 2 Casati, Gaetano, Ten Years in Equatoria (London, 1898), pp. 273–4.Google Scholar

Page 480 note 3 See Andreski, Stanislav, Military Organization and Society (Berkeley, 1968), especially pp. 124–33 and 139–42.Google Scholar

Page 480 note 4 Ogot, (ed.), War and Society, p. 3.Google Scholar

Page 481 note 1 For three detailed studies using the historical approach, see Karugire, S., ‘Succession Wars in the Precolonial Kingdom of Nkose’, in Ogot (ed.), War and Society, pp. 9–34;Google Scholar J. B. Webster, ‘The Civil War in Usuku’, ibid. pp. 35–64; and Uzoigwe, ‘Succession and Civil War in Bunyoro Kitara’, loc. cit.