A Military History of Africa achieves a daunting task: it synthesizes decades of specialized academic research and literature—including the most recent material—to offer an accessible survey of Africa’s military history, from the earliest times to the present day. The first volume examines the precolonial period beginning with warfare in ancient North Africa including ancient Egypt and Carthage and continues through the cavalry-based Muslim empires of the trans-Sahara trade and the wars of the slave trade in West and East Africa. The second volume focuses on the wars of European colonial conquest and African resistance during the late 19th century, African participation in both world wars, and the early violent struggles for independence from the 1950s and early 1960s. The third volume explores warfare in postcolonial Africa, including coverage of the impact of the global Cold War, conflicts in Southern Africa from the 1960s to 1980s, the development of postcolonial African armed forces, and civil wars sparked by the discovery of precious resources, such as diamonds in Sierra Leone. Readers of this three-volume work will understand how warfare and military structures have been consistently central to the development of African societies.

Features

• Provides a complete introduction of Africa's military history that is accessible to general readers without specialized knowledge
• Supplies illuminating accounts of Africa's most important military leaders, from Hannibal of ancient Carthage to Queen Nzinga of 17th-century Angola to Paul Kagame of contemporary Rwanda
• Portrays Africa within the context of a global perspective that portrays the continent's existence as an intrinsic part of a wider world, not as an isolated "dark continent"
• Includes a comprehensive reading list at the end of each of the three volumes for conducting additional research