Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Africa: from slavery days to Rwandan genocide (review)

This useful collection of essays is another indication of how Africa's military history has very much returned to the mainstream, after a number of years in which it was something of an elephant in the room in terms of scholarship. This book is designed around an interesting, indeed compelling, idea, namely the experiences of 'civilians' in a diverse array of 'wartime' scenarios, from the pre-colonial era to more recent conflicts. Together the contributors cover much ground and a wide range of topics across time and space. Several of the chapters are first-rate, including Paul Lovejoy's characteristically perceptive piece on the slave trade, and John Laband's study of civilians in the context of a pre-colonial military revolution (that of the Zulu); Bill Nasson vividly retells the story of British mistreatment of Boer non-combatants (although this is clearly not how the British themselves saw them) during the South African war, and the accounts of the First and Second World Wars by Tim Stapleton and David Killingray respectively are as good as any. Of the later chapters, Inge Brinkman's analysis of the war(s) in Angola is both moving and in-depth, and contains the results of some fine and doubtless arduous fieldwork; it is indeed exemplary in terms of oral research among a traumatized population. The chapters dealing with civil war in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Lansana Gberie) and the Rwandan genocide (Alhaji M. S. Bah) tell of considerable tragedy; they are, however, somewhat descriptive and do not shed any significantly new light on these terrible conflicts. They are, essentially, detailed historical overviews, and are useful enough in their own right. Edward and Idris on Sudan are a little more analytical, particularly with their focus on women, but again this chapter is somewhat thin in terms of the actual remit of the book.

It is perhaps a little unfair to point out the book's sins of omission, but in fact it is to the credit of both editor and contributors that the subject matter raises a series of new questions and possibilities for further research. To what extent, for example, has recruitment into colonial armies had an impact on perceptions of the 'civilian' in war over the longer term? Moreover, more work clearly needs to be done on the treatment of 'civilians' in pre-colonial warfare in other parts of Africa, exploring the very nature of African militaries as well as notions of order in war, conventions surrounding behaviour toward non-combatants, levels of political and ethnic violence, and so on. Does the brutal treatment of women in particular in recent conflicts have its roots in an earlier era, for example? To what extent has there been a recognizable separation of 'military' and 'civilian' in both state-level and non-state-level violence in African history more broadly? If it is accepted that there is little in Africa's late pre-colonial past to suggest that the military and the political or the 'civil' were regarded as distinct – and this is certainly true across swathes of western and eastern Africa – one cannot avoid the rather depressing conclusion that civilians always have and always will be targeted in African conflicts, unless and until especially vigorous efforts are made to prevent it. Of course in the age of modernity it is clear that civilians do indeed become caught up in war; but perhaps 'total war' has been around in the continent rather longer than might be supposed, especially if we take as a marker of total war the systematic targeting of civilian populations. These are analytical hooks which this reviewer would like to have seen more vigorously pursued, perhaps in the introduction, or in an additional overview at the end. It seems almost superfluous, indeed, to examine some of the conflicts described in this volume in terms of 'civilians', as they are almost [End Page...