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Asking the question, "Is there a common African military tradition?" leads to consideration of the all too readily accepted tripartite periodization of African history as precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial. Does such a model sufficiently encompass African agency and actions? Or instead—being keyed to the colonial moment in the African past—might it privilege institutions of a decidedly European character? As an alternative, this essay suggests examining Africa's military tradition around four alternatively defined analytical touchstones, each built upon exemplars of indigenous African activity. It argues that using such a "new lens" offers an opportunity to consider if there are not a variety of African military traditions, rather than an over-generalized system of supposed military values historically common to all African soldiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical reconsideration of black nationalist origins in Malawian political assertiveness, focusing on the movement created by Jamaican populist Marcus Garvey. Though familiar with Garvey's ideas, the nation's first President--Hastings Kamuzu Banda--was not responsible for carrying them to Malawi. That distinction belongs to an earlier group of activists who--during the decades of Banda's absence from his homeland--stoked the fires of "Africa for the Africans" which Joseph Booth and John Chilembwe had first sparked a half-century before independence. Key among them was Isa Macdonald Lawrence who championed Garveyism, at first directly and later indirectly, planting black nationalist roots in Malawi's mid-twentieth century politics. Despite efforts to repress those Garveyist influences and replace them with a veneration of Banda's legacy, the echoes of Marcus Garvey and his vision of Africa for the Africans have reverberated through more than a century of Malawian history revealing the black nationalist influences embedded in its past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Were the effects of First World War truly similar globally? A comparison of how the conflict was perceived by two extremely different groups of rural people – southern Americans of the Jackson Purchase region of far western Kentucky and Africans in the small British Protectorate of Nyasaland in south central Africa – makes their microhistories significant rather than trivial by placing them a global context. In the early twentieth century, both groups were not only rural, but removed, decidedly disconnected from each other. Yet, drawing on documentary evidence, especially interviews with the last generation of First World War survivors in both regions, offers a significant perspective on how similar their experiences actually became in the crucible of a global war. The call to arms, their recruitment and resistance to service, combat adversities and cultural experiences, post-war disillusionments and triumphs, and especially the economic consequences of their war provide penetrating insights into the wide-ranging ordeals and opportunities that this first truly global event offered peoples worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ed. by Melvin E. Page and Penny Sonnenburg. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2003.3 vols. alkaline. $285 (ISBN 1-57607-335-1). Melvin E. Page, the general editor of Colonialism: An International Social, Cultural, [...]