Analyses African insurgencies and their relationship to the societies in which they are set and to the outside world.

Insurgencies or guerrilla movements have come to occupy a prominent place in the politics of modern Africa. At one time they could be regarded as the means by which Africans fought for independence against colonial or white minority regimes which refused to concede it peacefully, but in the late-20th century they have become an important source of organized opposition to incumbent African governments. In some cases they have ousted those governments and established new regimes in their place; in other cases they have prompted state collapse.

At the center of many of Africa's violent conflicts are movements that do not seem to fit any established theories of armed resistance. African Guerrillas offers new models for understanding these movements, eschewing one-dimensional explanations. The authors build on - and in some cases debate - the insights provided in Christopher Clapham's groundbreaking work. They find a new generation of fighters - one that reflects rage against the machinery of a dysfunctional state. Their analysis of this phenomenon, combining thematic chapters and a range of representative case studies, is a crucial contribution to any effort to understand Africa's war-torn societies.

Study of guerilla warfare in Africa, with particular reference to the nature and causes of violent political opposition and the prediction of future trends - considers the theoretical elements in the choice of guerilla warfare by independence movements and by rebellious ethnic groups, including in the historical context of colonialism, etc., and refers particularly to ongoing conflicts in Angola, Mozambique, rhodesia (Zimbabwe), South Africa R, Namibia and Sudan. Maps and references.

In the summer of 1914, Major Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was the commander of the German Protective Force in German East Africa, with a mere 2,000 troops -- most of them Black Askaris -- and weapons that dated back to the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870's. When World War I began in August, Governor Heinrich Schnee surrendered to the British at Dar-es-Salaam, but von Lettow refused to accept the surrender. Instead he took up arms against the British, and after the war was over, it was evident he could have beaten the British in Africa if the Germans had not lost in Europe

From the Nobel Prize-winning author comes a novel of exile, displacement, and the agonizing cruelty and pain of colonialism, both for those who rule and those who are their victims. “A brilliant novel in every way.… [It] shimmers with artistic certainty.” —The New York Times Book Review Set on a troubled Carribbean island, where “everybody wants to fight his own little war,” where “everyone is a guerrilla,” the novel centers on an Englishman named Roche, once a hero of the South African resistance, who has come to the island – subdued now, almost withdrawn – to work and to help. Soon his English mistress arrives: casually nihilistic, bored, quickly enticed – excited – by fantasies of native power and sexuality, and blindly unaware of any possible consequences of her acts. At once Roche and Jane are drawn into fatal connection with a young guerrilla leader named Jimmy Ahmed, a man driven by his own raging fantasies of power, of perverse sensuality, and of the England he half remembers, half sentimentalizes. Against the larger anguish of the world they inhabit, these three act out a drama of death, hideous sexual violence, and political and spiritual impotence that profoundly reflects the ravages history can make on human lives.