Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T02:35:25.482Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Armies and Identities in Southern Africa - Apartheid's Black Soldiers: Un-national Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa By Lennart Bolliger. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2021. Pp. 240. $80.00, hardcover (ISBN: 9780821424551); $34.95, paperback (ISBN: 9780821425114); e-book (ISBN: 9780821447413).

Review products

Apartheid's Black Soldiers: Un-national Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa By Lennart Bolliger. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2021. Pp. 240. $80.00, hardcover (ISBN: 9780821424551); $34.95, paperback (ISBN: 9780821425114); e-book (ISBN: 9780821447413).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2022

Stephanie Quinn Open the ORCID record for Stephanie Quinn [Opens in a new window]
Stephanie Quinn*
Affiliation:
University of the Free State
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'

Keywords

Southern AfricaSouth AfricaNamibiaAngolaapartheidindependence warsdecolonizationmilitarypostapartheid
Type
Book Review
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , July 2022 , pp. 267 - 270
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For Namibia, see SWAPO's official history: SWAPO of Namibia, To Be Born a Nation: The Liberation Struggle for Namibia (Luanda, 1981)Google Scholar. There is also a body of literature that draws a teleological link between resistance against the northern contract labor system and Namibian nationalism. See: Moorsom, R., ‘Underdevelopment, contract labour and worker consciousness in Namibia, 1915–72’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 4:1 (1977), 52–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, A. D., “The institutionalisation of contract labour in Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 25:1 (1999), 121–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 White, L. and Larmer, M., ‘Introduction: mobile soldiers and the un-national liberation of Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 40:6 (2014), 1271–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see: Alexander, J., Israel, P., Larmer, M., and de Oliveira, R. Soares (eds.), ‘Liberation beyond the nation’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 46:5 (2020), 821–1074CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 White and Larmer, ‘Introduction’.

4 M. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Athens, OH, 2014). See also G. Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC, 2006).

5 C. A. Williams, National Liberation in Post-Colonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO's Exile Camps (Cambridge, 2015).

6 D. Henrichsen, G. Miescher, C. Rassool, and L. Rizzo (eds.), ‘The South African Empire’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 41:3 (2015), 431–685; S. Quinn, ‘Scalar claims, worker strategies, and “South Africa's labour empire” in Namibia, 1943–1979’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 47: 1 (2020), 57–78; J. Crush, A. Jeeves, and D. Yudelman, South Africa's Labour Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines (Boulder, 1991).

7 Bolliger cites literatures on transnational conflicts in East and Central Africa, but as histories of African soldiers rather than transnational or un-national histories. For example: Larmer, M., ‘Of local identities and transnational conflict: the Katangese gendarmes and Central-Southern Africa's forty years war, 1960–99’, in Arielli, N. and Collins, B. (eds.), Transnational Soldiers: Foreign Military Enlistment in the Modern Era (New York, 2013)Google Scholar; Branch, D., Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar.

8 The ‘middle ground’ idea comes from Richard White and, later, Luise White. White, R., The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar; White, L., ‘Students, ZAPU, and Special Branch in Francistown, 1964–1972’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 40:6 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.