The need for creative, multidisciplinary analyses of security problems is more critical than ever. Africa provides a potentially fertile field for such research: cultural, geographic, and historical environmental circumstances merge there in a way that seems unique.

Robert Edgerton would appear an ideal scholar to help in this undertaking. An anthropologist who teaches at the UCLA School of Medicine, Edgerton has published works that examine the Crimean War, the Mau Mau rebellion, British and Zulu soldiers in late nineteenth-century South Africa, Japanese military traditions, Asante warriors in West Africa, and multicultural relativism in “primitive” societies.

His new monograph promises a “review [of] the history of sub-Saharan Africa’s armies from pre-colonial times to the present,” a discussion of “possible pathways to future well-being,” and speculation on “the role Africa’s military forces can and must play if the future is to bring better times” (p. viii). Edgerton assumes that in precolonial and colonial times, African militias fought with honor and courage, but, with independence, African military leaders selfishly grabbed power—with catastrophic results (p. vii).

Edgerton skips about the region to present his case. A cursory chapter (19 pages) covers political, military, and cultural aspects of precolonial Africa; chapters 2 and 3 offer a potpourri of African resistance to colonial conquest and rule. Subsequent chapters sketch various civil wars, military coups, and government corruption, as well as provide an in-depth look at genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. A final chapter, “Africa Today and Tomorrow,” cites Mauritius, Botswana, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and the Côte d’Ivoire as moderately successful examples of “hope for the future.”

The book is a disappointment, neither living up to its title nor attempting to fulfill its declared purposes. Rather, it is a compilation of selective, often sensationalistic, descriptions of African security dilemmas drawn from secondary materials (the chapter on genocide in Rwanda and Burundi is a prime example). It lacks substantive analysis that would explain, for example, what is meant by “army” or “military,” or how these concepts could apparently include precolonial militias, European-style colonial armies, combatants within Somali lineage segments, warlords, gangs of child soldiers, and conventional armed forces. There is no discussion of finance, tactics, doctrine, training, or recruitment that would help illuminate the dynamics of these groups. Readers will find only sparse, superficial explorations of political illegitimacy as a cause of Africa’s security dilemmas. Likewise, the book fails to mention the implications of civil-military relations in a context of political illegitimacy or the links among Africa’s precarious ecological circumstances, economic underdevelopment, instability, historical legacies, and the atrocities it graphically (and repeatedly) describes.

Analysis, when it appears, seems illogical and pedestrian. Edgerton conflates cause and effect in ascribing the roots of Africa’s current crises to “witchcraft” and “maladaptive African culture” (pp. 230ff.): witchcraft in any society is symptomatic of pathologies, not their cause. The use of one-dimensional concepts like “warrior tribes” (the “historically warlike Muslim Hausa and Fulani peoples” and “various warlike Nilotic tribes,” pp. 104ff.) by an anthropologist to explain factionalism is indicative of the work’s superficial approach to complex problems. Moreover, he ignores the Belgian Congo, which provides an important counterexample to the assertion that colonial armies were highly respected.

The single map is of no use in elucidating the text and is at least a decade out of date: Eritrea is not represented; Burkina Faso is misrepresented as “Burkina” and the Côte d’Ivoire as the “Ivory Coast”; and the boundary between Togo and Ghana is missing. The book’s one redeeming feature is its bibliography. Otherwise, the military professional who seeks to understand the basics of Africa’s security situation will have to go elsewhere.

Col Bryant P. Shaw, PhD, USAF, Retired
Troy University

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.