This chapter describes the patterns of war in ancient Greece. Most ancient military campaigns were of relatively short duration because of the undeveloped nature of ancient supply procurement and the limitations of ancient transportation. Opposing parties often engaged in pitched battle where attackers went to the plains because it provided the most abundant sources of forage, while defenders often marched out to save their farms and livelihoods from devastation. This chapter also considers the claim that the farmers of the phalanx ensured that ideological constraints were placed on hoplite warfare.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the developments in warfare in Greece from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the classical period. It has described the Greek concept of war and peace, the patterns of military campaigns and the battlefield engagements during the age of the hoplite. This volume has chronicled the development of siege and naval warfare and explained the connection of war with the economy and religion.

This chapter analyzes ancient Greek warfare in economic terms. Economic motivations can play a part in the reasons for waging war and on the course campaigns take. Also economic resources are consumed by war, but they are often acquired through its prosecution. This chapter examines the influence of agricultural practices on the objective, methods and timing of warfare and discusses how wars can stimulate production in specific sectors, most obviously the manufacture of weapons, warships and other paraphernalia of war. It relates how some people made a living, even grew wealthy, from servicing the military needs of states and individuals and explores the connection between war and the mercenary market.

Chapter 2 tells the story of how ethnicity came to be known in Kenya through territory, providing an overview of the history of ethnic territorial boundary drawing from its inception with the first colonial administration, to today. The principal motivation for the earliest hard boundaries between purportedly homogenous ethnic groups was to free up land for white settlement and capital accumulation. After independence, the administrative boundaries of provinces and districts were deliberately retained, and ethnic patterns of land settlement were engineered. With multi-party elections in the 1990s, these established ‘ethnic territories’ motivated electoral gerrymandering, the most significant postcolonial driver of ethnic territorialisation. All these practices cemented a profound connection between land, boundaries, identity, rights, power, and security. I show how the 2010 constitution worked within this paradigm, too, but in novel ways that moved toward vagueness to manage the inflammatory, grievance-based politics tethered to boundary drawing in Kenya. In doing so, I show how ethnic territorial population concentration today is less certain than commonly imagined.

This chapter examines the enumeration of ethnic populations in the census, where ‘the tribe question’ has been included since 1948. I trace its evolution – from its origins as self-evidently important with a self-evident list of groups – through numerous changes up to 2019. The powerful social imaginary of ‘42+ tribes’ comes from the 1969 census, despite the numerous changes since then. I show how changes in classifications over time, as well as the way they have been used and narrated by the state, reveal the multiple political purposes of classifying and counting ethnicity. In the colonial period, this centred on ethnic population distribution to support indirect rule via ethnicity, as well as tax collection and labour control. In the postcolonial period, ethnic demographic posturing for electoral purposes or ‘the tyranny of numbers’ became a major driver of interest in ‘the tribe question’. However, since 2009, the census has also been a site of recognition for minorities and of the painting of a portrait of a nation defined by its diversity. In this chapter, I also show how the quintessentially unambiguous nature of ethnic census codes has been rendered ambiguous in useful ways.

This concluding chapter offers some final reflections on the nature of knowledge about ethnicity in Kenya. I argue that if the nature of this knowledge is purposefully vague and makes ethnic categories polyvalent, then the best way to protect against problematic uses of ethnic knowledge is vigilance. This is far less satisfying and reassuring than law or rights as a framework for governing the risks of diversity, but it is far more appropriate, and I briefly consider what this might look like. Finally, I look forward to the digitisation of Kenya’s population register and aspirations to establish a population knowledge architecture so sophisticated that it could render numerous registers interoperable and ultimately replace even the census. I reflect on the nature of ethnic classification in such an architecture and argue that it would lose all the qualities that have made it amenable to solidaristic and pluralistic purposes thus far, while amplifying all its dangers.

The only form of knowledge about ethnicity that officially and permanently attaches to individuals in Kenya is the register of citizens kept by the National Registration Bureau, which issues ID cards. In this chapter, I briefly trace the history of the ID card in colonial labour control practices (not civil registration), but focus on the deeply ambiguous role of ethnicity in registration over recent years. I show how there is a disconnect between the lack of a place for ethnicity in law or regulation surrounding IDs, yet its continued presence in practice. I then examine several cases of minority ethnic community leaders engaged in what I call ‘code seeking’, where they successfully lobbied for recognition as ‘tribes of Kenya’ as a path to securing ID cards – de facto proof of citizenship for people otherwise stateless. However, I also show that other people, in this example, the Galje’el people, a sub-clan of Somalis, have not been and likely will not be successful with this strategy. This chapter draws our attention to the benefits of both classification and vagueness, while remaining vigilant about their risks.

This chapter examines efforts to list Kenya’s ‘minorities’ and ‘marginalised communities,’ categories in the 2010 constitution entitled to affirmative action in government representation, resource distribution and public service employment. These are the first classifications with allocative consequences since colonial times. I examine how these terms are operationalised in legal cases, by government Commissions, and by civil society. I show the impossibility of arriving at a fixed list and illuminate myriad strategies for responding to competing political demands for status. These are quintessential examples of cultivated vagueness. I show how this enables both generosity in conferring special status and its application in divisive ways. I use three cases of code seeking – Nubian, Wayyu and Sakuye peoples – to further illustrate both how vague codes have become and how politically salient they are. I examine both the limits of classification in this space and explore ways to make them work to benefit marginalised people. I conclude with some alternatives to classification for remedying marginalisation.