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9 - Terrorism in African History

from Part III - Historical Case Studies in Terrorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2021

Richard English
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
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Summary

There has been a marked increase in incidents of terrorism – and correspondingly a growth in the study of terrorism – in Africa over the last twenty years or so. Yet a brief survey of the phenomenon in historical context reveals that terrorism in Africa has long been both complex and prevalent. There is clearly novelty, in the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, in terms of external linkages, ideologies and technology at terrorists’ disposal; this is true of both state and non-state actors. However, it is clear enough that some patterns of terrorist activity can be discerned as flowing from Africa’s deeper past. Therefore, it is important to see terrorism, in its historical and its contemporary forms, as part of the totality of violence in Africa. Connected to that, terrorism cannot be removed from the socio-economic and political conditions within which it takes place. Africans have considerable experience of state terrorism – from the slave trade and the state-building exercises of the precolonial era, to imperial partition, to the brutal excesses of authoritarian systems in the recent past. Marginalised, subjugated or otherwise dispossessed communities have sought to curtail these projections of power and resist, using whatever tools available. Terrorism cannot be segregated from wider contingencies – most obviously, economic and political aspiration and desperation, which fundamentally shape attitudes towards human life, or more precisely the taking of it, at particular moments in time.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Clapham, C., ‘Terrorism in Africa: Problems of Definition, History and Development’, South African Journal of International Affairs 10/2 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, R. J., Warfare in African History (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012)Google Scholar
Reno, W., Warfare in Independent Africa (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rotberg, R. I. (ed.), Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa (Washington, DC, Brookings Institution Press, 2005)Google Scholar
Walter, D., Colonial Violence: European Empires and the Use of Force (London, Hurst, 2017)Google Scholar

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