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Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830-1914. By Bruce Vandervort. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1998. 288 pages. $16.95. Reviewed by Colonel Dan Henk, Director of African Studies, US Army War College.
An eminently readable and useful treatment of the military's role in the European colonization of Africa? Surely that must be an oxymoron! Yet Bruce Vandervort succeeds in presenting an interesting, sometimes fascinating, account of conflict in Africa resulting from l9th-century European colonial encroachment. He offers insights from Africa's past which are relevant to its present, and to the low-intensity conflicts of the late 20th century. He does this with judicious selectivity, avoiding tedious detail, and making generally well-supported arguments as he refutes a variety of stereotypes. He endeavors to make the account useful to the Africanist scholar, and at the same time intelligible to the general reader-no easy task, but one in which he largely succeeds.
Vandervort sets out to "examine the origins and conduct of colonial warfare in Africa from the perspectives of European invaders and the African resisters, and in the process to demonstrate the impact upon the societies, political structures, and military theory and practice of both victors and vanquished." To do this, he consults the appropriate European sources, but also makes liberal use of African scholarship....