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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Violence as politics in eastern Africa, 1940-1990: legacy, agency, contingency
Authors:Anderson, David M.
Rolandsen, Øystein H.ISNI
Year:2014
Periodical:Journal of Eastern African Studies (ISSN 1753-1063)
Volume:8
Issue:4
Pages:539-557
Language:English
Geographic terms:Northeast Africa
East Africa
Subjects:political violence
political history
1940-1949
1950-1999
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2014.949402
Abstract:This article introduces the special issue 'Politics and violence in eastern Africa: the struggles of ermerging States, c. 1940-1990'. It outlines how over the 50 years between 1940 and 1990, the countries of eastern Africa were embroiled in a range of debilitating and destructive conflicts, starting with the wars of independence, but then incorporating rebellion, secession and local insurrection as the Cold War replaced colonialism. The articles in the issue illustrate how significant, widespread and dramatic this violence was. In these years, violence was used as a principal instrument in the creation and consolidation of the authority of the State, and it was also regularly and readily utilized by those who wished to challenge state authority through insurrection and secession. Why was it that eastern Africa should have experienced such extensive and intensive violence in the 50 years before 1990? Was this resort to violence a consequence of imperial rule, the legacy of oppressive colonial domination under a coercive and non-representative State system? Did essential contingencies such as the Cold War provoke and promote the use of violence? Or was it a choice made by Africans themselves and their leaders, a product of their own agency? This speical issue focuses on these turbulent decades, exploring the principal conflicts in six key countries - Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Tanzania. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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