Nonviolent Action

A Research Guide

Ronald M. McCarthy, Gene Sharp, Brad Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780815315773
• eBook ISBN: 9781135067533
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This comprehensive guide to research, sources, and theories about nonviolent action as a technique of struggle in social and political conficts discusses the methods and techniques used by groups in various encounters. Although violence and its causes have received a great deal of attention, nonviolent action has not received its due as an international phenomenon with a long history. An introduction that explains the theories and research used in the study provides a practical guide to this essential bibliography of English-language sources. The first part of the book covers case-study materials divided by region and subdivided by country. Within each country, materials are arranged chronologically and topically. The second major part examines the methods and theory of nonviolent action, principled nonviolence, and several closely related areas in social science, such as conflict analysis and social movements. The book is indexed by author and subject.

PART I
CASES OF
NONVIOLENT
STRUGGLE

Chapter 1
Africa and the Middle East

Section I
Africa South of the Sahara

Africa's history of nonviolent struggle disproves the idea that nonviolent action was invented in India or the West. Research on Africa shows an extensive pre-colonial repertoire of traditional methods of protest, noncooperation, and ridicule that continued to influence protest in the colonial period. During and after the colonial period, African societies introduced labor strikes and boycotts, student protests, noncooperation by officials, and many other methods in their struggles with colonial and indigenous powers. The level of political innovation of methods is high, for example in NIGERIA, where market women conducted a campaign of tax refusal against the British and especially in SOUTH AFRICA'S century-long struggle against the racial system in that country. It was also in SOUTH AFRICA that Mohandas K. Gandhi, the leader of the twentieth-century independence movement in India, began his experiments in nonviolent politics. Gandhi's example and ideas continued to influence African independence movements into the 1960s, sometimes under the concept of “positive action.”

African countries have also been the target of international political and economic sanctions. One example of this is RHODESIA (ZIMBABWE), where the European minority government was the object of relatively unsuccessful sanctions, and another is SOUTH AFRICA. Likewise, nonviolent action has been used in Africa in struggles that relied largely on violence and guerrilla forces, such as in MOZAMBIQUE.

1. Friedland, William H., Unions, Labor, and Industrial Relations in Africa: An Annotated Bibliography. 159 pp. Ithaca NY: Center for International Studies, Cornell Univ., 1965. (Partially annotatedbibliography of journal articles on labor issues. See subject index under disputes and strikes. Index.)

2. Schlachter, GailA., ed., Africa since 1914: A Historical Bibliography. 402 pp. Santa Barbara CA, Denver CO, and Oxford: ABC-Clio Information Services, 1985. (Consult index under boycotts, demonstrations, general strikes, independence movements, political protest, strikes, students, and names of countries. Index.)

STUDIES

3. Beshir, MohamedOmer, Revolution and Nationalism in the Sudan. 2nd ed. 327 pp. London: Rex Collings, 1977. Orig. publ. 1974. (Limited discussion of nonviolent action in connection with a revolt in 1924 in ch. 4, 5. See also a student strike, pp. 115–117, and labor conflict, for example, pp. 190–92, 212–16. Illustrations. Index. Bibliography.)

4. de Braganca, Aquino, and Immanuel Wallerstein, eds., The African Liberation Reader. Vol. 2, The National Liberation Movements. 196 pp. London: Zed Press, 1982. (Although most chapters examine the armed struggle, ch. 2 contains statements on the role of nonviolent action, pp. 34–36, 40–42, and on its rejection by the movements, pp. 43–47, 53–65.)

5. Bunker, StephenG., Peasants Against the State: The Politics of Market Control in Bugisu, Uganda, 1900–1983. 284 pp. Urbana and Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1987. (Case study of state control and coercion and how coffee-growers of the Bugisu district reacted. Shows the role of indigenous elites [“ascendant groups”] in mobilizing the peasantry and their opportunism in exploiting the privilege they gained. The coffee-growers tried various means to retain control over the market, supported by threats to hold crops off the market or even to abandon their plantations in retaliation against state intervention, a threat partly implemented during the Amin regime. Summary of the politics and economics of bargainingthrough threat appears in pp. 227–40 and the conclusion. Appendixes. Index. Bibliography.)

6. Cronje, Gillian, and Suzanne Cronje, The Workers of Namibia. 135 pp. London: International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1979. (See ch. 7, 8 on a major strike in 1971–72 suppressed by South Africa and efforts to cause inter-ethnic conflict. Photos. Index.)

7. Crummey, Donald, ed., Banditry, Rebellion, and Social Protest in Africa. 404 pp. London: James Currey; Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1986. (Writings in the “primitive rebels” tradition and related approaches. See Leroy Vail and Landig White, “Forms of Resistance: Songs and Perceptions of Power in Colonial Mozambique,” ch. 9 on protest and organizing songs; Julia Wells, “The War of Degradation: Black Women's Struggle Against Orange Free State Pass Laws, 1913,” ch. 11 on women's “unprecedented passive resistance campaign”; and Stephen G. Bunker, “Property, Protest, and Politics in Bugisu, Uganda,” ch. 12. Illustrations. Index.)

8. Fawzi, Saad EdDin, The Labour Movement in the Sudan 1946–1955. 189 pp. London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1957. (History of Sudanese labor movement from 1946 to 1955 with accounts of marches and strikes. Index.)

9. Friedland, WilliamH., Vuta Kamba: The Development of Trade Unions in Tanganyika. 293 pp. Stanford CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford Univ., 1969. (Study of militant trade unions and their motto vuta Kamba [strike]. Several strikes and boycotts discussed. See esp. pp. 101–9 on protest and representation and index under boycotts and strikes. Photos. Index. Bibliography.)

10. Gray, Richard, The Two Nations: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. 373 pp. London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 1960. (Background and developments, 1918–53. See part 2, ch. 5; esp. pp. 290–94, 316–36; on strikes in Southern Rhodesia [Zimbabwe] and pp. 342–55 on political organization in Nyasaland [Malawi]. Bibliography.)

11. Grillo, R.D., Race, Class, and Militancy: An African Trade Union, 1939–1965. 159 pp. New York and London: Chandler, 1974. (Ethnography of African railroad union and its “militancy.” See discussion of links among militancy, confrontation, and strikes throughout, esp. ch. 3, 5. Index. Bibliography.)

12. Gutkind, Peter C.W., Robin Cohen, and Jean Copan, eds., African Labor History. 280 pp. Beverly Hills CA: Sage Publications, 1978. (Essays by various authors on strikes, labor unions, and decolonization in different African contexts. See esp. Gerard Althaber, “Strikes, Urban Mass Action and Political Change, Tananarive 1972,” ch. 8.)

13. Hanna, William John, University Students and African Politics. 296 pp. New York and London: Africana, 1975. (See esp. William John Hanna, “Students, Universities and Political Outcomes,” ch. 1; William John Hanna, Judith Lynne Hanna, and Vivian Zeitz Sauer, “The Active Minority,” ch. 4; and William John Hanna, “Systematic Constraints and Individual Activism,” ch. 10. Index.)

14. Isaacman, Allen, and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982. 235 pp. Boulder CO :Westview Press; Hampshire, England: Gower, 1983. (Brief references to a variety of nonviolent actions in resistance to colonial rule and liberation, pp. 61–84. Illustrations. Photos. Index. Bibliography.)

15. Jones, Griff, Britain and Nyasaland. 315 pp. London: Allen & Unwin, 1964. (See pp. 149–50, 177–89, 203, 218, 221 on African noncooperation and resistance to Federation, and pp. 231–65 on “The Emergency” and its aftermath.)

16. Liebenow, J. Gus, Liberia: The Quest for Democracy. 336 pp. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 1987. (Political history of modern Liberia. See esp. pp. 171–78 for demonstrations that erupted into the Rice Riots of 1979, and the subsequent founding of MOJA [Movement for Justice in Africa], a political organization devoted to direct action. Index.)

17. Maguire, G. Andrew, Toward “Uhuru” in Tanzania: The Politics of Participation. 432 pp. London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969. (Study of the development of support for independence in one region; examples of protest and noncooperation in parts 2, 3. Consult index under civil disobedience and Geita crisis as well as names of organizations. Index. Bibliography.)

18. Mazrui, Ali A.,ed., The Warrior Tradition in Modern Africa. 260 pp. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1977. (See Ali A. Mazrui, “Gandhi, Marx, and the Warrior Tradition in African Resistance: Towards Androgynous Liberation,” pp. 179–96.)

19. Middlemas, Keith, Cabora Bassa: Engineering and Politics in Southern Africa. 367 pp. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1975. (See pp. 167–69 for brief account of anti-colonial protest boycott in Germany against participation in building of a hydroelectric dam in Portuguese Mozambique. Consult index on evasion of Rhodesia economic sanctions. Photos. Index. Bibliography.)

20. Ohaegbulam, Festus Ugboaja, Nationalism in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa. 176 pp. Washington DC: University Press of America, 1977. (See ch. 4 on resistance to colonialism.)

21. Pieterse, Cosmo, and Donald Munro, Protest & Conflict in African Literature. 127 pp. London, Ibadan, and Nairobi: Heinemann, 1969. (See esp. Dennis Brutus, “Protest Against Apartheid,” pp. 93–100 and Louis James, “The Protest Tradition,” pp. 109–24.)

22. Rotberg, Robert I., and Ali A. Mazrui, eds., Protest and Power in Black Africa. 1274 pp. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970. (Chapters on resistance, rebellion, protest, and coups from 1879 to 1969. See esp. Dharam P. Ghai, “The Bugandan Trade Boycott: A Study in Tribal, Political, and Economic Nationalism,” pp. 755–70; Robert Melson, “Nigerian Politics and the General Strike of 1964,” pp. 771–87; and an assessment of nonviolent struggle in South Africa by Leo Kuper, “Nonviolence Revisited,” pp. 788–804. Index. Bibliography.)

23. Sandbrook, Richard, and Robin Cohen, eds., The Development of an African Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action. 336 pp. Toronto and Buffalo: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1975. (Brief coverage of strikes and labor action in several African nations, including Kenya, pp. 31–44; Tanganyika [Tanzania], pp. 57–69; Rhodesia [Zimbabwe], pp. 74–77; Guinea, pp. 101–9; Nigeria, pp. 153–58, 173–76; South Africa and Namibia, pp. 215–32; and Ghana, pp. 262–65. Index. Bibliography.)

24. Scott, Roger, The Development of Trade Unions in Uganda. 207 pp. Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House, 1966. (History of organizing and action by Ugandan trade unions, with accounts throughout of strikes and other actions. Illustrations. Bibliography.)

25. Sithole, Ndabaningi, African Nationalism. 2d ed. 196 pp. London, New York, Nairobi, Ibadan: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968 [orig. publ. 1959]. (See ch. 11, 16 on the actions of nationalists and white responses. Photos.)

26. “Sudan's Revolutionary Spring” MERIP Reports 15 (1985): 2–28. (Articles on Sudanese 1985 rebellion, which included both violent and nonviolent actions. See, e.g., pp. 4–6 on demonstrations and general strike and article by Abbas Abdelkarim, A...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• How to Use This Book
• Authors' Note
• Nonviolent Action
• Part I: Cases Of Nonviolent Struggle
• Part II: Studies Ofnonviolent Action And Related Fields
• Subject Index
• Author Index