Decolonization and Conflict

Colonial Comparisons and Legacies

Martin Thomas, Gareth Curless, Martin Thomas, Gareth Curless

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781474250375
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474250405
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Insurgency-based irregular warfare typifies armed conflict in the post-Cold War age. For some years now, western and other governments have struggled to contend with ideologically driven guerrilla movements, religiously inspired militias, and systematic targeting of civilian populations. Numerous conflicts of this type are rooted in experiences of empire breakdown. Yet few multi-empire studies of decolonisation's violence exist. Decolonization and Conflict brings together expertise on a variety of different cases to offer new perspectives on the colonial conflicts that engulfed Europe's empires after 1945.

The contributors analyse multiple forms of colonial counter-insurgency from the military engagement of anti-colonial movements to the forced removal of civilian populations and the application of new doctrines of psychological warfare. Contributors to the collection also show how insurgencies, their propaganda and methods of action were inherently transnational and inter-connected. The resulting study is a vital contribution to our understanding of contested decolonization. It emphasises the global connections at work and reveals the contemporary resonances of both anti-colonial insurgencies and the means devised to counter them. It is essential reading for students and scholars of empire, decolonization, and asymmetric warfare.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Decolonization, Conflict and Counter-insurgency
• Chapter 1 Seeing Like a Soldier: The Amritsar Massacre and the Politics of Military History1
• Chapter 2 Confronting Revolt in France’s Interwar Empire: Counter-insurgency in 1920s Morocco and Syria
• Chapter 3 The Plantation as Counter-insurgency Tool: Indonesia 1900–50
• Chapter 4 The Sten Gun is Mightier than the Pen: The Failure of Colonial Police Reform after 1945
• Chapter 5 ‘A Litigious Island’: Law, Rights and Counter-insurgency during the Cyprus Emergency
• Chapter 6 ‘A Battle in the Field of Human Relations’: The Official Minds of Repressive Development in Portuguese Angola
• Chapter 7 Strategic Villages: Forced Relocation, Counter-insurgency and Social Engineering in Kenya and Algeria, 1952–621
• Chapter 8 Reconsidering Women’s Roles in the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, 1952–60
• Chapter 9 The Art of Counter-insurgency: Phase Analysis with Primary Reference to Malaya (1948–60), and Secondary Reference to Kenya (1952–60)
• Chapter 10 Rebel Sanctuaries and Late Colonial Conflict: The Case of West Germany during Algeria’s War of Independence, 1954–62
• Chapter 11 David Galula and Maurice Papon: A Watershed in COIN Strategy in de Gaulle’s Paris
• Chapter 12 Escaping the Empire’s Shadow: British Military Thinking about Insurgency on the Eve of the Northern Ireland Troubles1
• Chapter 13 Shadow Warriors: The Phoenix Program and American Clandestine Policing in Vietnam
• Index