Decolonization and Conflict: Colonial Comparisons and Legacies

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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 decolonisations violence exist. Decolonization and Conflict brings together expertise on a variety of different cases to offer new perspectives on the colonial conflicts that engulfed Europes 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.

Reviews

Oers a valuable tour dhorizon of emerging scholarship ... [Includes] informative and thought-provoking case studies. * Journal of Contemporary History *
In this collection of essays, Thomas and Curless have brought together some of the best historians of 20th century imperialism to discuss the relationship between warfare and the end of empire. The result is a provocative and enlightening book which offers insights into some of the most important topics in the field including imperial policing, modernisation, gender and the colonial legacy. It marks a major advance in our understanding of the wars of European decolonisation. * Spencer Mawby, University of Nottingham, UK *
This is a unique volume spanning an impressive range of insurgency situations. It marks a forceful intervention in recent debates regarding decolonization era conflicts, offering fascinating case studies and fresh historiographical and intellectual perspectives. * Ashley Jackson, King's College London, UK *
Martin Thomas and Gareth Curless have produced a uniformly outstanding anthology that will long remain the last word on comparative colonialism between 1920 and 1970. The book demolishes the claims of both imperial apologists, and rosy post-colonial historiography to point convincingly to the affects of colonial violence, hypocrisy, and militarized policing on both the post-colonial state, and the former colonial metropole. This book makes depressing, but illuminating reading for those wishing to understand, for example, why police departments in Europe and America storm immigrant and minority neighborhoods with body armor, automatic weapons, and armored vehicles in the new century. * Michael Provence, University of California, San Diego, USA *

Author Bio

Martin Thomas is Professor of Imperial History at the University of Exeter, UK, where he is Director of the Centre for the Study of War, State and Society. His recent publications include Violence and Colonial Order (2012), Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire (2014) and he is co-author of Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europes Imperial States, 1918-1975 (2015). Gareth Curless is an ESRC Future Research Leader (2013-16) and a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, UK. He is currently working on a monograph that investigates the relationship between labour unrest and decolonization in the British Empire.