AnthonyBoscia
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Ajidica
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Sorry, can't help you there. Can't think of any book on the subject I've read and none of the authors that appear when I google "books on Dunkirk" leap out at me.
Now, if she wants to read about the fight to preserve white rule in Africa, I got her covered!
Now, if she wants to read about the fight to preserve white rule in Africa, I got her covered!
Lexicus
Deity
Darn
I might be interested in this from a world-building point of view. Is this about Rhodesia or more expansive like the Rif, Mau-Mau, and the like?
Ajidica
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More about the Congo Crisis and Katanga. I have a bunch of books on my list relating to the Portuguese Colonial Wars on my list though.
Katanga 1960-1963: Mercenaries, Spies, and the African Nation That Waged War on the World by Christopher Othen.
Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo 1960-1965 by Lise Namikas.
Namikas is a more scholarly book while Othen's is more focused on the memories and recollections of various participants involved in the secession of Katanga and the multiple UN operations to end the Katanga secession.
But if you are looking at general Cold War Africa, I would recommend either The Global Cold War by Odd Arne Westad (certain chapters) or Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa (or The State of Africa, one is a reprint of the other).
Katanga 1960-1963: Mercenaries, Spies, and the African Nation That Waged War on the World by Christopher Othen.
Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo 1960-1965 by Lise Namikas.
Namikas is a more scholarly book while Othen's is more focused on the memories and recollections of various participants involved in the secession of Katanga and the multiple UN operations to end the Katanga secession.
But if you are looking at general Cold War Africa, I would recommend either The Global Cold War by Odd Arne Westad (certain chapters) or Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa (or The State of Africa, one is a reprint of the other).
The problem there is making sure you find a book that differentiates between the often overlapping goals of "maintaining white rule" and "fighting communism" where it needs to.... which often especially these days easily get conflated with some even going as far as defending communism because it's main enemies in Africa were/are white. My rule of thumb tends to be seeing which books truthfully acknowledge white/black cooperation without the mandatory ideological frothing about how they were self-loathing traitors or some such nonsense. There are interestingly enough still a few blocks of black anti-marxist holdouts but large parts of Africa is currently some form of communist.
Koevoet! by Jim Hooper is the only book about that I can remember atm, an American journalist was allowed to embed with a para-military policing unit in Namibia at a time where all foreign journalists were viewed with suspicion.... was an entertaining read if nothing else.
Koevoet! by Jim Hooper is the only book about that I can remember atm, an American journalist was allowed to embed with a para-military policing unit in Namibia at a time where all foreign journalists were viewed with suspicion.... was an entertaining read if nothing else.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Wait, what? Where?
Almost all the black groups fighting the colonial powers during the so called de-colonisation of Africa were some form of Marxist/Communist. The non-marxist groups that won power were then in turn attacked by the Marxists and this pattern repeating across the continent is why Africa is permanently in "conflict". Basically the mentality is one of permanent violent revolution, it must also be stressed that most of these Marxists are not on the intellectual level of European or American Marxists. For them the big draw to the ideology was "power, forever", so almost none of the countries that went full-on communist when they finally stabilized. Instead the leadership usually degraded into crony capitalism. Basically they are not "communist" communist but mostly some corrupted form, similarly you will be hard pressed to find a fully capitalist African country.
In SA for example atm the ruling party is attempting to establish a "communist utopia" by nationalizing almost all the farm land and hoping no one notices its intentions while it's opposition keeps agitating for a people's revolution to "get back the land" from the "thieving whites".... both groups having strong Marxist ideology and connections to the SACP which never died. The second group is also agitating for nationalizing the central bank.
Another broad example is the tendency of "post-colonial" countries to be called "democratic republics" while being neither democratic nor republican.
The one book on this I remember atm is "Government by Deception - Jan Lamprecht" written before the guy went off a obvious deep end, though I doubt you will be able to find a copy.
In SA for example atm the ruling party is attempting to establish a "communist utopia" by nationalizing almost all the farm land and hoping no one notices its intentions while it's opposition keeps agitating for a people's revolution to "get back the land" from the "thieving whites".... both groups having strong Marxist ideology and connections to the SACP which never died. The second group is also agitating for nationalizing the central bank.
Another broad example is the tendency of "post-colonial" countries to be called "democratic republics" while being neither democratic nor republican.
The one book on this I remember atm is "Government by Deception - Jan Lamprecht" written before the guy went off a obvious deep end, though I doubt you will be able to find a copy.
The caveat being that a lot of these dictators are ideologically loyal towards each other, the African Union was born partially to expel western political influence and partially to keep the clicke together. Communist lite is still communist partly because it's an ideology where capitalism (still the big enemy) is a economic system. The raw Marxist group-thinking is still strong with the aptly called dictators, Stalin & Mao were a dictators too mind you. A common fallacy is that "dictator" means right-wing even though most dictators in the last hundred years were left-wing....
A funny example being the minor race riots a few years back in SA which were re-marketed as "regrettable xenophobic violence" where union leaders implored the natives to stop attacking foreign blacks because "it's the capitalists that are the real enemy", the non-SA blacks are in their (the union leaders) thinking comrades in arms in a struggle against capitalism that never ended... though as I said their version of communism is mostly a rather low-brow affair with a handful of intellectuals. In the mind of the "African Marxist" Africa is a potential communist superstate with the African Union being the pre-cursor... though for half of them that utopian promise too could just be blowing smoke up the behinds of their voting blocks while they materially entrench themselves. One such smoke blower was ousted from office in SA recently with the guy ousting him seeming to be a "true believer" so to speak.
A funny example being the minor race riots a few years back in SA which were re-marketed as "regrettable xenophobic violence" where union leaders implored the natives to stop attacking foreign blacks because "it's the capitalists that are the real enemy", the non-SA blacks are in their (the union leaders) thinking comrades in arms in a struggle against capitalism that never ended... though as I said their version of communism is mostly a rather low-brow affair with a handful of intellectuals. In the mind of the "African Marxist" Africa is a potential communist superstate with the African Union being the pre-cursor... though for half of them that utopian promise too could just be blowing smoke up the behinds of their voting blocks while they materially entrench themselves. One such smoke blower was ousted from office in SA recently with the guy ousting him seeming to be a "true believer" so to speak.
Ajidica
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In many cases the two were the same. Rhodesia, Portugal, and South Africa (and Katanga, but Katanga is weird) explicitly linked majority rule with communism and painted anyone who thought majority rule might be good as a "communist". It would at times go the other way, with the Baluba refugees outside Elisabethville naming the roads in their camp "Khruschev Street" and that because Khruschev, a communist, fought against white rule, and the refugees fought against white rule, communism meant fighting against white rule.
(Which, given that the communists were often the only ones doing more than saying "and that's terrible" as South African security services gunned down children one can see their point easily.)
Vaguely socialist with a heavy bent toward state interventionism was seen as the way of the future, in Africa and in Europe. Europe was dominated by Social/Christian Democrats with dirigisme economic planning. That newly independent countries might want to copy that is hardly surprising.
That's really all I can say. Even a brief perusal of post-Independence African history would show that is both straight up wrong, and utterly fails to explain why conflict has been so endemic in Africa. The largest conflict in African history, the complete disintegration of Zaire in "Africa's World War" had nothing to do with Communism or Marxists and everything to do with sordid little dictatorships doing their damned to loot a corpse.
EDIT: Sorry, didn't see your post Arakhor. Got bumped to the next page.
Surely ethnic divisions and tensions, partly exacerbated by the history of colonialism and post-colonialism that forced different groups together, is a far more obvious candidate for "main cause of African conflicts". For example, two of the most iconic and brutal such events, the Biafran War and Rwandan civil war and genocide, had nothing to do with communism either. I think the same is largely true of the Sudanese civil wars, which if they were about ideology at all were more about Islam than communism.
Thanks.
Lexicus
Deity
http://asianhistory.oxfordre.com/vi...0277727.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277727-e-237
This is a very good article on central Asian horse nomads, with a long list of references and Further Reading at the end that may be useful or interesting.
This is a very good article on central Asian horse nomads, with a long list of references and Further Reading at the end that may be useful or interesting.
Looking for stuff on the Outremer, specifically ideology, society, and maybe some daily life.
EDIT: I'm currently reading Runciman's history and I can already see some howlers. Which parts of his work are considered still accurate/useful today?
EDIT: I'm currently reading Runciman's history and I can already see some howlers. Which parts of his work are considered still accurate/useful today?
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Lexicus
Deity
I've just started reading Volker Ullrich's biography of Hitler (translated by Jefferson Chase), which is the first of two parts, though as far as I can tell the second part is not published yet. I'm hoping it will be by the time I finish the book, it's a page-turner and I stayed up later than I should have last night because of that.
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