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.
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 Europe's Imperial States, 1918-1975 (2015).
Gareth Curless is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, UK.
1. The Colonial Prose of Counter-Insurgency (Kim Wagner, Queen Mary University, London, UK)
2. Analysing 'British Ways' of Counterinsurgency: The Malayan Emergency As a Case-study in Changing Phases in COIN Strategy (Karl Hack, Open University, UK)
3. From Sétif to Moramanga: Identifying Insurgents and Ascribing Guilt in the French Colonial Postwar (Martin Thomas, University of Exeter, UK)
4. ''More Troops for the Pacification": The Plantation Counterinsurgency in the Netherlands East Indies, 1948-1950 (Roel Frakking, European University Institute, Italy)
5. David Galula and Maurice Papan: A Watershed in COIN Strategy in de Gaulle's Paris (Emmanuel Blanchard, Université de Versailles, France and Neil MacMaster, University of East Anglia, UK)
6. A Repressive Developmentalism: The Portuguese Imperial Endgame (1940-1975) (Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
7. Subverting the State: Counterinsurgency and the Cyprus Bar Council, 1955-59 (Brian Drohan, University of North Carolina, USA)
8. Strategic Villages: Forced Relocation, Counterinsurgency and Social Engineering in Kenya and Algeria, 1952-1962 (Moritz Feichtinger, University of Bern, Switzerland)
9. Labour Protest and Colonial State Violence: Contested Decolonisation in British Guiana and Singapore (Gareth Curless, University of Exeter, UK)
10. Shadow Warriors: The Phoenix Program and American Clandestine Policing in Vietnam (Jeremy Kuzmarov, University of Tulsa, USA)
11. South Africa's Counterinsurgencies: The Cold War and White Supremacy, 1961-89 (David Anderson, Warwick University, UK)
12. The Crater Effect': Aden's Resonances in the Early Northern Ireland Troubles (Huw Bennett, Aberystwyth University, UK)
13. Rebel Sanctuaries and Late Colonial Conflicts: The Case of Federal Germany during Algeria's War of Independence, 1954-1962 (Mathilde von Bülow, University of Glasgow, UK)
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