User:Indy beetle/sandbox/Writing about Africa

Writing about Africa

Coverage of African military history is lacking on Wikipedia when compared to its Western counterparts. Much remains to be written about African history in general and military history in particular. There is a wide variety of content that can be curated and improved under this topic, allowing for an editor to tackle one of many subjects of their choosing. African military history may seem less accessible at first, but once one is familiarized with a subject and has established solid avenues for obtaining sources, writing about the genre becomes less daunting. All articles that fall in this category can be tagged under the African military history task force on their respective talk pages by the checking the task force within the Military history project template. The Wikitext will read as {{WikiProject Military History|African-task-force=yes}}.

Finding and using sources

"African military history has only recently come into its own as an acknowledged and viable academic field of considerable variety, scope and sophistication."

Historian John Laband, 2017

Do not be surprised if source material seems hard to come by. African historiography is lacking in general. This is largely due to historical trends—few specialized academics, lack of funding for research, disinterest in a "continent without history"—but the field is now growing and racing to catch up.

Older African military histories, such as they exist, tend to focus on the activities of European empires and colonial conflicts. These are useful but limited in scope and perspective, generally discussing the progress of campaigns and the activities and attitudes of the European belligerents. Mainstream historians have broadly written about the impact of World War I and World War II on Africa. Political scientists have been writing detailed analyses of modern African states and their armies since the 1960s. These can include great detail on the status of armies at given times, but are usually tailored to civil-military relations, the influence of the army in regimes, the political activities of soldiers, the occurrence of military coups, etc. They usually do not devote much time to the particulars of military capability, tactics and strategy, or battles and wars. The lack of dedicated history literature has led the lions' share of post-colonial conflicts to be academically written as "warless wars", with every aspect of certain conflicts explored in detail (such as related diplomacy, propaganda, economics, international legal matters, etc.) except, crucially, how they were fought on the ground.

Since the 2010s, African military history has matured into a more well-established discipline, with more focus on the impact of war on society. There now exists at least one specialized journal devoted to the subject, the Journal of African Military History (ISSN: 2468-0966), which was launched in 2017. The British publisher Helion & Company has also released numerous books under its Africa@War series, covering 20th and 21st century African conflicts. The modern discipline tends to favor colonial and postcolonial conflicts. Some coverage of precolonial wars may be found in more generic works of history.

Memoirs of African military figures can sometimes be found. They predominate in some areas, particularly in the written works of white Rhodesians and South Africans concerning the Apartheid-era conflicts of the mid-to-late 20th century in Southern Africa, such as the Rhodesian Bush War. Memoirs, autobiographies, and other works written by the participants in conflicts blur the line between primary and secondary sources and should be used with great care to account for bias. State media and newspapers proliferate the African continent, and will release material pertaining to ongoing conflicts and/or do occasional retrospectives on past wars. These accounts may seek to demonize the military activities of previous regimes and/or justify the actions of incumbent ones. Use such sources with care and always be ready to attribute contentious claims in-text. The same follows for official publications of European colonial administrations in Africa. Academic sources are almost always preferable to works produced by people or institutions who have a stake in the matters about which they write.

Most African states are home to at least one national private newspaper with an online presence. These can be useful when looking for material pertaining to ongoing conflicts, changes in military command or policy, as well as retrospectives on past wars and interviews with veterans and retired commanders. Continental/regional news publications, Western press agencies, and/or United Nations-sponsored media will often produce reporting online that covers African conflicts.

While English literature predominates African historiography, French language sources are also common. Depending on the subject about which you are writing, it may help to look for sources in Portuguese, German, Italian, Arabic, Amharic, or Swahili. Online translators such as Google translate are helpful in deciphering non-English sources. The quality of their translations is quite good for European languages, while translations for African languages such as Swahili and Kinyarwanda tend to be less precise.

Things to avoid

• Some distinguished Western news publications and organizations, such as The New York Times, Time, Reuters, and the Associated Press, have been covering events in Africa for decades. While most post-Cold War coverage of Africa is professional and reliable, the more dated material can be imbued with a sense of sensationalism, geopolitical partisanship, paternalism, and/or racism. These works include important details that can improve an article, but should be used with great care.
  • For Cold War-era events, be prepared to see a disproportionate amount of space in a news article devoted to what the United States, Soviet Union, or the People's Republic of China think of a conflict or speculation on their involvement. When possible, it's good practice to cross reference with more modern academic sources to gauge whether it is WP:DUE to add the dispositions of the Western and Eastern powers. Some African conflicts can be accurately characterised as proxy wars, while others mostly revolved around local factors.
  • Be wary of talk of "tribes" and "tribal conflict"—what a dated source may be referring to is something more akin to ethnic groups and ethnic conflict. Similarly, bands of "armed tribesmen", which conjures a derogatory image of spearchucking savages, more often than not refers to what in the Western world would be characterised as a militia.
• Cannibalism has occurred and continues to occur in African conflicts, but it helps to search for claims of this activity in more recent scholarly material and, when such cross-referencing is not possible, be cautious not to overplay their instance and/or attribute in-text to the source making such claims. This goes for generic claims of brutality, atrocities, and human rights violations.
• 20th and 21st century African affairs has been marked by outside interest and occasional intervention. This brings charges of imperialism, neocolonialism, and other similar forms of foreign subversion, both in the media and in academia. Sometimes, in the pursuit of denouncing perceived intrusiveness and breaches of sovereignty for their pervasiveness, these works will erase any sense of Africans' agency over their own conduct. Be sure to follow the WP:Neutral Point of View guideline and have consideration for the local interests and motivations of governments, soldiers, and rebel groups when writing about them.

Other things to note

• African military history encompasses all military activity regarding the peoples and polities connected to the continent of Africa. "African" is often exclusively associated with things related to Sub-Saharan Africa ("Black" Africa). The modern popular imagination may regard states such as Libya and Egypt as more politically and cultural attached to the Middle East; nevertheless, these are African places and thus fall under the domain of African military history.
• African places and people have undergone name changes throughout history. Some of these were due to state-sponsored initiatives in the mid-late 20th century, such as the Authenticité campaigns in in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Chad. This led to the renaming of cities and persons. When writing articles about such subjects, creating wikilinks, or looking for more sources, it helps to search for information under alternative names.
• Where two differing accounts of equal apparent repute of an event exist, do your best to balance what each says per the Neutral Point of View and DUE guidelines. In-text attribution may be useful in these instances.