Introduction - I THE PRECOLONIAL CONTEXT & THE AFRO-EUROPEAN ENCOUNTER Indigenous polities & intersocietal relations in precolonial Guinea-Bissau - Overview of Portuguese-African political relations & warfare 1446-1890 - African kingdoms at war, changing Fulbe alliances & Portuguese aggression 1840s-1910 II VANQUISHED STATE, TERRORIST STATE The vanquished state: multiethnic resistance & the great siege of Bissau, 1890s-1909 - The terrorist state: conquest through mercenary pillage III THE 'SETTLED' COLONIAL PERIOD Military resistance to state building, 1923-1950 - Sociocultural aspects of a strong rural civil society, 1920-1960 - The colonial state & the informal economic sector IV WAR & THE POSTCOLONIAL STATE Rural civil society's multiethnic mobilization for independence - Postcolonial legacies: weak state, strong civil society - The postcolonial state, economy & renewed war - Conclusions.
Joshua B. Forrest is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont.
...a readable and thought-provoking book - Lars Rudebeck in
*AFRICAN AFFAIRS*
...unique in its scope and depth. By putting an otherwise much
neglected country and its chequered history on the map Forrest has
done Guinea Bissau justice. Above all, Forrest has correctly
focused upon the remarkable feats of the country's different
communities and the way in which they challenged, and still
challenge, outside intervention (by incorporating some outsiders
and related phenomena), while retaining their autonomy in the
process. Forrest's study exemplifies how productive the combination
of primary and secondary sources and the creative use of modern
political theory can be for a comparative analysis of the
resilience of African societies. His approach provides much food
for thought in regard to political change, a subject that has
(again) been placed high on the African agenda since multiparty
elections became a major issue. We hope that the author's effort
may serve as an inspiration to scholars who are prepared to
retrieve forgotten or neglected corners of Africa, and to reassess
historical and political premises by delving deep into its distant
and more recent past in a comparative perspective.
*H-NET REVIEWS*
...an intriguing and greatly commendable case study that - if only
implicitly - makes a valuable contribution to the arguments
advanced in the recent literature on postcolonial studies. -
*JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES*
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