A Violent History

Know about the book -

A Violent History is written by Giacomo Macola and published by Leuven University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 9462704511 (ISBN 10) and 9789462704510 (ISBN 13).

Since the early nineteenth century, political and military violence has played an exceptionally significant role in the territory corresponding to the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. By emphasising the periodic re-occurrence of “warlordism” and the economy of plunder that characterises it, Giacomo Macola offers new analytical tools to interpret the history of the societies of the Congo Basin over the past two hundred years. In the concluding chapters, the author dwells on more recent events, detailing the collapse of Mobutu’s Zaire, the “Great African War” and the reasons for the continuing armed instability in the east of the country. Supplementing analyses of the contemporary dimension of African conflicts, Macola makes a case for the enduring importance of studying precolonial history.