Moyd 2014_Violent Intermediaries

<p>"In “Violent Intermediaries,” Michelle Moyd focuses on one particular social and professional group in colonial German East Africa, namely the askari of the <em>Schutztruppe</em>, i.e. the African soldiers of the German colonial army. As highly controversial figures, askari were and have been largely misrepresented by their contemporaries as well as by later generations. Tanzanians and Africa historians have considered them traitors, collaborators, and brutal henchmen of the colonial state, while Germans colonialists and colonial apologists have portrayed them as loyal and obedient servants in the colonial army, who famously stayed at the side of General Lettow-Vorbeck even until after World War I had officially ended. Moyd convincingly argues that both of these portrayals are misleading and superficial, and the book is an attempt to write an alternative historical account by way of conceiving of askari not only as professional soldiers but also as fathers, husbands, heads of households, and individual men with personal goals and desires that were not always congruent with colonial policies and imaginations. According to Moyd, askari soldiers joined the <em>Schutztruppe</em> and acted in highly violent ways because it helped them to establish themselves as “big men” in their social worlds, which consisted of askari villages where wives, askariboys, and other dependents lived alongside African soldiers. […]"</p><p>– Benjamin Brühwiler, Assistant in African History, University of Basel</p><p>https://www.hsozkult.de/review/id/reb-23013</p>