The Oxford Handbook of Late Colonial Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies

Since the Second World War, conflicts between insurgent groups and counter-insurgent security forces have become more deadly, while conflicts within states have been the predominant form of organized political violence worldwide. This Handbook connects ideas about contested decolonization and the insurgencies that inspired it with an analysis of patterns and singularities in the conflicts that precipitated the collapse of overseas empires. It aims to reconceptualize late colonial violence in the European overseas empires by exploring its distinctive character and the globalizing processes underpinning it.

Format: Hardback
Length: 768 pages
Publication date: 02 November 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Since the Second World War, the lethality of conflicts between insurgent groups and counter-insurgent security forces has significantly increased, while the lethality of conventional or inter-state wars has declined. For several decades, conflicts within states have been the predominant form of organized political violence globally. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have revived interest in colonial experiences of rebellion, while current Western interventions in sub-Saharan Africa have sparked accusations of militarist humanitarianism. Despite growing interest in counter-insurgency and empire, comparative research on colonial responses to insurrection and civil disorder remains sparse. Some scholars have described a "golden age of counter-insurgency" that began with Britain's declaration of a Malayan Emergency in 1948 and ended with the withdrawal of US ground troops from Vietnam in 1973. This Handbook connects ideas about contested decolonization and the insurgencies that inspired it with an analysis of patterns and singularities in the conflicts that precipitated the collapse of overseas empires. It aims to conduct a systematic study of the global effects of organized anti-colonial violence in Asia and Africa. The objective is to reconceptualize late colonial violence in the European overseas empires by exploring its distinctive character and the globalizing processes underpinning it.

Since the Second World War, the lethality of conflicts between insurgent groups and counter-insurgent security forces has significantly increased, while the lethality of conventional or inter-state wars has declined. For several decades, conflicts within states have been the predominant form of organized political violence globally. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have revived interest in colonial experiences of rebellion, while current Western interventions in sub-Saharan Africa have sparked accusations of militarist humanitarianism. Despite growing interest in counter-insurgency and empire, comparative research on colonial responses to insurrection and civil disorder remains sparse. Some scholars have described a "golden age of counter-insurgency" that began with Britain's declaration of a Malayan Emergency in 1948 and ended with the withdrawal of US ground troops from Vietnam in 1973. This Handbook connects ideas about contested decolonization and the insurgencies that inspired it with an analysis of patterns and singularities in the conflicts that precipitated the collapse of overseas empires. It aims to conduct a systematic study of the global effects of organized anti-colonial violence in Asia and Africa. The objective is to reconceptualize late colonial violence in the European overseas empires by exploring its distinctive character and the globalizing processes underpinning it.

Weight: 1490g
Dimension: 182 x 253 x 52 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198866787