Doing Violence to Ethnography: A Response to Catherine Besteman's "Representing Violence and 'Othering' Somalia"

Rethinking resistance: revolt and violence in African history

“…French troops retaliated by laying waste the area surrounding the scene of the Johnsons' murder, burning houses and killing people more or less randomly in the belief that severe punishment would prevent any repetition. 1 Nevertheless, throughout the following weeks there were reports from many parts of central Madagascar of local disputes of various Ellis sorts getting out of control, fights breaking out at markets, unpopular village officials being attacked and church buildings being damaged. In many places there were reports of exceptionally serious raids by cattle rustlers, sometimes in bands hundreds strong, and some including Malagasy army deserters with breech-loading rifles.…”

“…1 Many historians and anthropologists have taken an interest in the events that raised so much controversy. 2 The various interpretations have their weaknesses as they have tended to focus on a description of events, especially on political and military issues.…”

“…The underlying cause was, at least ostensibly, the search for an ideological foundation and definition of the legitimacy of the new, post-colonial polity. The revolt 1 and its failure also involved certain other dimensions that make it of more than a passing interest to observers of Africa's past and contemporary politics.…”

“…Its melody was composed and selected during a competition before independence in early 1990 and the words were added a few months later. 1 The anthem is evidence of the * I am grateful to Reinhart Koessler for his comments on the draft manuscript of this chapter. 1 These introductory lines led to some raised eyebrows and concerns among members of the white minority with regard to the extent to which the declared notion of national pride of an emerging new nation placing itself on the map of sovereign states after more than a century of foreign occupation and continued resistance, including more than two decades of an armed liberation struggle.…”

“…For almost a century, from 1779 to 1880, the region was wracked by successive outbursts of violence 118 Ross in what has been called Africa's 'Hundred Years' War'. 1 The violence varied in intensity and there were long periods of relative, even absolute, peace between those times conventionally considered to be war. Nevertheless, the threat of war, the experience of war and the recovery from war dominated the minds and lives of most of the frontier's inhabitants throughout the era, and certainly until after the end of Mlanjeni's War in 1853.…”