During a university trip to Nigeria, Assoc. Professor Samuel Fury Childs Daly was struck by the number of people wearing uniforms. There were different colors and every camouflage pattern imaginable; some were conventional military uniforms, while others were bright blue or hot pink for different militias or youth groups. But everyone seemed to be wearing one.

“I got a lesson in the power of uniforms one day when someone tried to confiscate the shirt I was wearing,” recalls Daly, now an associate professor in the history department at the University of Chicago. “It was a fast-fashion garment with shoulder pads that this police officer considered too close to a military uniform. This got me thinking about militarism as a more general force in this society. »

In his new book, Soldier’s Paradise: militarism in Africa after the EmpireDaly explores the appeal of militarism as a political ideology and what happens when soldiers take power. Historian of 20th century Africa, his previous book, A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime and the Nigerian Civil Warexamined African politics as it relates to war and the military.

“A lot of people crave structure and security, and military officers understand that intuitively,” Daly said. “Military regimes offer people a firm hand which, in times of crisis or uncertainty, is actually very reassuring. There’s always the risk that a firm hand will crush you, but that’s a risk many people are willing to accept.”

Martial law

To answer the central questions of his book, Daly embarked on a project that he describes as being at the border of history, anthropology and the study of law, a project that is both observational and archival. The archival aspect is, however, particularly delicate when it comes to military dictatorships which, notoriously, are not very open about their activities. The files could be incriminating one day. Regimes are also formed in haste, often without concern for posterity or precision. However, Daly was able to extract court records, some administrative records as well as briefs.

“It’s a pretty piecemeal way of doing research,” he said. This project, even if it concerns a period which is not very distant, is based on very dispersed materials. My task was to find a story to tell in these documents which are in reality not very complete.

What Daly learned and what he describes in Soldier’s Paradiseit is that military officers believed that they could govern better than civilians and that they could transform their societies from top to bottom. They believed they could get civilians to think and act like them, thus leading to a sort of utopia.

Of course, not everyone shared this vision. Daly also found evidence of people opposing, often in court, or attempting to bend the military’s plans to their own personal interests. Throughout the book, Daly uses their stories to understand militarism as a system of thought.

Several chapters in Soldier’s Paradise focusing on people who found themselves in the grips of military law. “It’s a system of law like any other,” Daly said, “with its own tensions and internal rules. I wanted to know how martial law worked when applied not just to soldiers, but to everyone.

For example, one chapter highlights Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, who had very complicated run-ins with the law during several military dictatorships. Another chapter concerns the psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon and how military regimes used his ideas to impose their vision of society.

After gaining independence, many people felt that they had been sold a commodity; they were disappointed by corrupt politicians or by the way their quality of life was improving more slowly than the nationalists had promised.

However, these stories also show that not everyone was against militarism or dictatorship.

“The cold truth is that for a lot of people, there were benefits to this ideology,” Daly said. “There were things that they valued, and there were ways in which they sought to improve their lot in life by combining their personal fortunes with that of the military.”

According to Daly, the animating force in African politics long after independence was not freedom but discipline.

“This story shows that how people define freedom depends heavily on their own circumstances,” he said. “For the people of that era, freedom did not mean the liberal freedom to do as one wanted, but the freedom to free oneself from the tyranny of one’s own instincts. Military regimes told people that if everyone behaved like a soldier, eventually everyone would become disciplined enough that their freedom would be meaningful.

Daly says it’s difficult to talk about this era in African history because it challenges many of the moral certainties people have about the post-independence period. And given that many people would prefer to forget that era, he notes that this could make his book rather controversial.

—Adapted from an article first published by the UChicago Department of History.