ABSTRACT
There were major socio-political and economic differences and resulting uses of violence as a means of survival, domination, and maintenance of law and order between the state (or cephalous) and stateless (or acephalous) communities in pre-colonial Chad. However, the core of the following chapter, although providing an overview of the country, focuses on the predominantly acephalous societies of Southern Chad, leaving a detailed discussion of Northern Chad to chapter two. Fundamentally, this chapter argues that present research seems to indicate that, stemming from a less developed state of sociopolitical institutions and a lack of relatively advanced technological and military preparedness, the conflict that Southern Chad’s ethnic groups may have experienced in pre-colonial times was less violent and less lethal in its impact. This condition, the chapter notes further, was in sharp contrast to the situation prevailing both in the precolonial North and the South following the introduction of Islam and the slave trade.
