ABSTRACT

The first series of anti-colonial liberation campaigns in Africa in the 1950s saw two insurgency movements against the British, one in Egypt on a small scale, the second, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, more serious. The French were faced with limited-scale nationalist uprisings in Tunisia and Morocco, and then in 1954 the opening of the largest-scale conflict in Africa in the second half of the century in Algeria. The Portuguese faced the first of the challenges to their African colonial rule in Angola in 1961. The common feature of all six wars was that military advantage lay initially with the insurgent, but when metropolitan security forces had become sufficiently strong and organized their superior technology, small arms, aircraft, bombs and later helicopters ensured that they remained undefeated, and they were able to impose a firm military control on the ground, whatever the political outcome. 1