In her imaginative and scrupulous book,
Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Ohio University Press, 2014), historian
Michelle Moyd writes about the
askari, Africans soldiers recruited in the ranks of the German East African colonial army. Praised by Germans for their loyalty and courage, the
askari were reviled by Tanzanians for the violence and disruptions the
askari caused in their service to the colonial state. Moyd questions the starkness of these characterizations. By linking
askari micro-histories with wider nineteenth-century African historical processes, she shows how the
askari, as soldiers and colonial intermediaries, not only helped to build the colonial state but also sought to carve out paths to respectability and influence within their own local African contexts. Moyd offers a truly fresh perspective on African colonial troops as state-making agents and critiques the mythologies surrounding the
askari by focusing on the nature and contexts of colonial violence, notions of masculinity and respectability.