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List of contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword by David Konstan (New York University, USA)
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Ancient Rome and Africa: Background and Differences
2. Land Ownership, Masculinity and War
3. Warfare-Madness, Violence and Expropriation
4. Veterans and the Prize of Valour: Masculinity and the Homosocial Strategy
5. Veterans, Masculinity and the Politics of the Body
6. Veterans and ‘Spatial Masculinities’
7. Concluding Remarks
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Obert Bernard Mlambo is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and History at the University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe. His research interests involve Roman History, Classics and Colonialism, Postcolonial Classics in Africa, and the issues of Violence, Gender, Politics, and Land in ancient Rome and Zimbabwe. Obert Mlambo also researches and teaches Roman history in a global context. He is a former Humboldt Fellow at the Institute of African Studies and Egyptology, University of Cologne, Germany, and a Guest Scholar at the Global South Studies Centre of the University of Cologne, Germany.
Summary
In this highly original book, Obert Bernard Mlambo offers a comparative and critical examination of the relationship between military veterans and land expropriation in the client-army of the first-century BC Roman Republic and veterans of the Zimbabwean liberation war. The study centres on the body of the soldier, the cultural production of images and representations of gender which advance theoretical discussions around war, masculinity and violence. Mlambo employs a transcultural comparative approach based on a persistent factor found in both societies: land expropriation. Often articulated in a framework of patriarchy, land appropriation takes place in the context of war-shaped masculinities.
This book fosters a deeper understanding of social processes, adding an important new perspective to the study of military violence, and paying attention to veterans' claims for rewards and compensation. These claims are developed in the context of war and its direct consequences, namely expropriation, confiscation and violence. Land Expropriation in Ancient Rome and Contemporary Zimbabwe contributes to current efforts to decolonise knowledge construction by revealing that a non-Western perspective can broaden our understanding of veterans, war, violence, land and gender in classical culture.
Foreword
A comparative study of the expropriation of land in ancient Rome and contemporary Africa, offering an approach to classics informed by African culture.
Additional text
The striking resemblances between decommissioned legionaries in ancient Rome and African veteran guerrilla fighters in present-day Zimbabwe are mutually enlightening. Moving beyond a narrow consideration of a single region or epoch towards an exploration of parallels and contrasts, this book recalibrates the Eurocentric habit of taking classical antiquity as the unique key for understanding social and political life. Mlambo brings African and European perspectives into a fresh dialogue with one another in empirically well-grounded and unexpected ways.
