Review by Choice Review
Rouvez has written a highly informative work on French, British, and Belgian involvement in sub-Saharan Africa since the early 1960s. He accurately portrays France as the most heavily involved with its former colonies, whether in backing monetary systems, or in keeping four permanent military bases, or in being willing to employ its forces often in African conflicts. France was clearly the dominant European power in Africa during this period and remains so today. Rouvez shows that three European metropoles maintained interest, in a quasi neocolonial fashion, in this region after independence in the 1960s. Militarily, Britain is a shadow of its former self. Given the very small role Britain has played in sub-Saharan Africa it is strange that the author spent 80-odd pages on this minor player. Surprisingly, Belgium has had significant influence in Africa, particularly in Rwanda and Zaire, with an elite paratroop unit specifically charged with African involvement. In the wake of the Rwanda debacle, however, Belgium's role is becoming more marginal. Some of the problems in this work include an almost encyclopedic and superficial approach to particular sub-Saharan crises, reliance on secondary and journalistic sources, lack of narrative flow, and turgid prose. Nonetheless, the book gives a good overall summary of French, Belgian, and British armed forces and their relative potential for power projection in Africa. General readers; upper-division undergraduates; graduate students. W. T. Dean III; Norwich University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review