African Arms and Armor
by Christopher Spring
$45.00

Hardcover - 142 pages (November 1993)

Smithsonian Institution Press; ISBN: 1560983175;
Dimensions (in inches): 0.74 x 11.17 x 8.84

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Editorial Reviews

From Book News, Inc. , March 1, 1995
A survey of traditional arms and armor drawing on eyewitness accounts, African oral history, and early published sources. Spring (curator, Dept. of Ethnography, British Museum) describes weapons, methods, and materials from across the continent, and discusses warfare, throwing knives, and the female warriors of the Dahomey culture. Includes some 30 color and 130 b&w
photos. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Customer Reviews

Indispensible Work for Serious Readers and Collectors

Reviewer: Carter Rila from Maryland July 19, 1999

The author, Christopher Spring is Curator, Department of Ethnography, of the British Museum. Thus he is well accquainted with the sources and has made excellent use of first-hand accounts, museum and sales catalogs, and ethnographical and typological studies to synthesize this general overview of the subject. He states in his introduction: "This book is primarily intended to celebrate African artistry and ingenuity. It also attempts to show the way in which arms and armor are incorporated into the complex material systems which express the structure of non-industrial societies....I believe that to underrate the significance of these artefacts within the societies which produced them would be to overlook a whole range of human endeavour and activity." The book contains a Forward, Introduction and eight chapters on each cultural region of Africa. 1.Arab and Berber--North Africa and the Sahara, 2. Knights of the Savanna--Warfare in Sudanic Africa, 3. Forest Kingdoms of West Africa, 4. The Shining Mystery--Throwing Knives of Africa, 5. Royal Blacksmiths--the Kuba Kingdom and the Congo Basin, 6. the Horn of Africa, 7. Cattle and Conflict--East African Pastorialists and Their Neighbors. 8. Mfecane--The Zulu and the Nguni Diaspora. There are 30 color and 130 grey scale.illlustrations. Biblio and index. Though some historians and ethnographers divide the continent of Africa into North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, referring to the latter as Black Africa (in French, l'Afrique noire), and omitting the former as a subject of African studies, preferring to include it in studies of Mediterrainea and Europe proper, there is just as much justification for including in this work, as for leaving out, the Maghreb area of Northwest Africa, conquered by the Islamic expansion and still ruled by descendents of the followers of the Prophet--there has always been trade and conquest across the Sahara and up and down the Nile Valley. In fact, what is known today as Morocco leather, is actually a product of the Arabized black cultures of the northern Nigerian area of today. Their weapons and fighting arts are covered in Chapter Two. The only chapter which covers more than one culture is Four, which describes the famous fabulously shaped (to European eyes) throwing knives. One of the major points made by the author and by the writer of the Forward, is that, in contrast to the major civilizations of Eurasia and the Americas, which, once they organized the means of production, so that a surplus could support a "non-producer" class of rulers, priests, and administrators, there arose a tradition of "art for art's sake." The artistic tradition led to all sorts of misconceptions when the European expansionists encountered the indigenous peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the material culture is and was expressed in a holistic manner, in which weapons and other material objects such as statues and ceremonial masks and clothing , however fantastically adorned or shaped, considered with a European's sensibility, were not created with any sort of artistic (art for art's sake) sensibility. Thus the copying of African sculptural forms by the Eurocentric artistic avant garde in the beginning of the twentieth century, was a total misreading of the intent of the creators. The other major point the author makes is that when the Eurocentric aesthetic sensibility was applied to African material culture, one, items were devoid of context, and, two, in many cases ignored both weapons and edged tools; which in some cases are the same thing. This sensibility says essentially "war is bad, therefore the tools of war are bad.'" (Compare this attitude opposed by major collections of medieval European arms and armor, including that held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) The other reason for of this omission could be "Work is sweaty and sweat is nasty, therefore tools are nasty and unworthy of study." Fortunately this sensibility is today recognized for the fallacy it is. A society which collects such material culture as gasoline pump globes, Pez dispensers, and all the other marvelous junk of our civilization can hardly ignore items seriously created for culturally significant purposes, whatever their symbolism or usage. In summary, this book is a comprehensive survey of its subject with a definite point of view which I agree with, but it would be none the less valuable as a synthesis if I did not. And there are plenty of leads to further study.