Warfare and urbanisation: The relationship between town and conflict in pre-colonial eastern Africa

The purpose of this paper is to place in context the role of warfare in the urbanisation process, in order that conflict, and the military dimension more broadly, may be viewed alongside such other crucial factors as the concentration and centralisation of political power, religion and economic activity in the making and shaping of eastern African towns. War is one factor which often acted in conjunction with one or more of these elements in the process of urban formation, and need not necessarily be viewed as something separate and distinct, even though this sometimes seems to have been the case. In some instances, warfare transformed existing political, economic and religious centres; in these cases, it is important to place war in the context of urbanisation more generally. In other cases, military activity led to the creation of new settlements developed in response to particular circumstances. Eastern African towns can thus be identified as fortified garrisons, strongholds, sprawling army camps, politico-military administrative centres and refuges, at the same time as they were markets, commercial intersections, agricultural and fishing depots and religious centres. The nature of towns, however, differed from region to region, and specialised urban functionality is much more discernible in the Ethiopian region than it is in pre-colonial Buganda. One of the striking characteristics about urbanisation in the context of warfare – indeed, of urbanisation more generally – is that the process often indicated depopulation and de-urbanisation elsewhere, usually close by. Just as fortified towns and villages appeared as a result of local political and military conditions, so other formerly thriving settlements were abandoned and largely disappeared. Towns and villages in the central and northern Ethiopian highlands, where urbanism was more deeply rooted than in other parts of eastern Africa, were often simply abandoned in the face of attack; the inhabitants fleeing