Ujamaa's Army

Charles G. Thomas is an associate professor of strategy and security studies at the US Air Force's Global College of Professional Military Education. He is the co-managing editor of the Journal of African Military History and primarily writes and teaches on the construction and evolution of postcolonial African militaries from the Cold War to the present.

Charles G. Thomas’s Ujamaa’s Army is a much-needed, exemplary history of the Tanzania People’s Defense Force (TPDF), a postcolonial army of tremendous importance for understanding African sovereignty and liberation struggles. Thomas’s patient, resolute, and creative research on the TPDF provides fresh insights into independence-era African militaries, their political complexities, and the material, moral, and political costs of state building. - Michelle R. Moyd, Michigan State University Ujamaa’s Army is a groundbreaking study of the development of an African national army. Drawing on unprecedented access to Cold War–era archives and interviews with high-ranking former officers, Charles G. Thomas shows how the Tanzanian People’s Defence Force balanced the necessity of military efficiency with Tanzanian socialism. In moving beyond the conventional literature on African military institutions this book is one of the first to provide an inside look into the historical evolution of the armed forces of an African nation-state. - Timothy Parsons, Washington University in St. Louis Ujamaa’s Army is among the most exciting and important books on African military history to appear in recent years. Based on extensive research, Charles G.Thomas shows how Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania built a new style of postcolonial African armed forces during the 1960s and 1970s that supported Southern African liberation movements and defeated Uganda in a conventional war. - Timothy Stapleton, University of Calgary