Includes bibliographical references and index.

The gavel and the gun : the inheritance of colonialism -- The soldier's creed : discipline as an ideology -- The portable coup : the jurisprudence of military "revolution" -- Oracles and autocrats : the uses of customary law -- Fela Kuti goes to court : the spectacle of inquiry -- The gift of martial law : military tribunals for civilians -- Coda: Militarism's denouement.

"Soldier's Paradise is an exploration of the ideologies that fueled military dictatorships in late-twentieth-century Africa. Through speeches and writing, the development of martial law, and public prosecutions, including the 1977 raid on Fela Kuti's compound, Samuel Fury Childs Daly provides a history of Nigeria's military dictatorship. In so doing, he also shows how the new nation's legal structures, largely inherited from British colonizers, were complicit with and facilitated military rule. Using an original collection of legal records, archival documents, and memoirs, Soldier's Paradise shows how law enabled militarism-and worked against it. Daly establishes Nigeria's military rulers as having recognizable theories and participating in legitimate structures of governance. In so doing, this book pushes back against some strains of African social history which try to position the militarism that affected the bulk of postcolonial African societies as aberrant. Instead, it explores how these governments worked (and didn't work) and why they appealed to civilians (and didn't). Long submerged by more hopeful ideological currents, militarism is now rising back to the surface of African politics. Soldier's Paradise describes where it came from, and why it lasted so long"-- Provided by publisher.

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