Paul B Rich
Biographic Data
| ID | 3585963 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul B Rich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul B |
| FAMILY NAME | Rich |
| SIGNATURE | RICH P B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 139 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 189 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 136 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Afterword
This afterword assesses some of the themes and issues dealt with in this issue in light of the Iran War that exploded on 28 February 2026. It is in two sections: the first outlines the war itself and the shift that has occurred, at least temporarily, in the Middle East region. The second section identifies five major themes for future research in military studies in light of the war. These are: 1) an enhanced focus on ‘strong men’ in modern polit…
US empire and Gray Zone Conflict in the Middle East
The Arab-Israeli conflict 1947-51, ethnic cleansing and efforts to forge a Palestinian “peace process
The bagpipes
Tunes of Glory and all that
This paper examines the film ‘Tunes of Glory’, released in 1960. It argues that the movie played an important role in the shift in British war and military cinema away from a tendency in earlier 1950s cinema to mythologise the British role in World War Two towards a less heroic one less pivoted around gentlemanly officer characters. Set in the isolated barracks of a fictional Scottish regiment, the film reveals both class and Lowland-Highland ten…
Russia in Africa
Memory Makers
Insurgency, counter-insurgency, and the military and security dimensions of South African racial segregation
This special issue explores a neglected dimension in the wide-ranging historiography of twentieth century South Africa: the evolution of the state and its security arm in the form of the police and
Mercenaries at the movies
This paper examines cinematic representations of mercenaries from the era of silent movies to the 1980s. It argues that cinema has been selective in the choice of historical periods to depict mercenaries and soldiers of fortune, ignoring for the most part the centuries of European state building in which mercenaries played a significant role. Most mercenary films are anchored in the near present and the paper focuses on Mexico and the Congo as te…
Hollywood and the hourglass war
This paper examines the cinema of the US-Mexican border in the context of an escalating drug war. It looks at movies released since the early 1980s and argues that Hollywood has supplied a large number of cinematic images of the ‘war on drugs’ that has more helped shape wider political and strategic debates. Using insights from strategic analysis, this paper seeks to show how cinema has represented the conflict between drug cartels, the Mexican s…
Everything you have told me is true
This is the second book on Somalia by Mary Harper, following her earlier well-received 2012 book Getting Somalia Wrong: Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State. The author has been a BBC journalis
Conflict in the South African transition
This fairly lengthy book is a recent addition to the extensive literature on what some analysts have termed the ‘armed struggle’ in South Africa, focusing particularly on the later phase of conflic
Francis FitzGerald's Fire in the Lake , state legitimacy and anthropological insights on a revolutionary war
This paper examines Frances Fitzgerald’s Fire in the Lake in the context of wider ethnological research in Vietnam stretching back to the Francophone era of Paul Mus in the 1930s and 1940s. It argues that Fitzgerald’s heavily criticised book was important for raising uncomfortable issues of political legitimacy in the US military involvement in Vietnam as well as feeding into wider debates on social revolution in Vietnam and Indochina more genera…
Radical Islamist ideology, Jihadist recruitment and the contradictions of western counter-terrorism
These three short books all engage with various aspects of modern counter-terrorism and the threat posed to western interests by Islamist-inspired Jihadist terrorist movements. They are part of a d
Race, Science, and the Legitimization of White Supremacy in South Africa, 1902–1940
Ideas of race in South African history have usually been seen in the context of the rise of white nationalism and apartheid. Radical scholars have begun to stress the importance of ideas generated in the imperial metropolis seeping through into South African political debate before and after Union in 1910. In the period up to the outbreak of World War Two there was an emerging consensus among both liberals and Afrikaner nationalist intellectuals …
Colonizing Palestine
This well-researched and documented volume is an important addition to the study and debate on Zionist ‘settler colonialism’ in Palestine, focusing on the neglected role of the Zionist left. The st...
An unwritten future
Insurgency and counterinsurgency
Jeremy Black’s study is an important new contribution to the historiography of insurgencies and counterinsurgency. Having taught history at the universities of Exeter and Durham before his retireme
Making the world safe for empire
Army, empire and film
Barbed-wire imperialism
This well-researched study is both an important contribution to the history of the British empire as well as the evolution of modern counter-insurgency. The book has been published as part of the B
Atrocity labelling
RichDr. Paul B. Rich is editor of Small Wars and Insurgencies and has published extensively on insurgencies and terrorism
Westphalia from below
Remaking the Modern World 1900-2015
Christopher Bayly, who died in 2015, became toward the end of his life a leading figure in the emerging field of world history, especially through the major work The Birth of the Modern World 1780
Empires of the mind
The title of this book comes from a speech made by Winston Churchill at Harvard on 9 September 1943 in the middle of World War Two. Churchill’s speech indicated the increasingly defensive position
Manful Assertions
The Counter-Insurgent State
Ministering to the white man's needs
1978). Ministering to the white man's needs: the development of urban segregation in South Africa 1913–1923. African Studies: Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 177-192
Race, Science, and the Legitimization of White Supremacy in South Africa, 1902-1940
Ideas of race in South African history have usually been seen in the context of the rise of white nationalism and apartheid. This has led to a focus upon the internal dynamics of Afrikaner political mobilization organized by such bodies as the Dutch Reformed Churches, the Broederbond, and the National Party.1 More recently scholars have begun to examine the role of British racial ideas in South African politics. Leonard Thompson has shown in a re…
Philanthropic racism in Britain
The history of racial ideology in Britain has focused mainly on extreme groups of the political right. Less attention has been paid to more ‘respectable’ forms of racism. This paper attempts to redress the balance. It concentrates upon two groups, the Anti‐Salvery Society and the Settlement Movement and, with particular reference to Liverpool and Cardiff between 1919 and 1951, examines their attitudes towards Britain's ‘half‐caste’ population
West Africans in Britain, 1900-1960
The long Victorian sunset
The ideas of Victorian anthropologists on race were exploited in the 1920s and 1930s for purposes which they never imagined. After the Second World War, attempts were made to remove racial terminology from the discourse of anthropologists and eugenists. Nevertheless, ‘racial theory’, however academically presented, has continued to be used to justify racist and antisemitic political ideologies
The Baptism of a New Era
1984). The Baptism of a New Era': The 1911 Universal Races Congress and the Liberal ideology of race. Ethnic and Racial Studies: Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 534-550
Insurgency, Terrorism and the Apartheid System in South Africa
This article discusses the development of guerrilla insurgency in South Africa and the government response centred around the concept of ‘total strategy’. After distinguishing analytically between the notions of ‘terrorism’ and ‘guerrilla warfare’, the insurgent campaign is seen to have a threefold impact in terms of loss of economic confidence, sapping of white morale and a mobilization of black political consciousness. The resulting response of…
Back to the future - people's war in the 21st century
Keywords: BoliviaFARCHo Chi MinhChe GuevaraLin Biaomass lineVo Nguyen GiapMao ZedongMaoismpeople’s warSendero Luminoso
A historical overview of US counter-insurgency
Say not the struggle naught availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been, things remain. Arthur Hugh CloughThis introductory article introduces some of the articles in this issue and examines the debate surrounding the idea of the “COINdinistas” in the US. It traces the roots of their approach to counter-insurgency and distinguishes “small c” counterinsurgency based on small groups of mi…
Warlords, state fragmentation and the dilemma of humanitarian intervention
This article explores the meaning of the term ‘warlordism’ in military thought. It examines the phase of warlord rule in interwar China and shows that warlords derived their authority largely from regional followings as well as the legitimacy of the imperial army. By contrast warlords in post‐1945 world politics are largely based on ethnic, tribal and clan based followings. These warlord formations also need to be seen within the context ofglobal…
Empires of the mind
The title of this book comes from a speech made by Winston Churchill at Harvard on 9 September 1943 in the middle of World War Two. Churchill’s speech indicated the increasingly defensive position
How revolutionary are Jihadist insurgencies? The case of Isil
This paper examines the rise of ISIL in the context of wider debates in the first half twentieth century on the nature and political direction of the early Bolshevik state model of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. It argues that there are some parallels between the Trotskyite internationalist tendency in Soviet Russia and of ISIL given the latter’s calls for revolutionary jihad against both ‘apostate’ states in the Islamic world and, in the longer ter…
The black Diaspora in Britain
This essay examines the growth of black student politics in Britain during the first half of this century. It looks at the conflict between early black nationalist movements that emerged after the First World War and the attempts at social control through white welfare organizations and the Colonial Office. The last part examines the West African Students Union and its struggle for an independent hostel before and during the Second World War. The…
The Appeals of Tuskegee
Doctrines of racial segregation in Britain
The Origins of Apartheid Ideology
Journal Article THE ORIGINS OF APARTHEID IDEOLOGY: THE CASE OF ERNEST STUBBS AND TRANSVAAL NATIVE ADMINISTRATION, c. 1902–1932 Get access PAUL RICH PAUL RICH Paul Rich has lectured in African politics at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Cape Town. He has recently completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Warwick on the history of South African liberalism between 1883 and 1948. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Acade…
Colonizing Palestine
This well-researched and documented volume is an important addition to the study and debate on Zionist ‘settler colonialism’ in Palestine, focusing on the neglected role of the Zionist left. The st...
Abd el-Krim's guerrilla war against Spain and France in North Africa
The Riffian rebel leader Mohammed Abd el-Krim Al-Khattabi (1882–1963) became an important early guerrilla leader by successfully initiating extensively organized resistance in the Moroccan Rif against Spanish and French imperial power in the early 1920s. The Rif War triggered a wave of adventure films since the 1930s. This article will look at some of these, especially Sergeant Klems (1971) and The Wind and the Lion (1975), and suggest that they …
The Algerian crisis and the failure of international mediation
The author examines the more recent events behind the crisis in Algeria and a conceivable role that the international community may have in negotiating a diplomatic settlement between the conflicting parties. The efforts that have so far been undertaken by external powers to mediate in the conflict are outlined. In particular, it is suggested that future European Union policy towards Algeria should include a well‐funded programme to implement the…
Is South African Radical Social History Becoming Irrelevant
United States containment policy, South Africa and the apartheid dilemma
Since the early 1970s, South Africa has become an increasingly important issue within US foreign policy after a long period of benign neglect. For a considerable part of the post-war period, US decision-makers felt it possible to avoid a direct confrontation with the moral and ethical issues involved in the South African government's policy of apartheid; the relative geographical isolation of the country from many central theatres of East–West co…
British imperial decline and the forging of English patriotic memory, c1918–1968
Landscape, social Darwinism and the cultural roots of South African racial ideology
The literature of settlers, travellers and missionaries shows how racist ideology in South Africa developed in relation to images of the landscape—the country was seen as a 'wilderness' to be 'civilized'. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Social Darwinist ideas on various capacities of race fitness justified territorial segregation
Ideology in a plural society
The ‘revisionist’ view of South African history has an advantage in understanding the role of values in terms of class structures, as opposed to liberal orthodoxy that sees ‘race’ as an autonomous variable: a view that is both static and unhistorical. The problem of explaining these values, however remains for class analysis can be accused of economic determinism. Pluralism may, therefore, be of use as a supplement to class analysis by interpreti…
Liberalism and ethnicity in South African politics, 1921-1948
One of the main problems confronting liberal ideology in the South African context is the nature and role of group identities. This has been no small question because liberal theorists have tended to be hide-bound by a reliance on the inherent rationality of a free market that specifically excludes the role of group interests from its sphere of operations. Thus, while twentieth century liberalism has made a number of important revisions in the cl…
Ministering to the white man's needs
1978). Ministering to the white man's needs: the development of urban segregation in South Africa 1913–1923. African Studies: Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 177-192
The Origins of Apartheid Ideology
Journal Article THE ORIGINS OF APARTHEID IDEOLOGY: THE CASE OF ERNEST STUBBS AND TRANSVAAL NATIVE ADMINISTRATION, c. 1902–1932 Get access PAUL RICH PAUL RICH Paul Rich has lectured in African politics at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Cape Town. He has recently completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Warwick on the history of South African liberalism between 1883 and 1948. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Acade…
The South African institute of race relations and the debate on "race relations", 1929-1958
Tradition and revolt in South African fiction
Coetzee's statement might not receive unanimous approval from critics of South African literature, but it does pinpoint a central area of concern with which all white writers at least have had to come to terms. This is the legacy of a colonial ideology which has permeated South African white society and indeed became tightened throughout the era of industrialisation. As recent historiography has shown, the hegemony of white racial ideology, wheth…
Race thinking ‐old and new (a review article)
Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race and Science: Great Britain 1800–1968, The Macmillan Press, London and Basingstoke, 1982, £20.00, 230 pp. Charles Husband (ed), ’Race’ in Britain: Continuity and Change, Hutchinson University Library, London, 1982, £6.95, 329 pp
Landscape, social Darwinism and the cultural roots of South African racial ideology
The literature of settlers, travellers and missionaries shows how racist ideology in South Africa developed in relation to images of the landscape—the country was seen as a 'wilderness' to be 'civilized'. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Social Darwinist ideas on various capacities of race fitness justified territorial segregation
Black minorities in Britain
James Walvin, Passage to Britain: Immigration in British History and Politics, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 221, £2.95. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London and Sydney, Pluto Press, 1984, pp. 399, £9.95
Philanthropic racism in Britain
The history of racial ideology in Britain has focused mainly on extreme groups of the political right. Less attention has been paid to more ‘respectable’ forms of racism. This paper attempts to redress the balance. It concentrates upon two groups, the Anti‐Salvery Society and the Settlement Movement and, with particular reference to Liverpool and Cardiff between 1919 and 1951, examines their attitudes towards Britain's ‘half‐caste’ population
Books
The transformation of Anglo‐Jewry Harold Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England, Fairleigh Dickinson, University Press: Associate 3033–2 University Presses, 339 pp., £20.00. Elements of Jewish identity and survival Marion Berghahn, German‐Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation, Macmillan, 1984, ix and 294 pp., £20. N. Kokosalakis, Ethnic Identity and Religion: Tradition and Change in Liverpool Jewry, University Pres…
Doctrines of racial segregation in Britain
The long Victorian sunset
The ideas of Victorian anthropologists on race were exploited in the 1920s and 1930s for purposes which they never imagined. After the Second World War, attempts were made to remove racial terminology from the discourse of anthropologists and eugenists. Nevertheless, ‘racial theory’, however academically presented, has continued to be used to justify racist and antisemitic political ideologies
The Baptism of a New Era
1984). The Baptism of a New Era': The 1911 Universal Races Congress and the Liberal ideology of race. Ethnic and Racial Studies: Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 534-550
Insurgency, Terrorism and the Apartheid System in South Africa
This article discusses the development of guerrilla insurgency in South Africa and the government response centred around the concept of ‘total strategy’. After distinguishing analytically between the notions of ‘terrorism’ and ‘guerrilla warfare’, the insurgent campaign is seen to have a threefold impact in terms of loss of economic confidence, sapping of white morale and a mobilization of black political consciousness. The resulting response of…
White Power and the Liberal Conscience
Black history and African history (a review article)
Basil Davidson, The Story of Africa, Mitchell Beazley, London, 1984, 288pp., £12.85, cloth, illus. Denise Dennis and Susan Willmarth, Black History for Beginners, Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative Society Ltd., New York and London, 1984, pp.189, £9.95, cloth, £3.95, paper, illus
Race, Government and Politics in Britain
Growing and grappling
(1986). Growing and grappling: Sipho Sepamla and the construction of a black South African literary identity. Wasafiri: Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 11-14
The impact of South African segregationist and apartheid ideology on British racial thought
(1986). The impact of South African segregationist and apartheid ideology on British racial thought: 1939–1960. New Community: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1-17
The Political Mythology of Apartheid
Journal Article The Political Mythology of Apartheid Get access The Political Mythology of Apartheid, by Leonard Thompson. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1985. 283 pp. £22.50. ISBN 0 300 03368 0. PAUL B RICH PAUL B RICH University of Warwick Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 85, Issue 340, July 1986, Pages 474–475, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097811 Pub…
South Africa
Journal Article South Africa: a different kind of war Get access South Africa: a different kind of war, by Julie Frederikse. James Currey, London, 1986. 192 pp. £6.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85255 301 3 (UK), 86922 (Zimbabwe). PAUL B. RICH PAUL B. RICH University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 85, Issue 341, October 1986, Pages 622–623, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.a…
The black Diaspora in Britain
This essay examines the growth of black student politics in Britain during the first half of this century. It looks at the conflict between early black nationalist movements that emerged after the First World War and the attempts at social control through white welfare organizations and the Colonial Office. The last part examines the West African Students Union and its struggle for an independent hostel before and during the Second World War. The…
T. H. Green, Lord Scarman and the issue of ethnic minority rights in English liberal thought
1987). T. H. Green, Lord Scarman and the issue of ethnic minority rights in English liberal thought. Ethnic and Racial Studies: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 149-168
Endgame in South Africa
Journal Article Endgame in South Africa? Get access Endgame in South Africa? by Robin Cohen. James Currey, London, and Unesco Press, Paris, 1986. x+108pp. £4.95 paperback. ISBN 0 85255 308 0. PAUL B. RICH PAUL B. RICH University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 86, Issue 343, April 1987, Pages 274–276, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097894 Published: 01 Apri…
Political science (112 works) · Sociology (85 works) · Law (82 works) · History (72 works) · Politics (61 works) · Law (43 works) · History (39 works) · Philosophy (31 works) · South African History and Culture (31 works) · Political economy (30 works)