The full version of this review is available in African Studies Quarterly.
One rich element of modern colonial histories is that they acknowledge the nuance with how colonialism affected different nations. Giacomo Macola successfully crafted what he declared as “the first detailed history of firearms in central Africa between the early nineteenth and the early twentieth century” (p. 19), which is an example of applying nuance to a basic idea: what happened when guns were introduced to Central Africa on a cultural level? This comprehensive examination of guns’ social symbolism is conjoint with a broader history of firearms in the region, which encompasses the early introduction of guns to gun regulation in the 1920s across dozens of different nations.
