Southern and central Africa has experienced a series of interrelated military, political and social conflicts since the early 1960s. The limited authority of nation-states and the importance of transnational forces are recognized as important factors in studies of the Congo wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s; in contrast, earlier conflicts were commonly interpreted as wars of national liberation - disregarding the extent to which the ʼnations’ being liberated were themselves the recent and problematic creations of the colonialists against whom those wars were ostensibly being fought. Contested visions of the meaning of national independence contributed significantly to the continuation of conflict well after the achievement of formal self-rule.
