German rule in East Africa rested on recruiting and empowering African soldiers (askari) to serve in the colonial defense force (Schutztruppe) from the beginning of conquest in the 1890s through World War I, when the Schutztruppe was disbanded and askari ceased to have a historical role. Violent Intermediaries centers the role of the askari in the construction and maintenance of the German colonial state, not only in asserting German power in wars of conquest and anticolonial rebellions, but also in the day-to-day activities that constituted colonial rule. In so doing, Moyd treats askari as agents, not just tools, of colonialism, who acted with their own interests in mind, particularly seeking to become power brokers in local communities surrounding colonial garrisons, where they served alternate roles as husbands, fathers, patrons, traders, and cultural intermediaries. Typically treated as a faceless backdrop in other histories, the askari are embedded here in the daily performance of colonial power, and Moyd portrays them with a sensitivity to how soldiers in any historical period, such as our own, transition from combat to family life.

Who were the askari, and what were their motivations? Unlike other histories of colonial soldiers that can tap into the voices and memories of men who served until independence in the 1950s and beyond, this volume could not make use of oral evidence, which does not exist in the German case. Moyd traces the few surviving fragments of askari testimonies, often in European-mediated life histories, and in a wealth of archival and published sources. Many askari were recruited from unemployed soldiers in Cairo—Muslim veterans of the wars of the Mahdi in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan who brought with them a professionalism that German commanders valued highly. Briefly, “Zulu” Shangaan mercenaries were part of the early German colonial forces in the 1890s before being demobilized and sent home. They were replaced by soldiers recruited from various localities of German East Africa, particularly Nyamwezi and Sukuma, following common colonial identifications of “martial races.”

Much of this account focuses on the interaction between askari and East African subjects that stemmed from nineteenth-century patterns of violent accumulation during the era of the caravan trade. In this sense, askari shaped tactics of warfare with German complicity. Yet as colonial agents, askari were not just soldiers, but also prison guards, tax collectors, escorts for traveling Europeans, chain gang and corvée labor overseers, and messengers, projecting German power daily. Moyd highlights the role of askari wives as power brokers in local communities. Family life was fundamental to askari aspirations, and wives accompanied their husbands on caravans and even in military expeditions. The influence of askari traditions of hierarchy, order, and ceremonial performance on Tanzania ngoma dance traditions created a social and cultural space that was beyond the ken of colonial authorities and observers. Although Moyd argues that the askari disappeared as a social group after 1918, I wonder if in communities established for retired askari, such as Boma la Ngombe near Moshi, oral methods might not have discovered askari descendants or a community memory of their past social roles.

Moyd ably balances the two poles of askari treatment in past scholarship. One, emerging after World War I, was the myth that all askari remained loyal to German rule to the end, surrendering to British forces in 1918 alongside their German commanders after almost four years of desperate struggle. While this myth fed German nostalgia for the colonial past, it also projected Germans as model colonizers rather than abusive oppressors. Moyd shows that many askari in fact deserted to the British when they perceived the opposing force as offering a chance to recreate their prewar roles as local big men and patrons. A second view, representing nationalist historiography, was that askari were mercenaries and collaborators, perpetrators of shocking levels of violence against fellow East Africans. Moyd emphasizes that grasping the conflictual role of askari and other colonial intermediaries is key to understanding how colonialism worked in practice. There could be no colonial state without the actions of such men in warfare and everyday life.