Since the early 2000s, the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram has been the subject of thousands of works by journalists, intelligence and NGO officers, and academic writers. Yet due to recycled themes, stale narratives, and fragmented sources, knowledge about the movement's origins, motivations, and continued transformation remains incomplete. Rethinking Boko Haram provides much-needed updates to older understandings of Boko Haram's religious, political, social, and economic dimensions, proposing new concepts and approaches to the continued study of the movement. Beginning in 2015 when Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS and became the Islamic State in West African Province (ISWAP), this collection deploys firsthand accounts, primary source materials, and fieldwork alongside theoretical approaches to present a new understanding of Boko Haram, from its interactions with the Nigerian military to its more recent adaptations for survival in the face of dwindling local support, climate change, and attempts to build administrations and alliances. Timely and necessary, Rethinking Boko Haram invites readers to reconceptualize the movement's core elements, revisit its religious motivations, and better understand its possible future.
Dr. Michael Nwankpa is the founder and director of the Center for African Conflict and Development. He is the author of Nigeria's Fourth Republic, 1999-2021: A Militarized Democracy (2023) and co-author of The Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State (2018). He is a Research Associate in the African Centre for the Study of the United States and the Centre for Mediation in Africa, Political Sciences Department, University of Pretoria.
1. Ways of Moving: Infrastructure for Empire Part I: Colonial Pathways 2. Muddy Paths and Streams: The English Colonies and Transportation to the 1670s 3. From Warriors' Paths to Wagon Roads: Transportation in the 1670s-1740s Part II: Wars and Upheaval 4. "Yet I Shall Go More Surely": Roads and the French and Indian War, 1754-1766 5. Revolutionary Expansion: Transportation and the Frontier in the American War of Independence Part III: New Pathways 6. Visions of Expansion: The Internal Improvements Debate and Native American Dispossession 7. Indian Removal and Transportation in the Old Northwest 8. Indian Removal and Transportation in the Old Southwest Epilogue and Conclusions: "You Are as Much Worthy of Pity as We Are" Abbreviations in Notes Notes Bibliography Index
"There is no small amount of research on Boko Haram, but only in recent years, with time, trained researchers, and better data, has the fragmented and often redundant information become better organized and thus able to identify gaps and new directions. . . . Nwankpa, as well as the material overall, does a very fine job of explaining how the periodization of Boko Haram-identifying precursors, the 2002-2015 era, and the post-2015 period-usefully organizes the literature and the evolution of the group itself."-A. Carl LeVan, American University
