In this episode, Siobhan talks with Samuel Fury Childs Daly about his J. Willard Hurst Prize winning book A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Daly is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Duke University. He is a historian of twentieth century Africa whose research combines legal, military, and social history to describe Africa's history since independence.
The Republic of Biafra lasted for less than three years, but the war over its secession would contort Nigeria for decades to come. Samuel Fury Childs Daly examines the history of the Nigerian Civil War and its aftermath from an uncommon vantage point – the courtroom. Wartime Biafra was glutted with firearms, wracked by famine, and administered by a government that buckled under the weight of the conflict. In these dangerous conditions, many people survived by engaging in fraud, extortion, and armed violence. When the fighting ended in 1970, these survival tactics endured, even though Biafra itself disappeared from the map. Based on research using an original archive of legal records and oral histories, Daly catalogues how people navigated conditions of extreme hardship on the war front, and shows how the conditions of the Nigerian Civil War paved the way for the country's long experience of crime that was to follow.
EPISODE 32: Kate Masur
EPISODE 31: Felicity Turner
EPISODE 30: Peter Grajzl & Peter Murrell
EPISODE 29: Jonathan Gienapp
EPISODE 28: Warren Milteer, Jr.
EPISODE 27: Samantha Barbas
EPISODE 25: Nurfadzilah Yahaya
EPISODE 24: Joseph David
EPISODE 23: Charles Zelden
EPISODE 22: Philip Thai
EPISODE 21: Ariela Gross and Alejandro de la Fuente
EPISODE 20: Paul Finkelman
EPISODE 19: Robert Chase
EPISODE 18: Maddalena Marinari
EPISODE 17: Sophie White
EPISODE 16: Gregory Downs
EPISODE 15: Jane Hong
EPISODE 14: Kimberly Welch
EPISODE 13: William Hustwit
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