Civil War Research Paper

Civil wars are typically multi-faceted creatures that evolve over the course of their existence. When academics, journalists, and participants attempt to describe them, it frequently ends up like the parable of the blind men and an elephant. Three blind men in an Indian town each attempt to describe an Elephant, which they are exposed to for the first time. The first man touches its trunk and thinks an elephant is like a snake. The second man touches the side of the elephant and believes an elephant is like a wall. The third man touches its legs and says its like a tree trunk. Each of them experiences one part of the creature and attempts to extrapolate that experience to the whole. This applies to civil wars as well, with people putting forth a variety of theories on the causes of the civil war due to the diversity of their experiences and perspectives. Rhodesia, however, appears to be an exception to this, because only a single theory on the origins of the Rhodesian Bush War seems to exist. With the Universal Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1964, the European

Professor Gerald Horne at the University of Houston suggests that “Most importantly…the European minority in Rhodesia controlled the economy while largely depriving the African majority of the right to vote. These salient factors helped foment a bloody war, which culminated in elections and independence in 1980.” He is a champion of the Zimbabwean nationalist organizations in his books, which puts his perspective on the opposite of the conflict from Ken Flowers. Yet they both agree on the fundamental causes of the conflict. Their agreement is particularly illuminating, as it shows why competing theories on the origins or causes of the conflict have not