Small wars, or guerrilla wars, had an enormous impact in the age of Napoleon. Fought by peasants with access to land and resources, guerrilla wars in Haiti and Spain, in particular, reshaped the world in ways as profound as any of the major regular campaigns. They bled and demoralized the French and set the stage for the emergence of new nations in the Americas. This essay examines the two successful guerrilla wars in Haiti and Spain and compares them to two failed guerrilla wars in Calabria and the Tyrol in order to identify the key factors determining success or failure by guerrilla forces. Among the keys to success were: the geo-strategic importance of the theater of war; mobilizing ideologies; the presence of imperial troops for a long period of time with all of the resulting violence that implies; the reliance of imperial troops on requisitions in the countryside; the presence of strong allies; the impact of disease; and, above all, the presence of socio-economic conditions that both motivated peasants to take up arms to defend their families, land, and resources against long odds and that supplied peasants with the wherewithal to survive the French counterinsurgency.

Like most of the other conflicts dealt with in this volume, that in Southern Rhodesia resulted from the process of decolonisation. Unlike Kashmir, Palestine and Cyprus, where the conflict was over control of a recently decolonised territory, in Southern Rhodesia (as in Indonesia in the 1940s) the conflict was between, on the one hand, a majority population seeking independence and, on the other, colonial masters determined to hang on at all costs. The situation differed from that in Indonesia in that the original colonising power, Britain, had more or less withdrawn from the situation, and for a decade and a half the colonialist fight had been carried on by the white minority they had left behind. But the similarities were strong, too.

The use of physical force was a common experience among the kruso’b in the second half of the nineteenth century. Up to the 1870s, they suffered repeated assaults by government forces. In turn, they exerted violence for practical and expressive purposes against Yucatecan soldiers and civilians, as well as against various pacífico groups, searching for loot, scaring Yucatecans away from their frontier settlements, demoralizing soldiers etc. The chapter discusses the changes in the armament of the rebels and their guerrilla tactics. Kruso’b assaulted settlements in Yucatán ranging from small, entirely Indian hamlets to haciendas, villages and larger towns. Obvious targets were army soldiers, National Guard members, those involved in the self-defense of settlements, and Indians in positions of authority. The kruso’b killed or captured Indians, vecinos, men and women, children and the elderly indiscriminately. Kruso’b behavior during and after raids on Yucatecan or pacífico settlements did not follow a uniform pattern. While members of a certain age, gender or administrative category were slain in some cases, they were spared in others. The taking and the treatment of captives depended on a number of factors, changing rebel needs for labor being one of the most important.

Battles between large combat units characterized the first phase of the war from July 1847 to the end of 1848, when rebel forces attempted to conquer the area controlled by the government. The insurgents mobilized large detachments, at times amounting to several thousand combatants. Late 1848, however, saw a shift in the nature of the war. According to a contemporary observer, it transmuted into “an eternal war with no quarter,” assuming “a more bloody and fierce character.” This second phase no longer saw large battles but a “guerrilla war in which engagements were daily and everywhere but with no conclusive result.” For the divided and almost routed rebels, the new Cult of the Speaking Cross became a vital cohesive element. The proclamations of the cross offered an interpretation of their destiny and presented past defeats as sanctions for having offended God’s orders, but they also inspired hope for a better future. Beyond this, veneration of the crosses provided inhabitants of different villages and followers of different leaders with a common ideological point of identification.

Battles between large combat units characterized the first phase of the war from July 1847 to the end of 1848, when rebel forces attempted to conquer the area controlled by the government. The insurgents mobilized large detachments, at times amounting to several thousand combatants. Late 1848, however, saw a shift in the nature of the war. According to a contemporary observer, it transmuted into “an eternal war with no quarter,” assuming “a more bloody and fierce character.” This second phase no longer saw large battles but a “guerrilla war in which engagements were daily and everywhere but with no conclusive result.” For the divided and almost routed rebels, the new Cult of the Speaking Cross became a vital cohesive element. The proclamations of the cross offered an interpretation of their destiny and presented past defeats as sanctions for having offended God’s orders, but they also inspired hope for a better future. Beyond this, veneration of the crosses provided inhabitants of different villages and followers of different leaders with a common ideological point of identification.