From the deployment of Roger's Rangers in the Seven Years War to the Sunni Awakening in the Second Gulf War, indigenous force cooperation has been a hallmark of significant armed conflicts in modern history. Indigenous forces are, by definition, recruited locally and are paramilitary in nature, as, for the most part, are their activities. They are not regular police, gendarme, or military forces. Rather, they represent a subset of a broader category of force that includes paramilitaries, unconventional forces, guerrillas, some militias, and auxiliaries. The focus of this dissertation is indigenous force cooperation. Indigenous force cooperation occurs when a metropolitan power (be it imperial or expeditionary) collaborates with one or more indigenous forces. Despite recurring employment, indigenous force cooperation remains largely ignored in historical literature and there has been no comprehensive study of the nature, structure, function, or experience of these forces. Using comparative case studies of indigenous force cooperation in Palestine Mandate and Ethiopia during the Second World War, this project seeks to identify whether successful indigenous force cooperation in war exists as a unified historical phenomenon and whether it was instrumental to theatres of operation in which it took place. The research supporting this dissertation includes personally conducted interviews with veterans of the indigenous forces and examinations of recently declassified documents. The comparative framework allows the project to determine what, if any, underlying patterns connect cases of indigenous force employment and govern the success or failure of cooperation. This dissertation consists of a comparative examination of four questions: why cooperation occurred, how cooperation was structured, what happened during cooperation, and whether cooperation was effective. Each chapter of this dissertation addresses one of the questions. Answering these questions will support a number of areas of study, including imperial history and contemporary strategic studies, by providing a theoretical framework by which to understand other cases of indigenous force cooperation.

This thesis attempts to address how and why North Shäwa deteriorated from a political heartland to a region of impoverished peasants by the beginning of the 20th century. One of the factors that determine the selection of the place for a seat of the government for a region or country and sustainability of its system is its resource potential. In this case, arable and grazing land with other related land resources were decisive. They were some of the major factors contributing to both the origin and development of the kingdom. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the region was abandoned by the court and by a significant proportion of its population. This was mainly because of the impoverishment of the region. The growth of the number of consumers (town dwellers) and the supplies needed by the kingdom exceeded the carrying capacity of North Shäwa. The economic productivity of the region could not correspond to the development of its needs. Thus, this thesis accords due emphasis to the factors that contributed to the impoverishment of North Shäwa and the consequences that followed. Throughout the thesis, North Shäwan peasants are the main subject of discussion. Political, social, cultural and geographical factors that impacted on the peasants’ economy and that retarded its development are discussed in the study. It also attempts to unearth the measures taken by the court and peoples of North Shäwa to withstand or escape from the prevailing socio-economic problems. Finally a comparison is made with other regions of the country to describe the political and socio-economic status of North Shäwans that continue to live in the region. This discussion covers the period from the 1880s up to the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935 / History / D.Litt. et Phil. (History)

This thesis attempts to address how and why North Shäwa deteriorated from a political heartland to a region of impoverished peasants by the beginning of the 20th century. One of the factors that determine the selection of the place for a seat of the government for a region or country and sustainability of its system is its resource potential. In this case, arable and grazing land with other related land resources were decisive. They were some of the major factors contributing to both the origin and development of the kingdom. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the region was abandoned by the court and by a significant proportion of its population. This was mainly because of the impoverishment of the region. The growth of the number of consumers (town dwellers) and the supplies needed by the kingdom exceeded the carrying capacity of North Shäwa. The economic productivity of the region could not correspond to the development of its needs. Thus, this thesis accords due emphasis to the factors that contributed to the impoverishment of North Shäwa and the consequences that followed. Throughout the thesis, North Shäwan peasants are the main subject of discussion. Political, social, cultural and geographical factors that impacted on the peasants’ economy and that retarded its development are discussed in the study. It also attempts to unearth the measures taken by the court and peoples of North Shäwa to withstand or escape from the prevailing socio-economic problems. Finally a comparison is made with other regions of the country to describe the political and socio-economic status of North Shäwans that continue to live in the region. This discussion covers the period from the 1880s up to the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935 / History / D.Litt. et Phil. (History)