There are two distinct sides to the analysis presented in this book, one that specifically addresses the military experience of men, and one that considers the war's broader effects on the maintenance of a senior masculinity. That this book takes in both sets of issues in a sense reflects the current state of the literature on militaries, masculinities and wars in Africa more generally, and neglected aspects of the longer-term impacts of war on masculinities.

In popular representations and in many scholarly accounts the association between soldiering and manhood can seem self-evident, almost natural. The terms ‘soldier’ and ‘veteran’ tend to conjure up a picture of a man, and perhaps of an archetypal role-model masculinity with broad appeal. This idea is very present in popular culture, whether as an invincible hero or a suffering male sacrifice for the sake of the nation. However, there is an increasing recognition in research on veterans that the seemingly quasi-automatic relationship between masculinity and the military is in fact a contingent one, present in some settings and not in others, for historically specific reasons in each setting. More broadly, the idea that in post-war settings in general the violence of wartime leads inevitably to a powerful hegemonic masculinity oriented around a capacity for violence has also been increasingly questioned.

In this book I have therefore sought to embed men's experience of war within the longer flow of history and amongst the other influences on masculinity besides war that have preceded, outlasted and sprung from Angola’s civil war. This has necessitated an approach that focuses on the very intense encounter that men had with the state and with violence through military service, but also looks at the broader historical transformations that these men had to navigate after their service, which often constituted the most pressing worries for them in the long term, and were of more enduring importance for their masculinities. The fact of their veteranhood has thus often receded into the background, as the effects of war on their masculinities was more complicated and ambivalent than many accounts might lead one to expect.