Samuel Fury Childs Daly
Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies

Samuel Fury Childs Daly is a historian of twentieth century Africa. His research combines legal, military, and social history to describe Africa's history since independence. His recent book, A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020), connects the crisis conditions of the Nigerian Civil War to the forms of crime that came to be associated with Nigeria in its wake. Using an original body of legal records from the secessionist Republic of Biafra, it traces how technologies, survival practices, and moral ideologies that emerged in the context of the fighting shaped how crime was practiced and perceived after Biafra’s defeat. By connecting the violence of the battlefield to violent crime, it provides a new perspective on law and politics in Africa after colonialism. This book won the J. Willard Hurst Prize from the Law and Society Association and the Fage & Oliver Prize from the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom. It also received honorable mention for the Peter Gonville Stein Book Award from the American Society for Legal History.

He is currently writing three books: a book about militarism’s legal forms, a global history of military desertion, and a history of military imposters.  

Current Research Interests

Military History; Legal History; Deserters; Nigeria; Tanzania; Nigerian Civil War; Biafra; Crime; 419

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Contact Information

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