AFRICA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

AFRICA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Edited by Melvin E. Page Associate Professor of History

Murray State University, Kentucky, USA

Palgrave Macmillan

©Melvin E. Page, 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987

'The Impact of the First World War on South African Blacks', by Albert Grundlingh, was first published in Wat and Society, 3, 1 (May 1985), and is reprinted here by permission of the copyright-holder, the University of New South Wales. © 1985.

All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly & Reference Division,

St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1987

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Africa and the First World War. Bibliography: p. Includes index. Contents: Introduction: Black men in a white man's war/Melvin E. Page-Kande Kamara speaks/ Joe Harris Lunn-The impact of the First World War on South African Blacks/Albert Grundlingh­(etc.] 1. World War, 1914-1918-Africa I. Page, Melvin E. (Melvin Eugene), 1944-D575.A37 1987 940.4'16 86-29831

ISBN 978-1-349-18829-1 ISBN 978-1-349-18827-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18827-7

ISBN 978-0-312-00411-8

ISBN 978-0-312-00411-8

Dedicated to the memory of the African soldiers and carriers who served in the First World War

Contents

List of Maps

List of Plates

Preface

Notes on the Contributors

1 Introduction: Black Men in a White Man's War

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Melvin E. Page 1

2 Kande Kamara Speaks: An Oral History of the West African Experience in France 1914-18 Joe Harris Lunn 28

3 The Impact ofthe First World War on South African Blacks Albert Grundlingh 54

4 The Nandi Experience in the First World War Lewis J. Greenstein 81

5 Reluctant Allies: Nigerian Responses to Military Recruitment 1914-18 James K. Matthews

6 The Legacy of Conquest: African Military Manpower in Southern Rhodesia during the First World War

95

Peter McLaughlin 115

7 Military Labour in East Africa and its Impact on Kenya Geoffrey Hodges 137

8 Military and Labour Policies in the Gold Coast during the First World War David Killingray 152

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9 The Impact of the First World War and its Aftermath on the Beti of Cameroun Frederick Quinn

10 'Insidious Conquests': Wartime Politics along the South-western Shore of Lake Tanganyika

171

Allen F. Roberts 186

Select Bibliography

Index

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218

List of Maps

Map 1 Africa in 1914 Map 2 First World War military campaigns in Africa

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List of Plates

Plate 1

Plate 2 Plate 3 Plate 4 Plate 5 Plate 6 Plate 7 Plate 8 Plate 9 Plate 10

King's African Rifles band on recruiting tour, Nyasaland, c. 1915. Kande Kamara in 1976 1st KAR resting while on the march in east Africa Northern Rhodesian labourers with artillery in east Africa Trench warfare in east Africa KAR askari with motor transport unit, Nyasaland Wartime crew of HMS Gwendolen, Lake Nyasa Nigeria Regiment en route to east Africa Nigeria Regiment casualties near the Rufiji River Registering wartime labourers, Mpala Mission, Belgian Congo

Preface

This collection of essays had its genesis in the conviction that there were several strands in the story of Africa and the Great War which needed to be drawn together. The unifying thread of the essays is the conviction of all the authors that direct African participation in the war- as soldiers, transport carriers, or in any of a host of other roles­rather than policy decisions made in European capitals provides the basis for understanding the impact of the First World War upon Africa's peoples. Yet each of us, while sharing this fundamental outlook on the problem, has reached separate conclusions. We remain, however, convinced of the value of such a collaborative effort, within which our different studies and divergent conclusions lend valuable texture to an understanding of this important chapter in African history.

While each of the contributors has acknowledged individual debts, the collection as a whole would not have been possible without the continued support of the Committee for Institutionally Sponsored Research of Murray State University. Their belief in the value of this project was instrumental in its being brought to fruition. Equally important was the role played by my graduate assistants at Murray State University- Deidre DeVane Stevens, Mine Coskuner, Robert Boxley, and especially Anne Snow - whose editorial and research contributions are manifest throughout the volume.

In the final preparation of the manuscript, I had the valuable assistance of several individuals. The secretarial staff of the History Department of Kenyatta University typed and retyped several portions of the manuscript. Kate Hoffman, of Murray State University's Faculty Resource Center, designed and drew the maps with a precision my scribbled instructions made difficult at best. At the publishers, I appreciated the encouragement of Tim Farmiloe and was aided immeasurably by the practised editorial hand of Keith Povey, whose efforts have improved the work.

Finally, I must also mention the support, both direct and indirect,

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given this effort by Professor George Shepperson. When I first suggested the idea of such a collection to him, Professor Shepperson was ready with ideas and assistance. Even before, as I- and, in fact, all of the other contributors as well - began work on Africa and the First World War, it was to his seminal writings on African social and military history that we looked. Yet when this collection was completed, Professor Shepperson was ready to push our efforts ahead of his in order to bring these essays quickly into circulation. It is to him, therefore, as editor and along with my fellow contributors, that I owe a special intellectual and personal debt.

Nairobi, October 1985 Murray, Kentucky, July 1986 MELVIN E. PAGE

Notes on the Contributors

Lewis J. Greenstein is currently Director of Development at Payne College in Augusta, Georgia. After completing his PhD in African history at Indiana University, he served on the faculty and as Assistant Dean of Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He has published several articles on the Nandi of Kenya under colonial rule.

Albert Gnmdlingh is Senior Lecturer in history at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. His monograph, in Afrikaans, on the collaborators in Boer society during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899--1902 (Die 'Hendsoppers en Joiners') was published in 1979. He has completed his PhD thesis on South African Blacks and the First World War.

Geoffrey Hodges has since 1973 been Assistant Master at John Beddoes School in Wales. A scholar of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, he completed his BA in 1954 and his MA in 1957. Accepted as a District Officer Cadet for Uganda, he was unable to complete the course at Oxford for health reasons. Subsequently he taught at Shrewsbury School, St Mark's College, Mpanza, Zambia, and at Strathmore College, Nairobi. He is the author of The Carrier Corps: Military Labour in the East African Campaign of 1914 to 1918.

David Killingray has since 1972 taught history at Goldsmiths' College, University of London, where he is now Senior Lecturer. He received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London. For 12 years he taught in secondary schools in Britain and Tanzania. He has contributed articles to the Journal of African History and other African studies journals, and he is currently an editor of African Affairs. His study of Westerners in Africa, A Plague of Europeans, appeared in 1973. He is also co-editor of Africa and the Second World War.

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Joe Harris Lunn is a PhD candidate in Modern European and African history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation, 'Memoirs of the Maelstrom: An Oral History of the Senegalese Experience in France, 1914-1918', is based on 80 oral histories collected in Senegal and will further explore the mentalite of West African soldiers during the First World War.

Peter McLaughlin currently teaches history at St George's College in Surrey. Born in Beflast, he has lived most of his life in Zimbabwe, where he took an honours degree in history at the University of Zimbabwe in 1974. From 1977 to 1983 he was Lecturer in history at the same institution, spending the 1981-2 academic year as an Association of Commonwealth Universities Academic Research Fellow at the London School of Economics.

James K. Matthews, currently Command Historian for the US Air Force Military Airlift Command, has also been a historian with the Strategic Air Command and the Air Force Communications Command. He holds a PhD in history from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He recently completed a monograph, Military Airlift Command Operations in Subsaharan Africa, 1960-1985, published by the Military Airlift Command.

Melvin E. Page has been on the History Faculty of Murray State University since 1975, having received his PhD in African history from Michigan State University. Previously he was Fulbright Lecturer in History at Chancellor College of the University of Malawi. More recently, he was Visiting Associate Professor of History at Kenyatta University, Kenya. In addition to publishing numerous articles on east and central African history, he also served as Associate Editor of the African Studies Review, the journal of the (US) African Studies Association, from 1981 to 1984.

Frederick Quinn is a member of the Senior Foreign Service of the USA. He has written extensively on Cameroun's anthropology and history, especially on the Yaounde region, for scholarly publications in France, Germany, the UK and the USA. He holds a PhD in history from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Notes on the Contributors XV

Allen F. Roberts is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Albion College and an Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies of the University of Michigan. He gained his PhD from the University of Chicago. His research and writing range from topics of symbolic and political anthropology to African art, development problems, and the implementation of renewable energy technologies in Africa.

~ T rrl1orles discussed In the essays

German colonies

MAP I Africa in /914

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