Our Journal: First World War Studies

At the onset of war in 1914, no imperialist European state, save for France, regarded its colonial Indigenous populations as a source of military manpower for a European war. Contemporary science, social biases and public opinion accepted that certain identifiable ethnic groups lacked the intelligence and integrity to fight modern war. It was also accepted that since these groups were the subjects of vast European empires, prudence warned against allowing them to fight in a European war, thus forfeiting white racial supremacy. By late 1915, however, with escalating casualties and an increasing demand for manpower, Britain specifically requested the military inclusion of Indigenous populations from its five Dominions including Canada and Australia. The elevated participation of Indigenous peoples from Canada and Australia during the First World War was the potential pivotal catalyst to accelerate their attainment of equal rights. For the first time in history, they had been summoned, in unprecedented numbers, to fight and labour on foreign fields alongside men from across the empire, and other Allied nations. For all nations, the sacrifice of the First World War was measured in blood and the staggering tally of the butcher’s bill. This was no different for the Indigenous peoples of Canada and Australia. Men and women from the far reaches of empire fought alongside their European counterparts and shared equally in the burdens of the war both on the battlefields and the Home Fronts. They voluntarily aided the British Empire in its time of need and viewed the war as a potential pivotal catalyst to accelerate their attainment of equal rights. This did not happen. In peace, their services were no longer needed, or wanted. After the war, prejudicial governmental policy in Canada and Australia continued to dominate political discourse and Indigenous veterans returned to their pre-war status as subjugated peoples, banished to the shadows and the fringes of conventional society. Most were denied veterans benefits, including the assistances of the various postwar soldier settlement programmes.

Key Words: Indigenous peoples, veterans, post-war programmes, Canada, Australia

As demobilization gathered pace in 1919, the colonial authorities in both the British and French Caribbean fretted about the reintegration of thousands of men imagined to have been rendered volatile and dangerous by their time overseas. By 1939, however, the situation appeared quite different. Veterans in the British islands were restive and dissatisfied, while their French Caribbean counterparts were comparatively settled. This contrast was not simply about disparities in state generosity. Rather, the article explores how differing conceptions of the relationship between military service and citizenship shaped the actions of the colonial and imperial governments. Where the governments of Martinique and Guadeloupe helped to foster the growth of veterans’ associations which were then incorporated into local policy-making and, more broadly, an imperial network of state aid, the British colonial authorities sought to suppress veteran identity in pursuit of the ultimately unachievable ideal of a final settlement with the demobilized men. An analysis of the interwar veterans’ movements therefore opens up questions of colonial governance, citizenship, and identity.

Key Words: First World War, veterans, Caribbean, anticolonialism, citizenship, empire

The First World War (1914–18) saw the recruitment of over 20,000 Nigerian soldiers to defend the British African empire. When the war ended, the chaotic demobilization process transformed the surviving soldiers into ex-servicemen. This article examines the problems that faced the ex-servicemen in the postwar economy of British Nigeria by focusing on the categories of demobilization and resettlement, employment, finances, war wages, gratuities and pensions, and health care. It emphasizes that the neglect of the men by the colonial government in those categories meant that the men had sacrificed for the British empire far more than the empire ever remitted. The article uses the situation of the men to problematize the political economy of a compartmentalized colonial state that enforced a duality of status – citizens vs colonial subjects – for Europeans and Africans. Based on data collected from the Nigerian and British national archives, the study reveals how Nigerian WWI ex-servicemen fell victim to the logic of British colonialism which, like all others, prioritized profit above all else. Consequently, after having served the colonial state, the men became undermined within their respective African communities without a simultaneous elevation of their status within the colonial state.

Key Words: Nigeria, ex-servicemen, WWI, colonial economy; victims

In 1935, a group of senior military and civilian officials came together in Paris to discuss the growing unrest among indigenous veterans in North Africa. Under the stewardship of the Algerian-born Marshal Louis Franchet d’Espèrey, they founded the Comité des Amitiés Africaines (Committee of African Friendships), with the dual mission of catering to and controlling North African veterans. This article examines the committee’s execution of its mission in the latter years of the interwar period. It asks what effect the handing over of provision for indigenous veterans to a supposedly non-state organization under the control of the colonial military and civilian authorities had on the relationship between the veteran and the colonial state. Furthermore, it examines the interaction of indigenous veterans and their families with the services provided by the committee, pointing to the daily negotiation of power that underlay the colonial encounter. At its heart, lies an exploration of the ambiguous attitudes of the colonial authorities in North Africa, and perhaps beyond, towards veterans who were seen as both potential clients of and contesters of the colonial state.

Key Words: Veterans, colonial history, Algeria, global First World War, French empire

During World War I, African colonial soldiers (askari) of the Schutztruppe für Deutsch Ostafrika fought a difficult campaign in German East Africa. In November 1918, they surrendered to the British alongside their commander, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Within a few months, their German officers had left East Africa to return to Germany. Most of the ex-askari found it difficult to make new lives for themselves in Tanganyika, as the former Germany colony came to be known in 1920. In British Mandate Tanganyika, the ex-askari had limited options for making a living commensurate with the status they had occupied before the war. Their paths through British colonial rule from 1918 to 1961, when Tanganyika became independent, took different forms. This article charts some of these paths in order to place the African veterans of the Schutztruppe alongside the experiences of other Black veterans of the First World War, whose responses to postwar indignities led them to radicalize. That African Schutztruppe veterans did not become radicals raises intriguing questions about the factors that shaped military veterans’ politics after the First World War, and through the next five decades of the twentieth century.

Key Words: German East Africa - World War I, African Theatre - World War One, askari, African Veterans – World War I

The era of the Senegalese veteran was bookended by two public events: the elaborate celebrations in Paris and Dakar on July14, 1919 commemorating the soldiers’ contribution to Allied victory, and the death of Abdoylaye Ndiaye, the last surviving soldier, on 10 November 1998. During these eight decades, the French colonial state, its nationalist opponents, and its Senegalese neo-colonial successor sought through a variety of means – including carefully manicured battlefield cemeteries, larger than life statues of heroic soldiers, manifestos calling for civic equality in the colonies in exchange for the performance of military duty, and annual public parades on Armistice and later Senegalese Independence Day – to appropriate, transmit and transmute the image of the veteran across multiplegenerations for their own ends. On a personal level, the Senegalese combatants’ postwar experience was highlighted by three moments: their joyous return home and reunion with their loved ones; their gradual reintegration into Senegalese society – forever separated from others by the lingering trauma of their war-time experiences and the gulf everlastingly differentiating combatants from civilians; and the ongoing insult of receiving an unequal combatants’ pension in old age, which made a mockery of their personal sacrifices. Drawing on the oral histories of more than 80 Senegalese veterans, 60 of their descendants, and extensive archival collections, this piece explores the tensions during their lifetimes between the public representations of the soldiers and the reality of their private lives. Itconcludes that even though the veterans have physically passed from the scene, they have entered into collective mythology, and the memory of their war-time service, as well as its appropriation by others for their own ends, continues to endure.

Key Words: Veterans, Senegal, tirailleurs sénégalais, First World War, French West Africa, oral history