World War I, Africa

World War I, which began as a European civil war, soon engulfed thirty-two nations, twenty-eight of which constituted the Allied and Associated Powers, ranged against the Central Powers made up of Germany, Austria-Hungry, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The war was not contained within the Balkan theater where competing nationalisms and old ethnic rivalries had been simmering. It quickly expanded to include a wider area of Europe and beyond and eventually spilled into Africa as well. In Africa, where the British and the French had extensive colonial interests to protect, the conflict engrossed a number of European nations battling it out among themselves in different regions of Africa with armies that consisted mostly of soldiers from the colonies, including India.

In the African phase of the war, the British and the French (using African troops under European command) quickly overran German Togo, which was surrounded by British and French colonies. The German Cameroon took a little longer to subdue, although it too did not have many white settlers or a significant number of German troops, which would have prolonged the military campaign.

Further south, the Allied forces, South African troops in particular, occupied German South-West Africa (Namibia) by 1915 without much struggle. The military campaign (given South African racist opposition) was carried out by white troops with a substantial number of Africans being used mainly as support labor. In German East Africa (Tanganyika) the conflict between the British (who relied heavily on white South Africans, Indians, and Africans, though South African racist objections against Africans serving as combatants surfaced once again) and the German forces (consisting mostly of African soldiers) became quite bloody. Some troops from India on their way to serving in Egypt were instead sent to East Africa to attack the enemy from the coast. This attempt proved to be a disaster and was quickly replaced by an invasion from the hinterland, that is, Nairobi. The campaign was a difficult one given the incidence of disease that affected horses, and African porters became the substitute for moving supplies for the troops. Needless to mention, African labor was not voluntary but coerced as the British needed extensive labor to maintain the military supply lines.

The German army was led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (1870–1964), who conducted a very effective guerrilla campaign by avoiding direct confrontations and keeping constantly on the move. He succeeded in widening the battle zone into a spectacular theater of operations that extended into Portuguese-controlled Mozambique, British Nyasaland (Malawi), and northeastern Rhodesia (Zambia). Von Lettow-Vorbeck managed to tie down more than 100,000 British-led Allied troops over this vast territory (rich with mining resources) in a dogged resistance that did not end until Germany suffered defeat in Europe. Scorched-earth tactics were utilized by both sides, with disastrous results on the local populations' food supply.

What were the consequences of the war for Africa? What were African perceptions of the war? Clearly Africans had nothing to look forward to (as they were not fighting for some principle or, as in the case of the French, to preserve what they had lost four decades earlier in the Franco-Prussian war), being drawn into conflicts and wars that were not of their making. As a matter of fact, Africans were themselves recent victims of European aggression that had resulted in, with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, the whole continent being carved up into colonies dominated by European powers (with a number of primary resistance movements cropping up here and there to deal with this situation). Quite understandably, therefore, they resented the sacrifices they were being asked to make on behalf of someone else or some other nation's wars.

The war campaigns created such untold hardship that around 100,000 people died of disease, malnutrition, and overwork. Famine and such diseases as influenza, malaria, and dysentery took their toll, killing large numbers of people in East, West, and Central Africa from 1918 to 1919. On both sides of the conflict, the African fighting men were killing one another for European causes. For instance, Kenya alone lost tens of thousands of people who died, mainly from disease, from the forcible recruitment of Africans into the fighting forces. Moreover, about 150,000 Africans in French colonies fought in Europe, where as many as 30,000 died in the savage battle of attrition against the Germans. The French had recruited several hundred thousand combat troops in North Africa and West Africa, a good many of whom fought in the trenches while others provided much needed labor or were employed in support roles.

The war disrupted Africa's international trade with the outside while raising commodity prices far above the rise in incomes. The increase in taxes to help finance the war efforts only added further burdens to Africa's subsistence producers, who had no other sources of income to fall back on. There were also heavy demands being placed on newly established health and medical programs, whose benefits were being mitigated by the disease factor, which had been made worse by the war.

Moreover, the developmental policies that were implemented in the period between the two wars resulted in migrations, voluntary or coerced, by people who were seeking employment from agriculturally marginal regions to mining or cash-crop-producing areas. In other areas of Africa, such as French West Africa, the return of a large number of ex-soldiers with no jobs waiting for them affected the employment situation. So did the disappearance of jobs that had been associated with ports and other facilities that were heavily used during the duration of the war. There was a lot of hardship for people in urban centers who were trying to cope as best they could away from their homes in the villages.

There were other repercussions as well: a number of African uprisings occurred both before and during World War I. Among the most serious were the Maji Maji uprising in German East Africa in 1905 and Elliot Kamwana's (1870–1956) Watchtower movement in Nyasaland in 1908. These religious revitalization movements were motivated by a strong sense of resentment against European domination, overtaxation, and forced labor. The movements, with their religious or messianic overtones, received a receptive ear among Africans (especially those in areas where Africans had lost their lands to white-settler communities, as in Rhodesia).

There were stirrings of revolt, as in the Shire Highlands (an area of white plantation settlement in northern Malawi) in 1915 when Africans protested against colonial injustices and the shedding of African blood in World War I. Though the leader of the uprising, John Chilembwe (d. 1915), was eventually captured and executed, his inspiration won him folklore status among people who had been increasingly subjected to colonial oppression. Similarly, strikes and protests took place in colonies such as Dahomey (now Benin) and Kenya. Among the most prominent of these protest organizations was the Young Kikuyu Association headed by Harry Thuku (1895–1970), who was later detained and exiled to a remote area of Kenya. This laid the foundations for the later struggles for independence in Kenya.

The above examples indicate that the war did not end colonial subjugation, despite the European propaganda about fighting for democracy; on the contrary, it ushered in a new era of colonial consolidation, especially in the absence of any external competition for the control of Africa. This was the era when the tiny educated African elite did not demand collective rights but rather sought to work within the system by seeking concessions with respect to participation in the political and decision-making process. The mood, of course, would change after the end of World War II, when Africans became more assertive in terms of their demands for total liberation, not piecemeal change for only certain sectors of the population. The colonial authorities dismissed such demands as premature, arguing that Africans were not ready to assume such practices as an open press and free speech, which were associated with the liberal traditions of countries like Britain.

The war had also weakened the European powers, which had been forced to borrow heavily from the United States to finance the war. This made the European powers look for ways in which the colonies could pay for themselves, while hopefully generating wealth for the imperial country. As a result, the theory of the dual mandate, developed by Frederick Lugard (1858–1945), attempted to put a respectable face to this British policy, as did its French equivalent in the French colonies.

Finally, it should be noted that World War I did not lead to the redrawing of the map of colonial Africa, as had occurred in Europe and the Middle East, where old empires had collapsed. Nothing of the sort happened in Africa. The war simply meant that Germany lost its former territories to the French (for instance, Togo), the British (Tanganyika), and the South Africans (Namibia, which was mandated by the League of Nations to be administered by South Africa). In the case of South Africa, the war had divided the white population into two camps: those who saw South Africa as a British dominion (and therefore took the country to war on the side of the British), and those (Afrikaner nationalists) who were vehemently opposed to going to war against Germany, which had aided them in the Anglo-Boer War (1880–1881).

see also Dual Mandate, Africa; Maji Maji Revolt, Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa, European Presence in.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Katzenellenbogen, S. E. "Southern Africa and the War of 1914–18." In War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J. R. Western, 1928–1971, edited by M. R. D. Foot, 107-122. London: Elek, 1973.

Rathbone, Richard. "World War I and Africa: Introduction." Journal of African History 19 (1) (1978): 1-9.

Shillington, Kevin. History of Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989; rev. ed., 1995.