Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict 9780755623921, 9781780764405

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Published in 2014 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright Editorial Selection q 2014 Andrew Tait Jarboe and Richard S. Fogarty Copyright Individual Chapters q 2014 Andrew Tait Jarboe, Richard S. Fogarty, Matthew G. Stanard, Maryanne A. Rhett, Wm. Matthew Kennedy, Julian Saltman, Steven Sabol, Sarah Zimmerman, Kenneth J. Orosz, Erin Eckhold Sassin, Richard Smith, Alan McPherson, John Lack and Bart Ziino The right of Andrew Tait Jarboe/Richard S. Fogarty to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. International Library of Twentieth Century History 68 ISBN: 978 1 78076 440 5 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For Maren and Seamus

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Albany, and the Gillis Family Fund for their financial support of this project. We would also like to thank editors Joanna Godfrey and Tomasz Hoskins at I.B.Tauris for their early enthusiasm and continued belief that our ideas would result in a book sooner or later. Thanks also to Peter Barnes for his careful copy editing of the manuscript, and to the anonymous readers for the press, all of whom helped make this a better book. Additionally, we extend our sincere appreciation to the contributors to this volume: for their excellent scholarship, hard work, and patience as we endeavoured to produce a book worthy of their efforts. Last, but certainly not least, we would like to thank our families for their own very special, and crucial, brand of belief in and patience with our efforts on this project. Both of us embarked on the far more ambitious project of fatherhood as we laboured to bring this volume to a finish, so we would like to dedicate it to Maren and Seamus. We hope that you grow up in a world with neither empires nor wars, and that these remain subjects only for history books like this one.

NOTE ON CONTRIBUTORS

Richard S. Fogarty is an associate professor of History at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He earned his PhD in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is the author of Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914– 1918 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), as well as numerous articles on the history of France and its colonial empire during World War I. He is currently working on a book about French North African Muslims as prisoners of war in Germany. Andrew Tait Jarboe completed his PhD in History at Northeastern University in 2013. He is an assistant professor at Berklee College of Music and history department chair at Roxbury Prep. His dissertation, ‘Soldiers of Empire: Indian Troops in and beyond the Imperial Metropole during the First World War, 1914–1919’, focuses on the temporary migration of nearly 138,000 Indian soldiers to the heart of Europe to fight on the Western Front and draws on archival work conducted in the United States, England and Germany. Wm. Matthew Kennedy is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Sydney. He earned a BA in History and in European Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and his MSt in Imperial and Commonwealth History at St Cross College, University of Oxford. His is currently researching the idea of empire in late nineteenth-century Australia.

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John Lack is Associate Professor and is a principal fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. He has published widely in urban, labour and migration history, and in the study of war and Australian society. His most recent book, Surviving Captivity: The campaign and P.O.W. diary of Bob Christie (2010) followed his investigation of Australian veterans’ remembering of World War II in No Lost Battalion: An Oral History of the 2/29th Battalion AIF (2005). Alan McPherson is Professor of International and Area Studies, ConocoPhillips Petroleum Chair in Latin American Studies, and Director of the Center for the Americas at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of the prizewinning Yankee No! AntiAmericanism in U.S.– Latin American Relations (Harvard, 2003), Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin America since 1945 (Potomac, 2006), and The Invaded: How Latin Americans and their Allies Fought and Ended US Occupations (Oxford, 2014). Kenneth J. Orosz is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Social Studies Education at Buffalo State College. His book, Religious Conflict and the Evolution of Language Policy in German and French Cameroon, 1885 – 1939 (Peter Lang, 2008), was awarded the 2009 Heggoy Book Prize by the French Colonial Historical Society. His current research interests include the internment of German missionaries in World War I, colonial tourism, and Cameroonian resistance movements. Maryanne A. Rhett is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and World History at Monmouth University. Her current work looks at the world historical implications of the Balfour Declaration as well as the intersection of Middle Eastern history and Western sequential art. Professor Rhett has organised conference programmes for the Mid-Atlantic World History Association and the World History Association.

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Steven Sabol is Associate Professor of History at University of North Carolina Charlotte. Professor Sabol is currently working on a booklength project that compares Russian and American internal colonisation (under contract with the University Press of Colorado). He is also a co-editor for the ‘Borderlands’ volume of the Russia’s Great War & Revolution series. Julian Saltman completed his PhD in Modern European History at the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. At Berkeley, he has held fellowships from the Institute of International Studies and the Institute for European Studies, and has taught courses on World War I and 20th-Century Europe. He holds an AB in History from Dartmouth College and a MA in History from UC Berkeley. Erin Eckhold Sassin is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College. She completed her PhD in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University in 2012, where she focused on the Ledigenheim, or home for single workers, a building type developed by German architects, industrialists, and both secular and denominational reformers in the middle of the nineteenth century to house single workers while combating the ‘lodger problem’ endemic to working class life. Richard Smith is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths University of London. He has written widely on the experience of Caribbean troops in both world wars and the race and gender implications of military service in the British Empire. Richard’s current research includes imperial propaganda in the West Indies during and after World War I, paramilitary and political violence among Caribbean ex-servicemen and moving images of black and Asian soldiers in the world wars. Matthew G. Stanard is Associate Professor of History at Berry College and author of Selling the Congo: A History of European ProEmpire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). He is at work on an essay on culture and the

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legacies of empire in Belgium after 1960 as well as a study of colonial state controls on both the movement of people in the Congo and the creation and dissemination of information about the colony 1945– 60. Bart Ziino is a lecturer in history at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of A Distant Grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War (2007), The Heritage of War (co-edited, 2012), and several studies of Australian remembering of the Great War, both by those who experienced it and by their descendants. He is currently researching a history of private sentiment in Australia during the Great War. Sarah Zimmerman is an assistant professor at Western Washington University. She carried out the research for the chapter in this volume while finishing her PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Sarah is currently working on a manuscript focusing on the women affiliated with tirailleurs se´ne´galais serving in the French empire. This work will focus on gender, marriage, migration and colonialism.

INTRODUCTION AN IMPERIAL TURN IN FIRST WORLD WAR STUDIES Andrew Tait Jarboe and Richard S. Fogarty

World War I was a conflict fought by empires to determine the fate of those empires. Only a month after the guns in Serbia, Belgium and France had signalled the commencement of what would become the world’s most destructive conflict to date, The Times attempted to reassure its readership that the British Empire stood united, prepared to withstand the ordeal. ‘History has never recorded so splendid and universal a rally as is now being witnessed throughout the British realms,’ the newspaper proclaimed on 10 September 1914. ‘Gifts are pouring in, and men will soon be pouring in, and the stream of help will flow unceasingly until the world-ambitions of Germany are crushed and the soil of France and Belgium is freed from the invader.’ What began as a conflict in Europe, in other words, was rapidly transforming into a world war, not because of any cajoling on the behalf of Whitehall but because of a willingness and desire on the part of colonial subjects to rally to the cause of the British Empire. ‘The Indian Empire has overwhelmed the British nation by the completeness and unanimity of its enthusiastic aid,’ the Times continued. Likewise in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and ‘plucky’ Newfoundland, men rushed ‘to the Empire’s standards’ to stand in arms against a common foe.

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From the ends of the earth armies are gathering to write in letters of blood the doom of Kaiserism . . . When the illimitable resources of the British Empire, our grand Fleet, our unconquerable Army, the flower of the manhood of these islands, our heroic kinsmen from overseas, our chivalrous Indian troops, are all placed in the scale in this mighty struggle from which we will never flinch nor falter, who can doubt what the end will be?1 The German military spent much of the next four years proving that economic determinism makes for a poor predictor of battlefield outcomes.2 Still, there can be little doubt that the resources of the British Empire – however inefficiently they might have been utilised – when combined with those of its imperial allies (the United States included) ultimately tipped the scales against the Central Powers. In total, Germany mobilised 13.2 million soldiers in the course of the war, nearly 85 per cent of its male population between the ages of 17 and 50. These men faced off against armies of a truly global make-up. By the end of the war, the British Isles had mobilised some 4.9 million men for the army. Not counting men who served in labour contingents or as bearers, the Empire supplemented its metropolitan fighting population with 1.4 million men from India (some 138,000 of whom fought in France), 458,000 Canadians, 8,000 Newfoundlanders, 332,000 Australians, 112,000 New Zealanders, 136,000 South Africans, 16,000 West Indians, 34,000 East Africans and 25,000 West Africans.3 The mobilisation of so many men from the British Empire alone illustrates just one aspect of the war’s truly global nature, and makes plain the primary wartime function of empires: the extraction, movement and deployment of imperial resources – the bodies, affections, raw material, commodities, finance and ideas of empire – within and across imperial boundaries in order to extend the life of those empires. Without listing all the facts and figures for each combatant in the war, we will merely note here that France, too, made extensive use of its colonial empire, recruiting over 500,000 colonial subjects – from North and West Africa, Madagascar and

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Indochina – to fight in its army between 1914 and 1918, some of the eight million men to serve in that army during the war.4 Of course, Germany’s main ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, did not possess or recruit from a tropical colonial empire, but it too mobilised millions of men of different ethnicities and nationalities, as did the third member of the Entente, Imperial Russia. The Germans, British, French and Belgians also recruited hundreds of thousands of Africans to serve as soldiers and carriers in their protracted campaigns in Africa.5 So the war was an imperial contest, and contemporaries recognised this. Echoing The Times’s confident claim that residents of the colonies gave their aid enthusiastically to the struggle among the Great Powers of Europe, proving the unity of metropole and overseas possessions, French Senator Henry Be´renger declared in 1915 that ‘colonial France and European France are no longer separated. A pact has been signed in blood for the same honour and the same flags.’6 After the war, Albert Sarraut, whose long political career included periods serving as Governor General of Indochina and as Minister of the Colonies, published an encomium to the past, present and future value of the French colonial empire, La mise en valeur des colonies francaises. The starting point for his argument was the manifest contribution the empire had provided to the war effort between 1914 and 1918. The war, despite its terrible costs and trials for the French people and nation, had at least had ‘the clear advantage of making the colonies known to the French public’, and making known that the herculean efforts of the men who had conquered and administered the colonies ‘had not been in vain’.7 Even in Belgium, whose Congo colony seemed only marginally involved in the war, former opponents of the nation’s colonial endeavours recognised that the war had only cemented metropole and colony more tightly together, and that Belgian rulership over the Congo was ‘a done deal’.8 Cheerleaders and even some critics of empire neglected to take into account the very real and significant part that violence and coercion would play in the course of extracting, moving and deploying imperial resources in the coming years, preferring instead to represent the Empire’s colonial subjects as consenting and eager

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participants. Yet it is true that metropole and colony (and Dominion) made the Great War global, made it the First World War. Perhaps this truth is itself manifestation of the hegemonic nature of the imperial project, of its ability to gain the consent of those whom it contained simultaneously ‘by rifle butts and napalm’, as Frantz Fanon would later put it.9 Be that as it may, any discussion of empires in World War I must attempt somehow to take into account the dynamic between imperial metropoles and colonies. It will not suffice to study the decisions made by power-brokers in Whitehall, for instance, without also studying the decisions made by peasants in India. Nor can we have a meaningful discussion without considering the war’s inter-imperial dimensions. Empires and inter-imperial rivalries created the contexts in which imperial subjects from around the globe encountered one another and made connections.10 Finally, it will not suffice to do what many histories of World War I continue to do, which is to tell the story of ‘the War in Europe’ in one chapter and ‘the war Somewhere Else’ in another. Rather, we must treat the globe as an integrated, if uneven, whole. We must treat distant places and peoples within ‘a single analytic field’, as part of a worldwide imperial system. This ‘imperial’ perspective in World War I studies is long overdue. By describing the conflict as a ‘Great War’, observers at the time were trying to capture both something of the war’s magnitude and its global extent, a characteristic even more explicit in the term some in Germany used to describe the war from the beginning: Der Weltkrieg. Since then, historians have told and retold the story of World War I countless times, and on the eve of the centennial of the war’s outbreak popular and scholarly interest in the topic remains unabated.11 From the war’s onset to the commencement of World War II, histories tended to focus on military and diplomatic matters. Imperial histories of the war certainly made an appearance during this time, though they tended to be jingoistic and self-serving.12 In the wake of the Third Reich and the subsequent division of Europe into two polarised blocs, a clear shift in focus began away from matters of diplomacy to social issues such as the home front during wartime and the experience of the trenches. In the past three decades, historians

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have largely pursued a cultural agenda, placing subjects such as collective memory, violence and the behaviour of soldiers at the heart of their studies.13 Scholars belonging to each of these configurations have explored new terrains, blurred previously taken-for-granted spatial and temporal boundaries, and introduced new questions and methodologies to the study of World War I. Yet common to each configuration has been a shared assumption that scholarly attention to conditions in Europe yields the greatest returns. The result is that students of the conflict have lost sight of global dimensions that were apparent to and experienced by the war’s participants and contemporaries. Recent years, however, have seen some indications that more historians are attempting to come to terms with this need to frame the story of World War I in a global, or even avowedly imperial perspective. A stated goal of the recently launched First World War Studies, the journal of the International Society for First World War Studies, is to ‘cleave the many insular, too often national particularisms’ that permeate academic fields in favour of an approach that is without ‘chronological, geographic, or topical constraints’.14 Hew Strachan’s many works on the war are at the forefront of this trend, in particular The First World War (2003).15 John H. Morrow, Jr.’s The Great War: An Imperial History (2004) integrates the imperial story into the larger history of the war.16 More recent publications indicate that this trend is likely to continue in general narratives of 1914–18.17 This is not necessarily to say that studies focusing on the war in Europe ought to give way, nor that the attention Europe has received is without merit. The war was, after all, quite literally won and lost on Europe’s Western Front, even if the war’s other fronts were undeniably important and stretched across large portions of the earth’s land and water surface. Nor is it to say that in order to recapture the conflict’s global nature, we must necessarily ‘decentre’ Europe. World historians, for instance, may continue to debate when and why the ‘great’ European divergence happened – as the economies and nations of the West became richer and more powerful more quickly than those of peoples and polities in other parts of the world – but none contest the claim that by 1914 it had happened.18 ‘Europe was the centre of the world in 1914 for two

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reasons’, Hew Strachan has written recently. ‘The first was financial and commercial, and the second colonial and imperial.’19 Thus in the Punjab, on the eve of the war, the Urdu-language newspaper Zamindar could confidently inform its readership that the war between Austria and Serbia would rapidly become a ‘universal war’, one in which ‘all the great empires of Europe will be involved’.20 Understanding the global dimensions of World War I necessarily involves addressing the roles of European empires in one capacity or another. Europe need not be the main focus of a given story, but its role and influence must be a part of the story at the very least. But when Europe is the centre of a given story, the key to an imperial perspective is remembering not to lose sight of ways in which imperial peripheries shaped the war in Europe. In this respect, historians of World War I must follow the lead of historians of European colonialism more generally, who have insisted for the better part of two decades that the histories of metropole and colony are not separate, but part of a whole whose parts are inextricably intertwined and in symbiotic, reciprocal relationships to each other.21 Historians following in the footsteps of Edward Said have revealed the centripetal nature of the imperial project, demonstrating that images of the colony and the colonial ‘other’ were ubiquitous within the imperial metropole by the outbreak of the war in 1914.22 Colonial soldiers played a key role before the war in expanding and defending the British, French, and German empires overseas – a fact not lost on metropolitan audiences.23 While there can be no doubt that national sentiment was very real among the warring powers engaged on various fronts, an imperial perspective reminds us that the major powers fighting World War I were nations within empires, situated at the core of an imperial world system.24 Any metropolitan sense of the ‘nation’ in 1914 was thoroughly entwined with ideas of the empire, for the simple reason that nations, if we might borrow Mrinalini Sinha’s term, were themselves ‘imperial social formations’.25 A growing number of recent titles exploring wartime imperial encounters between colonising and colonised peoples within, beyond and between imperial metropoles and peripheries indicate that we may be witnessing the early stages of an imperial turn in First World

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War studies.26 Historians of the French Empire and of France’s colonial troops have led the charge, so to speak, in this endeavour. Reflecting the often dominant interest in the history of West African troops, Marc Michel set the stage with his seminal work, L’Appel a` l’Afrique. Contributions et re´actions a` l’effort de guerre en A.O.F., 1914– 1919 (1982).27 Outside France, Joe Lunn helped pioneer renewed interest in the ‘colonial’ experience of the First World War in his Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (1999), which made extensive use of his interviews with West African veterans of the French army.28 More recently, in Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (2006), Gregory Mann explores the ways in which service in the French Army, from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II, reconfigured relationships among Africans and between Africans and French colonial administrators in Mali.29 In Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914 – 1918 (2008), Richard Fogarty posits that while French officials took republican ideals of assimilation seriously – namely, that military service in defence of the Republic could make one French – ideas about race worked simultaneously to keep colonial subjects at arm’s length.30 Books by Glenford Howe and Richard Smith demonstrate that work on soldiering, empire and race also have a place in the British story of the war.31 Indeed, race, in all its various guises, has become one of the most compelling categories of historical analysis within this imperial turn, and offers a valuable analytic framework with which scholars can make comparisons within and across empires, as a recent edited volume by Santanu Das demonstrates.32 A handful of monographs and articles further explore the encounters and anxieties engendered by the deployment of colonial labourers to Europe during the war, and Philippa Levine has demonstrated the usefulness of both gender and race as categories of historical analysis by showing that the deployment of colonial labourers and of Indian soldiers to Europe resulted in an ‘increasingly alarmist link between racial mistrust and a vision of sexual disorder’, necessitating policies intended to control working-class women and non-white men ‘for the sake of empire’.33

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The post-war deployment of African soldiers to the German Rhineland has also received greater attention lately, reminding us that French imperial policy had repercussions within the German metropole.34 What new understandings might the imperial turn reveal as it continues to develop, and how can this volume make a contribution? One important quality of the present work is that it seeks to combine the global and imperial scope of more general works, while adding detailed examinations of particular, and sometimes unexpected, aspects of the story. Taken together, the contributions to this volume suggest three broad conclusions about World War I. The first of these may seem obvious yet is worth repeating: for everything that scholars have said about nations and national sentiment in World War I, those who took part in and experienced the war did so in imperial terms. Empires framed wartime possibilities and opportunities (see Chapters 4, 5 and 8). As imagined political communities, empires were able to arouse deep attachments even as they reinforced difference and reproduced inequalities (see Chapters 6, 9 and 10).35 Second, non-European empires, and indeed nations that do not always figure on lists of modern ‘traditional’ empires, played important roles in World War I. The United States and Japan feature prominently in this volume as imperial actors. Both took opportunities presented by the war to flex imperial muscle and to make claims on extra-imperial holdings (see Chapters 2, 3 and 12). The United States, for its part, also had to contend with its own interior frontiers (see Chapter 7). The third conclusion the essays in this volume suggest is that World War I represented both the high point and the beginning of the end of the worldwide imperial system. Scholars have recently made much of the ‘Wilsonian moment’ in the closing years of World War I, of the international origins of anti-colonial movements cloaked in the rhetoric of national self-determination and Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.36 This volume explores some challenges to imperial rule born of the war (see Chapters 11 and 12), and it is no accident that important (and from the point of view of the imperial powers, troublesome) nationalist movements emerged and gained

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strength during the inter-war period. But in many important respects, World War I also marked the high point of empires. For one thing, even as the Russian, German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires fell at the end of the war, the League of Nations Mandates increased the physical size of some European empires, notably those of Great Britain and France, as the victors divided the spoils left by their fallen imperial rivals.37 This event reinforced commitment to the imperial project among some who might otherwise have lost (or even never acquired) enthusiasm, and in so doing extended a lease on life to empire (see Chapters 1, 9 and 13). Contributions to this volume survey the role of empire during the war in Belgium, Japan, India, the Pacific, North America, the West Indies, Palestine, Britain, France, North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, Central Europe, the Caribbean, Australia, Canada and Jamaica. An edited collection such as this cannot, of course, be truly comprehensive in its coverage, particularly of a global event like the First World War. However, this volume is wide-ranging, as the above list of regions and nations suggests, demonstrating powerfully just how extensive the war was and how multifarious were its imperial manifestations. When read in its entirety, it offers scholars and students of World War I the opportunity to look for connections and make comparisons on a truly global scale. Each chapter then, in turn, draws out some particular aspect of the conflict’s imperial dimensions. In an effort to construct a narrative that is nonetheless globally integrative, chapters are grouped thematically into four sections. Those collected in Part I, ‘Myths and Realities of Imperial Expansion’, demonstrate that World War I presented an unparalleled opportunity for many of the war’s participants to realise until-then dormant imperial ambitions. While the story of tiny Belgium’s stubborn yet hopeless stand against waves of German Uhlans and infantry in August 1914 finds its way into every account of World War I, Matthew Stanard demonstrates that the war proved central to the formation of a more conscious empirebuilding and imperialist identity in Belgium. This profoundly reshaped the trajectory of the Belgian Empire, he argues in ‘Digging-

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in: The Great War and the Roots of Belgian Empire’. Stanard highlights the co-dependency of wartime events in Europe and Africa, while also attending to the activities of Belgian-sponsored colonial organisations during and after the war in order to highlight the centrality of World War I in configuring a ‘new’ Belgian Empire after 1918. Half a world away, the outbreak of war in Europe also represented a moment when the hope of empire stirred strongest in India and Japan, as Maryanne Rhett shows in her contribution, ‘Race and Imperial Ambition: The Case of Japan and India after World War I’. In the shadow of the British Empire, Indian nationalists not only fought for independence, but for their right to create their own empire along the rim of the Indian Ocean. In a similar fashion, the Japanese struggled to prove their civilisation just as capable of an imperial mission as the great Western European powers. Some in both India and Japan used the context of the war to make race-, nation- and civilisation-based claims for their nations’ roles as future empires. In fact, as Wm. Matthew Kennedy shows, Japan’s struggle for empire itself reflected part of a latter day nonEuropean scramble for empire in the Pacific similar to the late Victorian rush for empire in Africa. His ‘A Pacific Scramble? Imperial Readjustment in the Asia Pacific, 1911 –22’, tells how, during the war, Australia and New Zealand asserted themselves as metropoles of their own quite discernable empires; Japan attempted a coup in China, undermining the treaty-port system and its premise of racial inequality; and the United States rewrote the standards of international finance and foreign investment to allow American capital into previously forbidden territories. The outbreak of war between the European powers thus held out the possibility of imperial expansion even for those who did not necessarily enjoy Great Power status in 1914. But what prospects did the war hold for those who would have to do the actual work of fighting for empires? The subject of colonial soldiers has quickly become a flourishing sub-field within First World War studies and presents a compelling springboard from which scholars can better understand the imperial dynamics of the war. Part II of this volume, ‘Soldiers of Empire, Far from Home’, therefore examines the

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movement of one of the most basic resources of empire – human beings. Deploying men from one side of the planet to another was a monumental task in its own right. Maintaining the loyalties of imperial soldiers and colonial subjects in the face of the war’s upheavals proved no less daunting. In ‘Propaganda and Empire in the Heart of Europe: Indian Soldiers in Hospital and Prison, 1914– 18’, Andrew Tait Jarboe compares two sites where imperial propaganda aimed to maintain, or convert, the loyalty of Indian soldiers fighting in Europe. At segregated hospitals in France and England, British authorities worked not only to repair damaged bodies, but also to foster imperial loyalty by impressing upon Indian sepoys the gratitude they owed their imperial hosts. At Indian prisoner-of-war camps, meanwhile, the Germans deployed a propaganda campaign not dissimilar to that of their British counterparts, albeit with the aim of making Germany, not Great Britain, the focus of Indians’ gratitude and loyalty. This campaign failed, however, to convert a significant number of Indian soldiers, in no small part because German authorities failed to sever ties that bound sepoys to the British Empire. Exploring the case of France’s North African soldiers, Richard Fogarty’s ‘Out of North Africa: Contested Visions of French Muslim Soldiers during World War I’ traces the ways various actors understood and attempted to influence Muslim identity. France’s use of hundreds of thousands of its Muslim colonial subjects as soldiers in Europe highlighted official French assumptions about the role of Islam in the war, while German and Ottoman attempts to persuade North African prisoners of war to switch sides revealed different, but equally stereotyped visions of Muslim solidarities. In the end, the North Africans themselves resisted easy categorisation of their affinities and manipulations of their actions, generating self-understandings and self-representations that made room for what was most important to most of them: their survival. Maintaining the cohesion and discipline of imperial armies also presented a host of challenges. In ‘“The Full and Just Penalty”? British Military Justice and the Empire’s War in Egypt and Palestine’, Julian Saltman examines military justice, as it applied to

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British Empire soldiers, in the Palestine theatre of the First World War. Focusing on field-general courts martial (FGCM), he considers how the British military designed the FGCM expressly to convict soldiers and apply maximum penalties, particularly in cases involving soldiers from the empire facing charges of contravening authority. Yet archival research reveals that nearly half of the convicted Empire soldiers in Palestine had their sentences either commuted or partially remitted during a mandatory review process. Drawing on previously unexplored sources, including the transcripts of several court-martial proceedings and the extensive disciplinary records kept by the War Office, the chapter complicates many scholarly assumptions about race and British military discipline. In before ‘“It was a Pretty Good War, but They Stopped it too Soon”: the American Empire, Native Americans, and World War I’, Steven Sabol explores debates in the United States over what role, if any, Native Americans might play in the war. Roughly 17,000 Native Americans served in the war in integrated units, even though a large percentage did not have citizenship, and in the 1920s and 1930s this service became the impetus to revisit American policies directed towards them. Ultimately, Sabol argues that these episodes demonstrate that the United States exercised an internal colonialism that should provoke us to view the United States as an imperial power alongside its wartime allies, the quintessential empires of Russia, Great Britain and France. Part III, ‘Thinking Imperially, Acting Locally’, shifts the focus to those navigating or engaged in projects on what one might call the imperial home front. The chapters presented here stress the interplay between the global and the local, and consider ways global empires ‘happened’ in various localities. In her contribution, ‘Citizenship, Military Service and Managing Exceptionalism: Originaires in World War I’, Sarah Zimmerman examines the attitudes of a group of West Africans to service in the army of their French imperial rulers. Men from several coastal municipalities, known as originaires from the ‘Four Communes’ of Senegal, possessed a special status that gave them some of the rights and responsibilities of French citizens but also preserved some elements of their status as colonial subjects.

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And they valued some aspects of both statuses. Zimmerman argues that originaires’ responses to the dramatic wartime legislation governing the terms of military service demonstrate that acquiring full French citizenship was less important to these men than maintaining the civic exceptionalism protected by the colonial legal and political regime. The essay is a powerful reminder that the global upheaval of World War I had important local effects far from the Western Front. Likewise, in ‘For God and Country: Missionary Service in Colonial Africa During World War I’, Kenneth Orosz explores an overlooked aspect of an often-overlooked front of World War I: missionary conscription and service in colonial Africa. The dearth of white personnel and the difficulties of obtaining reinforcements from home meant that colonial authorities conscripted many missionaries and lay brethren into the local military, both as combatants and as chaplains. When Entente forces took control of Germany’s African holdings, officials called upon missionaries to open schools and offer language courses to win the hearts and minds of indigenous peoples, facilitate local administration by the occupying forces, and help cement British, French and Belgian territorial ambitions in post-war settlements. Reminding us that wartime empire-building happened in Europe just as it happened overseas, Erin Sassin brings the focus to Germany’s contiguous empire in ‘The Visual Politics of Upper Silesian Settlements in World War I’. Her chapter explores the consolidation of ethnic and national identity during the war through the planning of extra-urban settlements (Siedlungen) in an economically important, long-contentious and multi-ethnic region of the German Empire, Upper Silesia. Through an investigation of the visual forms employed in settling and housing single workers, Sassin demonstrates that this model community functioned both as imperial propaganda and as an attempt to consolidate the locality of a mining and heavy industrial region whose residents’ allegiances were not to their German overlords. The strains of the war broke some empires, created lasting fissures in others, and in still other cases strengthened the imperial hand.38 Part IV, ‘Afterlives of War and Empire’, looks to the ways in which

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some contemporaries used the context of the war to challenge imperial rule, without losing sight of ways in which empires tried to consolidate themselves in the post-war decades. In ‘World War I and the Permanent West Indian Soldier’, Richard Smith explores how post-war West Indian nationalist movements exploited the masculine rhetoric of military sacrifice and citizenship. He highlights how the re-interpretation of wartime experiences after exposure to panAfricanism was pivotal to the emergence of ex-soldiers as political leaders and agitators during the 1920s and 1930s, a phenomenon that transcended the boundaries of empire. Smith pays particular attention to the role of ex-soldiers and sailors in post-war insurrectionary episodes and to their reception of Marcus Garvey’s message as they migrated throughout the Americas in search of employment. Alan McPherson, in ‘World War I and US Empire in the Americas’, explores the linkages between World War I and US empire in the Caribbean. US forces occupied Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic a year later. These occupations, occurring within the context of World War I, deepened the commitment of US imperialists to occupy Caribbean territories for longer terms and under more comprehensive and direct administration. At the same time, movements resisting the occupations blossomed in 1919, taking their inspiration from the ‘Wilsonian moment’ and the rhetoric of self-determination that contradicted the very notion of occupation. John Lack and Bart Ziino’s contribution, ‘Requiem for Empire: Fabian Ware and the Imperial War Graves Commission’, reminds us that, in the midst of the war, the British government created the Imperial War Graves Commission, charging it with the responsibility of making permanent the graves of the British Empire’s fallen soldiers. These monuments and cemeteries were intended to reflect a British Empire made whole by the war, with an invigorated sense of itself and its political leadership in the world. Lack and Ziino take advantage of the Imperial War Graves Commission archives, as well as others in Britain, Australia and Canada, to investigate the ways in which imperial forms of commemoration sought to shape a particular memory of the war and

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to insist on the British Empire’s place in world affairs, in particular the preservation of peace in the 1930s. Taken together, these essays stand both as a reminder of the centrality of imperial stories to the history of World War I and as innovative indications of directions for current and future research that will add depth and variety to our understanding of the events of 1914– 18. In brief, they remind us of the indisputable global scope of the war. In myriad ways, the mobilisation of resources – human, natural, economic, political, social, ideological, emotional and more – across the world was arguably as ‘universal’ as The Times claimed in 1914 (although whether it was ‘splendid’ or not depended upon one’s perspective). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the world was more closely tied together in a global system than it had ever been before and more than it would be again until the end of the century. As Keynes recognised in the war’s immediate aftermath, more than four years of upheaval and destruction had severely damaged this global integration.39 But if it is ‘inconceivable’ that the world would have become so integrated by the eve of the war ‘in the absence of empires’, the war years themselves stand as the best proof of how tightly tied together the world had become and how integral those links would be to giving the war its shape.40 If the last few decades have seen attempts to resurrect a ‘globalised’ world like the one we lost in 1918 (although for most of its proponents this would be a globalisation without the formal empires that made the earlier one possible), the job of historians of this era is increasingly to recapture that pre-1918 world in all its integrated and multifarious complexity. This volume seeks to make a decisive contribution to that project.

Notes 1 ‘The rally of the Empire’, The Times, 10 September 1914. 2 Overy (1997) masterfully shows the limits of similarly economically deterministic arguments in explaining the outcome of World War II. 3 Stevenson 2004, 161– 3. 4 See Fogarty 2008. 5 On African labour in the First World War, see Hodges 1997; Page 1987; Killingray 1979; 1989; Savage and Munro 1966.

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6 Service Historique de la De´fense, 7N2121: Rapport sur le recrutement d’une arme´e indige`ne, pre´sente´ a` la Commission Se´natoriale de l’Arme´e par M. Henry Be´renger, Se´nateur, 26 novembre 1915. 7 Sarraut 1923, 37 – 8. 8 Socialist Jules Mathieu, quoted in Stanard’s contribution to this volume. 9 Fanon 2004, 4. 10 See the discussion in Burbank and Cooper 2010, 7, 370– 80. 11 Winter and Prost 2005. 12 Lucas 1926. 13 See for example Fussell 1975; Keegan 1976; Audoin-Rouzeau 1992; Winter 1995; Eksteins 1989; Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker 2000; Horne and Kramer 2001; Kramer 2007; Bourke 1999; Ferguson 1999; Jones 2011. 14 Sabol 2010, 1. 15 Strachan 2003; see also idem 2001; 2004. 16 Morrow 2004. 17 See for instance Neiberg 2006; Storey 2010; Sondhaus 2011. 18 See for example Pomeranz 2000; Parthasarathi 2011. 19 Strachan 2010, 6. 20 India Office Records, L/R/5/195: Selections from the Indian Newspapers Published in the Punjab, Zamindar, 30 July 1914. 21 For a particularly clear and influential articulation of this historiographic imperative, see the introduction to Cooper and Stoler 1997. 22 See for example MacKenzie 1984; Aldrich 1996; Friedrichsmeyer et al. 1998. 23 See for example Streets 2004; Killingray and Omissi 1999; Omissi 1994; Echenberg 1991; Schneider 1982; Cohen 1980. 24 See for example Becker 1985. 25 Sinha 1995. Gary Wilder (2005) uses the term ‘imperial nation-state’ in his own attempt to capture the inextricability of nation and empire in France during this period. Scholars have also begun the process of rewriting German history in a more avowedly transnational and imperial perspective. See Conrad and Osterhammel 2004. 26 For an investigation of an ‘imperial turn’ in a broader, albeit British context, see Burton 2003. 27 Michel 1982. 28 Lunn 1999. 29 Mann 2006. 30 Fogarty 2008. 31 Howe 2002; Smith 2004. For the pre-war imperial and racial context in the British Army, see Streets 2004. 32 Das 2011. 33 Levine 1998. On colonial workers in France, see Stovall 1998; 2003. See also Horne 1985; Cross 1983; Frader 2008. Another important recent work on the subject of Chinese labourers in France is Guogi 2011.

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34 See especially Nelson 1970; Marks 1983; Roos 2012; le Naour 2003; Van Galen Last 2012; Wigger 2007. See also Koller 2001. 35 Anderson 1991. 36 Manela 2007. 37 To take but one example, Andrew and Kanya-Forstner 1981 identify the immediate post-war period as the ostensible apogee of French colonial power. Recent works that explore Anglo-French imperial machinations as they looked to divide up and rule the Middle East during and after the Great War, demonstrating the continuing vigour of empire in Great Power geopolitical calculations, include Fieldhouse 2005; Barr 2011. 38 See for example Tan 2000. 39 Keynes 1919. 40 Ferguson 2006, 16.

References Aldrich, Robert, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (New York, 1996). Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991). Andrew, Christopher and A.S. Kanya-Forstner, The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914– 1924 (Stanford CA, 1981). Audoin-Rouzeau, Ste´phane, Men at War 1914– 1918: National Sentiments and Trench Journalism in France during the First World War (Providence RI, 1992). ——— and Annette Becker, 14 – 18: Understanding the Great War (New York, 2000). Barr, James, A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914– 1948 (New York, 2011). Becker, Jean-Jacques, The Great War and the French People (Dover NH, 1985). Bourke, Joanna, An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in 20th-Century Warfare (New York, 1999). Burbank, Jane and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton NJ, 2010). Burton, Antoinette M., After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation (Durham NC, 2003). Cohen, William, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530–1880 (Bloomington IN, 1980). Conrad, Sebastian and Ju¨rgen Osterhammer (eds), Das Kaiserreich Transnational: Deutschland in der Welt 1871– 1914 (Go¨ttingen, 2004). Cooper, Frederick and Ann Laura Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley CA, 1997). Cross, Gary, Immigrant Workers in Industrial France: The Making of a New Laboring Class (Philadelphia PA, 1983). Das, Santanu (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge, 2011). Echenberg, Myron, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Se´ne´galais in French West Africa, 1857– 1960 (Portsmouth NH, 1991).

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Eksteins, Modris, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York, 1989). Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 2004). Ferguson, Niall, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York, 1999). ——— The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (New York, 2006). Fieldhouse, David K., Western Imperialism in the Middle East, 1914 – 1958 (Oxford, 2005). Fogarty, Richard S., Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914– 1918 (Baltimore MD, 2008). Frader, Laura Levine, Breadwinners and Citizens: Gender in the Making of the French Social Model (Durham NC, 2008). Friedrichsmeyer, Sara L., Sara Lennox and Susanne M. Zantop (eds), The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor MI, 1998). Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford, 1975). Hodges, Geoffrey, Kariakor – The Carrier Corps: The Story of the Military Labour Forces in the Conquest of German East Africa, 1914– 1918 (2nd (rev.) edn, Nairobi, 1997). Horne, John, ‘Immigrant Workers in France during World War I’, French Historical Studies xiv/1 (1985), pp. 57 – 88. ——— and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven CT, 2001). Howe, Glenford, Race War and Nationalism: A Social History of West Indians in the First World War (Kingston, Jamaica, 2002). Jones, Heather, Violence against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France and Germany, 1914– 1920 (Cambridge, 2011). Keegan, John, The Face of Battle (New York, 1976). Keynes, John Maynard, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London, 1919). Killingray, David, ‘Beasts of burden: British West African carriers in the First World War’, Canadian Journal of African Studies xii (1979), pp. 5 – 23. ——— ‘Labour exploitation for military campaigns in British Colonial Africa, 1807– 1945’, Journal of Contemporary History xxiv (1989), pp. 483–501. ——— and David Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers c. 1700– 1964 (Manchester, 1999). Koller, Christian, Von Wilden aller Rassen niedergemetzelt: die Diskussion um die Verwendung von Kolonialtruppen in Europa zwischen Rassismus, Kolonial- und Milita¨rpolitik, 1914– 1930 (Stuttgart, 2001). Kramer, Alan, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford, 2007). le Naour, Jean-Yves, La honte noire: l’Allemagne et les troupes coloniales francaises, 1914– 1945 (Paris, 2003). Levine, Philippa, ‘Battle colors: race, sex, and colonial soldiery in World War I’, Journal of Women’s History ix/4 (1998), pp. 104– 30. Lucas, Charles Prestwood, The Empire at War, Vol. 5 (Oxford, 1926). Lunn, Joe, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth NH, 1999). MacKenzie, John M., Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880– 1960 (New York, 1984).

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Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York, 2007). Mann, Gregory, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham NC, 2006). Marks, Sally, ‘Black watch on the Rhine: a study in propaganda, prejudice and prurience’, European Studies Review xiii/3 (1983), pp. 297– 334. Michel, Marc, L’Appel a` l’Afrique. Contributions et re´actions a` l’effort de guerre en A.O.F., 1914– 1919 (Paris, 1982). Morrow, Jr., John H., The Great War: An Imperial History (New York, 2004). Mosse, George, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford, 1990). Neiberg, Michael S., Fighting the Great War: A Global History (Cambridge MA, 2006). Nelson, Keith, ‘“The black horror on the Rhine”: race as a factor in post-World War I diplomacy’, Journal of Modern History xlii/4 (December 1970), pp. 6 – 27. Omissi, David, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army 1860– 1940 (London, 1994). Overy, Richard, Why the Allies Won (New York, 1997). Parthasarathi, Prasannan, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600– 1850 (Cambridge, 2011). Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton NJ, 2000). Page, Melvin E. (ed.), Africa and the First World War (New York, 1987). Roos, Julia, ‘Nationalism, racism and propaganda in early Weimar Germany: contradictions in the campaign against the “black horror on the Rhine”’, German History xxx/1 (2012), pp. 45 – 74. Sabol, Steven, ‘A brief note from the Editor’, First World War Studies i/1 (2010), pp. 1 – 2. Sarraut, Albert, La mise en valeur des colonies francaises (Paris, 1923). Savage, Donald C. and J. Forbes Munro, ‘Carrier corps recruitment in the British East Africa Protectorate. 1914– 1918’, Journal of African History vii (1966), pp. 313– 42. Schneider, William H., An Empire for the Masses: French Popular Images of Africa, 1870– 1900 (Westport CT, 1982). Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester, 1995). Smith, Richard, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness (Manchester, 2004). Sondhaus, Lawrence, World War One: The Global Revolution (Cambridge, 2011). Stevenson, David, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy (New York, 2004). Storey, William Kelleher, The First World War: A Concise Global History (New York, 2010). Stovall, Tyler, ‘The color line behind the lines: racial violence in France during the Great War’, American Historical Review ciii/3 (1998), pp. 737– 69. ——— ‘National identity and shifting imperial frontiers: whiteness and the exclusion of colonial labor after World War I’, Representations lxxxiv/1 (2003), pp. 52 – 72. Strachan, Hew, The First World War: Vol. 1, To Arms (London, 2001). ——— The First World War (New York, 2003).

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——— The First World War in Africa (London, 2004). ——— ‘The First World War as a global war’, First World War Studies i/1 (2010), pp. 3 – 14. Streets, Heather, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857– 1914 (Manchester, 2004). Tan, Tai-Yong, ‘An imperial home-front: Punjab and the First World War’, Journal of Military History lxiv/2 (2000), pp. 371– 410. Van Galen Last, Dick, De Zwarte Schande: Afrikaanse Soldaten en Europa, 1914– 1922 (Amsterdam, 2012). Wigger, Iris, Die ‘Schwarze Schmach am Rhein’: Rassistische Diskriminierung zwischen Geschlecht, Klasse, Nation und Rasse (Munich, 2007). Wilder, Gary, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago IL, 2005). Winter, Jay and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to Present (Cambridge, 2005). Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995). Xu, Guogi, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge MA, 2011).

CHAPTER 1 DIGGING-IN: THE GREAT WAR AND THE ROOTS OF BELGIAN EMPIRE 1 Matthew G. Stanard

The Germans shot and killed Belgian nurse Gabrielle Petit at dawn on 1 April 1916. The occupiers had arrested her the preceding February, accusing her of passing secrets to the English (which she had indeed been doing). Despite great pressure and promises of leniency if she cooperated, Petit refused to divulge information about her collaborators, so she faced the firing squad. She was 23 years old. Unlike British nurse Edith Cavell, also executed in Belgium by the Germans, Petit’s story was not well known during the war. But in a major ceremony in 1919 the Belgians exhumed her body, and reburied her in the presence of Queen Elisabeth, transforming her into a national hero embodying the country’s courageous defiance in the face of German aggression (Figure 1.1).2 The day Petit faced the firing squad, officers of the Force Publique in the Congo, 4,000 miles away, were preparing the offer of an armistice for German East Africa governor Heinrich Schnee. The ceasefire’s terms, delivered on 5 April, ‘would have fulfilled Belgian objectives to the letter’; these were compensation, territory and acknowledgement that Germany had started the war.3 Sensing a ruse,

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Figure 1.1 Statue of Gabrielle Petit in Brussels. Photograph by Adolf and Meredith Spangenberg (used with permission).

Schnee played for time. One week later, Force Publique soldiers, commanded by Charles Tombeur, opened fire along the Belgian – German colonial border at the Rusizi River, and in June Belgian forces took Ruanda– Urundi. By 19 September, Force Publique

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troops had captured Tabora, the capital of German East Africa, giving Belgium its greatest field victory of the entire war. As Petit sat in St Gilles prison in Brussels, and while Tombeur prepared his troops for the eastward assault, the French, British and Italians were asking Russia to launch an attack on the Eastern Front to relieve pressure at Verdun and Trentino. At a meeting presided over by the Tsar on 14 April, Aleksei Brusilov persuaded his reluctant peers of the need for an attack along the Austro–Hungarian front, to be launched in June.4 The offensive became one of Russia’s greatest victories, but the resources needed for Brusilov’s and other such offensives pushed the Tsarist regime to the limits. By January 1917 strikes had broken out, followed by large-scale demonstrations and a revolution in March that terminated the Romanov dynasty. Although taking place thousands of miles apart, these three events and the conflict that gave rise to them restructured the nature of Belgian imperialism in central Africa. Scholars have generally overlooked the years 1914– 18 when exploring the interrelationship between Belgium and the Congo,5 but this chapter argues that World War I reshaped the trajectory of Belgian empire, not only by recasting Belgium as a legitimate colonial power but also by provoking a more conscious empire-building effort and giving rise to a more imperialistic identity in Belgium. Moreover, the conflict changed the character of the colonial economy and Belgium’s relationship to it. In these and other ways, the war was a transformative moment in the history of Belgian imperialism. World War I has not to date taken centre stage in studies of Belgian empire, for several reasons. First, Belgian combat – although consequential – was limited. In August 1914, German forces overran the country except for a tiny corner in western Flanders, situated behind trenches running from Nieuport past Ypres and across the French border near Armentie`res. Other than slowing Germany’s advance, the Belgian army played a minor role in determining the course of the war, and the Congo’s direct participation in the European theatre was negligible. The colonial administration did not send troops to Europe, and the number of Congolese in the metropole in August 1914 was very small. Joseph Droeven – son of a Belgian

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gunsmith and his Congolese wife – was highly exceptional; he became the first black Belgian soldier in December 1912. Only two dozen Congolese fought in Europe, including Paul Panda Farnana, Albert Kudjabo and Joseph Adipanga, all of whom joined the Corps des Volontaires Congolais, led by Colonel Louis Chaltin, which saw heavy fighting around Namur. Many if not most were captured in 1914 and spent the war in a German POW camp.6 In Africa, the Force Publique – a police force rather than an army, and barely the size of one 15,000-man German division – also saw limited fighting in Cameroon, Rhodesia, on Lake Tanganyika and in German East Africa. Belgians refused entreaties from their allies to use Congolese troops on other fronts because of long-standing fears that exposing Africans to outside elements would weaken colonial control. After experiments with bringing Africans to the metropole in the late 1800s, authorities stopped the practice because of their almost desperate fear, lasting into the 1950s, that travel to Europe would undermine white prestige by bringing Congolese into contact with poor or less educated whites, or introduce Africans to dangerous ideas such as communism.7 The Minister of Colonies and the Governor General in the Congo strictly opposed using Congolese troops in Asia, Europe or even North Africa, because they believed it would cause ‘serious difficulties’ in the colony.8 Their fears were not misplaced, to judge by the case of Paul Panda Farnana, who created the Union Congolaise in Belgium after the war to organise fellow veterans, and who spoke out for African rights at the 1920 Congre`s Colonial National in Brussels and at the London Pan-African Congress of 1921. (This probably led authorities to limit the Congolese presence in Belgium even further.)9 Although France, Britain and even the United States mobilised hundreds of thousands of non-white or colonial troops, workers and Chinese labourers for World War I, the Belgians took the opposite approach.10 Although Belgian and Congolese forces saw limited combat, the war reshaped Belgian imperialism by lifting the albatross of the Leopoldian past. Before 1914 Belgium’s reputation had suffered even among its future allies. Leopold II’s colony in central Africa was a

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regime of ghastly abuses, including widespread kidnapping, forced labour, murder, and even the cutting-off of children’s hands. His misrule was so horrific he was forced to turn the colony over to Belgium in 1908 after the great international humanitarian campaign led by E.D. Morel. The hand-over hardly lessened international criticism, and Belgium faced constant questioning as to the legitimacy of its rule in central Africa.11 Germany’s 1914 invasion, however, caused a total shift in Western opinion, for several reasons. First, although it is doubtful whether Flemings and Walloons single-handedly thwarted the Schlieffen Plan, the Entente powers – surprised at the vigour of the Belgian army’s fight – came to view them as having saved civilisation by slowing the advance of the Kaiser’s troops. As the US Legation Secretary in Brussels, Hugh Gibson, described the war’s early period, ‘The Belgian troops so far had to dam the flood of Germans with little or no help from the allies.’12 By the time the United States entered the war the Americans cast those first weeks as a major victory: The decision of Belgium to resist, transformed the character of the whole war . . . No one who was alive in the August days, when Belgian resistance began, and dwelt outside of German or Austrian frontiers, will ever forget the instant and enduring impression that Belgian heroism created.13 One French author asserted that Belgium had transformed the course of world history: ‘The heroic defence of the Belgians and their king falls into the category of those events that we would say changed the face of the earth. Their future impact infinitely exceeded their significance at the moment.’14 The earliest days of the war led people in Britain, the United States, France and elsewhere to think of Belgians not in the context of central Africa but rather in terms of their valiant defence against Germany’s invasion. While Belgium’s army was defending the country, Germany destroyed Louvain, and observers began to see Belgium as a victim. Louvain’s Catholic University, with its centuries-old library holding

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hundreds of thousands of books and ancient manuscripts, was one of Europe’s oldest and most famous centres of learning. After the German army entered and devastated the city, including burning down the library, accounts of the destruction – exaggerated or otherwise – found their way into foreign newspapers. As The New York Times reported, ‘The attack upon the unarmed population came suddenly, the Germans firing in the streets, going from house to house, pillaging and setting houses on fire. Neither age nor sex was respected. Almost all the clergy were shot.’15 Eyewitness A.J. Dawe reported in The Times that ‘The city was a mass of flames, destruction and death . . . Burning houses were every moment falling into the roads. The dead and the dying, burnt and burning, lay on all sides . . . In one street I saw two little children walking hand-in-hand over the bodies of the dead men.’16 These and other reports transformed Germany’s invasion into ‘The March of the Huns’ and Belgium into a blameless victim of Germanic ruthlessness.17 The years-long ‘Rape of Belgium’ that followed Germany’s invasion transformed a people associated with Leopold II’s atrocities into victims – even saviours of civilisation. Occupation authorities brutalised the inhabitants by forcing them to work in Germany, requisitioning their food and pushing them to ‘the edge of starvation’.18 Although Gabrielle Petit’s execution only gained notoriety after the war, not so the killing of British nurse Cavell, whom the Germans executed several months after Petit. Cavell’s death caused outrage in Britain, and her name became a byword for German cruelty. While Leopold II was called the Roi Baˆtisseur because he funnelled blood-stained Congo profits into building projects at home, King Albert’s determined resistance turned him into the Roi Chevalier, a wartime hero ‘honoured throughout the world’.19 Outsiders lauded Albert well into the post-war era, such as when Brand Whitlock dedicated to the king his account of his wartime experiences as US minister to Belgium.20 Ironically, the more that reports of atrocities filtered out of the country – of ‘Huns’ eating babies, attacking Red Cross hospitals, bayoneting and shooting civilians, burying a wounded man alive, cutting the hands off women and children – the more such barbarities eclipsed

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Leopold’s violent legacy in central Africa.21 (Although anti-German propaganda exaggerated events, we now know the German army inflicted great damage on Belgium’s civilian population.)22 The Belgian case offered a stark contrast between a large, militaristic and pitiless empire that was fighting for land and power, and a smaller, neutral, innocent state only defending itself. Belgians perpetuated this contrast after the war, for example by maintaining their hands were clean of any guilt for having started the fighting that took place in Africa: ‘It is not hard for us to show that it is not our fault if we crossed swords with Germany in Africa. Our intentions were peaceful.’23 According to this narrative, the country was innocent of starting the conflict, acquitted itself well in battle, and suffered. Led by the bold and brave Roi Chevalier, Belgium could take its place among the responsible imperial powers as they entered the post-war era. Thus foreign attitudes toward Belgium underwent a dramatic shift between 1914 and 1918. Unintended consequences of the mission civilisatrice in Africa, even African deaths, paled in comparison with the wicked destruction of Louvain and the torture and killing of European women and children. For more than four years the Rape of Belgium was ongoing and close to the rest of Europe, making the loss of African life at the hands of Leopold’s agents seem very far away, in both time and space. Leopold II was dead and gone, Albert I was here and now. Britain’s 1915 Bryce Report reinforced Belgium’s image as a suffering nation by confirming (and thus repeating) the stories of German atrocities. The country’s new-found roles as victim and hero were so thoroughly established by the outpouring of news articles and accounts like the Bryce Report that official and unofficial propaganda posters, novels and military recruiting-campaigns could mobilise millions with two simple words: ‘Remember Belgium’.24 As Belgium took its place among the righteous imperial powers in 1919 – if not as an equal at least as a legitimate practitioner of the civilising mission – its economic presence in the Congo became much more important as a result of Russia’s defeat and the Bolshevik Revolution. In short, the war contributed to a huge shift of foreign direct investment (FDI) away from Russia and towards the Congo.

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From the 1890s onwards, Belgian enterprises and mixed banks, led by the Socie´te´ Ge´ne´rale, had expanded their activities abroad, in particular toward Russian mining and heavy industries as well as textile, glass, brick and ceramics manufacturing.25 Whereas Leopold II had had to prod enterprises to invest anything in the Congo, they had needed little persuading to spend in Russia. The Cockerill group, for instance, had invested heavily in both Latin America and Russia and its successful ventures in the Tsar’s realm had led other firms to create subsidiaries there.26 By 1913 Belgium was among the top five creditor nations in the world, and on the eve of nationalisation in Russia in 1918 it was the fourth largest investor in stocks and bonds in Russia in absolute terms after France, Britain and Germany.27 The contrast with Leopold’s (and after 1908, Belgium’s) Congo is striking. ‘The main recipient of Belgian FDI before the First World War had been Russia, with several hundred Belgian companies investing there. Contrary to many other European powers, neither Belgian capitalists nor Belgian politicians were looking for foreign colonies.’28 The scale of investment can also be measured by the number of Belgians who had relocated to either place for work during this period: from 1890 to 1900 their number in the Congo had increased from 175 to a mere 1,187, while in Russia they had increased from 39 to 2,195.29 Belgian activity in Russia came to a crashing halt after Russia’s defeat and what followed under the Bolsheviks – namely the nationalisation of banks and industry and the unilateral cancellation of Russian debt, all part of what came to be called ‘war communism’. The regime backed away from this disastrous course with Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which allowed for some private, foreign capital, but Belgian firms were not among those who played a significant role within the confines of this new Soviet system.30 In fact none of the investments lost through the Russian Revolution were ever recovered. At the end of the Russian civil war and the following confiscation of all capitalist property, Belgian investors had lost about 420 [million] Francs d’or in their Russian adventure.31

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Even the Belgian socialists could not broker a rapprochement with Soviet Russia after 1918 because even they viewed the signing of Brest– Litovsk as unforgivable. As Auguste Dewinne, editor-in-chief of the socialist newspaper Le Peuple, put it, ‘There are things you just don’t sign.’32 When Belgian FDI changed fundamentally, beginning in 1917, so did the country’s relationship with the Congo. After Germany’s invasion shattered the illusion of protection through neutrality and spurred nationalist thinking – and with Russia now off-limits to investments – interest shifted to the Belgian Congo.33 The results were spectacular: ‘Of the total capital invested in the colony between 1887 and 1959, one-third was subscribed between 1921 and 1931.’34 Developments elsewhere, for example in China, reinforced this shift. As Leopold II had used his kingdom’s neutrality to obtain the Congo, so too had he used its position as a small power to obtain railway concessions from the Qing government to stimulate Belgian investments, the greatest example being the Beijing– Hankow concession and the Socie´te´ Ge´ne´rale’s creation of the Franco–Belgian Socie´te´ d’Etudes des Chemins de Fer en Chine.35 The 1911 Revolution, mounting nationalistic claims on railways, and the 1919 May Fourth Movement dissuaded further such foreign investment.36 Thus while the period 1890 – 1910 represented the high point of Belgium’s internationalisation of its overseas industrial expansion, the war shifted attention to the Congo.37 Belgian universal banks and holding companies, the heirs of one of the richest nations in terms of capital, invested massively in the Congo after the First World War . . . Nearly all of the FDI capital that before the First World War had been spread out across the world was now concentrated within the Congo.38 When Belgian funds began to pour into the Congo after 1918, they were invested in an economy significantly different from what had existed before the war, due to an accelerated shift from rubber production to the mining of minerals. Africa’s rubber boom lasted 1890 to 1913, but the amount of rubber harvested in the Congo Free

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State (CFS) had dropped significantly by 1906, as natural supplies began to run out.39 Although the genesis of copper mining in Katanga is traditionally placed in that same year because of the 1906 formation of the Union Minie`re du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), production did not begin on a significant scale until the eve of World War I, and it did not take off until the conflict started. Elisabethville (today Lubumbashi), Katanga’s main city, was only founded in 1910, and from 1908 to 1914 ‘the progress of the mining industry was not encouraging . . . the position of UMHK was precarious.’40 According to UMHK itself, production did not really begin until 1913, when output was a mere 7,400 tons.41 Rapid Japanese industrialisation in 1914– 18, peak copper prices in 1916– 17 and the need to provide for the Allies – Britain imported most of the Congo’s copper during the war – stimulated investment in Katanga.42 Copper production rapidly grew from 10,700 tons in 1914 to 27,500 in 1917 and 43,400 in 1922.43 A growing faith in the future of minerals transformed the nature of the colonial enterprise. Although Germany stripped the metropole of resources, ‘the colony’s general economic situation hardly suffered from the European crisis. On the contrary, its development, far from coming to a standstill, continued in an entirely satisfactory way.’44 The value of copper, diamonds and other mineral exports increased rapidly, the value of gold exports doubling from 1913 to 1916.45 Socie´te´ Ge´ne´rale, UMHK and other firms became convinced of the need for a metals industry in Belgium, to bring the financial benefits of colonial copper home and to reduce Germany’s influence in the nation’s metallurgical industry and other sectors that its capital had ‘infiltrated’ before the war.46 This included the formation in 1919 of the Socie´te´ Ge´ne´rale Me´tallurgique de Hoboken and the Socie´te´ Ge´ne´rale des Minerais, which together created the country’s nonferrous industry.47 The Congo, which had not figured as a major copper producer in the decade 1900 – 09, became the third largest copper producer in the world by 1929, and UMHK the largest copper-producing company in the world.48 This transformed the colony into a giant mining enterprise, because its budget depended so heavily on tax revenue from mining companies like

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UMHK. As Jean-Luc Vellut puts it: ‘It is not an exaggeration to say that the colonial edifice was built on mining revenue.’49 Belgian colonial officials successfully broke with the cruelties of the past and avoided outside interference in Congolese affairs, even if many abuses continued for years after 1908 as a result of the mobilisation of African labour for mining and other work. Despite administrative reforms, the mining sector still bore some hallmarks of the Leopoldian era, because mining companies impressed Africans into service as it scoured the countryside for an adequate workforce: ‘in the 1910s, it was not uncommon to send the recruits to the mines of Katanga in columns with ropes tied around their necks.’50 Such practices, coupled with horrific working and living conditions at mines and appallingly high mortality rates, contributed in 1926 to a League of Nations censure of labour practices in the Congo, but this was a far cry from Morel’s crusade that rallied an international campaign for change. Perhaps the shift in attitude toward Belgians resulting from the war provided breathing room for them to reform labour practices. In any case Europeans were undoubtedly more inward-looking after the war because of the loss of life, the need to rebuild and pressing intra-European questions including on-going revolution and war in Ireland, Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey and Greece; peace negotiations in Paris; the question of German reparations; the occupation of the Ruhr; and the Locarno Treaty. It was not until the end of the 1920s that UMHK adopted a policy of ‘stabilisation’, settling workers in mining communities to ease the need for annual recruiting. By that time UMHK and other colonial concerns had begun to achieve some success at improving labour practices, mortality rates, nutrition and living conditions at mines and in their hinterlands.51 Just as there was agreement on the need for colonial reform and a reduction of Germany’s influence over the economy, so Belgians of all political stripes coalesced around the colonial project. In short, the political union nationale that prevailed in 1914, as in France and elsewhere, extended into the inter-war era when it came to colonial affairs. Socialist leader E´mile Vandervelde embodied the attitude of his party:

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He [was] the perfect incarnation of the spirit of national union and of national ardor that seized all Belgian socialists, without exception, in August 1914, and that continued to live within almost all of them throughout the whole war. His faith in socialism and his faith in the sacred nature of the Belgian cause combined in an indissoluble way.52 Vandervelde had never really opposed imperialism, even if other socialists had. In fact, when all socialists present had voted against the take-over of the Congo in parliament, a number of them, including Vandervelde, did not because they were absent – Vandervelde, in fact, was in the Congo. After the war, opposition to the colonial project, even among socialists, was simply non-existent. As socialist Jules Mathieu put it in 1920: Twelve years ago our party still fought over the appropriateness of a Belgian colonial policy. But I think that all now consider the Belgian colonial endeavor as a done deal and that we ought not have any other concern other than to get through it with honor. Guy Vanthemsche summarises the post-war situation thus: ‘Between 1908 and 1914 Vandervelde and other Belgian Workers’ Party representatives had intervened several times in Parliament to complain about abuses in the young colony. After the First World War, however, such interventions had become rare.’53 The war experience planted even the Belgian left within the imperialist camp, even if not all socialists (e.g. Vandervelde) had vehemently opposed Belgian rule in central Africa. Nationalist strivings trumped ideological opposition to empire. The war also led to an intensification of real Belgian control on the ground in Africa, which before 1914 had been extremely limited. Up to at least Leopold’s hand-over of the colony to Belgium in 1908, according to Jan Vansina, there had never been any government worthy of the name at all in Upper Congo upstream of Le´opoldville . . . Even as late as

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1905 district commissioners still did not, or could not, rein in the autonomy of their subordinates in all but military matters . . . The government of the Congo Independent State [CFS] was a ponderous and bureaucratic reality in the Lower Congo but not beyond.54 Many peasants eluded colonial control by absconding before officials arrived to collect taxes, or by fleeing into the bush or across borders to avoid obligatory service on road and rail projects, in mines or on plantations.55 More violent and direct forms of resistance to European rule persisted, such as revolts in Sankuru: even though colonial forces violently defeated a first revolt there in 1904, including the capture and eating of three villagers, the region rose in revolt again in 1919– 20. Although European control remained spotty across the whole of the massive Congo, in significant ways it became more heavy-handed over the years 1914– 18 and by the 1920s was more far-reaching. The many demands of war halted major administrative reforms, including granting greater autonomy to some Africans. The administration cracked down on social or religious movements it considered destabilising.56 Although some ambitious projects, like the BasCongo– Katanga Railway Company line from Katanga to Matadi, were postponed, the administration demanded increased production of gold, copper and other minerals and mandated the cultivation of certain crops, such as cotton, all to support the war effort. A February 1917 compulsory labour law obliged peasants to work 60 days each year or work a certain amount of acreage to produce specified crops. Failure to comply resulted in two months in jail.57 A 1918 decree ‘vested territorial agents with plenary power to impose seven days prison and/or a 200 franc fine for “any disrespectful act or word committed or uttered towards a European agent of public authority in his presence”.’58 When the war ended, the administration focused its efforts on tightening the system of direct control by installing loyalist chiefs throughout the colony, which diminished the number of violent uprisings. When Sankuru revolted again in 1920 – 21 and peasants in the Bas-Congo fought back in 1920 – 22, the Force

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publique ‘pacified’ the areas through an overwhelming use of force, as they continued to do into the inter-war years. For example, the suppression of a Pende revolt in Kwilu in 1931 killed more than 400 Pende.59 Perhaps Belgium’s revamped reputation gave it a freer hand to suppress such uprisings with force, but this must also be seen in the context of the violent and tumultuous post-war years that witnessed not only the Rif War and Amritsar, but also the Sparticist uprising in Berlin and protracted warfare in Ukraine, Poland and Russia. The war years also led to a strengthening of the Belgian presence in the Congo because the proportion of Flemings and Walloons among the total number of colonists increased significantly. From the CFS’s earliest days, many missionaries, administrators, Force publique officers, explorers, doctors and scientists working in the colony had been foreigners, not Belgian. Heightened nationalism and a continued dependence on foreigners during the war persuaded many Belgians of the need to intensify the Congo’s Belgian-ness. Because many Force publique officers were Scandinavian, Governor General Fe´lix Fuchs worried what might happen if the governments of Sweden, Norway and Denmark forbade their citizens from taking part in the war in Africa.60 The Minister of Colonies feared Italy’s entry into the war because so many doctors in the colony were Italian, and when Italy recalled many of them for military duty, it provoked a small crisis.61 Similar problems existed for private capital. At the end of 1913, only 18 of 37 long-term and 31 of 130 short-term contract employees at UMHK were Belgian. Cut off from the metropole, UMHK could only recruit among those few Belgians living in London, the Netherlands and other places free from German occupation, so they recruited in Rhodesia, South Africa and the United States. When the proportion of Belgian workers at UMHK dropped from 53 per cent in August 1914 to 22.5 per cent in June 1917, the company stepped up efforts to take on Belgians, for example hiring even more of those who were living in Britain.62 Intensified recruitment paid off in the post-war era when the proportion of foreigners in the Force publique, the administration and colonial companies dropped significantly. By 1930, nearly 70 per cent of all whites living in the Congo were Belgian.63

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Although we know quite a bit about Belgians and the war, we know far less about its effects on Congolese peoples. Minister of Colonies Jules Renkin’s wartime reports to Albert I offer few details on Africans, and suggest a high degree of stability in the Congo. People’s experiences must have varied across that vast colony – 80 times the size of Belgium, equal in size to the entirety of the United States east of the Mississippi. While certain areas remained largely untouched, the war directly affected some zones in the east. Because Belgians did not use Congolese on European battlefields, nothing occurred on the scale of the French mobilisation of troops in French West Africa, although the colonial government did mobilise tens of thousands of porters. The number of Congolese soldiers who fought in Africa itself was comparatively small and ‘only’ 1,500 of them died during the conflict, although this does not count the estimated 7,000– 27,000 porters killed in combat or by outbreaks of dysentery and other illnesses.64 How many of those porters were from the colony itself, however, is unclear, because fighting took place outside the Congo, for example on Lake Tanganyika or in German East Africa, and the administration tried to limit recruitment to occupied areas.65 Although few died in combat, the war led to the deaths of many more. Outbreaks of dysentery and other diseases were devastating, and when the 1918– 19 influenza pandemic hit central Africa, it killed tens of thousands. Among the Kuba, for example, Jan Vansina estimates that influenza on top of an earlier outbreak of dysentery caused around 29 per cent mortality.66 The conflict also caused a famine throughout Rwanda that lasted for years and killed thousands.67 Although the war’s precise effects on the Congo and Congolese are unclear, it clearly stimulated Belgian leaders’ acquisitiveness in Africa and opened up a window of opportunity to add new colonial territories. Many Belgians came to believe it was necessary to pursue their own needs above all, and that they could only depend on themselves, not even their allies, since their allies were only fighting and dying to free Belgium out of self-interest. Already at odds going into the war, Belgium and its allies remained on bad terms, were divided entering the 1919 peace conference and grew even further

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apart after signing the Versailles Treaty.68 Minister of Colonies Renkin concluded that, ‘As a rule, we have to rely on ourselves first and foremost’, and that in Africa ‘Belgian military action can only be justified by a Belgian interest.’69 Renkin told the vice-governor of Katanga in 1916 that a goal of such military activity in Africa was to become the sole occupying power over substantial German territories, in order to use those areas in post-war negotiations.70 Although Belgians claimed to be reluctant imperialists, the actions of their diplomats at the Peace of Paris negotiations over African territories – what William Roger Louis characterised as another scramble for Africa – disclosed a strong imperialistic streak.71 When the main powers left Belgian representatives out of the decisionmaking on the German colonies, they were deeply disappointed, even furious.72 Belgians pointed to their contributions to the war in Africa, for example at Tabora, to push their demands for territory astride the Congo River estuary that would expand the colony’s Atlantic coast, hoping to swap Ruanda– Urundi and somehow compensate the Portuguese.73 Portugal refused, and Belgium kept Ruanda– Urundi under a League of Nations mandate, making it for ‘all intents and purposes a fifth province of the Belgian Congo’.74 Although those erstwhile regions of German East Africa were small territories, they increased the population under Belgian rule in central Africa by around 30 per cent.75 This development ‘would have been unimaginable ten years earlier, after the revelations concerning King Leopold’s murderous regime in the Congo’.76 But the war had intervened, turning the unimaginable into reality. Although stymied on one front, the Belgians did achieve a small victory when the peace negotiations made the Congo more Belgian by recognising the country’s authority in the Congo basin. Leopoldian and Belgian sovereignty in central Africa had been an enduring problem. The international recognition of the CFS in 1885 had understood the colony differently to others controlled by European powers (thus the misnomer ‘Congo Free State’, meaning ‘free’ from the control of any one state). Rather than being ruled by a European state the Congo basin was a free-trade zone and an ‘international’ colony ruled by an individual, Leopold II. One way

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Morel made his case was by demanding that governments such as Britain’s fulfil their obligations as parties responsible for the CFS. After 1908, the Belgian authorities often fought to assert their sovereignty over the Congo, even clashing with allies on the issue during the war.77 The 1919 Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye altered the Berlin Act of 1885 by maintaining freedom of trade in the Congo basin but declaring it ‘under the control of recognised authorities’ (i.e. the Belgians) and administered adequately.78 This finally made the colony Belgian by eliminating uncertainty about who ruled there.79 Other developments confirmed the country as a colonising power, such as when funds left over from Herbert Hoover’s Commission for the Relief of Belgium underwrote Belgian colonial institutions, including the Universite´ Coloniale and the Institut de Me´decine Tropicale Prince Le´opold in Antwerp, and the Institut national pour l’e´tude agronomique au Congo belge, the Institut des parcs nationaux au Congo belge, and the Institut de la recherche scientifique en Afrique centrale in the Congo.80 What is more, German colonial irredentism heightened Belgians’ fears and contributed to an unprecedented imperialist tenacity among them. Anxieties about losing the colony, which had always been there, persisted into the post-war years after Belgium added to its central African holdings.81 The new status quo, in which Belgium ruled Ruanda– Urundi and Germany was excluded from Africa, was not self-sustaining. No status quo in international relations is ever fixed; rather they endure only through a constant process of affirmation and re-creation. Although the Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of its colonies it could not eliminate an imperialist mindset, and German governments sought to reclaim former colonial territories and even to acquire new ones. Germany’s celebrations of its erstwhile empire, Reichstag debates, the formation of colonial interest groups, the acclaim heaped on Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and other actions attest to an important irredentism.82 German demands fostered an even greater determination among Belgians to hang onto their overseas territories.83 Whereas before World War I Belgians had feared Great Power designs on the Congo in general, afterward they were most alarmed about Germany, and hate directed toward that

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country was very much alive. Writers projected extreme, almost terrifying German imperialist tendencies back into the past claiming Germany had tried to create a Mittelafrika beginning in the 1880s and had attempted to encircle the Congo and take it over by making it part of a ‘vast colonial empire in the centre of Africa’.84 As a result Belgians became more convinced rulers, even as they maintained they were reluctant imperialists. Some Belgian fears found expression in a surge of official and unofficial pro-empire propaganda after the war.85 The Ministry of Colonies had created a bureau called the Service de Documentation et de Vulgarisation during the war to educate people about the colony through film, sending a crew to Africa to shoot a series of silent films. Belgium had perhaps the highest density of cinemas in the world by 1914, and after the armistice people took to them to see films like Ernest Gourdinne’s Troupes coloniales belges (1917– 19), which showed Force publique troops returning to the colony after their famous East African victory. That film alone was shown more than a thousand times in the months following the armistice in cinemas and at special screenings by groups intent on tying Belgium closer to the colony.86 The number of visitors to Tervuren’s Congo museum climbed after the war, reaching 220,000 annually by 1923. The organisation Journe´es coloniales, founded in 1920, celebrated the colony at the start of July each year, and spawned numerous local and provincial groups.87 Belgian Catholic missionaries had been as reluctant as Belgian capitalists to participate in Leopold II’s empire-building, but after the war they took up a significant role in promoting the colony, whether through small expositions or missionary publications or from the pulpit – even if they were less interested in the Congo as a colony than as an area for evangelising. Missionary activity surged: whereas in 1908 there were only 233 clergy and 102 lay missionaries in 56 mission posts across the whole Congo, by 1924 there were 895 missionaries in 136 posts.88 This increase paralleled the overall growth in the number of Belgians leaving for central Africa, which accelerated rapidly in the 1920s. While the Belgian population in the Congo had increased 45 per cent during the period 1900– 09, and 91 per cent betweeen 1910 and 1919, it grew an astonishing

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340 per cent from 1920 to 1929. Such change was anything but inevitable, considering that during the 1930s this population dropped by 1 per cent.89 The inter-war years also represent the height of building memorials to colonial heroes; services at some monuments took on religious overtones, suggesting empire had become a sacred mission. Among the events celebrated in propaganda was one of the country’s few wartime victories, which had come in Africa. The commander of the attack on German East Africa, Charles Tombeur, was honoured with a barony (allowing him to add ‘de Tabora’ to his surname) and, after his death, with a monument in Brussels’ St Gilles neighbourhood, coincidentally just a short walk from the prison where Gabrielle Petit was executed (Figure 1.2). During the inter-war period, celebrants hoisted the ‘flag of Tabora’ at commemorations of the war dead, on special occasions accompanied by Force publique detachments.90

Figure 1.2 Monument to Baron Tombeur de Tabora in Brussels. Photograph by Adolf and Meredith Spangenberg (used with permission).

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Conclusion World War I was critical in determining the shape of the twentiethcentury Belgian empire. Although Congolese saw virtually no fighting in Europe, thousands of soldiers and porters died, and even more Congolese succumbed to disease and famine provoked by the conflict. Colonial rule intensified on the ground in central Africa, including greater administrative controls and a growing Belgian settler population. Internationally, under cover of a brutal German occupation embodied in Gabrielle Petit, Belgium hid Leopoldian skeletons in the closet and transmuted itself into a legitimate colonial power. A sort of post-war union nationale in the country united Flemings and Walloons on colonial issues for nearly half a century. The post-war fruits of growing colonial ambitions, namely Ruanda– Urundi, created fears of German irredentism and intensified Belgian imperialist sentiments, evinced by a ramped-up propaganda effort. Finally, Russia’s defeat, the Bolshevik Revolution and the reorientation of Belgian FDI toward the Congo nationalised a transformed colonial economy based on mining revenues, especially from copper mining. As the Belgians started to consolidate between 1914 and 1918, their empire truly took root.

Notes 1 The author thanks Jon Atkins, Chase Babineaux, the editors, and Meredith and Adolf Spangenberg for their generous assistance. 2 O. (n.d.). 3 Strachan 2004, 153. 4 Tucker 1998, 117. 5 From Cornevin 1963 and Anstey 1966 to the work of Jean Stengers to, more recently, de Schaepdrijver 2006 and Vanthemsche 2007. 6 Bontinck 1980. 7 Georges Brausch, ‘Note pour Monsieur le Ministre’, 27 May 1957, folder Presse, Georges Brausch papers, private historical archives, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium. 8 Renkin to King, February 1918, in Vanthemsche (ed.) 2009, 181–2. 9 Ndaywel e` Nziem 1998, 141– 3. 10 Xu 2011. 11 Hochschild 1998.

THE GREAT WAR 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

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Gibson 1917, 73. Simonds 1917, 99 – 100. Palat 1918, 37. ‘Germans Burn and Sack Louvain’, The New York Times, 29 August 1914. ‘The Crime of Louvain – On This Day, The Times, September 3, 1914’, The Times, 3 September 2003. The Times, 29 August 1914; Kramer 2007; Zuckerman 2004. Hoover 1959, 6– 14. Antwerpen 1930 (13 May 1930), cover. Whitlock 1919. Gibson 1917, 150– 1, 183. Horne and Kramer 2001, 223. Habran 1919, 9. Kingsbury 2010. Van der Wee and Goossens 1991, 124. Van der Wee 1997, 193– 4; Peeters and Wilson 1999. Van der Wee and Goossens 1991, 113; Sontag 1968, 531. Buelens and Marysse 2009, 138. Vanthemsche 2007, 353– 4; Peeters and Wilson 1999, 57. McKay 1974, 350. Peeters 1998, 123. Stengers 1988, 305, 324. Abbeloos 2008, 116– 18. Jewsiewicki 1986, 474. Van der Wee and Goossens 1991, 123. Spence 1990, 252– 3. Peeters 1998, 118. Buelens and Marysse 2009, 160. Harms 1975, 88. Jewsiewicki 1986, 463. Union Minie`re du Haut-Katanga 1956, 109. Fetter 1999, 451. Union Minie`re du Haut-Katanga 1956, 123, 136. Geerinckx 1919, 688. Ge´rard 1917, 428. Van der Wee and Goossens 1991, 128. Brion and Moreau 2006, 104– 7. Schmitz 1997, 301, 303; Jewsiewicki 1986, 476. Vellut 1983, 130. Ibid. Ibid, 126– 62; Higginson 1989. Stengers 1988, 298. Vanthemsche 1999, 35. Vansina 2010, 118.

44 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86

EMPIRES IN WORLD WAR I Davidson et al. 1990. Vansina 2010, 125, 151, 180, 264. Young 1994, 253; Vansina 2010, 125, 215. Young 1994, 252. Davidson et al. 1990, 293– 4; Vellut 1987, 32 – 3. Renkin to King, December 1915, in Vanthemsche (ed.) 2009, 94. Renkin to King, June 1915, July 1915, in ibid. 59, 60. Union Minie`re du Haut-Katanga 1956, 112, 124. Vanthemsche 2007, 353. Brosens et al. 2010, 11 – 13. Renkin to King, 10 August 1916, in Vanthemsche (ed.) 2009, 127. Vansina 2010, 142– 4. Lugan 1976. Helmreich 1976; Marks 1981. Renkin to King, July 1915, 31 August 1916, in Vanthemsche (ed.) 2009, 62, 129. Helmreich 1976, 191– 2. Louis 1966. Idem 1963. MacMillan 2001, 106; Habran 1919. Jewsiewicki 1986, 475. Louis 2006, 42; Ndaywel e` Nziem 1998, 405. Paice 2007, 400. Renkin to King, May 1916, February 1918, in Vanthemsche (ed.) 2009, 117– 18, 183. ‘Convention’, American Journal of International Law 1921, 314. Vanthemsche 2007, 118– 19. Hoover 1959, 429– 36; Belgian American Educational Foundation; Fondation Universitaire. Leopold II had been the constitutional monarch of a small, neutral state who carved out a massive colony, surrounded by French, German, British and Portuguese territories. His agents scrambled to establish his territory’s borders, taking as much land as possible. International attacks on the CFS, later against the Belgian Congo, heightened Belgians’ siege mentality; they worried about others seizing territories around or within the Congo basin, thus reducing the size of the colony Leopold had created. See Emerson 1980; Slade 1960. Metzger 2006; Michels 2006; Eckhart 2006; Schmokel 1978; Norton 1978, 394. ‘Les allemands’, Congo 1926, 59 – 69; Orts 1937, 25. Bourquin 1918; Louwers 1918, 1. Stanard 2011, 136– 43. Van Schuylenbergh and Zana Aziza Etambala 2010, 203; Association des Inte´reˆts Coloniaux Belges invitation to Andre´ Van Iseghem for 20 May 1920,

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folder Banquets, Andre´ Van Iseghem papers, private historical archives, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium. Journe´es Coloniales 1925. Cleys et al. 2009, 151– 2. Vanthemsche 2007, 353– 4. v. A. 1930, 11.

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Emerson, Barbara, Le´opold II: le royaume et l’empire, trans. Herve´ Douxchamps and Ge´rard Colson (Paris-Gembloux, 1980). Fetter, Bruce, ‘If I had known that 35 years ago: contextualizing the copper mines of Central Africa’, History in Africa xxvi (1999), pp. 449– 52. Fondation Universitaire, ‘Historique’, http://www.fondationuniversitaire.be/fr/his torique.php (accessed 3 October 2012). Geerinckx, Joseph, ‘Histoire e´conomique du Congo belge (1914 – 1919)’, Le Flambeau: Revue belge des questions politiques et litte´raires ii/6 (1919), pp. 662– 88. Ge´rard, August, ‘Les progre`s du Congo belge pendant la guerre (1914 –1917)’, Revue hebdomadaire xii (1917), pp. 421– 38. Gibson, Hugh, A Journal from Our Legation in Belgium (Garden City NY, 1917). Habran, Louis, Le Congo Belge dans la Guerre Mondiale: La Question de l’Embouchure du Congo (Brussels, 1919). Harms, Robert, ‘The end of red rubber: a reassessment’, Journal of African History xvi/1 (1975), pp. 73 – 88. Helmreich, Jonathan E., Belgium and Europe: A Study in Small Power Diplomacy (The Hague, 1976). Higginson, John, A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private Enterprise, and the African Mineworker, 1907– 1951 (Madison WI, 1989). Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston MA, 1998). Hoover, Herbert, An American Epic, Vol. 1: Introduction: The Relief of Belgium and Northern France 1914– 1930 (Chicago IL, 1959). Horne, John, and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven CT, 2001). Jewsiewicki, B., ‘Belgian Africa’, in A.D. Roberts (ed.), Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 7: From 1905 to 1940 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 460– 93. Journe´es Coloniales, Les, Rapport au Roi sur les Journe´es Coloniales de 1924 (BrusselsIxelles, 1925). Kingsbury, Celia Malone, For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front (Lincoln NE, 2010). Kramer, Alan, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford, 2007). ‘Les allemands et la revanche coloniale’, Congo: revue ge´ne´rale de la Colonie belge/Congo: Algemeen Tijdschrift van de Belgische Kolonie i/1 (1926), pp. 59– 69, originally published in ‘Les Renseignements coloniaux dans l’Afrique Francaise’, Journal des De´bats xii (1925). Louis, Wm. Roger, ‘The United States and the African peace settlement of 1919: The pilgrimage of George Louis Beer’, Journal of African History iv/3 (1963), pp. 413– 33. ——— ‘Great Britain and the African peace settlement of 1919’, American Historical Review lxxi/3 (1966), pp. 875– 92. ——— Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization (London, 2006). Louwers, Octave, Le Congo belge et le Pangermanisme colonial (Paris, 1918). Lugan, Bernard, ‘Causes et effets de la famine “Rumanura” au Rwanda, 1916– 18’, Canadian Journal of African Studies x/2 (1976), pp. 347– 56.

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MacMillan, Margaret, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York, 2001). Marks, Sally, Innocent Abroad: Belgium at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Chapel Hill NC, 1981). McKay, John P., ‘Foreign enterprise in Russian and Soviet industry: a long term perspective’, Business History Review xlviii (1974), pp. 336–56. Metzger, Chantal, ‘D’une puissance coloniale a` un pays sans colonies: l’Allemagne et la question coloniale (1914 –1945)’, Revue d’Allemagne et des Pays de Langue Allemande xxxviii/4 (2006), pp. 555– 69. Michels, Eckard, ‘Deutschlands bekanntester “Kolonialheld” und sein “Askari”: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck und der Feldzug in Ostafrika im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Revue d’Allemagne et des Pays de Langue Allemande xxxviii/4 (2006), pp. 541– 54. Ndaywel e` Nziem, Isidore, Histoire ge´ne´rale du Congo: De l’he´ritage ancien a` la Re´publique De´mocratique (Paris, 1998). The New York Times, ‘Germans burn and sack Louvain’, 29 August 1914. Norton, William B., ‘Pierre Ryckmans (1891– 1959)’, in L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan (eds), African Proconsuls: European Governors in Africa (New York, 1978), pp. 391– 411. O., G., ‘Gabrielle Petit’, in 1914– 1918: Cahier du Souvenir (Mons, n.d.). Orts, M. Pierre, ‘The claim for colonies: a Belgian view’, Journal of the Royal African Society xxxvi/142 (1937), pp. 23 – 46. Paice, Edward, Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (London, 2007). Palat, Ge´ne´ral (Pierre Lehautcourt), La Grande Guerre sur le Front occidental, Vol. 3 (Chapelot, 1918). Peeters, Wim, ‘Foreign direct investment within a reconstructed balance of payments: preliminary results for Belgium, 1879– 1939’, in Clara Eugenia Nu´n˜ez (ed.), Public Debt, Public Finance, Money and Balance of Payments in Debtor Countries, 1890– 1932 (Seville, 1998), pp. 101– 25. ——— and Je´roˆme Wilson, L’Industrie belge dans la Russie des Tsars (Alleur, 1999). Royal Museum for Central Africa private historical archives, Tervuren, Belgium. Schmitz, Christopher J., ‘The changing structure of the world copper market, 1870– 1939’, Journal of European Economic History xxvi (1997), pp. 295– 330. Schmokel, Wolfe W., Dream of Empire: German Colonialism, 1919– 1945 (New Haven CT, 1964). Simonds, Frank H., History of the World War, Vol. 1 (Garden City NY, 1917). Slade, Ruth, King Leopold’s Congo: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Congo Independent State (London, 1960). Sontag, John P., ‘Tsarist debts and Tsarist foreign policy’, Slavic Review xxvii/4 (1968), pp. 529– 41. Spence, Jonathan D., The Search for Modern China (New York, 1990). Stanard, Matthew G., ‘Learning to love Leopold: Belgian popular imperialism, 1830– 1960’, in John M. MacKenzie (ed.), European Empires and the People: Popular Responses to Imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy (Manchester, 2011), pp. 124– 57. Stengers, Jean, ‘Belgique et Russie, 1917– 1924: gouvernement et opinion publique’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire lxvi/2 (1988), pp. 296– 328. Strachan, Hew, The First World War in Africa (Oxford, 2004).

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The Times, 29 August 1914. ——— ‘The crime of Louvain – On this day, September 3, 1914’, 3 September 2003. Tucker, Spencer C., The Great War 1914– 18 (Bloomington IN, 1998). Union Minie`re du Haut-Katanga, Union Minie`re du Haut-Katanga, 1906– 1956 (2nd edn, Brussels, 1956). v. A., G., ‘De coloniale troepen te Antwerpen’, Antwerpen 1930, 29 July 1930, p. 11. Van der Wee, Herman, ‘Investment strategy of Belgian industrial enterprise between 1830 and 1980 and its influence on the economic development of Europe’, in H. Van der Wee and Jan Blomme (eds), The Economic Development of Belgium since 1870 (Cheltenham, 1997), pp. 186–204. ——— and Martine Goossens, ‘Belgium’, in Rondo Cameron and V.I. Bovykin (eds), International Banking, 1870– 1914 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 113– 29. Van Schuylenbergh, Patricia, and Mathieu Zana Aziza Etambala, Patrimoine d’Afrique centrale: Archives films, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, 1912– 1960 (Tervuren, 2010). Vansina, Jan, Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880– 1960 (Madison WI, 2010). Vanthemsche, Guy, ‘De Belgische socialisten en Congo 1895– 1960’, Brood & Rozen: Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van sociale bewegingen, Vol. 2 (1999), pp. 30 – 65. ——— La Belgique et le Congo: Empreintes d’une colonie, 1885– 1980 (Brussels, 2007). ——— (ed.), Le Congo belge pendant la Premie`re Guerre mondiale: Les rapports du ministre des Colonies Jules Renkin au roi Albert Ier 1914– 1918 (Brussels, 2009). Vellut, Jean-Luc, ‘Mining in the Belgian Congo’, in David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin (eds), History of Central Africa, Vol. 2 (London, 1983), pp. 126– 62. ——— ‘Re´sistances et espaces de liberte´ dans l’histoire coloniale du Zaı¨re: avant la marche a` l’Inde´pendance (ca. 1876– 1945)’, in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Alain Forest and Herbert Weiss (eds), Re´bellions-Re´volution au Zaı¨re 1963– 1965, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1987), pp. 24 – 73. Whitlock, Brand, Belgium: A Personal Narrative, 2 vols (New York, 1919). Xu, Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge, 2011). Young, Crawford, ‘Zaı¨re: the shattered illusion of the integral state’, Journal of Modern African Studies xxxii/2 (1994), pp. 247–63. Zuckerman, Larry, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York, 2004).

CHAPTER 2 RACE AND IMPERIAL AMBITION:THE CASE OF JAPAN AND INDIA AFTER WORLD WAR I Maryanne A. Rhett

In the wake of World War I some empires, like the Ottoman, German and Austro-Hungarian, were wiped from the map. Others, like the British and French, expanded through the creation of the Mandate System. Yet this is not an era noted for the emergence of newly-formed empires. Conventional wisdom across Europe and North America thought of the imperial heyday as passe´, but for segments of the Indian population and for the Japanese state, imperial ambition was on a marked upswing during the inter-war years. Although the nascent Japanese Empire was defeated and dismembered at the close of World War II, its powerful inter-war presence shook up international relations and tested the very nature of who should have an ‘empire’ and how ‘civilisation’ should actually be defined. With similar ambition, but distinctly different outcomes, an Indian empire, aspired to by a small but significant Indian nationalist contingent, never came to fruition. What India was able to achieve, however, was an expanded cultural and economic imperialism throughout the Indian Ocean region lasting well after

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World War II, decolonisation, the Cold War and the end of the twentieth century. The differences between the Japanese and Indian cases are striking, but they are not without parallels. In both examples race played a significant role in how Europe and the rest of the world looked on imperial ambitions. Had these two states been European or NeoEuropean (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc.) the desire to establish national identity through imperial hegemony might not have received unbending support, but it would certainly not have engendered fear and paranoia, as in the case of Japan, or outright contempt, as in that of India. Thus, not only does the case of Indian and Japanese imperialism situate the era of World War I and the inter-war period in a period of collapsing empires (e.g. AustriaHungary or Germany) but also on an international political continuum of racial thinking that, instead of being the harbinger of ‘modern’ thought about self-determination, simply reinforced the status quo hierarchy of White Europe on top and everyone else, even its allies, falling well beneath.

Japan’s development as an imperial contender Modern Japanese imperial acquisitions began in 1895, with the end of the Sino-Japanese war and the securing of Japanese influence over Korea. Although the Triple Intervention – by the British, French and Russians – at the end of the war meant Japan was ‘forced to watch with deepening shame, humiliation, and bitterness the almost immediate takeover of her relinquished conquests [by European powers]’,1 the later Anglo– Japanese alliance (1902–23) helped to counteract frustration over Russian interests in Japan’s perceived sphere of influence, allowed it a free hand over Korea, and offered a clear avenue for entrance into World War I. However, even in alliance with Japan, the British, Russians and French ‘were not willing to see Japan establish a position of dominance in the Far East’.2 With Japan increasingly marginalised at the 1919 Versailles Conference following the war, the hopes of its diplomats for seats at the Great Powers’ table were dashed and their diplomatic attempts to create

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global equality among powerful states were side-stepped. Instead, racially defined norms for imperial acceptance remained the rule. Thus what Japanese imperial ambition could not achieve at the negotiating table was later taken by force. Since the opening of Japanese ports in the 1850s, its leaders had focused their efforts on creating powerful state structures able to rival any of those in Europe, to prove that its civilisation was just as capable of pursuing and maintaining the foundations of imperial hegemony and commanding an East Asian empire, not to mention defend itself from the ambitions of others. Japanese policy-makers thoroughly researched the process of imperial development, consciously modelling their efforts on the Western format. Initially reluctant to accept Western aid, trade goods and philosophies, by the 1870s and 1880s Japanese leadership actively courted European tacticians, strategists and armaments specialists. It was not only apparent to European powers that modern and innovative armed forces were key to securing and maintaining empires – it was abundantly clear also to non-European states.3 At the start, the legacy of Napoleon led Japanese leaders to seek French military instruction, but by the 1870s, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, they had almost entirely set aside French tutelage. Although the Japanese retained French advisors for language and ordnance instruction, in addition to continuing to work with Italians (as the Japanese were still using largely Italian weaponry), they increasingly regarded the Prussian army as the model of a modern force, and so their interest in German military thinking and know-how began to take hold.4 In 1885, at the request of the Japanese state, Major Klemens Wilhelm Jakob Meckel arrived in Tokyo to teach at Japan’s staff college. Meckel’s pedagogy fitted well with Japanese military thinking, particularly the concept of seishin, ‘fighting spirit’.5 Received enthusiastically by Japanese officials, and despite the language barrier – which made the process of teaching a laborious one – the hierarchical structures introduced by Meckel had a profound influence on the Japanese army. While some contemporaries did not give much weight to Meckel’s impact, others credited his work with making possible ‘the victories of the

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Japanese over the Chinese and Russian forces’ in the early twentieth century.6 When Meckel died in July 1909, the New York Times obituary noted: ‘The Japanese themselves are deeply grateful to Meckel. After the battle of Mukden Field Marshal Oyama telegraphed to him, ascribing his success to Meckel’s instruction.’7 The connections between Germany and Japan’s army did not end with Meckel’s departure. By 1898, 12 Japanese officers were studying at military institutions in Germany, compared with only three in France, while others were assigned as attache´s or observers to various European and American armed forces. Yet for all the affinity the Japanese army felt toward the Germans, Japan still entered the war in November 1914 on the side of the Entente, ensuring that World War I would not be waged solely by European powers. Even though German thinking shaped the army, it was the British imperial structure, coupled with the fact that duty and honour dictated adherence to the Anglo– Japanese alliance, that the Japanese sought to emulate. Moreover, during the 12 years between the alliance’s establishment and the outbreak of World War I, Japan’s navy had modelled itself on the British Royal Navy. This split between the armed services led to divergent views of the two branches. Not unlike the in-fighting and reputational competition between service branches today, ‘Popular wisdom [in Japan] credit [ed] the imperial navy with producing cosmopolitan and sophisticated officers while dismissing army officers as provincial bumpkins.’8 Such provincialism was not in reality due to significant lack of intelligence, but to a combination of ‘professional hubris, jealousies that arose from old regional antagonisms, rivalry for public attention and budgetary support, as well as honest differences in strategic perspective’.9 In time the navy gained ‘status as an independent organ of the state’ and the forward arm of imperial action.10 Ironically, when the British tried to limit Japan’s imperial reach during World War I it did so by focusing only on Japanese naval assistance, limiting the army’s participation, perhaps because the army was modelled on the German structure. Nevertheless, both Britain’s focus on the Japanese navy, and its lack of interest in the army, had the effect of encouraging imperial ambition.

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Despite the connections afforded the Japanese navy through the Anglo– Japanese alliance, the British over the first decade of the twentieth century became ‘increasingly reluctant to share information on British naval advances in training and technology’ and ‘reacted coolly to Japanese suggestions for the conduct of joint naval exercises’.11 This reluctance continued to permeate British sentiment toward Japanese territorial and military ambition through World War I. In particular, the Anglo–Japanese alliance referenced ‘the safeguarding of the special interests of the contracting parties’, which in the minds of British officials like Lord Curzon, ‘raised, in his opinion, a somewhat difficult question, as it was never easy to define exactly what such interests were or to agree exactly on the extent to which a Power was interested’.12 For the Japanese, however, asserting what qualified as their ‘special interests’ in the Pacific became possible with the outbreak of the war. In the opening days of August 1914 Great Britain sought to avoid ‘if possible drawing Japan into trouble’, but warned ‘the Japanese Government that if hostilities spread to [the] Far East and an attack is made on Hongkong or Wei-hei-wei, H.M. Government will rely on their support’.13 On 7 August 1914, ‘the British government formally requested Japan dispatch its fleet to hunt out and if possible, seize armed German merchant ships’.14 Japan, unwilling to be limited in its actions, claimed that it needed ‘a free hand and no limited liability’. Since the British wanted ‘to limit the acts of war in [the] Far East to the sea’ it was clear from the outset that the two sides had very different visions of the war’s potential outcomes.15 On 9 August, the Japanese informed British officials that they would ‘take every possible means for the destruction of power of Germany that might inflict damage on the interests of Japan and Britain in East Asia’.16 The aggressiveness of Japan’s assistance unnerved British officials who certainly wanted the aid, particularly so far from the European theatre, but were not ready to cede control to another power so near its own strategic interests, e.g. Australia, Hong Kong, etc. However, on 11 August ‘Britain gave in to the Japanese intentions and recognized Japan’s participation in the war; but restricted the sphere of Japanese operations to the Eastern China

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Sea and German leased territory on mainland China’.17 While it was the hope of British, French and Russian leaders that Japan’s efforts would remain confined to the Pacific, ‘Japanese belligerent action did in fact exceed the geographical limits the British Government had tried to impose’.18 Japan’s navy took part in Pacific actions as far away as Honolulu, and by October 1914 Japanese forces had occupied the Marshall Islands and part of the Carolines. In December 1914, the Japanese stated frankly that they proposed to keep the German islands North of the Equator. The British Government pointed out that all occupations of enemy territory during the war must be provisional. The Japanese replied that nevertheless they counted on British support.19 It is worth noting that this assertion, early in the war, of territorial acquisition is the same as Sheirf Husayn’s attempt, in the 1915 Husayn-McMahon correspondence, to draw boundaries around a future Arab state. For both Japan and the Arabs, however, the British remained steadfast in the belief that only decisions of this nature could have any permanency among French, British and Russian interests. For the Arabs this referenced those laid out in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, while for the Japanese it pertained to French, British and Russian strategic interests in the Pacific. After this initial aggressiveness on the part of the Japanese, European allies increasingly questioned the nature of the price of their assistance. Japan’s allies did not wait long to ask the question again – ‘what price?’. In January 1915 the Japanese government issued a secret ultimatum to the Chinese government, the ‘Twenty-One Demands’, at the heart of which was Japan’s desire to assert regional and cultural hegemony through greater control over Chinese actions, interests and regions (notably Manchuria and Shandong). According to Robert Gowen, ‘At stake in the demands was not only Japan’s compulsion to control China, but also its desire to lead a pan-Asian movement subversive of the cultural divinity and political hegemony claimed by the West.’20 Not having received a satisfactory answer from the British with regard to the future of Japanese war acquisitions, Japan

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decided to enter into negotiations directly with China. The TwentyOne Demands that ‘ultimately tied to the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s’ was in 1915 ‘the paramount symbol of Japanese aggression’.21 British documents on the matter note that the ‘demands made on China were so extensive that they caused considerable embarrassment to Japan’s allies’,22 and that while China was ‘an unwieldy and helpless country . . . it must naturally be the desire of His Majesty’s Government to see China built up again and some sort of cohesion arrived a[t] in that country’.23 What the British and Japanese agreed on was the need for outside intervention in China; their disagreement centred on who should provide the civilising mission. Eventually smoothed over, the issues with China and the other overly aggressive actions of the Japanese continued to put European allies on the alert.

Japan and Versailles: why so much concern over race? After World War I came to a close, the leaders of the world descended on Paris to discuss the post-war settlement. In the initial days of the peace talks, evidence indicated that the Japanese would be full and equal partners in fashioning the war’s settlement. It appeared to those uninitiated into the finer points of international diplomacy that as one of the Big Five, Japan had risen to a place of equality with the British and American empires, but the racist policies pursued by countries like the United States (e.g. those dealing with immigration), and fully part of the British and French imperial structures, forced Japanese diplomats to realise their political equality was not a foregone conclusion. As Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds note in Drawing the Global Colour Line, ‘Japan expected to associate with the Western powers on equal terms, but was disparaged as “a yellow race”.’24 Japanese efforts at securing equality increasingly marginalised them from the main decision-makers at the conference. In an effort to forestall a worsening position the Japanese delegation proposed an amendment to the treaty, what has since become known as the Racial Equality Clause. On 13 February,

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Baron Nobuaki Makino (1861–1949), a Japanese delegate, read his amendment to the ‘religious liberty’ clause: The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible, to all alien nationals of States members of the League equal and just treatment in every respect, making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.25 The aim of the clause was to prove Japanese imperial equality with its European counterparts and to secure protections for its citizens while travelling and working abroad. Unfortunately for Japan, and for all other Asian and non-European countries, the mystique of white hegemony continued to pervade international politics. Lord Cecil, in response to the proposed amendment, ‘said that, alas, this was a highly controversial matter. It was already causing problems within the British empire delegation.’26 Europeans and Americans feared, with some reason, that the clause would destabilise the fine racial balance of power maintaining European hegemony. This racial explanation of imperial non-acceptability became thoroughly apparent during the course of the war. In 1917, when asked to comment on the potential use of Japanese troops in the Middle East, Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu voiced a number of concerns, shared by other British leaders, about the viability and reach of Asiatic militaries: As regards Japan, at home I took very strong objection to the employment of Chinese either in Mesopotamia or in Aden or in Egypt. I felt that they had doubtful military value, if any, and that it would lower our prestige enormously to appear to depend upon foreign mercenaries to protect British processions. The Japanese present another question. They are of undoubted military value. We are getting very short of men. At home I stated the strong objections felt by the India Office to Japanese cooperation in Mesopotamia, based not so much on prestige but

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on the notorious attitude of the Japanese, their Germanic system of civilisation, and the prize they would be likely to ask.27 It was not simply a question of using Asian forces, but the ambitions of the state those forces served. Much of what made Japan ‘Germanic’ fell into two categories: martial theory and practice, and imperial ambition. While the latter was something the Japanese modelled on the British, it was the former in which they followed the Germans. As has already been noted, in the years leading up to and following World War I, Japan made great leaps in its status as a world power, particularly through its restructured military. The undoubted martial abilities of the Japanese, respected by European powers and certainly welcomed by the Entente in the Pacific theatre, were not enough to trump the racial considerations and the imperial hierarchy British statesmen strove to maintain. It was race, not military capability, that dominated wartime and post-war political agendas. Frequent expressions of concern over growing Japanese hegemony, typically couched in racial and imperial rhetoric, urged caution in the use of Japanese troops beyond the Pacific Rim. Throughout the course of the war the Entente Powers seriously discussed the use of Japanese ground forces outside the Pacific, and while naval forces were deployed in Western theatres, the rhetoric surrounding the matter clearly revealed the fears of the Europeans and Americans over the emerging imperial power in the East. In November 1914 the British government, in consultation with France, Russia, the United States and representatives of the dominions and colonies, discussed the proposal to accept Japanese military assistance in Europe. The British ‘declared [it] unacceptable both on grounds of principle and of practical possibility’.28 When the question resurfaced in September 1917, Edwin Montagu, on behalf of India’s interests, continued to dissuade the British from pursuing the use of Japanese troops outside the limited Pacific sphere: My view of the employment of Japanese troops is different from my view of the employment of Chinese troops, for the former

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have a real military value, and therefore if they are employed in sufficient numbers, I cannot argue that we are not doing something to aid our prospects of military success. But I have strong political objections to the employment, of Japanese in Asia, or with Indian troops, and these objections are certainly not fanciful, even if they are not conclusive.29 This fear of the political price the Japanese leaders would extract from direct British imperial interests led Montagu to note: ‘As regards Tsingtao, surely the Japs hope that they will keep that for themselves. I do not want them to think the same thing in a smaller degree of Mesopotamia.’30 In June 1918, Arthur Balfour (1848– 1930) noted that while he knew there to be a great deal of mistrust and jealousy, or fear, I ought to say, of Japan, he himself did not share it and saw no reason to fear Japan’s intentions for at least the next five to ten years. When asked to reflect on why the Americans in particular were concerned with Japanese intervention, in this case in Siberia on behalf of the Allied cause, Balfour noted that ‘Japan and the yellow races are unpopular in a white country, that, to allow intervention even, though it is Allied intervention, in which the Japanese will play, and must play, the main part as regards to numbers, will be to alienate Russian sentiment and to drive them into the hands of Germany’.31 Conversely, General Knox stated that ‘he found no evidence of deepseated hostility to the Japanese. These Russian officers drew favourable contrast between the good behaviour of the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War and the barbarity of the Germans in this War.’32 While there remained some difference of opinion on the value of Japanese efforts in Siberia, the question of price remained paramount. Minutes of the British Cabinet meetings noted that ‘Japanese co-operation would enormously enhance the prestige of Asiatics as against Europeans, and would consequently react upon the

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attitude of Indians toward the British.’33 Pan-Asianism was, even before the war had come to an end, a clear concern among British imperialists. The service the Japanese rendered the Entente Powers during the war was an uneasy debt, which the European and American leaders eagerly wished to settle. A confidential Foreign Office memorandum asserted that ‘Japan is the only non-white first-class Power . . . If she can enforce her claim she will become our superior; if she cannot enforce it she remains our inferior; but equal she can never be.’34 Despite Britain’s efforts to control the Japanese imperial ambitions, the war only offered greater opportunities to expand Japan’s imperial scope.

Britain’s other unwittingly inspired empire: India For India, the case for imperialism was similar to that of Japan in as much as it confronted the racial ideologies of the day, yet still vastly different in terms of support and scope. India was still a colonial possession of Great Britain in 1919, and although it made a concerted effort not only to cast off colonial rule, the desire to itself become a colonial ruler was not shared by all citizens of the country, but only by a segment of them. Noting long-term interests in the Indian Ocean basin, particularly East Africa, some prominent Indian nationalists, like Gopal Gokhale (1866– 1915) and Aga Khan III (1877– 1957), tied their nationalist rhetoric to the effort of imagining Indian colonialism and an Indian Ocean empire, thus showing a striking similarity to the Japanese desire for an empire, an appetite whetted by the possibilities World War I afforded. Such Indian nationalists not only advocated an independent Indian state, but tied to their nationalist ambitions a desire for a strong and centralised Indian Ocean empire. In the shadow of the British Empire, Indian nationalists like Gokhale and the Aga Khan put forward schemes to colonise East Africa with Indian settlers, building on the population of Indian merchants and civil servants already there, and suggesting that their notions of national strength must go hand in hand with imperial endeavours.35

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The connections between East Africa and India predated British imperialism in the region, going back to at least the advent of Islam. For centuries traders throughout the Indian Ocean region had connected the important centres of learning and trade in South Asia to those along the Eastern coast of Africa. For the Aga Khan, the unity of his Ismaili (Shi’a sect) community, which stretched across the region at the turn of the twentieth century, strengthened this connection. As he noted, East Africa ‘provided a field for Indian immigration and enterprise from time immemorial, and we have seen that Indians played a conspicuous part in their development before the white man came on the scene as a settler’.36 Still, despite these historic linkages, European settlers in East Africa and AngloIndians (in this case meaning, Britons who lived in or were born in India) spurned almost any attempt by Indians to claim equal political status. Shortly before his death in 1914, Gokhale finalised a document for the Indian National Congress outlining plans for constitutional reform. At the very end of it, in what almost appears to be an afterthought, Gokhale claimed that: ‘German East Africa, when conquered from the Germans, should be reserved for Indian colonisation and should be handed over to the Government of India.’37 The seeming randomness of Gokhale’s choice of German East Africa is explicable in three ways. First, Indian cultural and economic connections throughout the Indian Ocean basin long predated British involvement. As is well documented, in works like N.K. Chaudhuri’s, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750, trading centres connecting Indian and East African communities stretch back centuries. Culturally India and East Africa shared a religious link through the Ismaili Shi’a community. By the nineteenth century the spiritual leaders of the Ismaili community had settled in the subcontinent, already endowed with their title ‘Aga Khan’, as bestowed upon them by the Persian emperor. The Aga Khans worked closely with the British leadership in India, forging a close relationship which went in some cases beyond political alliances.38 Traditionally, the Ismaili sect, much smaller in numbers than the better known

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Twelve Shi’a (the sect represented by the Iranian state today), were scattered across the Islamic world. By the nineteenth century, as the leadership settled in India, other communities flourished throughout the Indian Ocean world, particularly in East Africa. Second, Indian civil servants had spread across the British Empire over the last half of the nineteenth century. This socio-economic class of British subjects was both invaluable to the smooth running of the Empire and, as the British were to find out in the first half of the nineteenth century, well-educated and desirous of political mobility. Third, the choice of German East Africa was a politically astute way of calling for Indian colonisation in East Africa, but not at the expense of trampling on allied toes. If the German East African colonial holdings came to be redistributed after the war, Gokhale and like-minded Indians wanted to be first on the list. Gokhale’s forward imperial thinking was taken up after his death in the Aga Khan’s 1918 work, India in Transition. Forcefully echoing Gokhale’s imperial ambitions, the Aga Khan argued that Indians were the logical heirs to settlements in German East Africa. This region, the Aga Khan explained, was the ‘most appropriate field for Indian colonisation and settlement’.39 Going a step further than Gokhale, however, the Aga Khan called for ‘the transfer of the administration of German, as well as British, East Africa to the Government of India’, claiming, ‘It would be vastly better both for the Sultan of Zanzibar and his people that he should be an Indian prince dealing with the Government of India than that he should remain in existing relationships with the Foreign Office.’40 While the Aga Khan spent a great deal of time connecting Indian interests to Africa through politics and culture, there was also a civilising mission, an echo of British imperialism, which the Aga Khan also reflected upon: It [Africa] is peopled by vast numbers of dark and aboriginal tribes. India, too, has her Bhils and other wild tribes in much the same stage of development. Her immigrant sons must feel stronger sympathy and toleration for the Africans than the white settler, and will be singularly fitted to help to raise them

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in the scale of civilisation. The Indian cultivator and the Indian craftsman do some things as these children of the wilds do them, only they do them much better. Indians would teach the natives to plough, to weave, and to carpenter; the rough Indian tools are within the comprehension of the African mind, and even Indian housekeeping would be full of instructive lessons to the negro.41 In other words, racial construction was a two-way street. While British officials in London bristled at the idea of granting Indian, or Japanese, imperial ambitions too much legitimacy, the Aga Khan and fellow imperialists in India and Japan used racial hierarchies and references to further their own agendas, differentiating themselves from the others they sought to rule. In the minds of some, it was as if empire-building in the postWorld War I era was a zero-sum game. There was only enough space for one new empire, not many. For the Aga Khan, the fear that Japan would jump the queue, gaining imperial equality before India, was unconscionable. As he observed: ‘Yet there is a school of Imperialistic thought in England ready to trust Japan and accept her as a full equal, exhibiting a strange lack of confidence in the King’s Indian subjects, for which there is no single justifying fact in history.’42 This imperialistic thinking, according the Aga Khan, linked to the good many windy phrases such as ‘taking up the white man’s burden’ and reflects a time when Britain was most influenced by German ideas, those of Bismarck and William II, Treitschke, and Nietzsche. It consciously or unconsciously desires the perpetuation of racial supremacy in India. The rise of Japan to a position of equality with the great European Powers has but served to concentrate upon the Indian dependency these ideals of race supremacy.43 Indian advocates of Indian imperialism specifically, but nationalists more generally, noted that the efforts of Indian soldiers during the

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war should be seen as proof of sustainable governability. Montagu championed the Aga Khan’s ideas, and was a direct voice of Indian imperial ambition in the British government.44 Both spoke at length of the long service by Indian forces on behalf of the British war effort. Vital to the Middle Eastern campaigns, and even serving on the European front, Indian troops fought and died for the British Empire. As discussed in his work Imperial Connections, Thomas Metcalf notes: During the First World War, Indian troops saw action on the Western Front in France and participated in the campaigns in Gallipoli and German East Africa. India’s largest contribution to the war effort, however, took place in Mesopotamia . . . Of the total number of 1.3 million Indians sent overseas to fight for the British Empire, some 600,000 . . . saw service in Mesopotamia.45 This service deserved a reward, and justified arguments for Home Rule, outright independence or the creation of an Indian empire. As Montagu noted in October 1918: I do submit with all the urgency that I can command that we shall be guilty of grave dereliction of Imperial duty if we do not see that the Indian has some opportunity of colonisation arising out of the Indian partnership in this war.46 From Montagu’s perspective, if the British Empire was unable satisfactorily to acknowledge what it ‘owed’ to its own subjects, how could it permit similar action from a less-known quantity, Japan?

Reflecting on the nature of empire and race There was some real reason to fear that the British government would not take Indian imperial ambitions seriously although, as noted earlier, there was also significant reason to doubt its willingness to

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treat Japan as an equal. As a confidential statement about Japan’s equality on the global stage observed, race was still a trump card: In every respect, except the racial one, Japan stands on a par with the great governing nations of the world. But however powerful Japan may eventually become, the white races will never be able to admit her equality . . . There is therefore, at present in practical politics no solution to the racial question.47 In India in Transition the Aga Khan had argued that political allegiance rather than race should set the standard by which communities are included in or excluded from the imperial game. Seeking to prove this point, he noted that because Austria and Germany had taken up arms against their European neighbours in World War I, ‘all and sundry have watched the humiliation of these fallen members of the white race’, while at the same time ‘sepoys have fought hand to hand with the fairest inhabitants of Europe. The longmaintained racial line of demarcation had [thus] been largely replaced by that of allegiance to Sovereign [sic] and flag.’48 Unlike the arguments put forward by racial theorists or Khalifatists,49 group inclusion for Indian nationalists remained a political matter, not a racial one. Despite this bold and well-reasoned public attempt to shift imperial thinking from issues of race to those of patriotism and loyalty, British imperial policy continued to reflect racial hierarchical thinking well into the inter-war period. Just as the Ilbert Bill controversy had ultimately upheld racial divisions, so too did the question of Indian enfranchisement in African British colonial or dominion possessions. The Ilbert Bill of 1884 was concerned with rectifying a judicial anomaly that barred native Indian judges from adjudicating legal actions involving non-Indians. The controversy led to a hue and cry from Anglo-Indians concerned at Indians achieving the same racial status as themselves. In addition to imposing a further strain on racial and gender relations in India and to heightening the Indian nationalist movement, the issues surrounding the Bill won Anglo-Indians few friends in London,

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clearly demarcating imperial realities in the metropole and the periphery. The question of Indian settlers’ voting rights and privileges tested the waters of Indian imperial ambition as well as British desires to accommodate it. In 1921, when the question of Indian enfranchisement in South Africa came up for discussion, clear indications that the British were unwilling to accommodate such imperial gains emerged. Edwin Montagu and members of the Indian government lobbied hard for greater Indian involvement in the African colonies, but despite their best efforts, Indians living in South Africa were not to be enfranchised. As a result of the South Africa experience, the pro-Indian lobby shifted its advocacy to Indian enfranchisement elsewhere on the continent. The focus fell in particular on East Africa, both the former German colony of Tanganyika and the British colonies which predated the Mandate period, notably Kenya. The Aga Khan again pressed for greater Indian involvement in the colonial administration of these regions, noting the long historical connection between East Africa and India, and India’s ability to act as a civilising force in the region. As with the Ilbert Bill and the South African enfranchisement debate, specific events in Kenya proved that racial hierarchies dominated both British policy and the rules by which empires were themselves created. Depending on where an Indian subject of the British Empire lived, that subject’s rights changed. The 1919 Government of India Act expanded the voting rights of Indian subjects, though by no means all of them, and set the stage for self-governing institutions. The 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms continued to advance the idea of gradually introducing self-governing institutions to India, and by doing so paving the way for eventual self-government. While Indian nationalists did not feel these reforms went far enough, imperialists feared they went too far. Neither of these acts extended the rights of Indians beyond the boundaries of India proper. From the perspective of those looking to increase Indian self-government, the argument lay in the fact that Indian enfranchisement in Africa was vital to achieving self-government at home. The delegations who lobbied London politicians for Indian rights in East Africa did so by

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focusing on the need to enfranchise only educated Indians, not just any Indian living overseas. This, they argued, would put equals on equal footing. The Kenya Indian Delegation, in a 1923 letter to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (1867– 1947), countered anti-Asiatic (anti-Indian) sentiment by asserting that former Secretary of State for India Lord Salisbury ‘emphasized the obligation of the Imperial Government to accord the Indian Subjects of His Majesty’s equality of treatment in the clearest terms’.50 In fact, what Salisbury promised was the same treatment of Indians in India and abroad. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Indians had gained significant improvements to their rights in India. These improvements led educated Indians, particularly those in the Civil Service, to consider themselves equal, at least intellectually, to Britons. The logical assumption was that these rights should extend overseas. Race, however, continued to trump education and imperial policy was slow to change. Echoing the Ilbert Bill crisis, elevating Indians in Africa to equal status with Europeans incensed Anglo-Africans and motivated the production of propaganda focusing on gendered and racialist sentiment. In the summer of 1923, a pamphlet, entitled The Woman’s Point of View, circulated among influential members of the British government.51 The pamphlet bluntly declared that the issue of Indian rights in Africa was of worldwide importance, since: ‘There is no previous instance where a coloured race has aspired to share the rule of any country with the European.’52 The pamphlet was purportedly from the perspective of a ‘concerned European woman’, and thus its greatest focus was on the potential which enfranchisement had for placing ‘European women under Asiatic administration’. The overwhelming emphasis of the Kenya Women’s Committee pamphlet was on the degenerate nature of Indians in Africa. The author (or authors) bluntly claimed that ‘any outbreak of plague invariably starts in the Indian quarters’, and, as if this were not enough, the co-education of Indian and English children would be disastrous. Indian children were, the pamphlet asserted, ‘trained and initiated into the mysteries of sex’, and so would presumably tempt

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English children into precocious sexual activity.53 The theme of Indian hygiene, or lack thereof, was nothing new in the assumptions of British officials concerning South Asians. In April 1917 Vaughan Nash (1861–1932), Secretary for Reconstruction in Asquith’s cabinet, wrote to Montagu, ‘You mention sanitation and education, but the first of these, as you know, is a terrain vague to all Indians and I do not think that it will appeal to them.’54 After denigrating the Indians’ skills as merchants, potential as agriculturalists and status as loyal members of the military, not to mention their hygiene and children, the pamphlet changed tack, using the familiar rhetoric of Britain’s role as paternalistic overseer. Noting the obvious fact that native Kenyans outnumbered the combined European and Indian populations, the author of the pamphlet contended that if the administration of Kenya were handed over to the Indians, ‘the progress of the [African] Native will be put back 50 years’.55 Beyond this, the pamphlet added to the battle cry of the Ilbert Bill crisis: ‘On the whole, the Native has taken very kindly to the rule of the white woman – he looks to her as his friend’; to give Indians the vote in Kenya ‘must rapidly tend to place European women under Asiatic administration’.56 What is more, the pamphlet derides the Indian as mischievous, and the African as child-like and in need of protection. Just as fear of Indian judges having power over white subjects during the Ilbert crisis led to Anglo-Indian outcry, so too were African Indians castigated for their lack of concern for what was ‘best’ for the native African. In both cases the Indian was seen as encroaching on the rightful territory of British leadership. On 27 January 1922, Winston Churchill (1874–1965), then Secretary of State for the Colonies, delivered his ‘Kenya Dinner Address’, during which he made two significant points. First, he asserted that We consider we are pledged by undertakings given in the past to reserve the Highlands of East Africa exclusively for European settlers, and we do not intend to depart from that pledge. That must be taken as a matter which has been definitely settled in all future negotiations.57

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Second, ‘All future immigration of Indians should be strictly limited.’58 Churchill built on already well-structured ways of dealing with the Indian question in Africa. An October 1918 memorandum, ‘The Future of the German Colonies’, noted that ‘His Majesty’s Indian subjects are not welcomed, and indeed barely tolerated, in many of the countries flying the British flag, and that at present they do not get in all cases as favourable treatment as other Asiatics such as the Japanese’.59 Neither point raised by Churchill made Montagu or the Indian delegations happy. In a letter to Churchill on 31 January, Montagu observed: What distresses me is that you seem to think that the existing residents in the country can only mean the European residents. Under every rule of equal rights for all civilised men, the term must mean the residents in the country regardless of race.60 The heart of the Aga Khan’s arguments for Indian imperialism in East Africa echoed sentiments shared by Indian nationalists, whether imperialists or not. Speaking directly to the question of colonisation the Aga Khan noted: To the Indian conversant with public affairs there is something singularly revolting in the desire of a mere handful of his white fellow-subjects to keep East Africa as a preserve for themselves. There are but some 65,000,000 whites in the British Empire, and they have for their almost exclusive enterprise not only the United Kingdom (of which Ireland certainly needs population and colonisation as much as any country, at least in the temperate zone), but the immense tracts of Canada, Australia and South Africa proper. Yet a small section desires to bar to the 315,000,000 Indian subjects of the King the lands of East Africa, to which their labour and enterprise for centuries have given them an unanswerable claim.61 Moreover, aside from the rights of Indians to settle in and colonise places like East Africa, India’s burgeoning market increasingly

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demanded an outlet not only for its labour, but also for its goods and services. From the Indian imperialist’s perspective, colonisation in Africa would not only help India’s growth, but if done within the structure of the British Empire, perhaps as a dominion, would also prove to the advantage of the British. The vitriolic propaganda against Indian immigration which dominated the debate in places like Kenya, however, showed again that race was more important as a determining factor of imperial ambition than economics or political viability.

Convergence: The Japanese and Indian Empires in the 1920s In the larger context of the first decades of the twentieth century, both Japan and India inhabited increasingly important geopolitical spheres, as central nodes of emerging Pan-Asian and/or consciously anti-Western sentiment. As noted in Cemil Aydin’s work, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought, both India and Japan were symbols of viable alternatives to Western imperial structures. The rise of Japan was a destabilizing factor that attracted Muslim activists who wanted to cooperate with the ‘Rising State of the East’ against the Western empires, accelerating contacts between Japan and the world of Islam from the vast regions of Eurasia and North Africa.62 Additionally, Japan’s perceived equality among the great powers of the early twentieth century world had won it favour, as a leader among Asian nations, with more than just pan-Islamists. In 1902, Gadhadhar Singh, a sepoy in the service of the British Empire, published his account of the Allied effort to suppress the Boxer Uprising in China (1900–01). As Anand Yang has noted, Singh’s memoir ‘imagined a new Asia emerging’ in the light of modernity. While Singh’s cloaked Indian nationalism sympathised with the Chinese plight, there was also room in his memoir for admiration of the Japanese forces who fought with the allied contingent, claiming

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that Japan offered a future for the Asian peoples.63 The desire among Indian nationalists and Japanese imperialists to emerge from under Western authority and control, mixed with the very fact that both had the potential to do so, made them forces to be reckoned with. Indeed, fear that the Indians and Japanese would feed off one another in terms of Pan-Asianist sentiment circulated in the corridors of British governance. New ‘fear[s] of Japan . . . however, more remote’ invading India were even more reason to keep the Indian populace happy, in this case by moving forward with the granting of King’s commissions.64 Japan and India represented widely divergent attempts to navigate imperial ambitions and global racial hierarchies, but both offer ways of illustrating the navigation of emerging non-European empires onto a global stage dominated by European empires. Only Japan, however, was successful in creating a sovereign empire. The Indian nationalist movement in the 1910s and 1920s, on the other hand, was multifaceted, including secular modern nationalism, Khalifatism, Pan-Islamism, Hindu nationalism and Pan-Asianism. This, when combined with British colonial domination, made both independent Indian imperialism and imperialism in partnership with the British unrealistic hopes. While Indian economic hegemony throughout the Indian Ocean world continued to expand, even under the watchful eye of British imperialists, the Indian empire envisioned by the Aga Khan never came to fruition. Unlike the more unified Japanese nationalism, which focused on a concerted effort at expanding the empire, Indian nationalists proclaimed an array of messages, and not all of them saw the need for imperial holdings as a prerequisite of statehood. The Aga Khan, Gokhale and other Indian imperialists were minority voices. Their vision did not win wide support, although components of their advocacy were certainly vital, e.g. enfranchisement outside India. In the case of both Japan and India, race played an important part in how the ambition of the imperialist was perceived. The differences in message proclaimed in the name of nationalism were directly connected to the successes and failures of both, but equally the too rigid racial hierarchies of the global system hampered the imperial ambitions of Japan and India.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Willmott 1982, 22. Ibid., 20. For further detail see Kosakowski 1992; Drea 2009. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 59. New York Times 1906. Ibid. Drea 2009, 60. Evans and Peattie 1997, 22. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 186. War Cabinet 1921. Committee of Imperial Defence 1917. Kosakowski 1992, 79. Committee of Imperial Defence 1917. Kosakowski 1992, 80. Ibid., 81. Committee of Imperial Defence 1917. Ibid. Gowen 1971, 76. Dickinson 1999, 85. Committee of Imperial Defence 1917. War Cabinet 1921. Lake and Reynolds 2008, 277. Macmillan 2002, 318. Ibid. Montagu 1917, 2. Committee of Imperial Defence 1917. Montagu 1917b. Ibid. Balfour 1918. War Cabinet 1918a. Ibid. Lauren 1983, 4. Regarding Gokhale, the accusation of Indian colonisation of East Africa is to be found in Iyer 1921, 10. 36 Khan 1918, 123. 37 Luthy1971, 80. 38 Aga Khan III was not only an immensely famous statesman, serving as League of Nations President from 1937 to 1938, but also an avid race-horse owner. Among other courses the Aga Khan’s horses frequently appeared at Ascot, as did the man

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EMPIRES IN WORLD WAR I himself. He was also a notable addition to royal functions and gatherings in Great Britain and elsewhere throughout his life. Khan 1918, 123. The entirety of Ch. 8 is devoted to his arguments on the matter. Ibid., 129– 30. Ibid., 127. Ibid., 291. Ibid., 291– 92. This is also true of other pressing matters at the time. The Aga Khan and Montagu spoke at length on questions related to Zionism, for example, and such discussions clearly influenced each other’s written works. Metcalf 2007, 89. Ibid., 84; Montagu 1918. Lauren 1983, 4. Khan 1918, 19. Khalifatists preached a pan-Islamic doctrine. They were Indo-Muslims who sought to re-establish the power of the Caliph (the spiritual leader of the Sunni Muslim community). The Khalifat Movement in India reached its apex in India. Kenya Indian Delegation 1923. The delegates included M.A. Desai, A.M. Jeevanjee, Hooseinbhai S. Virjee, B.S. Varma, Yusuf Ali A.K. Jeevanjee and Tayab Ali. A copy of this, which is accessible in the India Office Records at the British Library, was sent to the wife of Humphrey Leggett, who passed it on to Sir Benjamin in a letter dated 1923. Kenya Women’s Committee c.1923. Ibid. Nash 1917. Kenya Women’s Committee c. 1923. Ibid. Montagu 1922, 4. Ibid., 8. Idem., 1918. Idem., 1922, 10. Khan 1918, 127–8. Esenbel 2004, 1140. Yang 2011. War Cabinet 1918b.

References Aydin, Cemil, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in PanIslamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York, 2007). Balfour, Arthur James, ‘Cabinet minutes, 20 June’, CAB 23/43 (London, 1918). Committee of Imperial Defence, ‘Japanese co-operation in the war’, precis prepared in the Historical Section, 3 October, CAB 24/27, 1917.

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Dickinson, Frederick R., War and National Reinvention: Japan and the Great War, 1914– 1919 (Boston MA, 1999). Drea, Edward J., Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853– 1945 (Lawrence KS, 2009). Esenbel, Selcuk, ‘Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900– 1945’, American Historical Review civ/4 (October 2004), pp. 1140– 70. Evans, David C. and Mark R. Peattie, Kaigun: Strategies, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887– 1914 (Annapolis MD, 1997). Gowen, Robert Joseph, ‘Great Britain and the Twenty-One Demands of 1915: cooperation versus effacement’, Journal of Modern History xliii/1 (1971), pp. 76–106. Iyer, T.S. Krishnamurthi, Mr. Montagu’s Failure and Other Papers (Madras, 1921). Kenya Indian Delegation, ‘Letter to Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin from the Kenya delegates’ (London, 1923). Kenya Women’s Committee, ‘The woman’s view point’ (London, c. 1923). Khan, Aga, India in Transition: A Study in Political Evolution (Bombay, 1918). Kosakowski, Leonard S., ‘The Anglo – Japanese Alliance and Japanese Expansionism, 1902– 1923’ Master of Military Art and Science, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (Fort Leavenworth KS, 1992). Lake, Marilyn and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge, 2008). Lauren, Paul Gordon, ‘First principles of racial equality: history and the politics and diplomacy of human rights provisions in the United Nations Charter’, Human Rights Quarterly v/1 (1983), pp. 1 –26. Luthy, Herbert, ‘India and East Africa: imperial partnership at the end of the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History vi/2 (1971), pp. 55 –85. Macmillan, Margaret, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York, 2002). Metcalf, Thomas R., Imperial Connections: India and the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860– 1920 (Berkeley CA, 2007). Montagu, Edwin Samuel, ‘Edwin Montagu to Lord Chelmsford’, Montagu Papers (Wren Library/Trinity College Cambridge, 1917a). ——— ‘Edwin Montagu to Lord Curzon, 28 September’, CAB24/28, G.T. 2240’ (London, 1917b). ——— ‘Future of the German colonies, 18 October’, CAB 24/67 (London, 1918). ——— ‘Edwin Montagu to Winston Churchill, 31 January’ (Cambridge, 1922). Nash, Vaughan, ‘Vaughan Nash to Edwin Montagu, 2 April’ (Cambridge, 1917). New York Times, ‘Death of Gen. Meckel’, 7 July 1906. War Cabinet, ‘Minutes of a meeting, 24 January’, CAB 23/13 (London, 1918a). ——— ‘Minutes of a meeting, 12 June’, CAB 23/6 (London, 1918b). ——— ‘Minutes of a meeting, 30 May’, CAB 23/25, 1921. Willmott, H.P., Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942 (Annapolis MD, 1982). Yang, Anand, ‘Chindia in 1900: a Subaltern Vision of China and India during the Boxer Uprising of 1900’, 20th Annual World History Association Conference (Beijing, 2011).

CHAPTER 3 A PACIFIC SCRAMBLE? IMPERIAL READJUSTMENT IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC, 1911—22 Wm. Matthew Kennedy

Histories of World War I often treat the crisis of imperialism which occurred in Asia and the Pacific as too remote to the European war to merit attention. An examination of these events often exists in a few lonely sentences or paragraphs, interspersed throughout a narrative centred in Flanders fields. This chapter intends to complicate this view by arguing two points. First, during the ‘European’ war, imperial powers fought an equally vicious diplomatic war over the principle and structure of imperial cooperation in East Asia and the Pacific. In this sense, World War I was truly global. Second, and perhaps counter-intuitively, the diplomatic conference system dedicated to the adjustment of imperial claims and processes characteristic of the pre-war years, met its demise primarily at the hands of events in East Asia and the Pacific. This may help explain why the legacies of the ‘peace’ at Paris rarely corresponded to their promises. The chapter breaks down into three distinct sections. First, it explores the status quo of empires in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on the primary powers, Great Britain and Japan, and investigates the series of events that led from imperial partnership to

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intense rivalry as a result of the war. Second, it exposes the ‘Scramble for the Pacific’ on the part of old and new imperial powers alike. It discusses the expansionism of Australia and the United States, and details the Japanese and British reaction to this influx of interest. Third, it analyses the post-war attempts to arrive at an arrangement which would satisfy new and old empires alike, arguing that these efforts further reveal the systemic collapse of the pre-war style of imperialism across the globe. During the early twentieth century, imperialism in Asia and the Pacific existed in an exceptional historical environment. European and non-European powers alike had witnessed the intense crisis and subsequent resolution of European competition in Africa. Mindful of the vast potential for conflagration as a product of imperial rivalry, then coming dangerously close to producing a ‘scramble’ for China, imperial powers undertook to better structure expansion in East Asia, so as to stave off future conflict. In its initial stages, this new order represented little more than an elite understanding, implicit rules of conduct. But the first decade of the twentieth century brought rebellion to China, and war between Japan and Russia. Hoping to avoid future hostilities, empires with the largest stake in East Asia pressed for a more permanent solution than previous diplomatic initiatives had judged proper. In European eyes, the chief problem seemed to be the continuous instability of China. Thus in 1911, when Britain and Japan renewed the 1902 Anglo– Japanese Alliance, they inserted a special section guaranteeing Chinese integrity outright, and formally declared that China and the Pacific Islands would operate commercially on an ‘open door’ basis.1 This document in effect became the legal structure for a new ‘cooperative’ imperial project in the Asia-Pacific region. Although the most horrific fighting took place on the European continent, World War I quickly became a global conflict. The instability of European empires led to their increasing vulnerability and even their outright obliteration. In East Asia and the Pacific, the capitulation of German colonial forces in New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands, the Shantung and in other minor island groups incited nothing short of a frenzied rush for territorial

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acquisition, in spite of the Alliance of 1911 and the rules it had set down. New conflicts on abutting imperial frontiers emerged, and the threat of war between Pacific powers seemed just as real in the AsiaPacific region as in Europe. Although the British, as a ‘senior’ imperial power, attempted to resist it, a wave of imperial readjustment driven by Australia, Japan and the United States swept across the entire Pacific and East Asia. Within ten years, the 1911 structure of imperial expansion lay in ruins. It shattered an already beleaguered faith that the pre-war diplomatic system of conferences and treaties could accommodate the augmented imperial projects of Britain, Japan, the United States and Australia.

Anglo –Japanese cooperative imperialism Even as the ink dried on the 1911 Anglo–Japanese Alliance, mutual distrust between the main contracting parties had reached alarming levels. Japan held a larger stake in China than any European power save Britain, and it had been striving to expand this since the late nineteenth century. Despite the formal agreement, Lord Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Jordan, British minister in Peking, and Sir Beilby Alston, head of Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office – the three most important British diplomatic officials concerned with the Far East – all regarded Japanese intentions in China with intense suspicion. Occupied by Japanese troops in 1895 and again in 1905, Korea was now a colony fully integrated into the Japanese imperial economy, taking a steady 6 per cent of all Japanese exports. In Shanghai, 18 per cent of all foreign direct investment came from Japan. With direct government support, Japanese investment in China increased from US$1 million in 1901 to $221 million in 1914.2 Further, Japanese enterprise expanded outside its defined Manchurian sphere of influence. Grey initially opposed working with Japan to restore peace in China during the 1911 revolution for this very reason, and months later Alston identified ‘a definite policy aimed at the extension of Japanese influence of a political, financial, and commercial nature’.3 Jordan, whose Chinese vantage point may have given him extra cause for

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alarm, viewed the Japanese actions as an anti-British assault, stating to Grey that ‘there can be no doubt that Japan is challenging our position in the Yang-tze valley, and now is the time to show her and other Powers that we are determined to defend it’.4 The Japanese Foreign Ministry thought British motives equally untrustworthy. Many influential personalities in Japan, most notably Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, believed that the terms of the Alliance were actually intended to strengthen British supremacy in Asia by affixing limitations to Japanese ambitions. To circumvent this, he argued that ‘the key to the peace of the Far East must be an alliance between our nation and a politically reconstructed China’ under Yuan Shi-Kai, Sun Yat Sen’s once ally, now rival, whose influence over China’s government had been consolidated in 1913.5 Taking note of these opinions, in 1912 and 1913 the Japanese Foreign Ministry published several memoranda on their ‘China policy’, claiming that Japan should pursue its objectives in accordance with the alliance, but also with reference to Yamagata and the military. Japanese diplomat Kato Takaaki, during talks with Grey in 1913, even suggested there was potential for interpreting the alliance as a deterrent against other powers intervening in China, it being reserved for joint Anglo– Japanese development.6 But when Kato became Foreign Minister in the same year, the anti-alliance Japanese newspaper Kokumin Shimbun urged him to ‘take a resolute line of [his] own, [otherwise] Japan would be left empty-handed when the moment of opportunity passed’.7 Japan thus emerged in 1913 with an attitude towards Britain as suspicious as Britain’s towards Japan. The cooperative imperial project had started on the wrong foot. The outbreak of the war in Europe opened a new avenue of expansion for Britain in East Asia and the Pacific. The German possessions in the region, notably the naval base at Tsingdao, could interdict allied trade and communications, and they therefore became legitimate targets. Britain’s declaration of war also brought Australia and New Zealand into the conflict. Sensing a valuable opportunity, all three began operations to capture German outposts in the Pacific. But by the end of the turbulent August of 1914, Japan too declared

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war on Germany, purportedly to assist Britain in expelling German forces from the Asian mainland, and in the conquest of the Pacific islands.8 Based on the troubled first years of the cooperative imperial project, Grey realised that the likely course of future events tended towards dangerous new imperial frictions. He issued statements discouraging unfounded Anglo-Australian misapprehension over Japan’s entry into the war, and attempted to persuade the Japanese to accept geographical limits to their operations. But Foreign Minister Kato refused Grey’s advances; besides, he explained, Japan had already dispatched demands for the cession of the German Shantung. The scramble for China and the Pacific had begun. The Japanese government acted quickly and resolutely. Learning of Chinese intentions to join the war and then to seize Kiaochow, the Japanese government informed Yuan that ‘Japan had already sent an ultimatum to Germany and therefore it was not necessary that China should come in’.9 Yuan backed down, and grudgingly declared Shantung a war zone. For Japan, wresting control of the region from Germany was only the first step in a wider imperial game. As for general strategy over the next years, Yamagata saw a unique opportunity: he surmised that the European war preoccupied traditional imperial powers, specifically Britain, to an extent sufficient to open Yuan to the idea of further collaboration with Japan. He thus argued that the German possessions in the Shantung, when captured, should be restored to China, and further efforts should be made to assuage Yuan’s anxiety over Japanese activity. Such a posture might be enough, Yamagata hoped, to begin brokering a new, unilateral arrangement for Japanese imperial enterprise.10 Thus the British government found itself in an increasingly awkward situation. Grey issued public reassurances about Japan’s helpful intentions, coupled with a Times article in support of the ‘chivalrous and honourable people upholding the principles of civilization in the Far East’. But sensing the growing contradiction between the terms of the Alliance and of cooperative imperialism on the one hand, and the Japanese pursuit of a new arrangement for Chinese protection, on the other, Grey privately admitted that ‘it cannot be expected that Japan will spend blood and treasure in

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Kiao-Chou [in Shantung] and get nothing for it’.11 By the beginning of 1915, fully aware that nothing could be done, Britain relaxed its pressure, and agreed that ‘all these territorial questions must be settled in the terms of peace and not before’.12 Alston’s prognosis was far gloomier, expressing ‘an uneasy notion that the Japanese are busily swarming and settling over the country as a preparation for an ultimate coup’.13 From the beginning of the Kiaochow campaign in September of 1914 to its successful conclusion in November, Japan constantly tested Britain’s resolve to maintain the status quo in the Far East. In October, in the middle of the fighting in China, Japanese forces invaded the German Marshall and Caroline Islands. This caused a deafening public outcry from Australia, whose forces were still engaged in German New Guinea and other German Pacific islands to the south. The Foreign Office could offer no serious resistance, and bid for time from both parties in settling the details. In addition, the increased Japanese military presence amplified Jordan’s intense suspicion of the Japanese garrison in Hankow, sitting as it did on the terminus of the line to Peking, commanding a key junction in the inner Yangtze. The manoeuvring, to Jordan, left ‘room for speculation as to the part which our Ally is destined to play in shaping the future of the Yangtse Valley’.14 Most important of all, Japanese forces seized the opportunity to also occupy the entire Tsingdao-Tsinanfu railway, which connected to both the Peking and Nanking lines. It far exceeded the declared war zone, which Yuan retracted in January 1915. Making his position clear, he then demanded that the Japanese forces return to Kiaochow at once. This nearly set the powder keg of the Far East alight. Sensing the weakness of the British position, and the paralysis of Yuan’s government without British support, Kato declared that the ‘psychological moment’ was at hand. On 18 January 1915, the project for a bilateral ‘understanding’ between Japan and China, replacing the 1911 Anglo– Japanese Alliance, began with an exhortation to Yuan:

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You have the reputation in Japan of being the arch enemy of my country. By granting these requests embodied in this memorandum you will not only clear yourself of that reputation but gain the lasting friendship of Japan.15 The note which followed encompassed the blueprint for Japanese imperial expansion in China, and as such was to be viewed as a secret agreement, exclusive to the two countries. This primordial version of the infamous Twenty-One Demands communicated three distinct goals: arriving at a settlement for the lands in Japanese possession, including Port Arthur, Dairen and the whole of the Shantung; the reservation of the Manchurian Sphere and its elevation to a quasi-state under Japanese sovereignty; and most importantly, virtually taking over all British controlling interests in China. Negotiations started immediately, for Kato knew he was racing against the clock: the demands would not remain secret for long. In the middle of February 1915, a full version of the Japanese demands finally reached the Foreign Office. Grey implored Kato not to advance ‘any demands which could reasonably be considered to impair the integrity or independence of China’, invoking, as far as he dared, the spirit of the alliance.16 The Foreign Office passed advice to Yuan, urging him to accept any Japanese terms in a final desperate move to prevent a Sino-Japanese war. With the dispute over the Shantung war zone still festering and negotiations faltering, by May Japanese diplomats felt that time had run out. Although the original list of demands had been diluted, removing the clauses that applied to the British Yangtze, Kato dispatched an ultimatum, and alerted Japanese forces in Hankow, Shantung and Manchuria – some 50,000 men.17 Japanese troops simultaneously occupied a position to block all rail traffic to north China from the Yangtze. When asked, a senior Japanese minister observed to Jordan that Japan did seem quite ‘prepared to occupy Peking within two weeks’.18 Britain had few options: even if resources to intervene had been available, it would have meant antagonising a valuable ally at a crucial point in the war, or worse, armed conflict with Japan. Completely outmanoeuvred,

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Britain decided to ‘bide [its] time till the war is over and trust to being then able to repair the damage’.19 Fighting blindness and overwork, together with grief over his son’s death on the Western Front, Grey resigned in mid-1916.

The beginning of readjustment The diplomatic conflict between Britain and Japan widened to encompass the entire Pacific during the crisis in China. It was in these remote Pacific archipelagos, rather than in China, that the last vestiges of imperial cooperation under the auspices of the 1911 alliance were swept away. The boisterous and diligent call to expansion by a newly empowered Australia, upon observing the Japanese efforts in China and the North Pacific, swiftly evolved into fiercely anti-Japanese sentiment. Australian demands first to prevent, then to expel the Japanese landings in the German Pacific Islands placed the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, in a delicate position, forcing him to choose between supporting Britain’s Australian dominion in the wake of Gallipoli, or the Japanese alliance, perhaps the only thing keeping the peace in China. There seemed no other option ‘in the present condition of British political and financial helplessness’.20 The dilemma touched off a fierce outcry from Australian expansionists, one which would reach its ultimate expression at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. ‘[Australians] have long since realized that we have a Pacific Ocean destiny, and for some years past we have been striving to attain Imperial recognition of our right to enforce a definite Pacific Ocean Policy,’ claimed the Melbourne Age on 12 August 1914. ‘By virtue of the European war an unexpected path has been opened to the furtherance of our ambition . . . [to lay] the foundations of a solid Australian sub-empire in the Pacific Ocean.’21 Many Australians shared this attitude at the beginning of the Great War. Although the terms of the 1911 Anglo– Japanese Alliance stipulated an ‘opendoor’ policy in the Pacific islands, Australia did not honour the clause, traditionally resisting any Japanese expansion farther southwards. But in 1914 –18 Japanese influence steadily increased

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in the Pacific, as Britain withdrew more and more forces to European battlefields. Many Australians feared that Japan might press for the universal enforcement of the 1911 terms. Balfour’s decision to support officially Japanese claims in the German islands north of the Equator checked this nascent Australian expansionism, ‘it being understood,’ he pointed out, ‘that the Japanese Government will, in the eventual peace settlement, treat in the same spirit Great Britain’s claims to the German islands south of the Equator’.22 What some in Australia considered irresponsible British concession-granting in the Pacific stirred barely dormant anti-Japanese sentiments. Some perceived Balfour’s acceding to Japanese expansion as an outright betrayal. Some day the Australian public opinion will compel British statesmen to explain why they gave the Caroline and Marshall Islands to Japan, and shaped their diplomacy in such a way that Australia emerges from the war not only financially but strategically worse off than when she entered it.23 American President Woodrow Wilson added his voice to the growing disapproval of territorial distribution. Like the proponents of Australian expansion, supporters of Wilsonian internationalism viciously attacked both British and Japanese actions in China, expressing their determination to prevent such rampant territorygrabbing. Balfour and Kato, willing but perhaps unable to sweep Hughes’s protests under the rug, could not ignore American objections. By 1918, Britain was especially concerned to repair the haemorrhaging of British funds across the Atlantic, brought on by the war. Japan’s worry was more strategic than financial: since 1909 the United States had been considered the ‘probable enemy’ in wars to come. Britain, Japan and Australia reacted in different ways to American diplomatic involvement, largely because of its character. To counteract Chinese dependence on Japan, the United States urged the resurrection of the international bank consortium, which had previously collapsed in 1913 because of American withdrawal.

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Ostensibly, through widening the formal scope of cooperative imperialism to include the United States as well as France, Belgium and other nations, it would allow for Chinese repossession of its rail infrastructure, severely impaired by the Twenty-One Demands. In reality, the consortium would be a railway protectorate in which the United States held a controlling share.24 Britain agreed to the consortium, believing that it would provide a substitute restraint on Japanese expansion, reducing losses until an eventual peace settlement. Eventually Japan outmanoeuvred these efforts through negotiation, allowing the consortium to form but limiting its oversight of Japanese interests.25 Out of this experience, the new Japanese government developed a fear that an Anglo-American combination might supersede the inert Anglo– Japanese understanding of the past two decades.26 In Hughes’s estimation, the most public and ultimately the most potent challenge to Australia’s imperial designs in the Pacific was American President Woodrow Wilson himself, and his proposal for a League of Nations. Wilson disapproved of territorial compensation. This was explicit in the content of the Fourteen Points, one of which directly prohibited annexation. Wilson further advocated the concept of economic and trade equality for all nations, which the Japanese delegation argued was impossible without a complementary recognition of racial equality. Wilson agreed, and wrote the principle of racial equality into the Covenant of the League of Nations.27 Both of these tenets Hughes viewed as completely incompatible with the Commonwealth of Australia’s continued prosperity, let alone its existence, and he shared this opinion on many occasions. A discussion on the principle applied to New Guinea brought out his deepest fears: It is only 80 miles from our northern shore, and . . . those who hold it hold us . . . no 5,000,000 people can possibly hold this continent when, 80 miles off, there is a potential enemy. Well stretched out from New Guinea there are New Ireland and New Britain. There are literally hundreds of other islands stretching

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out and out, every one of them a point of vantage from which Australia could be attacked.28 Hughes, Balfour, Wilson and Kato all realised that they must inevitably challenge each other, and each prepared for the coming clash. It was in post-war Paris that the readjustment of empires in Asia and the Pacific after the scramble would begin in earnest, and a new form of imperialism, with both European and non-European participants, would arise. In this way, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 can be likened to the Berlin Conference of the 1880s, which divided up imperial claims in Africa during the late Victorian era. At Paris the question of Japan’s territorial claims in the Pacific and in Shantung became one of the most obdurate problems. Britain had pledged to support Japan’s acquisitions, if not its ambitions, but given the joint Anglo-American attacks on the Sino-Japanese Treaties, and a New York Times article comparing the Twenty-One Demands to the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, Japanese confidence in wartime pledges wavered.29 At the very start of the conference, the Japanese delegates led by Kato tested the water, bringing up the fifth of Wilson’s Fourteen Points; this embodied the idea that no power should gain territory as a result of the late war. Instead, the League of Nations would issue a Mandate over former enemy territories, acting as a kind of international control. French President Georges Clemenceau at once objected, supported morally by Hughes as far as the South Pacific was concerned. Britain similarly protested: the premise conflicted with the many British commitments made during the fighting, not least the 1917 Pacific Islands agreement made with Japan and Australia. It was a noble ideal, but the several imperial interests represented at the conference prevailed in defusing it. General Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa, who also had an interest in the case for annexation in ex-German Southwest Africa, pointed to what he believed was a fundamental flaw in Wilson’s suggestion.30 ‘The German colonies in the Pacific and Africa are inhabited by barbarians, who not only cannot possibly govern themselves, but to whom it would be impractical to apply any idea of political self-determination.’31 Smuts’s idea, that a League of Nations

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Mandate over former German colonies in the Pacific and in Africa should be structured differently from those over other territories, found its way into the final draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations: under Paragraph 6 of Article 22, the alternative form of mandate, a ‘C’ mandate, was spelled out. There are territories, such as Southwest Africa and certain of the South Pacific islands, which, owing to their size, of their remoteness from the centers of civilization, or their geographical continuity to the territory of the Mandatory, and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population.32 Despite the high-minded language, implicit in the spirit of the law was a recognition that a class C Mandate and an annexation were nearly identical. For Hughes, it was not a total victory. He had to concede defeat in his fight to prevent the Japanese from receiving similar control over the North Pacific Marshall and Caroline Islands. ‘I never said I would strenuously oppose Japanese annexation of Marshall or Caroline Islands, but if I thought I could stop them from getting them certainly I would do so’, he declared, attempting to save face.33 It was a significant step forward in the creation of the Australian Pacific, for a C Mandate would allow Australia to extend exclusionary policies inherent in its imperial project to the equator, creating a territorial border with the Japanese Mandated Islands. How to keep these new borders from being permeated presented another question altogether, one which brought Hughes’ realism into direct conflict with Wilson’s idealism. The two wrangled constantly in meetings. Wilson tried to circumvent Hughes’s stubborn resistance to the insertion of racial-equality clauses in the Mandates, but Hughes thwarted him. At the end of one particularly exasperating session, Wilson leaned over the table and asked, ‘Mr. Hughes, am I to understand that if the whole civilized world asked Australia to agree to a mandate in respect of these islands, Australia is

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prepared to defy the appeal to the whole civilized world?’ Hughes replied, ‘after some stage of business with his hearing aid, “that’s about the size of it, Mr. President”’.34 Hughes very neatly defeated Wilson in the showdown by threatening to make inflammatory speeches in the western United States, whose constituents were deeply distrustful of Japanese immigration. After all, 1920 was an election year and the President was especially sensitive to the sentiments of American public opinion. The threat led Wilson to remember Hughes as a ‘pestiferous varmint’.35 As a result of Wilson’s very real political concern and Hughes’ constant pressure, the vote – 11 to six in favour of inserting a racial-equality clause – was struck down by Wilson himself. Any decision of the kind should be unanimous, he argued. A different kind of contest occurred over questions about the Asian mainland. Kato ultimately agreed to re-establish previous rights – other than ex-German rights – in the Shantung, even though Japanese troops still occupied the region and controlled the vital railways leading to Peking, and could begin negotiations at the leisure of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Still, the British Foreign Office painted the East Asia sessions as enormous successes, given the intractability of the problems before them. ‘By the efforts of Japan and her Allies’, wrote Balfour emphatically, ‘China, without the expenditure of a single shilling or the loss of a single life, had restored to it rights which it could never have recovered for itself.’36 But Jordan, still in Peking, felt otherwise. ‘It is impossible to overlook the fact that the situation in China carries the seeds of future conflict, and that a re-adjustment of policy is essential if we are to avoid such a harvest of international rivalries.’37 While territorial matters may have been artificially resolved, Japan’s control of Chinese railways almost completely circumvented the restoration of Chinese territory. Charles Selden, a correspondent for The New York Times, shared Jordan’s bleak outlook and articulated his disappointment at the conference’s diplomacy: Each nation in making its special application of Wilson’s fourteen points to its own case, arrives at a conclusion

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diametrically opposed to some other nation applying the same principles in its case. Every little while even the question of making peace at some time with somebody bobs up. But on the fringe of the Conference at least, there seems less agreement on how to make peace than there was 135 days ago when the fighting ceased on the old fronts . . . Some think war stopped too soon.38 The Australian Prime Minister, both as observer and participant, agreed more floridly, comparing the efforts at Versailles to the erection of the Tower of Babel. ‘The plenary sittings of the Conference were palpable shams’, he fumed, and the end result, the League of Nations, was ‘what a toy was to a child – [Wilson] would not be happy until he got it’.39 Immediately after the conference, events deflated even Balfour’s optimism. In July of 1919, the Foreign Office learned of another Japanese forward movement on the railways in the Yangtze zone. Jordan, ever watchful, warned of the probable intention ‘to obtain possession of the railway before the new Consortium materializes’, which if successful would render it off-limits.40 To him, it was the ‘culmination of an effort . . . to challenge the whole position of Great Britain in Asia’.41 A speech by the Vice-Chief of the Japanese General Staff in early 1920, claiming that Japan’s right to exclusive settlement there was ‘already an established fact’, strengthened Jordan’s case.42 The first attempt to contain the scramble for Asia and the Pacific had failed, and with the United States opting out of the fledgling League of Nations, all powers recognised the desperate need for a new arrangement. Adding to the urgency, the Anglo– Japanese Alliance was set to expire in 1921. As a preparatory measure, the British government under Prime Minister David Lloyd George called together the representatives of the dominions at the Imperial Conference of 1921. Hughes, who attended the conference, sought to compel the British government to give Australia a review of the British position on the Alliance, as he recognised that the fate of Australia’s Mandate empire depended on reviving the failed cooperative imperial project. The Foreign Office,

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now in the hands of Lord George Curzon, had also been busy preparing for the conference. Intricate legal considerations made this process difficult, however. At one point in May of 1920, Sir Charles Eliot, British ambassador to Tokyo expressed to Curzon concern that he had inadvertently signalled the British intention to renew the alliance during general discussions as to the ‘state of public and official feeling in Japan’ about it.43 The Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs ‘seemed to assume that I had proposed a renewal of alliance, for he said that he had submitted the whole question to Cabinet and that the “Japanese Government are in favour of its renewal”.’44 Equally troubling was the fact that the alliance was set to expire in July, in the middle of the Imperial Conference. Curzon, through Eliot, requested and received an extension of three months from the Japanese.45 The British would have to work fast. Immediately before the Conference, the members of the British Committee for Imperial Defence published a report spelling out their position in rather clear language. Although they stressed that ‘nothing . . . should be taken to prejudice the political and international complications due to naval rivalries and racial antagonism’, the first conclusion of their study generally supported the case for renewal.46 The committee stated that, ‘from a strategic point of view, the principle advantage to be derived from the renewal of the Anglo– Japanese Alliance is that such renewal will render the possibility of a war with Japan in our present unprepared condition more remote’.47 Lloyd George’s opening remarks made clear that he also supported the alliance.48 Plainly, the general attitude of the British members of the conference tended from the outset towards renewal. Lord Curzon presided over the first meeting, which was dedicated to discussing the future of the Anglo– Japanese Alliance. Although he claimed to attempt an even-handed summary of benefits and detriments of both denunciation and renewal, he too carried the banner of continuation forcefully forward. While Curzon mentioned that both the United States and China had raised valid objections to the alliance’s renewal, he managed to paint American negative opinion as ‘misunderstandings’ of the finer terms of the agreement,

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and that of the Chinese as the natural reaction of a ‘great helpless, hopeless, and inert mass . . . utterly deficient in cohesion or strength’ to the ‘orderly and disciplined’ Japanese advances.49 Numerous protests from British residents of China were not so easily brushed aside. One petition, from the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, even threatened a boycott, a position that the Asiatic Petroleum Company also took much later in September. The British Ambassador in China, Sir Bielby Alston, continued to receive telegrams during the conference ‘from various parts of the country requesting me to notify His Majesty’s Government, both Houses of Parliament, &c., of their opposition to a renewal of Alliance’.50 But in Curzon’s estimation, which was final, the cost of not restoring the relationship was simply too enormous, and he forcefully presented this case to the conference. His statement, quoting another report from Eliot, brought frightening news of ‘the German Ambassador there . . . already at work trying to lay the foundations of a German – Japanese combination in the future’.51 No doubt Curzon startled Hughes in particular, but in this case his arguments were not necessary, for Hughes had also already made up his mind in favour of renewal. The Australian position on the Anglo– Japanese alliance was a reluctantly practical one. To Hughes and to Australia, the maintenance of official Japanese friendship seemed to be the strongest guarantee against dreaded Japanese expansion southward, or outright invasion. He reminded his colleagues that since 1917 Japan had been ‘the strongest naval power in the Pacific. In the face of these facts is it to be wondered at, that Australia views with apprehension the possibility of the Japanese Treaty being denounced?’52 He demanded that his fellow prime ministers ‘look at the map and ask yourselves what would have happened to that great splash of red right down from India through Australia down to New Zealand, but for the Anglo– Japanese Treaty’.53 Though glad that Australia was in favour, Lloyd George grew concerned that Hughes was neglecting the American piece of the puzzle. He felt that it was not only unavoidable but desirable for Britain to work in cooperation with the United States to achieve

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British imperial goals. Setting it out as policy, he declared firmly that ‘it is inconceivable that we should embark upon any policy that would involve a breach with the United States of America. That, I think, is accepted as an axiom by all those who sit around this table.’54 Hughes conceded the point, albeit reluctantly.55 With the grand vision of an exclusively Anglo-centric world dispelled, Lloyd George set out to make the case for what seemed to him the least common denominator – to leave the matter of the Anglo– Japanese Alliance to a conference of Pacific Powers, whose goal it would be to re-draft the agreement in terms that would offend neither the various national sensitivities nor those of the League of Nations. While it shifted the focus of the conflict away from inter-imperial disputes, Jan Smuts contended that it pitted Japan and the United States against one another. ‘Our interest is to get America in. Japan’s interest is to keep America out’, he observed.56 Hughes agreed: I cannot conceive that Japan will be content to allow the question of the renewal of the Treaty to remain in suspense. If we say: ‘We are not going to renew this Treaty’ or ‘We are going to refer the matter to your rival, to your enemy’, does this not look as though we were not satisfied with them?57 All had had enough of inconclusive conferences, no doubt. Hughes, ever eloquent, compared the debates about this Pacific Conference to so much ‘buzzing like an angry beetle impaled upon a pin’.58 The Americans’ failure to reply on the proposed Pacific Conference until later, and then their reluctance to agree on holding it in London, greatly aggravated Lloyd George and the rest of the conference. As Curzon suggested, the American Ambassador, Harvey, was largely to blame. Earlier so confident that America had finally come around, Lloyd George took time from one of the sessions to vent his frustrations about Harvey’s handling of the situation: It is quite clear he was acting without instructions – at least he was acting without knowledge . . . Whether the President of the United States of America and his advisers there are running this

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purely as a political stunt in America – well, I am afraid it bears a good deal of the characteristics of American diplomacy and that it has too little regard for the susceptibilities of other nations. They have their own politics, but they forget other nations also have their own politics and they say: ‘We want this thing in Washington, on the Pacific, Disarmament, everything, because that is necessary to the political well-being of the administration.’ It is a very short-sighted policy, even from that point of view because, I think, it is doomed to failure.59 Further, it looked as if the dominions would not have their opinions heard in either of these conferences, supposing the latter did indeed happen. Hughes protested at this. This Pacific question is a matter of vital importance to the Empire. It is especially so to New Zealand and Australia. We have a right to be heard. Our interests are at least as large as those of America.60 In Balfour’s estimation, the American demand that dominions be represented by their respective prime ministers was a radical condition, and perhaps an intentional slight. Japan and China, after all, were not sending their prime ministers, but more specialised members of their government. Mindful of this fact, and of a cryptic message from the American Secretary of State ‘hoping that no agreement would be reached between Japan and Great Britain behind the back of the United States’, the imperial ministers concluded that the Pacific Conference along American lines was defunct from the outset, and decided to abandon it altogether.61 Only the proposed Washington Disarmament Conference would take place, and it held a place at the table for Great Britain alone – none of the dominions merited an invitation. Hughes grew more distraught while speaking in general terms about the likely course of the discussions there. Initially, the participation of the Japanese seemed suspect. Lord Curzon, in sharing a draft of the letter of acceptance to the United States, made it explicit that both Britain

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and Japan would have to be brought in to discuss affairs in the Far East and Pacific along American lines. Three of the four such matters were to concern China – contentious issues for Japan, given that the United States had been irreconcilably opposed to nearly all Japan’s aims in China.62 Much to the chagrin of the Pacific dominions, the Foreign Secretary further predicted that the question of the Pacific Mandates would no doubt come up, a development Hughes dreaded: You know we had a fight over that [the open door] in respect to the mandates, to the ‘C’ class mandates. Japan is insisting, is breaking the law, is endeavouring to get what we say she shall not get, the right to set up her trading stations and get the trade from our mandates territory. May it not be that she will say – ‘if you want the open door in China you must give me the open door in the Pacific. I see no escape from that . . . I want to say most emphatically that there is the Treaty, they are the conditions, and on those we stand.63 He saw where a discussion combining both the open door in China – a stated British and United States interest – and the Pacific mandates would inevitably lead. But, unlike in 1919, he would only be able to watch as the three Great Powers went about their business of settling Asian and Pacific affairs. The British Empire delegation led by Balfour included nearly 100 high-level members of the government.64 Among the many goals of the Washington Conference was a resolution of the Anglo – Japanese Alliance, and the achievement of a satisfactory agreement on a scheme for disarmament. In order even to begin discussion on either of these items, the conference would first have to navigate through the complex and unsettled diplomacy of East Asia and the Pacific. As the previous Paris Peace Conference had illustrated, this presented a mammoth challenge to the international community, and one which seemingly overshadowed the European trauma of the previous four years.

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Forging a new imperial structure The Washington Conference heralded the true beginning of post-war diplomacy and strategy regarding China specifically, and the world of empires generally. Primarily addressing the naval arms race in the Pacific, the result of each Pacific power pursuing contingency plans in the face of mounting imperial tensions, the outcome of the disarmament sessions depended on the final settling of all ‘Far Eastern Questions’.65 The first item, restoring Shantung to China, required, in the British estimation, a reversal of the Japanese position.66 But it was no longer simply an Anglo– Japanese dispute. Representatives of France, Italy, the United States and China joined Britain and Japan in deciding the future of Japanese-occupied Shantung, and in developing novel legal and philosophical parameters for the new cooperative imperialism in East Asia. For the head of the Foreign Office’s Far Eastern Department, Sir Victor Wellesley, these discussions resembled ‘a trial of Japan before a court of the nations’, much like the one endured by Germany at Paris.67 Through hard negotiation, culminating in the British offer to cede their Shantung possession of Wei-hai-Wei, the Japanese delegation finally agreed to discuss a plan for restoration. The Japanese agreed to withdraw so long as they received adequate compensation, concerned mostly with the rail concessions and mining rights that had been acquired in 1915 and 1916. Talks with the Chinese delegation yielded an agreement whereby China would buy back from Japan the ex-German line to Tsing-Dao, and would form a joint-owned company holding the ex-German mining rights.68 Restoring the international system in China as a whole presented a completely different challenge. Balfour, still the optimist, came prepared to discuss a draft tripartite agreement that would, in his mind, outmanoeuvre the various factions involved in the dispute: The object of the scheme is (a) To enable the Americans to be parties to a tripartite arrangement without committing themselves to military operations.

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(b) To bring the existing Anglo– Japanese Alliance to an end without hurting the feelings of our Ally. (c) To leave it open to us to renew a defensive alliance with Japan if she should again be threatened by Germany or Russia. (d) To frame a treaty which will reassure our Australasian Dominions. (e) To make it impossible for American critics to suggest that our Treaty with Japan would require us to stand aside in the case of a quarrel between them and Japan, whatever the cause of that quarrel might be.69 On 13 December the conference met to discuss the draft of what was initially understood to be an alliance superseding the Anglo– Japanese Alliance of 1911.70 The agreement was to be between Britain – which also represented Australia – the United States, Japan and France: With a view to the preservation of the general peace and maintenance of their rights with respect to their insular possessions and dominions in the Pacific Ocean, the signatory powers agree as follows. (i) They engage between themselves to respect the said rights and if there should develop between any two of the high contracting parties a controversy on any matter in the above mentioned region which is likely to affect the relations of harmonious accord now happily subsisting between them, they shall invite the other high contracting parties to a special conference to which the whole subject will be referred for consideration and adjustment. (ii) If the said rights are threatened by the aggressive action of any other power, the high contracting parties shall communicate with one another fully and frankly in order to arrive at an understanding as to the most efficient measure to be taken, jointly or separately, to meet the exigencies of the particular situation.

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(iii) This agreement shall remain in force for ten years from the time it shall take effect and after the expiration of the said period it shall continue to be in force, subject to the right of any of the high contracting parties to terminate it upon one year’s notice. This agreement shall be ratified as soon as possible, in accordance with the constitutional methods of the high contracting parties and shall take effect on the exchange of ratification which shall take place at Washington and thereupon the agreement between Great Britain and Japan, which was concluded at London on July 13th 1911, shall terminate. This ‘Four Power Treaty’ did not represent an alliance in the sense of the earlier Anglo– Japanese agreements. Instead, it existed as something much closer to the language of the 1884 Berlin Conference resolutions, whereby the international community, or at least the signatories, could uphold spheres of influence and appeal to diplomatic arbitration on conflicting claims.71 In practice, the Four Power Treaty became a vaguely binding agreement to maintain close diplomatic relations necessary for the furtherance of the 1911 concept of cooperative empire, now including the United States, France and, by British proxy, Australia. The termination of the Anglo– Japanese Alliance and the signing of the Four Power Treaty marked the end of an era in imperial diplomacy. The significance of this escaped none of the interested parties, a fact powerfully displayed through the uncharacteristically candid displays of emotion surrounding these moments. The Melbourne Argus rejoiced, if sarcastically: ‘The fact that a formal agreement has been made by the United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan about anything earthly is a factor of the first moment in the consolidation of world supremacy.’72 Exuberance in Australia accompanied sombre relief in British diplomatic circles. ‘As the last sentence sounded and the Anglo– Japanese Alliance publicly perished’, one observer recorded:

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[Balfour’s] head fell forward on his chest exactly as if the spinal chord had been severed. It was an amazing revelation of what the Japanese Treaty had meant to the men in a vanished age . . . The head of stereotyped diplomacy had fallen forward – the vital chord severed – and new figures hereafter would monopolize the scene.73 At another moment, a Japanese observer allegedly lamented to a fellow British diplomat: ‘At any rate, you gave the alliance a splendid funeral.’74 The news drove some in Japan to more violent emotions. Protests came in the form of death threats to the new Prime Minister of Japan, Viscount Takahashi, whose predecessor, Hara Kei, had indeed been assassinated.75 On 6 February 1922 the Washington Conference came to an end with the signing of the Treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armament. During its opening weeks, and especially its opening days, all public attention had been focused on the conference to end all conferences. As the final sessions came to a close, and drafters worked feverishly to draw up official copies of the several great treaties, commentary on the conference in the American press took a negative turn. After three years of conferences, such portrayal played on frayed nerves. The British Ambassador to the United States Sir Auckland Geddes penned a particularly scathing denunciation, a sentiment no doubt shared by many of his colleagues: In recent days there have been occasions when important newspapers such as the ‘New York Times’ have appeared without any reference to the Washington Conference on their first page – a sure guide to the trend of public interest in this country . . . America has been so accustomed to get immediately what she wants that, like a spoilt child, she pouts because the rapid, complete, world-arresting, epochmaking success of which she dreamed and thought to be within her grasp has somehow escaped her. She has begun to realise that, even at Washington, a Conference confers and that the foreign delegations, far from accepting orders from

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[United States Secretary of State] Mr. Hughes, argue and debate with quite surprising skill and even convince the American delegates themselves that improvements in plans proposed are possible. Only a few weeks ago the more ignorant American newspaper men were writing as if every American proposal were inspired, not only in substance, but in the very wording. Now the bloom is gone, the first rapture is over.76 Although East Asia and the Pacific mostly reverted to the territorial status quo ante-bellum, with the obvious exception of the League of Nations Mandates, there were several lasting effects of the collapse of Anglo– Japanese imperial agreements on future British, Japanese, Australian and American conduct in China. What the new system swept away also merits attention. The days of Anglo– Japanese ‘special interests’ were over. Because of Japan’s efforts to reduce Britain’s stake, the United States now came in as a controlling power as it could not have done in 1911. And with the termination of the Anglo– Japanese Alliance in Washington, the drift apart accelerated into the endemic mutual distrust of the 1930s. Both Britain and Japan knew that after the Washington Conference they stood at a parting of ways in their policies towards East Asia. The alternative left to Japan was to return to its pre-1911 strategy of ‘peaceful penetration’, coupled with the embryonic Yamagata plan of ‘coexistence and co-prosperity’, both of which were still very much alive. Imperial rivalries between Japan and Australia in the Pacific Islands seemed just as strong in the months following the conference. Disputes that would later lead to Japan’s war with China, Australia, Britain and the United States opened within days of the close of the Washington Conference. In the spring of 1922, the British Admiralty shared with the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office the report of HMS Veronica, a ship of the New Zealand Squadron returning from a special reconnaissance mission. She had been ordered to sail through the Gilbert and Ellice, Marshall and Caroline Islands, reporting on ‘Japanese activities’ there. The mission sought once and for all to verify the several reports from the

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Australian government claiming that Japan was boycotting Australian trade. Although Alan Hotham, Commodore of the New Zealand Squadron, remarked that ‘this can hardly be wondered at in view of Australia’s attitude towards Japan’, Veronica’s observations painted a less than comforting picture. While steaming through the Japanese-mandated islands, she confirmed the augmented presence of seaplanes and minelayers, consistent with the construction of fortifications. On Truk, one of the larger islands in the eastern area of the Mandates, and one capable of harbouring a major fleet, Veronica recorded more suspicious signs. Truk is closed as a port of call and Captain Hadley [a local British administrator] believes they are fortifying the place. All civilians who land are placed under close surveillance and their movements strictly circumscribed. They are escorted from the quay to their offices or Government Office and back and are allowed no further movement.77 The report was enough to convince Veronica’s captain of the ‘ulterior motives’ of the Japanese. It led to an alarming concluding opinion from Commodore Hotham: Even if the Washington Conference succeeds in all it sets out to accomplish, there will still be a commercial war in the Pacific Islands . . . There is no suitable method of Government supervision of these groups of islands, other than that afforded by a man-of-war.78

Conclusion The Anglo–Japanese experiment in cooperative imperialism between 1911 and 1922 merits special attention as a case study in the historiography of empire and of World War I. In attempting to erect an international quasi-legal framework for formal and informal expansion throughout these ten years, British and Japanese foreign

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ministers demonstrated an implicit knowledge of the mechanics of imperial scrambles and the ignition of rivalries into all-out conflict. The shadow of the Victorian imperial experience stretched into this era of high politics, perhaps explaining some of the universal cynicism of the British diplomatic corps, and certainly instructing the central method of expansion – ‘international’ imperial structures, either an immense banking consortium, a paper treaty, or a supranational system of mandates. In the end, the project failed. The regulations and understandings on which Anglo– Japanese imperial cooperation in 1911, and later the Four Power imperial cooperation in 1922, depended proved inadequate to satisfy the signatory members when it was most needed – during and after the global harvest of rivalries that was World War I. Mindful as imperial powers in Asia and the Pacific proved to be in seeking a legal structure for cooperative exploitation of the region, these powers ultimately did not possess the necessary foresight to avoid catastrophe. The fatal flaw in the terms of the 1911 Anglo– Japanese Alliance arose from misunderstanding East Asian and Pacific economic and political history, and imperialism’s own role in upsetting structures, infrastructures and institutions upon which the existence of a Chinese state relied. A stable China being the stated primary objective of the 1911 alliance, cooperative imperialism indeed worked against its own goal, albeit unknowingly. Compounding the error, Britain, the United States and Japan all strongly believed in the vast economic potential of the East Asian interior, and the lure of the mythical ‘China market’ drew in enormous amounts of capital.79 Even that strident critic of empire, John Hobson, had a Pauline conversion when considering the potential benefits of a cooperative imperialism in East Asia. In the Pacific, Australian and Japanese rhetoric supporting their own Pacific Empire destinies were somewhat grounded in notions of the Pacific islands being rich in resources and trade, despite the decades of experience that proved just the opposite. But none of these promised rewards materialised during this era and beyond, and certainly not through the cooperative imperial projects of 1911 or of 1922, leading China towards political fragmentation, the Pacific

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Mandates to 20 years of notorious neglect by their guardians, and the signatory powers into another world war.

Notes 1 Nish 1972, 66. 2 Beasley 1991, 133. 3 FO 405/212, Alston to Grey, dispatch, 15 August 1913, quoted in Gowen 1971, 80. 4 FO 405/216, dispatch, Jordan to Grey, 19 February 1914, quoted in ibid., 81. 5 Quoted in Hackett 1971, 272; also quoted in Beasely 1991, 104. 6 Quoted in Nish 1972, 89. 7 February 1912, quoted in ibid., 82. 8 Quoted in ibid., 124. 9 Documents on British Foreign Policy (hereafter DBFP) Series I, Vol. VI, 522 (hereafter I, VI, 522, etc.). 10 For an in-depth discussion of the internal politics of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, and the wider Japanese-language documents themselves, see especially Beasley 1991, Ch. 8. 11 FO 371/ 2019, minute, Grey, 19 August 1914, quoted in Louis 1967, 39. 12 Quoted in ibid., 42 – 3. 13 FO 410/64, memorandum by Alston, 1 February 1915, quoted in Gowen 1971, 84. 14 FO 350/13, Jordan to Langley, Jordan MSS, 1 January 1915, quoted in ibid., 80. 15 DBFP I, IV, 588. 16 Quoted in Nish 1972, 154. 17 Ibid., 155. 18 FO 371/2322, Greene to Grey, 10 March 1915, quoted in Gowen 1971, 95. 19 Quoted in Nish 1972, 159. 20 Ibid., 208. 21 Age, 12 Aug 1914, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA). 22 Quoted in CAB 21/235, ‘Cables landed at Yap’, Foreign Office Confidential Print summary quoting original agreement of February 1917, ‘Yap,’ 15 October 1921, National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter TNA). 23 Message from Murdoch, 9 July 1919, quoted by Mr J.H. Catts in House of Representatives. Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates (hereafter CPD) 89, 12 September 1919, col. 12421. 24 DBFP I, IV, 624– 32. 25 Ibid. 26 Quoted in Nish 1972, 266. 27 The First Point reads in full: ‘A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the

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government whose title is to be determined.’ The Third Point helped to lay the foundation of Japan’s racial-equality claims; it reads: ‘The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.’ In the carefully crafted argument of the Japanese delegation, Australian blanket policies of ‘economic exclusion’ or ‘protection’ in New Guinea or any of the islands occupied during the war were in fact masquerades for racially discriminating legislation, intentionally prohibiting Japanese to trade in these islands. Thus racial equality was a necessary precondition for commercial equality. CPD 89, 10 September 1919, col. 12174. New York Times, 26 July 1919. For the definitive biography of Smuts, see Hancock 1962; 1968. Smuts 1918. Article 22, Covenant of the League of Nations. CP 360/8/1/3, Hughes to Watt, 9 February 1919, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), quoted in Thompson 1980. Horne 2000, 163. Manela 2007, 182. DBFP I, IV, 565– 6. Ibid, 566– 7. New York Times, 26 March 1919, 1. Hughes 1929, 104; see also Hudson 1978. Ibid., 648. Ibid., 694. Ibid., 934. Sir C. Eliot (Tokyo) to Earl Curzon, rec’d 25 May 1921, No. 193 Telegraphic (F 938/199/23), DBFP I, XIV, 36. Ibid. Earl Curzon to Sir C. Eliot (Tokyo), 13 May 1921, No. 104 Telegraphic (F 1797/63/23), very confidential, DBFP, I, XIV, 279. A fortnight later, the Japanese followed with another overture to Eliot, along these lines: ‘Japanese Government were anxious to meet the views of His Majesty’s Government as far as possible.’ See Sir C. Eliot (Tokyo) to Earl Curzon, rec’d 1 June 1921, No. 198 Telegraphic (F 2025/63/23), Urgent, Very Confidential, DBFP I, XIV, 291. CAB 5/4, Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) paper 144-C, ‘Strategic situation in the event of the Anglo – Japanese Alliance being determined’, 17 June 1921, TNA. Ibid. CAB 32/2, Stenographic notes of Imperial Meetings, 1st meeting (opening statements), 20 June 1921, TNA. CAB 32/2, Stenographic notes of Imperial Meetings, 8th meeting (Anglo – Japanese Alliance), 28 June 1921, TNA.

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50 Sir B. Alston (Peking) to the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, rec’d 2 July, No. 253 Telegraphic (F 2429/63/23), DBFP I, XIV, 318. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid.; 10th meeting (Anglo – Japanese Alliance), 29 June 1921, TNA; the text relates to the Jellicoe Report, A5954, 1207/9, ‘Naval defence: Report of Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa, on naval mission to the Commonwealth of Australia (May –August 1919) (Vol. 1)’, NAA. 53 CAB 32/2, Stenographic notes of Imperial Meetings, 10th meeting (Anglo – Japanese Alliance), 29 June 1921, TNA. 54 Ibid. 55 The stenographic notes of Lloyd George’s statement are annotated with oneliners by Hughes. For example, when Lloyd George was referring to American friendship towards China, Hughes interjected, ‘How do the Chinese reconcile President Wilson’s attitude towards them in the Shantung?’ 56 CAB 32/2, Imperial Conference 1921, 13th meeting (Anglo–Japanese Alliance), 1 July 1921, TNA. 57 Ibid. 58 Hughes 1929, 124. 59 Ibid., Curzon remarked of Harvey: ‘I cannot be quite sure whether the Ambassador does telegraph fully to Washington what passes between him and me . . . He is willing to make great sacrifices, if that is not too strong a term, for [getting the first conference in London]; but whether he transmits all this to his Government and makes it clear to them how critical the situation is, I do not know.’ Curzon also recounts going to Harvey’s office and asking him whether he telegraphed every single item for dispatch by going through each title one by one. 60 CAB 32/2, Imperial Conference 1921, 25th Meeting (Proposed Pacific Conference), 19 July 1921, TNA. 61 Ibid., 26th Meeting (Pacific and Washington Conferences), 22 July 1921, TNA. 62 Ibid., 26th Meeting (Naval Defence), 19 July 1921, TNA. 63 Ibid. 64 According to Lord Riddell, Balfour and Hankey were ‘certainly the most efficient persons attending the conference’. Riddell 1933 remains one of the most candid, if excessively cynical accounts of the Washington Conference. This particular statement comes on p. 339. For a full list of members of the British Empire delegation, as well as the offices and hotel rooms they occupied, see A981, DIS4, ‘Disarmament. Washington Conference on Limitation of Armaments, British Delegation’s Supplementary Papers 1921’, NAA. 65 CAB 21/218, ‘Washington Conference 1921, International Disarmament,’ 12 November 1921. 66 CAB 21/218, Sir C. Eliot to the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, 21 November 1921. 67 Louis 1971, 5. 68 Quoted in Beasely 1987, 168.

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69 CAB 21/218, ‘Washington Conference on Limitation of Armaments,’ (Copy of a Despatch (No. 1) from Mr. Balfour to the Prime Minister), 11 November 1921, TNA. Also in Foreign Office correspondence, ‘Mr. Balfour (Washington Delegation) to Mr. Lloyd George No. 1’, (F 4466/2905/23), 5 December 1921, DBFP I, XIV, 415. 70 ‘Confe´rence de Washington’, No. 69, M. Rene´ Viviani, De´le´gue´ de la France a` la Confe´rence de Washington a` Briand, 13 De´cembre 1921’, in Ministe`re des Affaires E´trange`res, Documents Diplomatiques Francais. 1920– 1932, Vol. 5, 2005. The terms of this agreement can be found in No. 57. 71 On the end of the Anglo– Japanese Alliance, see Nish 1972 for the best work devoted exclusively to its demise. For its context, consult Louis 1971 for the diplomatic aspects and Braisted 1971 for the naval atmosphere. Further, a nearcomplete collection of published primary source-material in the form of diplomatic correspondence can be found in DBFP I, XIV, ‘Far Eastern Affairs’. 72 The Argus, 13 December 1921, 7, NLA. 73 Weale 1922, 186– 7, quoted in Louis 1971, 107–8. 74 Nish 1982, 383. 75 The letter arrived on 11 December; Melbourne Argus, 15 December 1921, NLA. 76 Sir A. Geddes to the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, No. 37 (A 587/2/45), rec’d 24 January 1922, DBFP I, XIV, 547. 77 ADM 1/8616/220, ‘Proceedings of HMS Veronica, during cruise to Islands in the Western Pacific’: ‘Report on activities of Japanese in Marshall, Caroline, and Gilbert Islands,’ rec’d CO, FO February 1922, TNA. 78 Ibid. 79 See Varg 1968; see also Hobson 1911, which enthusiastically supports cooperative imperialism, or joint development, in China particularly. It should also be noted that the book is effectively a recantation of the argument put forward in his seminal 1902 work, Imperialism.

References Beasely, W.G., Japanese Imperialism 1894– 1945 (Oxford, 1987). Braisted, William R., ‘China, the United States Navy, and the Bethlehem Steel Company, 1909 1929’, Business History Review xlii/1 (1968), pp. 50 – 66. _____ The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1909 –1922 (Annapolis MD, 1971). Chi, Madeline, China Diplomacy 1914– 1918 (Cambridge MA, 1970). Davis, Clarence, Ronald Robinson and Kenneth Wilburn (eds), Railway Imperialism (New York, 1997). Dua, R.P., Anglo – Japanese Relations During the First World War (New Delhi, 1972). Edwards, E.W., ‘Great Britain and the Manchurian railways question, 1909– 1910’, English Historical Review lxxxi/321 (1966), pp. 740– 69. Gowen, Robert, ‘Great Britain and the Twenty-One Demands of 1915: cooperation versus effacement’, Journal of Modern History xliii/1 (1971), pp. 76 –106.

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_____ ‘British legerdemain at the 1911 Imperial Conference: the dominions, defense planning, and the renewal of the Anglo – Japanese Alliance’, Journal of Modern History lii/3 (1980) pp. 385– 413. Hackett, Roger, Yamagata Aritomo in the Rise of Modern Japan, 1838– 1922 (Cambridge MA, 1971). Horne, Donald, Billy Hughes (Melbourne, 2000). Hudson, W.J. (ed.), Australia and Papua New Guinea (Sydney, 1971). _____ Billy Hughes in Paris (Melbourne, 1978). _____ Australia and the League of Nations (Sydney, 1980). Hunt, Michael, Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations, 1895– 1911 (New Haven CT, 1973). Ikei, Masaru, ‘Japan’s response to the Chinese revolution of 1911’, Journal of Asian Studies xxv/2 (1966), pp. 213– 27. Livingston, William S. and Wm. Roger Louis (eds), Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands Since the First World War (Austin TX, 1979). Louis, Wm. Roger, Great Britain and Germany’s Lost Colonies 1914– 1919 (Oxford, 1967). _____ British Strategy in the Far East, 1919– 1939 (Oxford, 1971). Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment, Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, 2007). Nicholson, Harold, Peacemaking 1919 (London, 1933). _____ Curzon: The Last Phase, 1919– 1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (New York, 1934). Nish, Ian, The Anglo – Japanese Naval Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894– 1907 (Oxford, 1966). _____ Alliance in Decline: A Study in Anglo – Japanese Relations 1908– 1923 (London, 1972). _____ ‘An overview of relations between China and Japan, 1895– 1945’, China Quarterly 124: China and Japan: History, Trends and Prospects (1990), pp. 601– 23. _____ Japanese Foreign Policy 1869– 1942: Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka (New York, 2002). Riddell, Lord, Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After, 1918– 1923 (London, 1933). Shimazu, Naoko, Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (London, 1998). Smuts, Jan C., The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (London, 1918). Spartalis, Peter, The Diplomatic Battles of Billy Hughes (Sydney, 1983). Thompson, Roger, Australian Imperialism in the Pacific: The Expansionist Era 1820– 1920 (Melbourne, 1980). Varg, Paul A., ‘The myth of the China market, 1890– 1914’, American Historical Review lxxiii/3 (1968), pp. 742– 58. Weale, Putnam, An Indiscreet Chronicle from the Pacific (New York, 1922). Willard, Myra, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (Melbourne, 1923).

CHAPTER 4 PROPAGANDA AND EMPIRE IN THE HEART OF EUROPE: INDIAN SOLDIERS IN HOSPITAL AND PRISON, 1914—18 Andrew Tait Jarboe

Shortly after the outbreak of the Great War, Bupendranath Basu, President of the Indian National Congress, wrote a pamphlet assuring imperial audiences that despite some of the disappointments and shortcomings of British rule, India was ‘heart and soul’ with Great Britain in the present crisis. The war had swept away all doubt, all hesitation and all question, so that in all of India ‘there was but one feeling – to stand by England in the hour of danger’.1 Events quickly appeared to mould to Basu’s assertion: India contributed £100 million outright to the war effort, and another £20– £30 million each year thereafter.2 Much to the delight of British and French audiences, Indian soldiers belonging to the Lahore and Meerut divisions arrived in Europe in late September and early October 1914. Up to December 1915, nearly 138,000 Indians held the line in France, fighting at the battles of Ypres, Festubert, Givenchy, Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres and Loos, suffering some 34,252 casualties.3 British propaganda, picking up where Basu left off, made a routine business of using these Indian soldiers as further

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proof of India’s loyalty to the Empire. ‘Every class and every race have shown their loyalty and their anxiety to take their share of the burdens and duties of citizens of the Empire’, proclaimed Sir Ernest Trevelyan, in a penny pamphlet.4 Yet for all the evidence suggesting India was ‘heart and soul’ with the Empire, British authorities acknowledged that the loyalty of India – and certainly no less that of the sepoys fighting in France – was never something to be taken for granted. No sooner had Indian soldiers first stepped off the troopships at Marseilles than British authorities apprehended a man trying to deliver seditious pamphlets to the sepoys in France. In October, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers. In Istanbul, the Turkish sultan declared a jihad, imploring Muslims throughout the French, British and Russian empires to fight against their imperial overlords. Later that winter, as the soldiers fighting in Europe attempted to come to grips with the horrendous casualties they were enduring at the front, their letters home became increasingly despondent. ‘It is very hard to endure the bombs’, one Garhwali serving in France wrote to his father in January 1915. ‘It will be difficult for anyone to survive and come back safe and sound from the war.’5 Letters such as this were a concern for the Viceroy of India, who noted in June 1915 that because such accounts of the fighting in France had reached India, enlistment in the Indian Army had dropped considerably. ‘If our Indian forces are to keep the field’, he wrote, ‘we must recruit far more quickly than at present.’6 Clearly, sustaining the loyalty of the soldiers fighting in Europe – as well as the flow of treasure and manpower from India – would take work.7 The remarkable thing is that British efforts directed towards these ends largely succeeded. Nearly 1.3 million Indian soldiers served during the war, the single largest contribution made by any of the colonies or dominions of the British Empire. In the Punjab especially, which supplied the bulk of these soldiers and where one in every 26 adult males had been mobilised, the colonial state emerged in 1919 intact and unweakened.8 This chapter compares two sites in Europe that were themselves part of global and imperial propaganda campaigns aimed at sustaining – or converting – the loyalty of the

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Indian troops who travelled halfway around the world in 1914 to fight on behalf of the British Empire: the hospitals in France and England where wounded Indians recuperated, and the prisoner of war camps in Germany where captured Indians waited out the war. British and German authorities believed that the war for the British Empire could be won or lost not only on the outcome of epic battles, but on the day-to-day treatment Indians received in hospitals or prisons. Despite striking similarities in the propaganda methods deployed at each site, British efforts at the hospitals to maintain Indian loyalty largely succeeded, while those of their German counterparts in the prison camps to convert Indians largely failed. Why? On one level, German efforts failed because prison authorities were unable to replicate aspects of the Indian hospitals that made them effective instruments of propaganda. Meticulously staged visits from imperial notables such as the King-Emperor, as well as excellent health care, were two salient features of the hospitals that the Germans proved unable to match. On another level, British efforts succeeded because hospital authorities monitored and proved adept at manipulating the information available to sepoys and Indian audiences. Testimonies from repatriated Indian prisoners further reveal that British propaganda successfully infiltrated POW camps deep within the Reich. While care parcels kept captured sepoys connected to the Empire, Indian NCOs and British officers played a key role in reminding soldiers that they were not beyond the reach of the British Empire. Comparing propaganda efforts at Indian hospitals and POW camps reveals often-overlooked and previously unconsidered ways in which the British Empire cultivated imperial attachments on both sides of no-man’s land during World War I.

Healing the Empire: the Indian hospitals in France and Britain, 1914– 15 Indian soldiers began arriving in France in late September 1914. The Lahore and Meerut Divisions were put under the command of LtGeneral Sir James Willcocks, re-equipped, and fed into the lines

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outside Ypres, where they reinforced a British Army desperate for bodies. The Meerut Division spent 25 consecutive days in the trenches during October and November. By the end of December, the two corps combined had sustained some 12,200 casualties.9 At the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on 10 – 12 March 1915, Indian troops made up half the attacking force, which suffered some 4,233 killed, wounded or missing British and Indian personnel.10 The Indian Corps remained a significant presence on the Western Front until the end of 1915, when the infantry were transferred to the Middle East.11 While Indian soldiers fought in the trenches, British authorities sent their wounded comrades by rail or ship to hospitals, throughout France and England, specially adapted to accommodate Indian customs and religious practices. In France, large hospitals were established at Boulogne in a converted Jesuits’ College and at Marseilles in a large camp and the adjacent Chateau Mussoˆt. Smaller hospitals included a converted hotel overlooking the sea near Hardelot and a military school at Montreuil that took in an especially large number of wounded Indians belonging to the Lahore Division during the fighting at Festubert in December 1914. There was also a large camp for wounded Indians at Rouen attached to the military depot, although this was closed in the spring of 1915. There was a clearing hospital at Lillers, and at St Venant the British acquired the use of a woman’s insane asylum to be used as a convalescent depot, where soldiers were meant to spend no more than a fortnight before going back to the fighting line.12 In late 1914, prompted by French protests that the railways could not accommodate the large number of Indian wounded, Lord Kitchener appointed Sir Walter Lawrence Commissioner of Indian Hospitals, and charged him with the task of finding suitable homes for wounded Indians in England. ‘The problem was to get the Indians quickly into warm and dry buildings, as they suffer greatly from a wet and cold climate, and it was essential to concentrate in one or two localities’, Lawrence later wrote. ‘The British wounded could be sent to any part of the kingdom, but the Indians, owing to their special requirements, must be kept together.’13 In Brighton, Lawrence succeeded in obtaining the Royal Pavilion, the York Place Schools

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and a block of buildings that became known as the Kitchener Hospital. The Lady Hardinge and the Forest Park Hotel opened as hospitals at Brockenhurst, in the New Forest. There were also hospitals at Netley, Bournemouth and Milford-on-Sea and a convalescent home at Barton-on-Sea, New Milton.14 Lawrence intended that the worst cases would be sent to England while the less serious remained in France, but the system never worked perfectly. ‘When the rush comes – and in the case of Indians it has always been a rush – they [the French] put them on ship because they have no provision for sifting them at Boulogne,’ he explained in a letter to Kitchener.15 Still, a system designed to move large numbers of wounded Indians quickly from the front to a hospital appears to have been able to do so. During the attack on Neuve Chapelle on 10–12 March 1915, the hospital at Boulogne received 750 serious cases within 24 hours,16 and 474 of those cases found their way to the Kitchener Hospital in Brighton on 16–19 March.17 Each Indian hospital represented a curious microcosm of the British Empire. Most of the officers of the Royal Army Medical Corps who controlled the administration of the Indian hospitals had served in India earlier in their careers. At the hospitals in Brighton, staffers were recruited from as far away as Peshawar, Bombay and Poona, while another 198 Indian students who had been studying in England at the outbreak of the war were employed as orderlies, dressers and interpreters.18 The India Office made a special effort to obtain ingredients like dal and ghee for all the hospitals, and at the Pavilion Hospital nine different kitchens catered to the different dietary requirements of the Indian soldiers.19 At the Kitchener Hospital there was a large recreation room where hospital personnel projected scenes of Punjab life ‘to a delighted audience of soldiers from the north of India’, and at the convalescent depots gramophones regularly played ‘the native airs of India’.20 Wounded Indian soldiers had a hand in shaping their non-medical treatment in the hospitals. In December 1914, Lawrence assured Kitchener that they were well supplied with comforts, but ‘the one thing they miss is news of the war, news from India, and news from their own homes’. Lawrence therefore made arrangements with the

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India Office to ensure that letters sent from India to the wounded men would arrive, and also arranged for a vernacular newspaper to be printed and distributed to the patients.21 It seems likely that feedback from Indian soldiers, coupled with logistical considerations, also contributed to the decision to close down the hospital at Rouen. ‘I am convinced from what I have seen and from what I have heard from the Sepoys that Rouen is not the place for Indians’, Lawrence wrote to a colleague in March 1915. ‘They speak of it as a “shaitan ka jagah” and a place of ill luck.’ Marseilles, on the other hand, with spring approaching already has an effect on their spirits. The atmosphere is Indian – there is sunshine – the supply depot is close at hand, and they cost less to feed here than at Rouen; and the authorities have made due arrangements for cremation and Muhammedan burial. At Rouen the authorities promised this last December, but have done nothing to help.22 The main job of the hospitals was repairing as many damaged bodies as possible so that they could be returned to the front. Despite periodic complaints that some of the Indian wounded in hospital were ‘malingering’, Lawrence made sure to highlight in his letters to Kitchener that the hospitals were sending a satisfactory number of soldiers back to the lines: ‘We return from the Convalescent Depot [in England] 57.48 per cent to the fighting line, and invalide back to India 42.52 per cent.’23 The Kitchener Hospital reported its figures to the War Office in early May: ‘Total admissions – 1359; Total mortality – 11 or .809%; Total invaliding – 229 or 16.85%; Total to duty – 414 or 30.46%.’24 By June, the camp commandant at the hospital assured the India Office: ‘Out of 2600 cases treated here I have already returned 900 to duty; and every effort is made to get men out as quickly as possible’.25 But the British Empire required more than just soldiers with healthy bodies: it needed soldiers who were loyal and wanted to fight. Lawrence understood this plainly: ‘The great preoccupation of the officers was to heal and to render the men fit for the fighting line, but they knew that beyond the physical healing much depended on the

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mentality of the Sepoys.’26 This priority played out in a variety of ways. Hospital authorities were especially concerned, for instance, with what came into the hospitals. ‘There are so many political agitators, Indian and English, that one has to walk warily’, Lawrence observed in December 1914.27 When he noticed that wounded men of the 15th and 47th Sikhs arriving in England in December 1914 appeared ‘somewhat morose’, he recommended that ‘The men of these Regiments who come to England should be divided as much as possible among the various Hospitals.’28 Lawrence also made sure that news of important victories made its way into the hospitals. ‘The result of the Neuve Chapelle fighting has been very remarkable’, he noted in late March. When I communicated the news to the patients at Brighton they received it with delight and it had a marked effect on their spirit. I have never seen a greater change in my life, and now that the wounded and sick have arrived, the change is still greater . . . In many cases men who were obviously malingering and disinclined to return to the front, now express a wish to get back as soon as possible.29 The steady stream of patients in and out of the hospitals made it nearly impossible to control the circulation of rumours, but Lawrence recognised that the Empire had a vested interest in trying. In this regard, the lessons of the 1857 rebellion were never far in the background. As Lawrence began the task of coordinating the efforts of the Indian hospitals, ‘it was reported that in the absence of ghee, margarine was being supplied’, and he acted quickly to ensure that regular supplies of ghee came to England and France from India. He also asked the India Office ‘whether any of the margarine manufacturers would guarantee a margarine free of beef and pigs’ fat’. Sir Alfred Keogh at the War Office, meanwhile, promptly issued orders that no margarine was to be served out. ‘This is a matter that must be very closely watched . . . If it got about that we were using margarine, there might be an explosion similar to the old cartridge trouble of the Mutiny.’30

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Another lesson the British took from 1857 was that the work of missionaries had directly contributed to popular unrest.31 Lawrence therefore ordered authorities at the hospitals in France, where the YMCA was in close contact with the Indians, to keep a very sharp eye on the proceedings [of the organisation] and to prevent Sepoys using Y.M.C.A. paper with the inscription ‘Christian Anjuman’ for their letters home. Many such letters have gone, and great capital will be made in India by agitators who are doing their utmost to cause disaffection in our Army.32 In February 1915 at the Pavilion, Lawrence discovered that a wounded Indian soldier had a vernacular translation of the Gospel of St Mark. I asked him where he had got it, and he said a lady had given it to him. Everybody who visits the Hospitals is supposed to write their name in a book, and they will be shown a notice begging them not to take any books of a religious nature. Lawrence stressed: ‘We cannot be too careful, as if it got abroad that any attempt has been made to proselytize men who are sick or wounded, there would be great trouble.’33 The content of the letters written by some of the Indian soldiers also caused alarm. In June 1915, Lawrence noted: In the Sepoys’ letters there is constant mention of the fact that the ‘black pepper’ is being used up and the ‘red pepper’ is being saved; in other words that the Indian troops are being deliberately sacrificed and the British troops preserved. Lawrence attributed this phenomenon to the fact that ‘the Indians in Hospitals only see the Indian wounded and never see the British Hospitals; and in England, in towns like Brighton and Bournemouth, they see a large number of Civilians whom they all regard as

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young men of military age.’ Lawrence thus worked quickly to remedy a potentially damaging situation. From some rough figures which I got regarding the affair at Neuve Chapelle I am of the opinion that it could be shown that the British have suffered more heavily than the Indians. I have not yet received the statement which I asked for, but it would be very valuable to obtain figures showing the proportion of casualties in the British Army and the Indian Army.34 The flow of visitors in and out of the hospitals was also a concern. When the Raja of Kapurthala paid a surprise visit to the hospital at Marseilles, hospital authorities made sure that he remained accompanied by a British officer at all times. Lawrence reported: He asked many questions about the food of the Sikhs. The answers to these questions were satisfactory, but if he had been allowed to go round the Camp unescorted, his questions might have led to trouble. Strict orders have now been given . . . and any visitors of this character, if allowed in the Camp, will be very carefully watched.35 Hospital authorities much preferred visitors who could inspire loyalty and help revive martial fervour. Thus on 25 August 1915 the King visited the Royal Pavilion Hospital, and in an elaborate investiture ceremony on the hospital lawn 1,000 wounded Indians gathered to witness 11 of their comrades receive decoration for gallantry in the field.36 Yet not all was imperial pomp and grandeur. In an effort to maintain white prestige, hospital authorities made every effort to segregate Indian soldiers from Europeans. The Kitchener Hospital maintained a police guard of 45 men ‘to prevent escapes of followers over the walls’ and ‘the passage of drink, etc. into the hospital’.37 While acknowledging that Indian soldiers required space to get fresh air ‘in order to hasten their convalescence’, Lawrence maintained from early on that ‘in places like Brighton and Bournemouth it will be

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fatal to let them about in the streets’.38 At the York Place Hospital, where there were no exercise areas, Indians were taken out in small parties through the town. Lawrence assured Kitchener: On the whole their conduct has been exemplary, but we recently had a case where some men in charge of a Havildar who was supposed to be trustworthy, got into a public house: steps have been taken to prevent the recurrence of such a thing.39 British women visitors and British women working in the hospitals presented a particularly sticky issue. As Rozina Visram has rightly pointed out, ‘Within the imperial context, the mystique of English womanhood and the prestige of the empire were interlinked.’40 Lawrence considered the Indian hospital at Marseilles to be situated ‘sufficiently far from Marseilles to prevent the dangers which arise from the women and, as far as I can ascertain from old French friends in this city, the Indians have on the whole behaved very well’.41 In England, a controversy erupted in late May over the employment of white nurses at the Indian hospitals when the Daily Mail published a photograph showing an English nurse standing beside a wounded Sepoy. In June, white nurses were removed from all Indian hospitals in England with the exception of the Lady Hardinge Hospital ‘for the protection of women and empire’.42 Even as the nursing ‘scandal’ revealed how entwined racism and the British Empire were, Lawrence understood that such British racism did not make for good propaganda. He received two letters from Sir Shapurji Broacha ‘urging that Sepoys were entitled to the ministration of Nurses’. Lawrence wrote to Kitchener in August 1915: In this matter I think that the opinion of the I.M.S. Officer Commanding Hospitals should prevail, but one has to consider Native opinion and political issues. One Indian of the I.M.S. said, ‘You take our men and money and yet deny us good nursing.’ This of course is not true, as in all the Hospitals the men get admirable nursing . . . I have explained to Sir Shapurji

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Broacha that the removal of the Nurses from Brighton was due to the fact that their services were more urgently required elsewhere.43 Hospital authorities instead tried to control the condition in which the bodies of Indian soldiers left the hospitals. For those soldiers returning to India, Lawrence noted: I think it is of the highest political importance that they should return to India as regiments, armed and equipped, and that the spectacle of wounded and sick men in Hospital clothes will have a very depressing effect in India, and a very bad effect on recruiting.44 The Home Office made special arrangement for the remains of Indian soldiers who died at hospital in England. ‘It is most undesirable to put any difficulty in the way of giving Hindu soldiers the last rites of their religion,’ reads an internal memo.45 A burning ghat at Patcham, five miles outside Brighton, ought to have been prohibited by the Cremation Act of 1902. The Secretary of State regarded the matter ‘as being outside the restrictions’ imposed by the law, and only required that a register should be kept showing ‘that his body was cremated in accordance with the rite of his religion’.46 By late 1915, every soldier who left the Pavilion for the front, or for India, carried with him a copy of a booklet published in English, Gurmukhi and Urdu and describing the use of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton as a hospital for Indian soldiers. The Government of India also purchased 20,000 copies of the booklet for distribution in India.47 The booklet declared: Everything has been done to make the wounded Indians as comfortable and happy as possible. Not only do they live in a Royal Palace, but the splendid grounds which surround it have been reserved for them, which goes far to promote their quick return to health and strength.48

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The booklet made a special point of emphasising the hospital’s exemplary medical facilities and amenities, the various ways in which caste and religious differences were meticulously respected, and the aforementioned visit by the King, ‘who had come specially to decorate with his own hands’ the 11 Indian soldiers. After the ceremony, the King and Queen proceeded to the wards to see those Indians who were not well enough to attend. There again, as on the previous visit, the King and Queen by their gracious sympathy gave many wounded soldiers a proud and happy memory that will be handed down to generations. In many an Indian village in the years to come these soldiers, their fighting days long over, will talk to their children’s children of the Great War. Their faces will then glow with pride as they tell of that day when they were lying wounded in a Royal Palace and the King and Queen came to their bedsides and spoke to them words of tender sympathy and cheer.49 Did the hospitals have the desired effect on Indian troops and Indian audiences? British authorities believed they did.50 Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, wrote that the work done in the Indian hospitals ‘tends to increase our prestige in this country and also the attachment the lower classes have to the Sircar.’51 Lawrence drew the same conclusion as the Viceroy, writing to Kitchener: ‘Perhaps the best judges of the experiment were the Indian soldiers themselves.’ Indian soldiers generally had very positive things to say about their experience in hospital when they wrote letters home. One Sikh wrote to a friend in India: The wounded Indian soldiers are being treated in England with such great care that my pen fails to describe it. We ought to give our lives for our kind Government . . . now is the opportunity for us to show our loyalty.52 In his final report on the arrangements made for sick and wounded Indian soldiers in France and England, Lawrence stated that he could

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‘quote from letters without end’; he offered Kitchener two. Naik Sant Singh wrote from Brighton: ‘I have been in hospital for one month and 22 days in bed, and the Government treated me so kindly that not even my own father and mother could have done more.’ Jemadar Chulam Muhiyudin wrote: One gets such service as no one can get in his own house, not even a noble. One gets meat, milk, tea, and all sorts of fruit, apples, pears, and oranges, sweet-meats as much as one can eat, milk as much as one can drink, and most excellent beds beyond description. These are no fables. This country compared with others is like Heaven.53 Lawrence, for his part, concluded: I think that the work has been of some use. It has shown to the sick and wounded Indians in very strange circumstances that there was a personal interest in them, and in my conversations with the sorely stricken I have not hesitated, as I was authorized, to convey [Lord Kitchener’s] sympathy. In some ways they are children, but intensely proud, shrewd and sensitive . . . Of one thing I am sure, that it was a wise policy considering the political condition of India to bring Indian troops to Europe. They have left France with a profound respect for the British soldier and for British resources. They go back deeply impressed with the mechanical side of warfare . . . And the lesson taught by the bold and wise policy of giving India a chance may be of enormous value to those who will soon be called upon to organize the real and actual British Empire.54

The Empire interned: propaganda and Indian POWs in Germany, 1914 –18 In early 1915, a letter from the Maharaja of Rewa to the Government of India found its way to various government offices in London. He wrote:

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I have read in the papers from time to time with pleasure the arrangements made by the British Government for the Indian soldiers, but I wish to know, if possible, whether the enemy respects scruples of the Hindus with regard to food. For example a Hindu would rather die than take beef. The Government of India’s political agent in Baghelkand responded to the Maharaja that no reports had yet been received of any Hindu having been taken prisoner but that enquiries would be made on the question.55 The matter of prisoners of war during World War I is itself an understudied topic.56 That the lot of Indian soldiers interned in Germany has received even less attention should perhaps be unsurprising.57 The total number of Indian soldiers captured in France by the Germans remained something of a mystery to British authorities throughout the war.58 Be that as it may, the first Indian soldiers fell captive to Germany before the end of 1914. In early 1915 British authorities learned that the Germans were concentrating Muslim prisoners from the British, French and Russian empires at a camp near Zossen, outside Berlin, and that a special mosque was to be built. The Consulate General in Rotterdam wrote to the Foreign Office: In view of the harsh (to use no stronger term) treatment meted out to prisoners of war in Germany, and especially to Britishers, the above information is rather symptomatic and in my opinion means that the German authorities are trying to start an anti British crusade amongst the native officers and men of the Indian Army now in captivity, and doubtless amongst the native French soldiers as well.59 Authorities further conceded that they could no longer take the loyalty of captured Indian soldiers for granted. A 7 May telegram from the Government of India to the Foreign Office read: Reliable information has been received by Criminal Intelligence Department that German newspaper invited

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some Indians in Europe to go to Germany where they will be well paid for talking to captured Indian soldiers. Those prisoners most amenable to the talk will be the first selected for exchange if and when exchange of prisoners with England begins. Germans intend that after exchange these men should do their best to persuade other soldiers to revolt against the British. It is known for a fact that some Indians are employed by German Government. In the event of exchange becoming practical question or of Indian prisoners being permitted to escape, mental attitude of such Indians will require consideration.60 For much of the war, the German War Ministry concentrated Muslim POWs at two Sonderlagern at Zossen: over 12,000 Russian POWs lived in the Tatarenlager at Zossen-Weinberge, French Muslim prisoners and Indian prisoners were held at Wu¨nsdorf, generally referred to as the Halbmondlager, with the Indians eventually confined to their own section, the Inderlager.61 In April 1917, the War Ministry transferred the bulk of the Indian troops interned at Wu¨nsdorf to a camp in Romania. In many ways, German methods at Zossen were not unlike those of their British counterparts at the Indian hospitals in France and England. Special facilities were installed to cater to dietary requirements and religious practices. The fast of Ramadan was duly kept and in early 1915 a small mosque was built with funds provided by the German Emperor. Starting in March that same year, Indian soldiers had access to a special newspaper printed in Urdu and Hindi, Hindosta¯n, Zeitung fu¨r die indischen Kriegsgefangenen. Meanwhile ‘visitors’ from India and North Africa, employed by the German Foreign Office, delivered frequent lectures on the topic of the GermanOttoman alliance and highlighted the jihad declared by Sheikh alIslam. The idea was that this propaganda, coupled with the good treatment Indian and North African soldiers received in the camps, would win them over to the German cause. The ‘converted’ would then volunteer to fight on various fronts for the German or Ottoman armies, or would themselves spread sedition among loyal colonial troops after being exchanged.62

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Part and parcel of a global propaganda campaign meant to foment rebellion throughout the British, French and Russian empires, German activities at Zossen were of a particular concern to the British, who recognised that the German-Ottoman alliance periodically interfered with war plans. Over 50 soldiers of the 46th Punjabis deserted in January 1915, when a double company of the regiment was ordered to sail for Mombasa to join up with the 130th Baluchis. The Viceroy of India wrote to the India Office in London: ‘There is no doubt that there is a strong disinclination among certain classes of Pathans especially Afridis to fight against Turks or their allies.’63 Only a month later, 400 Rajput Muslims belonging to the right wing of the 5th Light Infantry stationed in Singapore mutinied, killed their British officers, and freed some 300 German prisoners interned at nearby Tanglin (though only 17 took the opportunity presented to attempt an escape). The press release issued by the government announced that the mutiny was sparked by ‘some jealousy and dissatisfaction concerning recent promotions’. There was probably some truth to this, but a telegram from the Governor of the Straits Settlements to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on 20 February reveals that the matter was not so simple: One mutineer captured to-day, Jellal Khan . . . states . . . that although they had fought previously against Moslems the Malvi told them from Mosque this war was unlike, as fighting against head of religion the Sultan at Stambul. Stated also now Germans are allies of Turk the Moslem Indians in France though they may not fight against us they will not fight for us in Asia.64 In similar fashion, recently captured Indian prisoners told their German interrogators that they held no particular fondness for the British Empire. One group of soldiers recovering from wounds at a hospital in Coblenz stated that they had only advanced across noman’s-land ‘under threat’.65 Another prisoner of war interviewed at the Halbmondlager said that he and his comrades ‘fought for England because of the money, and would, for the same reason, be willing to

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fight for the Germans’.66 Sepoy Mohammed Arifan, a native of Peshawar captured in November 1914, told his German interrogator that he would ‘be pleased to fight with the Turks against their enemies’. As for his comrades, ‘I am confident that when the Muslim soldiers fighting in the English army learn about the Holy War, they will no longer fight against the Germans but against their true enemies.’67 In the light of such findings, it should come as no surprise that the British tried to keep tabs on captured Indian soldiers. The British Foreign Office and India Office spent much of the war trying to gather as much intelligence as they could on conditions and activities at Zossen, in the hope that Britain could find ways of keeping Indian POWs loyal to the Empire. On 17 June 1915 representatives of the India Office, Foreign Office, War Office, Indian Soldiers’ Fund and Prisoners of War Help Committee met informally at the India Office for the purpose of considering various questions in connection with Indian prisoners of war in Germany. At the top of the agenda were questions concerning where the Germans interned Indian prisoners, whether they confined Indian troops with their British officers, if they kept – and might provide – complete lists of Indian prisoners, whether they allowed Indian prisoners to communicate with their friends, and if the British Government could ask the United States Embassy to make a special report on the condition and wants of Indian prisoners. The various representatives present at the meeting decided that if such a special report on the Indian prisoners could be obtained, it could, ‘if considered desirable, be issued in India with a view to assuring the Indian public that Indian prisoners of war were being properly cared for’.68 At the request of the informal committee, J.B. Jackson of the United States Embassy in Berlin visited the Indian POW camp at Wu¨nsdorf on 7 July. His report made its way through the normal diplomatic channels to the British Foreign Office ten days later. At Wu¨nsdorf, he reported, a new camp had been built (beside the camp for French Muslim soldiers) that held 400 Indian soldiers and four officers in five separate barracks: one for 95 Muslim Baluchis, two others for 160 Ghurkas, a fourth for 65 Sikhs, including one officer,

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and a fifth for 71 Thakurs. Jackson spoke with the officers, ‘and each said that he preferred to remain in this camp, where he could be near and care for his men, and none of them wish, at present, to be transferred to an officers’ camp’. None of the barracks appeared to be overcrowded, nor were the Indians called upon to do any work outside the camp, and the soldiers had use of the ‘well-arranged’ baths in the neighbouring Muslim camp. ‘The mosque in that camp is to be dedicated next week, and thereafter the Indian Mahommedans will use it as a place of worship’, Jackson said, adding that there were four kitchens in the Indian camp, ‘one each for the Mahommedans, Ghurkas, Sikhs, and Thakurs, and each sect is allowed to prepare its food according to its own ritual’. There were no armed German guards in the camp itself, and the non-commissioned officers who attended to its administration ‘are very considerate of the feelings of the Indians and do not go into their kitchens or the prayer section of the Mahommedan barracks’. Jackson closed his report by adding that the health of the camp was good and ‘all in the camp seemed to be in good spirits’.69 The crucial piece of information contained in Jackson’s report was the number of Indians interned at the Halbmondlager. The Foreign Office forwarded Jackson’s numbers to the Indian Soldiers’ Fund (ISF), an organisation set up shortly after the outbreak of the war which by 1915 regularly sent large dispatches of food, clothing and other comforts to Indian prisoners.70 The ISF also spent the war trying to construct an accurate list of not just the exact number of Indian prisoners in Germany, but their names and whereabouts. They did this primarily by collecting information from four sources: the Office of the Military Secretary, India Office; the Deputy Adjutant General, Rouen; the British Red Cross Society, Prisoners of War Branch; and private sources.71 The first three of these received their information, in turn, from the German Red Cross Society. The task of creating an accurate list of Indian prisoners was all the more difficult, the ISF concluded in June 1916, because ‘there is no system in Zossen, Germany (where nearly all the Indian prisoners are now confined) under which any kind of revision of the name of the prisoners is undertaken’.72 The ISF therefore valued the occasional

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letter from an internee, so long as it contained the names of other Indian prisoners. Two 3 May letters from Subadar Ransur Rana of the 2/8th Gurkha Rifles, a prisoner of war at the Halbmondlager, thus made its way through the various Government Offices. One of the letters included a list of 29 Indian soldiers who had died of disease, and instructions from the Subadar: ‘Please do not send any parcels in their names.’ The second letter contained 63 names of soldiers belonging to the 2/8th Gurkha rifles ‘who have never received any parcels’.73 If captured Indian soldiers were never entirely out of reach of the British Empire, they did rest rather squarely in German hands. Yet as historians have rightly pointed out, German efforts aimed at ‘converting’ Indian prisoners largely failed: by April 1917, only 49 from Zossen made the trip to Constantinople to fight in the Ottoman Army.74 The vast majority of these prisoners remained loyal to the British Empire. Why? Documents created by German camp authorities and a small batch of testimonies by Indian and British soldiers given in 1918, after the men had spent much of the war in German prison camps, reveal that German and British authorities asked the very same question. Repatriated in early 1918, Subadar-Major Sher Singh Rana of the 1/4th Gurkha Rifles spent most of the war in captivity. His testimony makes clear that the Germans and their agents attempted to ‘corrupt’ Indian prisoners at nearly every turn. Taken prisoner in the fighting at Festubert on 19 December 1914, he and other Indian soldiers were taken first to La Basse´e and then to Lille, where ‘the Indian soldiers were left behind, but the Gurkhas (who were treated as Europeans) were sent with the Turkish and French prisoners to Cologne’.75 At La Basse´e, two Indians met the soldiers: One was from Baroda, probably a Mahratta . . . The other was a Sikh of Hoshiapur, but his hair and his beard clipped . . . I do not know the names of either. I was threatened by these men and they made attempts at Lille to seduce Indian soldiers. A German name Paul Walter also visited the Indians. He ‘spoke Hindustani fluently and had been long in India. He was a thoroughly

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dangerous man (a “Shaitan.”)’. Rana stayed at Cologne only a short while before being sent to Osnabru¨ck where he remained until April 1916. The Germans then transferred him to the camp for Indian prisoners at Zossen, ‘as a result of several requests I had made through the American Commissioners’. In Osnabru¨ck, Rana testified, there was no attempt to corrupt Indians. At Zossen there was a good deal of this. Walter visited it, and there were other sedition agents there, e.g. Ram Singh, a Sikh, (but with his hair clipped) of Rawalpindi, a ‘bara badmash’. Walter was responsible there for distributing the ‘Ghadr’ newspaper among Indian soldiers.76 Despite this barrage of propaganda in Zossen, Rana maintained that German efforts fell flat. ‘I did my best to dissuade Indian soldiers from listening to any advances. In my opinion the sedition propaganda had little effect on them “going in at one ear and out at the other”.’ About August 1916, camp authorities transferred Rana to Clausthal, where he stayed for seven or eight months, after which all the Indian prisoners excluding himself and two other Gurkha officers and one Sikh officer were sent to Romania. ‘We were sent to the punishment camp at Strohen, owing to our refusal to accept German advances.’ From there Rana was transferred to hospital and eventually evacuated to Holland in 1918, ‘and thence to England’. A few items embedded in Rana’s testimony are worth highlighting. Internees do not appear to have regarded the agents, hired by Germany to ‘seduce’ Indian soldiers, very highly. Rana notes twice that Sikhs in the employ of the Germans had their hair clipped. Nor did appeals to Indian autonomy resonate with the Nepalese Subadar Major. Moreover, by 1917, frustrated that their attempts to ‘convert’ Rana had failed, the Germans gave up trying and sent him to a punishment camp. It also appears to be the case that the many of the Indian soldiers held by the Germans had already internalised the value of imperial loyalty, and were predisposed to resist German attempts at ‘corrupting’ them: they seem to have played an important part in keeping their comrades loyal, a point noted by German

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authorities in early 1916.77 In fact, some of the Indian ‘sedition agents’ at Zossen mentioned in a June 1916 report that Subadar Major Rana and a Sikh Jemadar were not only ‘doing their best to resist the spread of patriot ideas among the soldiers, but that they are secretly carrying on a strong anti-German and pro-English propaganda’.78 The testimony of Mardan Khan, a Sepoy in the 59th Sind Rifles, corroborates some of what is found in Sher Singh Rana’s. Wounded and captured in the fighting at Festubert on 19 December 1914, Khan was also taken first to La Basse´e and then to Lille, where he and other wounded soldiers ‘were put into a goods train and taken to a hospital at Cologne’, where he stayed for three months. The Germans then sent him briefly to another camp and from there to Zossen in May 1915, where he remained for two years. Khan noted: ‘The Germans have got a regular “Company” of Bengalis which they employ in various capacities.’ Here his testimony is at variance with Rana’s. The Bengalis, he says, ‘used to visit the camp occasionally but did not talk to us. They were engaged I think in printing German – not Urdu – newspapers. I never saw any copies of the “Ghadr” newspaper, or any other vernacular newspapers.’ Khan does not deny, however, that the Germans attempted to ‘convert’ the Indian soldiers. A German captain and a German Sergeant approached the Mahommedan prisoners at Zossen, saying that the Turks were our brothers, and they would send us to Turkey if we wished. All the soldiers – Hindus and Mahommedans alike – flatly refused, saying that they preferred death to treachery.79 But why should imperial loyalty – ‘preferring death to treachery’ – continue to be valued by soldiers largely cut off from the British Empire? One explanation is that although they would not admit as much to their British interrogators in 1918, while interned in Germany, Indian soldiers feared British reprisals if they joined the Germans. Some Afridi prisoners told German prison camp authorities that if they joined Britain’s enemies, the soldiers risked serving long prison sentences and losing their pensions if

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recaptured.80 As for Muslim prisoners from the Punjab, camp authorities acknowledged, ‘fighting for Turkey is totally out of the question . . . their land and their families are dependent upon them [the British], and they want to go back to India once peace has been declared.’81 The testimony of a third soldier, Jemadar Suba Sing Gurung of the 2/2nd Gurkha Rifles, suggests two further explanations. Gurung was captured at Festubert on 20 December 1914 and preceded to Osnabru¨ck, where he remained until 1916, when he was sent to Zossen in company with Subadar Major Sher Sing Rana. Gurung was still a prisoner when Major Wylie of the 1/4 Gurkha Rifles, himself a prisoner interned in Holland, collected the Jemadar Suba’s testimony in early 1918. Gurung’s statement suggests that poor health conditions at Zossen – quite contrary to Jackson’s findings in 1915 – convinced Indian soldiers that the German side was not worth joining.82 In addition to a ‘persistent campaign of sedition’: The main complaint the Jemadar had against the camp . . . is that the water was bad, and that in consequence large numbers of men became ill, and had to go to hospital. No men were allowed to go with them as orderlies or nurses, and the result was that they rapidly became worse, and a very large percentage died. There were 52 men of the Jemadar’s regiment, 2/2nd Gurkha Rifles, taken prisoner, and of these 18 had died by April, 1917, and he states that this was not a remarkable percentage, and that from 33 to 50% of the original prisoners had certainly died. There was a good deal of tuberculosis as well, and one Subadar Prem Sing Thapa, 1/4th Gurkha Rifles, died of the disease.83 Gurung’s testimony also reveals that the efforts of the Foreign Office to ascertain the number and whereabouts of Indian prisoners had not been in vain. The Jemadar states that the parcels sent by the Indian Soldiers’ Fund, Carlton House Terrace, London, were excellent,

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and the men lacked nothing essential. The clothing sent was good and sufficient, the men were not compelled to work outside the camp. Care packages, it appears, had done the job of reminding Indian prisoners that they were not entirely beyond the reach of the British Empire. Major Wylie also interviewed Sergeant J.P. Walsh, of the 1st Gloucester Regiment, who had been a prisoner interned at Go¨rlitz in Poland, when the aforementioned Sepoy Mahomed Arifan, Machine Gunner, 127th (attached 129th) Baluchis arrived there from Zossen in late November 1915. ‘He is a native of Lundi near Peshawur, and prided himself on being a Pathan.’84 While Sergeant Walsh’s testimony might only be second-hand evidence at best, what he says about Sepoy Arifan’s experience at Zossen and Go¨rlitz reinforces the finding that care parcels – coupled with the reassurances of interned British officers – helped keep Indian prisoners connected and loyal to the Empire. Arifan arrived at Go¨rlitz in a pitiable state: He had been shot through both knees and taken prisoner, I think in 11/14, near Ypres, and was still unable to walk except with a stick. He was in a wretched state, had received no parcels since being taken prisoner, and was nothing but a miserable bundle of filthy rags. Sergeant Walsh testifies that he ‘took charge of him from the moment of his arrival, and he became devoted to me during the 17 months we were together in Go¨rlitz’. Concerning the treatment Arifan and his comrades received at Zossen, ‘at first they were well treated, but the camp was overrun with Mahommedan propagandists, Turks, Fakirs, and what not, who tried by every means to influence the Indian soldiers to break their allegiance to the British Empire’. Arifan assured Sergeant Walsh that these efforts were a complete failure, and as a result the Germans systematically persecuted them by every means, withdrew the sanction hirtherto accorded to caste

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feeling, and finally sent away from Zossen those who stood out firmest, and were most influential among their fellows in preserving loyalty to the King-Emperor. In 1916 Sergeant Walsh wrote on Arifan’s behalf to the latter’s brother in Lundi, and to the Prisoners of War Aid Society in Southampton to get his name put on the list for care parcels. ‘After this he received clothing, boots, food, etc., regularly from the Society. His family also sent him money, food, etc., from Lundi.’ During his 17 months at Go¨rlitz, Arifan ‘bore himself well, and is a credit to the Indian Army’. For his own part, Sergeant Walsh ‘always assured him that the British Government would not forget his loyalty and that of his comrades at Zossen’. Walsh concluded: [Arifan] was intensely proud of being a British subject. He was frequently placed in prison for refusing to work for the Germans, and the last I saw of him was when he was sent away in March 1917 to Ko¨nigsbruck to look after an elephant, but he told me he would continue to refuse to do any work for the Germans.

Conclusion Comparing the work done by British propaganda at the hospitals for wounded Indians in France and England with that deployed by the Germans at Indian POW camps reveals ways in which the British Empire was ‘present’ on both sides of no-man’s-land during World War I. Wounded Indians at Brighton and captured Indians at the Halbmondlager both represented ‘captive’ audiences. Walter Lawrence recognised clearaly that good medical treatment could go a long way towards preserving the loyalty not only of the soldiers themselves, but of their comrades still fighting in the trenches and of the friends and family members back home, with whom they communicated through letters. In Germany, meanwhile, a propaganda campaign not unlike that deployed by the British at

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their Indian hospitals attempted to ‘convert’ captured Indian soldiers. To be sure, the campaign failed on its own merits. Yet Indian soldiers also remained loyal because the Germans failed to sever completely the ties that bound Indian soldiers to the British Empire. It would take the destruction of a second world war to undo the British Empire.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Basu 1914. Vadgama 1984, 92. Jack 2006, 329; Merewether and Smith 1918, 459. Trevelyan 1914, 6. India Office Records (hereafter IOR), L/MIL/17347. IOR/L/MIL/17347, copy of a telegram from the Viceroy to the India Office, 5 June 1915. The matter of what motivated Indians to support the Imperial war effort has been variously dealt with. See especially Das (ed.) 2011a; Omissi 1994; 1999. See also Das 2011b, 75. Tan 2000, 408. See also Mazumder 2012. Imperial War Museum P253, the First World War Diary of Brigadier P. Mortimer, entries for 23 November 1914 and 13 January 1915. The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), PRO WO 106/338B, The Action Taken by the Indian Corps in The Battle of Neuve Chapelle, March 10th to March 13th 1915 (Simla, 1915). As was the case during the war, the performance of the Sepoys in the trenches of the Western Front has dominated historical accounts. See Merewether and Smith 1918; Willcocks 1920; Greenhut 1983; Corrigan 1999. For a recent reappraisal of that performance, and a brief review of the subject’s historiography, see Jack 2006. TNA, WO 159/17, letter from Sir Walter Lawrence to Lord Kitchener, 31 December 1914. TNA, WO 32/5110, report by Lawrence on arrangements made for Indian sick and wounded in England and France, 8 March 1916. See Visram 2002, 180–92. TNA, WO 32/5110, Lawrence to Kitchener, 22 March 1915. Ibid., 30 April 1915. TNA, WO 95/5465, War Diary of Kitchener Indian Hospital, Brighton, January 1915 to January 1916. Visram 2002, 171– 2, 181. Ibid., 181. TNA, WO 32/5110, report by Lawrence, 8 March 1916.

132 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

EMPIRES IN WORLD WAR I Ibid., Lawrence to Kitchener, 15 December 1914. Ibid., Lawrence to Sir Neville, 3 March 1915. Ibid., Lawrence to Kitchener, 22 March 1915. TNA, WO 95/5465, war diary of Kitchener Indian Hospital. TNA, WO 95/5110, letter from commandant, Kitchener Indian Hospital, to India Office, 24 June 1915. Ibid., report by Lawrence, 8 March 1916. Ibid., Lawrence to Kitchener, 15 December 1914. Ibid. Ibid., 22 March 1915. Ibid., 5 August 1915. Metcalf 1964, 47, 89, 107– 8. TNA, WO 32/5110, Lawrence to Kitchener, 10 March 1915. See also Visram 2002, 183– 4. TNA, WO 32/5110, 15 February 1915. Ibid., 15 June 1915. Ibid., 30 April 1915. See the account in Brighton Corporation, 1915. TNA, WO 95/5110, letter from camp commandant, Kitchener Indian Hospital, to India Office, 24 June 1915. Ibid., letter from Lawrence to Kitchener, 15 December 1915. Ibid. Visram 2002, 185. TNA, WO 32/5110, letter from Lawrence to Sir Neville, 3 March 1915. Visram 2002, 186– 7. TNA, WO 32/5110, Lawrence to Kitchener, 5 August 1915. Ibid., 15 June 1915. TNA, HO 45/10761/270222, ‘Cremation of the remains of Indian soldiers’ at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, 2 November 1914. Ibid., letter to the Officer in Charge, Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, from the Home Office, 6 November 1914. See also Visram 2002, 182. ‘Indian wounded at Brighton’, The Times, 13 April 1916. Corporation of Brighton 1915, 9. Ibid., 15. See Visram 2002, 183. TNA, WO 32/5110, Lawrence’s final report, 8 March 1916. IOR/L/MIL/17347. TNA, WO 32/5110, Lawrence’s final report, 8 March 1916. Ibid. TNA, PRO FO 383/39, copy of a demi-official letter no. 4150 dated the 3rd December 1914 from Lt-Col. S.H. Godfrey, C.I.E. Political Agent in Baghelkand, to the Hon’ble Mr. O.V. Bosanquet, C.S.I., C.I.E., Agent to the Governor General in Central India. The India Office in London received this

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76

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letter in early January 1915 and the Foreign Office seems to have received a copy in February. See Jones 2008. There are some important exceptions; see especially Jones 2011a; Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker 2002, 79 –84. Again, there exist some important exceptions; see Jones 2011b. The subject of Germany’s special prison camps for Indian and African soldiers in Wu¨nsdorf and Zossen is thoroughly explored, from the perspective of German documents, by Ho¨pp 1997. IOR/L/MIL/7/13561, French to the War Office, 31 August 1915. TNA, FO 383/39, letter from the British Consulate General in Rotterdam to the Foreign Office, 7 January 1915. TNA, FO 383/62, telegram from the Government of India to the Foreign Office, 7 May 1915. Ho¨pp 1997, 44 – 5. Ibid., 39. TNA, PRO 30/57/69, telegram from the Viceroy of India, 29 January 1915. TNA, ADM 1/8419/112, Indian troops mutiny at Singapore. Political Archives of the Foreign Office, Berlin (hereafter PAAA), R21245, interview with wounded Indian prisoners, 5 March 1915. PAAA, R21244, report, 4 January 1915. PAAA, R21245, interview of Mohammed Arifan, 20 January 1915. TNA, PRO FO 383/65, Minutes of an informal Conference held at the India Office on 17th June 1915 for the purpose of considering various questions in connection with Indian Officers and other ranks Prisoners of War in Germany. TNA, PRO 383/65, Report by Mr Jackson on Visit to Indian Prisoners of War Camp at Wu¨nsdorf (Zossen). The United States Embassy in Berlin also acted as an important link between the British Empire and Indian prisoners, until the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in 1917. In January 1916, the Calcutta Office of the YMCA sent large supplies of curry powder and ‘similar consignments’ to Indian prisoners in Germany through the offices of the United States embassies in London and Berlin. See TNA, FO 383/151. TNA, FO 383/194. Ibid. Ibid. Jones 2011b, 176. TNA, FO 383/390, sworn statement of Subadar-Major Sher Singh Rana 1/4th Gurkha Rifles. In the original transcript, the word ‘Turkish’ is circled. The soldiers Rana refers to were probably North Africans. Rana corrects himself later, saying that one man who arrived at Osnabru¨ck in early 1916 ‘began by asking us whether we got our rations regularly, etc. He then said “Do you think about autonomy (Sora)?” I replied that I was a Gurkha of Nepal and that I refused to listen to any such talk.’ PAAA, R21253, report, 25 January 1916.

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78 PAAA, R21258, Indian Independence Committee to Foreign Office, 21 June 1916. 79 TNA, FO 383/390, sworn statement of Mardan Khan, Sepoy No. 3817, 59th Sind Rifles. 80 PAAA, R21246, memo, 27 May 1915. 81 PAAA, R21252, memo, 18 November 1915. 82 The Indian Independence Committee also brought this issue to the attention to German authorities. When another outbreak of tuberculosis began to ravage the camp in spring 1916, the Committee raised the alarm. ‘We regret very much to have to say that the prisoners have no faith in the efficacy of the medical treatment they receive.’ See PAAA, R21255, Indian Independence Committee to Foreign Office, 23 April 1916. 83 TNA, FO 383/390, Treatment of Indian Prisoners at Zossen and Goerlitz, statement of Jemadar Suba Sing Gurung, obtained by Major M. Wylie, 1/4th Gurkha Rifles, 6 March 1918. 84 Ibid, statement of Sergeant J.P. Walsh, 1st Gloucester Regiment, obtained by Major M. Wylie, 1/4th Gurkha Rifles, 6 March 1918.

References Audoin-Rouzeau, Ste´phane and Annette Becker, 14 –18: Understanding the Great War trans. Catherine Temerson (New York, 2002). Basu, Bupendranath, Why India is Heart and Soul with Great Britain (London, 1914). Brighton Corporation, A Short History in English, Gurmukhi and Urdu of the Royal Pavilion Brighton and a Description of it as a Hospital for Indian Soldiers (Brighton, 1915). Corrigan, Cordan, Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front 1914– 1915 (Tonbridge, 1999). Das, Santanu (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge, 2011a). ——— ‘Indians at home, Mesopotamia and France, 1914– 1918: towards an intimate history’, in ibid, 2011b, pp. 70 – 89. Greenhut, Jeffrey, ‘The imperial reserve: the Indian Corps on the Western Front, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History xii/1 (1983), pp. 54 – 73. Ho¨pp, Gerhard, Muslime in der Mark: Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wu¨nsdorf und Zossen, 1914– 1924 (Berlin, 1997). Jack, George Morton, ‘The Indian Army on the Western Front, 1914– 1915: a portrait of collaboration’, War in History xiii/3 (2006), pp. 329– 62. Jones, Heather, ‘A missing paradigm? Military captivity and the prisoner of war, 1914– 18’. Immigrants & Minorities xxvi/1/2 (2008), pp. 19– 48. ——— Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France and Germany, 1914– 1920 (Cambridge, 2011a). ——— ‘Imperial captivities’, in Das (ed.), Race, Empire, 2011b, pp. 175– 93. Keene, Jennifer D. and Michael S. Neiberg (eds), Finding Common Ground: New Directions in First World War Studies (Leiden and Boston MA, 2011).

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Liebau, Heike, Katrin Bromber, Katharina Lange, Dyala Hamzah and Ravi Ahuja (eds), The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia (Leiden and Boston MA, 2010). Mazumder, Rajit K., ‘From loyalty to dissent: Punjabis from the Great War to World War II’, in Roy (ed.), The Indian Army, 2012, pp. 461– 91. Merewether, Lt-Colonel J.W.B. and Lt-Colonel Sir Frederick Smith, The Indian Corps in France (London, 1918). Metcalf, Thomas R., The Aftermath of Revolt: India, 1857– 1870 (Princeton NJ, 1964). Omissi, David, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860– 1940 (Basingstoke, 1994). ——— Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914– 18 (New York, 1999). Roy, Kaushik (ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars (Leiden and Boston MA, Tan, Tai-Yong, ‘An imperial home-front: Punjab and the First World War’, Journal of Military History lxii/2 (2000), pp. 371– 410. Trevelyan, Sir Ernest J., India and the War (London, 1914). Vadgama, Kusoom, India in Britain: The Indian Contribution to the British Way of Life (London, 1984). Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London and Sterling VA, 2002). Willcocks, Sir James, With the Indians in France (London, 1920).

CHAPTER 5 OUT OF NORTH AFRICA: CONTESTED VISIONS OF FRENCH MUSLIM SOLDIERS DURING WORLD WAR I Richard S. Fogarty

‘But you are not a Muslim!’1 This angry and bewildered exclamation from a German officer, confronted with the stubborn refusal to switch sides of a French North African prisoner of war, betrayed the officer’s assumptions about the importance and meaning of Muslim identity. In the German’s mind, and in the minds of many other observers, Islam determined all Muslims’ loyalties and actions in a straightforward way. A North African Muslim, then, would surely see it as his duty to fight not for his colonial masters but on the side of the Central Powers, which included the Ottoman Empire. What is more, the Sultan in Istanbul had declared jihad on 14 November 1914, two weeks after the Ottomans entered the war, noting that the ‘fire of hell’ awaited Muslim subjects of European colonial powers if they did not heed the call to holy war against their colonial masters.2 Thus it was the clear duty of all Muslims to take up arms against the Entente, enemies of the faith, was it not? Of course, religion did play an important role in shaping Muslim soldiers’ thinking and behaviour during the Great War, but the relationship was more

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complex and contingent than common stereotypes and assumptions would suggest. Yet for many observers, particularly military and political officials making policy vis-a`-vis these men, religion was the most important element in determining North Africans’ thinking and behaviour. Caught in the middle in this process of construction, the soldiers tried to work out and articulate their own identities and behave accordingly. This chapter will explore the meaning of religion as a component of the identity of Muslim colonial subjects in French uniform during World War I, in particular the experiences of North African soldiers captured by the Germans. By the time the war was over, some of these men had traced an incredible, if unwilling, journey from North Africa across Europe to Central Asia and the Middle East, before returning home again. After leaving their homes, from August 1914 onwards, these men served on the Western Front in the French Army, defending the metropole as part of the over 500,000 troupes indige`nes (as colonial subjects in uniform were called) deployed in Europe during the war.3 By the spring of 1915, a number of these soldiers were in German custody. Some had deserted, but most were prisoners whom the Germans had captured in battle. Placed in a special camp outside Berlin, these North Africans were the targets of an intense propaganda campaign to convince them that Germany and its allies, rather than France and the Entente, represented the true interests of Islam.4 Muslim soldiers received special treatment, but they also faced intense pressure to take up arms against their colonial masters, to fight ‘for Islam’ and ‘against (French) imperialism’ in the ranks of the Ottoman army. Eventually, in 1916, the Germans formed about 1,000 North Africans into a battalion and sent them to serve the Ottomans in Mesopotamia.5 Many deserted to British lines at the first opportunity, ending up back in the custody of French Army officers after 1917. Historians can follow this larger story, and the individual stories of many of the men, in the archives: information gathered by postal censors, intelligence reports and many other official documents, including transcripts of French Army interrogations of returned soldiers. These records reveal a great deal about France’s engagement

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with the Muslim world during the war, an important chapter in France’s centuries-long efforts to understand and influence that world, and place the French and North African experience in a wider international and historical perspective.6 More importantly, the experiences of these men highlight the ways in which contemporaries constructed the identities of troupes indige`nes in the French Army not merely via notions of race and ethnicity, but via understandings of Islam and how it would help determine the men’s affiliations and actions. Yet this construction was not only something external observers visited upon North Africans. In particular, listening to these soldiers’ stories in their own words can provide glimpses of some of the ways they themselves attempted to define the nature of Muslim identity and their relationship to it. This is true even if the stories reach us filtered through the imperatives and perspectives of French Army interrogators, since the officials undertook the interrogations not to investigate the returned soldiers themselves, but to gather information about other known collaborators and with a view to bringing war crimes charges against the Central Powers (for the French knew most soldiers’ service in the Ottoman army was coerced).7 In the end, these soldiers’ tales of their epic travels and experiences, living and soldiering under several different banners, reveal important aspects of their own understandings of their ethnic, national, imperial and religious identities, as well as the ways Europeans in France and Germany understood these issues. Samuel Hynes has argued that soldiers’ tales, taken collectively as told in memoirs, can help uncover essential truths about the experience of modern combat.8 The argument here is that the stories soldiers tell, and stories others tell about them, in wartime and in the archives can help reveal other important aspects of the modern experience of war. In this instance, such stories illuminate the ways in which soldiers preserved or constructed a sense of self, how they positioned themselves among competing and externally imposed understandings of who they were and what determined their actions. North African prisoners-of-war in German custody engaged, in so far as it was possible under conditions of stress and constraint, in

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self-identification and self-understanding rather than mere identity construction or categorisation by others. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper have encouraged us to abandon the use of the term ‘identity’, which they argue has come to mean both ‘too much’ (in the ‘strong’ sense of reifying, hardening and flattening fixed characteristics and often emphasising sameness within groups and changeless differences between them) and ‘too little’ (in the ‘weak’ sense that emphasises identity as ‘constructed, fluid, and multiple’, and therefore displays an inexact elasticity that renders the concept useless for social analysis).9 Instead, they recommend the use of terms and concepts better able, they argue, to capture the complex processes at work as people decide who they and others are. This is particularly important in social and historical analyses of these complex processes, particularly those that have resulted in ‘the late modern sense of a self being constructed and continuously reconstructed out of a variety of competing discourses – and remaining fragile, fluctuating, and fragmented’.10 This is a fair description of the fraught circumstances that North African Muslims in captivity faced as they encountered new and ever-changing pressures to conform to different understandings of who they were, or who they ought to be. If I have not always found it possible or necessary to dispense entirely with the use of the term ‘identity’ in the constructivist manner Brubaker and Cooper critique, the critique itself and their suggestion of alternative terms are tremendously helpful in untangling and identifying more precisely the past events and mentalities discussed here. ‘Identification’ (‘self-’ and otherwise), ‘categorisation’, ‘self-understanding’ and ‘self-representation’ are all useful not only because they help us avoid the overuse of the term ‘identity’, which in some ways has been drained of much of its meaning through uncritical and promiscuous deployment, but also because they capture more precisely the various ways actors and observers come to decisions about who they are, what they believe and how they will (accordingly) act.11 In short: People everywhere and always have particularities, selfunderstandings, stories, trajectories, histories, predicaments.

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And these inform the sorts of claims they make. To subsume such pervasive particularity under the flat, undifferentiated rubric of ‘identity’, however, does . . . violence to its unruly and multifarious forms.12 Of particular relevance to the history traced here, it is not evident that even ‘softer’, constructivist concepts of ‘identity’ can help us make sense of the ‘sometimes coercive force of external identifications’ with which North African prisoners of war contended, and thus alternative terms can lend greater precision to the analysis of their situation and actions. Without detouring into the vast scholarly literature on identity from sociological, historical, philosophical and other perspectives, it is useful to think of the processes described here in light of Amin Maalouf’s very personal but also very acute observations about identity formation in the modern world.13 He argues that ‘identity’, as many currently construe it, is in fact hazardous as both word and concept. The dangers of contemporary political and religious violence resulting therefrom are clear, but he is also in accord with Brubaker and Cooper in regarding the term as more a hindrance than a help in describing how people do and should really come to selfunderstanding. Their concern is with social analysis, while his is with contemporary political and social effects, but neither party seeks to ignore ‘particularity’, as Brubaker and Cooper put it. Maalouf would welcome their effort to ‘conceive of the claims and possibilities that arise from particular affinities and affiliations, from particular commonalities and connections, from particular stories and selfunderstandings from particular problems and predicaments in a more differentiated manner’.14 A more differentiated understanding of self is precisely what Maalouf advocates, as both more true to the real development of the human self and politically safer in a violent modernity. Identities, he argues, are in fact mosaics made up of many different identifications. Thus a healthier and truer sense of self and others would allow for a multiplicity of allegiances, rather than choosing, for oneself or others, one particular component of the mosaic and privileging it above others.15

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It is significant that Maalouf speaks of ‘allegiances’, since determining where allegiances and loyalties lay was precisely the dilemma that faced North African Muslims, particularly after they became prisoners of war. As he notes, ‘it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances’.16 At every turn, one can see French, German and Ottoman officials engaging in a sort of reductive synecdoche, assuming that ‘Muslim’ could stand for the whole vast array of peoples around the world who embraced Islam, and in knowing that one component of a soldier’s identity, one could safely assume that a host of sympathies, affinities and loyalties followed logically and in an uncomplicated manner. To make matters more complicated, these assumptions were often unexamined stereotypes rather than considered judgements about Islam, North Africa, Muslims, colonial subjects or any of the other pieces in the mosaics of these men’s identities. Thus, of course, the soldiers’ self-identifications did not always or only conform to the expectations of various parties. Just as Maalouf recommends when considering ethnic or religious, particularly Muslim, identity in today’s world, North Africans caught up in World War I responded to the pressures around them by attempting to build, maintain and present their own mosaics of selfunderstanding, in which Islam was a part but in which they would decide what it meant, how big a part it would be, and how exactly that component would relate to the other elements of their personalities. To be sure, then, all three of the main parties in this drama – French officials, German and Ottoman officials, and North African soldiers themselves – considered Islam to be an important factor in the men’s identities. But other factors were significant as well, particularly for the men themselves, and as events unfolded one can observe a shifting sense of who these men were – of what was most important to them in defining their identity – as the politics of nationality, colonialism and war brought different and sometimes conflicting pressures to bear. French officials most often categorised the men as loyal and grateful French colonial subjects, and as Muslims, although these two definitions sometimes conflicted.

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German and Ottoman officials and their collaborators expected, or hoped, that North Africans would be loyal Muslims, therefore antiFrench and anti-colonial in outlook. The men themselves negotiated a path amid these identities, sometimes taking advantage of the various options available to them and of the spaces opened up by different and conflicting expectations. In the end, North Africans reacted to the understandings and categorisations of others, positioning themselves as best they could. But they also recognised that they had to be loyal to themselves and that resisting fixed monolithic identifications was all that would keep them alive and able to return home.

Islam, captivity, and external views of Muslim soldiers French officials felt they had reason to worry about German efforts to undermine the loyalty of their Muslim soldiers as early as October 1914, even before the Ottomans entered the war at the end of that month. By the end of November, the French Foreign Minister warned his colleague at the Ministry of War that the Germans were seeking to send Muslim prisoners of war to Turkey to fight in the Ottoman army.17 As the war went on into the summer of 1915, it was beyond doubt that the Germans were making special efforts to convert North Africans to the cause of the Central Powers, setting up a special camp outside Berlin at Wu¨nsdorf-Zossen, complete with a mosque built at the Kaiser’s expense, Arabic-language interpreters, culturally-appropriate food and diversions, and even opportunities to study the Quran. A former French lieutenant, a native Algerian named Boukabouya Rabah who deserted to the enemy in the spring of 1915, exhorted his comrades to take up the cause of Germany and its Ottoman ally, and thereby to defend the cause of Islam. He spread this message much more widely in a pamphlet, L’Islam dans l’arme´e francaise, published at Constantinople in 1915, then expanded in a second edition in 1917, which included a detailed and laudatory description of life among Muslim prisoners of war in Germany.18 Despite this very public effort to undermine the loyalty of France’s Muslim soldiers, some in France expressed confidence that the men were not liable to be impressed by arguments like Boukabouya’s.

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In a brief response to L’Islam dans l’arme´e francaise designated for broadcast on the radio as part of a counter-propaganda effort, the Ministry of War declared that the easiest way to debunk this ‘tissue of crude and hateful lies’ was to point to the ever-increasing number of voluntary enlistments in North Africa. Here was real evidence of gratitude for France’s more sincere solicitude for its Muslim subjects.19 An article submitted to the censors for the newspaper L’Homme enchaine´ made much the same point about French benevolence toward Muslims and their resulting loyalty, if in a more backhanded way. Far from being fanatical Muslims susceptible to calls for Holy War, or even to special accommodations by the French army for their religious sensibilities, Muslim soldiers were more concerned about regular meals of couscous and cafe´ maure than about religious matters.20 And it was not just in public that French officials and others expressed confidence that Muslim soldiers would remain loyal. The Resident General of Morocco, General Hubert Lyautey, wrote to the metropolitan government in 1916 that Moroccan prisoners in Germany would certainly remain ‘sceptical’ of German efforts to pose as the protectors of Islam.21 Nonetheless, some reactions to news of events at the Wu¨nsdorfZossen camp indicate uneasiness on the part of French officials, and this focused on the prisoners’ identity as Muslims and the potential for unreliability resulting from it. One report on morale among North African soldiers noted that, according to information provided by wounded prisoners who had been repatriated from Germany and those who had managed to escape, ‘nearly all of our Africans remain loyal’. But the report also noted that officials needed to be careful, since it was likely that some among the repatriated wounded had been affected by anti-French propaganda and the Germans had sent them back in order to sow discontent in North Africa.22 French officers formerly imprisoned in Germany also warned officials to watch escaped prisoners carefully, since some might have been ‘turned’ by the Germans and sent back to provoke disloyalty among their fellow soldiers.23 Other imprisoned officers expressed their unease more subtly. In December 1915, two of them noted with satisfaction that German pro-Muslim propaganda efforts were mostly ineffective, which led to a change in tactics from solicitude to

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punishment for the recalcitrant soldiers. This approach was no more effective, but the officers recommended that the French government remind its imprisoned Muslim subjects that it had not forgotten them by having the Spanish Consul visit them to deliver the message and sustain their further resistance.24 The same goal, in addition to a sincere concern for the suffering of these men, no doubt animated the efforts of various organisations to send food and clothing to the prisoners of war. The French Inspecteur Ge´ne´ral des Prisonniers de Guerre made this goal explicit: ‘France has not forgotten its Muslim soldiers in captivity. She knows she can count on their unfailing loyalty. She feels a pious gratitude toward them and deplores only the unmerited sufferings which are the price [of this loyalty].’25 Others expressed more overt doubts about the reliability of Muslim prisoners of war exposed to German appeals to their character and religious sensibilities. One French Army officer working with North African troops as an interpreter wrote in 1917, in response to stories of open defiance of German efforts among the prisoners, that to think that these men wished for the victory of France, especially publicly, one must ‘be ignorant of the mentality of Arabs, who flatter their masters of the moment, or those from whom they hope to gain something’. Moreover, the Germans were clearly exploiting the ‘religious fanaticism’ of the prisoners by building mosques and imposing religious studies in the camps, hoping to arouse ‘a Janissary spirit’.26 One Ministry of Foreign Affairs official wrote that Muslim prisoners were particularly susceptible to being won over, little by little, by certain favours, such as tobacco, cigarettes or special food, and ‘then catechized by the would-be hajis of Mecca who preach holy war’.27 The French consul in Mesopotamia informed the Foreign Ministry that German pan-Islamic propaganda had no political effects, but did have religious resonance. Algerian prisoners of war regarded the Turks as their brothers in religion, he maintained, although they also claimed to remain French subjects. Only harsh treatment at the hands of Ottoman army officers weakened this religious link.28 Clearly, despite a desire to remain confident in the loyalty of North African soldiers because of their presumed gratitude for French tutelage and their willingness to serve and sacrifice for

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their patrie adoptive, many French officials still ultimately feared what they considered to be overriding weaknesses among these colonial subjects. Foremost among these was the alleged ‘religious fanaticism’ inherent in any Muslim’s identity. This led many French officials to suspect, more or less strongly, that true ‘Frenchness’, or even true loyalty to France, was impossible for Muslims.29 If French officials feared North Africans’ Muslim identifications, German and Ottoman officials were counting on them. The propaganda of the Central Powers appealed primarily to the prisoners’ sense of solidarity with their fellow Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, as well as their sympathy for the Ottomans’ allies in the European war.30 The spearhead of this effort was, unsurprisingly, Boukabouya, who had after all thrown over his loyalty to France in favour of the Central Powers. Algerian soldier Amar ben Tahar reported that Boukabouya displayed an Ottoman flag to the prisoners at the Zossen camp repeatedly over two months, saying that it was ‘the Muslim flag’ and that the tirailleurs should abandon the French flag.31 Corporal Saı¨di Sadok remembered Boukabouya demanding that their co-religionists take up the cause ‘of the crescent, which he presented to us as the emblem of Islam, the cause of humanity and justice’.32 Aside from such direct appeals, the German authorities sought to promote sympathy for their cause and for their claim to have the best interests of Islam at heart by treating their prisoners’ religious sensibilities with what might be called extreme solicitude. One report that came into the Ministry of War, apparently from a spy, described the scene at Zossen during Ramadan in 1915: Complete rest all day for the indige`nes. First thing in the morning, marching to music, the indige`nes were led to the camp’s mosque to celebrate the divine service. After the religious ceremony, still accompanied by music, a grand parade took place in the camp, then a light meal was served, and finally inspiring speeches about the unity of all servants of the Crescent were given. In the afternoon various festivities were organised, and to show better the consideration that [the authorities] had for the Arabs, the German guards disappeared for the day.33

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Indeed, from the very beginning, reported the Algerian Mare´chal des Logis Taouti Ben Yahia, German authorities presented the move from a previous camp for Muslim prisoners to Zossen as ‘a measure of respect for Islam’.34 The message was consistent, at least, because very near what was the end of the experience for many of these men, when they were forced into service in the Ottoman army, their new Turkish commander pressured them to accept their new assignment as good Muslims.35 Indeed, many of the North Africans recalled being told often what was expected of a ‘good Muslim’, and their refusal to conform could provoke anger, frustration or even outright denial. Lieutenant Ali ou Rabah explained to his German interrogators that he and other Algerians did not recognise the Sultan in Istanbul as their ‘emperor’ and had antipathies toward the Turks that went back beyond the arrival of the French in Algeria in 1830. In response the German officer declared, ‘You are not a Muslim!’, and thereafter subjected Rabah to harsh treatment in reprisal for his apparent apostasy.36 German and Ottoman appeals did not, however, always focus so exclusively on North Africans’ religious identity, even if this was at all times the subtext of the propaganda. Sometimes the solicitation of disloyalty to France took on a frankly political or even practical aspect. When Ben Yahia noted that the Turkish flag flew over the first camp specifically constructed for Muslim prisoners, it was clear that the flag represented not only a rallying point for Muslims as Muslims, but also expressed the Central Powers’ professed hostility to the oppressive French colonial empire. He noted that the main thrust of some of the propaganda aimed at him and his fellow North Africans was an emphasis on German power and its eventual triumph over French oppression, colonial and otherwise.37 Sergeant Mohammed ben Che´rif told his French interrogators after his repatriation in 1917 that the political message of some of the propaganda could not have been more clear. A camp propagandist noted that Germans did not treat North Africans as inferiors, as the French did, and that the Germans were moreover the friends of the Turks, who were ‘faithful to the law of the Prophet’. A camp propagandist claimed (disingenuously): ‘Germany has already seized

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Morocco, part of Algeria, and will soon be in full possession of all French colonies in Muslim lands.’ Appealing thus to North Africans’ anti-colonial political sensibilities and their practical sense of which way the winds of international power were blowing, he continued: ‘There is thus an immediate interest, and an interest for the post-war, to acquire German sympathies.’38

Self-understandings and choosing loyalties Of course, such comments put the prisoners in a difficult spot. Did their identity as French subjects come first? Or were they above all Muslims? And if they were, did that translate easily into an adherence to the cause of the Ottoman Empire and its European allies? Did a hostility to French colonial rule, whether religiously or politically based, automatically indicate a preference for the Central Powers’ cause? Or would more practical concerns, such as their survival through the war and the future of their homes and families in North Africa, be their overriding concern? And if so, which stance would better guarantee this future security: loyalty to France, or to the Central Powers? Although different soldiers made different choices among these alternatives, many negotiated carefully among them and many refused the stark alternatives presented to them, instead carving out a space in which they themselves could decide what it meant to be a Muslim, a North African, a French soldier and colonial subject, and a prisoner of war. A number of soldiers clearly preferred to remain loyal to France. In what was probably unintended irony, German interrogators labelled those who remained loyal to France ‘young Algerians’ (the worst designation, apparently, among ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘susceptible’).39 Young Algerians was, in fact, the name adopted by a group of politically active and assimilated Algerians who had been demanding greater political rights within the French colonial system. As such, it was perhaps not entirely strange to imagine that Young Algerians would be loyal to a France they merely thought should live up more honestly to its republican and egalitarian principles, but the loyalty of North African soldiers was usually of an entirely different sort.

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Mare´chal des Logis Ben Yahia was a spahi, cavalry recruited primarily among the indigenous elite in Algeria, many of whom had been coopted by French power and support of their social positions rather than promises of republican equality. He clearly had contempt for those who succumbed to German and Ottoman blandishments, reporting that these men served not in the cavalry, but in the infantry (they were tirailleurs, and thus recruited from among the broader Algerian population).40 Lieutenant Ali ou Rabah made an identical observation, adding that the tirailleurs’ treason was unsurprising, since these men were ‘mercenaries, without morality, nor honour, men who for the most part count for nothing in their own communities’.41 Another loyal French colonial subject, Corporal Saı¨di Sadok, deplored the intense efforts of the Germans and their propagandists, like Boukabouya, to ‘pressure their comrades among the prisoners to break the friendly ties which have until now united them with their government, and to take up the cause of their enemies . . .’42 Such propaganda was common, but sometimes totally ineffective. Lieutenant Ali ou Rabah was punished for rejecting his captors’ overtures, and declared that such treatment and the overall experience of captivity had only increased his hostility to the enemy: ‘I have taken away from my 13 months of captivity an inextinguishable hatred toward the Germans and the Turks.’43 Punishment was apparently a common occurrence. When 100 men asked to be moved from the camp for Muslims so they could be with their French comrades, they were instead jailed for six days.44 Camp officials punished another North African prisoner for cutting the head off of an image of the Kaiser, committing a crime of lese-majesty. One French officer was gratified to hear of this patriotic act, worthy of a true Frenchman, exclaiming, ‘But what a most noble act of loyalty to our cause!’45 There were, however, less gratifying indications that some prisoners appreciated the enemy’s solicitude for their religious sensibilities. French postal censors reported that Chahiri Kaddour ben Laredj wrote home from Zossen: We have a great deal to eat and drink. In addition, the German government is very good to us. I must tell you that they have

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built mosques for us, with minarets to call the faithful to prayer and [schools] for reading the Quran. They have distributed books on Islamic law and religion. We do not work, and we are not exposed to the sun like others [presumably, non-Muslim French prisoners]. They have given us splendid clothing. As for our brothers the Turks, they come to visit us on Fridays; they have the friendliest of intentions toward us.46 It was perhaps the same soldier (named in this report as ‘Chahiri Kaddeur’) who wrote six months later: Here under this powerful government, we lack for nothing. We have soap for washing, tobacco for smoking, each day we are given jam, clean linen; three times per month we take a bath. They have built mosques for us where we can pray, study the Quran and read. Since we became prisoners, we have not had to work.47 No less troubling for French officials was Sergeant Laebi Ali’s letter from Zossen, which declared We thank the Germans who have done everything possible to make our captivity comfortable; as proof I send along with my portrait a postcard showing the mosque built for us to permit us to pray and observe all that is required by our Muslim religion.48 And Lagich Amar also seemed to find German captivity agreeable: ‘I don’t work. Our guards couldn’t be nicer. I don’t work, I do nothing . . .’ 49 Clearly, some men responded favourably to such gentle treatment and to appeals to their religious identity. But as a North African writer pointed out in the newspaper L’Oeuvre (in an article that, remarkably, made it past the censors despite its inflammatory criticism of France’s policy toward its Muslim colonial subjects), Muslims knew very well to beware of ‘the false friends of Islam’, whether French or not.50 One Tunisian soldier could not have been clearer on the issue when he referred to the effects of French artillery

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on ‘the enemies of Allah’.51 In fact, the response of prisoners in Germany revealed that many of them did not trust the motives of any of the belligerent powers posing as the protectors and friends of Islam. Rejecting the arguments of those, like Boukabouya, who wanted to define the duties of a ‘good Muslim’, the prisoners defended their right to decide for themselves how they would best remain true to the tenets of their faith. El Achemi ou Rabah, the great nephew of fellow prisoner Lieutenant Ali ou Rabah, was asked by his Turkish interrogators if he wanted to fight in a holy war against ‘the infidels’. The young soldier responded by asking the Turk, ‘Who are the infidels, for you?’, to which the Turk responded, ‘The English, the Russians, the French.’ To this, the soldier said ‘The French are not infidels for me . . . I am French’, at which point the Turk became furious, chasing him from the room and calling him names.52 Ultimately, though, the best proof that the prisoners rejected arguments aimed at their religious sensibilities was their clear refusal to join the ranks of the Ottoman army. The soldiers’ testimony on this point is clear, and captured German documents verified their claims that those who had travelled to Mesopotamia and deserted to the British had been forced to join the Ottoman army.53 As the Tunisian solider Ahmed ben Younes told his captors after being caught trying to desert from the Ottoman army, the French had not forced him to serve, so he did not want to be forced to serve the Turks.54 Sometimes appeals to religious solidarity or anti-French feelings failed on more practical grounds. Sergeant Mohamed ben Che´rif stymied Boukabouya’s attempts to win him over to the cause of Islam by revealing that he was a Catholic. French interrogators noted that he was indeed ‘really Catholic’, having married a Frenchwoman who was of that faith. He was also literate, signing his statement himself, and thus an assimilated colonial subject unlikely to respond favourably to German propaganda.55 It is clear, however, that some prisoners made more instrumental use of their identities as French colonial subjects: self-representation with very calculated goals. Wounded men repatriated from German camps reported that Arabs speaking French tried to pass for naturalised Frenchmen, and others who did not speak French well claimed they were Catholics. French officers were proud of

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men like Corporal Taibai, who told his captors: ‘I am French and want to remain as such, and if you Germans want to make me happy, send me home.’ But it was probably the more practical, but still appropriately loyal, response that meant most to the prisoners: ‘I have children in Algeria, where I also have my property.’56 Indeed, it is not surprising that such practical and personal considerations predominated in the calculations of many of the prisoners. Assaulted from all sides with demands that they conform to an assigned identity, they negotiated a path that would ensure the most important factor in ensuring their own sense of self, and a great deal else, remained intact: their survival. Soldier Ali Ben Djebba Ferah claimed: ‘If anyone agreed to serve in the Turkish army of their own free will, it was only to escape maltreatment, or with the idea that it would be easier to flee the Turkish ranks than the camp at Zossen.’57 A French officer agreed, stating that his questioning of many of these men led him to conclude that it was not religious diatribes, anti-French propaganda or even hunger that led men to accept their transfer to the Ottoman army. Their desire to escape Germany for the greater opportunities to flee in Anatolia and the Middle East was decisive.58 Still, even more mundane opportunities presented themselves, but they were just as important for preserving the prisoners from further suffering. One was the opportunity to take German-language courses at the camp, of which many men apparently availed themselves in order to take advantage of the resulting two-hour reduction in work and exercise each day.59 In fact, it is likely that the difficulties of life in captivity dulled the effectiveness of German blandishments. Although some men wrote home describing the comforts of life in captivity, Madjoubi Mohammed wrote that after nine months as a prisoner of war, he would be glad to leave Germany because of the hunger: ‘We have almost nothing to eat; for nourishment we have barley, corn and fish eyes; as for meat, it is rare; the black bread is not edible . . .’60 And the prisoners felt the shortages that were plaguing Germany in general as the war dragged on – as the food quality and quantity declined and meat disappeared, one group of hungry prisoners even attacked a bread wagon.61

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These kinds of considerations, however, could also be connected to larger concerns that were equally practical, but political and religious in nature. Mare´chal des Logis Ben Yahia described the reaction of a group of men during a propaganda meeting with an Egyptian in the pay of the Germans. Many of these men held administrative or judicial posts under the French and had taken an oath of loyalty to that government ‘which protects our property and our families’. It was no accident that this loyalty to France was predicated upon very pragmatic concerns about homes, families and futures. The men also told the Egyptian spokesman: You would like to speak to us of religion but you know as well as we do that questions of nationality come before questions of religion, and that before being disciples of Muhammad we are and will remain above all French.62 Whatever their true feelings about the matter, these men made use of the idea that their national identity as French subjects outweighed their religious identity as Muslims, and represented themselves accordingly to their captors. That these men were keen to present this in a way that would please their French superiors, upon whom their futures were likely to depend, is clear: 16 North African noncommissioned officers present at the meeting gave a signed statement about it to Major Fromant, a doctor interned with them. Presumably, they hoped he would report favourably upon their honourable behaviour while in captivity.63 Finally, not all rejections of German and Ottoman enticements were based upon such calculated goals. Some prisoners clearly believed that German and Ottoman appeals to religious solidarity failed on their own merits (or lack thereof ). Ben Yahia professed not to be impressed by the accommodations made at Zossen for religious observances: the ceremony for prayers was insufficient, ‘no religious rule is observed’ and the service often took place outdoors because the mosque was too small. The ceremony contained no ablutions and authorities allowed worshippers to wear their shoes during prayers. The real goal of these prayers was all too apparent: not to observe religion but simply ‘to gather us together to try to take advantage of our real

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[religious] sentiments’. Surrounded by German guards, services were compulsory, camp officials going so far as to go into the barracks to gather those ‘who found these shams repugnant and who refused to pray in such pathetic conditions’.64 Ben Yahia was not the only prisoner who was unimpressed by German efforts to accommodate Muslim observances. French censors noted in November 1916 that several North Africans wrote home from Germany asking their families to send them oil and mutton fat. They could not write openly of such matters, the censors surmised, but veiled phrases such as ‘he who can understand, should understand’ indicated that the Germans were probably feeding them pork fat, forbidden to observant Muslims.65 Moroccan soldier Aiyesh ibn Mohammed put it most simply when he denied that French Muslims were serving in the Ottoman army of their own free will. They deserted en masse at the first opportunity, and he found it ‘ridiculous’ to suppose that they would serve the Turks for religious reasons. This clearly impressed the British officer who interrogated him after his escape in Mesopotamia (the officer also admired the soldier’s intelligence and physical abilities, despite his wounds and the three bullets still in his body), and no doubt reassured French authorities as well.66

Conclusion Aiyesh’s declaration is not notable only for the way it provided officials with reassuring evidence of Muslim North Africans’ continued loyalty to the Entente cause. His words also reveal his own and other Muslims’ determination to retain an independent ability to decide for themselves what their religious identity meant, and how it would inform their choices, their actions and their future. North Africans ran great risks no matter what choices they made. They could not know who would win the war, and so which nation was the better bet for their own and their families’ future. In the end, these men would not allow their captors to tell them how their religious or political loyalties should guide them: they decided for themselves, resisting categorisation by others, often refusing to comply with what their captors defined as appropriate behaviour for Muslims. Instead, they disputed the claims of propaganda aimed at them, declined to serve in

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the Ottoman army willingly, and escaped when they could. They engaged in a process of self-understanding and self-identification, constructing their own sense of themselves, articulating that sense and making choices that best suited it as they faced a disastrous war and epic travels through foreign and often hostile lands. These dangerous adventures forced North African prisoners of war to make difficult and explicit choices about their loyalties, and thus led them to articulate, more clearly than they might have done otherwise, what made them distinct and different amid the pressure to conform and the clamour around them. The experiences of these soldiers, then, help us understand the fluid process of what Brubaker and Cooper call ‘identification’ in action. Crucially, this ‘processual, active term’ captures both ‘self-identification and identification and categorisation . . . by others’.67 Here, even individuals with seemingly reduced agency – subjects under colonial domination, soldiers subject to discipline, and prisoners subject to constraint – could still try to compose their own mosaic of identity, their own complex selfunderstandings. They did not do so in circumstances of their own choosing, but in so far as they could, they decided, articulated, and acted on their own notions of what being a Muslim meant for them in a war in which the belligerent powers tried to politicise and instrumentalise Islam and soldiers’ adherence to it.

Notes 1 Service Historique de l’Arme´e de Terre (henceforth SHAT) 7N2107: Gendarmerie de Bougie (Alge´rie), Rapport du Lt. Baulard, 11 juin 1916. This chapter is a revised, English version of “L’identite´ en question: l’Islam et les soldats nord-africains pendant la Grande Guerre,” Migrances 38 (2011), 37–52. I am grateful to the editors of Migrances for permission to publish this version here. 2 Quotation from the Sultan’s fatwa, in Strachan 2001, 703. 3 See Fogarty 2008. North Africans, especially from Algeria, constituted slightly more than half these soldiers. See also Meynier 1981. 4 There were also other Muslim, even colonial, prisoners in this and another nearby camp, taken from the Entente armies of Russia and Great Britain. For more general overviews of the camp, focused in particular on German perspectives, see Ho¨pp 1997; Khaleyss 1998; Jones 2011; Lange 2008. 5 On the formation of this battalion, see Ho¨pp 1997, 82ff. French officials were aware from an early date of these activities, and had more of less pieced together

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6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

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the entire story even by the time they captured German documents that indicated the unwilling nature of North Africans’ service in the Ottoman army. See Archives du Ministe`re des Affaires E´trange`res (henceforth AMAE) G1667: Mission Militaire Francaise en Egypte, Note no. 63: ‘Les prisonniers musulmans francais a` Zossen et a` Constantinople (d’apre`s le tirailleur marocain Aiyesch Ben Mohamed et le journal de campagne du Lieutenant Allemand Grobba)’, Lt. Doynel de Saint Quentin, 13 aouˆt 1916. Among the many works on the larger historical context of French relations with the Muslim world and Islam, see especially Watson 2003; Cole 2007; Coller 2011; Ageron 1968; Davidson 2012; Trumbull 2009; Le Pautremat 2003; Scott 2008; Amselle 2003; MacMaster 1997; Shepard 2006; Burke III 2008. See AMAE G1667: Mission Militaire Francaise en Egypte, Note no. 63: ‘Les prisonniers musulmans francais a` Zossen et a` Constantinople’. For the context of the French interrogations later in the war and after 1918, particularly the interest in investigating these events as war crimes, see the documents in SHAT 7N 2189. Hynes 1997. Brubaker and Cooper 2000, 1, 10 – 12. Ibid., 9. For Brubaker and Cooper’s arguments for the use of these terms, see ibid., 14 – 21. Ibid., 34. The 2003 English translation of Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf’s In the Name of Identity gained, predictably, a great deal of attention in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. But the book first appeared in France as Identite´s meurtrie`res in 1996, and is a more ambitious attempt to understand identities and even violence than many of the books that appeared after 2001. For useful overviews of scholarly perspectives on identity, see Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Jenkins 2008; Lawler 2008. Bubaker and Cooper 2000, 36. See in particular ch. 1, ‘My Identity, My Allegiances,’ in Maalouf 2003, 7 – 43. Ibid., 22. SHAT 7N2103: MAE to MG, Envoi en Turquie soldats musulmans prisonniers par les Allemands, 27 novembre 1914. El Hadj Abdallah [Boukabouya’s pseudonym] 1915; 1917. SHAT 7N 2104: SA to MA, Projet de Communique´ Radio-Telegraphique, re´ponant au Radio de propagande allemand, date´ de Nauen, 12 avril 23 h, 11 septembre 1916. SHAT 7N2104: L’Homme enchaine´, ‘Libe´ralisme sure´rogatoire’, article presented to the censor, 1 July 1916. SHAT 7N2104: GGA Lutaud to PC/MAE, A.s. d’une brochure allemande intitule´: ‘L’Islam dans l’Arme´e francaise, guerre 1914– 1915’, 7 mars 1916. SHAT 7N2103: MAE to MG, AS de soldats indige`nes prisonniers en Allemagne, 26 juillet 1915. Ibid.

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24 SHAT 7N2103: Rapport du Lieutenant de re´serve Fabregoul sur la situation faite aux Arabes prisonniers de guerre en Allemagne, 6 de´cembre 1915. 25 SHAT 2104: Insp. Gen des Prisonniers de Guerre to SA, AS du sort des prisonniers musulmans en Allemagne, 6 novembre 1916. 26 SHAT 2104: Gouvernement Militaire de Lyon et 14e region, Rapport de L’Officier Interpre`te Auger, Chef du Bureau des Affaires Indige`nes de la 14e region, 30 octobre 1917. 27 Ibid. 28 AMAE G1669: Consulat de France en Mesopotamie to MAE. AS des Soldats musulmans francais incorpore´s dans l’arme´e turque, 25 mars 1918. 29 For the development of these kinds of ideas in the colonial context itself and among colonial officials, see Trumbull 2009. 30 For the broader context of German efforts to exploit its alliance with the Ottomans for propaganda purposes in the Muslim world, see Lu¨dke 2005; McMeekin 2010. 31 SHAT 7N2107: Conseil de Guerre Permanent de la Div Territorial d’Alger, Proce`s-Verbal d’Information, 6 de´cembre 1916. 32 SHAT 7N2104: Rapport du Caporal ‘Saı¨di’ Sadok, du 1er Rgt de marche de Tirailleurs (1er btn, 2e cie, 45e div) Apre`s un se´jour en Allemagne du 27 mai 1916 au 1er de´cembre 1916. 33 Ibid. 34 AMAE G1669: Lettre de Taouti Ben Yahia a` Laghouat, Alge´rie, Mare´chal des Logis de Spahis Aux. a` E´douard Montet, Professeur a` l’Universite´ de Gene`ve, 24 janvier 1918. 35 SHAT 7N2107: Conseil de Guerre Permanent de la Div Territorial d’Alger, Proce`s-Verbal d’Information, 7 de´cembre 1916. 36 SHAT 7N2107: Gendarmerie de Bougie (Alge´rie), Rapport du Lt. Baulard, 11 June 1916. 37 AMAE G 1669: Lettre de Taouti Ben Yahia. 38 SHAT 7N2104: Extraits des interrogatoires des PG Francais interne´s en Suisse et rapatrie´s le 20 de´cembre 1917. 39 AMAE G1669: Lettre de Taouti Ben Yahia. 40 Ibid. 41 SHAT 7N2107: Rapport du Lt. Baulard, 11 June 1916. 42 SHAT 7N2104: Rapport du Caporal ‘Saı¨di’ Sadok. 43 SHAT 7N2107: Rapport du Lt. Baulard, 11 June 1916. 44 SHAT 7N2104: Note de l’Insp. Gen des Prisonniers de Guerre a` SA, AS du sort des prisoniers musulmans en Allemagne, 6 novembre 1916. 45 SHAT 7N2104: Gouvernement Militaire de Lyon et 14e Re´gion, Rapport de l’officier interpre`te Auger, 20 juillet 1915. 46 SHAT 7N2103: MG-Bur. de Renseignements aux Familles to SA, lettre de tirailleur Chahiri Kaddour ben Laredj, 1er rgt tir., prisonnier des Allemands a` Zossen-Halbmondlager, 14 de´cembre 1915.

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47 SHAT 7N1001: Rapport sur les prisonniers de guerre francais interne´s en allemagne, juin 1916. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 SHAT 7N2104: ‘Les faux amis de l’Islam’, L’Oeuvre, 25 January 1916. 51 SHAT 7N2103: ‘Nos Troupes d’Afrique et l’Allemagne’, Tabit Mostapha Ould Kaddour, Impressions et chant de guerre, sans date. 52 SHAT 7N2107: Rapport du Lt. Baulard, 11 juin 1916. 53 AMAE G1667: Mission Militaire Francaise en Egypte, Note no. 63: Les prisonniers musulmans francais a` Zossen et a` Constantinople, Lt. Doynel de Saint Quentin, 13 aouˆt 1916. 54 SHAT 7N2107: Conseil de Guerre Permanent de la Div Territorial d’Alger, Proce`s-Verbal d’Information, 7 de´cembre 1916. 55 SHAT 7N2104: Extraits des interrogatoires . . . 20 de´cembre 1917. 56 SHAT 7N2104: Rapport de l’officier interpre`te Auger, 20 juillet 1915. 57 SHAT 7N2189: Conseil de Guerre Permanent, Algers, 9 octobre 1917. 58 AMAE G1669: Note 78, Capt. Doynel de Saint-Quentin, 23 septembre 1917. 59 AMAE G 1669: Lettre de Taouti Ben Yahia. 60 SHAT 7N1001: Rapport sur les prisonniers de guerre francais interne´s en allemagne, sans date [1916?]. 61 AMAE G 1669: Lettre de Taouti Ben Yahia. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 SHAT 7N1001: Rapport sur les operations de la commission militaire de controˆle postal de Tunis, novembre 1916. 66 AMAE G1667: Mission Militaire en Egypte, Note no. 60, 19 juillet 1916. 67 Brubaker and Cooper, 14 – 15.

References Ageron, Charles-Robert, Les Alge´riens musulmans et la France, 1871–1919 (Paris, 1968). Amselle, Jean-Loup, Affirmative Exclusion: Cultural Pluralism and the Rule of Custom in France (Ithaca NY, 2003). Brubaker, Rogers and Frederick Cooper, ‘Beyond “identity”’, Theory and Society xxix/1 (2000), pp. 1 – 47. Burke III, Edmund, ‘The Sociology of Islam: The French Tradition’, in Burke III, Edmund and David Prochaska, (eds.), Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics (Lincoln NE, 2008). Cole, Juan, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York, 2007). Coller, Ian, Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798– 1831 (Berkeley CA, 2011). Davidson, Naomi, Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France (Ithaca NY, 2012).

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El Hadj Abdallah, Lieutenant, L’Islam dans l’arme´e francaise (Guerre de 1914– 1915) (Constantinople, 1915; 2nd edn, Lausanne, 1917). Fogarty, Richard S., Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914– 1918 (Baltimore MD, 2008). Ho¨pp, Gerhard, Muslime in der Mark: als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wu¨nsdorf und Zossen, 1914– 1924 (Berlin, 1997). Hynes, Samuel, The Soldiers’ Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (New York, 1997). Jenkins, Richard, Social Identity (3rd edn, New York, 2008). Jones, Heather, ‘Imperial captivities: colonial prisoners of war in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914– 1918’, in Das, Santanu (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 175– 93. Khaleyss, Margot, Muslime in Brandenburg: Kriegsgefangene im 1. Weltkrieg: Ansichten und Absichten (Berlin, 1998). Lawler, Stephanie, Identity: Sociological Perspectives (Cambridge, 2008). Lange, Britta, ‘Academic research on (coloured) prisoners of war in Germany, 1915– 1919’, in Dendooven, Dominiek and Piet Chielens (eds), World War I: Five Continents in Flanders (Tielt, 2008), pp. 153– 9. Le Pautremat, Pascal, La politique musulmane de la France au xxe sie`cle. De l’Hexagone aux terres d’Islam. Espoirs, re´ussites, e´checs (Paris, 2003). Lu¨dke, Tilman, Jihad Made In Germany: Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War (New Brunswick NJ, 2005). Maalouf, Amin, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (New York, 2003; Identite´s meurtrie`res, Paris, 1996). MacMaster, Neil, Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900– 62 (New York, 1997). McMeekin, Sean, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (Cambridge MA, 2010). Meynier, Gilbert, L’Alge´rie re´ve´le´e: la guerre de 1914– 1918 et le premier quart du XXe sie`cle (Geneva, 1981). Scott, Joan Wallach, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, 2008). Shepard, Todd, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, 2006). Strachan, Hew, The First World War: Vol. I, To Arms (Oxford, 2001). Trumbull IV, George R., An Empire of Facts: Colonial Power, Cultural Knowledge, and Islam in Algeria, 1870– 1914 (Cambridge, 2009). Watson, William E., Tricolor and Crescent: France and the Islamic World (Westport CT, 2003).

CHAPTER 6 `

THE FULL AND JUST PENALTY'? BRITISH MILITARY JUSTICE AND THE EMPIRE'S WAR IN EGYPT AND PALESTINE Julian Saltman

On a July night, a fight broke out at a British Army compound near the banks of the Suez Canal in Egypt. It was 1917 and World War I raged across the globe, engulfing millions of men and women in a cataclysmic struggle that had swept across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. That July night, however, at a military punishment facility near the Egyptian Expeditionary Force’s base at Kantara, the conflict was not between the British and the Germans, Austrians or Turks, but inside the British Army itself. Responding to a captain’s order to quell a loud, but non-violent, commotion, several military policemen found themselves fighting three soldiers from the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), each of them sentenced to year-long prison sentences the day before. Suddenly, one of the West Indians struck a policeman, hit him with a plank of wood, and produced a razor with which he slashed another, causing a serious stomach wound.1 Eventually, the fight was quelled, and its apparent instigators court-martialled several days later. The knife-wielding soldier, a

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Jamaican private named Hubert Clarke, was found guilty of striking a superior officer. Fifteen days after the fracas, he was taken to an abandoned rifle range and positioned against a mud wall. Stripped to his shorts and blindfolded, he was then shot by several nervous British soldiers, aiming for the star of plaster-tape marking his heart. He was the first member of the British Army to be executed during the campaign for Palestine.2 Clarke was one of the 346 British soldiers executed by their own army, the unlucky fraction of the more than 3,000 men sentenced to death by military courts-martial during World War I.3 Those who were executed, particularly the 278 British Army soldiers shot on the Western Front, have attracted a great deal of historical attention in recent decades. Many of those brought before firing squads on charges of desertion or cowardice suffered from deep psychological wounds, particularly shell-shock, and were probably medically unfit to stand trial. Long hidden from historical conversation, initial work by William Moore led to the first archival examination of the topic by Judge Anthony Babington in 1983, as well as subsequent works by Julian Putkowski, Julian Sykes and later, Gerard Oram, all of which opened an important window into the murky history of Britain’s military-justice system during World War I.4 Their efforts helped provoke a national debate in Britain over the legacy of capital trials, resulting in a 2006 blanket pardon by the Ministry of Defence for all those executed for military offences during World War I. Decades after his burial at the Kantara War Memorial Cemetery, Private Clarke was pardoned, a public recognition that the system that had administered his execution was deeply flawed.5 Despite renewed focus on British capital trials during World War I, only a small amount of scholarship exists on the system of military justice responsible – a variety of courts-martial that resulted in slightly over 300,000 trials from 1914 to 1920, nearly half of which took place outside the British Isles.6 Recently, several broader studies of military discipline have emerged, but all have been heavily focused on the Western Front and mostly on British soldiers.7 In comparison, historians know little about military justice in other theatres – particularly the Middle East, which was full of colonial and Dominion

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soldiers subject to the Army Act of 1914 and the same justice processes as British servicemen. Understanding military justice in the Middle East, particularly during the campaign for Ottoman Palestine, provides a fuller picture of Britain’s empire at war and provides added contextualisation for understanding the various political, social, economic and cultural hierarchies that were so critical in governing the lives of thousands of imperial and colonial soldiers during and after the conflict. This chapter uses a broad examination of the courts-martial of several different imperial groups to serve as an introduction to comparative work in military justice, with the hope of opening new dialogue between military, legal and empire historians of the early twentieth century. Several important points emerge from this investigation. First, many Empire soldiers, but particularly those considered ‘not of pure European descent’, acquired reputations for insubordination that were partially the result of perception and entrenched racial beliefs and not necessarily rooted in any real propensity to indiscipline.8 Second, just as on the Western Front, courts-martial in Egypt and Palestine were overtly punitive and exemplary, often reflecting nineteenth-century norms of military discipline, despite the abolition of flogging and public execution. Third, however, formal or informal checks on the punitive nature of the system existed. In some imperial or colonial units, commanding officers subverted the disciplinary system by exercising powers of summary punishment (comparatively milder than a court-martial sentence) for offences that could have required a court-martial. More importantly, a prescribed system of legal review existed inside the justice system throughout the war, and frequently corrected procedural abuses or overly harsh sentences, even for colonial soldiers in the British Army. Determining the full extent of the British military justice system in Palestine is difficult to do with total precision – too many records were incorrectly transcribed or simply lost. Many went missing during the war itself and others, including the individual conduct sheets of some Empire soldiers in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), were destroyed by fires during Luftwaffe raids in 1940. Other records, such as those of executed Indian Army soldiers, appear to be

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missing or incomplete, and most full case-files for court-martialled British Army soldiers concern only those who had a death sentence confirmed.9 The majority of the quantitative figures in this chapter, therefore, are culled from several dozen of the registers of the British Army’s Judge Advocate-Generals, which recorded each courtmartial.10 These sparse, unindexed records are supplemented by figures established by other historians, as well as the surviving case files of West Indian and Australian soldiers, in order to offer a fuller comparative picture. The West Indian encounter with military justice in Palestine is the dominant theme of this chapter, although it is firmly ensconced within a comparative framework that considers the disciplining of Australians, Egyptians and New Zealanders in Palestine, African conscripts in East Africa and Irishmen in France. Several thousand men from the Caribbean formed the three battalions of the BWIR stationed in Egypt and Palestine from early 1916 until 1919. Composed almost entirely of black and ‘coloured’ volunteers, these units – the 1st, 2nd, and 5th (Reserve) battalions – were part of the official British Army, considered active service troops and were the only West Indian units to serve for the entire Palestine campaign. Two other battalions, the 3rd and 4th, briefly served in Egypt in 1916 before being sent to France to work as artillery support troops; six other BWIR battalions would join them in Europe, several of which were forced into labour duties in Italy.11 Officially differentiated by the British Cabinet from African recruits, the BWIR in Palestine was a well-trained force that took part in fighting near Gaza and in the Jordan Valley, frequently in coordination with other EEF forces, and received public commendation for bravery on several occasions.12 Yet its racial composition meant that its men also faced prejudice and formal obstacles to pay bonuses and commissions, which they had to fight to overcome. In many ways, these battalions occupied a middle ground throughout the war – a volunteer combat force aiding Britain’s struggle, but one whose racial background often prompted discrimination. By examining the BWIR experience with military justice, this chapter is able to reveal new ways in which the British Empire’s various racial hierarchies functioned, offering a

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bridge between past examinations of white British soldiers or of black African conscripts. The history of this grey area in the British Empire is undoubtedly best understood through the prism of the British campaign in the Sinai and Palestine, the most imperial, in function and goal, of all of Britain’s World War I battlefields. The British campaign for the Sinai and Palestine began in earnest as the assault at Gallipoli concluded in early 1916 and became a significant offensive action with the Battle of El Romani in August 1916. Over the following two years, the British would cross the Sinai Peninsula, capture Gaza (at the third attempt), take Jerusalem – as a Christmas present for David Lloyd George – and in September 1918 shatter the Ottoman armies on the coastal plain near Megiddo, entering Damascus on 1 October.13 The EEF responsible for this success was the most globally diverse of the British expeditionary forces, drawing men from across the British Empire. This imperial assortment was the result of the British High Command’s broader policy of ‘substitution’ and ‘dilution’, processes by which white, British soldiers were removed from secondary theatres and transferred to the main struggle on the Western Front. The result in Palestine was a dramatically transformed force, one that by 1918 featured only one entirely British division out of 11, the rest a me´lange of Australians, Burmese, Canadians, Egyptians, French Algerians, Hashemite Arabs, Indians, Italians, Jews, New Zealanders (including Rarotongans), South Africans and West Indians.14 The spectrum of imperial personnel in Palestine was broader than other theatres such as Mesopotamia, where most of the non-British soldiers were Indian (subject to Indian Army rules and justice), or Africa, where most ‘non-white’ troops were subject to explicit racism and violent extrajudicial punishment.15 It is in Palestine, therefore, that historians can trace how military laws written for white, British soldiers were applied to a wide range of colonial and imperial recruits. During World War I, the British Army officially maintained four types of courts-martial, but most soldiers outside England faced a Field General Court Martial (FGCM), the least formal or substantial of any trial. Authorised by the Army Act of 1914 to expedite legal proceedings while ‘in the field’, the field court-martial could still

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impose a full range of penalties, including execution, and dominated legal proceedings in Egypt and Palestine. It usually consisted of three officers, one of whom chaired the proceedings as president and held the rank of captain or higher (although the Army preferred the chair to be at least a major).16 The adjutant or another officer from the accused’s battalion acted as prosecutor and a soldier charged could request the aid of a ‘prisoner’s friend’ for their defence – generally a junior officer from within the battalion. Field trials were often uneven affairs – the majority of officers involved lacked legal training and there were occasions in Egypt and Palestine when the defending officer outranked the prosecutor, sometimes by a considerable margin.17 The field trials of Australian soldiers required three Australian officers, unlike those of other EEF soldiers, who might have judges drawn from several different units. However, it was not uncommon in Palestine for one of the three presiding officers, although usually not the president, to come from either the accused’s battalion or a sister unit. While this was usually the result of necessity and limited forces in a given area, the level of familiarity between judge, prosecution and defence could be of particular importance for soldiers from Empire units, which often maintained a cohesive, self-contained identity that depended on paternalistic officer-soldier relationships. A field court-martial could award any sentence within the Military Manual of Law, but it could only issue a death sentence if the decision was unanimous. After sentencing, the district’s commanding officer had to endorse the punishment, and the Commander in Chief had to confirm any death sentence.18 In addition, a deputy judge advocategeneral (DJAG), who had the power to lessen, commute or quash a conviction, reviewed the proceedings for any legal irregularities. Australians, although they could receive a death sentence, could not actually be executed unless convicted of mutiny, desertion to the enemy or treason, under the terms of the Commonwealth Defence Act of 1903. Even then, the death sentence required the confirmation of the Governor-General, a near impossibility given the previous public outcry over the British execution of the Australian, Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant, during the Second Boer War. As a result, no

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Australians were executed during the war, despite the issuing of 121 death sentences and various attempts by senior British generals to overturn or amend the Act.19 Australians were alone in this exception – all other Dominion and colonial forces under the British command lacked this layer of legal protection. The actual court-martial occurred in two distinct phases – the first to determine the soldier’s guilt or innocence, and then, if the former, a period before sentencing to hear evidence related to the soldier’s character. During the trial, both prosecution and defence could call and cross-examine witnesses or enter earlier depositions into the official record, and a medical officer attested, often via a paper form, that the accused was medically fit to undergo imprisonment with hard labour.20 Afterwards, the presiding officers deliberated and reached a verdict. Bizarrely, only a not guilty verdict could be disclosed at the conclusion of this first phase; guilty verdicts were not actually announced aloud. If the court found the soldier guilty, the trial simply reconvened and the judges asked for character evidence, a process that surely confused many accused soldiers. After hearing character testimony, the court issued a sentence, which was subject to review and confirmation. Since the review process took time and often modified soldiers’ sentences, it could be days before a convicted soldier knew his final punishment. Private Clarke, for example, had been court-martialed on 7 August, but did not know his sentence was confirmed until 9 August at the earliest. Many delays were longer – one private waited eight days for confirmation of his death sentence – and must have been traumatic for soldiers who knew of their conviction, but were unsure of their sentence. EEF soldiers could face court-martial for a wide variety of infractions, many of which overlapped in scope. A soldier who had physically threatened an officer might be charged not only with insubordination, but also with disobedience or violence towards a superior. Other charges, like drunkenness, frequently appear alongside charges of illegal absence, disobedience or violence.21 Charges of violating section 40, a clause allowing prosecution for ‘conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline’, could be added to most formal charges, and was often employed if the soldier’s actions

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had not merited a ‘real’ charge. As the table (6.1) of charges and courts-martial brought against soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment demonstrates, a substantial number of trials featured multiple charges. The most striking theme in the table, however, is the number of cases brought on charges of contravening authority. BWIR soldiers were charged with disobedience, insubordination, violence to a superior officer, or a related ‘misc.’ charge, on 119 occasions – almost 40 per cent of the total charges brought. If the catch-all charge of section 40, which was often applied to cases related to military authority, is included, the percentage increases to nearly 60 per cent.25 These percentages are significantly higher than in the other units for which comparative information exists. Charges brought against New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) soldiers in Egypt and Palestine generally consisted of drunkenness or minor AWOL violations, with some serious charges like rape (three cases), and ‘a number for theft and violence against civilians’.26 When expanded to include the NZEF in France, just under 17 per cent of the charges were authority-related.27 Although the NZEF had over five times more men in Palestine than the West Indian battalions, there was nowhere near the number of authority-related charges brought against its soldiers.28 Over a similar period, and in the wake of the 1916 Easter rebellion, Irish soldiers in France only faced court martial for disobedience 6 per cent of the time, insubordination 2.6 per cent or violence to a superior officer 0.04 per cent of the time.29 The frequency of authority-related charges could mean that the BWIR volunteers had difficulty adapting to life in the army, but it is more likely that it indicates British officers’ ready perception of indiscipline or a challenge to their authority from a West Indian. The BWIR’s status as a regular, volunteer unit of the British Army, not a colonial unit, meant that when faced with prejudice or abuse from officers outside their regiment, West Indian soldiers may have responded by invoking their rights as British soldiers, which a prejudiced officer would immediately view as insubordinate behaviour.30 Interestingly, no member of the BWIR faced charges of mutiny in Palestine, although seven members of the 1st battalion

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Table 6.1 Charges brought against BWIR soldiers in Egypt and Palestine, 1916–1922 Charge Absence or Breaking Out of Camp (AWOL) Desertion Disobedience Drunkenness Escaping Confinement Insubordination and Threatening Losing Property Murder Mutiny Misc. 6(d)23 Misc. 9.1 Misc. 11 Misc. 15.3 Misc. 18 Misc. 18.5 Misc. 25 Misc. 29 Misc. 40 Misc. 4124 Offence against Inhabitant Resisting or Escaping Escort Quitting Post Sleeping on Post Theft Violence or Striking Senior Officer Total Charges/Total Courts-Martial

Occurrences Occurrences Occurrences 1st BWIR 2nd BWIR 5th BWIR Total 2

5

10

18*

1 7 1 0 5

0 22 2 0 12

1 25 7 6 18

2 55* 11* 7* 36*

1 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 5 2 1

2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 18 0 0

17 0 0 1 1 6 1 1 0 2 0 30 7 5

20 2 0 1 2 6 1 1 1 2 2* 55* 9 6

0

0

3

4*

0 0 1 4

0 6 1 5

7 14 11 11

7 20 13 20

34 30

73 57

184 131

301 226

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were tried for mutiny in May 1919 after reacting to severe discrimination while at Taranto in Italy, as were 32 members of the 2nd West India Regiment in Palestine. Taranto had also been the site of a larger mutiny in December 1918 by the BWIR battalions stationed in Europe, whose objections over discrimination during the war erupted after tremendous racial abuse while concentrated at Taranto.31 While collective unrest did occur inside the BWIR battalions in Armistice-era Palestine, the lack of prosecution presents an important outlier to the broader West Indian experience. West Indians were not the only soldiers in the EEF perceived to be inherently problematic. Australian troops, once the subject of British fascination for what was perceived as rugged, outback charm, became less appealing when subject to strict discipline. By 1918, nine Australians per thousand were in military prison, compared to 1.6 per thousand for New Zealanders, South Africans, and Canadians combined.32 One British soldier in Palestine recalled the Australians as ‘rather grim looking fellows’ who did not ‘seem to pay much attention to discipline, at anyrate (sic) by “Imperial” standards’.33 Another summed up their detached attitude, writing in his diary that the national sport of Australia must surely be lamp-post leaning. Wherever a lamp-post or pillar can be found in this country an Australian can be found attached, legs crossed, smoking, gazing amusedly at the world from beneath his broad-brimmed hat. They say that an Anzac got leave from the Jordan Valley after eleven months, and that he never passed Kantara Station on his journey down to Cairo. He found the station lamp-post, and was still there when the train left for up the line next week.34 Australian indifference to British conceptions of proper bearing during the Palestine campaign was, in part, motivated by the social environment they encountered upon their arrival in Egypt. Not unlike ‘coloured’ West Indians, who despite being educated and often of middle-class standing in their home colonies, found themselves ignored or excluded in white, British society, rank-and-file

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Australians were often left outside ‘European’ society while in the Middle East. Many of these circles were upper class and scornful of the ordinary ‘digger’, leaving many Australians deeply frustrated by their inability to ‘establish friendships with . . . their co-subjects in the British Empire’.35 Resentment often boiled over into conflict, especially after the bungled British operations at Gallipoli. Several Australian troopers, for example, woke one morning to find themselves facing court-martial for drunkenly assaulting several British non-commissioned officers – an incident in which they had attempted to throw the latter off a moving train.36 Many Australian officers were aware of their men’s frequent conflicts with British soldiers, and on occasion altered disciplinary proceedings to compensate for this relationship; in particular, many assumed British provocation of their troopers, regardless of what military policemen might testify in court.37 The presiding Australian officer in one court-martial, a Major Brooks, even took it upon himself to write a letter to senior officers explaining that he ‘is of the opinion that the accused acted under considerable provocation, and has therefore awarded a very light sentence considering the gravity of the charge’ – in this case, striking a senior officer.38 Such decisions infuriated the British command, not least because they subverted the entire nature of the court-martial system, which relied on harshly punitive sentences, balanced with later review, to maintain discipline. The general tendency for officers serving on a field court-martial was to issue severe sentences to all rank-and-file soldiers found guilty. The majority of officers lacked legal training, many were influenced by middle- or upper-class beliefs into seeing common soldiers as inherently criminal and there was a general desire to maintain discipline by convicting, particularly in colonial units. One historian has persuasively argued that most officers viewed field courts-martial simply as ‘components of the penal process’, merely a means by which to make an example.39 The statements of a brigadier-general in Palestine bear this out: in a furious letter, he accused an Australian major of ‘mental peculiarities’ because ‘he is unable to conceive that an accused person can be satisfactorily convicted of an offence unless the evidence given for the prosecution and the defence tallies in every

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respect’.40 The system of military justice, therefore, was not simply designed to establish the guilt or innocence of a soldier, but rather to remind all soldiers of the power of military authority. These attitudes were magnified in the trials of ‘non-European’ soldiers, and West Indians received particularly harsh sentences – an additional reminder that many officers felt the need to discipline ‘coloured’ colonials particularly severely and maintain the established the imperial hierarchy. In the vast majority of cases, BWIR soldiers were sentenced to some form of detainment – either in the field or behind the lines. The most common sentences handed down were imprisonment with hard labour or a form of field punishment – the former occurring in 97 cases (43 per cent of total sentences), and the latter in 79 (35 per cent).41 The worst form of imprisonment, but also the least commonly prescribed, was penal servitude, which occurred in 14 cases (6 per cent of total sentences). Unfortunately, due to the small sample size and the fact that soldiers could face multiple charges, it is impossible to develop an accurate correlation between charge and sentence. However, comparison with the sentencing of court-martialled New Zealanders in Egypt reveals that they also were more likely to receive a sentence of imprisonment or penal servitude (36 sentences) than field punishment (19 sentences), but that as a percentage of total sentences, New Zealanders faced lighter punishment.42 A similar comparison with the sentences handed to Irish soldiers in France reveals sharp disparities – courts-martial sentenced only 10 per cent of Irish soldiers to imprisonment with hard labour, and less than 2 per cent to penal servitude.43 It seems that the FGCMs in Egypt and Palestine sentenced West Indians with a very heavy hand. A careful examination of the frequency of acquittals in the courtsmartial of BWIR soldiers supports this conclusion. According to the voluminous Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, there were a total of 304,262 courts-martial in the British Army from August 1914 until March 1920, with 154,339 of these cases occurring outside Britain.44 Of the cases occurring abroad, 10.05 per cent of soldiers were found not guilty.45 At first glance, the not-guilty rate of the BWIR for 1916– 19 is comparable – 23 of the

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226 courts-martial in Palestine, or 10.17 per cent, resulted in notguilty verdicts. However, a closer examination of when these verdicts occurred reveals a more complex picture. Using the 30 October 1918 Armistice with the Ottoman Empire as the dividing line, it becomes clear that the BWIR faced a significantly higher conviction rate during the war than during the occupation period. 161 courtsmartial of BWIR soldiers occurred before the Armistice, of which only eight yielded a not-guilty verdict, a rate of 4.96 per cent – roughly half the average rate in the Army as a whole. After the October Armistice, however, courts-martial reached 15 not-guilty verdicts out of 65 cases, a 23 per cent rate.46 In contrast, Timothy Bowman has revealed that from October 1916 until February 1918, the not-guilty rate for Irish units in France was 12.5 per cent, two and half times greater than that of the BWIR in Palestine.47 Even though the 10 per cent rate across the British Army mentioned above included courts-martial constituted after the European Armistice, when convictions may have been lower, it still seems that West Indian soldiers were more likely to be found guilty than their Army peers. The severity of punishment often depended on the ‘character’ of the accused – a word that encompassed both his past disciplinary record and whether his officers thought he was an effective soldier. As a result, it was common for accused EEF soldiers to have their officers speak on their behalf during sentencing. One Australian major noted the ‘exemplary character as a soldier’ of one accused, and drew particular attention to his service at the battles of El Romani and Birel-Abd.48 At a different trial, another Australian major swore that the accused was ‘a capable and reliable NCO, his character on all occasions has been above reproach, and . . . one of the squadron’s best NCOs’.49 In the capital trial of a Jamaican BWIR private, James Mitchell, his commanding captain, in an attempt to avoid a death sentence, argued that Mitchell’s ‘character is excellent and he has never been accused of a crime before’.50 A court might assume that a soldier without testimony on his behalf was unwanted by his officers and anyone who had a ‘bad’ character, perhaps having committed multiple offences, faced rapidly escalating punishments. One Australian trooper in the 2nd Light

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Horse received two minor punishments for separate infractions in March 1916, before a court-martial sentenced him to two months of field punishment for insubordinate language in January 1917. A few months later, another trial for insubordination led this time to six months of imprisonment with hard labour. When the same trooper pled guilty to disobedience in a July 1918 court-martial, his past history guaranteed a harsh sentence – five years of penal servitude.51 Inefficient soldiers also faced harsher penalties, placing many West Indians at an inherent legal disadvantage, since both the War Office and senior British officers thought that ‘the West Indian would never be any use as a soldier, and that his fighting qualities are doubtful’.52 One Australian officer unwittingly revealed the structure of FGCMs in a letter, noting that his rulings were always balanced, ‘excepting in the cases of a few particularly and consistently illbehaved soldiers to whom I have been instrumental in awarding heavier punishment than was perhaps necessary for the actual offence’. This was the nature of the courts-martial system – it made examples of soldiers with a ‘bad’ character or a poor service record, whether real or perceived. However, a liberal counter-weight was built into the system, which, the same major noted, ‘in these cases it was done for disciplinary reasons by the effect of immediate promulgation, and in each of these cases remissions were made of portion of sentences awarded’.53 Officers passed down harsher sentences precisely because they wanted to make an immediate statement to their men and assumed the DJAG would eventually revise the sentence downwards for legal reasons. However, factors beyond the individual case and charges could strongly influence decisions made by the DJAG and the confirming commanding officer during the sentencing review. Not only did the conduct sheet and character evidence of the accused accompany the case file, but also information about ‘the state of discipline within the accused’s unit’.54 The condition of the latter could determine the difference between life and death. Just before Private Clarke’s case file entered the review process, the administrative commandant at Kantara attached a confidential letter

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to headquarters. He argued that Clarke’s case was an opportunity to deal with what he perceived as the general indiscipline of West Indian troops, writing, I do not consider the sentence of death passed on Pte. Clarke excessive, but I am personally of opinion that the sentences passed on Ptes. Smith and Banton [the two other prisoners involved] are light, as compared with the sentence passed on Pte. Clarke. A severe lesson is needed with regard to the repeated instances of insubordination committed by prisoners of the B.W.I. Regiment in the F.P. Compound at Kantara.55 The description of Smith’s and Banton’s sentence – several years of penal servitude – as ‘light’ implies that the commandant would have preferred to see them executed as well, even though neither of them had wounded a policeman, as Clarke had done. A broader, commonly-held assumption lay behind his opinions – that ‘nonwhite’ units required punitive discipline in order to function militarily: I draw attention to the fact that, as appears on the conduct sheets, these, (and other soldiers of this Regt.) have repeatedly committed acts of insubordination, the punishment for which has been unduly light . . . No disciplinary lesson has been taught to insubordinate soldiers in the case of earlier offences – and the result appears to be total disregard for authority.56 Such an attitude probably reflected entrenched prejudice – a report just before Clarke’s execution had stated that ‘the discipline of the [BWIR] men has been consistently good . . . and the smart turn-out of the men has often been noted’.57 Other reports from officers continually noted the excellent discipline of the West Indians, including when under fire, throughout the war.58 The commandant’s attitude, then, was rooted in the prevalent belief that soldiers of African descent were inherently problematic and ill-disciplined, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

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While there were some officers in the BWIR who shared the commandant’s attitudes, others did not. One officer in the 1st battalion noted in a confidential memorandum that the principal irritation of West Indian troops occurred when they were ‘handled in a tactless manner by officers – sometimes General officers – who did not understand them; who had never been in the West Indies and who were incapable of distinguishing between a West Indian and a Hottentot’.59 The result was that some attempted to shelter West Indians from the punitive field courts-martial by using ‘summary punishment’, a process by which officers could issue punishment for infractions without convening a court martial. In his letter about Clarke’s trial, the same British commandant also complained to his superiors that BWIR officers were exceeding their powers by summarily punishing soldiers for severe offences, instead of courtmartialling them.60 This process – which is quite difficult to track – appears to have been a favourite technique of officers in Egypt and Palestine for protecting imperial and colonial soldiers. In the NZEF in Palestine, the commanding officer often dealt with substantive charges, and it was also common among Australian units – where, for example, an officer might simply give a three-week field punishment sentence to a trooper for ‘assaulting natives’, instead of court-martialling him.61 Although any soldier had the right to appeal against summary punishment and to request a formal trial, there are only six instances of West Indians doing so, significantly fewer than in other units for which comparable information exists.62 Interestingly, when one of the BWIR battalions spent more time in service near ANZAC units, its court-martial numbers plummeted, perhaps an indication of a broader pattern of imperial avoidance. In contrast, the court-martial rates of the reserve West Indian battalion, a unit stationed in the rear and in close proximity to numerous British officers, maintained a consistently high record of official disciplinary punishment. In addition, this discrepancy reveals that the rapid offensive movement of the Palestine campaign ensured that commanders in the field maintained some separation from rear headquarters and could therefore exercise more latitude in disciplining their men.

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The Kantara commandant’s desire to make an example of the three West Indians in order to instil discipline in the BWIR battalions reflected an older notion of how to maintain order in the military. When a soldier in the British forces was executed during the Napoleonic Wars in the West Indies, his regiment was not only forced to watch the execution, but afterwards was ‘filed past the corpse in slow time so that each man got a good look at the mangled form on the ground’.63 Even though the execution of a soldier no longer took place in front of his unit, much of the intent was the same – pour encourager les autres. Corporal punishment evolved in a similar manner – the passage of the Army Act in 1881 had prohibited flogging (although the cat-o’-nine tails was in use until 1908, and caning continued well into World War II), but another punishment, with a similar intent, remained available to military courts.64 Field Punishment (or FP) was one of the most common British disciplinary punishments in World War I, yet it is unfamiliar to most non-specialists. Two varieties existed – known simply as ‘No. 1’ and ‘No. 2’ – and while both forms relied on physical exertion and public shame as a means of punishment, No. 1 was significantly more severe. In both versions, soldiers spent part of each day either in a special area at the front, or behind the lines at a field punishment compound or prison if not on active service. In Egypt, special field-punishment compounds existed near major British installations, like Kantara and Abbassia, although some soldiers, like Australian trooper Louie Corcoran, completed their sentences at military prisons like Gabbari.65 Each day of their sentence, soldiers were subjected to hours of parade inspections and drilling, as well as various forms of pointless, heavy labour. One soldier in Palestine recalled that after drilling, men would be ordered in full kit out into the desert, where they were forced to exercise in the sun. Other times, they filled baskets with sand, carried them hundreds of feet before dumping them, and then carried more sand to refill the original hole.66 To exacerbate the punishment, soldiers lost their pay, and might still have to fulfil their normal responsibilities if at the front. No. 1, however, added a more brutal twist.

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Despite many of the limitations on corporal punishment passed in the 1881 Army Act, No. 1 FP still made an example of the guilty soldier via humiliation and pain. In addition to the penalties common to both forms, soldiers enduring No. 1 suffered an improvised crucifixion. For several hours each day, they could be ‘tethered to a wheel or post, or with their hands tied behind their backs, [be] suspended by their wrists’ with rope or irons.67 Poor weather conditions, or a brutal overseer, could make conditions significantly worse. Exposure to extreme heat – as was common in the Middle East – or cold, a tighter tying of appendages and many other variations turned a public warning of ill-discipline into severe corporal punishment. One officer from New Zealand referred to it simply as ‘a means of inflicting unnecessary torture’.68 Field Punishment reflected residual, nineteenth-century notions of discipline that remained in the British military-justice system throughout World War I. The tradition of improvised crucifixion stretched back to discipline in Wellington’s army a century earlier, and existed to deter future offenders through public shame and pain.69 FP reflected the long-held belief that military law should rely on ‘a policy of calculated terror and torture as a public spectacle’, in order to deter potential offenders rather than reform the guilty.70 This backward-facing intent did not go unnoticed in Britain – after the war a debate over its use took place in Parliament. One MP from Manchester Moss Side, an ex-Army major with legal training, argued the punishment was ‘quite contrary to the spirit of the age’ and called for its abolition.71 Yet, during the war FP remained a key component of the punitive process, since it (arguably) maximised the effect of the example made of the guilty soldier. In Egypt and Palestine, a sentence of No. 1 FP was a rarity, but on the Western Front it was one of the most common punishments. This was not only true for British units; nearly 45.6 per cent of courtmartialled Irish soldiers in France received a sentence of No. 1, as did nearly 11 per cent of New Zealanders.72 In contrast, 19 per cent of BWIR courts-martial passed down an initial sentence of No. 1, and this percentage decreased further after post-trial judicial review.73 However, while the more brutal form of field punishment was

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common in France, it appears to have been very rare in Egypt and Palestine – only three cases are recorded in NZEF trials – meaning that the BWIR’s rate of No. 1 FP was actually very high for the theatre in question.74 Given the corporal nature of the punishment, it is possible that some field courts-martial in Palestine and Egypt used No. 1 as a means of circumventing the British Army’s prohibition of bodily punishment, particularly flogging, to make examples of ‘nonwhite’ soldiers and their bodies. One historian has suggested that No. 1 FP was ‘capable of resurrecting the collective memory of slavery’, a strong possibility if the military policemen executing the punishment used more brutal methods, or emphasised racial differences between punisher and punished.75 However, there is no clear evidence that BWIR soldiers in Palestine thought this and it is important to remember that British soldiers were continually subjected to No. 1 in France. Field Punishment was not, therefore, designed to be redolent of racial slavery, but rather was part of the broader means by which the state exhibited power over its subjects. This is especially true when the punishment of West Indians is compared to the British Army’s disciplinary dealings with native Egyptians and Africans during the war. The treatment of native Egyptians and Africans shows most clearly how the racialist thinking that justified slavery still dominated military justice for those at the bottom of the colonial hierarchy. Africans recruited by the British Army were subject to officially sanctioned beatings as punishment, as well as indiscriminate caning and flogging, punishments that British soldiers were immune from.76 Members of the Rhodesian Native Regiment, for example, faced flogging for crimes of insubordination, insolence or desertion, and this sentence could be carried out in public, in front of the entire unit.77 Sentences like those passed on five African members of the 4th Nigeria Regiment, tried on charges of cowardice and all sentenced to three months of Field Punishment and 24 lashes, were not uncommon.78 In a different incident, an African soldier in the Gold Coast Regiment received 42 days of FP 1 and 24 lashes for disobedience.79 In general, African soldiers were sentenced much

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more harshly than any other Empire soldiers – records of those who had death sentences commuted during review indicate they still faced 14 years of penal servitude, substantially more than the five to ten years commonly imposed on West Indians who had death sentences commuted.80 Africans were not the only members of the British forces to face such punishments. The army treated the native Egyptians who comprised the Egyptian Labour Corps (ELC) and built much of the infrastructure needed for Allenby’s march to Damascus in much the same way. Egyptians attached to the ELC were subject to the rules of the Army Act, but Allenby sought for special legalisation of flogging as, ‘there are now and then cases for the lash’ within the ELC.81 Although such a provision was never extended, there is substantial evidence that British authorities turned a blind eye to extra-judicial beatings of Egyptian labourers. One historian has found evidence of the ‘promiscuous beating and flogging of native drivers’ by Australians, and argued that this helped exacerbate conditions leading to the anti-British revolts across Egypt in the spring of 1919.82 However, no attempts were made to treat the BWIR battalions in Egypt and Palestine in a similar manner. Rather, the tendency seems to have been to rely on the more brutal form of FP to effect corporal punishment. Such processes suggest a multi-faceted racial hierarchy inside the British Army – one that might exact illegal violence on those at the bottom of the racial ladder, but then revert to an intensified, but technically legal, set of punishments for others. While there was clearly discrimination against men classified as ‘nonwhites’, it appears to have been more tiered than commonly thought. The West Indians, whether by virtue of being volunteer combat troops, or because of perceptions of British acculturation, escaped the violence that, at first glance, many would assume they might encounter. Yet, while the disciplinary process allowed the brutal punishment of native labourers, and stopped short of genuinely protecting the native residents of Egypt and Palestine, there were occasions when it responded to the violence of EEF soldiers against locals.

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As the British advanced into Ottoman Palestine, they created a legal vacuum, a presence occupied during the war by military courts. Despite a generally blind eye, there were occasions when the justice system took action against EEF soldiers when local Egyptians or Arabs brought complaints to British officers. Perhaps the most important of these trials was that of Private James Mitchell, a Jamaican teenager in the BWIR who was the only soldier executed in Palestine itself during the war. Mitchell, apparently intoxicated, had approached a well near the village of Beit Duras in November 1917, where he encountered a local woman, Nazha ben Saleh Yousef, and her husband, drawing water. According to Nazha’s court testimony, Mitchell rudely propositioned her, exposed himself and then lunged at her, at which point her husband interceded to separate them. As Nazha fled, she saw Mitchell unshoulder his rifle and shoot her husband in the chest, fatally wounding him.83 After her husband’s death, Nazha’s uncle travelled to a nearby Jewish settlement and notified a British major of the attack. The British response was prompt – the next morning, a doctor, an interpreter and a BWIR officer travelled to Beit Duras to examine the body. The West Indian battalion was one of the only units in the area, and a series of identity parades took place, at which Nazha was present. Although she did not identify Mitchell during these occasions (she later claimed that the number of men present made identifying the attacker too difficult), he confessed to assaulting her. However, Mitchell was unequivocally clear that he had only shot her husband because he had attempted to seize Mitchell’s rifle.84 After a more substantial trial than Private Clarke’s – including a much more significant defence – Mitchell was found guilty and sentenced to death, largely on the basis of Nazha’s testimony. Despite his popularity inside his platoon, strong character evidence, no past disciplinary history and some evidentiary discrepancies during his trial, Mitchell was shot eight days later at Ramleh.85 The decision to execute Mitchell can be interpreted as a statement of both imperial accountability and imperial power – the British would respect local inhabitants, provided that they acknowledged the British, in this case the Army, as sole arbiter in the region. Nazha,

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it turned out, was the niece of the mukhtar, a prominent local elder in charge of the area around Beit Duras. He was a figure whom the British wanted to respect and co-opt, both to avoid potential shortterm difficulty with their supply lines, and also for the longer term, when they would need local elites to serve as intermediaries of empire. The mukhtar’s actions in the wake of his nephew-in-law’s death had signified a willingness to cooperate with the new imperial authority in the area – he had not sought local retribution, but rather initiated proceedings via the presiding judicial process. The trial of Mitchell had been held at Ramleh – some 25 miles north of Beit Duras and a not inconsiderable distance for the mukhtar and his niece to travel during a war, thereby signalling further cooperation. Executing Mitchell, rather than imprisoning him, enabled the British to demonstrate their supreme authority and also helped persuade local inhabitants to warm to the British Empire by ensuring that their first major interaction with it ended with the desired resolution. Had Mitchell been convicted of a voluntary form of manslaughter, the more appropriate charge given his lack of premeditated intent to kill, it is unlikely that he would have been executed. In two other cases involving the BWIR, soldiers facing murder charges had only been convicted of manslaughter and both had been sentenced to penal servitude, rather than execution.86 Executing Mitchell, then, was more of a public statement to the surrounding community than it was to his battalion. Neither the reporting of crimes against locals by EEF soldiers, nor the reliance of the prosecution on native witnesses in assessing guilt, were incidents confined to Mitchell’s case. An Australian lieutenant in the Imperial Camel Corps, Bertram Arthur Clark, was courtmartialled at Suez in May 1918 for beating an Egyptian, Mohammed Hassan. After the attack, Hassan had notified a military policeman, which had resulted in an Australian officer preparing identity parades and disciplinary proceedings. The prosecuting officer’s case against Clark rested almost entirely on Hassan’s statements, plus the testimony of several other Egyptian witnesses who had seen an officer strike Hassan in the neck with a cane from a taxi, before later whipping the (justifiably) indignant Egyptian with a belt.87 Despite

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Clark’s rapid rise from sergeant to lieutenant, the Distinguished Conduct Medal he had won in 1917 and the fact that the prosecution based its case on the testimony of Egyptians while the defence relied on the testimony of several Australian officers, the court still found Clark guilty, though it prescribed the minimal punishment of a severe reprimand and a reset of his seniority date.88 While such a sentence was a relative slap on the wrist, the simple fact that any punishment at all was inflicted on a white officer decorated for bravery, when it was routine for British and Australian soldiers to flog Egyptian labourers, is somewhat remarkable. In evaluating the court-martial process, it is important to note that despite its appearance as an overwhelmingly punitive process, there was still an entrenched check against abuse – the deputy judge adjudant-generals. These officers, tasked with reviewing trials, were on alert for abusive sentences, as well as for procedural violations that contravened the Army Act. Despite their critical role in the justice system, their work generally escaped both public and historical attention. In the post-war Parliamentary debates over the wartime justice-system, one MP from Co. Antrim – a former DJAG in Egypt and Palestine – called the Commons’ attention to the system of oversight against abuses, concluding that military justice had ‘not failed’ as egregiously as some thought.89 Importantly, there is evidence to support the MP’s somewhat self-serving contention. Sometimes, DJAGs focused on appropriate charging, as when one demanded to know of an Australian trial ‘why this man who was absent for a few hours was charged with desertion’.90 Such oversight could protect an ordinary soldier from the whims of an overlypunitive-minded officer – an AWOL charge would normally be punished by a stint of FP, whereas desertion could result in a death sentence. On another occasion, an Australian trooper sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour for attempting to plunder supplies had his conviction promptly quashed after the DJAG found a number of problems with the trial proceedings – the charges were filed under the wrong section of the military code and a witness was not examined correctly.91 At other times, a review might turn out

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worse for the accused. Initially punished by a ‘reprimand’ at his first court-martial, L/Corporal Duncan MacPhee found himself facing a reassembled court after the presiding officers were notified by the DJAG that such a light sentence was ‘not a valid Court Martial sentence on an NCO’.92 This system of review was of particular importance to BWIR soldiers, who, as noted earlier, often faced particularly aggressive, racially-motivated sentencing. Yet, this prejudice appears somewhat mitigated by careful examination of the court-martial statistics of BWIR soldiers in Egypt and Palestine, which show frequent commutations of sentence, as well as partial reductions of sentence length (known as ‘remittance’). Almost 40 per cent of BWIR convictions in Palestine featured a modification of sentence, often significant. Of the 88 cases in which a BWIR sentence changed during review, 38 involved commutation to a lesser penalty, 49 sentences were decreased in length, and one conviction was simply quashed. Importantly, exactly three-quarters of the modified sentences occurred before the October Armistice, indicating that despite the punitive tendencies of wartime courts, a level of judicial review still provided some protection for BWIR soldiers.93 The following chart depicts the instances of review in the 190 cases where a BWIR soldier was sentenced to some form of detention:

Modified prison sentences in the BWIR, 1916– 19

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While there appears to be some tendency to commute sentences of imprisonment or penal servitude, the above chart makes clear that review more often involved remitting a portion of the original sentence. At a minimum, one-third of the original sentence length was remitted, but more often remittance occurred on a larger scale – between half and two-thirds of the original sentence length in the cases of FP and imprisonment, along with the occasional remittance of three-quarters of a sentence. Additionally, when a DJAG commuted a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour to FP, the length of the sentence was also often substantially reduced. The frequency of commutation and remittance reinforces the contention that most courts-martial of BWIR soldiers in Palestine yielded overly harsh sentences. In one particular case, a FGCM sentence of three years of penal servitude was commuted to only six months of hard labour – a significant alteration that implies severe overreach in sentencing by the officers of the FGCM.94 Still, sentence modification demonstrates that there was some sort of oversight to the punitive nature of military law, even for black and ‘coloured’ soldiers. In fact, it is one area where West Indian soldiers fared comparably well – 46 per cent of their sentences of imprisonment or penal servitude were modified, compared with 54 per cent over the entire NZEF.95 While commutations or partial remittances were probably little consolation to sentenced soldiers (and do not suggest that even the modified sentence was fair), the existence and use of a check against abusive sentencing is an oft-overlooked feature of the military-justice system, and perhaps evidence of a more complex relationship between the British Empire and its imperial and colonial forces during World War I. Military justice, then, was an uneven affair for imperial and colonial soldiers – one that featured punitive sentencing, but was balanced in part by a system of review. Australians and West Indians, as we have seen, were perceived as particularly ill-disciplined by many of the British officers in Egypt and Palestine, a perception from which Australians were to an extent protected by their own officers during trials. West Indians, however, were often at the mercy of the court and the DJAG, although the latter treated them relatively

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fairly. As a result, West Indian soldiers in Palestine seem to occupy a middle area in military discipline. While they suffered more severe punishment than white soldiers in the imperial forces, the ‘discipline’ meted out to other colonials, such as Africans and Egyptians, was significantly more abusive. Whether West Indian soldiers in Egypt and Palestine were aware of this distinction is unclear. In one of the only surviving pieces of wartime correspondence to call attention to military justice, 12 West Indian soldiers noted that ‘under military law subject to its various amendments we suffer the full and just penalty when we break that law just as any other British soldier’.96 This, as we have seen, was not the case. The history of how military justice applied to imperial and colonial soldiers in Egypt and Palestine is but a tiny story amidst the overwhelming mass of experience produced during World War I. Yet, it is an important window into examining the ways in which empires, having drafted colonial manpower into the broader struggle, sought through the legal system, to discipline tens of thousands of armed men. For the British Empire, our understanding of the colonial experience with British justice has long focused on rebellious events inside the colonies – Morant Bay, the Indian Mutiny, Amritsar and the Mau Mau rebellion, amongst many others. The focus of this chapter has been decidedly different – the history of Empire soldiers’ experience with military justice while serving in defence of the Empire. It will, I hope, cast new light onto old narratives and broaden the way in which historians consider the relationships between empire and subject.

Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the Graduate Division, the Institute for European Studies and the Institute for International Studies at UC-Berkeley, and to the Helen Diller Family Trust, for providing the funding needed to complete the research and writing of this chapter. I also would like to thank Anthony Adamthwaite, James Vernon and Alex Toledano, who all read early drafts and provided thoughtful commentary.

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Notes 1 The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), WO 71/595. Another account is in Abraham 1957, 185– 8. Abraham claimed that when the military policeman, Lance-Corporal G. King arrived at the field hospital, his bowels were held up by a bloody towel. This particular detail is important, as there is some question about the seriousness of Clarke’s attack. Abraham recalls the belly wound as ten inches, while the trial testimony indicates six inches. Richard Smith has written about Clarke’s execution as well, although his examination focuses on the intersections of race and gender in the BWIR battalions. See Smith 2004. 2 Many historians cite Clarke’s date of execution as 11 August 1917, but his file shows that the sentence was ‘promulgated’ on 10 August. A South African private named N. Matthews, en route to France, was court-martialled for murder and hanged in 1916 in Egypt. However, he was part of the 3rd South African Infantry Regiment, and therefore not technically a member of the British Army. See Putkowski and Sykes 1998, 59, 298. 3 Ferguson 2006, 346–7. Depending on who is included, and when one ‘ends’ the war, the British shot between 346 and 361 soldiers during the war (346 is the ‘official’ number), but only 291 were officially part of the British Army. According to Putkowski and Sykes (1998, 20) the French Army shot around 700 of its own men, while the German Army shot 48. 4 Ibid.; Moore 1975; Babington 1983; Oram 1998; 2003. Moore lacked access to most of the documents and records that later historians consulted, and Babington was provided with access to court-martial files before their release to the public. 5 Putkowsi and Sykes 1998, 282. Soldiers executed for non-military offences, such as murder, were not pardoned. 6 Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914– 1920 1920, 643. Of the total number of 304,262 courts-martial, 407 trials of officers and 153,992 of other ranks took place outside England. 7 Corns and Hughes-Wilson 2001; Pugsley 1991; 2004; McCartney 2005; Bowman 2003. Pugsley’s work does the most in venturing outside Europe. 8 The phrase ‘not of pure European descent’ appears frequently across WO and CO memoranda and correspondence, and was often used interchangeably with ‘nonEuropean’ or ‘non-white’ to identify anyone of colour. These terms are deeply problematic – they define people not by what they are, but by what they are not – but are used in this chapter because they reflect the various racial constructions that existed inside the military justice system. 9 TNA, WO 71. 10 For each trial, these ledgers include the following information: name of the accused, rank, charges brought, date of trial (sometimes this was inaccurate), trial location, verdict, punishment, notations of commutation or remittance, and whether the trial was the result of an appeal against summary punishment.

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11 A small detachment of BWIR troops also served in Mesopotamia, and 500 from the 1st and 2nd BWIR served in the East African campaigns before returning to Palestine. Overall, there were 397 officers and 15,204 ordinary ranks in the BWIR. The 1st and 2nd each contained roughly 1,000 ordinary ranks; the 5th was a reserve battalion, and its size often fluctuated above 1,000 ordinary ranks by several hundreds For a work that considers the entire West Indian contribution, see Howe 2002. For a work more specifically focused on Jamaicans, but still broadly informative, see Smith 2004. 12 See TNA, CAB 37/136/19, Question of Raising Native Troops for Imperial Service, 18 October 1915, p. 4, for the official discussion of West Indian soldiers. Also see WO 95/4427, 2nd BWIR WD, Vol. 3, 12 June and 29 June 1916; see WO 95/4410 1st BWIR WD, 26 August 1917 for information on West Indian training in Palestine; for an account of their military service, see ICS, WICC Scrap Book, p. 36; W.T. Massey, ‘Capture of Amman: West Indian troops’ gallantry, Daily Mail, 23 November 1918. 13 The classic works by Cyril Falls and W.T. Massey long dominated this subject, but two more recent, complementary works are superior: Hughes 1999 and Woodward 2006. I have used the American printing of Woodward; the British version, from Tempus, is entitled Forgotten Soldiers of the First World War. 14 Hughes 2004, 17. 15 Killingray 1994, 201– 16. 16 Babington 1983, 12; Putkowski and Sykes 1998, 14. 17 Ibid., 14 – 15. Since these ‘friends’ generally had little legal training, they often offered little in the way of a defence, and instead focused on lessening the sentence. Some soldiers declined the services of a ‘friend’, and there is some evidence to suggest that there were cases, particularly in France, where no such services were offered. For examples of outranking, see National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), A471/3382, Gunston, J.; ibid., A471/4629, PoulettHarris, H.V. Gunston was defended by a captain, Poulet-Harris by a major, and both men were prosecuted by a lieutenant. 18 Babington 1983, 12, 14 – 15. 19 Oram 2003, 9, 17; Pugsley 1991, 131– 3. 97 per cent of these sentences occurred in France, and 104 of them stemmed from desertion charges. See ibid., 133 for a full breakdown. Corns and Hughes-Wilson (2001, 391) give a figure of 129 Australians sentenced to death. 20 This often took the form of a certificate entered into the evidence. Being medically unfit for imprisonment did not exempt a soldier from a sentence of FP. See NAA, 471/3282, Franks, Leslie, for an example of this. 21 See ibid., A471/3342, Glass, W., for a good example of this. 22 When a soldier from a battalion was court-martialled while attached to a different battalion, I have included him in the statistics for the battalion he was serving in when the court-martial took place. Asterixed totals indicate the inclusion of men not explicitly noted as belonging to the 1st, 2nd or 5th Battalions, but clearly members of the BWIR serving in Palestine. In this case,

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36

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these eight soldiers account for one offence of Absence, one of Disobedience, one of Drunkenness, one of Escaping Confinement, one of Escaping Escort, one of Insubordination, two of Misc. 29 and two of Misc. 40. 6 (d) Physically Attacking a Sentinel; 9.1 Disobeying a Superior Officer’s Orders; 11 Disobeying a General Order; 15.3 Absent without Leave; 18 Deliberate Injury or Faking Illness to Escape Duty; 18.5 An unspecified Fraudulent Act or Any Other Disgraceful Conduct; 25 Deliberately Making False Statements on Official Forms and Documents or Altering or Stealing them; 29 Providing False Evidence in a Military Court. Manual of Military Law, 6th edn 1914, 381-405. A catch-all clause for trying Army soldiers for a variety of civil offences punishable by ordinary law, such as murder, in an Army court. Ibid., 413. In fact, all but three of the 17 courts-martial in the BWIR’s first six months’ service were for charges of disobedience, insubordination or violence to officers. See TNA, WO 213/8– 10. Pugsley 1991, 56. Ibid., 347. In fact, the NZEF had only 93 court-martial cases in Egypt and Palestine from 1917 to 1919, less than half the total for the BWIR. Pugsley 1991, 56. Bowman 2003, 157t. Bowman’s time-frame for measuring these offences is from October 1916 to the end of February 1918. A comment in TNA, CO 318/348/5991, noted: ‘The West Indian negro is in general proud of his British nationality (even to the point of being obnoxious about it abroad).’ Although subsumed within its own problematic racial framework, this comment suggests how prejudiced British officers perceived West Indian soldiers that agitated for their rights as soldiers. Putkowski 1998, 92 – 4; Smith 2004, 135– 7; Howe 2002, 164. The 1st BWIR soldiers were awaiting transport home in May, while the 2nd WIR soldiers were protesting exclusion from a pay bonus. The mutinies at Taranto have sometimes been conflated incorrectly. Corns and Hughes-Wilson 2001, 391. Imperial War Museum (hereafter IWM), 3/31/1, C.R. Hennessey, p. 154. Brugger (1980, 77) has pointed out that many Australian soldiers ignored minor military procedures, such as saluting, much to the disgust of British officers. Sommers 1919, reprinted diary entry of 6 June 1918. Brugger 1980, 53, 57, 77. NAA, A471/3342, Glass, W. The instigator, Trooper W. Glass, was found guilty at Moascar in September 1917 of drunkenness and violence against a superior officer, charges for which he was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment with hard labour. Glass, importantly, had been wounded at Gallipoli. NAA, 471/4337, McConnachy, Clifford Peter, and ibid., 471/9721, Murray, A. J., for cases in which Australian officers explicitly assumed provocation by British soldiers in order to lessen the punishment of Australian troopers.

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38 NAA, A471/3382, Gunston, J., letter from Major J.J. Brooks to Convening Authority of FGCM of Trooper Gunson, 6 June 1918. 39 Babington 1983, xi. For a different opinion, see Corns and Hughes-Wilson 2001, 1 – 38. 40 NAA, 471/4337, McConnachy, Clifford Peter. Brigadier General Commanding Palestine Lines of Communication to General Officer Commanding, AIF, 7 March 1919. 41 Of the 79 sentences of FP, 43 were of the harsher, No. 1 variety, 28 were No. 2, and in the remainder the distinction was not noted. (Later, this chapter explains exactly what FP was and points to its importance.) 42 Pugsley 2004, 130– 1. 78 per cent of BWIR cases resulted in imprisonment or FP, versus 46 per cent of NZEF cases. If only imprisonment sentences are compared, the ratio falls to 49 per cent in the BWIR to 37 per cent in the NZEF. The statistics for the full NZEF, including France, was 18.58 per cent imprisonment, 23.6 per cent FP, and 1.17 per cent penal servitude. 43 Bowman 2003, 158t. Percentages were calculated based on the absolute numbers provided in Bowman’s table. 44 Statistics of the Military Effort 1920, 643. The total number is made up of 407 officers and 153,992 other ranks. 45 Ibid, 644. The total number of not-guilty verdicts as a percentage of officers and ordinary ranks was 10.08 per cent. 46 Unsurprisingly, privates stood a higher chance of being convicted than noncommissioned officers. There were 195 instances of BWIR privates facing court-martial in Palestine, and in only 14 of them was a not-guilty verdict delivered – a rate of 7 per cent. However, seven of the 19 NCOs tried were found not guilty – a rate of 37 per cent. This disparity is more or less in line with general trends in sentencing across the Army, where officers were found innocent twice as frequently as other ranks (20.39 per cent to 10.05 per cent), a reflection of sharp British class-divisions. 47 Bowman 2003, 158t. 48 NAA, A471/4629, Poulett-Harris, H.V. 49 NAA, A471/20226, McPhee, Duncan. Testimony of Major Stodart, MC. 50 TNA, WO 71/629/16, 2nd Testimony of Captain T.H. Irving. 51 NAA, A471/14773, Jarman, Edward George. Jarman would have known he faced a severe punishment – he had disobeyed an order to join a listening post allegedly stating ‘I’m fucked if I’ll go on’, and then punched his troop officer, 2nd Lieutenant W.K. Thomson, in the face before threatening to murder him. The presiding officer of the court-martial, knowing full well that the sentence had to be severe, had repeatedly begged Jarman not to plead guilty, or at least to make a statement in his own defence. 52 Institute for Commonwealth Studies (hereafter ICS), F1601, PAM 13, Lt. Col. C. Wood-Hill, ‘A few notes on the history of the British West Indies Regiment’, Sunday Pamphlets, Vol. 13, No. 8.

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53 NAA, 471/4337, McConnachy, Clifford Peter. Major A.E. D’Arcy to DAAG and GOC, Desert Mounted Corps, Confidential letter of 12 March 1919. 54 Babington 1983, 16. 55 TNA, WO 71/595, Colonel A.H.O. Lloyd to HQ, Palestine Lines of Communication, 7 August 1917. 56 Ibid., 7 August 1917, italics added. 57 TNA, CO 318/344/35242. Forwarded report entitled, ‘A Short History of the British West Indies Regiment in Egypt,’ 24 June 1917. Although General Murray signed off the report, it was probably written by senior BWIR officers. 58 See, for example, the statements of Lord Harding in TNA, WO 95/4410, 1st BWIR WD, July 1917 and 2 August 1917. After commanding several West Indian platoons during a raid, he wrote to headquarters that they had ‘worked exceedingly well, displaying . . . a keen interest in the work, cheerfulness and energy, coolness under shell fire and an intelligent application of what was required of them and the ability to carry it out’. 59 TNA, CO 318/349/49634. Confidential Memorandum of 25 July 1919 by Captain R.J. Craig, 1st BWIR. 60 TNA, WO 71/595. Colonel A.H.O Lloyd to HQ, Palestine Lines of Communication, 7 August 1917. These allegations were raised during the case of Private Hubert Clarke, which will be discussed later. 61 Pugsley 1991, 91; NAA, A471/3382, Gunston, J., Attached Conduct Sheet. 62 TNA, WO 213/8/115; 213/21/137; 213/29/92; 213/18/47; 213/25/18; 213/29/135; Bowman 2003, 15. 63 Buckley 1998, 204. 64 Babington 1983, 2; Killingray 1994, 202. 65 NAA, B2455, Corcoran L. Corcoran, a member of the 11th ALH, had been sentenced to two months of FP 1 for disobeying orders and striking a Military Police NCO. 66 Roman Freulich, ‘Out of the Jabotinsky Saga,’ in AJHS I-429, Honoring the Memory of Ze’ev Jabotinsky on the Occasion of His 22nd Yahrzeit and Departed Jewish Legionnaires (Los Angeles CA, 1962), pp. 6 – 7. 67 Putkowski and Sykes 1998, 16; Putkowski 1998, 11. Putkowski claims that 21 days, with two hours per day of crucifixion, was the maximum allowed for this form of FP, but it is unclear whether this cap was actually enforced. 68 Lt. Col. Murray, quoted in Pugsley 1991, 91. 69 Ferguson 1999, 346– 7. 70 Buckley 1998, 203. 71 Hansard HC vol. 113, col. 118, 3 March 1919. Speech of Major Gerald Hurst. 72 I arrived at the Irish percentage by tabulating the sentences from Bowman’s table (2003, 158), though whether any portion of these sentences were commuted is unclear. A further 4.8 per cent of Irish soldiers received FP No. 2. For the New Zealanders, see Pugsley 1991, 347. 73 There were 43 initial sentences of FP No. 1 in the BWIR, although four of these sentences were commuted, quashed or fully remitted.

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74 Pugsley 2004, 130. 75 Smith 2004, 127– 8. Smith argues that FP ‘may have provoked particularly strong feelings among black soldiers’, but provides no direct evidence of this. 76 Grundlingh 1987, 90. 77 Stapleton 2006, 44. However, Stapleton is quick to note that no Rhodesian Native Regiment soldier was ever executed for a capital offence (desertion, cowardice, etc.). 78 TNA, WO 213/19/116. Privates Lawani and Agboola Ibadan, Ediga, Ekka, and Yagba. The trial was on 28 October 1917, and took place at Mtama, in what is now Tanzania. 79 TNA, WO 213/17/171, Private A. Kano, tried at Narungombe on 9 August 1917. 80 Compare the sentences of Privates Frafa and Dagomba of the Gold Coast Regiment (TNA, WO 213/19/106) with those in WO 213/26/103 C.A. Wilson (five years’ penal servitude), WO 213/11/172 V. Hall (ten years’ penal servitude), WO 213/17/147 H. Hart (ten years’ penal servitude), all three in various West Indian units. 81 Hughes 2004, 100. The letter is from Allenby to General Robertson, and was sent on 4 December 1917. 82 Brugger 1990, 77. See also Woodward, 39 –42. 83 TNA, WO 71/629, Testimony of Nazha ben Saleh Yousef. Medical evidence given at the trial later indicated that her husband, Abda Rahman, had his back at least partially turned to Mitchell when he was shot. 84 TNA, WO 71/629/A, Statement of James A. Mitchell, 23 November 1917. 85 TNA, WO 71/629, Trial of James A. Mitchell. 86 See the cases of Blenman, TNA, WO 213/22/6, Johnson ibid., 213/25/19, and for a post-Armistice case in Europe, Richards, ibid. 213/27/74. Johnson, tried six months after Mitchell, was actually from the same battalion. 87 NAA, 471/6478, Clark, Bertram Arthur. Testimony of Mohammed Hassan, Mohammed Joubshi, Amir Ali and Ahmed Ali. 88 Clark went on to face court-martial twice more while in Egypt and Palestine – once for significantly overdrawing his pay, and the other for organising a, possibly dubious, commercial sugar-selling enterprise. On both occasions, his punishments were financial – an order to repay the extra salary, and another reset of his seniority date. 89 Hansard HC vol. 113, cols 127–8, 3 March 1919. Speech of Major Hugh O’Neill. One should note, however, that nothing was said about whether military justice had in fact succeeded. 90 NAA, 471/9721, Murray, A.J. Major Percy, DJAG to General Officer Commanding, Eastern Force, 20 March 1917. 91 NAA, A471/3082. Draper, Rupert Randolph. Major Percy, Deputy JAG, EEF to GOC, Desert Mounted Corps, 31 October 1917. 92 NAA, A471/20226, McPhee, Duncan. Staff Captain, AAG Palestine Lines of Communication to GHQ Jerusalem, 23 December 1918.

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93 Of the 88 cases modified, 66 occurred before 30 October 1918. 94 TNA, WO 213/22/88, Case of Private T. Ellis. 95 Fifty-one sentences out of 111 were modified for the BWIR, and 211 out of 392 for the NZEF. For the pre-calculation New Zealand numbers, see Pugsley 1991, 348. 96 TNA, CO 28/294/56561. Letter from 12 members of BWIR in Egypt to Hon. J.C. Lynch, MLC, 2 August 1918.

References Abraham, J. Johnston, Surgeon’s Journey: The Autobiography of J. Johnston Abraham (London, 1957). Babington, Anthony, For the Sake of Example: Capital Courts-Martial, 1914– 1920 (New York, 1983). _____ The Rule of Law in Britain from the Roman Occupation to the Present Day (Chichester, 3rd edn, 1995). Bowman, Timothy, The Irish Regiments in the Great War: Discipline and Morale (Manchester, 2003). Brugger, Suzanne, Australians and Egypt, 1914– 1919 (Carlton, 1980). Buckley, Roger Norman, The British Army in the West Indies: Society and the Military in the Revolutionary Age (Gainsville FL, 1998). Corns, Cathryn and John Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War (London, 2001). Ferguson, Niall, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York, 1999). Grundlingh, Albert, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War (Johannesburg, 1987). Howe, Glenford, Race, War and Nationalism: A Social History of West Indians in the First World War (Oxford, 2002). Hughes, Matthew, Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917– 1919 (London, 1999). _____ (ed.), Allenby in Palestine: The Middle East Correspondence of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, June 1917– October 1919 (London, 2004). Killingray, David, ‘The “Rod of Empire”: the debate over corporal punishment in the British African Colonial Forces, 1888– 1946’, Journal of African History xxxv/2 (1994), pp. 201– 16. McCartney, Helen, Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (New York, 2005). Manual of Military Law (London, 6th edn, 1914). Moore, William, The Thin Yellow Line (New York, 1975). Oram, Gerard, Worthless Men: Race, Eugenics and the Death Penalty in the British Army during the First World War (London, 1998). _____ Military Executions during World War I (New York, 2003). Pugsley, Christopher, On the Fringe of Hell: New Zealanders and Military Discipline in the First World War (Auckland, 1991).

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_____ The ANZAC Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War (Auckland, 2004). Putkowski, Julian, British Army Mutineers, 1914– 1922 (London, 1998). _____ and Julian Sykes, Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army Act (Barnsley, 1998). Smith, Richard, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness (Manchester, 2004). Sommers, Cecil, Temporary Crusaders (London, 1919). Stapleton, Timothy, No Insignificant Part: The Rhodesia Native Regiment and the East Africa Campaign of the First World War (Waterloo, 2006). Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914– 1920 (London, 1920). Woodward, David, Hell in the Holy Land: World War I in the Middle East (Lexington, 2006).

CHAPTER 7 `

IT WAS A PRETTY GOOD WAR, BUT THEY STOPPED IT TOO SOON'1 : THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, NATIVE AMERICANS AND WORLD WAR I Steven Sabol

When the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) landed in France in 1917, included among its number were Native Americans. They were not segregated into separate units, but were fully integrated into the United States army, sent there to defeat the Germans, rid the world of militarism and make it safe for democracy. Despite decades of mistreatment and failed government policies, their cause, or so it seems, was little different to that which motivated millions of white Americans to enlist or register for conscription. Most scholars believe that roughly 17,000 Native Americans served during the war and that they should be considered ‘colonial troops’; this runs counter to the general perception of the United States military force as one that did not deploy such troops during the war. As such, the role and consequences of United States internal colonisation mean it is often neglected in comparison to scholarship devoted to the other imperial powers during the war. Yet, there they

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were, American Indians marching with Pershing and eager to prove themselves in battle, despite the fact that a large percentage of Native Americans did not have citizenship and should have been excluded from both conscription and voluntary enlistment. The Indian stereotypes prevalent at the time depicted Native Americans as instinctive fighters, an image exploited by supporters of their enlistment during the war because, as one newspaper claimed, even without the ‘feathers and warpaint’ worn by their Indian ancestors, modern Indians were nonetheless ‘perfect specimens of manhood’ and keen to take on the Hun.2 This essay will examine four themes associated with Native Americans in the AEF during World War I: the origins of Native Americans in the armed forces; the debate surrounding their role and designation; their service during World War I; and the consequences of that service. In order to understand Native Americans as an ‘imperial’ force fighting on behalf of its coloniser against the darker forces of militarism and Prussian aggression, it is important also to note that the United States was an imperial power that exercised an internal colonialism comparable to that of its allies Russia, Great Britain or France. It is also important to recognise that the relationship between Native Americans and the United States evolved during the period of internal colonisation in the nineteenth century, which subsequently influenced the debates and consequences associated with Native American enlistment, conscription and service. Yet, if colonised and oppressed, why did Native Americans fight on behalf of an imperial United States during World War I?

Americans and Native Americans: the coloniser and the colonised The United States colonised its continental interior during the nineteenth century and exercised a form of internal colonisation that, in some ways, differed little from the policies of the European colonial states. American expansion clearly fits one definition of imperialism and colonisation, whereby the ‘aggressive encroachment of one people upon the territory of another’ results in the ‘subjugation of the latter people to

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alien rule’.3 As Ann Stoler and Carole McGranahan note in their introduction to Imperial Formations, ‘What scholars have sometimes taken to be aberrant empires – the American, Russian or Chinese empires – may indeed be quintessential ones, consummate producers of excepted populations, excepted spaces, and their own exception from international and domestic laws.’4 Thus, while few would debate that Russia, Great Britain and France possessed empires, and that they utilised ‘colonial troops’ during the war, the United States is often left out of the conversation. Writing in 1905, however, the Russian historian Paul Miliukov noted that Russia and the United States have been colonised . . . in recent history. Hence the settlement and the exploitation of the natural resources . . . form the very warp of their historical texture. Most of the important features of their economic, social, and political development must be referred to this process of colonisation.5 Furthermore, as John F. Richards notes, contiguous expansion extended the frontier in a way that echoed European overseas expansion, where every ‘settler frontier required the active political, military, and fiscal engagement and support of an aggrandizing state’.6 The United States, however, is often neglected during discussions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism in which other belligerents figure so prominently, because as Amy Kaplan argues: ‘United States expansion is often treated as an entirely separate phenomenon from European colonialism of the nineteenth century.’7 And yet, the United States’ westward expansion, colonising the continental interior expressed in lofty-sounding phrases such as ‘Manifest Destiny’, utilised strategies of marginalising Native Americans and segregating them from the settler communities. It used legal and illegal means to establish its position, compelling Native Americans to resist, migrate or assimilate. The American government considered the continental interior to be uninhabited or sparsely populated, thus open to settlement by the conquering, civilised, industrious pioneer; it was under-utilised and suitable for extensive agricultural development.

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In the United States, settlers moving to regions where land seemed abundant but uncultivated were, as Stuart Banner argues, ‘unconvinced of the legitimacy of Indian property rights’.8 The indigenous populations – settled, semi-nomadic or nomadic – were ultimately displaced by an expansive agrarian society that perceived the Indians as inherently backward and in need of ‘civilisation’. These perceptions defined Native Americans, and ‘the degree to which others can be persuasively shown to be discordant with the putative norm, provides a rationale for conquest’.9 By the late 1860s, the ‘Indian problem’, as it was commonly known, re-emerged as a serious obstacle to an orderly consolidation of American expansion, resulting in violence, conflict and Native American segregation onto reservations governed by a white bureaucracy that attempted to manage every aspect of the Indians’ life to prepare them for ‘civilisation’. As in European colonies in Africa, Asia and beyond, Native Americans were generally segregated from the dominant society, lived in isolated, rural reservations or communities, did not enjoy equitable civil rights, and were dependent upon alien political and economic rule imposed by the dominant white colonial society. In the first half of the nineteenth century, American westward expansion was a slow, somewhat ad hoc affair. American policy toward Native Americans was equally confusing. During this period, the United States established displacement to ‘Indian Territory’ (territory west of the Mississippi River) as the government’s remedy.10 The 1831 Supreme Court decision in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia acknowledged that the Native American tribes were each a ‘distinct political society’, which placed the Cherokee and all other Indians in a legal ambiguity called ‘domestic dependent nations’. Indians became ‘wards’, and the United States their ‘guardian’. The government claimed Indian land ‘independent of their will, which must take effect in point of possession when their [Indian] right of possession ceases’.11 Indians enjoyed no rights as ‘wards’, and subsequent court cases identified the federal government as the final arbiter in Indian affairs. Subsequently, the system of reservations developed rather than one of removal, amidst growing concern that the Indians were nearing extinction. According to Paul Prucha, the

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‘reservation policy that was developing in the 1850s . . . included as an essential component the establishment of fixed and permanent homes for the Indians’.12 Moreover, reservations offered the possibility of more land available to white settlers, thereby reducing the chance for conflict. The United States developed reductive strategies and policies, based upon the widely-held perceptions and notions of progress, designed to ease Native American transition into ‘civilisation’ and prevent conflict between migrants and the indigenous populations. Assimilation or extinction appeared to be the only two possible solutions for American Indians. The United States established the Bureau of Indian Affairs, within the Department of the Interior – although throughout the nineteenth century the struggle between Interior and the War Department to control Indian affairs was often intense – which established agencies on the various reservations to implement government policies. The Indian Service was corrupt, replete with graft, and utterly misguided in its efforts to assimilate Indians into American society.13 Eventually, American reformers, many of whom were involved in the Abolitionist movement, demanded that more humanitarian consideration be given to displaced and relocated Indian tribes. In 1867 a socalled ‘Peace Commission’ negotiated treaties with various tribes to end sporadic conflict, especially in the Great Plains. President Grant’s newly established ‘Peace Policy’ relied heavily on religious denominations to act as agents and administrators on Indian reservations; religious and educational foundations would properly assimilate the tribes into white American society, thereby civilising them. It was hoped that churches would eliminate the corruption and egregious practices of former Indian agents and federal officials, practices that the reformers used to bolster their case to defend Indian rights and their anticipated civilising mission. Assimilation became the goal of the United States, despite legal and cultural impediments. For example, in 1876 Commissioner for Indian Affairs John Q. Smith complained that in every other department of the public service, the officers of the Government conduct business mainly with intelligent men.

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The Indian Office . . . has to deal mainly with an uncivilized and unintelligent people, whose ignorance, superstition, and suspicion materially increase the difficulty both in controlling and assisting them.14 In the 1870s numerous Indian reform groups emerged,15 led chiefly by eastern white Americans with little serious consultation from Native Americans; the former regarded allotment as the best policy to civilise Indians and, concurrently, to facilitate American expansion.16 The government-devised solution was the 1887 General Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, which ‘mandated a fundamental change in Indian-White relations’.17 Well-intentioned supporters of the Act believed that it would encourage Indians to abandon their cultures completely and would make them more amenable to white settlement and adopt agriculture permanently. Essentially, individual Indians would be ‘allotted’ up to 160 acres, learn agriculture and assimilate. It also made millions of acres of unallocated land available for white settlers. It would, one advocate claimed, elevate the barbarian because civilisation ‘follows the improved arts of agriculture as vegetation follows the genial sunshine and the shower, and that those races who are in ignorance of agriculture are also ignorant of almost everything else’.18 The agrarian life produced, presumably, industrious, productive farmers, settled on large tracts, followed by rapid assimilation into civilised society. The Dawes Act, according to Emily Greenwald, was an effort to ‘atomize Indians, to break down their economic and social bonds by dispersing them onto individually owned parcels of land’.19 Most historians have concluded, however, that the Act, in effect until 1934, was a dismal failure. Indeed, within two years of its passage, Senator Dawes complained that the Indians had ‘no homes, no horses, no hoes, no seeds, and had they had ploughs, they would not know how to use them’.20 Americans operated under the belief that, as Helen Carr notes, reformulated policies treated ‘removal of land as the granting of civilization’.21 In 1889 Commissioner of Indian Affairs T.J. Morgan identified eight ‘simple, well-defined, and strongly-cherished convictions’ to

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guide his administration, including that the ‘reservation system belongs to a “vanishing state of things” and must soon cease to exist’. All Indians, he argued, must be absorbed ‘into our national life, not as Indians, but as American citizens’. Morgan wanted Indians to adjust accordingly, and to destroy tribal relations, ‘peacefully if they will, forcibly if they must’.22 He understood the difficulties, however, writing in 1890 that the ‘natural conservatism of the Indians, which leads them to cling with tenacity to their superstitions and inherited practices, adds to the difficulty of inducing them to abandon their own and accept the white man’s ways’.23 In the 1890s a mechanism was developed by which Indians could be utilised, made productive and demonstrate the benefits of assimilation: service in the United States military.

Indians in the Army It is unclear who first proposed enlisting Indians into the army, but it was not a novel idea: Indians had participated, either as allies or enemies, in just about every American conflict.24 In the Indian Wars of the 1870s, Indians had served, chiefly as scouts, with distinction, including some who died with Custer. It was perceived as a mechanism to assimilate and civilise them, providing positive examples of virtue to act as agents of change within their respective communities. Indeed, as early as 1873 the Commissioner of Indians Affairs wrote an article in North American Review that endorsed enlisting Indians to serve as regulars.25 Military leaders were unconvinced, including General Sheridan, who in 1884 complained that Indians are ‘a race so distinctive from that governing this country that it would be neither wise nor expedient to recruit our army from their ranks’.26 Nevertheless, in 1890 Sherman’s successor, General John M. Schofield, ordered the establishment of two experimental ‘Indian’ companies, each comprising 100 men. One unit would consist of ‘northern’ plains and the other of ‘southern’ plains tribes. Lieutenant Ned Casey commanded the ‘northern’ unit, which included Cheyennes and Crows, while Lieutenant Homer W. Wheeler’s unit was made up of Arapahoes and southern Cheyennes. Casey was an interesting choice; having worked with numerous Cheyenne scouts, he had travelled to Washington to convince

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military leaders there that ‘Why these people should not do as well as soldiers as the Russian Cossack or the Indian Sepoy can never be seen until the experiment be tried’.27 Wheeler had worked with Cheyenne and Arapahoes in Texas and was an enthusiastic supporter of the plan.28 By 1891 the Adjutant General’s office claimed 759 Indian enlistees.29 The Secretary of War’s 1892 Annual Report claimed that ‘looking exclusively to the interests of the Indian, in respect to his civilisation, self-support, and control, the experiment of enlisting him as a regular soldier may be regarded as entirely successful’.30 One year later, however, the Adjutant General’s office claimed Indian enlistment was a failure and within two years the programme was dropped. Thomas Wilson, who had commanded a company of Sioux infantry, wrote in an 1895 article in The Illustrated American that ignorance, lack of discipline and cultural differences doomed the effort, noting that trying to ‘make a United States soldier out of a recalcitrant redskin [would] result in failure’.31 Some suggested, however, that the government’s abandonment of the experiment was due to white resentment, particularly following the severe 1893 recession, which meant that the enlistment of Indian soldiers led to a reduction in opportunities for whites. The Army and Navy Journal perhaps provided another reason, one that would be put to rest during World War I, when it concluded that the Indian ‘doesn’t have the patriotic instincts a soldier must have’.32 General Hugh Scott, in his memoirs, lamented: It seems a remarkable thing that British officers could make efficient soldiers of Egyptians . . . but American officers could not make soldiers out of Indians, who had fought us successfully for a long period, and who when suitably armed and mounted were the best light horsemen the world had ever seen.33 Although it is difficult to determine its importance for the role that American Indians were to play in World War I, in March 1891 the young John J. Pershing – future commander of the AEF – arrived at Pine Ridge reservation to command a company of Sioux recruits. He commented most favourably about the men in his unit, especially

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after he led a ‘delicate – and potentially volatile – mission to police the Wounded Knee battlefield’.34 Despite the Army’s decision not to target Native American men for enlistment in the Army, many disagreed, arguing that it would be a compelling means of assimilating Indians into American society. What this meant in practice, however, was that Native Americans continued to enlist, as individuals rather than under any specific programme designed to create special, segregated units. While American blacks served in such units, Indians were not designated a racial grouping that might possibly discourage service. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the Army briefly considered a plan to raise units from among Native Americans. The great showman, William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody even volunteered to raise such a force, but the government prudently declined; the plan was never implemented on the grounds of perceived earlier failures (though Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Rough Riders’ did include some Native Americans). Following the conflict with the Spanish, the military did not develop a plan specifically to target Native Americans, but continued to permit individual enlistment. Indians fought during the Boxer Rebellion in China, and in units that put down the Filipino Revolution. In the decade before the United States entered the war, activists continued to encourage Indian enlistment. One organisation, the Society of American Indians (SAI) and one prominent European-American, Joseph Dixon, became ardent advocates for Indian enlistment plans, although they disagreed about how it should occur. Work, education and unity were constant SAI themes, which stressed reform rather than separation from American society; some believed strongly that military service would provide specific benefits.35 Among the Indian intellectuals who shaped the SAI’s agenda, common race-identity was stronger than the divisive separation of tribal identities. Shared anger and frustration at United States policy toward American Indians and a common racial identity unified the sense of purpose. By 1913 the SAI had more than 200 members; it started publishing and held annual conferences. Its journals, the Quarterly

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Journal of the Society of American Indians and the American Indian Magazine, represented its principle organs and its best means of disseminating its agenda. Despite this invigorated political and social activism, the SAI never fully effected the change it sought. It was, according to Hazel Herztberger, ‘a town meeting of educated English-speaking Indians rather than a representative confederation of tribes’.36 This is, however, an unfair assessment because the SAI was the first organisation led by Indians that demanded a ‘voice in federal Indian policy’ and ‘respect for Indians as citizens’. In many ways, this pre-war, pan-Native American movement resembled other concurrent nationalist movements in Europe and Asia. They were, as Edward Lazzerini notes of Pan-Turkic nationalists, ‘partial insiders who knew how to turn the dominant discourse against itself’,37 subsequently adopting a variety of methods to preserve the nation. They aspired to use the dominant culture to their advantage, via education and economic advancement, to defend their own nationality and its culture against the encroachment of another. Their efforts – organisational, political, social – conform to Miroslav Hroch’s ‘periodisation’ theories of national revival, which denote three definable ‘phases’. Phase A was the period of scholarly interest, Phase B that of patriotic agitation and Phase C that of a rising mass national movement.38 The SAI established the foundation for the ‘next wave of reform during the New Deal’ under John Collier (Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Franklin Roosevelt) in the 1930s.39 More importantly, after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, the SAI vigorously and successfully advocated enlisting Native Americans into fully integrated units. As one SAI leader, Arthur Parker, claimed (with a touch of hyperbole), ‘segregation has done more than bullets to conquer the red man’.40 SAI leaders’ fight for assimilation and military service during the war was believed to be one mechanism to achieve it. Perhaps no one did more than Joseph Dixon to advocate and agitate on behalf of Indian enlistment in the months leading up to America’s declaration of war. Guided, in part, by his prejudices, having ‘never relinquished totally his belief that American Indians were a “Vanishing Race”’, he studied Native Americans in what he

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sincerely believed was their natural setting; he lamented their vanishing cultures and languages, arguing that only citizenship and assimilation could save them. Contrary to nineteenth-century reformers, Dixon sought also, paradoxically, to preserve languages and cultures through assimilation, because it meant individual and group autonomy.41 Dixon’s desire to secure citizenship for Indians, a privilege still denied to most, motivated him to push for Indian enlistment. His argument centred on the idea that: ‘If a man is willing to lay his life on the altar of his country, he should, in all fairness, have the privilege of becoming part of that country, sharing its privileges, possibilities and obligations.’42 Citizenship and patriotism were mutually reinforcing; citizenship stimulates patriotism, Dixon believed, noting in his book The Vanishing Race ‘a spirit of patriotism . . . would lead to a desire for citizenship’.43 After his book was published in 1913, he travelled the country promoting his ideas, gave speeches, testified before Congress and helped draft legislation. However, he also campaigned for segregated units, something that ultimately the War Department and the Indian Affairs Commissioner, Cato Sells, opposed. The major legal obstacle to be overcome was the absence of citizenship for Native Americans; non-citizens, including American Indians, were not required to register for conscription following the passage of the Selective Service Act of 1917. In his efforts to secure a place for Indians in the military, Dixon, like many others, resorted to cliche´s and stereotypes of Indians as instinctive warriors. With inherently noble characteristics and ‘unstained honor, their unimpeachable veracity, their undaunted bravery, their loyal friendship’ made Indians sincerely desirable recruits.44 Dixon urged the military to create segregated units, but Secretary of War Newton Baker opposed Indian segregation because he believed that policy had failed in the 1890s. Sells noted in his 1918 Annual Report that integrated units gave Indians an opportunity to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with white troops and, perhaps more importantly, ‘associational contact’ would better impart discipline.45 Sells and Baker agreed to support Indian enlistment and when required to register for the draft on 5 June

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1917, citizen and non-citizen Indian joined other Americans with little controversy or Indian opposition. There was some administrative confusion, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) generally handled registration on the various reservations without encountering Indian resistance. When questions arose regarding citizenship standing, the BIA let local draft-boards determine status on a case-by-case basis; if the local board members determined that an Indian was a ‘citizen’, they forwarded the registration card to the appropriate authorities. The BIA cautioned local officials that if any doubt remained as to an Indian’s citizenship, it would be best to declare him an ‘alien’ – although Indians were not defined as resident aliens – and non-citizen. Another issue that slowly resolved itself was Indians who wanted to waive their exemption and enlist rather than be drafted. By May 1918 most problems were resolved. Indians with citizenship could be drafted and non-citizen Indians could enlist. More than 50 per cent of all Indian selective-service registrants served, although the total number of Indians ultimately inducted remains a matter of debate. Most scholars believe that between 12,000 and 17,000 Indians served in the army or navy during the war46 (not including those who went to France on their own before the United States declared war, or those who served in the Canadian forces).47 The SAI responded enthusiastically to the military need, instructing its journal’s readers that the United States ‘has upheld the principles of human liberty, political equality and universal justice and she has invited to her hospitable shores the millions of the world who needed a land of opportunity and has schooled them in those principles’. It concluded with a challenge: ‘Already we hear the tread of feet that once wore moccasins; already the red men are enlisting. Let this, then, be a personal question, “Have you done your share?”.’48 The SAI was rarely in accord with the BIA or the War Department, but on this occasion it never wavered in its efforts to support the government. Those who did oppose Indian support for the war effort were generally ignored by the government, the military and Indians themselves. By the 1920s, the SAI had splintered into factions, rent by internal rivalries, but its support for Indian

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enlistment, service and domestic contributions (i.e. Liberty Loans, etc.) influenced politicians and others positively to enact necessary reforms, including full citizenship in 1924.

Indians in the war After induction, Indians reported to any number of training camps throughout the United States, were given physicals, IQ tests and a general introduction to the job of soldiering. By June 1917 Indians were included in some of Pershing’s AEF, even marching along with other Americans during the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris. Indians fought in every major military engagement undertaken by American forces, serving without fanfare or any distinctive ‘Indian-ness’ that might have distinguished them from the average American soldier. That does not mean that Indians served without distinction or courage, or that their Indian ‘pride’ or ‘identity’ was consumed by or evaporated during the war, but rather that Indians simply, quietly, efficiently and professionally carried out their service. There were even Indians serving in the so-called ‘Lost Battalion’, the 77th Division that became trapped for several days behind the German lines. Because Indians were integrated, their service during the war differed little from that of whites. Individual Indians, of course, served with distinction, were recognised with medals and honours following the war, but there was not a collective ‘Indian engagement’ with the enemy that might be characterised as ‘Indian’ in nature or outcome. Indians often served as messengers, scouts or infantrymen, and in many non-combat roles such as clerks. They transmitted messages by telephone in their native languages, a tactic later made famous in World War II by the Navajo ‘wind-talkers’.49 When later describing their service, many Indians simply noted where and when they had served, perhaps a battle or wound endured. Exaggerated accounts generally originated with others, such as Commissioner of Indian Affairs Sells who claimed that their deeds exceeded those represented in memorials of ‘bronze and marble’, or which inspire ‘song and story’ forever etched in tradition and antiquity.50 Private Frank Red Elk described his experience thus:

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‘I had hell in that man’s war’.51 Private William Menz simply noted: ‘While in the world war, I have to say that I have went through without a scratch, but although I suffered considerable I thought I was doing my duty.’52 The majority of Indians served, simply, honourably and without hyperbole or exaggeration. As Thomas Britten and, years before, Jennings Wise observe, the kind of rhetoric employed by Sells and others with social and political agendas reinforced the stereotypes and cliche´s about Indians that actually paid a disservice to their wartime record. Over-glorifying and exaggerating that service was unfair.53 One contemporary assessment of the Indians’ contributions to the war effort was so clouded in cliche´s and stereotypes that it resorted to sentimentality and indignities to persuade Americans that Indians deserved full citizenship and equal rights. The author, Caroline Dawes Appleton, stated: ‘Quietly, beneath the dignity of crested plumes, bright war paint, and enshrouding blankets, the chiefs of fourteen great Indian tribes gathered at the mighty council fire in Washington and laid their services on the altar of patriotism.’54 She noted that the Indians’ ‘natural instincts’ and their martial spirit made Indian soldiers the supreme pride of their ‘untutored’ brethren. The Indian, she wrote, ‘will scarcely be content, though he may be silent, to return to the life he left’.55 In fact, that is just what many wanted to do, although many also believed that their service would advance the Indian cause. Another writer noted that Indians in the military ‘ought to find many of their ancestral fighting instincts and methods’ useful in war. The journal The Native American claimed in an editorial that Indians made better soldiers than Whites because Indians ‘can see danger quickly and take by instinct the best means out of it’.56 Indians themselves resorted to stereotypes in order to promote the Indian cause and demonstrate Indians’ utilities to defeat Germany. According to Henry Owl, ‘The Indian has always been conspicuous as a fighter because of his dexterity and fundamental vitality, which is an ancestral heritage.’57 A report prepared shortly after the war ended reflected the prevailing sentiments of the day, further sentimentalising Indian

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contributions by noting that it ‘seemed as if the warrior spirit had revived in them, and many of those too old for service were most eager to enter the fight’. A clear indication of this martial spirit was evidenced by the ‘fact’ that 12,000 Indians enlisted in the Canadian army. The report’s author expressed keen approval of a ceremony conducted for enlisted Indians from the Standing Rock (Sioux) Reservation, who included ‘hostiles . . . who overcame Custer’, who had gathered to demonstrate a ‘loyalty to their government seldom equalled anywhere’. The report concluded that: It is not difficult to imagine the consternation of the Prussian Guard when the redskins, with war whoops, came out of the forest in true woodsman style, reverting to the typical Indian fighting tactics, disregarding rules of modern warfare, disregarding also the withering enemy machine gun fire, and proceeded to clean out the nests of machine guns. Reports from France indicate that the Indian was one of the staunchest, coolest men under fire that faced the Germans in the Great War; that the Indian never knew fatigue, never knew fear, smiled in the face of death, and fought stubbornly with a determination to win, no matter what the odds.58 Such reports, with their assumptions about Indian bellicosity, mask the reasons, more difficult to gauge, why Indians – internally colonised peoples – enlisted and fought. One of the more interesting reasons that Indians might have enlisted, or expressed such willingness to serve, was indeed the warrior tradition among the Sioux and other Plains tribes, such as the Cheyenne or Arapaho. This is a much more difficult thing to measure, but many Indians acknowledged it after the war, noting that according to custom a young man needed to prove himself in battle to earn respect and privileges within his tribal community. Gunner William Leon Wolfe, who served in the navy, stated simply that ‘My people were proud of my determination to fight.’59 After the war, Indians joined various associations, such as the American Legion, set up to unite and celebrate veterans’ contributions. At ceremonies

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and subsequent pow-wows, Indian veterans sang and danced to traditional tunes, but evoked images of the American flag, killing Germans and chastising the ‘slackers’ who did not fight. Frances Densmore observed in a 1934 article, ‘The songs of Indian soldiers during the World War’, that civilisation and education ‘in the white man’s way did not kill this desire’ to be a warrior.60 Private Louis Bighorn Elk recorded his service positively: ‘I liked it alright. I was used well. Never had any trouble with officers. I fought in trenches. I was not afraid. The home folks cite us all for bravery when we get back home.’61 The answers to questions as to why Indians registered for the draft or enlisted are little different than what motivated other Americans. After the war, Joseph Dixon, who had not surrendered the goal of full citizenship for Indians, attempted to document the war records of every Indian who served. Variously described by critics and scholars as ‘eccentric and vain’, ‘controversial’, ‘a troubled and mysterious man’ and a ‘fake’, Dixon rendered an invaluable service to historians and others, creating an archive which, as much as any can, represents a significant resource for examining the reasons why Indians enlisted, their wartime experiences and their achievements.62 In addition, the Office of Indian Affairs also collected material to document Indian servicemen’s efforts during the war. From these two sources, scholars can extrapolate some common reasons and motivations. Cynthia Enloe argues that Indians who served were similar to other marginalised ethnic groups or races that considered military service one way to demonstrate loyalty and ‘legitimate themselves in the eyes of the dominant culture’.63 The Dixon documentation reveals simply that patriotism ‘and a sense of duty to country pervade’ their responses, and that these were coupled with a desire to extend civil rights and liberty for all Indians. As one Indian said to Dixon, ‘I went to do my share, and that share was to end the war and give liberty to all people, especially my people’.64 After the war, Indians’ participation in the fighting elevated the national agenda of communities and organisations that supported greater integration of Indians into American national life. Demands for citizenship and civil rights resonated among white Americans in a way that might have seemed impossible before the war. Press

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accounts supplied by journalists and reformers eager to illustrate Indian commitment and bellicosity documented Indian prowess, their loyalty to the United States, their devotion to flag and country. As Joseph Cloud told one journalist, when asked why he had enlisted: ‘No good Indian would run away from a fight.’65 In June 1919, the American Congress passed legislation granting Indian veterans the right to petition for citizenship, although few embraced the opportunity. According to the Dixon documentation, most Indians did not even know they could petition.66 Thus it required a further act of Congress to eliminate this step towards citizenship. Interior Secretary Frank Lane fully supported the legislation, claiming that ‘the controlling factor in granting citizenship to Indians’ is because ‘they are real Americans, and are of right entitled to citizenship’.67 In 1924 Congress granted full citizenship to all Indians; however, that did not guarantee full civil rights. Many Indians remained impoverished on reservations and many states continued to deny them the franchise until after World War II. It is perhaps ironic that President Woodrow Wilson, the principal advocate of self-determination, refused even to consider its application to the United States. Wilson’s attitude reflected the creed, or the principle, rather than as a programme or policy to be carried out in the United States. It was fine to apply the policy in Eastern Europe, but he had not given much concrete thought to how or where it ought to be implemented. He believed strongly in the concept of government by consent of the governed; it was, as Victor Mamatey notes, a ‘self-evident truth, a natural right, an indispensible corollary of democracy – but not a principle of action’.68 Wilson seemed completely unaware of the revolutionary implications of his rhetoric when colonised peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East eagerly embraced self-determination. According to Allen Lynch, Wilson believed in the idea that ‘all men are fit for selfgovernment; this however, is an evolutionary process, one that depends on a guided democracy; leadership is essential here.’69 This might explain why Wilson does not seem ever to have considered American Indians for self-determination. He believed that the

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United States had a moral duty to guide self-determination for ‘mature’ peoples not governed autocratically, who were therefore ready to assume, and capable of assuming, self-determination for themselves. Wilson believed that self-determination equalled the moral foundation of government by the consent of those governed, identical to popular sovereignty.70 Indians were, by this estimation, neither mature nor led by an autocratic government. Those people in Eastern and Central Europe, such as the Poles, Czechs and even Serbs, who had demonstrated their maturity and ability, were therefore ready for self-determination. The ‘civilising’ justification created a broad tension between colonised and coloniser; it was one of the flaws of colonising states and of the ‘civilisation’ ideology. If the goal is to elevate from savagery to ‘civilised’, the imperial colonising regime is in effect creating the environment for its own destruction. Once a ‘backward’ society has achieved ‘civilisation’, it stands to reason that the justification for the continued imperial presence, or in this case the continued role of the American government in Indian affairs, would cease to exist.71 In the 1920s, that became the fundamental issue, and one which in the 1930s the Indian New Deal sought to remedy. Many modern empires maintained their imperial-colonial presence by asserting that it was necessary to sustain the civilising mission. In the United States, the government sought to extricate itself from Indian affairs, yet its critics and supporters acknowledged that previous government policies had impoverished Indians and severely altered if not destroyed their social, political and economic structures. Continued government involvement in Indian affairs was, by extended logic, necessary. The ‘civilising mission’ was not yet over. Native Americans served in the AEF as fully integrated servicemen, not specifically as colonial troops or in segregated units. Nonetheless, in many respects their service was similar to Europeans’ use of colonial troops during the war. The French deployed troops from West Africa, the British troops from India, and Russia in 1916 ended its policy of not conscripting Muslims for military service, although with disastrous results. American Indians served and fought to uphold real and perceived traditions, to

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demonstrate loyalty and patriotism, to gain social advancement and mobility, and to earn respect from the dominant society that controlled the economic and political life of the vast majority of their brethren. Indians were justifiably proud of their service during World War I: they were involved in every major American engagement, and some were deployed to Russia during the allied intervention there. But because the United States is typically neglected in discussions of empire and the war, and because Native Americans did not serve technically or explicitly as ‘colonial’ troops in defence of an empire, identifying and classifying American Indians in the ‘colonial’ context is more complicated. American Indian men served in the military, their families joined the Red Cross and subscribed to Liberty Loans, while others worked for charitable organisations, industry or agricultural concerns. Although internally colonised, an environment that had much in common with the situation of French Senegalese, Russian Tatar and Kazakh, or British Indian troops, American Indians were not construed as colonial or imperial conscripts, but rather as Americans, despite the social and economic inferiority which most experienced at home.

Notes 1 Krouse 2007, 55; scholars are indebted to her for cataloguing this vital source of Native American voices. 2 New York Evening World 1918. 3 See Meinig 1982. 4 Stoler and McGranahan 2007; they define imperial formations as ‘polities of dislocation, process of dispersion, appropriation, and displacement.’ The system creates ‘new subjects that must be relocated to be productive and exploitable, dispossessed to be modern, disciplined to be independent, converted to be human, stripped of old cultural bearings to be citizens, coerced to be free’. 5 Miliukov 1905/1962, 22. 6 Richards 2003, 6. See also, for example, Gerhard 1959; Mikesell 1960; Kohn 1956; Kohn, a noted scholar of imperialism and nationalism, recognised two different types of colonies, settled and dependent, arguing that the most dangerous for natives was the former and that the United States, ‘where the settlement of the vast continent meant the practical extermination of the natives’, was the ‘outstanding example’. ‘Reduced to its barest outline,’ Kohn argues, ‘colonialism is foreign rule imposed upon a nation’.

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Kaplan 1993, 17. Banner 2005, 35. Deane 1990, 12. Removal was a means of preventing extinction, but was not perceived to be a mechanism of assimilation. See Prucha 1975, 58 – 60. Idem 1986, 110– 11. See for example Hoxie 1984. Smith 1876, 381. For example, the Women’s National Indian Association in 1879, and three years later the Indian Rights Association. Prucha 1973, 8. Carlson 1981, 3. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1885 1885, III. Greenwald 2002, 2. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs stressed that Indians ‘must abandon tribal relations; they must give up their superstitions; they must forsake their savage habits and learn the arts of civilization; they must learn to labor, and must learn to rear their families as white people do . . .’ See Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1885 1885, V. Committee on Indian Affairs 1934, 468. Carr 1996, 44. Washburn 1973, 424– 5. Ibid., 437. Scholars debate still whether it was the Indian Service or the military that first championed the idea. See Ricky 1970, 42; Tate 1986, 419; Britten 1997, 14 – 15; Britten’s work is the seminal study of Native Americans during World War I. Walker 1873, 343. Quoted in Price 1997, 17. Quoted in Weist 1997, 29. See Wheeler 1935. Feaver 1975, 112. Secretary of War 1892, 197. Wilson 1895. Army and Navy Journal 1893, 9. Scott 1928, 169– 70. Feaver 1975, 111– 13; Britten 1997, 20. See Quarterly Journal of the Society of American Indians 1913, 71 – 5. Hertzberg 1971, 96. Lazzerini 1997, 40. Hroch 1985, 22 – 3. Furnish 2005, 172. Quoted in Hertzberg 1971, 161. See Dixon 1913; quoted in Britten 1997, 34. Quoted in Krouse 2007, 11.

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43 Dixon 1913, xv. 44 Testimony before the House Committee on Indian Affairs, 25 July 1917; quoted in Britten 1997, 39. 45 Chambers 1987, 331– 2; Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1918, 3 – 4. 46 Ibid., 5; Barsh 1991, 277– 8; Britten 1997, 59 – 60; Krouse 2007, 80. 47 See Dempsey 1989, 2; he estimates that between 3500 and 4000 Canadian Indians served. 48 American Indian Magazine 1917, 5. 49 Britten 1997, 114. 50 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1919, 14. 51 Quoted in Krouse 2007, 62. 52 Quoted in ibid., 63. 53 Wise 1931, 526– 7; Britten 1997, 83. 54 Appleton 1919, 110. 55 Ibid., 112. 56 Quoted in Britten 1997, 99 – 100. 57 Owl 1918, 353. 58 Report of the Committee of the Boston Hampton Committee 1919. 59 Quoted in Krouse 2007, 119. 60 Densmore 1934, 419. 61 Quoted in Krouse 2007, 119. 62 Britten 1997, 50; Barsh 1993, 91; Hertzberg 1971, 170. 63 Enloe 1980, 189. 64 Quoted in Krouse 2007, 33. 65 New York Evening Sun 1918. 66 Krouse 2007, 155. 67 House of Representatives 1919, 2. 68 Mamatey 1957, 41– 2. 69 Lynch 2002, 424. 70 Unterberger 1996, 933. 71 Stoler and Cooper 1997.

References ‘America needs men’, American Indian Magazine v (1917), p. 5. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1918 (Washington DC, 1918). Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1919 (Washington DC, 1919). Appleton, Caroline Dawes, ‘The American Indian in the war’, Outlook, 21 May 1919, pp. 110– 12. Army and Navy Journal, xxxi (26 August 1893), p. 9. Barsh, Russel L., ‘American Indians in the Great War’, Ethnohistory, xxxviii (1991), pp. 276– 303.

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——— ‘An American Heart of Darkness: the 1913 Expedition for American Indian citizenship’, Great Plains Quarterly, xiii (1993), pp. 91 – 115. Brandes, Ray (ed.), Trooper West: Military and Indian Affairs on the American Frontier (San Diego CA, 1970). Banner, Stuart, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Land and Power on the Frontier (Cambridge, 2005). Britten, Thomas A., American Indians in World War I: At Home and at War (Albuquerque NM, 1997). Carr, Helen, Inventing the American Primitive: Politics, Gender, and the Representation of Native American Literary Traditions, 1789– 1936 (New York, 1996). Chambers, John W., To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (New York, 1987). ‘Committee on Indian Affairs’, H.R. 7902, Part 9, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session (1934). Dempsey, James, ‘Problems of Western Canadian Indian war veterans after World War One’, Native Studies Review v (1989), pp. 1 – 18. Densmore, Frances, ‘The songs of Indian soldiers during the World War’ Musical Quarterly xx (1934), pp. 419– 25. Dixon, Joseph M., The Vanishing Race: The Last Great Indian Council (New York, 1913). Enloe, Cynthia H., Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (Athens GA, 1980). Feaver, Eric, ‘Indian soldiers, 1891– 1895: an experiment on the closing frontier’, Prologue, vii (1975), pp. 109– 18. Furnish, Patricia Lee, ‘Aboriginally Yours’: The Society of American Indians and U.S. Citizenship, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oklahoma, 2005. Gerhard, Dietrich, ‘The frontier in comparative view’, Comparative Studies in Society and History i (1959), pp. 205– 29. ‘Granting citizenship to certain Indians’, House of Representatives Report No. 140, 66th Congress, 1st Session, 21 June 1919. Greenwald, Emily, Reconfiguring the Reservation: The Nez Perces, Jicarilla Apaches, and the Dawes Act (Albuquerque NM, 2002). Hertzberg, Hazel, The Search for an American Indian Identity (Syracuse NJ, 1971). Hoxie, Frederick E., A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880– 1920 (Lincoln NE, 1984). Hroch, Miroslav, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations, trans. Ben Fowkes (Cambridge, 1985). Kaplan, Amy, ‘“Left alone in America”: the absence of empire in the study of American culture’, in Kaplan, Amy and Donald Pease (eds), Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham NC, 1993), pp. 3 – 21. Kohn, Hans, ‘Some reflections on colonialism’, Review of Politics xviii (1956), pp. 259– 64. Krouse, Susan Applegate, North American Indians in the Great War (Lincoln NE, 2007). Lazzerini, Edward, ‘Defining the Orient: a nineteenth century of Russo-Tatar polemic over identity and cultural representation’, in Kappeler, A. (ed.), Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspectives on Nationality, Politics, and

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Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Durham NC, 1997), pp. 33 –45. Lynch, Allen, ‘Woodrow Wilson and the principle of ‘National Self-Determination’: a reconsideration’, Review of International Studies xxviii (2002), pp. 419– 36. Mamatey, Victor S., The United States and East Central Europe, 1914–1918: A Study in Wilsonian Diplomacy and Propaganda (Princeton NJ, 1957). Meinig, Donald, ‘Geographical analysis of imperial expansion’, in Baker, A.R.H. and M. Billinge (eds), Period and Place: Research Methods in Historical Geography (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 60 – 80. Mikesell, Marvin, ‘Comparative studies in frontier history’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers l (1960), pp. 62– 74. Miliukov, P.N., Russia and Its Crisis (New York, 1962). New York Evening Sun, 20 December 1918. New York Evening World, 1 August 1918. Owl, Henry M., ‘The Indian in the War’, Southern Workman, xlvii (1918), pp. 353– 5. Price, Byron, ‘The utopian experiment: The army and the Indian, 1890– 1897’, By Valor and Arms, iii (1977), pp. 15 – 35. Prucha, Paul Francis, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indian, Abridged edn (Lincoln NE, 1986). ——— Americanizing the American Indian (Cambridge, 1973). ——— (ed.), Documents of the United States Indian Policy (Lincoln NE, 1975). Quarterly Journal of the Society of American Indians i (1913), pp. 71 – 5. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1885 (Washington DC, 1885). Richards, John F., The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley CA, 2003). Secretary of War, Annual Report (Washington DC, 1892). Scott, Hugh L., Some Memoirs of a Soldier (New York, 1928). Smith, John Q., ‘Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs’, in The Report of the Secretary of the Interior, House Executive Document no. 1, 44th Congress, 2nd Session, serial 1749, 1876. Stoler, Ann L. and Frederick Cooper, ‘Between metropole and colony: rethinking a research agenda’, in Cooper Frederick and Ann L. Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley CA, 1997), pp. 1 – 56. ——— and Carole McGranahan (eds), Imperial Formations (Santa Fe NM, 2007). Tate, Michael L., ‘From scout to doughboy: the national debate over integrating American Indians in the military, 1891– 1918’, Western Historical Quarterly xvii (1986), pp. 417– 37. Unterberger, Betty Miller, ‘The United States and national self-determination: a Wilsonian perspective’, Presidential Studies Quarterly xxvi (1996), pp. 926– 41. Walker, Francis A., ‘The Indian question’, North American Review, cxvi (1873), pp. 42 –5, 365. Washburn, Wilcomb E., The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History, Vol. I (New York, 1973). Weist, Katherine M., ‘Ned Casey and his Cheyenne Scouts: a noble experiment in an atmosphere of tension’, Montana: The Magazine of Western History xxvii (1977), pp. 26 – 39. Wheeler, Homer W., Buffalo Days: Forty Years in the Old West: The Personal Narrative of a Cattleman, Indian Fighter and Army Officer (Indianapolis IN, 1925).

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Wilson, Thomas H., ‘The Indian as soldier’, Illustrated American (1895). Wise, Jennings C., The Red Man in the New World Drama (Washington DC, 1931). World War I Pamphlet Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula, Pam 01, Box 37, Folder 8. ‘A brief sketch of the record of the American Negro and Indian in the Great War’, Report of the Committee of the Boston Hampton Committee (N.P., 1919).

CHAPTER 8 CITIZENSHIP, MILITARY SERVICE AND MANAGING EXCEPTIONALISM: ORIGINAIRES IN WORLD WAR I Sarah Zimmerman

In May 1910, Nicola Huchard wrote to the administration of France’s West African colonial federation, L’Afrique Occidentale Franc
aise (AOF), about his desire to enlist in one of the French metropolitan units stationed in France and Algeria. Officials rejected his request because of his Senegalese origin.1 Nicola Huchard had been born in and was a resident of, Rufisque, which – along with Saint-Louis, Gore´e and Dakar – was one of the Four Communes of French colonial Senegal. As a result of a special privilege granted under France’s Second Republic in 1848, men born in the Four Communes were French citizens. Known as originaires, these men elected a representative to the French National Assembly and had access to French public education and to French courts. They possessed the privileges of French citizenship, but, unlike most French citizens, were not required to serve in the French military. Additionally, originaires possessed other anomalous privileges under a special legal

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status, the statut personnel (personal status); originaires could practice polygyny, subscribe to sharia law and use Muslim courts.2 Originaires’ civic privileges also contrasted starkly with those of indige`nes, were the vast majority of AOF.3 Thus originaires are an exception to one of the false dichotomies of colonial studies: they were neither full French citizens nor French colonial subjects. Nicola Huchard could elect a representative to the French National Assembly, yet he was barred from fulfilling one of the quintessential obligations of French citizens to the French state: military service. The concept of the ‘citizen-soldier’ is one of the central components of the French republican civic ideology that developed during the French Revolution.4 In 1910, all French male citizens were required to serve in the French army, except for France’s African citizens in the Four Communes of Senegal. As a volunteer, Huchard was directed to the West African branch of the French Colonial Army (rather than the metropolitan army), the tirailleurs se´ne´galais, which was made up of recruits with indige`ne status. This was a complicated form of discrimination against minority citizens. The French state’s rejection of Huchard’s request to serve France as a soldier was symptomatic of a campaign launched by the French imperial state to disenfranchise originaires at the turn of the twentieth century.5 Legislation in 1903 and 1912 circumscribed originaires’ ability to exercise their rights, as well as challenged their birthright to citizenship. Their legal and political privileges under threat, originaires sought avenues to secure their citizenship in the French state, as well as to maintain their exceptionalism. In 1914, the election of the first African originaire deputy to the National Assembly, and the advent of World War I, gave rise to a political moment where France’s dire need for manpower gave originaires a leg up against the French imperial state. The Blaise Diagne legislation of 1915 and 1916 protected originaires’ atypical civic privileges and guaranteed their French citizenship by obliging them to serve alongside full French citizens in the French metropolitan army. Historians have written about the causes and effects of originaires’ effort to secure their French citizenship in a number of ways. Iba Der

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Thiam has understood it as a sacrifice to the greater cause of France, which served also as an emancipatory step for African citizens to achieve full French citizenship.6 G. Wesley Johnson portrayed originaires’ battle for political rights during World War I as the result of their assimilation to Western-style democratic politics.7 Johnson’s ideas on political assimilation relied on Michael Crowder’s assertions that France’s implementation of assimilation policies was most complete in the Four Communes.8 Mamadou Diouf has argued that instead of assimilating, originaires created a unique hybrid culture particular to the Four Communes.9 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch has taken a legal perspective on originaires’ unique access to French political rights without conforming to French civil rights, which she used to discuss West Africans’ French naturalisation.10 Diouf and Coquery-Vidrovitch have clearly demonstrated the difference between citizenship as a legal category and as membership in a French society claiming universal cultural practices.11 With the Blaise Diagne legislation, originaires secured legal and political citizenship, as well as atypical civic status during the World War I. Many historians have identified World War I as an historic moment of French colonial inversions and reversals, not least because so many colonial subjects came to France to serve as soldiers and labourers.12 The Blaise Diagne legislation, however, illuminated reversals taking place within the French armed forces at the margins of empire. Historians of the tirailleurs se´ne´galais and of West Africa’s contribution to World War I have neglected the consequences of this legislation and how it impacted the relationship between originaires and the French armed forces.13 Obligatory military service secured the voting rights of originaires and upheld their legal status as French citizens. However, originaires continued to be exempt from the French Civil Code – they could practice polygyny and live in accordance with sharia. Originaires were an imperial minority population that successfully leveraged the obligations of military service against a French state in crisis in order to maintain their distinctiveness within the French imperial framework.14 There were some surprising consequences in the wake of the Blaise Diagne legislation. After 1915, the French military

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investigated the civic status of originaires in order to compel them to fulfil their obligation to the French state. Originaires were segregated from indige`nes in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais, which made their differences more palpable. The military also scrutinised originaires’ personal lives and accommodated their multi-wife households when allocating family benefits. Thus, the French imperial state adapted to and supported their polygynous Senegalese citizens, which contrasted drastically with Algerians’ access to French citizenship.15 Unlike Muslim Algerians, World War I made originaires, like Nicola Huchard, exceptional Muslim citizen-soldiers.

The originaires’ unique history Inhabitants of coastal Senegal gained voting rights as early as 1830. With the inception of the Second French Republic in 1848, the native-born inhabitants of Saint-Louis and Gore´e became French citizens. The extension of citizenship to these populations occurred in tandem with the Second Republic’s ratification of the universal abolition of slavery in 1848. These Senegalese islands had been contact zones for some two centuries, where Africans, Europeans and Americans had participated in transatlantic commerce. By 1887, the littoral municipalities of Rufisque and Dakar joined Saint-Louis and Gore´e in possessing African-born French citizens who voted in French elections. These four coastal enclaves became known as the Quatre Communes de plein exercice (Four Communes endowed with full rights). These rights-endowed inhabitants of the Four Communes were the originaires. In addition to voting rights, they could access French public education and pursue legal recourse through the French court system.16 Although considered French citizens, originaires did not satisfy one of the principle obligations of all male French citizens – mandatory military service. In addition to this exemption, originaires had a singular set of civic privileges protected by their statut personnel. This exclusive status came into existence during Louis Faidherbe’s two terms as Governor of Senegal (1854– 61 and 1863– 65). The statut personnel entitled Muslim originaires to live in accordance with the

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legal and familial customs of Islam, which included practising polygyny, adhering to sharia and using Muslim courts. Faidherbe also inaugurated a Muslim tribunal in Saint-Louis that adjudicated legal matters for Muslim originaires according to sharia. Local Muslim notables staffed the tribunal and also reported to the imperial state regarding originaires’ civil affairs. Originaires’ statut personnel directly conflicted with the French Civil Code, which defined the state as secular and required French citizens to practice monogamy. By the 1880s, French citizenship policy had evolved to define its citizens sociologically, which made certain social practices normative.17 According to Rogers Brubaker, French understandings of nationhood and imperial expansion were heavily reliant on assimilation.18 In nineteenth-century French West Africa, this assimilationist imperative took on greater import in colonial rhetoric, though it resulted in relatively little investment in schools and cultural programmes in sub-Saharan Africa.19 Due to originaires’ longer physical proximity and historical contact with Europeans, the French assumed that they had taken on the cultural trappings of French people. However, their statut personnel directly contravened French prohibitions on the merging of religion and the state. Ironically, the same assimilationist French imperial state sanctioned West African citizens’ anomalous cultural practices and contravened the principle of universal, unitary French citizenship. By contrast, originaires retained their particular identities, privileges and/or practices. Faidherbe’s unmistakable efforts to accord Muslim originaires’ certain privileges contradicted the characteristics of the French imperial state. They secured rights not extended to Muslim Algerians, although the latter inhabited a region that was, administratively, part of France.20 During Faidherbe’s governorship, inhabitants of Saint-Louis and Gore´e were pivotal in extending France’s presence beyond the Atlantic littoral. In particular, Muslim originaires aided the French imperial state in marketing itself as quasi-Muslim to Muslim leaders in the interior.21 Muslim traders were also important intermediaries between French and indigenous agents trading along the Senegal River,22 though France’s reliance on these local agents declined after its formal military occupation of the

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West African interior. Thus, during the first decades of the twentieth century, the French sought to reduce the rights of West African French citizens, whose usefulness in the colonising process was no longer so evident. At the beginning of the twentieth century, military and political legislation sought to increase all West Africans’ obligations to the French imperial state, while limiting its reciprocal obligation to West Africans. In February 1912, the French Ministers of War and Colonies agreed on a decree that outlined a new system of imperial military recruitment. Until 1912, all West African recruits had ostensibly enlisted voluntarily, and the overwhelming majority (originaires and indige`nes) served in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais. The 1912 decree converted the recruitment method to quota-based conscription. This military legislation was the result of several years of lobbying on the part of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mangin, who was intent upon establishing a ‘black reservoir’ of soldiers in the AOF in case of future war with Germany.23 While this legislation profoundly affected indige`nes, it did not directly concern originaires, who in 1912 were not yet obliged to undertake military service. However, originaires would manipulate the impulse behind this legislation with the onset of World War I. In August 1912, the Governor-General of AOF, William Ponty, revamped the legal system to place all West African indige`nes within the same legal system, known as the indige`nat.24 While this legislation did not specifically affect originaires residing in the Four Communes, it ‘challenged the privileged status of originaires as “citizens”’ because it meant that originaires would be tried in Native Courts if residing or travelling outside the territorial limits of the Four Communes.25 Conversely, Frenchmen and other foreigners continued to benefit from their citizenship status when travelling anywhere in the AOF. This decree also went on to define French citizens in West Africa as only those who had completed the formal naturalisation process, which directly challenged the birthright of originaires. They reacted strongly to this second piece of legislation, and their opportunity to challenge it came during World War I.

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Blaise Diagne’s election By late 1913, originaires had begun to mobilise politically against the legislative challenges to their citizen status and civic privileges. In Senegal, rumours indicated that an African candidate would run for the Four Communes seat in the upcoming elections to the French National Assembly. The Four Communes had elected a representative to the National Assembly since the mid-nineteenth century, but prior to the 1914 elections successful candidates had exclusively been Bordeaux and Creole businessmen residing in the Four Communes.26 This would change with Blaise Diagne’s candidacy in the 1914 elections. Diagne had been born on Gore´e, but had spent the majority of his adult life working in the Caribbean as a civil servant. He returned to coastal Senegal as a largely unknown, obscure candidate. Diagne campaigned heavily in the Four Communes, as well as in other parts of the AOF, in order to rally indigenous leaders’ support. His political platform centred on protecting originaires’ exceptional legal status and on expanding rights for all West Africans, including indige`nes. Due to the originaires’ insecure legal status after the 1912 political decree, they could not serve in the metropolitan armed forces or in the French Foreign Legion (as the example of Nicola Huchard illustrates). If Diagne could convince the French National Assembly to make originaires’ citizenship contingent on mandatory military service in the French metropolitan army, many thought they would retain their exclusive French citizenship and singular civic rights.27 Blaise Diagne won the Four Communes seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 1914, entering the National Assembly just weeks before Germany’s declaration of war against France. World War I engendered a shifting political landscape that enabled Diagne to introduce and ratify legislation advantageous to the originaires, by manipulating France’s need for greater manpower in their protracted armed conflict with Germany. In order to win concessions for the political and civic rights of West African French citizens, Diagne discouraged originaires from volunteering for the tirailleurs se´ne´galais because he wished to secure their rights before they went to war.28

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The Blaise Diagne Laws of 19 October 1915 and 29 September 1916 tied originaires’ full citizenship to obligatory military service, guaranteeing them enfranchisement, educational opportunities and civil rights. Yet, these pieces of legislation also delivered originaire soldiers to the trenches of the Western Front.29 The language of the 1915 Law was ambiguous in awarding full citizenship rights to originaires (and their offspring), so they pushed for clarification. Conversely, the French military and colonial administration reacted negatively to the law because of the blanket bestowal of French civil rights on polygynous West African originaires. In order to eliminate ambiguities and assuage anxieties among originaires, Blaise Diagne introduced another piece of legislation to the French National Assembly and on 29 September 1916 the deputies ratified it. The 1916 Law unambiguously stated: ‘The natives of the Four Communes of Senegal and their descendants are, and will remain, French citizens obligated to the military duties previously defined in the Law of 15 October 1915.’30 The 1915 law awarded French citizenship to originaires according to birthplace ( jus solis), and the 1916 law extended these rights to their descendants ( jus sanguinis) regardless of where the latter were born.

Originaires’ circumventions of the Blaise Diagne legislation The Blaise Diagne Laws represented a renegotiation of originaires’ citizenship, facilitated by a French state in crisis. The period immediately following the ratification of the laws witnessed a pronounced effort, on the part of both the French imperial state and the originaires themselves, to direct the process through which French West Africans became, socially and legally, exceptional Frenchmen. This legislation reified distinct political, social and cultural differences between originaires and indige`nes as West African soldiers serving in the French armed forces. The first law, ratified in 1915, officially removed originaires from the tirailleurs se´ne´galais. After that date, originaires enlisted in the ranks of the French metropolitan army and served shoulder to shoulder with Frenchmen born on mainland France, while indige`nes continued to serve in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais.

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In the immediate aftermath of the Blaise Diagne legislation, originaires, military agents and the French imperial state entered into new and complex relationships. Until 1915, local decrees had successively stripped originaires of their rights. Their recourse was to secure those rights though a higher authority than the West African French administration. Their local authority usurped, members of the AOF administration protested against originaires’ citizenship by underscoring the civic incongruities of the French Civil Code and Muslim civic customs protected by the statut personnel. Administrators championed the belief that all West Africans should be equal, in their inequality, with French metropolitans. Purportedly, the Blaise Diagne Laws negated French ‘republican’ values of egalitarianism because the new legislation discriminated in restricting political and civil rights to a minority population on the grounds merely that they had been born in, or descended from, the Four Communes.31 In 1915, Governor-General Clozel expounded on the irony of enfranchising men born in the Four Communes when aristocratic sons of indigenous African elites could not have the same rights as originaires. Moreover, a pregnant woman from French Guinea or the Coˆte d’Ivoire, brought to Dakar or SaintLouis for the prosecution of a crime, could give birth during her trial and her offspring would, ipso facto, be a French citizen.32 Other protests arose in the colonial administration because the onus of locating and enlisting eligible originaire soldiers fell on military and administrative employees in the AOF. Not all originaires were aware of their new duty, and few came forward voluntarily to serve in the trenches of World War I. Determining who was, and who was not, an eligible originaire soldier required an arduous examination of imperfect and incomplete colonial administrative records. Furthermore, the military had to impose the new military obligation on those originaires who were potentially residing outside the Four Communes, the AOF or even the African continent. Undertaking this onerous task, the French military administration became embroiled in the personal and familial affairs of originaire recruits, which exposed numerous problems endemic to West African colonial bureaucracy. The process of inducting originaires into the

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French army also exposed their mixed reactions to the Blaise Diagne legislation. In late 1915, Pierre Salla approached his commanding officer at a military training camp in Senegal and demanded his immediate discharge from the French metropolitan army. Salla claimed that although he had enlisted in the French metropolitan army as an originaire from Gore´e, he had been born in Sokhone, a village outside the Four Communes, located near the Saloum River delta.33 If true, Salla was an indige`ne and ineligible to serve in the French metropolitan army. Even though he had been serving a sentence in prison for theft, Salla had been pressed into military service after the 1915 Blaise Diagne Law. Seeking ways to escape a military life he found distasteful, Salla divulged his fraudulent identity. He preferred to be relegated to indige`ne status and to be at the mercy of the conscription-based quota recruitment system that applied to residents of the AOF outside the Four Communes. Salla probably understood that he would have a better chance of avoiding military service as an indige`ne. After an official inquiry into his status, the military found him to be an indige`ne and sent him to prison for falsifying his identity.34 Sent back to prison with indige`ne status, Salla would have probably been disqualified anyway, given his criminal record, from serving in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais. The inquiry into Pierre Salla’s legal status revealed his parents’ cunning, as well as malfeasance on the part of colonial bureaucrats. Salla’s originaire parents, Marc Sall and Anna Thienou Diagne had filed Pierre Salla’s birth certificate with the civil service in Gore´e, as opposed to the chef de cercle in Sokhone.35 Officials traced the inaccurate registration of Salla’s originaire identity to a cavalier African civil servant, Samuel M’Baye, whom they further accused of registering many indige`nes as originaires born on Gore´e. M’Baye was unavailable for questioning because he was deceased. A French administrator from Thie`s, providing evidence for the case, confirmed that Mbaye’s malfeasance was more common than not in the Four Communes. The administrator reported that he had worked with several West African civil servants who had claimed false origins in Gore´e. West Africans regarded French citizenship as valuable,

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particularly for originaires who were already benefiting from that status. Apparently, it was not uncommon practice for originaires to file their children’s birth certificates in the Four Communes, even if the latter had been born outside them.36 The example of Pierre Salla made clear that some Senegalese men no longer wanted originaire status once it was made contingent on military service; some originaires desired to continue living as French citizens without any obligations to the French imperial state. These men were willing to forfeit French citizenship in order to escape military obligations to wartime France. Interestingly, the official inquiry into Pierre Salla’s civic status occurred between the ratification of the 1915 and 1916 Blaise Diagne Laws. Thus at the conclusion of the inquest he was an indige`ne, but within less than a year the 1916 law would have legally extended his parents’ originaire status to their son regardless of his birthplace. In addition to Salla’s case, the Governor-General of the AOF identified, on Gore´e alone, at least 35 other complex military cases involving originaires.37 Some originaires used substitution to safeguard their relatives from the trenches of World War I. The example of Malick N’Diaye exposed layers of corruption and forgery in the originaire induction-process. In the egregious abuse of a minor, the family of Malick N’Diaye presented a 14-year-old youth, by the name of Amadou Mery, to a recruitment board in the place of their son. Malick N’Diaye, according to his birth certificate, was 28 years old at the time of his induction in January 1916. The military medical staff examining Amadou Mery (posing as Malick N’Diaye) found physical evidence pointing to the adolescence of the new recruit. When questioned, however, members of the N’Diaye family vehemently claimed that the man presented was, in fact, their 28year-old son.38 The N’Diaye family apparently persuaded, through one means or another, medical practitioners that a man of 28 was a boy half his age. This case only came to light because Amadou Mery decided he did not like soldiering, divulged his true age, and was discharged from the military. Archival records are silent regarding any punishment meted out to the N’Diaye family or medical professionals.

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The case of N’Diaye/Mery underscored how distasteful military service was to some originaires and how their families went to extreme lengths to protect their sons from being sent to the Western Front.39 The French military were incapable of detecting all the cases where West Africans circumvented the legal distinctions between originaires and indige`nes. In both the Salla and the N’Diaye/Mery cases, the French military and colonial administration only became aware of the liberties taken by people in its employment – civil servants and medical experts – because inducted recruits found the rigours of soldiering unpleasant. These cases also signalled stark differences in how the French military and African communities understood the relationship between West African citizens and the French imperial state. The French military draft boards saw originaires as decisionmaking individuals who had to fulfil their obligations to the state. From the viewpoint of African communities, however, household heads and local political leaders made collective decisions regarding which members of the extended family were most appropriate for military service. Amadou Mery’s family coerced him to take Malick N’Diaye’s place because he was the son of a second wife and born outside the Four Communes.

Bureaucratic errors and West Africans’ manoeuvrability The French blamed West African cultural traditions and West African civil servants for the majority of cases involving recruitment substitution and false identities. In an effort to curb malfeasance and corruption on the part of their West African employees, a military official proposed rescinding the plenipotentiary powers France had allotted to local West African agents, particularly the Muslim tribunals in Saint-Louis. In attacking this particular institution, Lieutenant-Governor Angoulvant struck at originaires’ cherished statut personnel. Angoulvant took this particularly hard-line stance because of an official inquiry performed in Saint-Louis, where Lieutenant-Colonel Cor had found that Muslim magistrates in the tribunal were guilty of accepting bribes and that many were unqualified to serve as judges.40 As a result, Muslim tribunals, and

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other sanctioned indigenous courts and institutions, came under fire. Colonial administrators portrayed them as compromised civic institutions, where Muslim leaders falsified documents.41 After the 1915 and 1916 Blaise Diagne laws, the French reaped the bitter fruit of their heavy dependence on colonial intermediaries. West Africans in French employment understood the limits of French authority over their individual actions as functionaries of the imperial state. French ideals of bureaucracy and legality did not map well onto the political and social beliefs of West African societies. As demonstrated by the cases above, civil servants were susceptible to giving and receiving favours, which fell more in line with methods of accumulated social and economic capital in the patron-client relationships common in West Africa, though by no means all West African civil servants transgressed French ideals of legal practice or moral integrity. Yet, it is imperative to understand that West African intermediaries had a great deal of power in collecting and corroborating information within the French West African colonial administration – and many of them were originaires. 42 Aside from cavalier civil servants, the greatest hurdles in locating originaires came from irregular, incomplete or missing documentation, resulting from name changes and inaccuracies in recording the date or place of birth. Many of the ‘errors’ made in civil records represented spaces where newly-designated French West African citizen-soldiers could manoeuvre and manipulate protocol; this became evident shortly after the ratification of the 1915 law. In the autumn of 1915, the French military posted the names of originaires immediately required for metropolitan military service in public spaces in the Four Communes. Officials expected the men listed on these recruitment rosters to come forward voluntarily and report for duty. The Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal, Raphae¨l Antonetti, predicted that of the 9,000 names listed on the recruitment rosters, only perhaps 1,500 would be located.43 By his estimation, threequarters of the Saint-Louis population practised name-switching. Furthermore, West Africans often went by names that were not on their birth certificates, which complicated the recruitment process.44 The French interpreted name-switching as an evasive tactic on the

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part of originaires endeavouring to avoid their new military obligations. Instead, West African name-switching signified just one of the points of slippage between French bureaucratic practice and African social norms. In November 1915, Diabe´ Diaye approached a large placard in the dusty Place Faidherbe in Saint-Louis. The placard displayed lengthy hand-written lists of originaires who were required to report for duty. Though an originaire, Diaye was a veteran of the tirailleurs se´ne´galais and had already served in the colonial army in West Africa. By 1915, he was a policeman in Saint-Louis, which was probably a result of the connections he had made as a veteran. Wondering if he would be required to enlist in the French army, Diaye scanned the lists of conscripts for his name. He did not find it, and found its absence odd. Diaye realised that he did not know what name his family had filed his birth certificate, so he visited his families’ elders to find out; their responses were inconclusive, but they provided Diaye with several possible names, which he took to the Saint-Louis civil records office to ascertain if any of these names were registered along with his date of birth and his parents’ names. He was unable to locate a birth certificate corresponding to all these bits of data. But he did, however, find a name – Mafal Diagne – that corresponded to his birthday and his father’s name, though not his mother’s name. Diaye then took it upon himself to enlist as an originaire soldier under the name of Mafal Diagne. It was legally impossible to connect the names Diabe´ Diaye and Mafal Diagne to the same person.45 Diaye/Diagne probably could have evaded military service had he remained quiet, but he either desired to return to military service or to remain on the right side of the law. The errors in record-keeping in the examples of Pierre Salla, Malick N’Diaye/Amadou Mery and Diabe´ Diaye/Mafal Diagne emerged in the gap between the 1915 and 1916 Blaise Diagne Laws, the second of which added more burdens to the process of locating eligible originaires. With the extension of originaire status to the descendants of people born in the Four Communes, the French colonial government found itself wading deeper into incomplete record-keeping systems. Originaire status was inherited patrilineally

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and matrilineally and the 1915 and 1916 laws were retroactive; this meant that there were many new originaires available for military service.46 One month after the ratification of the 1916 Law, the Governor-General of the AOF estimated that there were 500 originaires in Senegal living outside the Four Communes, 1,000 in Upper-Senegal-Niger, 60 in French Guinea, 25 in the Coˆte d’Ivoire, ten in Dahomey, six in Niger and ten in Mauritania.47 There were also originaires resident in neighbouring, non-French colonial territories.48 The first hurdle in locating these 1,600 originaires living outside the Four Communes was potential recruits’ ignorance of their new political rights and corresponding military obligations. Second, in order to locate those originaires born, or living, outside the Four Communes, the French military had to depend on inconsistent and incomplete records. Further, they depended on traditional leaders to provide these missing recruits. Also, the French had to rely on local knowledge of originaires’ whereabouts, due to the absence of civic records outside the Four Communes, and this opened a wider space for manoeuvring on the part of originaires living outside the Four Communes. The multiple layers of interlocutors and intermediaries controlled knowledge regarding birth, residence, age, physical appearance and names. Protective webs of contradictory or concealed information enabled originaires to escape military service, as well as allowed indige`nes to pose as originaire soldiers in order to gain citizenship. The third complication was that the French were forced to rely on their imperial competitors – Britain and Portugal – to assist them in locating originaires in Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria.

Cultural difference and integration: statut personnel and military culture In addition to casting the net wider for originaire recruits, the 1915 and 1916 Blaise Diagne laws intensified the French military’s scrutiny of the religious protections offered by originaires’ statut personnel, as compared to republican civic ideology and military

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culture. In the eyes of some French officials, insurmountable cultural differences between West African originaire recruits and metropolitan soldiers would cause disciplinary problems.49 One official from SaintLouis believed that black Muslims’ integration into the French metropolitan army would reduce troops’ cohesion and solidarity, as well as their trust in one another. Officials believed Islamic practices were incompatible with professional military life – in particular, praying five times a day, abstinence from alcohol and refusing to consume pork.50 Nonetheless, the Blaise Diagne laws had traded military service for originaires’ irrevocable citizenship without impinging on their exclusive statut personnel; thus the military had little alternative but to accommodate originaires’ differences. Surprisingly, the colonial military sometimes went to great lengths in acknowledging and accepting originaires’ polygynous practices, though the French had no choice in managing incongruities between cultural practices protected by the statut personnel and those central to the French Civil Code. After the Blaise Diagne legislation, military debates focused on two major points of discord between Muslim civic norms and republican civic ideology – marital practices and political secularism. According to sharia, Muslims could practice polygyny and for many, religion and the state were immutably intertwined. The French Civil Code recognised only monogamous marriages and, within the French Republic, there was a separation of church and state. In the Four Communes, these seemingly contrary ideologies had co-existed since the mid-nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, West African Muslim originaires would don French uniforms, earn the same pay and benefits, share sleeping quarters and meals with metropolitan troops. Confronted by this integration, French military officials feared that deep-rooted sociocultural differences between West Africans and metropolitan Frenchmen would separate the troops into two groups, particularly at meal-times, where French troops regularly consumed alcohol and pork.51 Lieutenant-Governor Antonetti, one of the more vehement critics in the debates arising from the enactment of the Diagne legislation, predicted that originaires’ routine intermixing with

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French soldiers would negatively affect the former; he feared West Africans in the metropolitan army would lose their traditional values. Officials were concerned that the originaires’ training and education could require French military leaders to spend extra time and energy on unique problems arising from cultural misunderstanding and racial prejudice. The Blaise Diagne legislation removed West African French citizens from the margins of empire and conspicuously placed them side by side with French metropolitan soldiers. Originaires’ presence in the ranks of the metropolitan army would challenge the racial segregation imposed by the French imperial state in the AOF. When military forces travelled by train in West Africa, carriages were racially segregated, which meant that African originaire soldiers could not accompany metropolitan troops. As something of a secondary effect, Diagne’s legislation challenged widespread racial barriers in the military, as well as compelled the French to tackle the partial application, or misapplication, of French republicanism in the Four Communes.52 Originaire soldiers in the ranks of the metropolitan army certainly raised eyebrows and caused some social friction, but this may be more indicative of the military’s failures than the alleged ‘insurmountable’ social differences between Frenchmen and originaires. Ideally, in a country that requires universal conscription of its male population, the military should mirror the country’s distribution of demographic categories. Because of the variety of people in a state’s national defence system, militaries attempt to reduce these differences through uniforms, similar training techniques, and a system of advancement based on merit. If originaires caused upheavals in the ranks of the metropolitan army, it is because the military failed to ensure that soldiers conformed to a particular ideal.53 Military officials’ outcry at the integration of originaires into the ranks was also a blatant admission of the failure of colonial assimilation in the Four Communes.54 While military officials raised their eyebrows at the newly integrated ranks of the French metropolitan army, military representatives in West Africa undertook measures to accommodate originaires’ polygyny. During World War I, originaire soldiers and

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their polygynous households succeeded in maintaining their exception to the French Civil Code. They also exploited the military’s new, more pronounced presence in their lives. Although soldiering in World War I often connoted injury or death, for originaires’ families it also meant increased family benefits. Through the distribution of family allocations to polygynous originaires, the French military became embroiled in multi-wife household disputes. Originaires and their wives were the newest clients of the French military and these households cajoled their French patrons into sanctioning and safeguarding their polygynous well-being. The women attached to originaire soldiers also ensured that the French imperial state made good on its duties to the wives of citizen-soldiers. After the 1915 law, the fixed allocation for originaires’ wives was 37 francs and 50 centimes per month – more than double the amount dispensed to the wives of tirailleurs se´ne´galais. Moreover, agents of the French military pointed out that originaires’ wives’ pay, although the same monetary amount, was exponentially worth more than that accorded to the wives of metropolitan soldiers. Due to differences in prices and living standards, originaires’ wives had more purchasing power in West Africa than metropolitan wives had in France.55 French military agents could not reduce the allowances for originaires’ wives, but they attempted to regulate, standardise and redesign the system through which these funds were disbursed; this impulse entangled them in the domestic politics of multi-wife households. Due to France’s growing interest in controlling payments, originaires framed their marital problems through the misappropriation and irregular distribution of family allocations. In doing so, originaire soldiers could persuade the French military to settle their affairs in their absence. Once officially involved, the French military became entangled in issues regarding marital legitimacy, as well as Muslim and customary laws related to social ranking among wives in polygynous households. Given the military outcry at the integration of Muslim soldiers into the metropolitan army, it was surprising that the French colonial military negotiated between the parallel sets of law in order to ensure fiscal equality among originaires’ wives and their offspring in polygynous households.

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World War I facilitated the granting of inalienable citizenship to their husbands, which enabled the wives of originaires to draw closer to the French state after 1915. Their legal affiliation with originaires was integral in empowering them against the French imperial state because, like other female French citizens, the state viewed them as subordinate citizens.56 Because they were clients of the French military through their marriage to soldier-citizens, the wives of originaires could formally petition the French imperial state and win concessions that were guaranteed by the statut personnel. The French regime, in its turn, scrutinised its new clients by questioning the marital connections between soldiers and their wives. Originaires’ polygynous marriages came under the military’s microscope because of requests by multiple wives for the family allocation of the same originaire soldier. In 1915, the Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal conjectured that only 2 to 3 per cent of originaires’ marriages met the stipulations of the French Civil Code.57 This meant that if originaire soldiers were married, most of them had celebrated their union through Muslim or customary practices. The coexistence of three legal systems in West Africa – French law, sharia, and the indige`nat – provided originaire soldiers and French officials with plenty of leeway in managing legal and fiscal issues in soldiers’ polygynous households. Local decrees and the French Civil Code often contradicted one another over polygynous families’ rights. Therefore no standardised procedures existed for recognising multi-wife households, or for regulating the distribution of the military’s family allocation to sets of wives. As a result, the French imperial state was receptive to originaire soldiers’ appeals for assistance in resolving personal matters among their wives. West African agents made several pronouncements about how to allocate funds to originaires’ wives. In 1916, the Governor-General of AOF asserted that only one wife of polygynous originaire soldiers should receive the family allocation, claiming that originaires should choose which wife could collect the allowance from the military.58 He also asserted that originaire soldiers’ offspring, irrespective of their mother, should receive the 50 centimes per month guaranteed to French soldiers’ offspring.59 In doing so, the military would protect

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children fathered by originaire soldiers, yet could deny funds to the mothers of these children if the latter had been born out of wedlock. Ironically, this suggestion reaffirmed the imperial state’s connection with children who would have normally been labelled illegitimate in accordance with the French Civil Code. The Governor-General’s suggestion did not become law, however, and the disbursement of originaires’ family allocations remained irregular through the interwar period.60 During World War I, French legislators could modify the amount and means of allocations for originaires’ multi-wife households. The specific example of Ali N’Diaye demonstrates how polygynous originaire soldiers took advantage of the French military’s irregular policies for regulating family allocations.61 Ali N’Diaye was a polygynous originaire born in Saint-Louis. His first wife was Bineta Gueye and his second Makhoni N’Diaye, who had given birth to a daughter in early 1917. According to local custom, the senior wife in a multi-wife household retained the lion’s share of authority and responsibility in that household, particularly in the absence of her husband. As a consequence, the French military awarded Bineta Gueye all of Ali N’Diaye’s family allocation. According to West African social norms, Gueye should then have distributed some of the allocation to Makhoni N’Diaye. Most likely due to jealousy or bad blood between the women, Bineta Gueye denied Makhoni N’Diaye a portion of her husband’s family allocation. In an ideal world, Ali N’Diaye would have been present to address this inequity, but since he was stationed in France he relied on the French military to intervene. N’Diaye framed his senior wife’s selfish behaviour as a fiscal problem that could be resolved through modifications of the military’s means of dispensing family allocations. After an official inquest, a French military commission decided that Ali N’Diaye’s allocation would be split equally between the two wives, who would each collect a monthly 18 francs and 75 centimes.62 This verdict revealed the degree to which the French military would protect and bankroll originaire soldiers’ rights to practise polygyny. Additionally, in the absence of male heads of households, the French military safeguarded Muslim

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customs requiring polygynous men to split their attention and finances equally among their wives. In the case of originaire soldier Seı¨dou Saar, his wives approached the French administration in Senegal in order to resolve their dispute concerning the apportionment of Saar’s family allocation. Both of his wives, Binta Saar and Fatou Diouf, felt they were entitled to receive family allocations while their husband was stationed in France. Archival evidence suggests that Fatou Diouf recognised her subordinate social position, as second wife, but felt that it did not preclude her from collecting part of the family allocation. In order to adjudicate this case, the Attorney General of the AOF sifted through legal precedent in local West African decrees, French Civil Code and military legislation. Curiously, he did not consult traditional law or sharia, which would have shed some light on polygynous originaires’ social and marital practices. In accordance with West African legal precedent, the Attorney General concluded that if the French state sanctioned Seı¨dou Saar’s marriages, then the French military should split Saar’s family allocation between Binta Saar and Fatou Diouf.63 Ultimately, his decision was not implemented because further inquiries found that neither woman had legally married Seı¨dou Saar according to French, Muslim or traditional means.64 Since Binta Saar was resident in Seı¨dou Saar’s home at the time of the official inquiry, she became the sole recipient of Saar’s family allocation. The cases of Ali N’Diaye and Seı¨dou Saar reveal the slippery nature of the French military’s involvement in originaires’ marital problems, dealing with their wives and in the distribution of family income. Wives and originaire soldiers seeking financial and personal benefits from the military and colonial administration framed their marital problems – wifely hierarchy and paternal rights – in terms of the distribution of family allocations. In doing so, they sought to gain an advantage through French and military courts, whose decisions regarding allocations carried authority and finality. Yet, their involvement in the personal affairs of originaires was dangerous because the French military discriminated against wives it deemed illegitimate. The French colonial court system and the military were

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inconsistent in their dealings with West African polygynous citizensoldiers. However, these state entities were surprisingly receptive to addressing cases involving family allocations and their exceptional West African citizen-soldiers. The statut personnel prevented the French imperial state from imposing assimilationist French social and cultural ideals on originaire soldiers’ families.

Weighing the benefits and detriments of originaires’ and indige`nes’ status In previous sections, this chapter grappled with how the originaires maintained their exceptionalism in relation to French republican legal and civic traditions. In order to complete an analysis of originaires’ exclusivity and their impetus to secure their citizenship status, this section addresses how the Blaise Diagne legislation bifurcated originaires’ and indige`nes’ military experiences. Until 1915, there was parity between originaire and indige`ne soldiers serving in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais. After 1915, however, originaires served in the metropolitan army, while West African indige`nes continued to serve in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais. After the Blaise Diagne laws, the designation ‘militaire’ in tirailleurs se´ne´galais’ passports was replaced with ‘indige`ne’, which clearly indicated their subject status and their exclusion from the benefits of French citizenship.65 This change of name indicates how negative and pejorative connotations became associated with indige`nes after the Blaise Diagne legislation. In a colonial system where indige`nes faced discrimination in all forms, ironically they had more independence from the state than did originaires. Pierre Salla is a case in point: he voluntarily denied his French citizenship in order to be recognised as an indige`ne and to escape mandatory military service. Due to poor record-keeping in the AOF outside the Four Communes, the French imperial state had much less individually specific knowledge of West African indige`nes. The state also had far less contact with them, and intervened in their personal affairs less often. Different methods of recruitment for indige`nes and originaires demonstrate this clearly. The French military tracked down

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originaires through their civic records. During World War I, the French recruited indige`nes for the tirailleurs se´ne´galais through a quotabased conscription system.66 A 1912 law created this recruitment method, which also stipulated ‘recruitment through conscription would be made following local customs’.67 This meant that French draft boards relied on local chiefs and numerous other intermediaries to fill soldier quotas for each designated region of AOF. This system allowed political elites and their heirs to escape military service by sending substitutes – often social subordinates or younger sons – to the recruitment boards. In addition to substitution, indige`nes called to serve in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais migrated and relocated to avoid conscription. In 1918, military officials estimated that nearly 100,000 indige`nes had migrated to foreign territories to avoid conscription during the war.68 Had they been originaires, French military police would have pursued them. Indige`nes had greater opportunity to avoid military service, but once in the French army, their treatment, training and compensation were significantly substandard in comparison with those of the originaires. Articles in the 1915 Blaise Diagne Law promised originaires entering the military the rank of non-commissioned officer based solely on their fluency in French.69 After the legislation, originaires serving in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais were transferred to metropolitan units and retained their equivalent ranks and seniority. Those who had already signed up for five- to six-year service agreements could not reduce the length of their engagements, but could request reimbursement of the monetary difference between tirailleurs se´ne´galais’ and originaires’ signing-on bonuses.70 Originaires served three-year tours of duty, whereas indige`nes served at least four years if conscripted into military service, and up to six years if they had volunteered. Indige`nes, unlike originaires, were legally required to be available for service outside West Africa, and received nominal bonuses while stationed in France. When French metropolitan soldiers served outside mainland France, they received pay increases and could more rapidly climb the ranks. In an ironic twist of civic designation and rules applying to military service in the colonies, originaires benefited the most while serving in the AOF. As French citizens, originaires were

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also paid more while serving outside France, which meant that they received higher salaries at home in the Four Communes. If originaires served in the chilly battlefields of France, they were paid reduced wages, whereas when serving at home, they received nearly double.71 Although they were paid less in France, originaire soldiers’ salaries and benefits remained nearly triple those of tirailleurs se´ne´galais. After completing their military contracts, originaires received 250 francs upon honourable discharge, and indige`nes 50 francs. As veterans, originaires were guaranteed civilian employment and pensions and, if they died, their widows could receive half their pensions. In financial terms, originaires’ military service yielded greater returns than indige`nes soldiering for France. Although more difficult to quantify, originaire soldiers also benefited from their civic status in other ways. In terms of education, training and promotion, they had advantages over indige`nes because, as citizens, they could attend French military academies. Originaires also had access to French education in the Four Communes, which meant they also acquired a greater ability to pass the entrance examinations to these elite military institutions. If they attended French military academies (few did), on graduation they entered the French military as officers. Indige`nes, meanwhile, ascended the ranks of the tirailleurs se´ne´galais based on seniority and merit. In terms of basic amenities, originaires were guaranteed individual cots, mats, sheets, blankets and mosquito nets, while indige`nes made do with metal, wood or concrete bunks and received bedding only if it was available at their military camp. Originaires ate the same food as European soldiers, and those who were Muslim were reimbursed for the wine rations they did not draw.72 Tirailleurs’ meals were often completely different to those of metropolitan troops and originaire soldiers, who were given basic carbohydrates and small amounts of protein. Regardless of citizenship status, however, no soldiers ate well on campaign or in the trenches of World War I.

Conclusion World War I and the Blaise Diagne Laws brought systematic changes to French colonial citizenship, to the tirailleurs se´ne´galais and to

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originaires’ exceptional legal and civic status. This legislation divided West African troops in the French armed forces according to their civic status. The separation of West African troops between the metropolitan army and the tirailleurs se´ne´galais, according to where they were born and the civic status allotted to the Four Communes, led to originaires’ increasing visibility in the ranks of the metropolitan army. Ironically, however, it led to their decreasing visibility in the military archives because they dropped the title ‘tirailleurs se´ne´galais’ or ‘troupes noires’ (‘black troops’) that easily distinguished them from French soldiers in the archival record. Indige`nes, on the other hand, retained the official title of tirailleurs se´ne´galais until the late 1950s. Even today, veterans of the tirailleurs se´ne´galais remember the arbitrary privileges and benefits accorded originaire soldiers during the colonial era. Many of them jokingly refer to originaire soldiers as ‘toubabs noirs’ (‘black Frenchmen’).73 In 1910 Nicola Huchard understood the social and civic value of soldiering as a toubab noir, as opposed to an indige`ne in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais. Five years later, the Blaise Diagne laws protected originaires’ exclusive corporate identity as polygynous African French citizens by obligating them to fulfil one important aspect of French citizenship – military service. By acquiescing in this one civic obligation, originaires maintained their exception from the French Civic Code and guaranteed the privileges protected by the statut personnel. Evidence from the immediate aftermath of the Blaise Diagne legislation shows that wartime France provided a space for manoeuvring and manipulating, where originaires could secure unique civic freedoms within an assimilationist state. Originaires were interested not only in developing towards Western models of political or cultural traditions, but also in leveraging the revered republican ideal of citizen-soldier in order reify their exceptionalism in relation to French citizens and other West Africans.

Notes 1 Letter signed by Bouvet, 24 May 1910, 4D30, Senegalese National Archives (hereafter ANS).

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2 Sharia is Islamic law, based on the Quran, Hadiths and Sunna. 3 Indige`ne is French for ‘native’ or ‘indigenous’. In this context, indige`nes refers to French subjects who lacked full membership and protection in the French imperial state. Unsurprisingly, the term had negative and pejorative connotations. 4 Brubaker 1992. 5 The phrase ‘French imperial state’ is used here to describe the network of intertwined metropolitan and colonial civil servants, military employees and legislation which affected French West African citizens. This conceptualisation is more accurate than referring to the colonial state and metropolitan state as separate entities. 6 Thiam 1992, 91; his argument shares similarities with literature on African American soldiers fighting to secure full citizenship. See Williams 2010; Leonard 2010. 7 Johnson 1971, 191. 8 Crowder 1967, 18. 9 Diouf 1998, 672. 10 Coquery-Vidrovitch 2001, 290. 11 This notion of cultural citizenship speaks to Benedict Anderson’s conceptualisation of the nation as ‘an imagined political community’; see Anderson 1991, 6. 12 There are too many to list here, but to name a few: Fogarty 2008; Adas 2004; Stovall and Maghraoui 2003; Balesi 1979. 13 Most historians of the tirailleurs se´ne´galais mention the Blaise Diagne legislation without analysing its affects on West African soldiers. See Echenberg 1991, 44 – 5; Lunn 1999, ch. 3; Michel 1982, 90– 2. 14 This claim is a modification of Ronald Krebs’ assertion that ‘minority groups wield military service as a rhetorical device for winning first-class citizenship’; see Krebs 2006, 3. However, in his model minority citizens wielded their citizenship after the fact, whereas originaires petitioned for full citizenship prior to serving in the French metropolitan army. 15 Fogarty 2008, ch. 7; Bowlan 1997, 110–19. 16 Indige`nes were subject to Native Courts. 17 Weil 2008, 4, 45 – 6. 18 Brubaker 1992, xi, 11. 19 Betts, 1961; Crowder 1967; Diouf 1998. 20 Weil 2008, 207–19, deals with the debates of franchising Algerian Muslims during the nineteenth century. 21 Robinson 2000, 79 – 88. 22 Shereikis 2001, 265– 6. 23 Mangin 1910. 24 The indige´nat was an arbitrary French legal system for colonial subjects, in which regional colonial administrators made local laws as they saw fit. For more information, see Mann 2009.

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25 Shereikis 2001, 275– 6. 26 The history of elections in the Four Communes and the politicisation of the originaires is detailed in Johnson 1971. 27 Ibid., 179. 28 Ibid., 185– 6. 29 Marc Michel found that after the 1916 law, originaires were disproportionately inducted into the French military, at a rate of 2.6 per cent of their population. For the rest of the AOF, induction rates were below 2 per cent. See Michel 1982, 92. 30 ‘Law extending the dispositions of the military law of 19 October 1915 to the descendants of originaires’, 29 September 1916, Journal Officiel de la Re´publique Franc
aise, 1 October 1916, 8667– 8. 31 On the republicanism of colonial policy in French West Africa, see Conklin, 1997. 32 Letter from the Governor-General of the AOF to the Minister of the Colonies, 9 December 1915, 4D23, ANS. 33 Handwritten letter from Pierre Salla to the Administrator of Thie`s, 4 December 1915, 4D26, ANS. 34 Letter from the Attorney General of the Judicial Service of the AOF to GovernorGeneral’s Service for Civil and Muslim Affairs, 8 March 1916, 4D26, ANS. 35 Chefs de cercle were local West African officials, often rural, endowed with authority by the French imperial state. Diagne is a common surname in Senegal, and it was unlikely that Pierre Salla’s mother was related to Blaise Diagne. 36 Letter from Le Herisse in Thie`s to the Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal in SaintLouis, 12 December 1915, 4D26, ANS. 37 Letter signed by Clozel, 23 March 1916, 4D26, ANS. 38 Letter from the Lieutenant-Governor of Saint-Louis to the Governor-General of AOF, 10 February 1916, 4D26, ANS. 39 In the first two decades of the twentieth century many indigenous elites in West Africa, including originaires, associated service in the tirailleurs se´ne´galais with the low-born or with former slaves. See Klein 1998, 74–5; Echenberg 1986, 311–33. 40 Letter signed by Angoulvant, October 1916, 4D27, ANS. 41 Letter from the Lieutenant-General of Saint-Louis, 1915, 4D26, ANS. 42 For further exploration of this topic see Lawrence et al. 2006. 43 Letter from Raphael Antonetti to Governor-General Clozel, 18 November 1915, 4D25, ANS. 44 For an in-depth look at how name-switching affected West African soldiers, see Mann 2002, 309– 20. 45 Letter from Lieutenant-Governor Antonetti in Saint-Louis to Governor-General Clozel of the AOF, 2 January 1916, 4D25, ANS. 46 Letter from Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal to the Governor-General of the AOF, 19 December 1916, 4D23, ANS. 47 Letter concerning the application of the Law of September 1916, signed by Clozel, December 1916, 4D23, ANS. Upper-Senegal-Niger roughly corresponds to modern-day Mali and Burkina Faso. Dahomey is now known as Benin.

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48 These included the British colonies of Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, as well as Portuguese Guinea-Bissau and independent Liberia. 49 It is important to mention that not all originaires were practising Muslims. In fact, many of the inhabitants of Gore´e had converted to Christianity prior to the nineteenth century (they were also known as gourmets). 50 Letter from Lieutenant-General Antonetti in Saint-Louis to Governor-General Clozel of the AOF, 2 January 1916, 4D25, ANS. 51 Letter from Lieutenant-General Antonetti in Saint-Louis to Governor-General Clozel of the AOF, 2 January 1916, 4D25, ANS. 52 For further reading on the application of French republicanism during and after World War I, see Conkin 1997; Wilder 2005. 53 It should also be noted that originaires were not the first to be integrated racially into the ranks of the metropolitan branch of the French army – soldiers from Martinique and Guadeloupe had been since the nineteenth century. See Fogarty 2008, ch. 3. 54 For work on French policies of assimilation, see Crowder 1967; Betts 1961. 55 Letter from Clozel, Governor-General of the AOF, to the Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal, 14 December 1915, 4D28, ANS. 56 Until 1927, French women lost their nationality if they married foreigners; they did not achieve suffrage until 1944. For further examination of French women’s citizenship rights, see Weil 2008, 195– 207. 57 Letter from Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal to the Governor-General of the AOF, 6 January 1916, 4D28, ANS. 58 Letter from the Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal to the Governor General of the AOF, 6 January 1916, 4D28, ANS. 59 Letter from Clozel, the Governor-General of the AOF, to the LieutenantGovernor of Senegal, 5 January 1916, 4D28, ANS. 60 Extract from the register of a sectional deliberation meeting, 4 November 1924, 4D61V89, ANS. 61 This soldier was referred to as Ali or Aly throughout the documents related to this matter. 62 Verbal proceedings of the commission convened to manage allocations, 8 January 1917, 4D28, ANS. 63 Letter from the Attorney General of AOF to the Governor-General of the AOF, 24 January 1917, 4D28, ANS. 64 By the onset of World War I, the French military in West Africa had come up with two criteria for identifying ‘traditional’ marriages: exchange of bridewealth and durable cohabitation. Letter addressed to the Governor-General’s military cabinet, 2 May 1911, 4D32, ANS. 65 Note for the Head of the Military Cabinet from the Head of the Service for Muslim and Civil Affairs, 8 October 1915, 4D3V81, ANS. Militaire refers to an active member of the French military. 66 This system is detailed in Echenberg 1991, ch. 4; Lunn 1999, ch. 2. 67 Decree of 7 February 1912, Journal Officiel de la Re´publique Franc
aise, 10 February 1912, 1347– 8.

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68 Note from the Minister of War’s Council to the Minister of the Colonies, 12 January 1918, 4D3V81, ANS. 69 Report addressed to the President of the French Republic regarding the Law of 1915, 4D23, ANS. 70 Note signed by Lieutenant-Governor Antonetti, 20 October 1915, 4D23, ANS. 71 ‘Comparison entre la situation militaire des originaires et celle des indige`nes’, undated, 17G233V108, ANS. 72 Ibid. 73 Toubab is Wolof for ‘European foreigner’, in this case French.

References Adas, Michael, ‘Contested hegemony: the Great War and the Afro-Asian assault on the civilizing mission ideology’, Journal of World History xv (2004), pp. 31 – 63. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1991). Archives Nationales Se´ne´galaises (Senegalese National Archives) Balesi, Charles, From Adversaries to Comrades-in-Arms: West Africans in the French Military, 1885– 1918 (Waltham MA, 1979). Betts, Raymond, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890– 1914 (New York, 1961). Bowlan, Jeanne, ‘Polygamists need not apply: becoming a French citizen in colonial Algeria, 1918–1938’, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History xxiv (1997), pp. 110– 19. Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge MA, 1992). Conklin, Alice L., A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Ideal of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895– 1930 (Stanford CA, 1997). Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, ‘Nationalite´ et citoyennete´ en Afrique Occidentale Franc
aise: originaires et citoyens dans le Se´ne´gal colonial’, Journal of African History xlii (2001), pp. 285–305. Crowder, Michael, Senegal: A Study of French Assimilation Policy (London, 1967). Diouf, Mamadou, ‘French colonial policy of assimilation and the civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): a nineteenth-century global project’, Development and Change xxix (1998), pp. 671– 96. Echenberg, Myron, ‘Slaves into soldiers: social origins of the Tirailleurs Se´ne´galais’, in Lovejoy, Paul E. (ed.), Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade (Madison WI, 1986), pp. 311– 33. ——— Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Se´ne´galais in French West Africa, 1857– 1960 (Portsmouth NH, 1991). Fogarty, Richard, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914– 1918 (Baltimore MD, 2008). Johnson, G. Wesley, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal (Stanford CA, 1971). Journal Officiel de la Re´publique Franc
aise Klein, Martin, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, 1998).

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Krebs, Ronald R., Fighting for Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship (Ithaca NY, 2006). Lawrence, Benjamin N., Emily Lynn Osborne and Richard L. Roberts (eds), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison WI, 2006). Leonard, Elizabeth D., Men of Color to Arms! Black Soldiers, Indian Wars, and the Quest for Equality (New York, 2010). Lunn, Joe, Memoirs of the Mae¨lstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth NH, 1999). Maghraoui, Driss, ‘French identity, Islam, and North Africans: colonial legacies, post-colonial realities’, in Stovall, Tyler and Georges Van Den Abbeele (eds), French Civilization and its Discontents:Nationalism, Colonialism, Race (Lanham MD, 2003). Mangin, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles, La Force Noire (Paris, 1910). Mann, Gregory, ‘What’s in an alias? Family names, individual histories, and historical method in the Western Sudan’, History in Africa xxix (2002), pp. 309– 20. ——— ‘What was the Indige´nat? The “Empire of Law” in French West Africa’, Journal of African History l (2009), pp. 331– 53. Michel, Marc, L’Appel a` l’Afrique: Contributions et re´actions a` l’effort de guerre en AOF (1914– 1919) (Paris, 1982). Robinson, David, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880– 1920 (Athens OH, 2000). Shereikis, Rebecca, ‘From law to custom: the shifting legal status of Muslim Originaires in Kayes and Medine, 1903– 1913’, Journal of African History xlii (2001), pp. 261– 83. Stovall, Tyler, ‘Love, labor, and race: colonial men and white women in France during the Great War’, in Stovall and Tyler (eds), French Civilization and its Discontents. ——— and Georges Van Den Abbeele (eds), French Civilization and its Discontents: Nationalism, Colonialism, Race (Lanham MD, 2003). Thiam, Iba Der, Le Se´ne´gal dans la guerre 14 – 18 (Dakar, 1992). Weil, Patrick, How to Be French: Nationality in the Making Since 1789, trans. Catherine Porter (Durham NC, 2008). Wilder, Gary, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism Between the Two World Wars (Chicago IL, 2005). Williams, Chad L., Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill NC, 2010).

CHAPTER 9 FOR GOD AND COUNTRY: MISSIONARY SERVICE IN COLONIAL AFRICA DURING WORLD WAR I Kenneth J. Orosz

Colonial authorities frequently viewed missionaries serving in Africa with suspicion. In addition to championing African rights at the expense of merchants and colonial administrators, missions often had branches in the possessions of rival powers and, in the case of Catholics, frequently drew personnel from a variety of nations. Furthermore, inside French colonies missionaries had to contend with the residual anti-clericalism left over from the turn-of-thecentury laws separating church and state.1 Protestant missions in German Cameroon, on the other hand, encountered official hostility due to their reluctance to answer calls to spread the German language and follow the official curriculum in their schools, preferring instead to concentrate on evangelising in unrecognised vernacular bush schools.2 In portions of the Belgian Congo priests from the White Fathers, a predominantly French order, had long served as the de facto local government, and bitterly resisted efforts by Leopold II’s agents to establish a secular administration.3

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For all these reasons missionaries often appeared to colonial authorities as troublesome and potentially subversive entities. The outbreak of war in August 1914 quickly changed that. Much as they were dismayed by the loss of life and destruction it would inevitably cause, missionaries generally saw the war as an opportunity to prove their loyalty to the metropolitan and colonial regimes, via a combination of civilian and military service. In addition to generating new-found respectability in the eyes of government and plantation owners, missionaries saw such service as a way of improving their finances, which had suffered during the course of the conflict from the disruption in trade and the siphoning of parishioners’ donations into the war effort.4 Individual missionaries, of course, often harboured additional private reasons for answering the call to duty. Regardless of their motives, just like clergymen in Europe, missionaries serving in Africa volunteered or were drafted for local wartime service in a wide variety of roles, including combatants, procurement officers, chaplains and medical personnel. As such they played a vital, albeit long overlooked, part in the African theatre of World War I. Studies of missionaries’ wartime service in Africa, which was gratefully received by colonial authorities due to the shortages of European personnel, also add to recent reinterpretations of the role of missions in Empire which posit that, rather than passive observers, missionaries were in fact powerful actors in the shaping of colonial policy.5 Although German colonial authorities attempted to negotiate with the allies to keep Africa neutral, the war arrived on the continent on 12 August 1914, when British forces from the neighbouring Gold Coast attacked Togo in a bid to destroy the wireless station at Kamina and deprive the Germans of the ability to communicate with South America, their other African colonies and shipping in the South Atlantic.6 During the brief, three-week campaign, the Germans, hopelessly unprepared and outnumbered, surrendered six of seven provinces without a fight. While British forces did eventually encounter significant resistance on 22 August, during the approach to Kamina itself, the Germans surrendered three days later, after first destroying the wireless station.

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As the attack on Togo unfolded, the British and French, albeit for different reasons, began making immediate plans for the invasion of nearby Cameroon. For the French this represented a golden opportunity to bloody the Germans, force them out of West Africa and regain territory lost during the resolution of the 1911 Agadir crisis.7 British goals were more pragmatic and focused on securing Nigeria’s borders while denying Germany access to either the wireless station or deep-water port in Douala. Although the French enjoyed some success with limited attacks from Chad and Gabon in early August 1914, German forces repulsed British efforts to launch cross-border invasions from Nigeria after inflicting heavy casualties.8 In the wake of this disaster, the allies launched a joint amphibious invasion which captured Douala on 25 September. Thereafter AngloFrench columns pushed steadily inland as German forces retreated. Fighting continued on multiple fronts through 1915, until the gradual allied advances convinced the Germans that their eventual defeat was inevitable. Rather than surrender, however, the bulk of the German forces – Europeans as well as askaris and their families – opted in February 1916 to flee to the neutral territory of Spanish Muni. Fighting abruptly ended two weeks later, with the surrender of the lone, isolated but undefeated German garrison at Mora, in the far north of the colony. The conflict in German South West Africa was similarly truncated. South Africa opted to join the British war effort in August 1914, out of a combination of imperial loyalty, territorial ambition and the desire to end the threat of rebellion by diehard Boer separatists who had taken up residence in the neighbouring German territory.9 As a result, South African troops launched a small multi-pronged invasion of German South West Africa in mid-September 1914. Their progress was, however, undermined by the near simultaneous eruption of a Boer rebellion at home in the Transvaal and Orange Free State by separatists sympathetic to the German cause and eager to regain their own political independence. Despite this momentary South African weakness, German forces were too scattered, outnumbered and poorly supplied to take advantage of the situation. Worse still, they faced their own local rebellion by recently arrived mixed-race populations.

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As a result, very little fighting took place between the German and South African forces until after the latter’s suppression of the Boer rebellion in December 1914. Freed from this distraction, South African troops launched a new, much larger invasion that forced the Germans into a fighting retreat. By early July 1915 the German commanders realised that their situation was hopeless and, anxious to avoid further loss of life, opted to surrender. While their colleagues in Togo, Cameroon and South West Africa all surrendered, German forces in East Africa proved the exception to the rule, fighting a running campaign for the entire duration of the war. German East Africa’s strategic location on the coast and between the great lakes of the interior made a British attack inevitable. Hostilities began in early August 1914 with the British shelling of the harbour in Dar Es Salaam and soon escalated when Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German military commander in East Africa, invaded Kenya and marched up the coast towards Mombasa.10 Although the British successfully repelled the German incursion, they soon faced a series of attacks on their ships in the Indian Ocean by the German cruiser Ko¨nigsberg as well as skirmishes on Lake Victoria and along the Zambezi river. Collectively this convinced the British of the need to launch their own invasion at Tanga to secure the Kenyan border and deprive the Germans of naval bases for further shipping raids. The poorly planned 2 November landing at Tanga by Anglo-Indian forces quickly turned into a rout after some of the invaders broke and ran during the German counter-attack. In the aftermath of the British evacuation Lettow-Vorbeck dug in and planned a spirited defence of the colony, designed above all to tie up allied forces that could otherwise be used in Europe. While 1915 saw a series of skirmishes, cross-border raids and efforts to secure control of Lake Tanganyika, the war in East Africa did not resume in earnest until early 1916, when imported South African forces launched an attack from Kenya. The Belgians brought additional pressure to bear on the Germans by invading the area between Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika while Rhodesian forces simultaneously pushed northwards. Faced with multiple threats, Lettow-Vorbeck turned to guerrilla war and evasive manoeuvres, retreating ever deeper into the

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interior of German East Africa before heading across the border, first into Portuguese Mozambique, then Northern Rhodesia. As planned, the Allies gave chase, tying up tens of thousands of troops for the duration of the war. Lettow-Vorbeck’s guerrilla campaign was so successful that he was still in the field planning additional attacks when the news finally reached him (several days late) that an armistice had ended the war. Despite the rich history of conflict in Africa during World War I scholars often regard it as a mere side-show, barely mentioning it in larger historical accounts of the war.11 Even those historians who do provide detailed examinations of events in Africa are nonetheless silent about the activities of missionaries, preferring instead to focus on military campaigns, askari recruitment, wartime rebellions, or the social and economic dislocations experienced by African communities during the war.12 Occasionally this is even further limited by an exclusive focus on the campaigns in East Africa.13 Similarly, while a few scholars have documented how clergy in the metropole responded to the war, most studies of the missionary experience in colonial Africa either end prior to 1914, offer only the briefest accounts of their wartime service, or ignore the war altogether.14 Indeed, in their effort to provide a broad overview of Christian activities in Africa historians of religion often devote little more than a few pages to the war itself.15 Similar problems can be found in those works focusing on the history of individual missionary societies, which often spend far more time discussing doctrinal matters, evangelical methods and the role of individual missionaries.16 While a few such studies delve more deeply into the war years, their primary focus is on how mission work suffered during the war and how African catechists and pastors stepped into the breach to keep Christian communities alive.17 As a result, Aylward Shorter’s recent study of missionary service during World War I is unique.18 It is also, however, limited, given its exclusive focus on the White Fathers and as such does not situate their activities within the broader context of how other missionary societies, both Catholic and Protestant, took part in the war effort in Africa. What follows seeks to address this gap in the literature of both missiology and World War I.

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Supporting roles The advent of hostilities in Africa saw missionaries from all belligerent nations aiding the war effort of their respective home countries by gathering and disseminating information about the war and its causes to European settlers and African subjects alike. Missionaries began by announcing the outbreak of the war itself and then worked tirelessly to reassure their African converts, who either did not understand what it meant or had difficulty in reconciling the Christian message of peace with the concept of European countries at war.19 Furthermore, missionaries played a key role in controlling rumours about the causes of the war, atrocities, and the timing of hostilities. For example, in British Nyasaland (later Malawi) missionaries had to combat rumours that the war grew out of a quarrel between the English and German ‘Sultans’ over the merits of their respective horses or, more disturbingly, that the Europeans intended to use the war as a pretext for annihilating all Africans.20 Like the Dutch Reformed missionaries serving in Nkhoma, who used their vernacular newspaper to warn villagers to be wary of what they heard and believed about the war, missionaries throughout Africa encouraged their converts to come to them for information rather than rely on rumour or the so-called ‘bush telegraph’. The various colonial regimes also solicited missions to help spread propaganda within Africa to demonise the enemy and encourage African participation in the war effort. In German East Africa the local colonial administration singled out a Moravian missionary named Uhlmann in Bundali as part of a campaign to smuggle propaganda literature south into British Nyasaland.21 The literature in question highlighted the German-Turkish alliance in the hope of generating sympathy and possible unrest among Muslim communities inside British territory. German authorities were annoyed when Uhlmann, a pacifist, refused to participate. But there was little they could do, particularly once his fellow Moravians issued statements of support, saying that while they were all willing to perform legitimate service in support of the German war effort, promoting rebellion ran contrary to their religious principles. Other missionaries had fewer

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scruples. Alexander Hetherwick, leader of the Church of Scotland Mission in neighbouring Nyasaland, openly used the pulpit to spread war propaganda, painting the Germans as Huns bent on destruction.22 His persistent attacks on the German character, combined with setbacks in the ongoing campaigns in East Africa, so poisoned the local atmosphere that they led to the internment of German missionaries serving throughout British East Africa, first in Blantyre and then in Egypt. Colonial authorities soon asked missionaries to support the war effort in more material ways, including using the pulpit and missionrun newspapers to solicit funds for the Red Cross and other relief agencies in Europe to aid war widows and refugees.23 Although individual donations were generally small, collectively they represented significant amounts and, in the case of the Dutch Reformed Mission in Nyasaland, were singled out for praise by the Governor. Fund-raising efforts of this nature continued for the duration of the war, despite the hardships faced by African congregations in the wake of wartime tax burdens, the heavy recruitment of African soldiers and the onset of shortages created by government demands for the production of food and war materials. Once the growing world conflict spread to Africa, missionaries became actively involved in procuring food for colonial troops serving in various African theatres. Most missions ran farms to produce goods for their own use as well as to provide some income through the sale of cash crops or surplus food. As the war progressed and local shortages set in, missionaries spent increasing amounts of time on their own farms to raise produce for the market.24 Of even greater significance was their oversight of official food-procurement campaigns. In the eastern part of the Belgian Congo the once-local Tabwa population was mobilised to produce food for colonial troops. ‘Catholic missionaries in Mpala, Baudouinville and other stations assumed the leadership [of this effort], directing the produce toward the government post at Mpweto. . .’25 Missionary oversight proved critical, since the Tabwa were often reluctant participants, particularly as forced labour and the constant demands for the requisition of food generated local shortages. Nevertheless, by the

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end of October 1914 missionary encouragement led the Tabwa to collect 23 tons of food, which was transported in caravans, overseen by priests, from Baudouinville to the government post at Mpala. The following year ‘the Mpala mission sent 58 metric tonnes of “native flour” (maize and/or manioc), 26 metric tonnes of potatoes, 6 metric tonnes of wheat, 2 metric tonnes of onions, and almost 200 lb [sic ] of honey’.26 In addition to overseeing delivery caravans and encouraging locals to produce more food, British and German missionaries in Nyasaland and Tanganyika also served as government contractors supplying troops involved in the East Africa campaign. At the request of British authorities, White Fathers like Marcel Rivie`re and Oscar Julien bought up large quantities of maize and beans which they stored in the mission station at Ntaka-taka before shipping them north via Lake Nyasa to feed troops engaged in the invasion of German East Africa.27 Across the border in Tanganyika German authorities welcomed missionaries’ service as contractors supplying food for troops in the region. A missionary named Felix Gemuseus, later leader of the Moravians during the inter-war period, began supplying grain in 1915 after cash-flow problems forced him to close the school in Rungwe.28 Gemuseus combined an excellent choice in goods with high market-demand and soon became the leading procurement agent in the district, eventually earning enough to reopen the school just prior to the British invasion in early 1916. Alongside their involvement in securing food and supplies for the war effort, missionaries also played a crucial role in supporting efforts to recruit Africans for wartime service as soldiers, porters and labourers in Europe and Africa.29 Many acted out of patriotism and a desire to convince colonial authorities of their loyalty to the state, particularly in the light of periodic mission opposition to official policies such as the use of forced labour or disputes over the language of instruction in colonial schools. Some even felt that military service in support of the war would improve Africans by instilling discipline and increasing their sense of morality through exposure to Western ideals of service.30 To this end, from the start of the war missionaries worked hard to dispel confusion about how to reconcile biblical

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injunctions against killing with military service in colonial armies, repeatedly reassuring their parishioners that enlistment was morally permissible. As part of this process they carefully explained that the Bible allowed the right to self-defence, and argued that the German invasion of Belgium and France, plus the subsequent spread of hostilities to Africa, meant that all citizens and colonial subjects were justified in fighting back. On a similar note, missionaries regularly used the pulpit to whip up patriotism so as to encourage recruitment and support for the war effort. Spiritan missionaries in Senegal made a point of decorating their chapels with the French flag to reinforce their parishioners’ ties to the metropole.31 Similarly, in Nigeria the Resident in Abekokuta asked the local priests to sing ‘God save the King’ every Sunday after mass.32 While some complied, those who objected to the use of an anthem for a Protestant monarch during Catholic services compromised by saying patriotic prayers instead. When recruiters visited African villages in search of able-bodied men for the war effort they were supported by missionaries on several levels. Missionaries often took the lead at recruiting stations, first helping to gather a crowd and then explaining the needs of the various armies to the African masses.33 As part of these efforts they endorsed the use of military bands by British recruiters visiting remote villages, knowing that the impressive parade uniforms, formation drilling and loud musical instruments would both attract a crowd and encourage some to enlist.34 In addition to endorsing the tactics of military recruiters, some colonial clergy even acted as recruiting sergeants. Sundkler and Steed report that missionaries, including Alexis Lemaitre, the Apostolic Vicar of Sudan, routinely took part in recruitment drives in French West Africa.35 Catholics were not alone in these efforts. In British East Africa pastors from the Dutch Reformed Church and the Universities Central Mission openly used their powers of persuasion on local leaders and parishioners alike in an effort to boost recruitment figures.36 Some, like the Rev. Henry Ayerton and Archdeacon Arthur Glossup, even went so far as to insist on local quotas of recruits from each village and congregation. Despite these efforts, recruitment efforts stalled as the war dragged on. In addition to growing French demands for soldiers to

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fight on the Western Front, all belligerents required large numbers of African recruits for the war effort in the colonies. While some were needed as askaris, the lack of roads and railway lines and the vulnerability of pack animals to tsetse flies, meant that the bulk of recruits, including those who had volunteered for combat, were destined to serve as carriers moving food, weapons and supplies in support of military operations. The sheer number of carriers used for the war in Africa was astronomical. According to Hew Strachan, the British and Germans used 40,000 carriers each for the campaign in Cameroon.37 By contrast, in East Africa the greater distances involved meant that the British alone needed over a million carriers to support their military operations. Repeated demands for such large numbers of soldiers and carriers soon provoked resistance. The constant absenteeism created by wartime service disrupted families and local labour supplies, ultimately leading to declines in agricultural productivity and the appearance of local famines.38 While all recruits at the front faced the dangers of combat, carriers faced additional and often deadly conditions.39 Most were poorly trained and inadequately equipped. Furthermore, carriers routinely marched six to seven hours per day with loads up to 60 lbs across rough terrain for very little pay.40 The food they received was inadequate, of poor quality, frequently rotten and often reduced, forcing porters to forage constantly or face starvation. The resultant malnutrition rendered them especially prone to diseases like malaria, dysentery and pneumonia, which frequently accompanied colonial armies. Those unfortunate enough to be wounded or fall ill received inadequate medical treatment, resulting in high mortality rates. While precise numbers are difficult to determine, due to incomplete records and the large number of carriers who deserted or went missing, the death toll is estimated to be in excess of 15 per cent.41 Those who died were buried where they fell, often in common graves, without ritual or markers in a combination of callousness and an attempt to adhere to basic standards of sanitation. Recruitment inevitably declined as word spread of the brutal conditions at the front and in the carrier corps, leading the British, French, Germans and Belgians to resort to conscription to meet their

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manpower needs.42 The shift from voluntary recruitment to conscription proved to be deeply unpopular and met with widespread African resistance, triggering periodic rebellions and outbreaks of violence. Most resistance, however, was individual and took the form of desertion or flight into the bush or across borders to avoid service.43 Some potential recruits also engaged in bribery or self-mutilation to escape conscription. Desperate to meet their quotas, military recruiters often compounded the problem by resorting to heavy-handed tactics that created an atmosphere of terror. The use of excessive force was not uncommon as men were press-ganged into service. Moreover, recruiters and colonial authorities threatened chiefs, headmen and African police with fines and loss of their positions if they failed to deliver sufficient numbers of conscripts. Those who complied often sent men who were sick, diseased or had mental health issues. Much as the missions deplored the harsh treatment of conscripts and recruits, across Africa their criticism of government policy was muted by the shared belief that the successful prosecution of the war required the manpower demanded by military authorities.44 As a result, missionaries’ continued active support of recruitment efforts overshadowed their informal complaints about the treatment of recruits. In addition to making a public show of blessing units and their flags as part of the effort to cultivate loyalty and patriotism among African troops and potential recruits, colonial authorities also called upon missionaries to assist in finding men to meet the increasing needs of carrier service.45 To that end they continued to use the power of the pulpit to remind ‘their flocks [of] . . . the Christian duty to serve and pointed out that evasion was contrary to good, Christian principles’.46 In Senegal, during Blaise Diagne’s 1918 recruiting tour, a Spiritan missionary named Father Joffroy gave such a patriotic sermon that, rather than fleeing, 15 members of his congregation went to the nearby government post to enlist.47 Of these, 11 were accepted for service, vastly exceeding the recruiter’s quota of three men. As a further inducement to get Africans to serve, missionaries also made a point of trying to reach out and comfort family members of departing conscripts so as to ease community opposition to the ongoing recruitment campaigns.48

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Front-line service In addition to their many support roles, missionaries and clergy of all nationalities were drawn into front-line service as soon as the war broke out. While British clergy in Africa did not face legal conscription, like their counterparts in Europe many volunteered for local military service or returned home to take part in the larger war effort.49 As for the Belgians, their traditional neutrality and decision to suspend the draft in 1902 meant that their army was relatively small, and volunteer-based until the resumption of limited conscription in 1909.50 Belgian forces in the Congo were similarly limited in size and focused primarily on maintaining order and conducting internal punitive raids. The German invasion of Belgium and subsequent attacks on Belgian steamers on Lake Tanganyika changed all that. Back in the metropole clergymen joined the laity in the resistance movement while volunteers and conscripts flocked to join the remaining Belgian forces under the command of King Albert. These reinforcements included several Belgian White Fathers serving in Africa who were called up for service in Europe, as well as a novice named Charles Raes who served with Congolese forces during the allied invasion of German East Africa.51 French and German clerics were even more likely to be called up for wartime service. The turn-of-the-century laws separating church and state in France eliminated both the position of military chaplain (aumoˆnier militaire) and the blanket clerical exemption from military service.52 Thereafter, French clergy were subject to conscription like all other men of military age. Only those ordained before 1905, who usually served in the medical corps and the handful appointed as official chaplains once that position had been re-established in 1913, received non-combat assignments. All others, including aspirants and lay brothers, trained as front-line soldiers and were assigned to combat units. As a result, when war broke out French missionaries of military age across Africa were called to the colours.53 Most joined units in North Africa and then saw service on the Western Front, where they experienced the full horrors of trench warfare.54 Some, however, served in military units stationed in Africa. German

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missionaries faced a similar fate. Ever since unification in 1871, all men of military age owed two years of compulsory service, followed until the age of 39 by stints as reservists in Landwehr (territorial army) or Landsturm (militia) units.55 Unless called up as chaplains, priests generally avoided conscription, but novices and lay brothers remained liable for military service. Hence, as the Great War spread to Africa dozens of missionaries were drafted into Schutztruppen (colonial forces) for local defence. Regardless of their nationality, one element of wartime service that missionaries across Africa had in common was assignment as interpreters, due to their familiarity with the diverse range of languages spoken by African recruits. During their recruitment drives in Senegal, French military authorities made use of mobilised priests to interpret for troops drafted into local military units, as well as those heading to the Western Front by way of Dakar.56 The British made similar use of chaplains throughout Nyasaland. Occasionally, military authorities also asked missionaries to interpret across enemy lines. One such case took place during the 1916 Belgian offensive into German East Africa, when General Tombeur called upon Mgr Henri Leonard, Apostolic Vicar of Unyanyembe, to act as interpreter during negotiations for the surrender of Tabora.57 In addition to using them as interpreters, the British, Belgians and Germans also relied on former missionaries for military intelligence during the various African campaigns. In some cases this was informal. For example, during the June 1916 Belgian campaign in Burundi a detail of Congolese soldiers, under the command of a white officer, quizzed Father Bonneau, a French White Father stationed at Buhoro, for details about the nearby German fort at Kitega.58 Bonneau not only provided an outline of its garrison and defences, he also offered the Belgians advice about where they should set up camp. Other missionaries took a more active role in gathering military intelligence during the war. In Nyasaland, the British called up Church of Scotland missionary Cullen Young to serve as an intelligence officer, in part because of his familiarity with the countryside, local languages and the resident African populations.59 Young’s duties included ‘[recruiting and controlling] a mixed

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multitude – from 120 to 160 – [of] African scouts, interpreters, guides and “runners”, these last being constantly employed. . . in maintaining contact with columns, patrols and scout parties’.60 He also went into the field himself, interviewing headmen and picking up news from local African communities about enemy movements. On the opposite side of the continent General Charles Dobell, British commander of the Anglo-French invasion force in southern Cameroon, worried that Germans were making similar use of missionaries for reconnaissance work, arguing that their network of stations, relations with local African populations and knowledge of the interior made them ideal spies.61 In at least one case his concerns were well-founded, since the Germans used a former missionary named Alphons Hermann for scouting and reconnaissance along the coast. Hermann, a lay brother of the Catholic Pallottine Mission, had long captained the mission steamer Regina and had expert knowledge of Douala’s harbour and the many creeks and rivers emptying into it.62 He and the Regina were conscripted as soon as war broke out but, since uniforms were in short supply, like other mobilised personnel he wore only a red band on his left arm and a silver eagle emblem on his cap to signify his status as a member of the Schutztruppe. Hermann spent much of early September 1914 transporting messages and doing reconnaissance work on the British flotilla anchored off Suellaba Point in preparation for the pending allied invasion of Douala. As part of these duties he reported ship locations, troop strength and British progress in sweeping mines and clearing wrecks scuttled by the Germans in an effort to block access to the harbour. Before the month was out German authorities recognised Hermann’s exploits with an Iron Cross and promotion to sergeant. Missionaries called to the colours in Africa also saw combat, risking bodily harm on the front lines. In Togo seven younger members of the Bremen mission were drafted as combatants; the French later captured six of them and interned them as prisoners of war in Dahomey.63 Several White Fathers from French Sudan, including Eugene Raisseau and Claude Chevrat, took part in the invasion of Cameroon and were later attached to a unit of Bambara riflemen who saw action in Edea.64 During the Cameroon campaign

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Dobell complained that German missionaries were playing an active role in combat operations and offered as proof stories about the discovery of cast-off German uniforms in captured mission stations, as well as claiming that German employees of the Swiss-based Basel Mission (hereafter BM) had violated the mission’s neutrality by hiding arms and ammunition in their stations in Edea, Buea and Sakbayeme.65 His counterpart in charge of allied forces in northern Cameroon, Brig. General Frederick Cunliffe, reported finding documents showing that a significant number of German missionaries in Cameroon were serving as part of the Schutztruppe, and had tried on several occasions to lure British troops sent to arrest them into an ambush, by asking them to come into the mission house to discuss the matter.66 Although the BM hotly contested these claims, Dobell used them as justification for seizure of the mission’s property and expulsion of its personnel from the colony.67 A much more colourful and better-documented case of German missionaries involved in combat operations in Cameroon revolved around efforts to sink HMS Dwarf. Of all the British vessels anchored outside Douala harbour, Dwarf was the most hated by the Germans because, in addition to assisting with minesweeping and the clearing of wrecks, she had a shallow enough draught to pass over the barrier of submerged wrecks and shell German coastal positions.68 In midSeptember 1914 a former Pallottine lay brother, Alphons Hermann, agreed to use the mission steam-launch Regina as a decoy vessel while another launch armed with home-made torpedoes fashioned from empty gas cylinders packed with dynamite embarked on a collision course with Dwarf.69 When the first attempt failed after the torpedo boat’s helmsman panicked and jumped overboard before setting his course, Hermann volunteered to try again. He was, however, forced to target the much larger HMS Cumberland instead, after the Dwarf was damaged in battle with the German gunship Nachtigal and retreated beyond the wreck barrier for repair.70 British picket boats thwarted Hermann’s attack on the Cumberland a few days later by surprising him while he waited for the tide. During the ensuing engagement the Regina was heavily damaged and Hermann taken prisoner. When asked to reconcile his actions with his service as a missionary

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Hermann reportedly declared: ‘I am a soldier first and only then a missionary.’71 Significant numbers of missionaries also saw combat during the East Africa campaign. Father Ernest Paradis, a Canadian serving as a civilian transport officer with British forces invading German East Africa, was constantly getting himself mixed up in battles, much to the embarrassment of his superiors. In the excitement of one such occasion he so far forgot himself as to get hold of a rifle and begin firing madly in the direction of the enemy.72 Church of Scotland missionary Robert Hellier Napier fell in battle in February 1918 while serving as an officer with the King’s African Rifles in Portuguese territory.73 During the 1916 Belgian campaign in Burundi Fathers Doumeizel and Perino left their station to assist with the Belgian siege of Kitega and were nearly shot on return by Congolese askaris who had mistaken them for the enemy.74 On the German side, several members of the Protestant Berlin Mission and five White Fathers serving in East Africa were called up and served as combatants.75 Of these, Br John Berchmans abandoned his station in early September 1914 and immediately volunteered for service in the Schutztruppe, rather than wait for his draft notice. His colleague, Arthur Mechau (Br Fulgence), was killed in a firefight while serving with German forces in Rwanda when his unit was surprised by invading Belgian troops in April 1916.76 The following year Congolese troops captured Jean Boerste (Br Gosport), a member of the White Fathers serving in a German supply unit.77 Boerste survived the subsequent massacre of prisoners by the Congolese, in the absence of their white officers, only because he was out of his tent meditating at the time. Although some clearly saw combat, most missionaries mobilised in the African theatre during the war served in non-combat front-line roles.78 The carrier service was arguably the most important of these since it entailed organising and directing the multitudes of porters needed to move the goods and supplies necessary for waging war in Africa. During the East African campaign several missionaries,

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including White Fathers Ernest Paradis, Wilfrid Sarrazin, Joseph Maze´ and Claude Boucansaud, served as officers in the Transport Corps, where they organised convoys and looked after carriers supplying British forces.79 Paradis was repeatedly mentioned in despatches for his service and by war’s end had been promoted to senior transport officer for all British troops east of Nyasaland and north of the Zambezi. Despite claims that some missionaries used beatings and threats of transfers to notoriously brutal South African units to goad porters into moving goods more quickly, those serving as transport officers did all they could to alleviate the suffering and mistreatment of carriers under their command.80 This included providing spiritual counselling, medical attention and extra food, particularly after rations were cut. Some, like Robert Hellier Napier, even went so far as to periodically disobey orders and give overworked men a much needed rest. As the war progressed and the allies faced increasing difficulty in securing sufficient quantities of bearers, British missionaries in East Africa stepped into the gap by forming private carrier corps. In June 1916 Frank Weston, the Anglican Bishop of Zanzibar, raised a mixed force of 2,000 pagan, Christian and Muslim men to serve as bearers in support of the offensive in German East Africa.81 Weston, who held the de facto rank of major, personally drilled his recruits, ensured they were properly equipped, and provided funds for their wives while they were away. On reaching the mainland in July 1916 Weston led the Zanzibar Carrier Corps for two months, accompanying several supply convoys into the interior until illness forced him to hand over command to a subordinate. Weston later received both a commendation from General Smuts and an OBE for his actions. The Rev. John W. Arthur of the Church of Scotland mission provided a similar service in June 1917 by creating the Kikuyu Volunteer Carrier Corps, under his own command.82 Arthur’s plan was to provide conscripted missionaries with a non-combat role while simultaneously allowing them to continue ministering to African converts. To this end he began preaching in mission schools on the need for additional bearers for the war effort and quickly secured

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some 2,000 volunteers, half of whom were Church Missionary Society (CMS) converts, with the rest split between followers of the Church of Scotland, the Africa Inland Mission and the Gospel Missionary Society. Eleven white officers, eight of whom were missionaries, were placed in command of the Kikuyu Volunteers. The unit was shipped to Dar Es Salaam in July 1917 and saw service in the Dodoma-Iringa region until disbanded in January 1918. Non-combatant front-line roles for missionaries were by no means confined to service in the carrier corps. With the exception of German Tanganyika, where they were initially rejected as recruits for the medical corps in the interests of preserving normal administrative practice, clergy across colonial Africa performed medical service to varying extents during World War I, just like their counterparts in the metropole.83 While medical missionaries continued to serve as doctors, those without formal training worked as field medics responsible for triage, stabilisation and transport of the sick and wounded. Missionary medics also comforted patients by providing baptism, last rites and preliminary burials as needed. At field hospitals missionaries serving as orderlies cleaned victims to remove blood, dirt and shrapnel so that doctors could work more effectively. They also provided continuing care, particularly for those cut down by the epidemics of dysentery, malaria, smallpox and fever which frequently afflicted the carrier corps and civilian populations weakened by food requisitioning induced malnutrition. Service of this nature was not without risks. Field medics and stretcher bearers were often indistinguishable from combatants and thus came under fire. Constant exposure to disease meant that those serving in hospitals occasionally became ill themselves, sometimes with fatal results. For example, in East Africa Sister Jacques de Saveur died of smallpox contracted while working at a hospital in Karonga.84 Despite the inherent risks, there was a seemingly endless reserve of missionaries willing to provide medical service to carriers and askaris in the African theatre. According to Bender, when news of the war was first announced in German Cameroon ‘all those [missionaries] who could [do so] volunteered as [ hospital ] orderlies and [ stretcher ] bearers; [ female ] missionaries, single sisters as well

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as married women, joyfully agreed to act as Samaritans to the wounded.’85 Similarly, by early August 1914 over two dozen priests had been mobilised in Senegal, Ivory Coast and French Sudan for hospital work in Dakar.86 White Fathers in Nyasaland not only served in the ambulance corps, they built and staffed military hospitals in Mpala and Old Langenberg, where a chronic lack of medical supplies and the sheer volume of sick and injured patients constantly undermined their work.87 During the East Africa campaign, missionaries serving with the carrier corps, like Robert Hellier Napier, became de facto doctors when porters under their command fell ill.88 In the case of White Fathers Paradis and Sarrazin, the constant demand for medical care for their porters increasingly pushed them into hospital work and led them to petition successfully for other missionaries to join them. Finally, regardless of their assigned military duties, all missionaries mobilised during the war served in some capacity as chaplains at the front. Altogether 20–30 White Fathers were appointed as official military chaplains in various colonial armies fighting in the East African campaigns.89 Dozens more priests from the Spiritan, Mill Hill, Consolata and Bavarian Benedictine orders, along with missionaries from Protestant groups like the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, received similar wartime appointments across colonial Africa.90 The Belgians and the British were especially likely to appoint former missionaries as military chaplains, in the belief that they boosted discipline and morale by ministering to carriers and askaris alike. Ultimately, however, the need to minister to the rank and file across all the colonial armies was so great that missionaries appointed to other roles, such as medical or transport officers, routinely took it upon themselves to perform extra duties as unofficial chaplains at the front, viewing such service as an extension of their missionary work. As such, official and unofficial chaplains converted, baptised and confirmed thousands of African porters and soldiers. They also regularly visited the wounded, mediated in disputes, conducted funerals, said mass, provided communion, heard confessions, and provided counselling and absolution to both white and non-white troops. Such services were not even limited to members of their own army; after giving

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communion to and baptising dozens of British askaris in the trenches during the Battle of Lupembe in November 1916, Father Ernest Paradis was led blindfolded to German positions so that he could also give the last rites to dying soldiers.91 Similarly, Belgian forces tasked French priests in Burundi with burying the body of a young German killed in battle.92 They built a coffin and took the body to their cemetery for burial, but had to delay when Congolese soldiers from a cannibal tribe protested, allegedly because they wanted to eat the body. The priests were so horrified they returned to their mission station and later buried the coffin in secret. Equally upsetting, military commanders ordered a Belgian priest named Raphael Roy serving with Congolese forces to attend several executions of askaris convicted of killing their officers.93 As part of these duties, Roy heard their confessions and wrote letters to their spouses before they were shot by firing squad.

Post-conflict missionary service Mission work suffered tremendously during the war years, due to a combination of manpower shortages, looting, damage to mission property, and lack of access to reinforcements, supplies and money.94 To make matters worse, as the war progressed missionaries in all the colonies faced the prospect of interment and expulsion as enemy aliens. Some societies, like the Bremen Mission, which had fields in the Gold Coast, or the CMS, which operated in both German East Africa and Kenya, had begun their work before the colonial division of Africa was complete, and thus when the war broke out were technically behind enemy lines. Others, particularly Catholic orders, were multinational organisations. The White Fathers, for example, had members from Belgium, France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada serving throughout East and Central Africa.95 While the precise timing and extent of internment and expulsion varied, all colonial governments chose to expel missionary citizens of enemy powers lest they engage in sabotage or espionage, or promote rebellion among restless African populations upset by the harsh realities of colonial rule and the ongoing war.96 In such cases, missionary societies with ties to the ruling power stepped in to

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replace ousted clergy. For example, in the French occupation zone, after the conquest of Cameroon, Spiritans and members of the Paris Mission replaced German missionaries serving with the Catholic Pallotine order and the Protestant Basel Mission respectively.97 The result of all this dislocation created a degree of instability which the various colonial governments and missions alike deplored. While African catechists, teachers and clergy stepped into the breach to keep Christian communities alive and well, missions still worried about the prospect of backsliding and reversion to paganism among their converts. Colonial governments, on the other hand, worried that the temporary administrative vacuum created by the mobilisation of so many civil servants, the disruption of trade due to the war and anger over unpopular measures like requisitions, taxes and the support of illegitimate rulers might together induce rebellions which would hamper the war effort.98 To that end, mission societies and government authorities alike were determined to maintain a missionary presence wherever possible, to stabilise local politics and reassure the masses that any war-related problems were purely temporary. Hence missionaries who had evaded conscription or internment, as well as those newly dispatched to take over from departed colleagues, a process that could take years, did their best to maintain the local status quo by running schools, reopening mission stations and holding regular religious services. Examples of how missionaries worked to help restore stability to communities upset by the vagaries of war are not hard to come by. In German SouthWest Africa, for example, the Rhenish Missionary Society agreed to stay and continue its evangelical and educational activities at the request of the conquering South Africans, who feared that their removal might provoke another Herero uprising.99 Similarly, officials called upon missionaries to provide a calming influence in Nyasaland in the aftermath of the January 1915 Chilembwe uprising. John Chilembwe, a US-trained African pastor, spent years protesting local tax and labour policies on nearby whiteowned agricultural estates.100 When the war broke out he expanded his critique by condemning British recruitment efforts on the grounds they represented a new form of forced labour and that

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Africans had no stake in a war they did not understand and from which they would not benefit. When his protests fell on deaf ears, he and his followers turned to armed insurrection, with fatal results. In the aftermath of the short-lived revolt, Catholic missionaries testified before the Commission of Enquiry investigating the causes of the rebellion and made a point of offering their services in support of the war effort in East Africa.101 Fearful that the recent expulsion of German missionaries from the region might enable unsupervised catechists and African preachers to provoke similar rebellions elsewhere in East Africa, the British called on the Church of Scotland mission and the Universities Mission to Central Africa to take control of the recently vacated mission fields, so as to calm the local populations and restore a degree of European authority.102 Such calls were not limited to the British and South Africans. When antiMuslim repression and long-simmering resentment over taxes and recruitment drives led to the eruption of the 1916 Volta-Bani revolt in French West Africa, members of the White Fathers played a key role in helping to contain the rebellion by persuading their converts not to participate.103 Later they also helped interrogate several ringleaders of the revolt, leading to the latter’s conviction and imprisonment. Thereafter, the mission proved so successful as a calming influence that local administrators opposed further conscription of mission personnel, an attitude shared by their peers in other French colonies. In addition to helping restore stability to areas affected either by rebellion or by the deportation of clergy as enemy aliens, missionaries also helped facilitate local administration in conquered German colonies and, on occasion, assisted with efforts to make the transition to another colonial power permanent. In the French-occupied zone of Cameroon military authorities understood the need to quickly obtain French-speaking clerks and interpreters to help them carry out the day-to-day tasks of government.104 Back in the metropole, the French also harboured ambitions of being granted permanent control of Cameroon as compensation for wartime losses. When these ambitions came under threat, first from the December 1914 creation of an Anglo-French Condominium to act as a caretaker government

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and then later by the March 1916 provisional agreement to divide the former German colony into separate spheres pending final peace talks, French authorities launched a plan to Gallicise Cameroon as quickly as possible so as to cement their claim and make Cameroon ungovernable by other colonial powers. Given the on-going wartime manpower-shortages, the solution both to the short-term need to train French-speaking African clerical staff and to the longer-term Gallicisation plan revolved around the demobilisation of experienced missionaries, so that they could begin opening schools where the primary goal was to be the ‘the rapid diffusion of French so as to permit relations with the natives’.105 To that end, General Joseph Ayermich, head of the local French military contingent, demobilised Father Jules Douvry and three other Spiritan priests serving as chaplains with French forces in Cameroon, so that they could begin the process of creating a French-language school system to train clerks and provide language lessons to German-trained African school monitors.106 Additional demobilised former missionaries, including seven more priests and four experienced Protestant missionaries from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, who had been serving as chaplains in Europe, joined Douvry and his colleagues in 1916.107 With the addition of these reinforcements, the French were able to reopen a total of 27 government schools by the end of the year, with a total of nearly 3,000 pupils, a figure they sustained with only minor fluctuations until the end of the war.108 In an effort to boost these figures, as well as to satisfy the desire of the demobilised missionaries to resume evangelical work – something they were precluded from doing in secular government-run institutions – in September 1917 the local French administration opted to create parallel public and private schools.109 Shortly thereafter trained African monitors were put in charge of some of the government schools, while others were spun off as private mission-run institutions. Over the next 18 months mission run private schools rapidly expanded in number as more and more German-trained catechists and teachers were taught to speak French and then assigned to open schools of their own. As a result, by 1918 the number of private mission-run institutions had risen to 37 schools catering to some 2,200 pupils.110

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Finally, building on their work in reopening schools, missionaries also played an important part in easing the transition back to peace when the war ended. Missionaries not only helped spread the word that the war was at last over, they also promoted social stability by speaking out against problems and deficiencies they observed in the demobilisation of askaris and carriers.111 Unlike white soldiers, neither colonial administrators nor their own people treated African servicemen as conquering heroes on their return home, in part because they often arrived empty-handed.112 Military authorities not only used demobilisation inspections to confiscate war souvenirs acquired by African soldiers and porters, in many cases they also took and destroyed blankets and uniforms so as to prevent the spread of disease. While African servicemen were usually issued with replacement clothes, they rarely got new blankets. Worse, they also came home with little in the way of wages for their service. Askaris received smaller lump sums than expected because most of their pay had been allocated earlier to their families. Carriers fared even worse, in that they were paid less than askaris and, given the chaotic nature of their demobilisation, often had trouble collecting their pay and promised bonuses. Worse still, most colonial armies turned them loose immediately at war’s end, making no provision for their repatriation. Once dropped from the rolls, carriers were thus forced to make the long trek home on their own. While en route, they had to fend for themselves and forage for food while battling rapidly spreading epidemics of influenza and dysentery. Missionaries not only repeatedly complained to military and colonial authorities about the conditions of African demobilisation, they worked to ease the plight of former servicemen trekking homeward by providing them with food, shelter and medical care in hospitals and mission stations along the way.

Conclusion From start to finish missionaries played an important part in directing the course of events in Africa during World War I. Their actions behind the lines in support of recruiting drives, including efforts at rumour control and the suppression of rebellions, greatly facilitated

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the mobilisation of local military forces for service at home and on the Western Front. Once hostilities spread to Africa, missionaries proved invaluable to the war effort by helping to organise and lead the legions of porters who moved the arms, ammunition and supplies necessary for waging war on the continent. Regardless of their race, soldiers of all colonial armies benefited enormously from the comfort provided by official and unofficial military chaplains. Similarly, missionary service as suppliers of food, military intelligence and medical care often made the difference between life and death for those at the front. As the war progressed, missionaries from across the continent also put their own lives at risk as combatants, serving in military engagements large and small, some even making the ultimate sacrifice. Those who survived worked strenuously to stabilise the continent as the fires of war receded, serving as replacements for deported colleagues to calm and reassure traumatised African communities, speaking out to improve the plight of demobilised askaris and carriers, and working to prepare conquered territories for their new colonial masters. While events in Africa admittedly had little bearing on the final outcome of World War I, the sheer volume of participants in this little known theatre, both white and black, renders it more than the side show many derisively call it. Indeed, if Page’s estimate that two million Africans served as soldiers and carriers is at all accurate, then Africa’s role in the war dwarfs that of Belgium by a factor of five.113 And yet with the exception of the long campaign in German East Africa, scholars have paid little attention to what transpired on the African continent, leaving far too many gaps in our understanding of how the war became a truly global conflict. Part of the answer, it turns out, can be found in closer study of missionary activities during World War I.

Notes 1 Turn-of-the-century French anti-clericalism is detailed in Ravitch 1990, ch. 4. For its effect on missions see Daughton 2006. 2 Orosz 2008, chs 1 – 3. 3 Roberts 1987. 4 Linden 1974, 109. 5 Examples of this reinterpretation of missionary roles include Daughton and White (eds) 2012; Porter 2004; Oermann 1999.

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6 Morrow 2003, 58. For a brief overview of the military campaigns in Africa, see Killingray 2010; Stoecker 1986. 7 Crowder and Osuntokun 1987. 8 Killingray 2010, 116– 18; see also Gorges 1930. 9 Morrow 2003, 59, 98 – 9; Collyer 1937. 10 For an overview of the campaign in East Africa, see Samson 2006, ch. 1. 11 Examples include Robbins 1984; Keegan 1999; Gilbert 1994. 12 Osuntokun 1979; Farwell 1986; Crowder 1985; Strachan 2004, which reprints material scattered throughout the first volume of his magisterial study of the war (Strachan 2001). 13 Anderson 2004; Paice 2007. 14 Marrin 1974; Hoover 1989; Madigan 2011; Becker 1998. Works which either end in 1914 or ignore the war altogether include Zorn 1993; Porter 2003; Etherington 2005. 15 Hastings 1994; Sundkler and Steed 2000; Ballard 2008. 16 Examples include Schlatter 1916; vol. 4, 1965; Koren 1983; Blanc et al. 1970. 17 Groves 1958; Moorhouse 1973, ch. 17; Pirouet 1978; Wright 1971. 18 Shorter 2007. 19 Page 1980b, 54; Moorhouse 1973, 296– 7. 20 Page 2000, 13 – 14. 21 Wright 1971, 138–9. 22 Moorhouse 1973, 293– 4. 23 Jean-Marie Coquard, ‘Notes de Guerre,’ ff. 31, Mss. Afr. r.51 ff. 9–40, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford (hereafter Rhodes House). Interestingly, similar fund-raising efforts on behalf of African soldiers and their families were either non-existent or only appeared late in the war. For example, it took until 1917 for the creation of a Native Red Cross, allowing the people of Nyasaland to donate money for African soldiers serving in East Africa and on the Western Front. See Page 2000, 126. 24 Taylor 1919, 443. 25 Roberts 1987, 193. 26 Ibid., 196. 27 Linden 1974, 109. By 1916 some 180,000 kg of maize and 50,000 kg of beans had been collected and temporarily stored at the mission station. 28 Wright 1971, 137, 139– 40. 29 Page 1987b, 18. While the French made extensive use of black troops on the Western Front, the British limited their own use of colonial subjects for combat in Europe to Indians. See Morrow 2003, 83. 30 Linden 1974, 111–12. 31 Foster 2006, 246. 32 Coquard,‘Notes de Guerre,’ Rhodes House Mss. Afr. r.51 ff. 25. 33 Moorhouse 1973, 293; Sundkler and Steed 2000, 612. 34 Page 1980b, 54 – 5; Page explains that African oral histories contest the legitimacy of using military bands as a recruitment tool since they created an

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35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

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atmosphere which encouraged enlistment without explaining what it entailed. He reports that many volunteers signed up in the mistaken belief that rather than be used as porters or askaris they would be issued with impressive parade uniforms and taught to play the musical instruments on display. Sundkler and Steed 2000, 612. Page 2000, 46. Strachan 2001, 498– 9. See also Matthews 1987; Killingray 1987. For the impact of wartime manpower demands on Africa during World War I, see Michel 2003, ch. 8; Balesi 1973, ch. 5; Thomas 1975; Killingray 1978; d’Almeida-Topur 1973. The experiences of African soldiers in World War I are detailed in Lunn 1999. Killingray and Matthews 1979, 5 – 23; Page 1978, 95 – 7. Hodges 1987, 144. Page 1987b; Savage and Munro, 1966, 316–19, 332– 3; Killingray 1997, 156– 8. Crowder 1968, 254– 62; Killingray and Matthews 1979, 15– 19; Page 1980a, 174– 6. Linden 1974, 111; Foster 2006, 241– 2. Ibid., 244; Page 1980a, 174. Page 2000, 47. Foster 2006, 248. For more on Diagne’s recruiting mission, see Michel 2003, ch. 4; Genova 2004, 35 – 41. Groves 1958, 69. Moorhouse 1973, 292. For an overview of the British clergy’s wartime service in the metropole, see Brown 1994; Parker 2009. Stevenson 2004; Schaepdrijver 2010; Strachan 2004, 30 – 1, 112– 14. Shorter 2007, 9 Byrnes 1999; Coffey 2002. Foster 2006, 225 n. 86. Groves reports that the White Fathers in Uganda had 34 of their 125 priests recalled for service in France, while the Lyons Seminary for African Missions, which operated in the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Egypt, had 31 priests mobilised for service in Europe and another 41 for local service in Africa. On the Protestant side, many members of the Paris Mission were recalled to their regiments as soon as general mobilisation was announced. See Groves 1958, 40 – 1. Shorter asserts that even though most White Father conscripts who served in Europe were non-combatants, they nonetheless had to shoot to kill and participate in bayonet charges in order to defend themselves. As a result, they witnessed the worst that trench warfare had to offer; see Shorter 2007, ch. 2. Keegan 1999, 20 – 1. On the role of German clerics during World War I, see Hoover 1989, ch. 4; Gordon 1981. Shorter 2007, 8, 11. Ibid., 126. Rabeyrin 1973, 19 – 20.

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59 Young 1956, 27 – 30; Page 1980b, 55. 60 Young 1953, 53 – 9. 61 Osuntokun 1979, 194– 6; General Charles Dobell to Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 5 December 1915, CO 649/2/465, Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO). 62 Undated and unattributed press clipping entitled ‘Die Schicksale eines Kolonialkampfers’, and an unsigned ‘Bericht (an die Kolonialamt) u¨ber die Ta¨tigkeit u. Gefangennahme des Pallotinerbruders Alphons Hermann als Soldat bei den Ka¨mpfen in Kamerun’, 1 April 1915, Provinz-Archive der Pallotiner, Limburg an der Lahn (hereafter Limburg Report). Photocopies of both documents, neither of which has a call number since the archives are being reorganised, were furnished to me in September 2007 by the Pallottiner’s archivist, Father Norbert Hannappel. 63 Groves 1958, 18. 64 Shorter 2007, 8, 106. 65 Telegram from Dobell to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26 April 1915, PRO CO 649/1/19445; Osuntokun, 1979, 145. 66 Ibid., 196. 67 Bender 1921, 19–20. The British later concluded that Dobell had overstepped his bounds and made restitution to the BM, since there was no hard evidence connecting these acts to the mission and even if its German employees had hidden munitions they were merely obeying the lawful orders of German authorities prior to the surrender of Douala. Memo from A.J.H. to Strachey, Risley and G. Fiddes Regarding the Basel Mission Trading Co., 26 April 1915, PRO CO 649/1/19445. 68 Limburg Report, 2 –4; Gorges 1930, 125; Chatterton 1931, 132– 5. 69 Nothnagel Diary, 14 September 1914, PRO WO 158/552; Capt. C. Fuller, Final Report of Late Senior Naval Officer Duala, May 1917, ‘Naval Operations in the Cameroons September 1914– May 1916’, PRO ADM 137/127. 70 Limburg Report, 4 – 8; Nothnagel Diary, 20 – 22 September 1914, PRO WO 158/552; Gorges 1930, 128– 9. 71 Bender 1921, 12. Since Hermann lacked a uniform and was often misidentified as a member of the BM, he was nearly court-martialled and executed for violating the neutrality of the mission. Eventually, however, the British recognised his status as a member of the Schutztruppe and declared him a prisoner of war. Hermann was then transferred to French custody and spent the remainder of the war interned in Dahomey and Morocco. Neffe n.d., 122. 72 Shorter 2007, 103. 73 University of Glasgow First World War Roll of Honour n.d. 74 Rabeyrin 1973, 19 – 20. 75 Groves 1958, 30; Shorter 2007, 10. 76 Ibid., 43 – 8. Although some 60 members of the White Fathers were killed while serving in Europe, Mechau was the only one to die on military service in Africa. 77 Ibid., 55. 78 Groves 1958, 40; Moorhouse 1973, 292.

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79 Linden 1974, 108; Shorter 2007, 12. 80 Shorter argues that such claims are little more than a gratuitous slur based on incomplete quotes or on material taken out of context; see ibid., 102, 104. For missionary efforts to improve conditions for carriers see Page 2000, 111– 12; Linden 1974, 110. 81 New York Times 1917; Smith 1926, ch. 10; Holland 1987, 970– 2; Tengatenga 2010, 190– 2. 82 Groves 1958, 68; Savage and Munro 1966, 316– 19, 332– 3; Sundkler and Steed 2000, 611. 83 Wright 1971, 137; Taylor 1919, 448; Coquard, ‘Notes de Guerre,’ Rhodes House Mss Afr r.51 ff. 25; Shorter 2007, 35– 6, 102. 84 Linden 1974, 108, 110. The White Sisters were not the only ones to serve on the staff of native hospitals across Africa. When Spanish influenza hit Dakar in October 1918 nuns from the Sisters of Saint-Joseph de Cluny were sent to help in colonial hospitals. See Foster 2006, 235. 85 Bender 1921, 9 – 10. 86 Foster 2006, 225; Sundkler indicates this was a sizeable percentage of all those available; see Sundkler and Steed 2000, 612. 87 Linden 1974, 107–8, 110; Roberts 1987, 196. 88 Page 2000, 111; Shorter 2007, 12. 89 Ibid., 10 – 13. 90 Linden 1974, 108–9; Pirouet 1978, 119; Roberts 1987, 193. 91 Shorter 2007, 127. 92 Rabeyrin 1973, 39 – 40. 93 Shorter 2007, 101– 2. 94 Moorhouse 1973, 298– 9; Groves 1958, 51 – 4. 95 Shorter 2007, 109– 10. 96 Wright 1971, 140–4. 97 For details on the deportation of missionaries from colonial Africa see Groves 1958, chs 1 –2. 98 Osuntokun 1971, 172– 3. 99 Pierard 1998, 16. 100 Linden and Linden 1971; Pachai 1971; Hastings 1994, 487– 9. 101 Shorter 2007, 93 – 5; Page 2000, 16 – 17, 38 – 40. 102 Wright 1971, 145–6. 103 Shorter 2007, 92 – 3. For more on the origins of the conflict and on the violent French response, see Morrow 2003, 97 – 8; Saul and Royer 2001. 104 Orosz 2008, 192– 7. 105 Journal Officiel de la Re´publique Francaise 1921, 431. 106 Jules Douvry to Mgr. [Le Roy], 29 May 1916, Congre´gation du Saint Esprit Archive, Chevilly Larue, 2J1.2a; Bulletin de la Congre´gation du St Esprit 1922. 107 Criaud 1990, 122; Alle´gret 1924, 30. 108 Orosz 2003, App. F. 109 Idem 2008, 200– 1.

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EMPIRES IN WORLD WAR I Idem 2003, Apps G, H. Page 2000, 162. Killingray 1987, 165– 70; Page 2000, 163– 5. Page 1987b, 18. The Belgian Army peaked in 1918 with 176,000 officers and men, aided by 30,000 civilians serving in hospitals and factories. Boue´ 2005–191.

References Alle´gret, Elie, La Mission du Cameroun (Paris, 1924). Anderson, Ross, The Forgotten Front: The East Africa Campaign 1914 –1918 (Stroud, 2004). Balesi, Charles John, From Adversaries to Comrades-in-Arms: West Africans in the French Military, 1885– 1918 (Waltham MA, 1973). Ballard, Martin, White Men’s God: The Extraordinary Story of Missionaries in Africa (Westport CT, 2008). Becker, Annette, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France 1914– 1930 (New York, 1998). Bender, Carl J., Der Weltkrieg und die christlichen Missionen in Kamerun (Kassel, 1921). Blanc, Rene´, Jacques Blocher and Etienne Kruger, Histoire des Missions Protestantes Francaises (Flavion Belgium, 1970). Boue´, Gilles, ‘Belgian Army’, in Tucker, Spencer C. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of World War I: A Political, Social and Military History, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara CA, 2005), pp. 190– 2. Brown, Stewart J., ‘“A Solemn Purification by Fire”: Response to the Great War in the Scottish Presbyterian Churches 1914– 1919’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History xlv/1 (1994), pp. 82 – 106. Bulletin de la Congre´gation du St Esprit, ‘Bulletin des Oeuvres-Cameroun’, xvii/384 (1922), pp. 723– 45. Byrnes, Joseph F., ‘Priests and Instituteurs in the Union Sacre´e: Reconciliation and its Limits’, French Historical Studies xxii/2 (1999), pp. 263– 89. Chatterton, Edward Keble, Gallant Gentlemen (London, 1931). Coffey, Joan L., ‘For God and France: The Military Law of 1899 and the Soldiers of Saint-Sulpice’, Catholic Historical Review lxxxviii/4 (2002), pp. 677– 701. Collyer, John Johnston, The Campaign in German Southwest Africa 1914– 1915 (Pretoria, 1937). Criaud, Jean, La Geste des Spiritains: Histoire de l’Eglise au Cameroun 1916– 1990 (Paris, 1990). Crowder, Michael, West Africa under Colonial Rule (Evanston IL, 1968). ——— ‘The First World War and its Consequences’, in Boahen, A. Adu (ed.), Africa under Colonial Domination 1880– 1935, Vol. 7, The UNESCO General History of Africa (Berkeley CA, 1985), pp. 283– 311. ——— and Jide Osuntokun, ‘The First World War and West Africa 1914– 1918’, in Ajayi, J.F.A. and Michael Crowder (eds), History of West Africa, Vol. 2. Rev. edn (New York, 1987), pp. 546– 77.

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d’Almeida-Topur, He´le`ne, ‘Les populations dahome´enes et le recruitement militaire pendant la premie`re guerre mondiale’, Revue francaise d’histoire d’Outre-mer lx/219 (1973), pp. 195– 241. Daughton, J.P., An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism 1880– 1914 (Oxford, 2006). ——— and Owen White (eds), In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World (Oxford, 2012). Etherington, Norman, Missions and Empire (Oxford, 2005). Farwell, Byron, The Great War in Africa (1914 – 1918) (New York, 1986). Foster, Elizabeth Ann, Church and State in the Republic’s Empire: Catholic Missionaries and the Colonial Administration in French Senegal, 1880– 1936, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton University (2006). Genova, James F., Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity and the Limitations of Mimicry in French-Ruled West Africa, 1914 –1956 (New York, 2004). Gilbert, Martin, The First World War: A Complete History (New York, 1994). Gordon, Frank J., ‘Liberal German Churchmen and the First World War’, German Studies Review iv/1 (1981), pp. 39 – 62. Gorges, Edmund Howard, The Great War in West Africa (London, 1930). Groves, C.P., 1914– 1954. Vol. 4, The Planting of Christianity in Africa (London, 1958). Hastings, Adrian, The Church in Africa 1450– 1950 (Oxford, 1994). Hodges, Geoffrey, ‘Military Labour in East Africa and its Impact on Kenya’, in Page (ed.), Africa and the First World War, pp. 137–51. Holland, Ruth, ‘Feet and Hands of the Army’, British Medical Journal 295 (17 October 1987), pp. 970– 2. Hoover, Arlie, God, Germany and Britain in the Great War: A Study in Clerical Nationalism (New York, 1989). Horne, John (ed.), A Companion to World War I (New York, 2010). Journal Officiel de la Re´publique Francaise liii/415 (7 September 1921), ‘Rapport sur l’administration du Cameroun de la conqueˆte au 1er juillet 1921’, Annexe, pp. 414– 92. Keegan, John, The First World War (New York, 1999). Killingray, David, ‘Repercussions of World War I in the Gold Coast’, Journal of African History xix/1 (1978), pp. 39 –59. ——— ‘Military and Labour policies in the Gold Coast during the First World War’, in Page (ed.), Africa and the First World War, pp. 152– 70. ——— ‘The War in Africa’, in Horne (ed.), Companion to World War I, pp. 112– 26. ——— and James Matthews, ‘Beasts of Burden: British West African Carriers in the First World War’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, xiii/1–2 (1979), pp. 5–23. Koren, Henry J., To the Ends of the Earth: A General History of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (Pittsburgh PA, 1983). Linden, Ian, Catholics, Peasants, and Chewa Resistance in Nyasaland, 1889– 1939 (Berkeley CA, 1974). Linden, Jane and Ian Linden, ‘John Chilembwe and the New Jerusalem’, Journal of African History xxii/4 (1971), pp. 629– 51. Lunn, Joe, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Oxford, 1999).

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Madigan, Edward, Faith Under Fire: Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War (New York, 2011). Marrin, Albert, The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War (Durham NC, 1974). Matthews, James K., ‘Reluctant Allies: Nigerian Responses to Military Recruitment 1914– 1918’, in Page (ed.), Africa and the First World War, pp. 95 – 114. Michel, Marc, Les Africaines et la Grande Guerre: l’Appel a` l’Afrique (1914 – 1918) (Paris, 2003). Moorhouse, Geoffrey, The Missionaries (Philadelphia PA, 1973). Morrow, John H. Jr., The Great War: An Imperial History (New York, 2003). Neffe, Gerold, Notices Biographiques des Freres Pallotins au Cameroun 1890– 1916 (Yaounde, n.d.). New York Times, ‘How fighting bishop saved British force’, 15 February 1917. Oermann, Nils Ole, Mission, Church and State Relations in Southwest Africa Under German Rule (1885 – 1915) (Stuttgart, 1999). Orosz, Kenneth J., Religious Conflict and the Evolution of Language Policy in German and French Cameroon, 1885– 1939, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Binghamton University (2003). ——— Religious Conflict and the Evolution of Language Policy in German and French Cameroon, 1885– 1939 (New York, 2008). Osuntokun, Akinjide, ‘Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria during the First World War, 1914– 1918’, Canadian Journal of African Studies v/2 (1971), pp. 171– 92. ——— Nigeria in the First World War (Atlantic Highlands NJ, 1979). Pachai, Bridglal, ‘An Assessment of the Events Leading to the Nyasaland Rising of 1915’, in Smith, G.W. and Bridglal Pachai (eds), Malawi Past and Present (Blantyre, 1971), pp. 114– 36. Page, Melvin E., ‘The War of Thangata: Nyasaland and the East African Campaign, 1914– 1918’, Journal of African History xix/1 (1978), pp. 87 – 100. ——— ‘The Great War and Chewa Society of Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies vi/2 (1980a), pp. 171– 82. ——— ‘Malawians and the Great War: Oral History in Reconstructing Africa’s Recent Past’, Oral History Review viii (1980b), pp. 49 – 61. ——— (ed.), Africa and the First World War (New York, 1987a). ——— ‘Black Men in a White Man’s War’, In Page (ed.), Africa and the First World War (1987b), pp. 1 – 27. ——— The Chiwaya War: Malawians and the First World War (Boulder CO, 2000). Paice, Edward, Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (London, 2007). Parker, Linda, The Whole Armour of God: Anglican Army Chaplains in the Great War (Solihull, 2009). Pierard, Richard V., ‘Shaking the Foundations: World War I, the Western Allies, and German Protestant Missions’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research xxii/1 (1998), pp. 13 – 19. Pirouet, M. Louise, ‘East African Christians and World War I’, Journal of African History xix/1 (1978), pp. 117– 30. Porter, Andrew, The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880– 1914 (Grand Rapids MI, 2003).

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——— Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700– 1914 (Manchester, 2004). Rabeyrin, Claudius, Les Missionaires du Burundi durant la guerre des gentilshommes en Afrique Orientale, 1914– 1918 (Langeac France, 1973). Ravitch, Norman, The Catholic Church and the French Nation 1589– 1989 (New York, 1990). Robbins, Keith, The First World War (Oxford, 1984). Roberts, Allen F., ‘“Insidious Conquests”: Wartime Politics along the southwestern Shore of Lake Tanganyika’, in Page (ed.), Africa and the First World War, pp. 186– 93. Samson, Anne, Britain, South Africa and the East Africa Campaign 1914– 1918: The Union Comes of Age (London, 2006). Saul, Mahir and Patrick Royer, West African Challenge to Empire: Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anti-Colonial War (Athens OH, 2001). Savage, Donald C. and J. Forbes Munro, ‘Carrier Corps Recruitment in the British East Africa Protectorate, 1914– 1918’, Journal of African History vii/2 (1966), pp. 313– 42. Schaepdrijver, Sophie de, ‘Belgium’, in Horne (ed.), A Companion to World War I, pp. 385– 402. Schlatter, Wilhelm, Geschichte der Basler Mission, 1815– 1915, 4 vols (Basel, 1916); vol. 4 (1965). Shorter, Aylward, African Recruits and Missionary Conscripts: The White Fathers and the Great War (1914 – 1922) (London, 2007). Smith, Maynard, Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar (London, 1926). Stevenson, David, ‘Battlefield or Barrier? Rearmament and Military Planning in Belgium, 1902–1914’, International History Review xxix/3 (2007), pp. 473–507. Stoecker, Helmuth, ‘The First World War’, in Stoecker, Helmuth (ed.), German Imperialism in Africa (London, 1986), pp. 270– 96. Strachan, Hew, To Arms. Vol. 1, The First World War (Oxford, 2001). ——— The First World War in Africa (Oxford, 2004). Sundkler, Bengt and Christopher Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge, 2000). Taylor, James Dexter, ‘Some Effects of the War on Africa’, Missionary Review of the World, Vol. 42 (1919), pp. 439–46. Tengatenga, James, The UMCA in Malawi: A History of the Anglican Church (Zomba Malawi, 2010). Thomas, Roger, ‘Military Recruitment in the Gold Coast during the First World War’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines xv/57 (1975), pp. 57 – 83. University of Glasgow First World War Roll of Honour, ‘Intelligence Officer and Lieutenant (Reverend) Robert Hellier Napier’, at http://www.universitystory. gla.ac.uk/ww1-biography/?id¼4010 (accessed 3 August 2011). Wright, Marcia, German Missions in Tanganyika 1891– 1941: Lutherans and Moravians in the Southern Highlands (Oxford, 1971). Young, T. Cullen, ‘Zovu’, Nyasaland Journal vi (1953), pp. 53 – 9. ——— ‘The Battle of Karonga’, Nyasaland Journal viii (1956), pp. 27 – 30. Zorn, Jean-Francois, Le grand sie`cle d’une mission protestante: La Mission de Paris de 1822 a` 1914 (Paris, 1993).

CHAPTER 10 THE VISUAL POLITICS OF UPPER SILESIAN SETTLEMENTS IN WORLD WAR I Erin Eckhold Sassin German-controlled Upper Silesia has not existed since 1921, when Weimar Germany was forced to cede much of the region to the new Polish and Czechoslovak nations. Yet this area, now located in the south-west corner of modern Poland and the north-west corner of the Czech Republic, once played an important role in Imperial German expansionist politics and was central to the nation’s industrialisation from its mid-eighteenth-century annexation by Frederick the Great until the end of World War I. This industrialisation resulted in a lack of solidly built housing for workers, just as was the case in other industrial regions of the German Reich, where attempts to reform housing via extra-urban settlements (Siedlungen) were not only a solution to pressing problems of hygiene and overcrowding, but also functioned as instruments of control and a means to forestall social unrest. However, attempts to rectify the housing situation in Upper Silesia were more politically and culturally fraught than elsewhere in the former German Empire. In particular, the use of an identifiably German architecture of reform and German town layout for workers’ housing settlements, in contrast to local building traditions, played a more important role in Upper Silesia than elsewhere in the Reich. The

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intentional ‘German-ness’ of these settlements in Upper Silesia helped to assert the control exercised by the German owners of the industrial enterprises over their largely ethnic Polish employees, reiterating the existence of a hierarchy based on skill level and ethnicity, which led up to and was intensified throughout World War I. In particular, this chapter investigates the visual forms employed for the settlements of the Fu¨rstlich Plessische Bergwerkdirektion (FPB) of 1917, which functioned both as imperial propaganda and as an attempt by industrialists to consolidate the loyalty of a region whose residents’ allegiances were not to their German overlords. With the employment of the identifiably German Heimatstil and settlement layout in an ethnically divided region – a process which, through differences in housing, helped to codify a hierarchy largely based on ethnicity – the FPB settlements supported the project of German hegemony at the fringes of the empire during World War I. While German employers often used company housing to consolidate divisions between workers in the nineteenth century, the layout and buildings of this company, and the settlement of Fu¨rstengrube in particular, stand in contrast to the integrative settlement styles then popular among employers in more central areas of the German Reich. In the case of the FPB, it is clear that architecture functioned as more than simply housing. Considering that Upper Silesia, as the southernmost part of the ‘Frontier Strip’,1 was a component in German plans for wartime expansion into the east, which the Kaiser and his general staff cast the war as a battle between the ‘Teuton and the Slav’,2 these settlements were an outcome of national policy. They were imperial propaganda projects related to the consolidation of German-centred social and economic hierarchies during World War I, in an area of the German Reich where 73 per cent of the population voted to join Poland in 1919.3

The history of industrial development in Upper Silesia and of its settlements In Upper Silesia, economic development of the region’s natural resources began in the mid-eighteenth century and intensified in the middle of the nineteenth, with the first stage of this process

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occurring largely under the auspices of the Prussian state and select Prussian nobles.4 The second phase of industrialisation began as railways connected the region to major urban centres in the midnineteenth century, easing the transportation of goods and materials, particularly the coal extracted from Upper Silesian mines. This led to phenomenal growth in both industrial production and in population, as thousands of people, generally landless peasants from both inside and outside Upper Silesia, began to seek work in the mines. Yet because of the constant influx of workers and their families to the area, housing was problematic at best. This swelling of the urban population resulted in speculative and largely unregulated building on the outskirts of existing towns, as illustrated by the town of Deutsch-Piekar north of Beuthen,5 as well as large planned settlements built by employers, such as Chwallowitz near Rybnick, where the housing remained of a temporary nature and sanitation was sorely lacking.6 Due to these problems in workers’ housing, as early as the 1870s bourgeois reformers began to recognise that the ‘housing question’ was one that would affect all German people, regardless of class. In particular, the bourgeoisie feared the rapidly growing population of industrial workers and their supposed potential for violence and revolt.7 However, bourgeois reformers felt they could counter the increasing unhappiness and militancy of the working classes by providing the worker and his family with something resembling a real home with space for a garden, even if the home was rented rather than owned. Reformers believed that ‘being master of even a small patch of land provides the workers with a stake in our whole society’.8 In particular, the model of the traditional rural village or small town was very enticing to many reformers and particularly to a group that was the impetus behind the settlements of 1917, the Bund Heimatschutz. Founded in 1904 by aesthetic reformers under the leadership of Ernst Rudorff and Paul Schultze-Naumburg, the Bund Heimatschutz focused its attention on the preservation of traditional forms of German architecture (the vernacular), small towns and the natural environment.

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In particular, and central to the employment of German forms in an ethnically mixed area, the Bund Heimatschutz, along with other reformist groups,9 sought ‘to revitalise German culture and with it a German nation’ by utilising several of the building blocks of culture: architecture and urban form.10 The Bund believed that, along with historical and mythological ethnic traditions, types of building and town planning could strengthen the bonds within the Volk, making it less vulnerable to outside forces.11 Thus, the built environment could aid and revitalise the German Volk in Upper Silesia and by extension, weaken the position of the Poles who sought secession. After all, although the situation in Upper Silesia was less contentious than in the neighbouring province of Posen,12 German nationalists had long noted the existence of ‘misleading and incendiary’ Polish nationalist movements,13 and this fear of Polish nationalism among German officials only increased during World War I.14 So what were the hallmarks of this architecture that could revitalise the Volk and nation? First, honesty of style and scale was paramount for the adherents of the Bund Heimatschutz, who felt that nothing in architecture should pretend to be what it was not, meaning that the house of a small businessman should reflect its position as belonging to a German burgher, not imitate a French chateau. Scale was intrinsically tied to honesty and style was to underscore the social position of a building’s owner, as well as its use. Secondly, the Bund sought to preserve or create beautiful surroundings for all Germans, specifically picturesque small towns and villages dotted over the landscape, rather than industrial cities. Where new housing was necessary, it was felt that these old towns should serve as models for both architecture and arrangement.15 In short, the Bund advocated housing specifically attuned to the local German landscape and in line with traditional vernacular building practices, namely the German farmhouse16 and the Biedermeier house.17 In both cases, Bund members explicitly referred to styles popularised in the early nineteenth century, or um 1800 (circa 1800).

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The allure of um 1800 Why was the early nineteenth century so alluring to reformists over a century later and, in particular, so appealing to the German builders of settlements during World War I? In short, the renewed interest in the era of um 1800 was mystical and rational, cultural and political, and paradoxically German nationalists at the turn of the twentieth century celebrated that era for both its rationalism and its romanticism. Circa 1800 not only saw the reawakening of the rational via the Enlightenment, it was the era that signalled the beginning of the middle classes’ rise and the decline of noble privilege. During this era, the state came to stand for the best kind of paternalism, as exemplified in the legislation passed by Baron von Stein.18 Proponents also celebrated what they viewed as a lack of materialist and positivist ethos in the early years of the nineteenth century. Similarly, Germans saw the time as a golden age of national unity in the face of Napoleon; one has only to think of the romantic nationalists Fichte, Ko¨rner and their ilk calling for German unity.19 Regarding the specific situation in Upper Silesia, the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century was also a golden age. Not only did the mining and forestry colonies organised by the Prussian state protect workers from the incursions of the nobles,20 but also late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century reformers considered it a relatively simple time, before the intensified industrialisation of the second half of the nineteenth century.21 Most importantly, Upper Silesia at the turn of the nineteenth century suffered less political turmoil than it did a century later and, specifically during World War I, given the (supposed) dual threats of de-Germanisation and Polonisation. There had been near constant attempts to bring in German workers from the west to counter the native, ethnically Polish population and these efforts continued throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.22 In fact, from the time of Frederick the Great onwards more native Upper Silesians left the region in the nineteenth century than ethnic Germans came to settle there.23 Yet the growth of certain industrial areas, particularly near the industrial

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triangle formed by Beuthen, Gleiwitz and Koenigshu¨tte – which was largely the result of an influx of Poles – had been spectacular, particularly in the two decades leading up to World War I. For example, by 1910 the ethnic Polish population of the Kreis of Pless, where the Bergwerkdirektion was located, was 86 per cent of the total population.24 Largely as a result of this population growth, by 1914 Imperial policy directed at the Poles in Upper Silesia was harsh, with German nationalist groups such as the Pan-German League and the Eastern Marches Society (Ostmarkverein) underscoring and escalating official policy. In fact, in a frightening harbinger of the Nazi resettlement policies of World War II, the Ostmarkverein and other Pan-German organisations, with strong backing from Berlin, advocated and carried out efforts to ‘Germanize the [eastern] soil’ with ‘a rooted German peasant and worker population’25 by purchasing estates owned by Poles and ‘colonising’ them with German labourers and employees.26 The long-standing history of official oppression of Polish subjects underscored such tendencies, the most infamous of which policies was Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in the 1870s, which mandated the use of German in Upper Silesian schools and curbed the power of the Catholic clergy. Via such aggressively pro-German policies, the stage was essentially set for the confrontation between Germans and Poles, which would play out in the years of World War I, when the FPB constructed ‘German’ settlements in Upper Silesia to counteract the growing solidarity and national awareness of the Polish-majority population.

The 1917 FPB settlements In 1917 in Upper Silesia, Bauinspektor Alfred Malpricht of Kattowitz (Katowice) erected a small group of settlements for the FPB: Emanuelssegen, Ober-Lazisk, Bo¨erscha¨chte and Fu¨rstengrube.27 These appear to pay homage to the historical presence of German settlements in the region, particularly those of Frederick the Great, as well as to intersect with the reformist ideals of the Bund Heimatschutz and its admiration for German architecture of um 1800.

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Malpricht’s were not the first model settlements for workers in the region, though they exemplify the style of numerous reformist and Heimatstil settlements in Germany.28 Were the owners of the Bergwerkdirektion suddenly motivated by altruistic feelings that inspired them to build a pleasant planned community? Why were these housing complexes built during such a tumultuous time?29 While it is impossible to investigate every possible motive, keeping up with the stylistic developments in the heart of the Reich could have been a factor, though the fears of de-Germanisation and ethnic unrest seem to have been the driving factor in the creation of improved workers’ housing. Considering that the coalfields and factories of Upper Silesia played a central role in supporting the war effort, the Reich could not afford a loss of production through strikes, let alone a full revolt. This was a particularly pressing issue: the number of strikes in the region had begun to climb by 1916, culminating in massive labour unrest in the summer of 1917, a fact that German officials directly attributed to Russians and other Slavs radicalising and propagandising Polish workers in the mines.30 In fact, the number of strikes continued to rise until the end of the war, resulting in 51 stoppages and 34,000 striking workers in 1917 alone, despite growing repression from the German military and industrial authorities.31 Most importantly, however, Upper Silesia served a symbolic function as an outpost of German strength on the edges of empire, a warning both to dissident Poles living under German rule and to their Pan-Slav allies, specifically the Russian Empire to the east.32 Thus, the settlements of the Bergwerkdirektion were not only an attempt to use an architectural style and layout favoured by the Bund Heimatschutz to improve the living situation of the workers, but were also intended to keep order and to underscore the German presence in Upper Silesia – a presence that was to be intensified after the projected German victory, when the region was to become part of the Frontier Strip dividing Teuton and Slav. The latter is particularly important in light of German Ostpolitik, for as early as 1914 the German authorities, and specifically Bethmann Hollweg, had proposed the creation of a Poland detached from Russia, but firmly within the German sphere of influence; this would then serve as a

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buffer state between the two great empires.33 Within the year, this idea developed into one of annexing a Polish border strip, or frontier strip, which would leave Posen and Upper Silesia firmly in German hands by ethnically cleansing the area of nationalist Poles and colonising the region with Germans from das Altreich, or Germany proper.34 As previously mentioned, the use of the Heimatstil (and the conservation of the German landscape) was seen as a very serious intervention in the health of the German Empire, particularly in contentious Upper Silesia, considering that a Heimatschutzer such as Schultze-Naumburg ‘equated a ravaged physical landscape with a weak national character and a failed national destiny’.35 Essentially, the employment of traditional German architectural forms in Upper Silesia was a statement of German presence, one that could inoculate the susceptible region against Polish contagion, particularly against nationalist Poles who favoured secession. The propagation of a traditional German building style was a way to show that Germans and by extension the government in Berlin, had control of an ethnically Polish majority population on the south-eastern edges of the empire. Similarly, the buildings helped to make the region appear an intrinsic part of Germany and one worth fighting to retain, despite the majority Polish population.36 Certainly, one can see the employment of the Heimatstil in the settlements of 1917, where Bauinspektor Malpricht utilised both the German farmhouse and the ‘vernacular classicism’ of the more urban Biedermeier house.37 In the case of the former model, Malpricht employed the simple white stucco facades, steep clay-tile roofs and numerous eyebrow windows typical of such buildings.38 Other domestic buildings utilised a neoclassical Biedermeier language, as exhibited by the Beamtenwohnhaus in Ober-Lazisk. This building was a simple cubic structure, the centre of which was picked out by a small triangular gable; the windows were placed symmetrically across the facade. In typical Biedermeier style, a number of white pilasters placed between shuttered windows adorned the entire ground-floor facade, while small eyebrow windows located near the edges of the central gable capped the building. In the case of both the

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Beamtenwohnhaus and the building designed to recall a German farmhouse, the overall impression is of permanence and timelessness: the buildings look as though they could have been built a century earlier than they were.39 However, and more importantly, neither of these models had anything to do with the traditional building practices of Upper Silesia. If, as its proponents claimed, the Heimatstil recalled the simple functionality of housing that was ‘rooted in construction . . . [its] forms directly derived from [that]’, and was indivisible from the landscape because of this,40 the location of these Heimatstil buildings is somewhat ironic. The buildings of the FPB may have been rooted in tradition, but it was not the native tradition of Upper Silesia. Vernacular Upper Silesian architecture largely employed wood as a building material, as was also the case in Western Galicia (Austrian Poland). In short, the stuccoed settlement buildings did not recall the traditional wooden Upper Silesian farmhouse, but a farmhouse in Central Germany. However, the employment of vernacular German architecture in a largely Polish region during wartime makes sense when one considers Edward Said’s premise that, in an imperial or colonial setting, culture (including architecture) is inseparable from national or imperial fantasies of identity and that the defence of the imperial culture in power necessitates the employment of such symbols to counter its challengers.41

The rejection of the integrative Friedrichian model The heightened ethno-political situation in Upper Silesia during World War I also impacted the layout of the settlements of Malpricht and the FPB. In particular, those constructed in 1917 stand in contrast to the more integrative and appeasing language employed by the Friedrichian authorities for settlements built in the 1750s, even though the FPB’s management would have known of this earlier model.42 These earlier imperial settlements were an aesthetic compromise, as Friedrichian planners utilised a traditionally Polish and Eastern European layout for the settlements by arranging the

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houses in long rows along straight streets (Liniendo¨rfer), with no clear village centre, as opposed to arrangement around a central square.43 In contrast, Malpricht ignored the precedent of these Friedrichian settlements in favour of co-opting the Upper Silesian landscape and imposing a traditionally German form – the central square – on the 1917 settlements, one that was highly compatible with the ideal town plans advocated by Heimatschutzer.44 Thus Malpricht chose a more overtly German form for his settlements, and this lack of compromise, or utter failure to acknowledge any of the building traditions of the subaltern Poles of Upper Silesia, is an indicator of how much more arrogant and overt the colonisation policies of the German empire had become by 1917. After all, there was no need for Malpricht to accommodate the Polish majority population when German officials believed that the region would be fully Germanised after the war.

Maintaining the ethnic status quo in Upper Silesia To understand why the emphasis on and overt presence of German forms in Upper Silesia during World War I was so important, particularly for the owners of industrial concerns and other authority figures, one must understand the political situation, in which, despite the increasing population of ethnic Poles, ethnic Germans were largely in charge, with both Germans and Poles working for them.45 Certainly, the creators of settlements such as those of the FPB would not have been immune from the rising tensions between Poles and Germans, compounded not only by the war but by the fact that ethnic Germans, many of whom would not have been born in Upper Silesia, continued to hold all the administrative and upper-level positions in such a company. Even positive interventions in the housing of workers, such as increased sanitation and the construction of sturdier homes, were not only a chance to appease workers but also a means to underscore the existing power structure: ethnic Germans from other parts of the Reich at the top, ethnic Germans from Upper Silesia in the middle, Poles from Upper Silesia at the bottom, and Poles and other Slavs from Congress Poland lowest of all.

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In the creation of housing particularly suited to family life and appearing extremely German in form and layout, the Bergwerkdirektion would have been holding out a kind of carrot to the upperlevel (and nearly always ethnically German) workers, who would be far less likely, as family men, to leave for work in the west or to turn to radical politics. Since it was a common belief that good architecture ‘nurtured not only “happy feelings” among the craftsmen/workers, but also “correct and unpompous” behaviour in the inhabitants of [his] houses’,46 it made sense to try to ameliorate the mounting ethnic tensions with good, clean, simple housing and amenities (though the latter were not available equally to all the workers). Thus, numerous amenities existed for the workers who resided in the housing settlements of the Bergwerkdirektion, notably a Kaufhaus abutting the marketplace of Emanuelssegen, a milk-house in a garden on the grounds of Bo¨erscha¨chte, and stall buildings for animals and the storage of hay. Many of the small apartment buildings, which looked more like large farmhouses, were even surrounded by gardens. However, not all residents of the colonies of the Bergwerkdirektion resided in such comfortable and accommodating circumstances. In fact, the majority of the ethnically Polish workers, primarily unmarried young men from the surrounding countryside, were essentially segregated from the rest of the community, particularly from the single family homes intended for German families, and housed in what was termed a Ledigenheim, or home for unmarried workers. The primary explanation for this arrangement would have been to negate the issue of Schlafga¨nger, casual lodgers who commonly boarded with working-class families and disrupted the bourgeoisfamily model reformers favoured.47 Yet this method of housing single men all in one building was not only a way to control family life and mores, as it was in the Ruhr and other industrial regions of Germany; in Upper Silesia the use of this type of building for housing unskilled Polish labour helped to maintain a hierarchy based on both class and ethnicity. Underscoring this hierarchy was the fact that unlike the housing intended for German families, the Ledigenheim for single workers in

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the colony of Bo¨erscha¨chte included no provision for any sort of privacy or home life, with each bedroom housing ten men, who also shared a tiny washroom and vestibule. The Ledigenheim of the colony of Emanuelssegen employed a similar internal arrangement of space and this building was specified in contemporary literature as being for foreign workers, most likely those from Congress Poland.48 Additionally, the exterior appearance of these homes for single workers (Ledigenheime) emphasised the residents’ low status within the company. For example, the heights of the storeys of the Fu¨rstengrube Ledigenheim were taller than necessary, particularly the second floor, as shown by its vertically elongated windows, a visual form that appeared intimidating and authoritative rather than domestic. Malpricht also avoided the use of eyebrow windows or shutters for the Ledigenheim, elements that had helped the housing for German workers appear cosy and home-like. Further reflecting and enforcing the ethnic hierarchy, the Bergwerkdirektion positioned a clock at the central position on the steep hipped roof of the Ledigenheim, an adjustment that recalled a factory rather than a home. Thus the authoritative building in which these workers resided emphasised the power of the Bergwerkdirektion, just as the use of traditional German architectural forms emphasised the German-ness of the Bergwerkdirektion as a whole. It bespoke an arrogance on the part of the German authorities regarding the outcome of the war and the realisation of their imperial goals, a confidence buttressed by the fall of Tsarist Russia in 1917. The foreign and/or Polish workers were needed, but the Bergwerkdirektion did not allow them equal housing: German reformist architecture in its ideal form was only available to ethnic Germans, not to Poles. A contemporary [German] commentator even wrote that ‘miners in the Rhineland and Westphalia prefer to live in freestanding single-family homes, and the miners of Upper Silesia prefer to live in larger buildings with many neighbours’.49 This statement clearly indicates that contemporary observers considered unskilled Upper Silesian labourers, who were largely Polish, to be both unappreciative of the creature comforts of a single family home in comparison to their German

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brethren in the west and not worth making financial adjustments for – and certainly not if they were shortly to be expelled from the area in favour of German colonists.50 So, in the housing settlements of the FPB there clearly existed a hierarchy of workers, a fact underlined by architecture, separating the skilled from the unskilled, the family from the independent male, and Germans from Poles. Yet before one comes to the conclusion that such a community would be the antithesis of one that could heal the German nation and the divisions between the classes, as dreamt of by the Bund Heimatschutz, an ‘organic community’ in the early twentieth century did not necessarily preclude the existence of a hierarchy. At the time, cultural critics published a number of treatises on luxury and its abuses, and in nearly all of them the idea of a hierarchy of needs was put forth. Theo Sommerlad of the University of Halle ‘made luxury relative to income’ and an editorial of the time also related luxury to class and station, writing, ‘the peasant would upset his stomach eating my dinner and I would do the same eating his’.51 Underlying such publications was the assumption that needs were dependent upon one’s station in life and certainly one’s ethnicity. Under such a premise, Poles did not have to be equal to Germans and thus they would not be afforded similar treatment. However, this hierarchical organisation of an ‘organic community’ was hardly the medicine for healing the divisions between the classes and solving the problems of Upper Silesia, particularly during wartime. Of course, healing the divisions between Germans and Poles does not appear to have been a concern to begin with, as the architectural forms chosen and layout of the settlements of 1917 were not a blending of German and Polish styles, but an imposition of traditional German forms upon a largely Polish working population. The FPB housing complexes of 1917 looked as though they could have arisen anywhere in the heart of Germany. There was nothing in the composition of the settlements or in the style of architecture employed to indicate that this was not central Germany but Upper Silesia. In fact, the Malpricht settlements reveal that the region was strongly linked to German housing-reform movements and the

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popularisation of German vernacular architecture, reflecting and enforcing an essentially colonial relationship between an empire and its borderlands.

Conclusion It is clear that architecture functioned as more than just employee housing in the settlements of the FPB. It was national work, a project related to the establishment of social and economic hierarchies in Central Europe and in the German Reich in particular. With the employment of an identifiably ‘German’ Heimatstil and ‘German’ settlement layout, with a clear hierarchy of housing based on skill and ethnicity, these building projects helped to support the project of German hegemony at the fringes of the empire, where control had begun to slip even before and certainly during World War I. After all, as Scott Spector writes, ‘German cultural “work” [in the borderlands] was identified as national and therefore political’.52 As we have seen, this cultural ‘work’ included architecture. One can take this further and state that culture was imbued with moral importance, particularly when one considers the contemporary debates that positioned ethnic Germans as the inheritors of a Kulturnation in the face of the Polish ‘threat’.53 Essentially, these projects illustrate the interplay between the centre of an empire and its borderlands, imperial consolidation and propaganda, as well as the impact of racial, class and religious tensions on the fringes of empire. While World War I was an imperial undertaking on a global scale, in economically important, long-contentious and multi-ethnic Upper Silesia architecture and urban form served to consolidate German imperial identity.

Notes 1 This frontier was to ‘facilitate defence of the eastern provinces; to round off the Upper Silesian industrial area; to separate the Prussian Poles from their countrymen in a future Polish state by a Germanized “frontier wall” and thus to isolate them; to acquire free land on which to settle Germans from Germany proper (das Altreich)’ (Fischer 1967, 116).

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2 Ibid., 33. 3 In November 1919, 73 per cent of the population in Pless voted in a plebiscite to join Poland, not Germany; see Tooley 1997, 240, Table 1. 4 Kuhn 1954, 236. 5 Ibid., image 76. 6 Ibid., image 77. 7 Bullock and Read 1985, 31. 8 Ibid., 77; this is a quote from Ludolf Parisius, 1865. 9 Wilhelmine reform movements were not just confined to architecture and the applied arts. Other academic disciplines also had their reformist variants. For example, Lebensreform (‘life reform’) movements could encompass both both nudist movements and youth groups like the Wandervogel. 10 Gutschow 1992, 6. 11 Stark 1981, 89. 12 Hagen 1980, 202. 13 Ibid., 259; these Polish nationalist movements often centred on the Catholic Church. 14 Tooley 1997, 22. 15 Schultze-Naumburg 1907, 11. 16 The farmhouse was cited as an example due to its purported rootedness in the German soil. The form was typically described as a ‘rural, free-standing, post and beam structure with brick infill, no ornament, a large pitched roof . . . with eyebrow windows’ (Gutschow 1992, 130). See also Schultze-Naumburg 1907, 17, abb. 12. 17 This exhibited ‘a refined and simplified classicism . . . two storeys high, stuccoed, whitewashed, with simple cubic volumes, the facade arranged in a classicist, symmetrical [way]’ (Gutschow 1992, 14). Biedermeier specifically refers to the period from 1815 to 1835, although reformers used the term somewhat more loosely. 18 Kuhn 1954, 245. 19 Breckman 1991, 498. 20 Kuhn 1954, 244-5. 21 Ibid., 254. 22 Ibid., 202, 245. 23 Ibid., 253. 24 Tooley 1997, 240, Table 1. 25 Tims 1941, 109. 26 Henderson 2002, 191. 27 This is the only Upper Silesian example (and only Silesian example, for that matter) in Baer (ed.) 1917; Baer was also the editor of the journal Moderne Bauformen. 28 Ibid., 247, 357, image 78. 29 Nearly all of the other settlements featured by Baer (ed.) 1917 were built in the years prior to World War I.

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30 Tooley 1997, 22. 31 Ibid. 32 Fischer (1967, 139) states that by the early twentieth century the neo-Slav or pan-Slavist movement had ‘weakened the traditional hostility between Russian and Pole’. 33 Ibid., 103. As reported by Burian on Bethmann Hollweg’s motives, ‘this militarily and economically fettered Poland, gripped in Germany’s powerful fist, would soon be very little different from direct German territory’ (ibid., 241). 34 Ibid., 116. 35 Gutschow 1992, 9. 36 After all, the post-war paramilitary Freikorps directed much of their attention towards Upper Silesia, and specifically Polish communists and nationalists, both before and after the plebiscite of 1921; see Theweleit 1977, 38. 37 Linazasoro 1984, 23. 38 Loewe 1969, 7. 39 The question remains as to whether or not Bauinspektor Malpricht would have been directly influenced by the proselytising of the Bund Heimatschutz, though he certainly would have been exposed to the group and to similar reformists. 40 Linazasoro 1984, 23. 41 Said 1994, xii-xxii, 9. However, while Said investigates the intersections of identity, power and culture in the light of colonialism and imperialism, and broadens his investigations beyond the Middle East in this work, he does not investigate the imperialist agendas of Austro-Hungary, Germany or Russia. For an investigation of Said’s scholarship in relationship to Central and Eastern Europe, see Spector 2000, 173. 42 Baer (ed.), 1917, 103. See also Kuhn 1954, 202, 248. 43 Ibid., 326, image 35. See also Helmigk 1937, 192. 44 Bullock and Read 1985, 81. 45 Kuhn 1954, 243. 46 Thuro Balzer, writing on the work of reformist architect Paul Korff, in Jarzombek 1994, 17. 47 Bullock and Read 1985, 67. 48 Baer 1917, 103. 49 Ibid., 104: ‘Bergarbeiter im Rheinland und Westfalen im allgemeinen Einfamilienhauser bevorzugen, wohnen die oberschlesischen Bergleute lieber in Ha¨usern, in denen mehrere Wohnungen vorhanden sind.’ 50 This bias against the east is also evident in Mebes 1920, where images of the east look rather shoddy and provincial. 51 Breckman 1991, 491. 52 Spector 2000, 14. 53 Kulturnation translates as ‘cultural nation’, and is thus differentiated from ‘civilisation’. The idea of the Kulturnation contains the premise that ‘true’ culture, genius or art (including architecture) is ‘not separable from its roots’ and cannot be translated from one culture to another; it is only honest when serving

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its own culture. This idea was promoted in Oskar Ewald’s ‘Talent and Genius’, published in a 1912 issue of Bohemia; see Spector 2000, 197.

References Anderson, Stanford, ‘The legacy of German neoclassicism and Biedermeier: Behrens, Tessenow, Loos and Mies’, Assemblage 15 (1991), pp. 62 –87. Avenarius, Ferdinand, Der Kunstwart, Vols. 15.2, 19.1, 19.2. (Munich, 1902, 1905– 06). Baer, C.H. (ed.), Kleinbauten und Siedlungen (Stuttgart, 1917). Breckman, Warren G., ‘Disciplining consumption: the debate about luxury in Wilhelmine Germany, 1890– 1914’, Journal of Social History xxiv/4 (1991), pp. 485– 500. Bullock, Nicholas and James Read, The Movement for Housing Reform in Germany and France, 1840– 1914 (Cambridge, 1985). Chickering, Roger, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the PanGerman League (Boston MA, 1984). Evans, R.J. and W.R. Lee (eds), The German Peasantry: Conflict and Community in Rural Society from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (New York, 1986). Fischer, Fritz, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (London, 1967). Frank, Hartmut, ‘A German approach to the question of European architecture’, Rassegna xx/76 (1998), pp. 72 – 87. Gutschow, Kai, ‘Schultze-Naumburg’s Heimatstil: a nationalist conflict of tradition and modernity’, in Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Papers Series, ed. Nezer Alsayyad, Vol. 36 (Berkeley CA, 1992), pp. 1 – 44. Hagen, William W., Germans, Poles and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772– 1914 (Chicago IL, 1980). Hays, Michael, ‘Tessenow’s architecture as national allegory: critique of capitalism or Protofascism?’, Assemblage viii (1989), pp. 1 – 22. Helmigk, Hans Joachim, Oberschlesische Landbaukunst um 1800 (Berlin, 1937). Henderson, Susan R., ‘Ernst May and the campaign to resettle the countryside: rural housing in Silesia, 1919– 1925’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians lxi/2 (2002), pp. 188– 211. Jarzombek, Mark, ‘The Kunstgewerbe, the Werkbund, and the aesthetics of culture in the Wilhelmine period’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians li/1 (1994), pp. 7 – 19. Jefferies, Matthew, ‘Back to the future? The “Heimatschutz” movement in Wilhelmine Germany’, History xli (1992), pp. 411– 20. ——— Politics and Culture in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Industrial Architecture (Oxford, 1995). Kuhn, Walter, Siedlungsgeschichte Oberschlesiens (Wu¨rzburg, 1954). Linazasoro, Jose´-Ignacio, ‘Ornament and classical order’, Architectural Design lvi/5/6 (1984), pp. 21 – 5. Loewe, Ludwig, Schlesische Holzbauten (Du¨sseldorf, 1969). Mebes, Paul, Um 1800: Architecktur und Handwerk im Letzten Jahnhundert ihrer traditionellen Entwicklung (Munich, 1920). Osterhammel, Ju¨rgen, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Princeton NJ, 1997).

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Otto, Christian F., ‘Modern environment and historical continuity: the Heimatschutz discourse in Germany’, Art Journal xliii/2 (1983), pp. 148– 57. Pommer, Richard, ‘The flat roof: a modernist controversy in Germany’, Art Journal, xliii/2 (1983), pp. 158– 69. Rollins, William H., ‘Heimat, modernity and nation in the early Heimatschutz movement’, in Hermand, Jost and James Steakley (eds), Heimat, Nation, Fatherland: The German Sense of Belonging (New York, 1996), pp. 87 – 112. ——— A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904– 1918 (Ann Arbor MI, 1997). Rose, William John, The Drama of Upper Silesia; A Regional Study (Brattleboro VT, 1935). Said, Edward W., Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1994). Schultze-Naumburg, Paul, Die Entsellung Unseres Landes (Munich, 1907). Spector, Scott, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Sie`cle (Berkeley CA, 2000). Stark, Gary D., Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890– 1933 (Chapel Hill NC, 1981). Tims, Richard W., Germanizing Prussian Poland: The H-K-T Society and the Struggle for the Eastern Marches in the German Empire, 1894– 1919 (New York, 1941). Theweleit, Klaus, Ma¨nnerphantasien (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1977). Tooley, T. Hunt, National Identity and Weimar Germany: Upper Silesia and the Eastern Border, 1918– 1922 (Lincoln NE, 1997). Umbach, Maiken, ‘The vernacular international: Heimat, modernism and the global market in early twentieth-century Germany’, National Identities iv/1 (2002), pp. 45 –68. ——— ‘Memory and historicism: reading between the lines of the built environment, Germany c. 1900’, Representations, lxxxviii (2005), pp. 26 – 54.

CHAPTER 11 WORLD WAR I AND THE PERMANENT WEST INDIAN SOLDIER Richard Smith

The tragic depictions of World War I, which have tended to dominate popular memories of the conflict in Europe, are largely absent from the narratives of West Indian nationalist and e´migre´ political groups. All West Indians who served in World War I were volunteers and have come to occupy a pivotal place in the emergence of Anglophone Caribbean nationhood. During the war, the West Indies, British Honduras, the Bahamas and Bermuda supplied around 16,000 officers and men for the British West Indies Regiment, a further 1,200 served with the West India Regiment and perhaps a further 1,000 enlisted in other British Army units. West Indians also saw wartime service in the Royal Navy and British merchant fleet. The West Indian colonies also contributed nearly £2 million from government funds and further voluntary donations provided war materials such as aircraft and British Red Cross ambulances. The cessation of the Royal Mail Steam Packet shipping route to the United Kingdom in 1915 made the West Indian economy increasingly reliant on United States and Canadian markets and investment. However, the territories continued to supply staples such as sugar, rum, cocoa and rice to Britain.

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Trinidadian oil production rose three-fold to meet war demands and from 1917 the British government purchased the entire sea-island cotton crop for aircraft production.1 During the 1920s and 1930s, the contribution and experiences of these volunteers were recalled to support an array of political campaigns, ranging from limited constitutional demands and West Indian independence to selfdetermination for all peoples of African descent. While British imperialist rhetoric glorified the empire’s military achievements as a means of reaffirming colonial rule, the West Indian popular imagination adopted martial rhetoric and symbolism to seek rewards for the wartime contribution of West Indian veterans. Military service during the world wars has a complex relationship with statehood in the Anglophone Caribbean. Entitlements due to West Indian veterans for their contributions to World War I campaigns were contested between the imperial power and the emerging mass political movements that eventually contributed to the demise of British rule. The Caribbean nation states formed during the 1950s and 1960s remembered military service in the world wars in order to affirm national identity and develop new relationships within the Commonwealth of Nations. The rise of a pan-African dimension to West Indian politics, particularly through northward migration to the United States, meant that the symbolism of military service transcended the boundaries both of emergent nation states and of the empire. The meaning of World War I was therefore contested in imperial, inter-imperial and post-imperial frameworks. This chapter will chart these shifting discourses around West Indian military service by first outlining the strength of pro-imperial feeling at the beginning of the war, before discussing how this loyalty was eroded when West Indian volunteers faced discrimination by the military authorities. The chapter will then explore how, despite these negative experiences, dissatisfied veterans, nationalists and pan-Africanists in pursuit of post-war reforms and independent statehood enlisted the symbols and discourses of military service.

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Pro-imperial feeling among West Indians at the outbreak of war Many non-white West Indians looked to the British monarch and the United Kingdom parliament to remedy injustices suffered at the hands of the plantation owners or the colonial government. This affinity to professed British values had its origins in the belief that Queen Victoria had ordered the full abolition of slavery when the apprenticeship system ended in 1838. But rather than being a simple question of loyalty, this association became a means of asserting values that challenged the interests and beliefs of the white plantocracy. The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), founded by Marcus Garvey in Jamaica on the eve of the war, exemplified the complex conditional allegiance of West Indian subjects to British imperial rule. UNIA aimed to ‘Promote the Spirit of Race Pride and Love’2 and to ‘reclaim the fallen and degraded . . . and help them to a state of good citizenship’.3 In September 1914 UNIA telegraphed a resolution to the Colonial Office in London ‘express[ing] our loyalty and devotion to His Majesty the King, and Empire . . . pray[ing] for the success of British Arms on the battlefields of Europe and Africa, and at Sea’.4 Garvey anticipated that support for the empire’s cause, including the offer of military service, would result in post-war reform and the redistribution of social, economic and political power. Speaking in January 1919, he asserted: ‘This war that has been won by the allied nations was fought for a great principle. It was that of giving to all peoples the right to govern themselves.’5 But the majority of West Indians took a less long-term view and were keen to fulfil such pledges of loyalty by volunteering for military service. However, the enthusiasm for overseas enlistment in the West Indies was at odds with War Office policy, which directed West Indians to assist the war effort through raw-material production, the protection of Caribbean supply routes and the prevention of local unrest.6 The rejection of overseas service raised the ire of pro-war West Indians. As a Barbadian correspondent to the West India Committee Circular remarked:

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We have put up sugar and money for the various subscriptions, but that won’t win our battles. It’s lives we desire to give as it’s for the Empire that the Motherland is fighting, and it is only fair to give these colonies the opportunity of showing the true spirit of patriotism that they have always evinced in the past.7 Non-white West Indians demanded the opportunity to prove themselves on the battlefield and prove not only their loyalty to empire, but their fitness for self-government. West Indians were eager to enlist, not only in the hope of post-war improvements in the imperial relationship, but also through fear that a British defeat would have severe repercussions for the black majority. The reintroduction of slavery, should Germany be victorious, was a frequent allusion made at recruitment rallies and in newspaper slogans declaring ‘Victory or Slavery’.8 Many West Indians believed they were participants in a struggle for civilisation, in which images of Prussian barbarism or ruthless, impersonal efficiency contrasted unfavourably with British ideals of fair play, humanitarianism and tolerance for the individual.9

The stigma of military labour The imagination of potential West Indian volunteers was captured by the Indian Expeditionary Force’s arrival in France in September 1914 and by the deployment of French Algerian troops.10 Having received several enquiries from the West Indian governors, the Colonial Office asked the War Office whether West Indian contingents might join the Expeditionary Forces. The initial proposal was to direct volunteers to the West India Regiment (WIR), whose two small battalions rotated between garrisons in Sierra Leone and Jamaica. The WIR was the surviving remnant of the West India Regiments formed during the wars with France from 1793 to 1815. Unique among colonial units, the WIR was a line regiment of the British Army. Its involvement in recent West African conflicts led supporters of a West Indian contribution to

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suggest the regiment was in a better state of readiness than territorial and yeomanry units from the United Kingdom.11 However, the War Office rejected the idea of West Indian volunteers, despite the decision to deploy the Indian Army in France. War Office misgivings centred on the belief that using non-white troops in the European theatres would undermine the racial hierarchy of the British Empire.12 These fears grew as the range of psychiatric disorders, usually termed ‘shell shock’ or ‘neurasthenia’, became increasingly evident among all ranks in the British Army. Many potential recruits were also in poor physical shape, which revived the spectre of racial degeneration, previously evident among military recruiters during the South African War (1899 – 1902).13 These two factors combined to erode the defining characteristics of white heroic endeavour, such as stoicism and self-control. To mask such anxieties, opponents of black recruitment in the War Office resorted to age-old caricatures to suggest West Indians would not make effective soldiers. Despite the routine use of black troops throughout the African imperial territories, in units such as the West Africa Frontier Force and the King’s African Rifles, the Army Council argued that ‘the ordinary coloured labourer is deficient’ in the ‘coolness, courage and initiative’ required in the front line.14 However, West Indians were not discouraged and some sailed to the United Kingdom to enlist. Black volunteers were treated equivocally by British military law, which was unclear whether they should be regarded as British subjects, negroes or aliens. As a result, West Indian volunteers were accepted at the discretion of individual recruiting officers. James Slim, a Jamaican, enlisted in the Coldstream Guards before he was discharged under instructions from the War Office, despite a record of good conduct. Egbert Watson, a ‘coloured West Indian from Jamaica’ served in the Royal Garrison Artillery before being discharged on medical grounds after 18 months’ service. Edward Jones, a Barbadian member of the Cheshire Regiment, was pictured in the Daily Mirror sitting on one of the stone lions in Trafalgar Square.15

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The West Indian governors became increasingly concerned that the rejection of black recruits, either in the West Indies or the United Kingdom, would have a corrosive effect on loyalty to the empire among West Indian subjects. In May 1915, King George V forced the War Office to take a more flexible line. His Private Secretary, Lord Stamfordham, forwarded a letter sent to the king from a West Indian philanthropist, which advocated a West Indian contingent. In a covering memo, Stamfordham noted that the king thought the raising of such a contingent would reinvigorate loyal feeling among black West Indians. Following discussions between the War Office and the Colonial Office and a personal conversation between George V and Lord Kitchener, Secretary for War, organisation of the contingent was finally agreed upon.16 The British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) was formally inaugurated in October 1915 and by the spring of 1916 two battalions had arrived in Egypt; 12 battalions were enlisted by the end of the war. Although classed as an infantry regiment and initially paid the same rates as other British regiments, commanders and officials predominantly viewed the BWIR as an inferior ‘native’ unit. Medical and recreational provision was inferior and the military authorities withheld pay increases granted to the rest of the British army from 1917, until protests from soldier activists forced concessions.17 Commissioned officer rank was only offered to men deemed to be of pure European descent, although this policy was breached in at least one case.18 But the most significant issue was the reluctance of the British to deploy West Indian troops on the front line. Nine BWIR battalions served as labour units on the Western Front and at the port of Taranto in southern Italy. They worked as labourers on road and railway construction, dug trenches, unloaded ships and trains, and carried supplies to ammunition dumps, while the BWIR battalions at the Front were often in the line of fire. However, military attitudes stigmatised their efforts, as such tasks were usually reserved for noncombatant military labour and those recruits rejected for front-line service on physical grounds. In some instances, regular infantry battalions were demoted to labour-battalion duties for showing insufficient fighting spirit in the face of the enemy.19

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The bayonet, military prowess and self-determination West Indian troops were occasionally engaged in combat roles. Detachments of the second battalion of the WIR were deployed against the enemy in the Tanganyika campaign. The German forces, led by von Lettow-Vorbeck, mainly comprised locally-recruited African askaris and the WIR was therefore given a higher profile than might otherwise have been the case. At the of Battle of Nyangao in October 1917, the most decisive engagement in the campaign, the WIR was commended for courage under fire and maintaining discipline while African porters and members of the Cape Corps fled or became demoralised. The battalion war diary noted that the men ‘had to be reproved . . . for exposing themselves un-necessarily’20 to enemy fire. In July 1917, during the Palestine campaign, the machine-gun section of the first battalion BWIR was involved in several raids on Turkish trenches at Umbrella Hill on the GazaBeersheba line.21 General Allenby, who had recently been made Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, was sufficiently impressed to state in a dispatch to the Governor of Jamaica: ‘I have great pleasure in informing you of the excellent conduct of the Machine Gun Section . . . All ranks behaved with great gallantry under heavy rifle fire and shell fire, and contributed in no small measure to the success of the operations.’22 The first and second battalions of the BWIR eventually gained significant experience in front-line action in the campaigns against the Turkish Army in Palestine and Jordan during 1917 and 1918, which earned belated respect for the fighting capabilities of the West Indian troops and resonated in the post-war West Indian imagination. In September 1918, Allenby’s forces defeated the Turks at Megiddo. During the battle, the first and second battalions took part in several attacks on Turkish positions in the Jordan Valley under heavy artillery fire. The Turkish lines were broken by an assault with fixed bayonets, which resulted in 140 Turkish casualties, 40 prisoners and 14 captured machine guns. Three Jamaicans – Sergeant M.C. Halliburton, Private (Acting Lance Corporal) Sampson and Private Spence – received the Military Medal, and another Jamaican

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– Private H. Scott – received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for carrying a message for 700 yards under shell fire.23 The West Indian press reproduced the medal citations alongside the official reports of action including the ‘spirited bayonet charge’ by the first battalion BWIR in September 1918 at Jisr Ed Damieh (Bridge of Adam), a crossing over the River Jordan.24 Major-General Edward Chaytor, who commanded the eastern flank of Allenby’s army, reported how the BWIR had ‘won the highest opinion of all who have been with them during our operations’.25 In the decades after the war, the significance of this moment in West Indian war memory highlights how an association with frontline heroism was fundamental to claims for post-war rewards and improvements in economic and social status. This is somewhat of a paradox, as, for many soldiers, military discipline and industrialised warfare resulted in feelings of collective impotence rather than individual heroism.26 However, the acute sensory tuning demanded by modern warfare has also been seen as evidence that the modern soldier gained a unique sense of self and the opportunity to realise impulses.27 West Indian veterans were not concerned with the glorification of war, but the enthusiasm for heroic narratives tended to conflate war with front-line service and to marginalise the service of those volunteers engaged in auxiliary and labouring duties. The experiences of those who died from disease, rather than from wounds inflicted in combat, were also excluded from these narratives, even though the majority of BWIR casualties occurred away from the front-line; 1,071 died of disease, 178 were killed or died of wounds and 697 were wounded.28 However, the canonical examples of Lord Byron and Rupert Brooke show that the symbolic association with heroic sacrifice in battle was ultimately as significant as death in action, particularly when associated with a noble or just cause.29 Despite the tendency of the British military to exclude West Indian troops from the front line, for the majority of West Indian veterans the rehearsal of heroic accounts of hand-to-hand contact with the enemy, centred on the singular involvement at Megiddo, served to overcome the stigma of being denied a primary combat role.

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The bayonet was central to this discourse and had already assumed a particular significance in the traditions of West Indian soldiery. Alfred Burdon Ellis, a major in the West India Regiment and anthropologist of West African customs, writing in the 1880s, remarked: The bravery of the West India soldier in action has often been tested, and as long as an officer remains alive to lead not a man will flinch. His favourite weapon is the bayonet; and the principal difficulty with him in action is to hold him back, so anxious is he to close with his enemy.30 As commissioned officer rank was denied to black recruits, Ellis clearly predicated West Indian valour upon white leadership. His remarks also sat comfortably with stereotypes of the partially civilised colonial best suited to unsophisticated manual labour. Indeed, urging the light-skinned middle classes to join the BWIR, in preference to the black peasantry, the General Officer Commanding, Jamaica, stated: We . . . want to see Jamaica represented by its most intelligent people . . . although there is . . . room for the muscle that drives the bayonet home, there is . . . more room for the brain that can use the complicated weapons of modern warfare.31 Throughout the British army ‘bayonet work’ remained a key element of military training, out of all proportion to its combat efficacy. New recruits were assured that the mere appearance of British soldiers bristling with cold steel was sufficient to put an enemy to flight.32 An article in The Times shortly after the war captured the continued significance of the bayonet as a symbol of heroic combat and conquest, even in the wake of industrialised warfare. A tool of superior civilisation and ‘not merely a spear’, the bayonet had proved its worth by winning the war, directed to this purpose by the ‘endurance’ and ‘self-control’ of the British Tommy.33 For the British infantryman, the bayonet provided a sign of autonomy and action in the face of industrialised warfare and

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discipline. But for the black West Indian volunteer, it symbolised a demand to participate on equal terms within the realm of imperial masculinity and to claim the rewards for such participation once hostilities were over. The continued significance of the bayonet within West Indian nationalist and pan-Africanist discourse underpinned images of the West Indian veteran as a permanent soldier, whether fighting the Turks in the Jordan Valley or the colonial regime on demobilisation. Shortly after the Armistice, a New York City police informant attended a street meeting conducted by Marcus Garvey on Lenox Avenue. Garvey is reported to have implied that black men were in a better position to assert their rights, as many had acquired military training during the war: If the white man carries a gun and bayonet and the coloured man a stick, the white man would take advantage of him . . . the negro should also carry a gun and bayonet . . . so that if the white man slaps his face he can . . . put the white man under the ground.34 In a West Indian context the veteran’s bayonet stood alongside the peasant’s machete or cutlass within nationalist iconography (the machete being the weapon of choice for insurrectionary slaves and peasants). In 1937, the Jamaica Progressive League of New York declared the machete to be a symbol of the agrarian masses, ‘a useful weapon in times of strife’ and a link to ‘the inarticulate masses of 1865’ who had risen against the plantocracy in the Morant Bay Rebellion.35

A war for race or empire: demobilisation and the Caribbean League Conflict around conditions of military service and deployment forged the identity and world-view of the permanent West Indian soldier. Military service often mirrored the experiences of pre-war plantation society, suggesting a degree of continuity with civilian life that was perhaps absent for the average British Tommy. The heroic accomplishments of the first and second battalions did not result

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in an end to the discrimination in pay and conditions, such as inferior recreational and medical facilities. Nor did these achievements erode the deep-seated resentment, experienced by many in the ten remaining battalions, of serving as labourers rather than infantry. Faced with these grievances, the BWIR battalions stationed at Taranto mutinied shortly after the Armistice.36 Improvement in wages and rations was granted to restive Italian and Maltese labourers employed by the British, while the West Indian troops continued to feel humiliated by the harsh discipline and increasingly menial duties they were expected to perform. On 6 December 1918, Lieutenant-Colonel Willis, commander of the ninth battalion BWIR and an officer notorious for his brutality, instructed the battalion to clean latrines used by Italian labourers. His order was disregarded and some of the men surrounded his tent, slashing it with knives and bayonets. One eyewitness reported ‘promiscuous shooting’ and threats ‘to kill every white man’ if demobilisation and repatriation of the BWIR to the West Indies was not completed by Christmas.37 The following day, the ninth and tenth battalions refused to work and were disarmed. A battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment, including a machine-gun company, was rushed to Taranto in case of continued unrest.38 Although the mutiny was brief, the 47 men found guilty of involvement at the courts martial which followed received heavy sentences. Private Arthur Sanches, regarded as the ringleader by the military, received a death sentence, later commuted to 20 years’ imprisonment. Sanches did not serve the full term of his sentence, but neither was he dissuaded from further political activity. In August 1934, he was among a delegation that presented a petition to the Governor of Jamaica, Sir Arthur Jelf, requesting improvements to the roads and water supply on the lands distributed to ex-servicemen.39 On 16 December 1919, 60 sergeants of the BWIR formed the Caribbean League at Taranto, to discuss ‘all matters conducive to the General Welfare of the islands constituting the British West Indies and the British Territories adjacent thereto’.40 The military authorities, who were provided with details of the inaugural meeting by an informer, at first approved of the organisation. The declaration

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at a later meeting ‘that the black man should have freedom to govern himself in the West Indies and that force must be used, and if necessary bloodshed, to attain that object’41 gave rise to great unease. War Office reports sent to the Colonial Office, and circulated to governors in the West Indies, created some apprehension, particularly given the imminent arrival of demobilised soldiers. However, it is clear that despite the fiery words uttered by some members, many in the League favoured a more reformist position that envisaged a degree of cooperation with the colonial authorities, and certainly not the immediate independence of the West Indian colonies. Concern was expressed that those who had taken part in the mutiny might ‘not understand the peaceful purpose of the league’.42 Three Jamaicans – Cecil Collman, Harold Brown and Arthur P. Jones – were the principal officers of the League, but this created resentment among members from the other West Indian territories, contributing to the organisation’s early demise, which was further accelerated by the rapid dispersal of returning veterans seeking employment in Cuba and the United States.43 Nevertheless, the application of the plantation labour regime to military service distilled a distinctive racial consciousness, captured by a verse published in the Jamaican press: As comrades of the war our efforts we’ll unite To sweep injustice form our land, its social wrongs to right . . . And Heaven grant you strength to fight the battle for your race.44 Having been radicalised by military service, previously loyal West Indians had acquired a combative spirit which not only sought to address grievances held against the military authorities but which could also be deployed against the plantocracy and the unreformed colonial state.

Blood sacrifice and the appropriation of military service The notion of a blood sacrifice proved an enduring theme among West Indian nationalist and pan-African organisations after the war.

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As it appropriated the memory of West Indian and black United States military service, UNIA called for the shedding of blood in the cause of national independence, civil rights and African liberation, perhaps more vocally than the veterans’ associations. UNIA was reestablished by Garvey in the United States during 1917, the year after he left Jamaica, and over the next two decades many West Indian e´migre´s, including former BWIR soldiers who journeyed to the United States in search of education and employment, became members. The purported purifying and sanctifying act of bloodletting was among several ways in which the Irish independence struggle influenced the Association. At the graveside of the Irish patriot O’Donovan Rossa in August 1915, Padraic Pearse declared: ‘Life springs from death . . . from the graves of patriotic men and women spring living nations.’45 While it cannot be certain Garvey read these words, he was in London in 1912 at the height of the Home Rule crisis before returning to Jamaica in 1914. Dedicating Liberty Hall, UNIA’s Harlem headquarters after July 1919, in honour of the Dublin Easter Rising, Garvey pronounced that ‘The time had come for the Negro race to offer up its martyrs upon the altar of liberty even as the Irish had given a long list from Robert Emmett to Roger Casement.’46 After the entry of the United States into the war in 1917, supporters of black enlistment there took up the theme of black selfsacrifice, once again in the hope of post-war reward. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was at the forefront of the campaign to secure black enlistment. The NAACP journal, Crisis, produced a special soldiers’ edition as the British implemented their policy of recruiting West Indians living in the United States. Among the contributors was Joseph Cotter, Jr (1895– 1919) whose ‘Sonnet to Negro Soldiers’ was written from the bed where he lay dying of tuberculosis. They shall go down unto Life’s Borderland. Walk unafraid within that Living Hell, Nor heed the driving rain of shot and shell That ’round them falls; but with uplifted hand

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Be one with mighty hosts, an armed band Against man’s wrong to man – for such full well They know. And from their trembling lips shall swell A song of hope the world can understand. All this to them shall be a glorious sign, A glimmer of that Resurrection Morn, When age-long Faith, crowned with a grace benign, Shall rise and from their blows cast down the thorn Of Prejudice. E’en though through blood it be, There breaks this day their dawn of Liberty.47 Cotter combined a reflection on his own mortality with the promise of a redemptive new age for black Americans should they assert citizenship rights in the bearing of arms. Crisis encouraged its readership to have faith that the sacrifices of black soldiers would hasten deliverance for oppressed Africans throughout the globe. The war could be taken as a cleansing act, one that would see black volunteers following in the tradition of earlier generations of black revolutionaries. Pre-eminent among the figures in this tradition was Toussaint l’Ouverture, who as part of a strategy to secure Haitian independence had formed a temporary alliance with the French colonists. The Crisis soldiers’ issue included a poem by James Fenton, which imagines the Haitian hero resurrected to lead a new struggle for freedom, ‘to arouse the sleeping men of Ethiopia’ in ‘the hour that tries the nations and the races’.48 Also, in the spring of 1918 John Edward Bruce, the radical black journalist, issued his pamphlet, ‘A Tribute for the Negro Soldier’. Its potential to mobilise black volunteers was underlined when it was reproduced in its entirety in the Congressional Record at the request of Walter M. Chandler, Republican member for New York. Before documenting the participation of black troops from Ancient Rome to the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars, Bruce highlighted the role played by black soldiers in European conflicts from the Napoleonic wars until the present conflict with Germany. Cementing this tradition with the contribution of black troops to the United States war effort, Bruce declared: ‘The negro soldier fighting under

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the flag of the United States is blood brother to some of the bravest men who have ever lived.’49 Significantly, in an unfinished short story outlined in 1912, Bruce predicted a future war in which the United States would be able to defeat Japan through the abandonment of racial prejudice and segregation in the interests of national unity and defence.50 From June 1918, black British West Indians resident in the United States who had been exposed to these sentiments were permitted to enlist in British army units. Faced with increasing manpower shortages, the British military authorities were beginning to consider the more widespread deployment of non-white troops. While definitive figures are not available, individual soldiers’ papers indicate that black West Indians did start to arrive in the United Kingdom as garrison troops towards the end of the war.51

Pan-Africanism and the transcendence of national politics In the West Indian colonies, post-war campaigns by ex-servicemen were focused primarily on land settlement and, to a lesser extent, political representation and social reforms. However, claims for the recognition of military service assumed more radical dimensions when they extended beyond the boundaries of the individual West Indian territories. This was evident in the increasingly expansive demands of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, whose initial campaigns for imperial citizenship and racial dignity had developed into global agitation for black self-government as the Paris peace conference convened in January 1919. Concluding that the Allies’ post-war agenda of self-determination did not extend to nonwhite imperial subjects, Garvey called for a renewed blood sacrifice in the cause of an African homeland, rather than in the interests of white imperialism. At a mass meeting in Brooklyn, New York, on 9 January 1919, Garvey declared: Our sacrifices . . . in the cause of other people, are many . . . we should prepare to sacrifice now for ourselves . . . Africa will be a bloody battlefield in the years to come . . . we are determined . . . to fight . . . to a finish. That finish must mean victory for the

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negro standard . . . my blood shall have paid that remission for which future generations of the Negro race shall be declared free.52 Just how bloody the Garveyites believed the battle for Africa might be was indicated in a letter, intercepted by the US postal authorities, from a Barbadian UNIA member, James Hamble Perkins, expressing his determination to see the British kicked out of Africa ‘if we use up 7 million negroes in the attempt’.53 West Indian war veterans were prominent in the UNIA during the 1920s and 1930s. Sergeant Samuel Haynes, who had led the UNIA branch in British Honduras, was encouraged by Garvey to move to the United States. He became one of Garvey’s most loyal lieutenants, contributing regularly to Negro World and assuming de facto leadership of the organisation when Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1935. While clear that his primary aim was the establishment of selfdetermination of all peoples of African origin, Garvey also agitated for transitional objectives. During a speaking tour of the Caribbean in 1921 Garvey visited his native Jamaica, where he urged Jamaicans to declare themselves citizens of Africa rather than British subjects. While arguing that full independence had to be gained through a ‘dominion of Negroes’54 in Africa, Jamaican war veterans should insist upon their full political enfranchisement within the existing legislative assembly system. In the event, Jamaican ex-servicemen were granted the temporary right to vote only in the first Legislative Council election after the war.55 Subsequently the franchise remained restricted to those who could meet prohibitive property qualifications, until universality was finally conceded in 1944. The failure of the Paris peace conference to adopt a racial-equality clause, proposed by Japan,56 showed the Garvey movement that black military service would not draw support for black selfdetermination from the Allies. The UNIA drew up an alternative Declaration of Rights articulating a vision of black redemption that envisaged African liberation by force of arms. This new approach was captured in the words of the Universal Ethiopian Anthem, the UNIA

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hymn co-written by West Indian e´migre´s Arnold Josiah Ford and Benjamin Burrell.57 Ethiopia, thou land of our fathers . . . Our armies come rushing to thee. We must in the fight be victorious When swords are thrust outward to gleam; For us will the vict’ry be glorious When led by the red, black and green.58 This image of armed liberation drew on a war memory that celebrated the part played by West Indians, Africans and African Americans in the allied victory. Garvey recalled this involvement at a Washington, DC meeting in July 1920: [W]e, by our prowess, won the war for the white man, when he was unable to win it for himself . . . If it were not for the Negro, those white folks would have been fighting in France, and Flanders . . . still. It took the Negro . . . to be the dividing line between the white man and the white man . . . in his great physical and military prowess to stop the Germans when the other whites ran away.59

Paramilitary organisations and the permanent West Indian soldier Although the dispersal of West Indian veterans after demobilisation precipitated the early demise of the Caribbean League, in the longer term the cause of West Indian national self-determination and panAfricanism was strengthened. At a very concrete level, the UNIA provided the means for ex-servicemen to appropriate and manipulate the symbols of imperial rule and military service through its paramilitary organisations, which drew recruits from both African American and West Indian members. The Universal African Legion organised companies in most chapters of the UNIA in the United States. With its glamorous uniforms, the UAL manipulated the

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symbols of British imperial and military might, convincing some black militants that the UNIA had the tangible means to wrest political power from British imperialism in the Caribbean and Africa. Such attire provided ample opportunity for a hostile press and opponents within rival political organisations to subject the UNIA to ridicule. However, Garvey was insistent that if African claims to statehood were to be taken seriously, then the UNIA and UAL, and particularly their leadership, were as entitled as European heads of state and colonial and military officials to wear appropriate uniforms of office.60 British military intelligence expressed some concern about this potential threat; however, aside from its preoccupation with grandiose military titles and drills, the UAL was equally concerned to nurture black self-improvement through the provision of technical and industrial education classes.61 The UAL drew significant inspiration from the military service of West Indians and the growth in Zionism evident in World War I. At a public meeting in 1919, Henrietta Vinton Davies, a leading Garveyite, remembered the valour of the first and second battalions of the BWIR who had fought with such distinction during the Battle of Megiddo. The engagement itself was fought over the ancient site of Armageddon, which marked the end of days in millennial traditions and whose West Indian adherents had found cause for fresh religious interpretation as imperial conflict gathered apace. It is likely that the UAL was named in honour of the Jewish Legions, the five battalions of the Royal Fusiliers organised by Ze’ev Jabotinsky.62 Among these was the 38th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, led by the pro-Zionist Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Patterson, which fought alongside the BWIR at Megiddo. As Garvey had believed support for the war effort might result in a post-war dispensation, so Jabotinsky believed Jewish enlistment would result in Allied backing for the Zionist cause. As with the BWIR, it was initially proposed to deploy the Jewish Legions as labour battalions, a strategy Patterson argued was designed to ‘bring the derision of the world upon the Jew’.63 Ironically, the Legions resisted the formation of a joint Jewish/West Indian brigade in July 1918, fearing ‘a blow aimed at Jewish prestige’.64 However, serving in campaigns where other self-determination aspirations were being

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voiced made a lasting impression on the West Indian veterans, both in a nationalist and pan-Africanist context. The Tiger Division of the New York chapter of the UNIA had the most concrete impact in terms of post-war paramilitary activity. Rather than providing a symbolic and ultimately unfulfilled means of liberating the African continent, from the late 1920s the Tiger Division defended sectional interests and geographical spaces in the black Harlem community, on occasion physically attacking members of other UNIA factions and rival political movements. The Tiger Division was led and organised by a flamboyant Jamaican veteran, St William Wellington Wellwood Grant. Having failed to find employment on his return from military service, Grant emigrated to New York in 1920, where he became commander of the Tiger Division.65 Grant designed uniforms for the Division, on which he wore his Victory and British War Medals. He also created somewhat extravagant and ad hoc military titles such as ‘captain of field artillery’, ‘major of machine guns’ and ‘lieutenants of cavalry and of infantry’. In reality the Division only had access to some sabres and unloaded Winchester rifles. Despite Grant’s desire that the Division should eventually form the basis for land, sea and air forces that would command the respect of the European nations, in practice it never developed beyond a street-fighting organisation. The Tiger Division claimed an area of Lenox Avenue and mounted attacks on other organisations that tried to occupy its turf, including Communist Party meetings, which had also started to attract black US and West Indian veterans. Members of the Division, Grant among them, were implicated in the death of a black communist, Alfred Levy, in June 1930. Garveyites were also said to be involved, although later acquitted, of the 1928 murder of Laura Adorkor Kofey, a former UNIA member who had established a cult following in Florida.66 Clashes within the Garvey movement increasingly reflected divisions between radical West Indian and more conservative US factions.67 Evident among West Indian veterans was a model of black self-determination which held that militaristic political campaigning would be most effective in the overthrow of racial oppression in the United States and British Empire.

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During the 1930s, pan-Africanist ideas took a firmer hold among West Indian war veterans. The coronation of Ras Tafari as Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, in November 1930 reaffirmed Africa as the ‘land of our fathers’.68 When the League of Nations did not intervene to prevent Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, some West Indians, among them ex-servicemen, wished to heed the words of the ‘Universal Ethiopian Anthem’ – ‘As storm cloud at night suddenly gathers, Our armies come rushing to thee.’ Garvey, however, was notably reluctant to advocate support for the Ethiopian cause, resulting in a split with one of his most enduring allies, the British Honduran veteran Samuel Haynes.69 Under the terms of the Foreign Enlistment Act (1870) and the Ethiopian Order in Council (1934), West Indians were not permitted to volunteer for the Ethiopian cause. Several veterans wrote to the Jamaican radical newspaper Plain Talk in protest. An unnamed ex-soldier asked: ‘If I had the fighting spirit to defend the whiteman against the whiteman then why could I not defend the Abyssinians my mother against those heartless uncivilised Italians?’ Another letter from A.H. Brown, ‘ex-BWIR’, called on all trained men to enlist and prevent Mussolini taking ‘hold of our Motherland Africa where God did provide for us all’. In October 1935, 1,360 Jamaicans signed a UNIA petition to George V, vowing as ‘members of the Negro Race, and the descendants of African slaves’, to ensure ‘the preservation of any part of Africa which is free of foreign domination’ and to defend ‘our ancient and beloved Empire’.70 St William Grant, who returned to Jamaica in 1934, having been expelled from the UNIA for his overzealous paramilitary activities, organised a further petition. Recalling the war service of the WIR and referring to Ethiopia as the ‘only relic of the great African Empire’, the petition demanded ‘that in the same way as we helped to safeguard the integrity of other races, we are asking that our race be protected at this crucial moment’.71

Conclusion Ultimately, the protests against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, combined with increasing unrest related to the economic fall-out of

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the Great Depression, would lead to the labour protests that spread throughout the British West Indies during the late 1930s. World War I veterans were a prominent element of this labour unrest. The war had raised the hopes of West Indian volunteers for citizenship rights, employment opportunities and autonomous landproprietorship. These expectations were expressed through the discourse of military sacrifice, despite the exclusion of many West Indian troops from the front-line roles generally linked to heroic narratives. The failure of the imperial government to honour these expectations increased veteran militancy, although the dispersal of exservicemen through the Americas initially diluted the political impact in the British West Indies region. Increasing exposure to an emerging global black consciousness transcended the boundaries of colonial subject-hood. As a consequence, West Indian military service had significance far beyond the geographical boundaries of the Anglophone Caribbean. The continual reinterpretation of West Indian military service and its contestation by national and panAfrican movements, combined with the unresolved grievances of the veterans, created the phenomenon of the permanent West Indian soldier throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Notes 1 Lucas 1923, 327–9, 341 –2. 2 Garvey, M. 1983, 62. 3 Enclosure in Marcus Garvey to Booker T. Washington, 8 September 1914, MGP, I, p. 69. 4 The National Archives (TNA) CO137/705/5 Marcus Garvey, Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League to Rt Hon. Lewis Harcourt, MP, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 16 September 1914. 5 West Indian (Grenada), 28 February 1919. 6 Joseph 1971, 96. 7 West India Committee Circular (WICC), No. 421, 17 November 1914, 502. 8 Jamaica Times (JT), 27 November 1915, 1. 9 Gleaner, 12 October 1915, 13. 10 WICC, No. 416, 8 September 1914, 412. 11 Dyde 1997; JT, 5 September 1914, 15.

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12 Killingray 1979, 426– 7. 13 Oram 1998; White, A. 1901. 14 TNA WO32/5094, Memorandum from Military Members of the Army Council 6 February 1917 to Commander in Chief, British Armies in France. 15 Smith 2004, 63 – 5. 16 Joseph 1971, 98 – 9. 17 Smith 2004, 125– 6. 18 Manual of Military Law, 1914, 471. A black Jamaican, Hubert Austin Cooper, Deputy Clerk of the Courts for the parish of Westmoreland, was commissioned in 1917 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the BWIR (Gleaner, 1 August 1942, 1). 19 Wellcome Institute RAMC 446/18, memorandum ‘1/5th Royal Warwick Regiment; extract from proceedings of a Court of Enquiry into failure of a party of 11th Border Regiment . . . to carry out an attack, on 10th July 1916’. 20 TNA WO95/5370, War Diary 2WIR, entries for 6 and 9 November 1917. 21 Institute of Commonwealth Studies Archive, London WIC/3/BWIR War Diary, 1st Battalion of the British West Indies Regiment, 1915 –1919, 75 – 8. 22 Cipriani 1940, 20. 23 TNA WO95/4732, War Dairy 1BWIR, entries for 19 –21 September 1918; The Times, 6 December 1918, 8. 24 Gleaner, 29 March 1919, 18. The original report, ‘British West Indies Regiment’, appears in TNA WO95/4732, War Diary 1BWIR, June 1917– April 1919. 25 Ibid., entry for 13 October 1918. 26 Gilbert, S.M. 1987. 27 Bourke 1999. 28 WICC 539, 29 May 1919, 128. 29 Mosse 1990, 15 – 32. Brooke died of sepsis en route to the Dardanelles, Byron (probably also of sepsis) before he could launch an assault on Turkish forces during the Greek War of Independence. 30 Ellis 1885, 14 – 15. 31 Gleaner, 12 October 1915, 13. 32 Bourke 1999, 44 –7, 51 – 5, 58 – 62. 33 The Times, 15 June 1920, 6. 34 MGP, I, 291. 35 Jamaica Tomorrow, 2 October 1937, 1 (copy filed in TNA CO137/827/1). 36 Smith 2004, 130– 3. 37 TNA WO95/4255, War Diary Camp Commandant Taranto Base, entries for 6 – 12 December 1918. Imperial War Museum (IWM) PP/MCA/173, ‘The First World War Memoirs of Lieutenant D.C. Burn’, f. 136. 38 TNA WO95/4255, War Diary Commandant Taranto Base, entries for 6 –8 December 1918; TNA WO95/4262, War Diary 7BWIR, January 1918– January 1919, entry for 9 January 1919. 39 TNA WO213/27, Register of Field General Courts Martial and Military Courts to 27 February 1919; Gleaner 29 August 1934, 5.

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40 TNA CO318/350/75, Notes of meeting held at Cimino Camp, Italy, 17 December 1918. 41 Ibid., Major Maxwell Smith to Major-General Thuillier, GOC Taranto, 27 December 1918. 42 Ibid., Major Maxwell Smith (8BWIR) to GOC, Taranto, 3 January 1919. 43 Ibid., Notes of meeting held at Cimino Camp, Italy, 17 December 1918. 44 JT, 28 June1919, 8. 45 Quoted in Foster 1988, 477. 46 Negro World, 2 August 1919, 1, reprinted in MGP, I, 472. 47 Crisis, June 1918, 64; West and West 2003, 71. 48 Crisis, June 1918, 65. 49 Bruce 1918, 1. 50 Gilbert, P. (ed.) 1971, 99 – 100; Crowder 2004, 66. 51 The terms of the Anglo-US Military Service Convention meant that black West Indians rejected by the British military missions in the United States could not be forcibly enlisted into the US army. TNA WO32/4765, WO to Gen. White 17 June 1918 (copy telegram); Gen. White to WO, 26 June 1918 (copy telegram); WO to Gen. White, 27 June 1918 (copy telegram). See also Killingray 1979, 425– 7. 52 West Indian (Grenada), 28 February 1919, MGP, I, 374– 5. 53 ‘Negro expresses revolutionary & anti-British views’, MGP, I, 343. 54 Gleaner, 26 March 1921, 6. 55 Notice, King’s House, 22 May 1919, TNA CO318/348/38685. 56 Henry 2000, 96. 57 Ford, a Barbadian, had served for a short period at the turn of the century as a musician in the Royal Navy before settling in Harlem and eventually becoming the UNIA director of music. Burrell, a poet and newspaper columnist from Jamaica, travelled to the United States in 1917 and worked in a munitions factory. He joined the UNIA before establishing a closer connection with the Communist Party-orientated African Blood Brotherhood; see James 1999, 55 – 69; MGP, I, 227– 8, n. 5; MGP, II, 398, n. 1. 58 MGP, II, 575– 6. 59 Bureau of Investigation, ‘Stenographic Report of UNIA Meeting’, Washington, DC, 24 July 1920, MPG, II, 454– 5. 60 Garvey, A.J. 1986, 353. 61 Summers 2004, 93 – 6. 62 Hill 1998. For the importance of West Indian millennial tradition in the context of World War I, see Smith 2009. 63 Patterson 1922, 64. 64 Ibid., 90. 65 White, N. 1979, 56. 66 ‘Man and woman killed in UNIA faction fight’, Daily Gleaner, 15 March 1928, MGP, VII, 141–2; ‘Garveyite leaders join NY police in murderous attack’, Daily Worker, 30 June 1930, MGP, VII, 406– 8.

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67 ‘Sabers used in fight of the Negro factions’, New York Times, 24 June 1929, MGP, VII, 304– 7. 68 MGP, II, 575. 69 James 1999, 67. 70 TNA CO318/418/4/71062, Petition of Kingston UNIA, October 1935. See also Weisbord 1970; Yelvington 1999. 71 TNA CO318/418/4/71062, Copy Petition to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 5 October 1935.

References Bourke, Joanna, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in TwentiethCentury Warfare (London, 1999). Bruce, John E., A Tribute for the Negro Soldier (New York, 1918). Cipriani, A.A., Twenty-five Years After: The British West Indies Regiment in the Great War 1914– 1918 (Port of Spain, 1940). Crowder, Ralph L., John Edward Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-Trained Historian of the African Diaspora (New York, 2004). Dyde, Brian, The Empty Sleeve: The Story of the West India Regiments of the British Army (St Johns, Antigua, 1997). Ellis, Major A.B., The History of the First West India Regiment (London, 1885). Foster, R.F., Modern Ireland 1600– 1972 (Harmondsworth, 1988). Garvey, Amy Jaques (compiler), The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (Dover MA, 1986). Garvey, Marcus, ‘A talk with Afro-West Indians: the Negro race and its problems’, in Hill, R.A. (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, pp. 66 – 73. Gilbert, Peter (ed.), The Selected Writings of John Edward Bruce: Militant Black Journalist (New York, 1971). Gilbert, Sandra M., ‘Soldier’s heart: literary men, literary women and the Great War’, in Higonnet, M.R. and Jane Jenson (eds), Behind the Lines: Gender and Two World Wars (New Haven CT, 1987), pp. 197– 226. Henry, Charles P., Foreign Policy and the Black (Inter)national Interest (Albany NY, 2000). Hill, Robert A. (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, I. (Berkeley CA, 1983). ——— (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, II. (Berkeley CA, 1983). ——— (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, VII. (Berkeley CA, 1991). ——— ‘Black Zionism: Marcus Garvey and the Jewish Question’, in Franklin, V.P., Nancy L. Grant, Harold Kletnick and Genna Rae McNeil (eds), African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict (Columbia MO, 1998), pp. 40 – 53.

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James, Winston, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (London, 1999). Joseph, C.L., ‘The British West Indies Regiment, 1914– 1918’, Journal of Caribbean History ii (1971), pp. 94 – 124. Killingray, David, ‘The idea of a British Imperial African Army’, Journal of African History xx/3 (1979), pp. 426– 7. Lucas, Charles, The Empire at War, Vol. II (Oxford, 1923). Manual of Military Law ( London, 1914). Mosse, George L., Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford, 1990). Oram, Gerard, Worthless Men: Race, Eugenics and the Death Penalty in the British Army during the First World War (London, 1998). Patterson, J.M., With the Judaeans in the Palestine Campaign (London, 1922). Smith, Richard, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness (Manchester, 2004). ——— ‘J. Edmestone Barnes, a Jamaican apocalyptic visionary in the early twentieth century’, in Kinane, Karolyn and Mike Ryan (eds), End of Days: Popular Conceptions of the Apocalypse (Jefferson NC, 2009), pp. 120– 41. Summers, Martin, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900– 1930 (Chapel Hill NC, 2004). Weisbord, R.G., ‘British West Indian reaction to the Italian-Ethiopian War: an episode in Pan-Africanism’, Caribbean Studies x/1 (1970), pp. 34 – 41. West, Aberjhani and Sandra L. West, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (New York, 2003). White, Arnold, Efficiency and Empire (London, 1901). White, N., ‘St. William Wellington Grant: a fighter for black dignity’, Jamaica Journal xliii (1979), pp. 56 – 63. Yelvington, K.A., ‘The war in Ethiopia and Trinidad 1935– 1936’, in Brereton, B. and K.A. Yelvington, The Colonial Caribbean in Transition: Essays on Postemancipation Social and Cultural History (Gainesville FL, 1999).

CHAPTER 12 WORLD WAR I AND US EMPIRE IN THE AMERICAS Alan McPherson

The campaign in Santo Domingo during 1918 was a part of the Great War. (Lieutenant Colonel George Thorpe, US Marine Corps)1 Histories of US involvement in World War I and those of US empire in the Americas are like estranged twins, intimately connected but strangely absent from each other’s lives. Understandably, the first group is focused almost exclusively on the European theatre.2 But most historians of inter-American relations have equally given little attention to the war.3 Those who have focused on it have generally asked how the Allies obtained Latin American participation and how hemispheric diplomacy and commerce affected the war effort.4 Those more interested in US empire have been fixated largely on the opposite question – how the war affected the Americas, specifically the rising power of US trade and finance in the hemisphere. Their narrative is generally that of an imperial jaguar, already well perched before the war, taking advantage of European distraction and weakness to pounce on European partners in the Americas. The narrative is also largely focused on South America.5 While that narrative is true enough, it neglects a more nuanced story of how World War I promoted but also restrained US empire

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in the Americas. At the heart of this nuance is the paradox that affected the Americas as much as it did Europe: the United States entered a war alongside colonial powers in order to promote selfdetermination. Just as the start of war in Europe offered Washington an opportunity to expand its power in the hemisphere, it also foresaw the beginning of the end of that empire by offering, at least implicitly, the ideological foundation for democracy and independence in President Woodrow Wilson’s call for national self-determination. To understand this dynamic fully, historians must take three approaches that they rarely have: first, begin the narrative not, as they usually do, in 1917, when the United States entered the war, but in 1914, when Germany began to threaten the hemisphere; second, focus on political and military rather than economic matters; and third, take into account the voices of those living under the US empire – not the largely independent presidents of South American countries, but repressed, censored and desperate representatives of peoples directly under the US heel in the smaller countries of the Caribbean and Central America. It is these denizens of often militaryoccupied republics who most took to heart Wilson’s entreaties on self-government and confronted them with the hypocrisy of US empire. This chapter makes those shifts in conceptual and methodological emphasis, made possible by research in three languages and five countries.

The war as a boon for US empire In many ways the war in Europe boosted the fortunes of US empire. Economically, the United States rapidly supplanted European countries as a major exporter, banker and investor south of its border. Diplomatically, the war put unprecedented pressure on Latin American republics. And militarily, the United States occupied or acquired more territory as a result of the war, or else solidified its strategic position in Central America and the Caribbean. First, the war in Europe improved the financial outlook of the United States in the Americas. Even before hostilities broke out, the United States was moving toward an empire that increasingly

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emphasised dollars over bullets. True, Wilson and his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, were opposed to the controlled-loan ‘dollar diplomacy’ of Wilson’s predecessor William Howard Taft.6 But their opposition was to the military control that it implied, not the extension of US commercial power. As historian Joseph Tulchin has noted, priorities shifted from eliminating political instability and fiscal irresponsibility to helping US businesses dominate foreign investment, hitherto a European domain in Latin America.7 During World War I, the revolving door between US business and diplomacy turned ever more swiftly. The State Department was filled with men from a business background and with investments abroad and they increasingly rejoined the business world after public service.8 The relationship was so intimate that firms at times directly influenced military policy. Entrepreneur Roger Farnham, who had economic interests in Haiti, played a not unsubstantial role in scaring Wilson administration officials into believing tales of German, French and even unlikely German-French intrigue in the republic, and those tales led to intervention in 1915.9 More commonly, the State Department encouraged the growth of US business in Latin America not only indirectly by organising conferences, but directly by loaning out translators, allowing the private use of official cables and providing official representation on behalf of corporations. The federal government also set up financial, shipping and communications infrastructure or enacted legislation to encourage private growth in Latin America. The War Trade Board embargoed some foodstuffs to Cuba, which benefited US firms and also blacklisted enemy firms, which allowed US interests to supplant them. Transferring German firms to US hands, wrote the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, was ‘a good method for the development of American commerce in that region [Latin America]’. As a result, trade between Latin America and the United States nearly tripled during the war, and US foreign direct investment south of the Rio Grande grew from $754.1 million in 1915 to $2,819.2 million in 1924.10 A major financial goal of US occupations, also adopted before the war, was to replace Europeans as the Caribbean area’s major creditors.

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In 1910, the State Department had reorganised the National Bank of Haiti and Wall Street had largely replaced French bankers.11 In Nicaragua, Secretary Bryan feared that Europeans, who were demanding payments by a government saddled with a $15 million debt, would move to take over its customs, if not its government. Bryan sold Wilson on the idea of replacing European loans at 5 to 6 per cent for US loans at 4.5 per cent, thus saving Nicaragua some money and still providing Wall Street with a profit.12 And in 1913, the Federal Reserve Act allowed US banks to establish affiliates in Latin America.13 World War I encouraged empire in the Americas not only commercially but diplomatically. As a diplomatic indication of US power over its empire by the start of the war, Washington was able to marshal most directly the sympathies of nations directly under its tutelage. On 3 February 1917 Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany, while on 6 April Congress declared war and Wilson asked that Latin American governments at least break relations with Germany. Such a request ran contrary to the Monroe Doctrine, which viewed with disfavour any hemispheric involvement in European affairs.14 Still, only six out of 20 Latin American republics remained neutral during the war. Of the 14 that either declared war on or broke relations with Germany, two were US protectorates (Cuba and Panama), three were under military occupation (Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic) and three more were subject to either occasional marine landings or diplomatic pressure (Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras).15 To be sure, to argue for US pressure is not to deny that Latin American executives also considered their national interest when they responded favourably to Washington. The Haitian government held off on declaring war until a German submarine attack on the steamers Karnak and Montreal, which destroyed a great deal of cargo and killed eight Haitian citizens in early 1917. Yet republics in the Caribbean and Central America admitted the weight of US influence in their decisions. Cuban President Mario Garcı´a Menocal did so somewhat inadvertently in his war message, explaining that neutrality would ‘be contrary to public sentiment, to

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the spirit of pacts and obligations, rather more moral than legal which bind us to the United States, and would eventually, because of her [Cuba’s] geographical situation, be a source of inevitable conflict [with the United States]’. In his own war message, Haiti’s Sudre Dartiguenave spoke of ‘our powerful and natural ally, the United States, admirable in her lofty ideals’. ‘Our indisputable duty in this tremendous hour of history is of a common ally’, echoed the president of Panama, ‘whose interests and existence as well are linked indissolubly with the United States.’16 But the least studied yet most complex impact of the war on US empire is the third, the military one. It remains under-examined because of the long saga of US military interventions before 1914. Tulchin, for instance, sees interventions in Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua as products of the pre-war, shop-worn pattern of intervention. While this is true, these interventions were nevertheless substantial and some of them direct results of the war.17 The Caribbean became far more strategically important as soon as the war began in Europe and even more so when the United States joined it. The opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914 coincided with the outbreak of hostilities and so shipping lanes became doubly vital to US security. In fiscal years 1917 – 19, over 5,600 ships transited through the waterway. Mexican petroleum and Chilean nitrates, both vital to the Allies, passed through the Caribbean.18 Ships steamed past some of the smallest and more vulnerable republics in Latin America, such as Cuba and Haiti and so increased the US fear of a military take-over by Europeans. Reacting to this competitive environment, the Wilson administration purchased the tiny Danish West Indies in 1916, renaming them the Virgin Islands, days before the war declaration of 1917, out of fear that the Germans might seize them and establish a U-boat base.19 It is even probable that Wilson signed into law the Jones Act, which among other things made Puerto Ricans US citizens, on 2 March 1917 partly because it facilitated the conscription of Puerto Ricans into the military when the Selective Service Act was passed two months later. Twenty thousand Puerto Ricans eventually served in World War I.20

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Most consequentially, Wilson sent occupation forces to Haiti (1915– 34) and the Dominican Republic (1916– 24). To be sure, US military intervention was not new on the island of Hispaniola that both republics shared. From 1867 to 1913, US Marines landed in Haiti 24 times.21 Yet in 1915, when political violence threatened foreigners in Port-au-Prince, the Navy occupied Haiti indefinitely, primarily because of the war. The chief concern in landing was to preempt the Germans and French from doing the same.22 It turned out later that major policy-makers such as Secretary of State Robert Lansing proved alarmist about impending European occupations and the intervention of Haiti turned into an occupation because the State Department thought it could change the revolutionary political culture of the Haitians.23 Yet the fact remains that it was fear of European intervention that prompted the initial Marine landing. Lansing, for instance, had every intention of securing a naval base at Haiti’s Moˆle Saint-Nicolas and Navy officials also wanted to protect Samana´ Bay in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. When the Marines took Port-au-Prince in July 1915, the French had landed days before in Cap-Haı¨tien to protect French property and the US Navy immediately warned Paris and London to move no further.24 The French backed off, saying ‘that anything likely to cause difficulties with the United States should be avoided’.25 Fear of Germany – and particularly of German spies in occupied countries – also coloured the occupations of these two countries. The exaggeration of the German threat is clear: while there may have been German citizens under US occupation who were less than loyal to Washington, there was no evidence of any effort by Germany to coordinate those citizens.26 Berlin certainly did organise political activity elsewhere in Latin America, but not in countries that the Marines occupied.27 Yet the larger point, again, is that the Marines feared German subversion and so entrenched themselves more deeply as an imperial force. Major General Littleton Waller wrote to the Secretary of the Navy citing ‘strong evidence’ – though he offered none – of German financing of Haitian anti-occupation activists in order ‘to upset the Government and drive the Americans out’.28 Haitian officials who

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approved of the occupation also believed such hype.29 In July 1918 the Haitian Council of State gave itself the right to expel and control the movements of foreigners and to take their property. Two days later the president decreed the sequestration of leading German commercial houses. He also imposed restrictions on German movements and interned 21 German citizens.30 In early 1920, long after the war was over, the Marines deported 50 Germans from Haiti.31 The fear was so widespread that, generations later, US diplomats and historians remembered the German peril as real.32 The Dominican occupation was even more stiffened by paranoia, since there was never even an implied threat of German occupation there. As the State Department’s Dana Munro later explained, the occupation began in 1916 partly because ‘the principal troublemakers were known to be pro-German’.33 Occupation authorities suspected Germans behind every Dominican insurgency, and jailed at least a few German citizens.34 Yet the accuracy of their knowledge was again doubtful. Occupiers spoke of ‘German interest’ lurking behind insurrections and persecuted Germans without offering solid evidence of their crimes. Some expressed frustration that they could find no ‘proof’ of German subversion.35 Yet again fear, not a real threat, was paramount. Lieutenant Colonel George Thorpe, for instance, wrote in August 1918: ‘I am more than ever impressed with the seriousness of the German situation here. They think they own the earth and propose to run things to suit themselves.’36 Thorpe partly revealed his logic by stating that ‘whoever is running this revolution is a wise man: he certainly is getting a lot out of the niggers’, and that therefore ‘it shows the handwork (sic) of the German as certain as can be’. Thorpe offered no evidence of such leadership.37 Nevertheless, he concluded in mid-1919 that Dominican ‘insurgents were incited, supplied, and often led by Germans’ and he ‘imprisoned several Germans therefore’.38 Thorpe’s zeal for rooting out German influence, real or imagined, might also have been motivated by his desire to be sent to Europe. As he explained in August 1918, ‘If I do a good job of clearing these two provinces of insurgents and kill a lot, mayn’t I go to some more active field of endeavor, too[?] It ought to demonstrate that I’d be a good

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German-killer.’39 In other words, the outbreak of war in Europe might have made things considerably worse for anti-occupation guerrillas – and more propitious for US empire – since they became stepping-stones to a greater mission for individual occupiers. Even the Nicaraguan occupation, begun in 1912 for reasons unrelated to the war in Europe, strengthened its hold after hostilities broke out across the Atlantic. In August 1914 Secretary Bryan and General Emiliano Chamorro signed an agreement that became law when the US Senate ratified it in February 1916. It gave the United States exclusive rights to two naval bases and to build any future inter-oceanic canal in Nicaragua. In return, Washington disbursed $3 million to the cash-strapped Central American nation. The goals of the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty were overwhelmingly strategic. The British had up to then had an equal right to build a canal, and Germany and Japan had expressed interest.40 The goal of keeping them out was more salient than that of building a new US canal in Nicaragua. The US collector-general of customs in Nicaragua argued that the treaty made Nicaragua ‘an important link in the chain, which we are attempting to forge, of preparedness and national defence, and the protection of our investment in the Panama Canal’.41 After all, Bryan-Chamorro was signed the same month that the Panama Canal saw the passage of its first ships. Bryan had even wanted the agreement to include a US right to armed intervention in Nicaragua, though the Senate opposed it.42 ‘The Nicaraguan policy of the United States angered many Central Americans’, wrote historian Emily Rosenberg, ‘yet World War I re-emphasized to the Wilson administration the necessity of dominating the Caribbean region.’43 By 1919, that dominance was clear. Only the United States had a canal in the area and guarded closely its right to build – or prevent – another. Shipping lanes were as safe as could be, ensuring not only military preeminence but also the ability to outmuscle European competitors commercially. And diplomatically, Latin Americans had needed little prodding to join an effort that reflected their values and interests, even if it did bolster US prestige. The war ended with a minor but fitting episode that spoke of the triumph of US empire: during

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negotiations over the League of Nations, Wilson acquiesced to the Senate’s demand that the Monroe Doctrine be included in the League’s Covenant. Latin Americans were livid, but it passed anyway.44

The war as a restraint against US empire Paradoxically, the war also restrained US empire in the Americas and this in two ways. First, by focusing US energies and ambitions largely away from Latin America, war in Europe dampened the Americans’ ability to back their social engineering during occupations with the needed military backbone. Second, the very language Wilson used to shape the post-war order in Europe inspired activists in the Americas to hasten the end of what they considered a US effort to suppress their own ability to self-govern. The war had a moderate impact on the quantity of US troops in the Caribbean. Perhaps hundreds of troops were sent from Hispaniola to France right before the United States entered World War I, for instance.45 The consequence for security was minor, yet the head of the Dominican occupation complained in mid-1917 that it gave the impression to insurrectionists ‘that we were withdrawing before an unbeaten bandit’.46 More important, the war harmed the quality of US imperial control by drawing away the most talented Navy officers. Many who were left behind felt inferior, deprived of true combat experience.47 One complained that Marines in the Dominican Republic received a smaller ‘allowance’ than those in Europe.48 Among the discontented was Smedley Butler, an officer whose thirst for combat remained forever unquenched, who bitterly complained of having to stay in Haiti in 1917 to lead its Gendarmerie. He requested a transfer to Europe, and got his wish to go to France, but then never saw combat there, to his chagrin.49 Butler was not the only one itching to go. The French charge´ d’affaires in Port-au-Prince reported in 1919 that 20 US recruits, unhappy that they had been sent to Haiti, were awaiting court martial after having mutinied.50 Anti-German paranoia, for all its impetus to empire in Latin America, also proved a drawback, because occupiers proved largely

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unable to appreciate the widespread opposition to their take-over. In the Dominican occupation, Lieutenant Colonel Thorpe concluded that ‘unless people are lying to me to curry favor there is almost universal approval of our methods and plan. Our opposition is from Germans and pro-Germans.’51 The descriptor ‘pro-German’, often used in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, became a convenient way of neglecting the real grievances of those under occupation, who criticised the Marines for taking over their institutions, dispensing justice unfairly, saddling their governments with new debts and introducing US-style racism, forced labour and torture, among other things.52 When the war ended but ‘pro-Germans’ continued to resist, US officials were left without a true appreciation of indigenous attitudes grounded in specific Latin American conditions. One cannot speak of US empire in Latin America without addressing Mexico. Mexico saw interventions, but not because of the war. On the contrary, the war prevented further interventions, and even shortened one. To be sure, before 1917 Mexico, having already been embroiled in revolution for years when World War I broke out, suffered through Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson’s connivance in the overthrow of President Francisco Madero in 1913, the occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and the ‘punitive expedition’ to chase down Pancho Villa in 1916– 17. Yet none of these moves were consequences of the war. The only directly war-related issue was the German proposal of a military alliance with President Venustiano Carranza in early 1917, uncovered in the Zimmermann telegram.53 But because Wilson could not afford the troops for a Mexican invasion and preferred to pacify Carranza, he let the matter drop if the latter was indeed strict in his neutrality. Mexico found the proposed alliance untenable in any case. The need for troops for the European theatre even moved Wilson to pull out John Pershing’s punitive mission without waiting for a quid pro quo from Carranza.54 Wilson’s Mexican policy, as it related to the war in Europe, was primarily one of caution. In October 1915, after the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat, the United States joined half a dozen Latin American countries in informally recognising Carranza. In an early, cynical version of self-determination, Wilson threw up his

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hands: ‘If the Mexicans want to raise hell, let them raise hell. We have nothing to do with it. It is their government, it is their hell.’55 One month before the US war declaration, the de jure recognition of Carranza was complete,56 but after 1917, when he shepherded the approval of a constitution that awarded all subsoil rights to the Mexican people and not to foreign investors, some in the United States panicked. The Oil Producers Association and National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico put pressure on the State Department, and Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico held hearings in August 1919. Suggestions from these proponents of US investment included breaking relations with Carranza so as to encourage arms to flow and a rebellion to spark, or even sending another US intervention force into Mexico. Wilson and Lansing refused.57 The second way that the war restrained US empire in the Americas was by spreading the idea of self-determination, a concept that seemed to many to be contradicted by US actions. To those under occupation, self-determination was an obvious goal. Even Latin Americans who did not suffer intervention or occupation were embittered and many said so when they met US counterparts. The war also created a powerful anti-imperialist minority in the United States, much of it an extension of isolationism.58 Of greatest consequence was that the end of the war did not immediately end any occupation, which laid bare other, non-strategic reasons for the US presence, such as commercial profit and social engineering. The message of self-government affected most deeply those to whom US imperial control denied self-government. Latin Americans saw the end of the war as an opportunity to exploit the paradox embedded in Wilson’s global foreign policy ideology: the US president fought a ‘war to end all wars’ and helped imperial allies with a promise to spread ‘self-determination’. As Erez Manela has shown, it soon became clear to nationalists and anti-colonialists outside Europe that they were not to be the beneficiaries of Wilson’s self-determination.59 Latin Americans, like others around the world, did not accede so easily to the US implication that freedom was not for them. Though

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occupied, Haiti was nominally independent, and so sent diplomats and delegates abroad. Usually these were puppets of the prooccupation presidents, but there was one exception. Dante`s Bellegarde, an experienced statesman and educator, was sent to various European capitals by Port-au-Prince. Often against the wishes of his own government, he argued for the rights of other small nations or those of Haitians exploited for their labour in Cuba.60 On 1 July 1924, Bellegarde, then president of the Haitian League Society, a private association, made his most impassioned speech to the International Federation of League Societies in Lyon. For this pacifist organisation Bellegarde embraced the language of ‘international law’ to denounce US occupation. US diplomats, attending only as observers at the General Assembly in Geneva, barely succeeded in having a simultaneous resolution in favour of US withdrawal watered down enough to be innocuous.61 Dominicans were even more emboldened by the rhetoric at Versailles – and more desperate. In 1916, the US occupation had pushed their president, Francisco Henrı´quez y Carvajal, into exile. It simultaneously installed a military government that operated like a dictatorship – with no Dominican president or legislature and a US Marine as military governor ruling by decree – thus making it impossible for Dominicans to represent their nation abroad, in contrast to Haiti. Henrı´quez y Carvajal – known as ‘Don Pancho’ – lay low for a few years, but when the war drew to a close he saw an opportunity in Wilson’s hypocrisy. ‘Like all patriots,’ explained the French charge´ d’affaires in Santo Domingo, ‘[Henrı´quez y Carvajal] sees the US occupation of his country is incompatible with the principle of the rights of small nations proclaimed by President Wilson.’62 Don Pancho gambled that he could show up at Versailles and appeal directly to Wilson to reconcile his words and actions and end the occupation. The military government sent its own representative to Versailles, but Don Pancho refused to be ‘soothed’ by such an envoy, the British vice-consul wrote.63 The former president and his circle raised thousands of dollars to pay the cost of his trip to Paris in February 1919. Days before he departed, a sympathetic Cuban newspaper declared that ‘the time has come not only for the small

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nations of Europe but for those of America; not only for Belgium and Poland but for Santo Domingo!’64 Events soon deflated such enthusiasm.65 Don Pancho reached Paris, but never got to meet Wilson and was physically shut out of peace talks. ‘I am almost completely isolated,’ he wrote to his son-inlaw in despair in April. ‘The Conference delegates are unavailable.’ He did have a meeting with State Department officials, who, to his dismay, informed him that Paris was not the place to discuss Santo Domingo or any other non-European issue.66 The immediate post-war years were rife with such disappointment. At Versailles, there were also Haitians trying to lobby Wilson, using his own rhetoric. In contrast to Don Pancho, Haiti’s representative in Paris, Terulien Guilbaud, was an official delegate, and his instructions were to abolish US-imposed martial law and provost courts in Haiti and to end US financial control. Foreign Minister Constantin Benoıˆt pointed out to Guilbaud the contradiction between Wilson’s ‘principle of respects for the rights of smaller nations’ and Haiti’s failure at ‘obtaining justice’, and suggested the possibility of publicly embarrassing Lansing and his president. Lansing signalled his openness to downgrading the Marine brigade in Port-au-Prince to the status of a ‘legation guard’, but US officials in Haiti and Washington killed the idea.67 Yet after the war, an increasing number of US citizens, moved by pacifism and the senselessness of World War I, helped Latin Americans out of their imperial straits. Journalist Carleton Beals, for instance, was a conscientious objector during the war who went on to be an influential leftist chronicler of US sins in Latin America.68 Another writer-activist, James Weldon Johnson, sarcastically titled his series of scathing 1920 articles in The Nation ‘Self-Determining Haiti’.69 After the war, Jane Addams helped found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and personally lobbied Wilson to end the Haitian and Dominican occupations. A WILPF co-founder, Emily Balch, was fired from Wellesley College for her opposition to World War I and in 1927 led the writing of a critical report on Haiti.70 Finally, politicians joined the fray. A 70-year-old Representative, William Mason (R-IL), wrote to a

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Dominican activist that he wanted ‘to live long enough to see my country free from cononies (sic) and all kinds of slavery. This will mean self-determination for the Philippines, Porto Rica (sic) and Sandomingo (sic).’71 Mason died the following year, his wish unfulfilled. In 1920, even presidential candidate Warren Harding declared: ‘We are at war, not alone technically with Germany, but actually with the little, helpless republics of our own hemisphere.’72 For Latin Americans the rallying cry of ‘self-determination’ inspired even more in peacetime. Dominican poet Fabio Fiallo continued to denounce Wilson, ‘whose cynicism ran parallel with his iniquity when in Versailles he was proclaimed the Defender of the Rights of Weak Nations, while here in the Caribbean the waters were covered with cruisers crowded with marines and soldiers’.73 Echoing Zola, Dominican historian and novelist Gustavo Adolfo Mejı´a in 1920 published a tract titled I accuse Rome, in which there was no mystery about who the duplicitous ‘Rome’ truly was: ‘I accuse Rome of treason to civilisation . . . I accuse Rome of having dishonored the international treaties and doctrines of its most brilliant sons.’74 Speaking of the Dominican occupation, Cuban historian Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring told a crowd that it was Wilson’s ‘ideas . . . that have moved and convinced me to raise my voice in defence precisely of trampled rights and in a demand for justice for a people of America, brother and neighbor to ours’. He added, to loud applause: How will President Wilson, after having proclaimed . . . the rights of small nationalities, allow that not in Europe but in his own continent there exists a small nation to which his own government has denied the liberty and sovereignty that he . . . brought to small European nations? Roig specified that Caribbean nations should be self-interested in their defence of the Dominican Republic, since the rights of all small nations close to the United States were similar.75 Henrı´quez y Carvajal used the remainder of his time in Paris to lobby fellow Latin Americans and there got the idea of a commission to rally support in South America, an idea that came to fruition in

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1920.76 He also returned to form the Dominican National Commission in New York City, which for the rest of the occupation was instrumental in raising funds and not a little hell.77 In the years that followed the war, Dominican and Haitian activists compared themselves to Poland and other down-trodden nations and repeatedly pointed out Wilson’s hypocrisy.78 The issue of self-determination eventually made its way into negotiations between Dominicans and US diplomats in the 1920s. At one meeting with Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, the American Federation of Labor’s President, Samuel Gompers, argued in favour of Dominicans, telling Daniels that the issue of Dominican improvement through US tutelage was irrelevant. ‘They have the right to self-determination’, Gompers insisted.79 Early on, it dawned on US occupiers that contradictions abounded between their stated policies in Europe and their actions in Latin America. In March 1919, after meeting with the Haitian minister in Paris, the American mission cautioned Washington that it could not ‘continue the occupation in the present form, without subjecting the United States to much criticism, particularly, as the rights of smaller nations are being kept to the fore and in the light of the President’s utterances’.80 Yet it took a new generation of policy-makers in Washington finally to respond to entreaties in favour of Latin American self-determination. At the conclusion of the war in Europe, several long-serving and senior State Department officials resigned and a new leadership emerged. In Latin American affairs, Leo Rowe and Sumner Welles rose to the top and began to initiate military withdrawals.81 In 1922, Welles negotiated the end of the Dominican intervention. Simultaneously, the United States re-organised the Haitian occupation and oversaw elections in Nicaragua as a prelude to withdrawing its troops. The last two occupations lasted several more years, but an impetus toward ending them had resulted from the war in Europe. As the eminent historian Lester Langley stated: ‘World War I confirmed US power in Central America and the Caribbean and increased its influence in South America and Canada. No European power, certainly not Germany or even Great Britain, now challenged

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the United States in the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico.’82 Langley, of course, was right that Washington no longer feared challenges from Europeans. But Latin Americans were another matter altogether. True, they were now more closely dependent on the United States, and many in Latin America would embrace the commercial and diplomatic opportunities of that dependence. Yet those who sought independence, often unconditionally, saw that the war served as an occasion to doubt forever the promises emerging from the Colossus of the North, knowing that behind many of those kind words were often the actions of just another imperial power.

Notes 1 Colonel George C. Thorpe, memo to Major General Commandant, Headquarters USMC in Washington, Norfolk, Virginia, 14 May 1919, folder Santo Domingo, Contacts, Reports of, box 2, Miscellaneous Collection of Records Relating to the Marine Occupation of Santo Domingo. Dominican Republic, 1916– 24, Records of the United States Marine Corps Record Group 127 (hereafter RG 127); National Archives Building, Washington, DC (hereafter NARA I). 2 For instance, Farwell 1999 devotes only a few pages to Mexico, and no space to any other country in Latin America. 3 Grandin 2006, 30 – 1. 4 For examples, see Bailey 1942, esp. ch. 10; Dura´n 1985; Jore 1988; Albert 1988; Siepe 1992; Weinmann 1994. This scholarship to some extent reflects the literature during and immediately after the war, celebrating Latin American republics which joined the war and disparaging those which did not: Groupement des Universite´s 1916; Contreras 1917; Kirkpatrick 1918; Gaillard 1918; Sua´rez 1918; Barrett 1919. Another group of historians has focused exclusively on the Latin American-European relationship, largely excluding the United States; see for example, Couyoumdjian 1986, and Rolland 1992. 5 For examples, see Tulchin 1971; Black 1988; Rosenberg 1987; Langley 2002; Cuenca 2006. 6 Adler 1940, 200– 1. 7 Tulchin 1971, 3. 8 Rosenberg 1987, 39. 9 Schmidt 1995, 52. 10 Coleman 1951, 36; Rosenberg 1987, 42 – 4, 50, 51 (quotation), 73. See also Kaufman 1971. 11 Callcott 1942, 277. 12 Adler 1940, 208.

344 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

29

30 31 32

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Whitaker 1954, 114. Rosenberg 1987, 4. For details, see Barrett 1919. All cited in ibid., 15, 20, 23; see also Martin 1942, 517. Tulchin 1971, 5. Yerxa 1987, 182. Ibid. Cabranes 1979, 404. Langley 1985, 69; Ferguson 2004, 56. Pierce and Hough 1964, 161; Plummer 1992, 91. Editorial, ‘Mr. Lansing’s Haitian Letter’, New York Times, 9 May 1922, 15; Douglas 1927, 253. Ibid.; McCrocklin 1956, 19, 21; Lieutenant R.B. Coffey, ‘Notes on the Intervention in Haiti, with Some of its Political and Strategic Aspects’, Port-auPrince, 1 February 1916, folder Reports, Miscellaneous, 1915 –16, box 3, Papers of William Banks Caperton, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress (hereafter MD-LOC). British Ambassador in Paris F. Bertie telegram to Foreign Office, 7 August 1915, file 108600, reference 2370, Foreign Office 371, Public Record Office, Kew (hereafter PRO). Edelstein 2008, 45. Schuler 2010. Major General L.W.T. Waller, USMC, memorandum to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Washington, [24?] September 1920, folder Haiti opns. þ training. 1915– 20, box 2, General Correspondence, 1907– 36, RG 127, NARA I. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, memo to Secretary of State, 14 March 1917, 838.00/1439, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of Haiti, 1910– 29, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59 (hereafter RG 59), National Archives, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARA II). Martin 1942, 519; ‘Interned Germans’, 11 February 1919, folder Internment Camp, box 2, General Correspondence of Headquarters, Gendarmerie d’Haiti 1916– 19, RG 127, NARA I. John H. Russell, daily diary report, 19 January 1920, 838.00/1618, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of Haiti, 1910– 29, RG 59, NARA II. Josephus Daniels, ‘The Problem of Haiti’, Saturday Evening Post, 12 July 1930, 32, 34, 36; Beaulac 1951, 102; Rear Admiral Kent C. Melhorn, oral history by Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen and Commander Charles Melhorn, Julian, California, 14 February 1970, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC; Heinl, Jr and Heinl 1978, 431; Corvington 1984, 53. Munro 1980, 270. ‘Quarterly Report of Military Government in Santo Domingo from July 1, 1918, to September 30, 1918’, 18 October 1918, 839.00/2104, Central

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36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

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Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of the Dominican Republic, 1910– 1929, RG 59, NARA II. Lieutenant Colonel George C. Thorpe, Chief of Staff, letter to Brigadier General J.H. Pendleton, San Pedro de Macorı´s, 19 September 1918, folder 21, box 2, Papers of Joseph H. Pendleton, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Gray Research Center, Quantico, Virginia (hereafter GRC); Henry C. Davis, Battalion Commander, memo to James J. McLean, GND, San Pedro de Macorı´s, 12 June 1918, legajo 28, 1918, fondo Secretarı´a de Estado de Interior y Policı´a, Archivo General de la Nacio´n, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; ‘Annual Report of Military Government in Santo Domingo from date of Proclamation, November 29, 1916, to June 30, 1917’, 21 July 1917, 839.00/2043, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of the Dominican Republic, 1910– 1929, RG 59, NARA II; G.C. Thorpe, report to The Brigade Commander, Seibo, 16 June 1917, 839.00/2036, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of the Dominican Republic, 1910– 29, RG 59, NARA II; ‘Quarterly Report of Military Government in Santo Domingo from July 1, 1917, to September 30, 1917’, 27 October 1917, 839.00/2062, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of the Dominican Republic, 1910– 29, RG 59, NARA II. Thorpe, Chief of Staff, letter to Brigadier General J.H. Pendleton, San Pedro de Macorı´s, 9 August 1918, folder 21, box 2, Papers of Joseph H. Pendleton, GRC. Thorpe, letter to Pendleton, San Pedro de Macorı´s, 18 August 1918, folder 21, box 2, Papers of Joseph H. Pendleton, GRC. Thorpe, memo, 14 May 1919, folder Santo Domingo, Contacts, Reports of, box 2, Miscellaneous Collection of Records Relating to the Marine Occupation of Santo Domingo. Dominican Republic, 1916– 24, RG 127, NARA I. Thorpe, letter to Pendleton, San Pedro de Macorı´s, 21 August 1918, folder 21, box 2, Papers of Joseph H. Pendleton, GRC. Gobat 2005, 69. Ham 1916, 185– 91. Nalty 1968; E-001, C-008, 000446, Colleccio´n ACS (Augusto Ce´sar Sandino), Centro de Historia Militar, Managua, Nicaragua. Rosenberg 1987, 155. Tulchin 1971, 64. McCrocklin 1956, 37. H.S. Knapp, memorandum to Secretary of the Navy, 14 July 1917, 839.00/2039, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of the Dominican Republic, 1910– 29, RG 59, NARA II. Fuller and Cosmas 1974, 29. Colonel C. Gamborg-Andresen, USMC, memorandum to the Brigade Commander, Santo Domingo, 27 February 1919, folder D-40 Dominican Rep. Misc. USMC Reports, box 8; Operations and Training Division, Intelligence Section, 1915– 34, RG 127, NARA I.

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49 Schoultz 1998, 233. 50 French Charge´ d’Affaires Rene´ Delage letter to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Portau-Prince, 9 July 1919, dossier 3, Haiti, Ame´rique 1918 –40, Correspondance Politique et Commerciale 1914– 40, Archives Diplomatiques, Ministre des Affaires E´trange`res, Paris, France (hereafter MAE). 51 Thorpe, letter to Pendleton, San Pedro de Macorı´s, 11 September 1918, folder 21, box 2, Papers of J.H. Pendleton, GRC. 52 Munro 1980, 311. 53 Langley 2002, xvi; Tuchman 1958. 54 Rosenberg 1987, 7 – 10, 118. 55 Schoultz 1998, 248. 56 Ibid., 251. 57 Machado, Jr and Judge 1970; Trow 1971; Langley 2003, 107; Rosenberg 1987, 116– 17. 58 Schoultz 1998, 253. 59 Manela 2007. 60 Cook 1940. 61 ‘La Re´publique de Haı¨ti demande a` eˆtre libe´re´e des troupes ame´ricaines’, Le Nouvelliste, 24 July 1924. 62 French Charge´ d’Affaires Barre´-Ponsignon Perroud letter to S. Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Santo Domingo, 2 March 1919, dossier 2, Re´publique Dominicaine, Ame´rique 1918– 1940, Correspondance Politique et Commerciale 1914– 40, MAE. 63 British Vice-Consul in Santo Domingo Godfrey A. Fisher, memo to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Arthur Balfour, 9 April 1919, file 69933, reference 3803, Foreign Office 371, PRO. 64 ‘La Soberanı´a Dominicana’, Diario de Cuba (Santiago, Cuba), 18 February 1919, enclosed with American Vice Consul in Cuba letter to Secretary of State, Antilla, Cuba, 24 June 1919, 839.00/2140, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of the Dominican Republic, 1910– 29, RG 59, NARA II. 65 Calder 1984, 185– 6. 66 Francisco Henrı´quez y Carvajal letter to Max Henrı´quez Uren˜a, Paris, 8 April 1919, in Uren˜a 1994, 650– 2; J.C. Grew, Secretary General of American Commission to Negotiate Peace, letter to Frank Polk, Acting Secretary of State, 25 April 1919, 839.00/2134, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of the Dominican Republic, 1910– 29, RG 59, NARA II; Henrı´quez y Carvajal, ‘Al pueblo dominicano’, Santiago de Cuba, 20 November 1919, in Incha´ustegui and Malago´n 1997, 584– 6. 67 Streeter 2010, 102, 104. 68 Delpar 1992, 30. 69 For example, Johnson 1920. 70 Balch 1972; Rosenberg 2003, 129, 130. 71 Rep. William E. Mason letter to Tulio Cestero, Washington, 27 April 1920, legajo Papeles 1919– 20, Tomo 1, Archivo de Tulio Cestero, Fondo Antiguo,

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80 81 82

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Universidad Auto´noma de Santo Domingo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (hereafter UASD). Moorfield Storey letter to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, 7 July 1922, folder Corres. Haiti-Santo Domingo May– Sept. 1922, 1922 – undated – Dec. 30, 1927, box 4, Subject File, Papers of Moorfield Storey, MD-LOC. Fiallo 1940, 19. Mejı´a 1920, 5 – 6. Leuchsenring 1919, 7, 8, 58. Henrı´quez y Carvajal to Henrı´quez Uren˜a, Paris, 1 June 1919, in Uren˜a 1994, 656. Idem 1977, 247. Kernisan [1919]; Asociacio´n de Jo´venes Dominicanos 1921. Tulio Cestero letter to Henrı´quez y Carvajal, Washington, 8 April 1920, in Tulio Cestero handwritten notes of meeting with Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Washington, 8 April 1920, legajo Papeles 1919– 1920, Tomo 1, Archivo de Tulio Cestero, UASD. American Mission in Paris, memo to Secretary of State, 14 March 1919, 838.00/1563, Central Decimal Files Relating to Internal Affairs of Haiti, 1910– 1929, RG 59, NARA II. Smith 1963, 59. Langley 2003, 108.

References Adler, Selig, ‘Bryan and Wilsonian Caribbean penetration’, Hispanic American Historical Review xx/2 (1940), pp. 198– 226. Albert, Bill, South America and the First World War (Cambridge, 1988). Asociacio´n de Jo´venes Dominicanos, A la juventud del paı´s (Santiago, 6 December 1921). Bailey, Thomas, The Policy of the United States toward the Neutrals, 1917– 1918 (Baltimore MD, 1942). Balch, Emily Greene (ed.), Occupied Haiti (New York, 1972, first publ. 1927). Barrett, John, Latin America and the War (Washington DC, 1919). Beaulac, Willard L., Career Ambassador (New York, 1951). Black, George, The Good Neighbor: How the United States Wrote the History of Central America and the Caribbean (New York, 1988). Cabranes, Jose´ A., ‘Citizenship and the American empire: notes on the legislative history of the United States citizenship of Puerto Ricans’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review cxxvii/2 (1979), pp. 391– 492. Calder, Bruce, The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the US Occupation of 1916– 1924 (Austin TX, 1984). Callcott, Wilfrid Hardy, The Caribbean Policy of the United States, 1890– 1920 (Baltimore MD, 1942). Coleman, George Cline, The Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt with Special Reference to Three Inter-American Conferences, 1933– 1938, Unpublished PhD dissertation, State University of Iowa (1951).

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Contreras, Francisco, Les e´crivains hispano-ame´ricains et la guerre europe´enne (Paris, 1917). Cook, Mercer, ‘Dante`s Bellegarde’, Phylon i/2 (1940), pp. 127– 31. Corvington, Georges, Port-au-Prince au cours des ans. Vol. 5, La capitale d’Haı¨ti sous l’occupation, 1915 –1922 (Port-au-Prince, 1984). Couyoumdjian, Juan Ricardo, Chile y Gran Bretan˜a: durante la primera guerra mundial y la postguerra, 1914– 1921 (Santiago, 1986). Cuenca, A´lvaro, La colonia brita´nica de Montevideo y la gran guerra (Montevideo, 2006). Delpar, Helen, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920 –1935 (Tuscaloosa AL, 1992). Douglas, Paul H., ‘The American occupation of Haiti’, I. Political Science Quarterly xlii/2 (June 1927), pp. 228– 58. Dura´n, Esperanza, Guerra y revolucio´n: las grandes potencias y Me´xico, 1914– 1918 (Mexico City, 1985). Edelstein, David, Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation (Ithaca NY, 2008). Farwell, Byron, Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917– 1918 (New York, 1999). Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (New York, 2004). Fiallo, Fabio, The Crime of Wilson in Santo Domingo (Havana, 1940). Fuller, Captain Stephen M. and Cosmas, Graham A., Marines in the Dominican Republic 1916– 1924 (Washington DC, 1974). Gaillard, Gaston, Ame´rique Latine et Europe Occidentale: L’Ame´rique Latine et la guerre (Paris, 1918). Gobat, Michel, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under US Imperial Rule (Durham NC, 2005). Grandin, Greg, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York, 2006). Groupement des Universite´s et Grandes E´coles de France pour les Relations avec l’Ame´rique Latine, L’Ame´rique Latine et la guerre europe´enne (Paris, 1916). Ham, Clifford D., ‘Americanizing Nicaragua: how Yankee Marines, financial oversight, and baseball are stabilizing Central America’, Review of Reviews liii/2 (1916), pp. 185– 91. Heinl, Jr., Robert Debs and Heinl, Nancy Gordon, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People 1492 –1971 (Boston MA, 1978). Incha´ustegui, Arı´stides and Malago´n, Blanca Delgado (eds), Vetilio Alfau Dura´n en Anales: escritos y documentos (Santo Domingo, 1997). Johnson, James Weldon, ‘Self-determining Haiti, II. What the United States has accomplished’, The Nation cxi/2879 (4 September 1920), pp. 265– 7. Jore, Jeff, ‘Pershing’s mission in Mexico: logistics and preparation for the war in Europe’, Military Affairs lii/3 (1988), pp. 117– 21. Kaufman, Burton I., ‘United States trade and Latin America: the Wilson years’, Journal of American History lviii/2 (1971), pp. 342– 63. Kernisan, Charles-Emmanuel, La re´publique d’Haı¨ti et le gouvernment de´mocrate de M. Woodrow Wilson (1919, n. publ.). Kirkpatrick, F.A., South America and the War (Cambridge, 1918). Langley, Lester D., The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century (Athens GA, 1985).

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——— The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898– 1934 (Wilmington DE, 2002). ——— The Americas in the Modern Age (New Haven CT, 2003). Leuchsenring, Emilio Roig de, La ocupacio´n de la Repu´blica Dominicana por los Estados Unidos y el derecho de las pequen˜as nacionalidades de Ame´rica (Havana, 1919). Machado, Jr, Manual A. and Judge, James T., ‘Tempest in a teapot? The MexicanUnited States intervention crisis of 1919’, Southwestern Historical Quarterly lxxi/1 (1970), pp. 1 – 23. Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Revolutionary Nationalism (New York, 2007). Martin, Percy Alvin, Latin America and the War, Vol. I (Baltimore MD, 1942). McCrocklin, James H., Garde d’Haı¨ti: Twenty Years of Organization and Training by the United States Marine Corps (Annapolis MD, 1956). Meacham, J. Lloyd, The United States and Inter-American Security, 1889– 1960 (Austin TX, 1961). Mejı´a, Gustavo Adolfo, Acuso a Roma: ‘Yo contra el invasor’ (Havana, 1920). Munro, Dana G., Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean 1900– 1921 (Princeton NJ, 1964). Nalty, Bernard C., The United States Marines in Nicaragua (Washington DC, rev. edn 1968, first publ. 1958). Pierce, Lt. Col. Philip N. and Lt. Col. Frank O. Hough, The Compact History of the United States Marine Corps (New York, 1964). Plummer, Brenda Gayle, Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment (Athens GA, 1992). Rolland, Denis, ‘Les perceptions de la France en Ame´rique Latine: structures et e´volution, 1918– 1945’, Me´langes de la Casa de Vela´zquez xxviii/3 (1992), pp. 161– 89. Rosenberg, Emily S., World War I and the Growth of United States Prominence in Latin America (New York, 1987). ——— Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy 1900– 1950 (Durham NC, 2003). Schmidt, Hans, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915 –1934 (1971, rpt. New Brunswick NJ, 1995). Schoultz, Lars, Beneath the United States: A History of US Policy toward Latin America (Cambridge MA, 1998). Schuler, Friedrich E., Secret Wars and Secret Policies in the Americas, 1842– 1929 (Albuquerque NM, 2010). Siepe, Raimundo, Yrigoyen, la primera guerra mundial y las relaciones econo´micas (Buenos Aires, 1992). Smith, Daniel, ‘Bainbridge Colby and the Good Neighbor Policy, 1920– 1921’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review l/1 (1963), pp. 56 – 78. Streeter, Michael, Central America and the Treaty of Versailles (London, 2010). Sua´rez, Vicente Pardo, Ladrones de tierras (Havana, 1918). Trow, Clifford W., ‘Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican interventionist movement of 1919’, Journal of American History lviii/1 (1971), pp. 46 –72. Tuchman, Barbara W., The Zimmermann Telegram (New York, 1958). Tulchin, Joseph S., The Aftermath of War: World War I and US Policy toward Latin America (New York, 1971).

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Uren˜a, Familia Henrı´quez, Epistolario (Santo Domingo, 1994). Uren˜a, Max Henrı´quez, Los yanquis en Santo Domingo: la verdad de los hechos comprobada por datos y documentos oficiales (Santo Domingo, 1977, first publ. 1929). Weinmann, Ricardo, Argentina en la primera guerra mundial: neutralidad, transicio´n polı´tica y continuismo econo´mico (Buenos Aires, 1994). Whitaker, Arthur P., The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline (Ithaca NY, 1954). Yerxa, Donald, ‘The United States Navy in Caribbean waters during World War I’, Military Affairs li/4 (1987), pp. 18 – 27.

CHAPTER 13 REQUIEM FOR EMPIRE: FABIAN WARE & THE IMPERIAL WAR GRAVES COMMISSION John Lack and Bart Ziino

In 1937 Major-General Sir Fabian Ware, Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission, surveyed the achievements of that organisation during its first 20 years. More than one million soldiers of the British Empire had died in World War I. The Commission had erected 678,000 headstones over their graves, in 1,850 cemeteries in more than 100 countries around the globe. Further, it had inscribed the names of 417,000 men on memorials to the ‘missing’.1 This was its material achievement. Yet Ware hoped and expected this Commission, as the institution responsible for marking the graves of the Empire’s dead, to have even more enduring effects. Those hopes, the men who held them, and the institution they created have received surprisingly little in-depth attention. What historians have studied, in considerable detail, are the cemeteries and structures erected by the Commission on the former battlefields. Scholars have interpreted these memorials largely as symbols of a new, modern age in commemoration, in which acknowledgement of individual identities was central to marking the sacrifice of citizen soldiers. The political origins of the Commission, however, are little

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understood. This is perhaps because its founders were concerned less with representing a new age of modern consciousness than with representing a British Empire made whole by the experience of war and the sacrifice of its armies, drawn as they were from across its colonies and Dominions. This chapter looks beyond the monuments erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission to the ideals and intent of its creators. It argues that the driving force behind this major commemorative work was not a desire to represent any fundamental break with the past, but an attempt to produce an institution that symbolised imperial cooperation and memorialised the war and its dead in a way that would continue to place the British Empire at the centre of world affairs. We know a great deal about the kinds of cemeteries and memorials created by the Imperial War Graves Commission, through the work of a series of historians determined to read their symbolism in the context of the emergence of the modern world. Fuelled by the war’s extraordinary scale of death and bereavement, new languages of remembrance emerged, with their own politics, to make the sacrifice meaningful. The dead, and practices of remembrance, were being nationalised and democratised.2 Following Paul Fussell, these scholars have argued that traditional memorials could not provide consistency with the past.3 According to Thomas W. Laqueur, mass death precipitated the introduction in January 1915 of a new military policy that insisted on identifying and burying the dead individually. Such practices mark the point at which ‘a new [modern] era of remembrance began’.4 New kinds of memorials, shorn of ornament, testified to an incapacity to find a generally accepted meaning in the war and architects such as Edwin Lutyens, Herbert Baker and Reginald Blomfield appear, exclusively, as the agents of those memorials. Yet the final forms of the war cemeteries have tended to conceal the imperial core of this major commemorative project. We have taken for granted the forms bequeathed to us by the Imperial War Graves Commission to represent death in that war, rather than examining their production more closely and in their own historical specificity. Jay Winter’s ground-breaking scholarship has encouraged some work along these lines.5 Some, like Michael Heffernan, have

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attempted to understand the organisation and its founders as more than the patrons of an extraordinary number of architectural commissions.6 Others have expressed sympathy for mourners in the Commission’s arrogation of the dead and their commemoration to themselves.7 Yet these explanations of the Commission’s motives remain indistinct and incomplete. To understand the Imperial War Graves Commission and its attempts to foster a particular memory of the war and the Empire, we must understand the motives of its founders, in particular its inspiration and permanent Vice-Chairman, Major-General Sir Fabian Ware. The literature on the Commission itself rightly accords Ware a central, even pivotal, role, yet presents him as a disinterested and apolitical individual who stumbled quite unprepared into the business of commemorating the Empire’s war dead. This is certainly inadequate. The Dictionary of National Biography echoes Longworth’s commissioned history in seeing Ware as a brilliant, energetic man, who had ‘already achieved distinction in several careers’ before turning his attention to commemorating the dead.8 Ware himself was entirely self-effacing in his The Immortal Heritage, though Edmund Blunden lauded him in its introduction and in his preface to Longworth’s work 30 years later, as ‘the hero of these chronicles’. By 1989, Ware had become the ‘remarkable Englishman’ who had created the most ‘profound and lasting memorial to mankind’s sacrifice on behalf of democracy’, and in 2007 the Commission’s 90th-anniversary history marvelled that ‘it was left to this one man to contrive the machinery that would make a reality of a completely new concept’.9 This rendering fundamentally ignores the intensity of Ware’s imperial politics, and obscures the origins and work of an organisation emerging out of a much longer debate over imperial relations and the nature and place of the British Empire in the twentieth century. An understanding of the Commission’s origins, and of its founders’ determination that it should play an exemplary if not direct role in world affairs, is fundamental to appreciating the kind of memory work it set out to conduct. The work of the Commission was no simple harking-back: to its founders the war had precipitated a fundamentally new phase of Empire, not its

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destruction or repudiation. The Imperial War Graves Commission sought, then, to express in one institution the urge to free cooperation among the British peoples of the world and its realisation in the sacrifice of a million men.

Fabian Ware: conservative and imperialist In 1924 Fabian Ware agreed to an interview for the prestigious weekly The Queen: The Lady’s Newspaper and Court Chronicle. His interrogator, Violet Markham, was alert to the sensitivities of so many of her readers for whom the treatment of the dead was a matter of deep and personal interest. Sir Fabian’s task, she observed, calls for more than administrative efficiency. It demands large powers of sympathy and imagination. For the work concerns the living no less than the dead . . . The graves . . . hold more than the sacred dust of those who died for England. The heart of a living woman is buried in most of them . . . [and] there are many [mothers, wives and lovers] who have found strength to bear and endure, because Fabian Ware has made them feel the cup of sorrow holds a noble drink.10 This last point hinted at the Commission’s role in shaping the meaning of death in the war. In her turn, though, Markham saw that Ware was motivated by more than solicitude for the dead and their descendants: ‘His mind is at work on a New Model.’ As Ware explained, the cemeteries were not intended to mark the last great effort of the Empire, but to breathe life into an ideal, a ‘model of what Imperial co-operation might be’. Ware imagined a permanent secretariat for the Imperial Conference, by which those meetings would become ‘more real and effective’.11 Though Markham had her doubts, she knew very well what Ware had in mind. Although chiefly remembered for her pioneering social work, Markham was an imperialist before she became a social reformer.12 Before the war both she and Ware had been enthusiastic Empire patriots and fervent admirers of Alfred Lord Milner’s ‘constructive imperialism’, designed

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to strengthen and consolidate the Empire in the face of the rising industrial and military power of Germany and the United States.13 ‘The modern ideal of Empire’ that she extolled was inspired by Milner, and underpinned by a strong British race-patriotism: ‘a free confederation of sister states, each independently developing the maximum of nationality, but united one to another and to the Mother Country by the link of a larger organic unity’.14 The political heritage of the Imperial War Graves Commission was long, and deeply embedded in the imperial politics in which Ware was already engaged at the turn of the century. Both Markham and Ware had found expression for their imperial activism in South Africa, around the time of the Anglo-Boer War (1899– 1902).15 While Markham was a staunch supporter of Milner’s policy of ‘anglicisation’ of the Boer republics during the period of reconstruction, Fabian Ware became one of its very agents, as one of Milner’s ‘kindergarten’: the youngish men drawn to South Africa during the war when Milner was administrator of the Orange River and Transvaal colonies.16 Milner saw a revived education system, with instruction in English, as a powerful agent for pacification and for incorporating the former republics into the Empire. Ware, a former schoolmaster and inspector, had something of a reputation as an educationalist who, acknowledging the superiority of aspects of French, German and American secondary and technical education systems, had proselytised for urgent reform at home if Britain and her Empire were to respond to the challenge being mounted by these rising powers.17 In June 1901 Ware was appointed to the Transvaal as assistant director of a highly centralised education department, charged with inculcating English language and British ideals into the progeny of the defeated Boers.18 Yet Milner returned home in 1905, his programme of ‘anglicisation’ by British farmer migration a failure and his policy of solving the labour shortage by admitting Chinese workers discredited. Ware, who had also returned, had taken up the editorship of London’s Morning Post, which became not only a defender of Milner’s record but a mouthpiece for Milnerite imperialism, urging tariff reform to strengthen economic bonds between Britain and her colonies.19 Ware’s violent intransigence on

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tariff reform, even after its spectacular failure at the polls in 1906, as well as his attempt to bend his leader writer to push Conservative Party policies, eventually led to his dismissal as editor in 1911.20 Ware’s links to Milner, however, remained strong and shortly after the latter became chairman of the Rio Tinto Company, Ware was appointed as a special commissioner to negotiate the firm’s terms with the French government. He also found time to write a book that revealed his unwavering Conservatism and deepening pessimism. The Worker and His Country (1912) was an alarmist diagnosis of social unrest in France and Britain, deploring the surge in industrial disputes, behind which Ware saw the malignant influence of syndicalism. He urged England’s landed aristocracy to adopt a policy of land redistribution as a means of ameliorating class tension, of encouraging workers’ identity with nation over class and of cementing support for ‘Tory democracy’. The state intervention that Ware espoused was founded on a Tory paternalism designed to deepen Conservative appeal to the working classes and to secure the organic state and a united Empire comprising Britain and the white Dominions, a state Ware was already calling ‘the highest form of human association’.21 Here we begin to see more clearly again the conservative politics that informed the character of the Imperial War Graves Commission. Ware derived his socio-political philosophy from Milner’s ‘social imperialism’, which ‘recast [citizens] in a populist and activist idiom . . . [as] a participant, absorbed into the larger organic unities of race, empire and nation’. There were hints here, then, of what Hall and Schwartz have identified as the ‘deeply authoritarian’ character of Conservative collectivism and social imperialism: the belief that, in a crisis, solutions might have to be imposed from above.22 In 1905, despairing of party politics, Ware had privately welcomed Milner’s return to England as the opportunity for a ‘great man’ to rescue Britain from national disarray. In The Worker and His Country, lamenting the failure of the cross-party attempt to forge a coalition under Lloyd George in 1910, he returned to this hope for a ‘great man’ to set things right. Although Ware suppressed Milner’s name from the dedicatory preface, there was little doubt where his hopes resided. Milner continued to play his part, declaring in 1913 that a

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British Empire organically united with the aim of ‘preserving the unity of a great race’ would be able to ‘fulfil its distinctive mission in the world’, namely ‘the maintenance of civilised conditions of existence among one-fifth of the human race’.23

Creating the Imperial War Graves Commission Fabian Ware’s political consciousness – especially his association with Milner’s ‘constructive Imperialism’ and his British race patriotism – are critical to understanding the way in which he responded to the war. The war was an opportunity for, rather than a disruption of, Ware’s political activities and while we should not doubt his response, it certainly requires more explanation than his simply being ‘too old to fight and yet too restless to pursue his peacetime career’.24 Intensely patriotic, and a Francophile, Ware it seems had responded to a War Office appeal for civilians, with their own cars, to help bring in stragglers and the wounded from the retreat from Mons in September 1914. Failing to find any wounded here, Ware nevertheless managed – with Milner’s help – to have this assortment of men and vehicles reconstituted as a Red Cross Mobile Unit, which soon expanded its duties to include registration of the now massive number of graves across the battlefield.25 Ware’s courage and dedication, often under fire, excited much admiration.26 The increasing scale of the problem demanded this kind of attention, yet Ware was also sensitive to the potential political value that would attach to the appropriate treatment of the dead. The war seemed to confirm his beliefs about the development of the British Empire as an association of peoples across the globe. In the British and Dominion armies at the front, Ware saw the unity between men of different classes and branches of ‘the British race’ that he had advocated before the war, and in their dead its most powerful expression. ‘Since the first Battle of Ypres’, he would later write, ‘the Empire had found its manhood on the world’s battlefields: the voluntary co-operation of the younger nations with the Mother Country had been sealed with blood from St Julien to Cape Helles, from the Indian Ocean to the shores of the South Atlantic.’27

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The will – as opposed to the urge – to mark the dead, then, owed as much to Ware’s own particular motives and political sensibility as to any more abstract sense that a new age of commemoration was dawning. As the war continued and intensified, Ware consolidated responsibility for the graves under himself, not just as a practical concern, but with an eye to the ultimate treatment of the dead. In March 1915, as the number of the dead continued to escalate, the Red Cross unit was reformulated as the Graves Registration Commission, with Ware at its head. To assert the authority of this organisation, the Army banned exhumations of any sort late in April 1915. This prohibition, the Adjutant-General insisted, would provide equality between those who could and could not afford to have the bodies returned home.28 The move anticipated the extraordinary increase in public interest in the treatment of the dead, though the Army only recognised the point fully in March 1916, when it incorporated the organisation entirely into its structures, as the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries. Still, Ware understood that the military ultimately would not be responsible for those graves and he moved again to ensure that the treatment of the dead remained an official rather than private prerogative. He asserted control through the Prince of Wales’ National Committee for the Care of Soldiers’ Graves, a civilian committee constituted in September 1915 so as to circumscribe other efforts to deal with war graves, either individually or as a whole. Dormant until mid-1916, Ware now sought to expand the committee’s scope to include representatives of the Dominions, which might otherwise insist on treating the graves of their dead separately. With his thoughts squarely on bringing the dead to represent the Empire’s unity, Ware was ‘anxious to see whether we could not come to a modus operandi by which the wishes of the Dominions and Colonies would all come up for discussion in the Central Committee, which would then speak with the voice of Empire’.29 The Prince himself urged: ‘As the Army in the field is now an Imperial army, so this Committee should be an Imperial Committee, entrusted by the Empire with the task of fittingly and enduringly commemorating the common sacrifice’.30 The accession of the Dominion High Commissioners to the committee was a small step. What was required was an organisation

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empowered to act, and Ware saw in the 1917 Imperial Conference an opportunity to consolidate a mandate over the graves of the dead. He drafted a memorandum for the Prince of Wales urging the establishment of an imperial organisation, independent of the United Kingdom government, which would include representatives from all member states of the Empire. There were practical arguments to be made, in terms of the scale of the undertaking and the need to attend to the desires of the various stakeholders. But in making his claims, Ware also warned representatives at the conference of the ‘moral contingencies’ – the danger of a powerful emotional public backlash – that threatened if the task was not set on the right footing.31 There were also other sentimental forces at work at this conference that, apart from contemplating the graves of the dead, was concerned with the very shape of imperial relations. Milner hoped for an imperial constitution, yet the climax of the conference was a resolution insisting that the self-governing Dominions were ‘autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth’, so ending the dream of imperial federation, but nevertheless allowing Ware to insist that the Empire was now achieving its highest form as a voluntary association expressing a common heritage. Though this was not exactly the mood of the conference, it still saw fit to create, to Ware’s deep relief, an Imperial War Graves Commission. Ware would be its permanent Vice-Chairman and, in an acknowledgement of its political heritage, Milner its second Chairman. The Imperial War Graves Commission received its Royal Charter on 21 May 1917. That document made clear the duality at the core of the organisation. Not only would the Commission preserve the graves of the dead for bereaved friends and relatives, but it would tend to keep alive the ideals for . . . which they have laid down their lives . . . and to promote a feeling of common citizenship and of loyalty and devotion to Us [the monarch] and to the Empire of which they are subjects.32 For its part, the Imperial War Graves Commission never really sought to meet the particular demands of the bereaved, so much as to

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speak for them on its own terms. In July 1917 Ware met with the Director of the National Gallery of British Art, Charles Aitken, and architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker to discuss the permanent treatment of cemeteries. They agreed that each individual grave should be marked. Lutyens had visions of a great stone in each cemetery, which would ‘stand, though in three Continents, as equal monuments of devotion, suggesting the thought of memorial Chapels in one vast cathedral whose vault is the sky’.33 Baker preferred the more familiar symbolism of the cross. The Commission adopted both and the stone would bear the text later selected by Rudyard Kipling from Ecclesiasticus: ‘THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE’. In terms of individual graves, Sir Frederic Kenyon, Director of the British Museum, whom the Commission now appointed to advise on the layout of cemeteries, claimed to have consulted widely among Army representatives, the bereaved, religious leaders and artists. He tended less to consult, however, than infer the temper of the bereaved as he considered how artistic ideas would be received by ‘the mass of average opinion, for whom the artists, in their higher language, speak’.34 Attending to private grief, in fact, was not high among Kenyon’s priorities. He hoped, indeed, that relatives would realise that ‘The sacrifice of the individual is a great idea and worthy of commemoration; but the community of sacrifice, the service of a common cause, the comradeship of arms which has brought together men of all ranks and grades – these are greater ideas.’35 No private memorials would be allowed, on the principle that this would introduce divisions between rich and poor where sacrifice had been equal. The Commission had fostered a divide between personal and imperial sensibilities that was not just the cruel burden of officiousness and economy, but a determined expression of imperial sentiment and meaning, to which the bereaved would have to reconcile themselves. The essential condition of this policy was that bodies would remain in battlefield cemeteries after the war, though this remained unstated until a decision was forced by weight of enquiries from the public late in 1918. In stating its opposition to repatriation openly,

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the Commission laid bare the practical essence of its proposals as they affected the bereaved. In response, dissent from these principles gathered momentum, questioning the Commission’s right to usurp the bereaved in the treatment of the dead. In July 1919 Lady Florence Cecil presented a petition with more than 6,000 signatures to the Secretary of State for War, asking that the form of headstone be at the discretion of relatives. Sara A. Smith, who had founded an organisation in Leeds to demand the return of the dead, drew on a powerful emotional current as she produced another petition, containing more than 2,000 signatures. The feeling, Smith wrote, ‘is very strong against this attitude of the Government who claimed our lads whilst living but belong to us alone’.36 In the face of such protest, the Commission firmly held the line, denying that dissent was widespread. The depth of the Commission’s determination to resist would only become clear a decade later. In a candid account published early in 1929, Ware admitted the Commission’s concern to channel private grief into its particular commemorative expressions, rather than to allow mourners personal discretion: We realised during the war that only some form of benevolent autocracy could control the situation which would arise when the War was over. We knew that then we would be dealing with hundreds of thousands of separate claims for individualistic treatment of the graves, claims based on such a depth of sentiment that their appeal would be irresistible if pressed, unsatisfied, before a public in which British hearts would dominate British brains. We realised fully that chaos must result unless we could lead all these stricken men and women – whose courage was unbroken, but the very mainspring of whose lives was the sacrifice which their dead had made – to some common form of the expression which monuments and their architects could give to their pride and their grief.37 Here Ware was laying bare the Commission’s determination to overrule the claims of the bereaved in the name of its own

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conception – with all its imperial connotations – of how the dead ought to be commemorated. Understandably, perhaps, dissent was muted in the more distant Dominions, though there were some few insistent individuals.38 In Canada, however, the example of the United States, which by early 1920 had affirmed its policy of returning its dead on request, prompted some significant questioning of non-repatriation. Despite questions in Parliament, however, the intervention of Sir George Perley, the Canadian High Commissioner in London, quickly reasserted the authority of the Commission and its decision.39 In Britain, however, relatives’ challenges to the Commission’s mandate escalated through the press and culminated in Parliament where, on 4 May 1920, the major protagonists traded arguments over the right of the Commission to prescribe the treatment of the graves of the dead. The debate divided on the Commission’s own dual aims. Viscount Wolmer made the severe accusation that the Commission had ‘no right to employ, in making those [imperial] memorials, the bodies of other people’s relatives. It is not decent, it is not reasonable, it is not right’.40 The Commission’s supporters could not dispute that this was what it intended to do. Instead, William Burdett-Coutts insisted again on the equality of sacrifice that the Commission’s plans represented, finding it ‘absolutely hateful to think of introducing these differences of means and opportunity into the atmosphere of this great National Memorial’.41 It was Churchill who settled the debate. Speaking in terms of the Commission’s great task and its practicalities, he asked dissenters to make just one more sacrifice by withdrawing their objections. Sir James Remnant did so. Lord Cecil, however, insisted that the matter was not settled; others would ‘go on fighting for this cause’. The Commission had, however, confirmed its mandate. In the face of further requests for repatriation, a more confident Ware advised commissioners ‘not to give way at all unless they were prepared to give way all along the line’.42 The Commission was not prepared to give way. It was also less inclined to make public pronouncements surrounding its work, preferring instead to work towards a time when it could present the completed cemeteries as the realisation of its ideals. The opportunity came in 1922, when the Commission

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finally assumed complete control of the cemeteries from the military. In May that year, it arranged King George V’s pilgrimage to the cemeteries in France and Belgium, carefully managed in order to affirm both the good work of the Commission and the imperial fraternity that the graves represented. At the completed cemetery at Terlincthun the King delivered a speech to which Ware would return continually over the following two decades. Standing before the Stone of Remembrance and Cross of Sacrifice, and a host of uniform headstones, the King now contemplated their meaning: Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and maintained individual memorials to their fallen, and, in the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon the earth through the years to come, than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war. And I feel that, so long as we have faith in God’s purposes, we cannot but believe that the existence of these visible memorials will, eventually, serve to draw all peoples together in sanity and self-control, even as it has already set the relations between our Empire and our allies on the deep-rooted bases of a common heroism and a common agony.43 These were more than the graves of the dead. From soldiers’ bodies the Commission had produced ‘potent advocates’ whose sepulchre spoke to the politics of the post-war world and affirmed Britain’s moral right to the leadership of that world.

The ‘first truly Imperial organisation’ Ware still remained reluctant to speak publicly about the Commission’s work before great sections of it were complete. After 1924, however, he began to speak increasingly freely of the Commission’s broader political aims. From its origins, an organisation intended to mark the million dead of the British Empire was also intended to be a working model of formal co-operation between the constituent peoples of that empire. In this

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sense, the Imperial War Graves Commission constituted the very machinery (a ‘beastly’ but necessary word, Ware said, reminiscent as it was of labour politics), by which closer imperial ties might be managed into the future. This was no imperial federation, but an organisation freed from the control of any one of its contributing governments, the example of which, Ware anticipated, would prompt people to ask ‘whether this system is applicable to other common work that could be carried on between the States of the Empire’.44 Such hopes for the practical application of the Commission’s model were surely already forlorn. The war had broken the Victorian-Edwardian conception of Empire; the selfgoverning Dominions, seeking greater autonomy, were very unlikely to concede real power to imperial bodies, whatever their model. 45 There was, however, more subtlety to the Commission’s political ideals than this. Ware was proud of his being responsible to all the governments of the Empire in this ‘first truly Imperial organisation’, and he invoked the spirit of the dead as the guiding force for the kind of voluntary association of British peoples that the war had so cemented. It was this ‘spirit of Empire’, he proclaimed in a 1929 radio address, ‘which our commission has been formed to perpetuate, and . . . the freedom and equality on which it is founded are real and no passing ideals.’46 Through these ideals, the British Empire as it was imagined by the Imperial War Graves Commission had a mission in the post-war world in which it was to serve as a platform for internationalism, for global stability and peace. Though others, even among the new internationalists, saw the Empire as an important transnational body, Ware’s view was more extreme.47 Thus he proclaimed in 1925 that the British Empire had to bear the burdens of a ‘stricken world’ almost alone. He was referring specifically to the threat posed by the emergent Soviet Union, the ideals of which were ‘destructive of all in our civilization of which . . . God looking down on the works of man can see . . . is good’. Britain had been called upon once before – after 1789 in France – to contain the radical principles emanating from revolution, and it was now called upon to do so again.48 The place of the Imperial War Graves Commission in this constellation of beliefs was simple. It existed to provide and maintain

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the material structures through which the dead, having sacrificed themselves, would act as witnesses to those principles. For people like Fabian Ware the Empire, and the Commission in particular, was an exemplar of what the League of Nations aspired to be. Hence Ware saw not the decline, but the apotheosis of empire in the post-war world. In 1937 he explained: The task of the Commission has not been to bury a phase of Empire, it has been to give perpetual commemoration to ideals of individual freedom woven by the struggles of centuries in to the fibre of the races who have together built up the British Commonwealth of Nations, ideals which are shared by them in common, and in defence of which a million men laid down their lives.49 As he had argued before the war, Britain, in its widest sense, had a mission to set the tenor of civilised social and political relations for the world. The million dead were the concrete manifestation of that mission and of the Empire’s right to assume it. By 1932, with the completion of the memorial to the missing at Thiepval, the work was practically complete: the million dead had all been named, either on individual graves or on those memorials to the missing. To insist on the political significance of that work, Ware declared that we regard these graves as everlasting monuments to our traditions, to all that we held – and that many of us still think – was the highest conception of freedom which the world had seen, and which gave the British as long as they were true to it, a right to their far-flung inheritance. 50

The War Graves Commission and British race patriotism In their material achievement, then, Ware and his fellow commissioners saw not only due honour to individual sacrifice, but genuine symbols of the greatness of the British Empire, among all the empires of history. The Commission’s monuments were not only tributes to the dead, but ‘at the same time monuments unique in

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history to the achievements of the British race and the British Commonwealth of Nations’.51 Certainly the Commission’s work was a global enterprise, conducted in some cases in the very sites of ancient empire. Assuring Violet Markham in 1924 that the cost of the war to the Empire would be remembered forever, Ware said: The cemeteries all over the world will tell the tale should every book and record be blotted out. Who knows? Perhaps in Mesopotamia 2,000 years hence men will find a stone or an inscription and say to each other, ‘The British were here all those centuries ago.’52 The memorial at Cape Helles, Ware reminded his audiences more than once, was the same size as the Colossus of Rhodes. Rudyard Kipling was only a little less hubristic in his observation that the Commission had undertaken ‘the biggest single bit of work since any of the Pharaohs – and they only worked in their own country’.53 The Empire’s Christian principles were barely below the surface, though concessions to cemetery design had been made in Turkey, where they were ‘surrounded by an easily excited anti-Christian population’.54 Here the Cross of Sacrifice was absent, replaced by a crucifix recessed into the great monuments and not visible outside the cemeteries themselves. Yet elsewhere the cross stood and Ware was nowhere more explicit about its religious symbolism than in his references to the cemetery and Cross of Sacrifice erected on the Mount of Olives in Palestine, a ‘very noble monument which we have endeavoured, for reasons which you will all appreciate, to make the most beautiful’.55 Those monuments themselves had a political mission: in the Empire’s new mandates and adjacent territories, Ware wondered whether ‘the strength and grandeur of the British Commonwealth [could] be displayed to these people of the East in any way more in harmony with the spirit of our heroic dead’.56 Even when there were no British hands left to tend the graves, their ruins would surely testify to the Empire’s glory. Ware was thinking ‘thousands of years hence when all the other memorials have fallen down’. The Commission’s headstones, he told Sir Philip Chetwode, ‘will be picked up all over the world to remind people of the British Empire’.57

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But the Commission’s cemeteries and memorials did not everywhere do justice to the truly global imperial effort of 1914 – 18. Many of those who died defending the Empire were honoured by neither grave nor inscription and received only the most general of acknowledgements. In a study of the treatment of the Indian and African dead of the Empire, Miche`le Barrett has observed that the Commission’s principles of naming and privileging individual identities did not seem to apply to non-white soldiers, at least outside Europe. Despite similar losses to Australia and Canada, for instance, less than 10 per cent of the Indian dead have identified burial places.58 Certainly the Hindu religion demanded cremation and the bodies of Muslim Indians were not supposed to be disturbed after first burial. Nevertheless, the abandoning of the graves of thousands of the Empire’s African soldiers to anonymity suggested that, if the Commission was not an agent of colonial power, then the non-white dead did not fit the model of empire upon which the Commission was founded. The bestowing of a headstone had a political significance beyond recognising individual sacrifice, intended as it was to represent the closer association of the white Empire. These were the true inheritors of Britain’s ‘immortal heritage’ of values, which Ware described as ‘that inexhaustible capacity for sacrificing themselves for others, based on a religious example and ideal which had woven itself into the British character’.59 We might not be surprised, then, that in another context Ware should pay Australia and New Zealand the particular compliment of having achieved ‘the best selected populations the world has yet known’ through their strict application of immigration policies designed to restrict non-white immigrants.60 Such a conception of Empire could not readily include those not yet self-governing, and of course not white, who otherwise could hardly inherit the character of empire that had found its expression on the battlefield.

Ware, the Commission and world peace In 1924 Violet Markham had doubted whether the spirit of the Commission, appealing to the noble and heroic, could be applied to

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Imperial Conferences, with their commercial and practical politics. Indeed, her doubts went deeper and she challenged Ware’s conception of the Commission’s political mission. While she could still regard ‘the fellowship of the British people at home and overseas, each free, but all standing for a common ideal of justice, liberty, rectitude [as] the most important thing in the world’, she yet declared herself, with some passion, ‘dead against the theory of a self-contained British Empire made strong against all-comers in a hostile world’. That theory she considered to be ‘rooted in the idea of inevitable war’. Instead, she wanted ‘to see the English race . . . taking the lead in working out the new international relationships which we must evolve or perish’. The war had not been the occasion to assert Britain’s right to leadership, Markham thought, so much as a lesson in mutual loss. ‘It is not enough’, she said, ‘that men should die nobly together. War . . . is at bottom as stupid as it is wicked . . . War is not the way.’ Now, she asked Ware pointedly, ‘Is it not the moral of your graves that men have to learn not only to die nobly, but to live nobly together? Is not that an ideal worthy of the British Empire?’ Ware was not about to concede the wider symbolism of the cemeteries and memorials as he conceived them. He replied solemnly: ‘I pray there may be no more wars. But never say those lives were given in vain or that the war was all loss. Their sacrifice lives, and in time we shall see its fruits.’61 The ‘fruits’ to which Ware referred, of course, were an enhanced British leadership of the world order, in which the Imperial War Graves Commission’s example of co-operative politics offered hope to those ‘who look to the League of British Nations to play a decisive part in the settlement of the world’s present misunderstandings’.62 But Ware also looked to the very materialisation of the Commission’s work on the battlefields, as he began to suggest that cemeteries and memorials could act as the very sites of international relations. War cemeteries and the bodies of the dead were to be more than symbols: they were to be the very context and indeed venues for diplomacy. As the King had suggested in 1922, Ware and his fellow Commissioners now marshalled the dead and their memorials to speak for world peace, albeit through subscribing to the values of the British Empire, and to a cult of the

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dead that Ware believed traversed national boundaries. He suggested that former enemies might yet be reconciled to the message of the dead that emanated from their tombs, that this message might be heard ‘across the frontiers behind which those who were their enemies mourn their dead also’.63 The dead of the war, he declared, were the only genuine common ground between those who fought with and against each other, ‘the one real common heritage of the war . . . drawing the Nations together . . . on no debatable ground, in no spirit of military rivalry’.64 In this mood Ware went so far as to suggest that British people might ultimately abandon Armistice Day as the focus of commemoration, in favour of a day more amenable to former enemies for remembering the fallen.65 Even so, he insisted that it was, and only ever could have been, the British Empire that had led all others to listen to the dead as silent witnesses to the desolation of war. Without a tradition of mass peacetime armies, he argued, the British Empire was in a unique position to deliver the war’s message to former belligerents. He observed: This message was, in a sense, new to them. It was one which, owing to our tradition, only the British Commonwealth could give . . . ‘End War’ is the message which these monuments thus convey to our former foes, and it is the goal to which they insistently call upon us and upon them to press forward.66 Ware went so far as to claim that Britain’s allies and even Germany were only following the British example in permanently marking the dead. A scheme of commemoration in which each individual’s sacrifice was acknowledged, and an architecture of remembrance that allowed them to speak as ‘the first great object-lesson in the cost of modern war’, was surely, Ware insisted, ‘a very British thing’.67 Internationalism and multilateral engagement might be worthy ideas, but they proceeded best from British values, and from an example of human fraternity made manifest in the crucible of war, both of which found their expression in the war cemeteries that now encircled the earth.

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World War II ultimately negated such hopes and while the British Empire rallied again, the war itself fundamentally undermined the basis of Ware’s own vision, as an empire that had found its manhood in World War I began to pass. There is of course no reflection of that reality in the cemeteries and memorials of World War II. The Imperial War Graves Commission had secured a mandate in 1939 to attend to the dead of this new conflict and so the forms that so characterised the commemoration of World War I persisted after this even greater conflict. Today these forms are more easily understood in terms of a lineage of modern democratic consciousness than as a relic of imperialist sentiment. Fabian Ware’s death in 1949 might seem apposite, at least to the historian, in that the organisation that he had so shaped persisted, but without the sense of political mission with which he had sought to imbue it. Ware had already been sensitive to the post-modern threat of separating a text from its author. In 1930 he made a plea to a radio audience to heed the Commission’s intentions, to understand the ‘higher objects of the task you have given us’. Marshalling the dead to represent a British commonwealth of nations, united in history and culture, and finally materialised in war, was what he meant. These were ideas, Ware declared, that the Commission had sought to express in everything they had constructed around the bodies of the dead. But as permanent as those works were, Ware understood that their interpretation was malleable: ‘Eliminate them [the Commission’s imperial principles], or cut us off from free discussion of them with you, and the work would become something very different from what it is.’68 Our understanding of the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission has indeed been decoupled from its political origins, so that we have sought to understand the monuments it has bequeathed to us without a sufficient understanding of the processes that produced them. Those processes were based on imperial ideals and ambitions, a desire to assert the apotheosis of empire, rather than the negation of older values with the advent of a new, modern and democratic age. To ignore that reality is to obscure the forces that operated so powerfully to remember and celebrate an empire through the very monuments that would ultimately become its requiem.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Ware 1937, 26, 63 – 70. Mosse 1990, 3; Bushaway 1992, 136– 67. Fussell 1975. Laqueur 1994, 152. Winter 1995. Heffernan 1995, 293– 323. Gregory 2008, 255–6. Longworth 1967, 1; Morris 2004, 382–3. Ware 1937; Longworth 1967, xxi; Gibson and Ward 1989, 43; Summers et al. 2007, 12. Markham 1924, 10. Ibid., 10 – 11. Riedi 2000, 59 – 84. The historiography of Milner is extensive and polarised, but two recent books (Thompson 2007a; 2007b) have been especially helpful. See also Webster 2006. Markham 1906, 921– 2. See also Markham 1900; 1904. Idem 1953, 48. Nimmocks 1968; Kendle 1975. Ware 1900; 1901. Malherbe 1925, 297– 303, 315, 323– 4. By contrast, Markham, who had been an enthusiast for the role of education ‘in the ultimate consolidation of our South African Empire’ (1904, 81), later conceded that the attempt to anglicise the schools had been a mistake, productive of much unhappiness (1915, 172– 3). Ware’s letter on education in the Transvaal, The Times, 13 November 1905, p. 10; Ware’s letter to Chamberlain defending Milner’s Chinese labour policy, The Times, 15 January 1906, p. 10. Wilson 1986, 33 – 52; idem 1990. Ware 1912, 276. Hall and Schwartz 1985, 21. Milner 1913, xxv, xxxii-iii, xxxv. Further (xxxiii), ‘[W]e can bear it [the White Man’s Burden], but – in the long run – only if we bring to the task the undivided strength of the British race throughout the world.’ Longworth 1967, 1; also Gibson and Ward 1989, 43. ‘The Graves Registration Commission’, Commonwealth War Graves Commission Archives (hereafter CWGC): WG 1708; O’Brien 1979, 259. For instance, Malcolm 1915, 52. Ware 1927a, 634. Adjutant-General Macready to various armies in the field, 28 April 1915, CWGC: SDC 4. Meeting Held at War Office with High Commissioners, 25/9/16, National Archives of Australia: AA1964/77, 2350/2.

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30 Minutes of meeting of Prince of Wales’ National Committee, 17/1/17, National Archives of the United Kingdom: WO 32/5850. This was a matter of deep importance to the Prince. His dedication to the army in the field, the memory of the dead, and the welfare of ex-servicemen is conveyed by Townsend 1929. 31 Memorandum by Ware for the War Conference, 7 March 1917, CWGC: WQ8 Pt 1. 32 Cited in Longworth 1967, 28. 33 E. Lutyens, memorandum, 28 August 1917, CWGC: WG 18. 34 Kenyon 1918, 4. 35 Ibid., 4, 6. 36 Sara A. Smith to IWGC, 8 May 1919, CWGC: WG 783 Pt 1. 37 Ware 1929a, 509. 38 See High Commissioner Union of South Africa to Colonel Lord Arthur Browne, 24 June 1920, CWGC: WG 1294 Pt 1; P.E. Deane to Thomas Trumble, 9 April 1920, National Archives of Australia: MP 367/1, 446/10/3410. 39 George Perley to Joseph Pope, 15 April 1920, Library and Archives Canada: RG25, Series A-3-a, Vol. 1205, File 1917-1021, Pt 1. 40 Parliamentary Debates Official Report, House of Commons, Fifth Series, Vol. 128, 4 May 1920, col. 1941. 41 Ibid., col. 1937. 42 IWGC Minutes, 20 July 1920, Library and Archives Canada: RG25, Series B-1b, Volume 326, File W18/26 (16). 43 Fox 1922. Gilmour (2002, 281) states that this speech was composed by Kipling. 44 Ware 1930a, 652. 45 Darwin 1999, 66. See also Hancock 1937; Holland 1981; Bell 2007, 260– 72. Ware persisted, however. For his failure to have an institution created on the IWGC model to facilitate imperial economic co-operation during the Great Depression, see Ware 1933b, 403– 4. 46 Idem 1929b. 47 Trentmann 2007, 47– 8. 48 Ware 1925. 49 Seventeenth Annual Report 1937, 4. 50 Ware 1933c. 51 Idem 1924, 353. 52 Markham 1924, 10. 53 Ware 1937, 56. 54 Idem 1927b. For a broader discussion of anti-Islamic anxieties surrounding Gallipoli, see Ziino 2007, 59 – 81. 55 Ware 1929, CWGC: Add 1/10/1 Folder 19. 56 Ibid. 57 Ware to Sir Philip Chetwode, 8 March 1931. CWGC: Add 1/13/2. 58 Barrett 2007, 463. 59 Ware 1933a.

REQUIEM FOR EMPIRE 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

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Idem 1935, 206. Markham 1924, 11. Ware 1927, 639. Ibid., 640– 1. Idem, 1930b. Idem 1937a, 1093. Ibid., 1058. Idem 1927a, 640; Ware 1930, CWGC: Add 1/1/141. Ware 1930, CWGC: Add 1/1/141.

References Barrett, Miche`le, ‘Subalterns at war’, Interventions ix/3 (2007), pp. 451– 74. Bell, Duncan, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order 1860– 1890 (Princeton NJ, 2007). Bushaway, Bob, ‘Name upon name: the Great War and remembrance’, in Porter, Roy (ed.), Myths of the English (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 136– 67. Darwin, John, ‘A third British Empire? The dominion idea in imperial politics’, in Brown, J.M. and Wm. Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4: The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 64 – 87. Fox, Frank, The King’s Pilgrimage (London, 1922). Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). Hall, Stuart, and Bill Schwartz, ‘State and society, 1880– 1930’, in Langan, Mary and Bill Schwartz (eds), Crises in the British State 1880– 1930 (London, 1985), pp. 7 – 32. Heffernan, Michael, ‘For ever England: the Western Front and the politics of remembrance in Britain’, Ecumene ii/5 (1995), pp. 293– 323. Gibson, Major Edwin and G. Kingsley Ward, Courage Remembered: The Story behind the Construction and Maintenance of the Commonwealth’s Military Cemeteries and Memorials of the Wars of 1914– 1918 and 1939– 1945 (London, 1989). Gilmour, David, The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (London, 2002). Gregory, Adrian, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge, 2008). Hancock, W.K., Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs 1918– 1936, Vol. I: Problems of Policy (London, 1937). Holland, R.F., Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance 1918– 1939 (London, 1981). Kendle, John E., The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union (Toronto, 1975). Kenyon, Frederic, War Graves: How the Cemeteries Abroad Will Be Designed (London, 1918). Laqueur, Thomas W., ‘Memory and naming in the Great War’, in Gillis, John R. (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton NJ, 1994), pp. 150– 67. Longworth, Philip, The Unending Vigil: A History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission 1917– 1967 (London, 1967).

374

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Malcolm, Ian, War Pictures Behind the Lines (London, 1915). Malherbe, Ernest G., Education in South Africa, Vol. I: 1652 –1922 (Cape Town, 1925). Markham, Violet, South Africa, Past and Present (London, 1900). ——— The New Era in South Africa, With an Examination of the Chinese Labour Question (London, 1904). ——— ‘Lord Durham and colonial government’, Nineteenth Century and After lix/352 (1906), pp. 914– 23. ——— The South African Scene (London, 1915). ——— ‘Conversations – VII’, Queen clv/4040 (28 May 1924), pp. 10 – 11. ——— Return Passage: The Autobiography of Violet R. Markham (London, 1953). Milner, Alfred, The Nation and the Empire, Being a Collection of Speeches and Addresses: With an Introduction by Lord Milner, G.C.B (London, 1913). Morris, A.J.A., ‘Ware, Sir Fabian Arthur Goulstone (1869– 1949)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 57 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 382– 3. Mosse, George, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York, 1990). Nimmocks, Walter, Milner’s Young Men: The ‘Kindergarten’ in Edwardian Imperial Affairs (Durham NC, 1968). O’Brien, Terence H., Milner: Viscount Milner of St James’s and Cape Town, 1854– 1925 (London, 1979). Parliamentary Debates Official Report, House of Commons. Fifth Series, Vol. 128 (4 May 1920). Seventeenth Annual Report of the Imperial War Graves Commission (London, 1937). Summers, Julie, Remembered: The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (London, 2007). Riedi, Eliza, ‘Options for an imperialist woman: the case of Violet Markham, 1899– 1914’, Albion ii/1 (2000), pp. 59 – 84. Thompson, J. Lee, A Wider Patriotism: Alfred Milner and the British Empire (London, 2007a). ——— Forgotten Patriot: a life of Alfred, Viscount Milner (Cranbury NJ, 2007b). Townsend, W. and L. Townsend, The Biography of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (London, 1929). Trentmann, Frank, ‘After the nation-state: citizenship, empire and global coordination in the new internationalism, 1914– 1930’, in Grant, Kevin, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann (eds), Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism 1860 –1950 (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 34 – 53. Ware, Fabian, Educational Reform: the Task of the Board of Education (London, 1900). ——— Educational Foundations of Trade and Industry (London, 1901). ——— The Worker and His Country (London, 1912). ——— ‘Building and decoration of the war cemeteries’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (11 April 1924), pp. 344– 55. ——— ‘A successful experiment in imperial co-operation’, Empire Club of Canada Addresses (20 October 1925), at ,http://speeches.empireclub.org/60082/data? n¼8., accessed 30 May 2011. ——— ‘War graves and the British Commonwealth’, Nineteenth Century 102 (1927a), pp. 631– 41. ——— Armistice Day radio address, 1927b, CWGC: Add 1/1/141.

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——— ‘The work of the Imperial War Graves Commission’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Third Series cccvi/13 (18 May 1929a), pp. 507– 19. ——— ‘The price of peace’. Radio address, 1929b, CWGC: Add 1/10/1 Folder 19. ——— ‘The War Graves Commission and empire partnership’, United Empire, New Series, xii/12 (1930a), p. 652. ——— ‘The nations and their common heritage’, Radio address, 1930b, CWGC: Add 1/1/141. ——— ‘Some corner of a foreign field’, World Radio xvii/434 (17 November 1933a), pp. iii– iv. ——— ‘Economic consultation and co-operation’, United Empire, New Series xxvii/7 (1933b), pp. 403– 6. ——— ‘The Empire’s care of Anzac graves’, Radio address, 1933c, CWGC: Add 1/1/141. ——— ‘Australia revisited’, United Empire xxvi/4 (1935), p. 206. ——— ‘The ten million dead’, Listener xviii/462 (17 November 1937a), p. 1093. ——— The Immortal Heritage: An Account of the Work and Policy of The Imperial War Graves Commission during Twenty Years 1917– 1937 (Cambridge, 1937b). Webster, Anthony, The Debate on the Rise of the British Empire (Manchester, 2006). Wilson, Keith M., ‘Calling the tune at the Morning Post’, Publishing History 19 (1986), pp. 33 – 52. ——— A Study in the History and Politics of the Morning Post 1905– 1926 (Lewiston NY, 1990). Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995). Ziino, Bart, A Distant Grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War (Perth, 2007).

INDEX

Albert I of Belgium, 29, 37 Algeria, 146, 147, 151 Allenby, Field Marshall Sir Edmund, 178, 309– 10 Altreich, 289 Anglo– Japanese alliance, 50, 52– 53, 76– 77, 81, 83, 87– 98 Army Act (1881, 1914), 161, 163, 175, 176, 178, 181 Arthur, Rev. John W., 265 Askaris, 251, 258, 264, 266– 268, 309 Australia operations in Pacific, 53, 77– 79, 81 –87, operations in Palestine, 164–65, 168–69 Ayermich, General Joseph, 271 Basel Mission, 263, 269 Belgian Congo, 26, 31, 249, 255 Belgium, 23, 27– 28, 260

Berlin, 137, 142 Berlin Mission, 264 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von, 288 Biedermeier, 285, 289 Bolshevik Revolution, 29 Bund Heimatschutz, 284– 85, 287, 294 Bremen Mission, 262, 268 British Army, 110, 115, 159, 163, 177– 178, 303, 311 British Empire, 1, 56, 59, 63, 92, 108, 119, 162– 63, 307, 351, 364 British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), 162, 166, 167, 170– 71, 176, 182, 308– 11, 313 Brooke, Rupert, 310 Brubaker, Rogers, 139– 40, 154 Bruce, John Edward, 316, 317 Brusilov, Aleksei, 24 Burrell, Benjamin, 319

INDEX

Bryce Report, 29 Byron, Lord, 310 Cameroon, 26, 249 Canada, 268, 342, 362, 367 Caribbean League, 312, 313, 319 carriers, 258, 265, 266 Cavell, Edith, 23, 28 cemeteries, 251 Central Powers, 136 Chaytor, Major-General Edward, 310 China, 31, 54 – 55, 75, 77, 78– 81, 93 Church of Scotland Mission, 255, 261, 270 Church Missionary Society, 266 Congress Poland, 291, 293 Congo Free State (CFS), 38 Convention of Saint-Germainen-Laye, 39 Cooper, Frederick, 139, 154 Cotter, Joseph, 315– 16 courts-martial, 160– 61 Diagne, Blaise, 220, 221, 225– 29, 233– 34, 241, 259 Dobell, Brig. Gen. Charles, 262– 263 Douala, 251, 262, 263 Douvry, Father Jules, 271 Dutch Reformed Mission, 254, 255 Eastern Front, 24 Egypt, 56, 152, 161

377

Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), 159, 161, 309 Egyptian Labour Corps, 178 Emanuelssegen, 287, 292, 293 Entente, 136, 153 Ethiopia, 322 Farnana, Paul Panda, 26 Fenton, James, 316 field punishment, 170, 172, 174, 175– 176 flogging, 161, 177 Force Publique, 23, 24, 26, 36 French army, 137, 138, 144, 220, 232, 241 French Empire, 7 Galicia, 290 Garvey, Marcus, 305, 312, 315, 317– 322 German East Africa, 23, 26, 37, 60, 61, 252, 254, 260 German Southwest Africa, 84 Germany, 137, 138, 142, 153 German Empire, 6, 282, 289 Gokhale, Gopal, 59 – 61, 70 Gold Coast, 233, 250, 268 Haile Selassie, 322 Haiti, 316, 330, 331– 34, 340 Haynes, Sergeant Samuel, 318, 322 Heimatschutz, 284– 285 Heimatstil, 283, 289 Hoover, Herbert, 39

378

EMPIRES IN WORLD WAR I

identity, 138– 42, 153– 54 Ilbert Bill, 64 Imperial War Graves Commission, 351 India, 2, 59– 63, 107– 08, 118 Indian soldiers, 7, 62, 107 Indian hospitals, 110– 11 Indian Mutiny (of 1857), 113 Indian Soldiers’ Fund, 123 influenza, 37, 272 Istanbul, 136 Jabotinsky, Ze’ev, 320 Jamaica Progressive League of New York, 312 Japan, 52, 69 – 70, 75– 78, 95 operations in the Pacific, 53– 54, 81, 99 at Versailles, 55 – 56, 84 Jewish Legions, 320 Jihad (Holy War), 108, 121, 136 Katanga, 32, 38 Kenya, 66 – 7, 252, 268 King George V, 308, 363 King’s African Rifles, 264, 307 Kitchener, Lord, 110, 308 Kulturkampf, 287 Lawrence, Sir Walter, 110 L’Islam dans l’arme´e franc
aise, 142– 43 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 316 League of Nations, 9, 33, 83– 85, 322, 336

Leopold II of Belgium, 26, 28, 40 Lettow-Vorbeck, Paul von, 39, 252, 309 Louvain, 27 Lyautey, Hubert, 143 Maalouf, Amin, 140 Makino, Nobuaki, 56 Malpricht, Alfred, 287 Markham, Violet, 354, 368 Megiddo, battle of, 163, 309, 320 Middle East, 137, 151 Milner, Alfred, 354– 56 missionaries, 36, 40, 114, 249 mission civilisatrice, 29 Montagu, Edwin, 56, 57, 63, 65 Morant Bay Rebellion, 312 Moravian Mission, 254 Morel, E. D., 27, 33 Morocco, 143, 147 NAACP, 315 Nationalism, 8 Negro World, 318 New Zealand, 2, 77, 89, 162, 367 New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF), 166 Nigeria, 233, 251, Nyangao, battle of, 309 Nyasaland (Malawi), 254 Ostpolitik, 288 Ottoman army, 137, 142, 144, 150, 153, 154

INDEX

Ottoman Empire, 108, 121, 136, 145 Palestine,161,163,167,177,309 Pan-Africanism, 317 Paris Peace Conference (1919), 55, 81, 84, 92, 317– 18 Patterson, Lieutenant-Colonel J. H., 320 Petit, Gabrielle, 23, 25 Portugal, 38 propaganda, 29, 40, 66, 107– 09, 121, 126, 137, 146, 150, 254 Queen Victoria, 305 Rabah, Boukabouya (pseudonym, El Hadj Abdallah), 142– 43, 145, 148, 150 race, 7 racism, 116, 163, 337 Racial Equality Clause, 55, 85, 318 Rape of Belgium, 28 Red Cross, 28, 124, 255, 358 Renkin, Jules, 37 Rhenish Missionary Society, 269 Rhineland, 293 Rhodesia, 36, 253 Rudorff, Ernst, 284 Ruhr, 293 Russia, 30 – 31, 50, 121 Schlieffen Plan, 27 Schnee, Heinrich, 23 Schutztruppe, 261 Senegal, 219, 222

379

shell shock, 160, 307 slavery, 177, 222, 305 South Africa, 2, 65, 84 South African War (1899-1902), 307 Spiritans (Holy Ghost Fathers), 269 Taranto mutiny, 168, 313 Tiger Division (UNIA), 321 Togo, 250– 51 Treaty of Versailles, 39 Turkish Army, 151 Twenty-One Demands, 54, 80 United States, 83, 90, 193– 99, 201– 02, 315– 16, 329, 330, 335, 342 Universal African Legion (UAL), 319 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 305, 317 Volk, 285 Volta-Bani Revolt, 270 Ware, Fabian, 352– 53 West African Frontier Force, 307 Western Front, 110, 137 Wu¨nsdorf-Zossen (POW camp), 120– 21, 142, 143, 145, 146, 148, 151, 152 White Fathers, 249 Zionism, 320