West African Soldiers in Britain’s Colonial Army, 1860-1960 (Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, 94) 1648250254, 9781648250255

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WEST AFRICAN SOLDIERS IN BRITAIN’S COLONIAL ARMY, 1860 –1960

T I M O T H Y S TA P L E T O N

West African Soldiers in Britain’s Colonial Army (1860–1960)

Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora Toyin Falola, Series Editor The Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor University of Texas at Austin Recent Titles Youth and Popular Culture in Africa: Media, Music, and Politics Edited by Paul Ugor Disability in Africa: Inclusion, Care, and the Ethics of Humanity Edited by Toyin Falola and Nic Hamel Cultivating Their Own: Agriculture in Western Kenya during the “Development” Era Muey C. Saeteurn Opposing Apartheid on Stage: King Kong the Musical Tyler Fleming West African Masking Traditions: History, Memory, and Transnationalism Raphael Chijioke Njoku Nigeria’s Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation Farooq A. Kperogi Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807–1896 Edited by Richard Anderson and Henry B. Lovejoy The Other Abyssinians: The Northern Oromo and the Creation of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1913 Brian J. Yates Catholicism and the Making of Politics in Central Mozambique, 1940–1986 Eric Morier-Genoud A complete list of titles in the Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora series may be found on our website, www.urpress.com 

West African Soldiers in Britain’s Colonial Army (1860–1960)

Timothy Stapleton

Copyright © 2022 by Timothy Stapleton All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2022 University of Rochester Press 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.urpress.com and Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-64825-025-5 (hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-80010-419-8 (ePDF) ISBN-13: 978-1-80010-420-4 (ePUB) ISSN: 1092-5228 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stapleton, Timothy J. (Timothy Joseph), 1967– author. Title: West African soldiers in Britain's colonial army (1860– 1960) / Timothy Stapleton. Other titles: Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora ; 94. 10925228 Description: Rochester : University of Rochester Press, 2021. | Series: Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora, 1092-5228 ; 94 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021033998 (print) | LCCN 2021033999 (ebook) | ISBN 9781648250255 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800104198 (ebook other) | ISBN 9781800104204 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain. Army. West Africa Command—History. | Great Britain. Army. Royal West African Frontier Force—History. | Great Britain. Army. West Africa Command--Military life. | Great Britain. Army. Royal West African Frontier Force—Military life. | Soldiers, Black—Africa, West—Social conditions--19th century. | Soldiers, Black—Africa, West—Social conditions—20th century. Classification: LCC UA855.55 .S73 2021 (print) | LCC UA855.55 (ebook) | DDC 355.1096609034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033998 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033999 The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: Three noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and their wives, 2nd Battalion Northern Nigeria Regiment, 1901. National Army Museum.

Contents Acknowledgmentsvii Abbreviationsviii Introduction 1 1 Slave Origins

31

2 Identities: Nigeria and Ghana

56

3 Identities: Sierra Leone and the Gambia

101

4 Religion

121

5 Symbols

167

6 Health

203

7 Women

237

8 Flogging

259

9 Mutiny

272

10 Murder and Mayhem

296

11 Former Soldiers

321

Conclusion 328 Appendix: Biographies

337

Bibliography353 Index 377 Illustrations appear after p. 156

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for its financial support of this project and the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (CIH) for providing a teaching release that enabled me to speed up the writing process. Many librarians and archivists rendered invaluable help including at the National Archives (Kew) and the Weston Library at Oxford University in the United Kingdom; the Nigerian National Archives branches at Ibadan, Enugu, and Kaduna; Arewa House in Kaduna; the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD) in Accra; the Sierra Leone Archives in Freetown; and the Gambia National Archives in Banjul. Thanks to Katrina Keefer, Bafumiki Mocheregwa, and Simon Bayani who worked as research assistants at different points and locations in the project. Katrina Keefer generously told me about a sack of army personnel records she found in the Sierra Leone Archive during her doctoral research, and we returned there to discover many more sacks that she has made the subject of a detailed study. I am very grateful to the Department of History and War Studies at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), its faculty and students, for providing a welcoming institutional base during my research visits to Nigeria. I also appreciate guidance by colleagues such as Mohammed Bashir Salau, Margaret Shaibu; B. J. Audu, Maryam Hamza; the late Chukwuma Osakwe, Bala Saho, Assan Sarr, Timothy Parsons, Roy Doron, Charlie Thomas, Yolanda Osondu, Yusuf Sholeye, Trina Hogg, and Toyin Falola.

Abbreviations AH—Arewa House (Kaduna) BEM—British Empire Medal BNCO—British Non-commissioned Officer CO—Colonial Office CSM—Company Sergeant Major DCM—Distinguished Conduct Medal GCAC—Gold Coast Artillery Corps GCC—Gold Coast Constabulary GCR—Gold Coast Regiment IWM—Imperial War Museum (London) MM—Military Medal NA (UK)—National Archives (United Kingdom) NAG—National Archives of the Gambia NAM—National Army Museum (UK) NCO—Noncommissioned Officer NCPF—Niger Coast Protectorate Force NNA—Nigeria National Archives (Ibadan, Enugu or Ibadan) NNR—Northern Nigeria Regiment NR—Nigeria Regiment OBE—Order of the British Empire OC—Officer Commanding PRAAD—Public Records and Archives Administration Department (Accra, Ghana) RNC—Royal Niger Constabulary RSM—Regimental Sergeant Major RWAFF—Royal West African Frontier Force SLA—Sierra Leone Archives (Freetown)

abbreviations  ❧ ix SLB—Sierra Leone Battalion SLR—Sierra Leone Regiment SNR—Southern Nigeria Regiment WAC—West Africa Command WAASC—West African Army Service Corps WAAMC—West African Army Medical Corps WAEF—West African Expeditionary Force WAFF—West African Frontier Force WAMS—West African Medical Staff WAR—West African Regiment WIR—West India Regiment WO—War Office

!

!

Liberia

British West Africa, c. 1920

Other Countries

British Mandate Territories

!

Freetown Daru

Sierra Leone

Portuguese Guinea

British Colonies

Legend

Bathurst

The Gambia

Gold Coast

!

Cape Coast

!

Kumasi

!

Tamale

British Togoland

Accra

!

French West Africa

French Cameroon

!

Calabar

Enugu

!

Lokoja

Nigeria !

Kano

!

Zaria ! !Kaduna

French Togoland British Cameroon

Lagos

!

!

Sokoto

Ibadan

!

British West Africa c.1920

!

Yola

Introduction Like Britain’s “Tommy” or America’s “G. I. Joe,” the West African men who enlisted in Britain’s colonial army gained popular nicknames in their region. The most common was “Waffs,” which was taken from the abbreviation for West African Frontier Force (WAFF), later renamed Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF), comprising the umbrella military structure in British West Africa during the early and mid-twentieth century. Soldiers from the Sierra Leone–based West African Regiment (WAR), the only locally recruited British Army unit in the region to stand outside the WAFF framework, received the moniker “Wars.”1 Other territorially oriented labels included Sierra Leone’s “Frontiers” originating with the territory’s Frontier Police of the 1890s, which morphed into part of the WAFF and the Gold Coast’s or Ghana’s “Abongo” derived from a popular Second World War–era army marching song about fictional soldier Corporal Abongo Frafra.2 While most of these nicknames disappeared along with the colonial titles of military institutions, Abongo continued to hold meaning in postcolonial Ghana where it became a derogatory term for uneducated men who became soldiers due to limited opportunities.3 The fact that people in British colonial West Africa referred to soldiers by these nicknames speaks to the military as a wellknown element of society at that time but also to the existence of stereotypes about men in uniform. Nevertheless, the troops who bore these sobriquets have become obscure figures in West African and military history.4 The men known as Waffs and Wars, Frontiers, and Abongos comprised Britain’s largest military force in colonial sub-Saharan Africa. During 1 2 3

4

C. S. Stooks, “From a Diary in the Cameroons,” Cornhill Magazine, October 1919, 380–391. For “Frontiers,” see Report on the Insurrection in the Sierra Leone Protectorate, 1898 (London: Stationery Office, 1899); For “Abongo,” see ORDP, S. K. Anthony to David Killingray, 16 January 1981. Addae, S. Kojo, A Short History of Ghana Armed Forces (Accra: Ministry of Defence, 2005), vii; John V. Clune, The Abongo Abroad: Military Sponsored Travel in Ghana, the United States, and the World, 1959–1992 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2017). Oliver Coates, “New Perspectives on West Africa and World War Two,” Journal of African Military History 4, no. 1–2 (2020): 19. While Coates makes the point with reference to the Second World War, the same theme applies to portrayals of African soldiers during the entire colonial period.

2  ❧  introduction

peacetime, the Nigeria Regiment alone equaled or outnumbered the entire King’s African Rifles (KAR), an equivalent force based in Britain’s East African colonies. With London’s thrifty approach to empire and the prevalence of tropical disease in West Africa mitigating against the large-scale employment of metropolitan troops, British colonial conquest and military occupation in the region depended heavily on locally recruited soldiers. From Britain’s large and populous colonies like Nigeria and the Gold Coast to the smaller territories of Sierra Leone and the Gambia, West African troops, led by a few British officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs), maintained colonial rule. Britain’s West African soldiers suppressed local uprisings and discouraged potential rebels, and their uniformed and armed presence served as an important symbol of colonial authority. Although primarily concerned with internal security in the colonies, the Waffs and Wars also formed an emergency reservoir of military personnel for Britain’s global conflicts. Unlike the French, who deployed large numbers of African colonial troops to Europe during both world wars, the British tended to dispatch their African soldiers (including the West Africans) to campaigns in other parts of Africa. Still, military and economic pressures prompted British governments to rethink this policy with the pending deployment of a Nigerian brigade to the Middle East halted by the November 1918 armistice and the formation of two West African divisions that fought in Burma from 1943 to 1945. During the Second World War, the relatively small interwar-era British military in West Africa totaling a few thousand troops swelled to around two hundred thousand soldiers and military laborers who served in East Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.5 Aside from their importance in maintaining colonial rule and fighting Britain’s conflicts, the Waffs transformed into the separate national armed forces of West Africa’s newly independent states during the late 1950s and 1960s. As such, the militaries of today’s Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia derive their core institutional culture from this British colonial heritage. West African Soldiers explores the history of Britain’s West African colonial army, placing it within a broader social context and emphasizing, in as far as possible given the limitation of sources, the experience of the ordinary soldier. The aim is not to describe the many battles and campaigns fought by this force but to look at the development of the West African colonial army as an institution over the course of nearly a century. In pursuing this goal, it 5

David Killingray, Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War (Woodbridge, UK: James Currey, 2010), 46.

introduction  ❧ 3

is sometimes useful to employ the lens of military culture defined differently by scholars but essentially meaning a set of shared ideas and behaviors that inform daily life in the military.6 The main point here is that Britain’s West African army represented a complex, ambiguous, and constantly changing organization and that this affected the experience of its locally recruited soldiers who also played a role in shaping this institution. Adopting a thematic structure, West African Soldiers examines four very broad subjects related to Britain’s West African army—identity, culture, daily life, and violence— recognizing that features of these themes overlap. The book opens with a series of chapters on identities showing how Britain’s West African soldiers originally comprised a nucleus of formerly enslaved men and eventually turned into a much more diverse body than stereotypes around colonial martial race theory suggest. Closely related to soldiers’ identity, chapters on religion and military symbols chart the changing cultural character of the West African army. Looking at some features of daily life within these regiments, two chapters explore shifting military health-care priorities around tropical and sexually transmitted disease and the experience of women in the force. The last section of the book deals with the violent side of military life with chapters on disciplinary flogging, mutinies, and day-to-day abuse committed by West African soldiers against civilians and their own colleagues. While the subject of colonial military veterans in West African society moves away from the army as an institution and therefore deserves separate attention, this book concludes by examining how former soldiers very often sought careers in other uniformed services thereby continuing their role as some of the most foundational agents of British rule. Given the usual anonymous presentation of West African soldiers in colonial primary sources, the work attempts to highlight the stories of individual troops—and, where possible, their wives—ending with a few biographies representing military service in different places and periods. The book’s thematic organization reflects the bulk of information discovered during archival research but also tries not to 6

For a variety of definitions of military culture see David French, Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army and the British People, c. 1870–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 6; Allan D. English, Understanding Military Culture: A Canadian Perspective (Montreal: McGillQueens, 2004), 6–7; Nicola Di Cosmo, ed., Military Culture in Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Isobel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 2, 93–95.

4  ❧  introduction

completely re-create the structure of previous studies of other African colonial forces such as Britain’s KAR and France’s Tirailleurs Senegalais. As with most aspects of studying Africa’s colonial past, reconstructing the history of Britain’s West African army relies heavily on available evidence authored by European officers and officials who were socially aloof from the African rank-and-file. Until the Second World War, most soldiers in British West Africa, like their counterparts in other regions of the continent, could not read or write and were recruited from remote or marginalized areas lacking Western educational facilities. As such, written or recorded (audio or video) accounts of colonial military service by West African soldiers remain rare, and those that exist relate to the Second World War period. Preserved in various archives, British-authored official documentation tended to preserve detailed information on specific West African soldiers only when they faced disciplinary charges for alleged misbehavior or received awards for meritorious service and many of both types of accounts are very brief. With some notable exceptions, most individual service records of West African colonial soldiers are lost or inaccessible and those that survive provide scant information. This means there is a dearth of evidence on the average West African soldier who lived out his military service without attracting special attention from authorities. By contrast, many primary sources detail the careers of the British officers and NCOs who led the colonial West African force. This is reflected in official documents but also recorded interviews with former British personnel of the West African army and particularly those who served from the 1930s to 1950s, along with their unpublished written memoirs collected and stored by British research institutions during the late 1970s and early 1980s. While these accounts hardly reflect the average West African soldier’s experience and generally focus on the Second World War era, they represent important evidence for reconstructing the history of Britain’s West African army and are some of the only informational sources for some topics.7 In addition, military administrative competence varied enormously in these colonial regiments with some official correspondence from the colonial era lamenting that officers took over formed units possessing virtually no

7

The Imperial War Museum (IWM) website offers taped interviews. See https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections. The Oxford Records Development Project (ORDP) collection is discussed in Anthony Clayton and David Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989).

introduction  ❧ 5

records.8 Historic newspapers provide limited information. However, those published in Britain or by British colonials in West Africa tended to celebrate the achievements of British officers. These papers ignored the West African rank-and-file and the West African press, pursuing the agenda of Westernized local elites, often showing little interest in reporting on uneducated West African soldiers. Despite these challenges around evidence, it is possible to piece together information on some aspects of the sociocultural history of Britain’s West African colonial troops. For instance, pitifully few primary sources even mention the possibility of same-sex relations among the all-male West African soldiers. West African Soldiers discusses evidence obtained from nine archives located in five countries: Britain, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia. The accessibility of documents in these archives reflects broader circumstances. While the National Archives at Kew in the United Kingdom offers a searchable digital catalogue and highly efficient delivery of wellpreserved documents and sometimes electronic copies of them, most West African state archives show signs of dire neglect. Emerging from civil war and state collapse, the Sierra Leone archives at the time of research lacked a reference system or list of contents, leaving researchers to rummage through disorganized sacks and cardboard boxes filled with deteriorating papers. Nevertheless, and likely the ironic result of administrative chaos, the Sierra Leone archives contain the only significant collection of service records of individual colonial-era West African soldiers with several thousand files mostly dating to the Second World War era.9 In other archives, a very few individual service records survive enclosed within files on a range of other topics. Within Nigeria, conditions in the three main branches of the state archives varied considerably with the one at Kaduna in the north, offering heroically professional service despite limited resources. But the others in Enugu and Ibadan struggled to maintain basic preservation and access. Also located in Kaduna, Arewa House focuses on documenting the history and culture of Northern Nigeria with its archive containing some files produced 8

9

For instance, see NA (UK) CO 445/23, Report on Lagos Battalion, 22 December 1905. This report claims that the Lagos Battalion, originally the Armed Hausa Police formed in the 1860s, kept no records dating to before around 1900. Katrina Keefer, Eric Lehman, Michael McGill, and Gabriela Mattia, “Documenting and Digitizing with Dignity: Ethical Considerations and the West African Frontier Force Personnel Records,” Esclavages and Post-esclavages/ Slaveries and Post-slaveries 3 (2020): 1–21.

6  ❧  introduction

by the British colonial military and surprisingly unavailable elsewhere. The national archives in Accra, Ghana, and Banjul, the Gambia contain many pertinent and accessible (though usually deteriorating) documents, but numerous catalogued files are too damaged to access, or they are simply missing. There is surprisingly little repetition in the colonial military archival files held in the United Kingdom and different parts of former British West Africa. For instance, the annual and biennial inspection reports of WAFF/ RWAFF units from the 1920s and 1930s became accessible at Kew in the 1970s and 1980s but seem not to exist in West African archives. It appears the granting of independence to West African states in the late 1950s and 1960s broke the archival chain. At the same time, and with numerous exceptions, records available in West Africa sometimes offer a much more granular view of the colonial army than many of the higher-level policy documents preserved in Britain.

The Literature The study of European-led colonial militaries in Africa began with celebratory regimental histories, usually authored by former officers turned amateur historians, focusing on the details of military campaigns and the careers of white commanders but paying little attention to the ordinary African soldier.10 Over the past thirty years, professional historians bringing together the hitherto separate fields of African History and Military History have developed a rich literature that places African colonial military service within the context of the wider colonial system and society. These works attempt, despite problems around primary sources, to focus on the African rank-andfile of colonial armies. Within this context, the literature on African military service in French colonial West and Central Africa appears particularly sophisticated and continues to grow with the addition of important new works.11 The British territories of East, Central, and Southern Africa, involv10 A. Haywood and F. A. S. Clarke, The History of the Royal West African Frontier Force (Aldershot, UK: Gale and Polden, 1964); H. Moyse-Bartlett, The King’s African Rifles: A Study in the Military History of East and Central Africa, 1890– 1945 (Aldershot Gale and Polden, 1956); Paul Emil Von Lettow-Vorbeck, My Reminiscences of East Africa (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1920). 11 Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth, NH; Heinemann, 1991); Nancy Lawler, Soldiers of Misfortune: Ivorian Tirailleurs of World War Two (Athens: Ohio

introduction  ❧ 7

ing military formations like the KAR, Northern Rhodesia Regiment (NRR), and Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), have received similar attention from scholars exploring the history of ordinary African soldiers.12 With interest extending beyond the French and British colonial militaries, some historians have studied black Sudanese soldiers in the Egyptian and Anglo-Egyptian army of the late nineteenth century13 and the African troops who comprised German forces in colonial East Africa during the late nineteenth and early

University Press, 1992); Joe Lunn, Memories of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Oxford: James Currey, 1999); Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Richard Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Jacqueline Woodfork, “‘It is A Crime to be a Tirailleur in the Army:’ The Impact of Senegalese Civilian Status in the French Colonial Army during the Second World War,” Journal of Military History 77 (2013): 115–39; Ruth Ginio, The French Army and Its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017); Sarah Westwood Davis, “Ceddo, Sofa, Tirailleur: Slave Status and Military Identity in Nineteenth-Century Senegambia,” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-slave Studies 39, no. 3 (2018): 518–39; Sarah Zimmerman, Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2020). 12 Timothy Parsons, The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King’s African Rifles, 1902–1964 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999); Timothy Lovering, “Authority and Identity: Malawian Soldiers in Britain’s Colonial Army, 1890–1964” (PhD diss., University of Stirling, 2002); Risto Marjormaa, “The Martial Spirit: Yao Soldiers in British Service in Nyasaland (Malawi), 1895–1939,” Journal of African History 44 (2003): 413–32; Timothy Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923–1980 (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2011); Alfred Tembo, “Frustrated Expectations: Experiences of Northern Rhodesian (Zambian) Ex-Servicemen in the Post-Second World War Era,” War in History 24, no. 2 (2017): 195–216. 13 Richard Hill and Peter Hogg, A Black Corp d’Elite: An Egyptian Sudanese Conscript Battalion with the French Army in Mexico, 1863–67 and its Survivors in Subsequent African History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995); Ronald Lamothe, Slaves of Fortune: Sudanese Soldiers and the River War 1896–1898 (Woodbridge, UK: James Currey, 2011).

8  ❧  introduction

twentieth centuries.14 While several works discuss the history of the Force Publique of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo,15 this notorious formation remains a promising avenue for future research. Formed in an independent republic and therefore technically not a colonial military, the Liberian Field Force of the same period included some colonial characteristics and represents the subject of several academic histories.16 Despite the near monopolization of armed military service by the ruling white minority of the Union of South Africa, historians have examined the wartime experiences of black South Africans in colonial and union formations.17 In general, the literature on the British colonial military in West Africa takes the form of distinct national histories focusing on aspects of this topic in one or another of the former colonies. Initially, the involvement of Britain’s West African units in wars of colonial conquest and the world wars stimulated a series of regimental campaign histories written by former officers during the colonial era.18 With the dissolution of the RWAFF and 14 Erik Mann, Mikono ya Damu: “Hands of Blood:” African Mercenaries and the Politics of Conflict in German East Africa, 1888–1904 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002); Michelle Moyd, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014). 15 Bryant P. Shaw, “Force Publique, Force Unique: The Military in the Belgian Congo, 1914–39,” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1984; Lisolo na Bisu: The Congolese Soldier of the Force Publique 1885–1960 (Brussels: Royal Army Museum, 2010). 16 Timothy Nevin, “The Uncontrollable Force: A Brief History of the Liberian Frontier Force, 1908–1944,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 275–97; Brian Shellum, African-American Officers in Liberia: A Pestiferous Rotation, 1910–1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018). 17 For some examples see Paul Thompson, Black Soldiers of the Queen: The Natal Native Contingent in the Anglo-Zulu War (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006); Peter Warwick, Black People and the South African War, 1899– 1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Albert Grundlingh, War and Society/Participation and Remembrance: South African Black and Coloured Troops in the First World War, 1914–1918 (Cape Town: Stellenbosch University Press, 2014). 18 Esme Gordon Lennox, With the West African Frontier Force in Southern Nigeria (London: H. J. Ryman, 1905); W. D. Downes, With the Nigerians in East Africa (London: Methuen, 1919); Hugh Clifford, The Gold Coast Regiment in the East African Campaign (London: John Murray, 1920); R. P. M. Davis,

introduction  ❧ 9

the independence of British West Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, former officers Anthony Haywood and F.  A.  S. Clarke produced a sweeping history of the force that stressed military operations and British leadership.19 Around the same time, ex-colonial official turned pioneering Africanist historian Anthony Kirk-Greene pointed to the potential wealth of primary sources for research on the British colonial military in Nigeria.20 Taking up the challenge and during an era of military coups and civil war in Nigeria from the 1960s to 1980s, Nigerian academic Samson Ukpabi wrote articles on aspects of the early history of the British colonial military in West Africa and several books on the colonial origins of the Nigerian army.21 Nigeria’s colonial-era military history evolved further through the work of Nigerian Defence Academy faculty such as Edho Ekoko on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British military policy in West Africa and C. N. Ubah on the colonial army in Northern Nigeria.22 Furthermore, aspects of Nigeria’s First and Second World War experiences from the home front to the Burma campaign attracted the attention of some historians.23 In a series of scholarly

19 20 21

22 23

History of Sierra Leone Battalion of the RWAFF (Freetown: Government Printer, 1932); C. G. Bowen, West African Way: The Story of the Burma Campaigns, 1943–45, 5th Battalion, Gold Coast Regiment, 81 West African Division (Uckfield, UK: Naval and Military Press, 2013; originally published 1946). Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force. A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, “A Preliminary Note on New Sources for Nigerian Military History,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3, no. 1 (December 1964): 129–47. S. C. Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3, no. 3 (1966): 485–501; S. C. Ukpabi, “Military Recruitment and Social Mobility in Nineteenth Century British West Africa,” Journal of African Studies 3, no. 3 (December 1966): 87–104; S. C. Ukpabi, The Origins of the Nigerian Army: A History of the West African Frontier Force, 1897–1914 (Zaria: Gaskiya Corp., 1987); S. C. Ukpabi, Mercantile Soldiers in Nigerian History: A History of the Royal Niger Company Army 1886–1900 (Zaria: Gaskiya Corp. 1987). Edho Ekoko, “The West African Frontier Force Revisited,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 10, no. 1 (1979): 47–63; C. N. Ubah, Colonial Army and Society in Northern Nigeria (Kaduna: Baraka, 1998). Akinjide Osuntokun, Nigeria in the First World War (Longman, 1979); G. O. Olusanya, The Second World War and Politics in Nigeria (Lagos and London: Evans Brothers, 1973); John Igbino, Spidermen: Nigerian Chindits

10  ❧  introduction

pieces focusing on the British colonial army in the Gold Coast (Ghana), pioneering Africanist military historian David Killingray looked at issues such as mutiny, recruiting, concepts of martial races, and the political impact of Second World War veterans.24 In addition, several studies of Ghana’s Second World War history and Ghana’s modern military discuss aspects of the country’s colonial army.25 Examining the causes of military coups in postindependence West Africa, political scientists and sociologists explored the transition of the colonial army into the national defense forces of Nigeria and Ghana.26 Compared to the larger countries of Nigeria and Ghana, the colonial military history of Sierra Leone and the Gambia remained neglected for a long time. Some exceptions include a semiofficial history of the Sierra Leone army published in the 1980s, the work of Festus Cole on Sierra Leone during the First World War, a 1939 military mutiny in Freetown and the colonial roots

and Wingate’s Operation Thursday, Burma 1943–1944 (Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2018); Chima Korieh, Nigeria and World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 24 David Killingray, “Military and Labour Recruitment in the Gold Coast during the Second World War,” Journal of African History 23, no. 1 (1982): 83–95; David Killingray, “Soldiers, Ex-Servicemen and Politics in the Gold Coast, 1939–50,” Journal of Modern African Studies 21, no. 3 (1983): 523–34; David Killingray, “The Mutiny of the West African Regiment in the Gold Coast, 1901,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 16, no. 3 (1983): 441–54. David Killingray, “Imagined Martial Communities: Recruiting for the Army and Police in Colonial Ghana, 1860–1960,” in Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention, edited by Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 119–36. 25 Wendell Holbrook, “The Impact of the Second World War on the Gold Coast: 1939–1945” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1978); Nancy Lawler, Soldiers, Airmen, Spies and Whisperers: The Gold Coast in World War II (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002); Festus B. Aboagye, The Ghana Army: A Concise Contemporary Guide to its Centennial Regimental History 1897–1999 (Accra: Sedco, 1999); Addae, History of Ghana Armed Forces; Clune, Abongo Abroad. 26 N. J. Miners, The Nigerian Army, 1956–1966 (London: Methuen, 1971); Robin Luckham, The Nigerian Military: A Sociological Analysis of Authority and Revolt 1960–67 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Eboe Hutchful, “The Development of an Army Officer Corps in Ghana, 1956–66,” Journal of African Studies 12, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 163–73; Simon Baynham, The Military and Politics in Nkrumah’s Ghana (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988).

introduction  ❧ 11

of the country’s postindependence praetorianism, and Charles Estep’s recent thesis on the Gambia’s small colonial regiment.27 The only serious debate that emerged among historians of Britain’s West African army revolves around the popular myth that African veterans of the Second World War returned home politicized by new ideas of democracy and freedom prompting their involvement in African nationalist campaigns. Such notions are also widespread with regard to war veterans from East and Southern Africa. Characteristic of the existing literature, the debate over West Africa focused on discrete national histories. Older works on Nigeria disagree as Ukpabi supported the popular concept despite a lack of evidence, and Olusanya maintained that a divided nationalist movement stifled the political potential of veterans.28 Chima Korieh’s recent study of the Nigerian home front during the Second World War acknowledges that veterans made little impact on nationalist politics but that their money caused significant social change by increasing bride wealth payments and altering marriage patterns.29 For Ghana, Killingray rejected the conventional view explaining that veterans, with diverse ethnic origins and war experiences, did not play a greater role than other social groups in the country’s nationalist movement. However, Adrienne Israel stressed the importance of the 1948 veterans protest in Accra as a pivotal moment in stimulating wider calls for

27 E. D. A. Turay and A. Abraham, The Sierra Leone Army: A Century of History (London: MacMillan, 1987); Festus Cole, “Sierra Leone and World War One” (PhD diss., SOAS, 1994); Festus Cole, “Defining the `Flesh’ of the Black Soldier in Colonial Sierra Leone: Background to the Gunner’s Mutiny of 1939,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 48, no. 2 (2014): 275–95; Festus Cole, “The Roots of Military Praetorianism in Sierra Leone,” in Paradoxes of History and Memory in Post-colonial Sierra Leone, edited by Sylvia OjukutuMacauley and Ismail Rashid (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013), 153–204; Charles Estep, “The Empire’s Smallest Regiment: The Gambia Company of the West African Frontier Force, 1902–58,” MA thesis, University of Calgary, 2020. 28 S. C. Ukpabi, “The Changing Role of the Military in Nigeria, 1900–1970,” Africa Spectrum 11, no. 1 (1976): 61–77; G. O. Olusanya, “The Role of Ex-Servicemen in Nigerian Politics,” Journal of Modern African Studies 6, no. 2 (1968): 221–32. 29 Chima J. Korieh, Nigeria and World War II: Colonialism, Empire and Global Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020): 249.

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independence.30 Looking at British policy, Emmanuel Mordi states that delays repatriating West African troops from Asia at the end of the Second World War related to London’s desire for an occupation force in the region and worries over returning a large number of former soldiers to the increasingly nationalistic atmosphere of their home areas.31 Recent research on countries in other regions of Africa demolishes the myth that Second World War veterans played a leadership role in the emerging independence movements of the late 1940s and 1950s and shows that in some places, they played almost no role at all.32

Historical Overview During the mid- and late nineteenth century, a number of separate and locally recruited British colonial paramilitary formations emerged in West Africa to serve as the coercive arm of the growing British presence along the coast. The first such units comprised the Gold Coast Corps that garrisoned colonial enclaves in what is now Ghana from 1852 to 1863 and the Armed Hausa Police Force (later called the Lagos Constabulary) raised in Britain’s newly occupied port of Lagos in Nigeria in 1862. During the early 1870s, particularly in the context of Britain’s war with the Asante Kingdom, British officials expanded the Lagos military model to present-day Ghana founding the Gold Coast Constabulary (GCC). These forces proliferated during the “Scramble for Africa” of the 1880s and 1890s as they fought conquest wars that pushed British rule inland. In 1886, with a charter from the British government, George Goldie’s Royal Niger Company embarked on the subjugation of the Nigerian hinterland and, in turn, it established a private army called the Royal Niger Constabulary (RNC) that conquered the states of Nupe and Ilorin. In 1885 London declared the Oil Rivers protectorate, renamed Niger Coast protectorate in 1893, over the coast of southeastern 30 Killingray, “Soldiers, Ex-Servicemen and Politics,” 523–34; Adrienne Israel, “Ex-Servicemen at the Crossroad: Protest and Politics in Post-war Ghana,” Journal of Modern African Studies 30, no. 2 (1992): 359–68. 31 Emmanuel Mordi, “‘No Longer Required for Operations:’ Troops Repatriation to West Africa after the Second World War, 1945–1950,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 6 (2020): 1–30. 32 Alfred Tembo, “The Impact of the Second World War on Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), 1939–1953” (PhD diss., University of the Free State, 2015); Stapleton, African Soldiers and Police.

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Nigeria and eventually founded a coercive element dubbed the Niger Coast Protectorate Force that participated in the 1897 defeat of the long-­established Benin Kingdom. In 1890, Britain founded the Sierra Leone Frontier Police to extend colonial control from the older coastal colony of Freetown into the hinterland that became the Sierra Leone Protectorate in 1896. With the outbreak of the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion in the protectorate, partly incited by Frontier Police brutality, the British supplemented the “Frontiers” by raising a new military unit called the West African Regiment (WAR). Britain’s program to amalgamate and coordinate these diverse West African armed forces began in Nigeria. In 1897 London decided to establish the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) along the Niger River to deter French expansion into the area, and the next year British officer Frederick Lugard arrived to take command of the new formation that absorbed the RNC and recruited fresh local troops. Experienced in colonial warfare, Lugard previously fought in Nyasaland (Malawi) at the end of the 1880s and led the British intervention in Buganda in East Africa at the start of the 1890s. At the close of the 1890s, the WAFF comprised a single colonial regiment in the interior of Nigeria. In 1900, with expense, tropical disease, and war in South Africa limiting the deployment of metropolitan British troops to the region, the WAFF organizational structure expanded to include almost all colonial military units in the British West African territories of Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia. As a result, the region’s separate paramilitary constabularies transformed into territorially based military regiments under the WAFF umbrella, which itself came under the authority of the Colonial Office in London. In Nigeria, a new military establishment echoed the creation of a new colonial administrative framework founded in 1900 encompassing the Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria protectorates. In the north, Lugard’s original WAFF battalions became the Northern Nigeria Regiment (NNR) and prosecuted the conquest of the vast Sokoto Caliphate in a series of decisive battles during the opening years of the twentieth century. In the south, the Niger Coast Protectorate Force became the Southern Nigeria Regiment (SNR) based at Calabar and the Lagos Constabulary became the Lagos Battalion. In 1906, when Lagos became the southern protectorate’s capital, the SNR absorbed the Lagos Battalion, producing a single formation based in Calabar and Lagos. During the 1900s and early 1910s, the SNR mounted a long succession of punitive expeditions that gradually and fitfully imposed colonial authority over the many decentralized communities of the interior of southeastern Nigeria. In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, the consolidation of Southern

14  ❧  introduction

and Northern Nigeria into the single British territory of Nigeria prompted the concomitant military merger of the SNR and NNR into the Nigeria Regiment. Similarly, as the WAFF structure expanded across the region at the start of the 1900s, the GCC became the Gold Coast Regiment (GCR) and the Sierra Leone Frontier Police became the Sierra Leone Battalion (SLB). Outside WAFF administration, the WAR formed part of the British imperial garrison defending the strategically vital port of Freetown and therefore the “Wars” came under British War Office control. Sierra Leone’s unique situation of hosting both Colonial Office WAFF and War Office WAR battalions prompted a sequence of bureaucratic wrangles between these branches of the British government contesting control of the territory’s soldiers who continued to suppress local rebellions and defend against Liberian incursions. As the regional military amalgamation proceeded, and with other British and colonial forces tied down fighting the South African War (1899–1902), the 1900 Asante Rebellion led to the deployment of Nigerian WAFF and Sierra Leonean WAR and Frontier Police troops to the Gold Coast. Conducted primarily by West African troops, this campaign confirmed the utility of a regional army in maintaining British rule. In the Gambia, where troops from the Caribbean and other parts of Africa fought wars of conquest, the British neglected to form a locally recruited paramilitary because of vain expectations of exchanging the small territory with France to expand colonial Senegal. The creation of the WAFF structure informed the 1901 raising of the colony’s first regular military unit called the Gambia Company, which comprised just over a hundred troops with the initial nucleus recruited in Sierra Leone.33 Falling under the jurisdiction of Britain’s Colonial Office, which administered the empire, the WAFF served as a coordinating agency supervised by an inspector general from the British Army with the constituent regiments remaining under the ultimate authority of respective British territorial governors in West Africa. For example, the governor of Nigeria held direct command over the Nigeria Regiment and the governor of the Gold Coast exercised the same power over the GCR. The preeminence of the Colonial Office and governors over the WAFF regiments related to the force’s primary 33 For an overview see Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 5–96. For the Gambia see Estep, “Empire’s Smallest Regiment,” 17–59; For disagreements over command of Sierra Leone–based forces see NA (UK), CO 445/28, “Amalgamation of Sierra Leone Battalion to West African Regiment,” District Annual Report, 22 February 1908, A. F. Montanaro.

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role of maintaining internal security in British West Africa, speeding up the ability of local colonial administrations to call out troops to suppress rebellions. In the early twentieth century, WAFF units garrisoned larger towns, but these regiments also maintained networks of small military outposts deterring resistance and enabling rapid response to local uprisings. While the WAR concerned itself with the defense of Freetown under War Office jurisdiction, its soldiers also staffed hinterland outposts and discouraged rebellion in Sierra Leone, supplementing the efforts of the WAFF’s SLB. Despite its lack of direct command over the WAFF, Britain’s War Office seconded metropolitan British Army officers and NCOs for tours of duty in the West African units where they headed a colonial racial hierarchy in which all white personnel were superior to all black soldiers. While this racial hierarchy existed from the start of Britain’s West African army in the mid-1800s, aspects of it developed over time. The original West African paramilitary forces formed from the 1860s to early 1890s appointed a small number of long-serving West African soldiers as “native officers” equivalent to the lowest European officer rank. This practice likely derived from Britain’s Indian army, where Indian officers with Viceroy Commissions served as intermediaries between Indian soldiers and British officers with King’s or Queen’s Commissions. A description of the GCC of the 1890s mentioned that it included “a certain number of native officers whose position and duties are analogous to native officers in India.”34 Similar to their Indian counterparts, West African “native officers” were more experienced and older than most of their British colleagues but lacked the same formal training.35 Conversely, an Indian regiment included an almost equal number of Indian and British officers while a West African battalion employed between one to three “native officers” among a dozen British officers. While little detailed information survives on the West African “native officers” of this early period, they emerged in a context whereby the British presence in West Africa was still limited and depended on skilled local agents to provide military advice and recruit troops beyond the frontiers of coastal colonial enclaves including at interior slave markets. The tiny number of West African “native officers,” about whom historians know very little, played a disproportionally important role in Britain’s colonial conquest with most of 34 “The Local Forces of the Gold Coast Colony,” Times, 4 December 1895. 35 For Indian officers see Ross Anderson, “Logistics of the Indian Expeditionary Force D in Mesopotamia: 1914–18,” in The Indian Army in the Two World Wars, edited by Kaushik Roy (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 131.

16  ❧  introduction

them serving in a host of military campaigns. Enlisting in colonial forces in the 1880s, Native Officer Mama Nakaru of the Lagos Battalion and Native Officer John Daniels of the SNR were already accomplished combat leaders when they deployed against the Asante Rebellion of 1900, and they both received Distinguished Conduct Medals for their actions during the 1901 Aro Expedition in southeastern Nigeria.36 During the August-September 1900 British attack on Yola, capital of the Adamawa Emirate in northeastern Nigeria, Daniels “did excellent work with a Maxim gun” as fifteen men of his detachment lay wounded.37 In 1900, and highlighting the importance of “native officers” in providing local knowledge, Daniels’s comprehension of Twi language enabled a British patrol to capture an important Asante leader.38 Since many British officers of this time did not speak West African languages, “native officers” played an important role in maintaining morale and translating orders. After an engagement with the Asante in 1900, a British officer observed, “that fine old native officer, Mr. Hari Zenoah, who had grown grey in the government service, praising here, reprimanding there, while keeping up the spirits of his men.”39 His name often spelled “Harri Zenuwa,” this man began his military career in the Armed Hausa Police in Lagos, he arrived in the Gold Coast during the 1873 Anglo-Asante War and then served in the GCC for twenty-five years. At around seventy years old, Zenoah received a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his “meritorious service” at the 1900 siege of Kumasi where he remained along with three British officers and a hundred West African soldiers while the governor and others

36 For the decorations see London Gazette, September 12, 1902; for Daniels in the Royal Niger Constabulary see Ukpabi, Mercantile Soldiers, 274; for a photograph of Nakaru in Asante see “Our Troubles in West Africa,” Navy and Army Illustrated, August 4, 1900, 490; for their careers see West African Mail, 17 May 1907, 180. 37 Navy and Army Illustrated, November 2, 1901, 152. 38 For Daniels’s knowledge of Twi see James Willcocks, From Kabul to Kumassi: Twenty-four Years of Soldiering and Sport (London: John Murray, 1904), 512; and C. H. Armitage and A. F. Montanaro, The Ashanti Campaign of 1900 (London: Sands, 1901), 259. 39 Armitage and Montanaro, Ashanti Campaign, 65. This account outlines a number of instances of the important contribution of native officers to the British campaign.

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escaped. Retiring with a pension in 1902, he served as head of Accra’s settlement of hinterland Muslims (or zongo) and passed away in 1920.40 With the creation of the WAFF regional structure at the start of the twentieth century, simultaneous with colonial expansion into the hinterland, British authorities neglected to replace retiring “native officers” who disappeared as a military class restricting African advancement to senior NCO ranks like sergeant and sergeant major. Units formed at the very end of the 1890s or early 1900s, like the WAR in Sierra Leone, Lugard’s original WAFF in Nigeria’s interior and the Gambia Company, never appointed “native officers” though documents fail to explain exactly why. In Sierra Leone, several men from the westernized Krio community who transferred from the Freetown police to the newly formed Frontier Police in 1890 became “native officers” participating in numerous military expeditions and the suppression of the 1898 rebellion. The 1902 retirement and nonreplacement of the last two “native officers” of the Frontier Police happened during that unit’s transformation into the purely military SLB of the WAFF and the colonial banning of Westernized Krio people from senior civil service positions.41 In the same year, however, the retirement of two “native officers” from the Lagos Battalion prompted the promotion of two sergeants to that rank with the founding WAFF inspector general G. V. Kemball recognizing the “great influence and efficiency of Mr. Nakaru.”42 Nevertheless, when Brigadier Thomas Morland took over as WAFF inspector general in 1905, he replaced “native officers” with British NCOs, and by 1907, the former disappeared from regiments in Southern Nigeria and the Gold Coast.43 Explaining the elimination of their military positions given the arrival of British NCOs and recognizing their contribution to the British colonial presence, the Lagos Legislative Council granted Native Officers Nakaru and Daniels special annual pensions of £30 rather than their usual one-time discharge gratuity 40 Correspondence Related to the Ashanti War 1900 (London, 1901), Governor F. M. Hodgson to Chamberlain, 28 August 1900, 101; London Gazette, January 15, 1901, 308; David Killingray, “The Colonial Army in the Gold Coast: Official Policy and Local Response, 1890–1947” (PhD diss., University of London, 1982). 41 Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 30–31; “Second Lieutenant Davis,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, February 7, 1903. 42 NA (UK) CO 445/14, “Report on the Lagos Battalion,” 12 January 1903. 43 For Morland’s policy see NA (UK) CO 445/23, “Report on the Lagos Battalion,” 22 December 1905; see also CO 445/28, “Report on the SNR,” 24 February 1908; CO 445/27, “Native Adjutant Lawani Zozo,” 7 August 1908.

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of £60.44 While authorities worried that potential clashes between British sergeants and West African “native officers” might incite conflict and undermine racial hierarchy, the demise of the latter also occurred in the context of the intensified European racism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that hindered the emerging African leadership within missionary churches. After more than three decades with no African personnel above the rank of sergeant major, Britain’s West African army appointed a very few African officers during the Second World War and commissioned Africans though in small numbers during the decolonization era of the 1950s.45 Founded slightly later than the West African army, and in the settler ethos of East Africa, the KAR generally did not have African officers before the decolonization era. As an exception, a small number of African officers existed in the fourth battalion of the KAR in Uganda, a legacy of the unit’s origins among Sudanese troops of the Egyptian army, from the 1890s to the 1920s.46 As military forces, the WAFF and WAR of the early twentieth century principally comprised infantry formations supported by some mounted infantry and light artillery elements in Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Formed as a cost-cutting measure by the British government, these West African battalions utilized simplistic uniforms and equipment and usually fought with slightly outdated weapons handed down from imperial forces. Up to the era of the Second World War, and unlike the metropolitan British Army, West African battalions lacked formal logistical services, relying on female camp followers and soldiers’ wives to prepare food in garrison and during field training or operations. Typical of European armies and their colonial offshoots, life in the military compounds of British West Africa revolved around a set daily routine usually beginning with an early morning parade and roll call, progressing through regimes of training and administration punctuated by meal breaks and ending with some free time and a formal “lights out” in the evening. In peacetime, and in keeping with the tropical climate, most training and formal parades occurred in the morning with a lighter schedule in the hot afternoon. Special events such as ceremonials, inspections by high authorities, field exercises, sports, and social occasions periodically 44 West African Mail, 17 May 1907, 180. 45 For Native Officers in the Gold Coast see Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 173–175; For the case of African evangelists see C. Peter Williams, The Ideal of the Self-governing Church: A Study in Victorian Missionary Strategy (Leiden: Brill, 1990). 46 Moyse-Bartlett, King’s African Rifles, 466.

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interrupted this predictable routine. As compensation for their work, West African soldiers received regular wages (though much less than their British counterparts), an array of allowances and accommodation as well as periodic leaves. A system of military law including summary trials and courts-martial empowered to inflict punishments as well as a range of unofficial sanctions encouraged soldiers to follow the rules and obey orders though they did not always do so.47 Minor infractions did not end military careers. For example, Tanko, a man from Kano in Northern Nigeria who had enlisted in Lugard’s WAFF in 1899, was convicted of offenses in 1907, 1911, and 1915 including fighting in town and in the market, and “improper conduct” receiving demotions and fines. Nevertheless, he completed a successful military career, retiring from the Nigeria Regiment in 1920 as a much-respected sergeant major and First World War veteran.48 Surprisingly ignored by many official military records, organized sports played a major role in army life in British West Africa. British officers often applied for a tour of duty in West Africa to enjoy the region’s colonial sporting culture including tennis and hunting, and the availability of inexpensive polo horses in Northern Nigeria and the Gold Coast. The sports played by Britain’s West African soldiers changed over time though tug-ofwar remained a consistent favorite throughout the colonial era. In the early twentieth century, Nigerian soldiers engaged in the traditional African sport of wrestling with mounted infantrymen staging their own version of wrestling from horseback. By the Second World War, and reflecting new popular sports in the region, football teams comprising West African soldiers played in military and local leagues, and soldiers also engaged in boxing and track-and-field competitions. Observing a West African army team defeat a team of professional British footballers at a match played in India in 1945, a newspaper reporter predicted the success of West African players on the international scene.49 In 1950 British military authorities in West Africa organized the first RWAFF athletics championship in the Gold Coast with teams representing all the units in the region and competing in running, 47 See NA (UK) CO 445 series of documents containing annual and biennial reports by WAFF regiments. 48 NNA (Ibadan) CS) 19/8/2007, “Company Sergeant Major Tanko,” 29 November 1920. 49 Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 157; John R. Raphael, Through Unknown Nigeria (London: W. T. Laurie, n. d., probably 1914), 284–85; West African Pilot, 29 November 1945.

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hurdles, jumping, pole vaulting, javelin throwing, and tug-of-war. By the 1950s, soldier-athletes like boxers and army footballers featured prominently in high-level organized sports in British West Africa.50 The Waffs and Wars fought in three African campaigns of the First World War (1914–18). While these formations still maintained internal security in their home territories, Britain’s West African army turned to providing military personnel for operations in other parts of Africa, initially securing strategic objectives such as ports, but this quickly transformed into a new scramble for German colonial territory. In August 1914, the GCR, along with French colonial forces, invaded the adjacent German colony of Togoland, rapidly capturing the large German wireless station that enabled Berlin’s international communications. At the start of the Togoland campaign, the GCR’s Lance Corporal (later RSM) Alhaji Grunshi famously became the first British soldier to fire a shot in the Great War.51 Subsequently, all Britain’s West African regiments fought in the protracted Anglo-French invasion of German Cameroon that lasted from August 1914 to March 1916. As elements of the Nigeria Regiment pushed overland across the Nigerian border into German territory encountering unexpected resistance, a British naval force landed other British and French West African colonial troops at the port of Duala from where they gradually secured the coastal riverine zone and advanced inland. In southern Cameroon, British colonial forces comprised troops from the Nigeria Regiment, GCR, SLB, WAR, and the Gambia Company, and they cooperated with other French African colonial forces moving across country from Gabon and Chad. It was during the Cameroon campaign that WAFF units first came under British War Office command as a temporary wartime arrangement.52 After Cameroon, Britain’s West African army conducted its first deployment outside its home region, sending contingents to German East Africa 50 “RWAFF Athletics,” Nigerian Citizen, 17 February 1950; for examples of West African newspaper reports on military athletes see “Soldier Beats 28 Men to Win Cross-country Race,” Nigerian Citizen, 5 June 1957; “Kaduna Military Hospital Defeat 36 Field Squadron 4-0 in Hard-fought Second League Match,” Nigerian Citizen, 4 September 1957; “Army Boxer Died After Contest,” Gold Coast Daily Graphic, 2 February 1956. 51 “The Case of Sergeant Grunshi,” Times, 25 March 1940. 52 F. J. Moberly, Military Operations: Togoland and the Cameroons (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1931); E. H. Gorges, The Great War in West Africa (London: Hutchinson, 1930); Hew Strachan, The First World War in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 19–60.

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(location of the First World War’s longest campaign), where white South African and Indian troops became ineffective from tropical disease. As part of Africanizing British imperial forces in East Africa, the West Africans served in that theater, while the hitherto small and locally recruited KAR expanded into a much larger corps. A fourteen-hundred-strong GCR battalion landed in East Africa in July 1916, serving there until August 1918, and the five thousand men of the Nigerian Brigade arrived in December 1916, departing in February 1918. Several other small West African units were deployed to East Africa. The Gambia Company joined the Nigerians in May 1917, and a GCR mounted infantry element pursued the Germans across Mozambique from February 1918. Back in West Africa, accelerated wartime recruiting and training provided regular shipments of replacement troops for the WAFF units fighting in East Africa.53 Furthermore, almost ten thousand West African supply carriers, primarily from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, supported the West African combat formations in East Africa adding to around one million porters recruited and conscripted by the British in that region.54 During the First World War, Britain’s West African soldiers also conducted internal security operations within British colonies and occasionally across the border in French territory. The combination of increased economic and recruiting demands to support the war effort and a simultaneous weakening of the colonial state prompted rebellions in numerous parts of West Africa. One of the most serious First World War uprisings in British West Africa took place among the Egba people of western Nigeria in June 1918, with three thousand Nigeria Regiment troops mobilized to suppress around thirty thousand rebels, who were defeated in a sequence of major battles.55

53 Downes, With the Nigerians in East Africa; Clifford, Gold Coast Regiment; Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 176–250; Tim Stapleton, “The Africanization of British Imperial Forces in the East Africa Campaign: 1917,” in Turning Point Year: The British Empire at War in 1917, edited by Douglas E. Delaney and Nikolas Gardner (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017), 139–59. 54 David Killingray and James Matthews, “Beasts of Burden: British West African Carriers and the First World War,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 13, no.1/2 (1979): 7–23; G. W. T. Hodges, “African Manpower Statistics for the British Forces in East Africa, 1914–18,” Journal of African History 19, no. 1 (1978): 101–16. 55 Toyin Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 91.

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During the interwar era (1919–39), often called the “High Tide” of colonial rule in Africa, Britain’s West African army decreased in size given postwar demobilization. Although British officials briefly debated the possibility of enlarging the African army to serve as an imperial reaction force, further cuts resulted from London’s desire to avoid a major war. Confidence in the new technology of air power to control colonial territories and eventually the Great Depression were also factors in deciding not to expand the force.56 From 1920, British officials reorganized and downsized WAFF regiments to save money and reoriented the formation to its internal security role, recognizing the need for potential deployment of an expeditionary force from one West African territory to another in response to a serious uprising that never happened. In many places, the numerous small military outposts relocated to a few large military cantonments in major population centers.57 Worst affected by austerity measures, the WAR shrunk from fifteen hundred to five hundred troops in 1922, and London disbanded the regiment in 1928 eliminating Freetown’s distinct imperial garrison.58 Simultaneously, the SLB dwindled from around six hundred to four hundred troops, who continued to enforce colonial rule in the Sierra Leone Protectorate and inherited the daunting responsibility of defending Freetown from external threats. During the 1920s, the total number of colonial troops in Sierra Leone dropped from around twenty-three hundred to four hundred.59 Official discussions around budget cuts almost resulted in the disbandment of the Gambia Company and the garrisoning of Bathurst with a few soldiers cycled through from Sierra Leone.60 In 1922 the Nigeria Regiment discharged 650 soldiers and 56 David Killingray, “The Idea of a British Imperial African Army,” Journal of African History 20, no. 3 (1979): 421–36; Elisabeth Mariko Leake, “British India vs. the British Empire: The Indian Army and an Impasse in Imperial Defence, circa 1919–39,” Modern Asian Studies 48, no. 1 (January 2014): 301–29. 57 NA (CO) 445/52, “Reorganization of WAFF,” 1920. 58 NA (UK) T161/163, “West African Regiment: Establishment and Disbandment,” War Office to Treasury, 31 March 1922; CO 267/624/2, “Sierra Leone: Reduction of Garrison and Disbandment of W. African Regt.,” 1928; NA (UK) T161/163, “West African Regiment: Establishment and Disbandment,” A. J. Newling (War Office) to G. Myrrdin Evans, 8 October 1927, Secret Cabinet Paper, “The Disbandment of the West African Regiment,” War Office, March 1928. 59 NA (UK) CO 820/3/14, “Report on SLB,” 10 March 1928. 60 NA (UK) CO 445/64, “Amalgamation of Gambia Company with Sierra Leone Battalion,” 2 August 1924.

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disbanded its northern-based mounted infantry battalion, as horses were considered outdated in the age of mechanized warfare, bringing the formation’s establishment down from five to four battalions, each stationed in a different part of the country.61 During the early 1930s, and partly informed by the military’s chaotic response to the 1929 “Women’s War” in the southeast, the Nigeria Regiment’s four battalions regrouped into six smaller battalions with three in the northern region and three in the southern region. Officials meant for this reorganization to reduce costs even further, follow military tactical trends of decentralizing machine guns to lower-level subunits, provide more building blocks for wartime expansion, maintain units near the border with French territory, and enable a more effective response to local resistance.62 In the Gold Coast, the single-battalion GCR consisted of 1400 troops in 1921 but regular cuts reduced this number to 700 in 1933.63 Despite downsizing and centralizing, Britain’s West African army continued internal security operations between the world wars including the new activity of breaking strikes organized by recently formed trade unions. In Sierra Leone, SLB and WAR troops were deployed to help contain the 1919 anti-Syrian riots, and in 1931 an SLB patrol suppressed a small but unexpectedly violent anticolonial Islamist group in Kambia. Sierra Leonean troops also helped quash organized labor actions such as in 1926 with the Railway Workers Union, in January 1939 with workers in Freetown, and in May 1939 with ironworkers in Marampa.64 The Gambia Company backed up the police during a 1929 strike in Bathurst, and Gambian troops temporarily based in Sierra Leone were deployed against strikers there in 1939.65 While miners’ strikes and cocoa boycotts took place on the Gold Coast during the 1930s, the colonial police there refrained from calling on the GCR, 61 NA (UK) CO 445/56, “Report on Nigeria Regiment,” 1921; CO 445/60, “Report on Nigeria Regiment,” 1922. 62 NA (UK) CO 820/17/12, “Report on the Nigeria Regiment,” 1933; AH (Kaduna) NPS 1/31/236, “Nigeria Regiment, WAFF—Reorganization,” 1931–1933. 63 NA (UK) CO 445/55, “Report on Gold Coast Regiment,” 1921; CO 820/16/1, Report on Gold Coast Regiment,” 1933. 64 Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 52–67. 65 NAG (Banjul), CSO 24-1, The Gambia Company History Book, Vol. 1, 30 November 1901 to 7 December 1937; Arnold Hughes and David Perfect, “Trade Unionism in the Gambia,” African Affairs 88, no. 353 (1989): 549–72. GA CSO 24-4, “Gambia Company History Book,” Vol. 2, started in 1938.

24  ❧  introduction

which largely stayed out of the fray.66 In December 1929 and January 1930, elements of the Nigeria Regiment became involved in the suppression of the Aba Women’s Uprising (or “Women’s War”) in southeastern Nigeria. This uprising was related to the colonial imposition of male warrant chiefs on a decentralized society and rumors of additional taxation. On several occasions, representing the mostly deadly use of violence by Britain’s West African army during the interwar period, British-led Nigerian soldiers fired into crowds of female protestors killing over fifty.67 The Second World War (1939–45) revolutionized Britain’s West African army. In anticipation of global conflict, a modernization process began in the late 1930s with the appointment of Major General George Giffard, a veteran of the First World War KAR, as inspector general of colonial forces in both West and East Africa. In addition to new communications equipment, uniforms, and weapons, the RWAFF regiments regrouped in preparation for wartime expansion and planned deployment to East Africa to face the Italian threat that could potentially cut off British access to the strategic choke point of the Suez Canal. In June 1940, a brigade from Nigeria and another from the Gold Coast arrived in Kenya where they joined colleagues from East and Southern Africa in an offensive against the Italians in Somalia and Ethiopia that began in February 1941. With the rest of its 11th (Africa) Division, the Nigerian Brigade took part in the advance along the coast of Somalia to Mogadishu and then turned inland pursuing the retreating Italians into Ethiopia. As part of the 12th (Africa) Division, the Gold Coast Brigade also invaded Somalia, reaching the port of Kismayo then pushing up the Juba River into Ethiopia. The East Africa campaign represented the first experience of Britain’s West African troops with mechanized warfare: these infantry units received trucks to speed them across the open space of Somalia. With the defeat of the Italians in East Africa, as well as an uncertain threat from pro-Axis Vichy French territories in West Africa, the Nigerian Brigade departed for home in August 1941, and the Gold Coast Brigade did the same in October.68 66 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 134–38. 67 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 321–22; Marc Matera, Misty Bastian, and Susan Kingsley Kent, The Women’s War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 68  Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 328–62; Andrew Stewart, The First Victory: The Second World War and the East Africa Campaign (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).

introduction  ❧ 25

As in the last war, the War Office took direct command of Britain’s West African forces, an arrangement that became permanent. After the East Africa campaign, the RWAFF became the infantry component of a much more sophisticated West African army. The July 1940 creation of West Africa Command (WAC) under Lieutenant General Giffard, headquartered in Accra, led to an enlargement of Britain’s regional army to include more infantry for the RWAFF regiments and completely new support and logistical services, including the West African Army Service Corps (WAASC), West African Engineers, and West African Army Medical Corps (WAAMC). With additional recruitment and the formation of new battalions, the SLB became the Sierra Leone Regiment (SLR), and the Gambia Company became the Gambia Regiment (GR). This rapid expansion led to a shortage of British leadership, prompting the dispatch of 273 exiled Polish officers, along with several hundred white Rhodesian officers and NCOs, to West Africa. In December 1942, with the relaxation of the Vichy threat in West Africa, Giffard suggested to the War Office that West African troops be deployed to the Burma campaign where the Japanese threatened British India and blocked Allied supply routes to China.69 The West African Expeditionary Force (WAEF) that fought in Burma represented a very different and much larger formation than previous British colonial military units raised in the region. WAC assembled two full infantry divisions complete with a network of support elements. The 81st (West African) Division, comprising a Nigerian brigade, a Gold Coast brigade, and a mixed brigade of Gambians, Sierra Leoneans, and Nigerians, arrived in India in August 1943. The Nigerian Brigade, known as the 3rd West African Brigade, detached to support the British special force known as “Chindits,” which disrupted enemy supplies and communications behind Japanese lines in Burma. The 81st Division fought in the second Arakan campaign from January to May 1944, when during its push down the Kaladan Valley it became the first Allied division in the war supplied solely by air. Reunited with the Nigerians of its 3rd West African Brigade, the division participated in the Third Arakan campaign from December 1944 69 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 363–74. For the Polish officers see Czeslaw Jesman, “The `Polish Experiment’ in West Africa during World War II,” Journal of the Royal United Services Institute 110, no. 369 (August 1965): 235–47; Michael S. Healy, “‘The Polish White Infusion:’ Polish Officers in Britain’s Royal West African Frontier Force, 1941–1945,” Polish Review 44, no. 3 (1999): 277–93.

26  ❧  introduction

to February 1945, which evicted the Japanese from Burma’s Arakan province. The 81st Division returned to India in April 1945, and it began its repatriation to West Africa in August. Arriving in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in July 1944, the 82nd (West African) Division comprised one Gold Coast brigade and two brigades from Nigeria. It took part in the third Arakan campaign, eventually linking up with 81st Division. Fighting in Burma until May, when operations ceased with the onset of the monsoon season, 82nd Division suffered the heaviest casualties in Britain’s XV Corps and returned to West Africa in 1946. The two West African divisions in Burma became the only British formations of the war to maintain dedicated and uniformed units of supply carriers who were also capable of filling in for infantry in an emergency. Each West African brigade comprised three infantry battalions supported by an auxiliary group of around 750 soldiers: this was effectively a fourth battalion—a quarter of which was armed—that moved supplies through the thick jungles of Burma where motorized transport proved useless. Divisional headquarters also included an auxiliary group as well as reconnaissance specialists, artillery and antiaircraft units, field engineers, service corps troops (e.g., cooks and drivers), medical personnel, electrical and mechanical engineers, military police, postal staff, and pay clerks.70 In addition to the 73,000 West African soldiers who fought in Burma, some 16,500 West African pioneers served in the Middle East during the Second World War, and West African medical units consisting of men primarily from Nigeria and British-administered Cameroon participated in the Italian campaign.71 Given the lack of sources, one of the most difficult questions for a historian to answer about Britain’s West African soldiers is: how did precolonial concepts or traditions of warfare influence how these colonial troops fought? As discussed in the chapter on religion, many West African soldiers consistently wore traditional magical protection amulets throughout the colonial era, and 70 John A. L. Hamilton, War Bush: 81 (West African) Division in Burma 1943– 45 (Norwich: Michael Russell, 2001); “A Short History of the 82nd (West African) Infantry Division,” 5 January 2010, http://www.britishmilitaryhistory.co.uk/webeasycms/hold/uploads/bmh_document_pdf/82_West_Africa_ Division.pdf; Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 376–472; Chukwuma C. C. Osakwe, “The West African Force in the Reconquest of Burma, 1943–45” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 1992). 71 Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 213; “West Africans Reported in Battle of Italy,” RWAFF News, 4 September 1944.

introduction  ❧ 27

this practice persists today. Arguably, another constant factor among Britain’s West African soldiers revolved around the use of long knives to decapitate dead enemies and take heads as trophies. During the 1873–74 Anglo-Asante War, a British journalist reported that the Hausa Constabulary used large knives to cut off the heads of enemy troops killed in battle: they kicked the severed heads around like footballs until stopped by disapproving British officers. The newspaper report continued to claim that “they look upon it as a great grievance that they are not allowed to ornament their drums with the skulls of those they slay.”72 During the First World War, all Nigerian troops fighting in East Africa carried a machete, and according to an understated British memoir, “Many a good-looking German this day had suffered from a tap on the head with one of these weapons.”73 In Burma during the Second World War, after a successful attack by a Nigerian Company on a Japanese position, “many who had done deadly work with their machetes carried their enemy’s heads as souvenirs to their dugouts.”74 The propensity of West African troops for chopping off Japanese heads also featured subtly in British propaganda meant to boost military morale. Newspapers for British troops in Southeast Asia featured a picture taken in Burma’s Kaladan Valley of a grinning West African soldier, with a heavily scarified face, holding up a machete. A caption described him as “thinking what he could do with his machete, if only he could get himself a Jap.”75 It is tempting to interpret these examples as part of an old West African tradition related to decapitating dead or captured enemies such as took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey or along the Gold Coast.76 On the other hand, European military leaders often wanted to capitalize on the supposed savage reputation of their African colonial troops issuing them with large knives that inspired fear in 72 “The Houssa Force,” Times, 3 September 1873. 73 Downes, With the Nigerians, 64. 74 Michael Calvert, Prisoners of Hope (London: Leo Cooper, 1996, originally published 1952), 126. For further discussion of the incident see Igbino, Spidermen, 98–103. 75 SEAC Souvenir, 14, in ORDP, M. L. Crapp, January 1982. Another newsletter identifies the man as a member of Eighty-One Division Reconnaissance Regiment which made 150 raids behind Japanese lines. RWAFF News, Victory Supplement, 19 September 1945. 76 Robin Law, “‘My Head Belongs to the King:’ On the Political and Ritual Significance of De-capitation in Pre-Colonial Dahomey,” Journal of African History 30, no. 3 (1989): 399–415; John Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 63.

28  ❧  introduction

enemies. Indeed, for German soldiers invading France in 1940, possession of the machete-like knife called coupe-coupe issued to the French colonial Tirailleurs Senegalais seemed to confirm their alleged involvement in mutilations, thereby justifying the murder of many who became prisoners.77 Furthermore, decapitating enemies and taking heads as trophies became a common feature of warfare in many times and places, particularly among societies with strong hunting traditions and who dehumanized their adversaries, with examples including British soldiers in nineteenth-century South Africa and American troops fighting the Japanese in the Pacific during the Second World War. Ultimately, there is far more evidence of American soldiers taking Japanese heads as war trophies than for West Africans.78 During the late 1940s, Britain’s West African army undertook a massive demobilization process at the same time the colonial state began calling on it to again focus on internal security by suppressing rising nationalist protest in the region. The Nigeria Regiment, which fielded a dozen infantry battalions during the war, reduced to five peacetime battalions. While the GCR sent six battalions to Burma, its postwar establishment dropped to two battalions, although rioting in the Gold Coast prompted colonial authorities to increase the number to three. The SLR, which sent one battalion to Burma and formed two others at home for training and local defense during the war, returned to single battalion status and the Gambia Regiment, which fielded a battalion in Burma and another at home, shrank back to one company. Differing from the prewar military situation, however, WAC continued to exist as a centralized regional military authority, retaining its distinct support and logistical units (though similarly downsized), and War Office authority continued into the late 1940s and 1950s. The outbreak of riots in the Gold Coast in early 1948 led to the deployment of GCR troops for internal security, and two battalions from Nigeria arrived by air and sea.79 In Sierra Leone, soldiers intervened to help suppress the February 1955 riots in Freetown, killing around eighteen people; they played a less prominent 77 Rachel Scheck, Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 72–73. 78 Simon Harrison, Dark Trophies: Hunting the Enemy Body in Modern War (New York: Berghahn, 2012); Denver Webb, “War, Racism and the Taking of Heads: Revisiting Military Conflict in the Cape Colony and Western Xhosaland in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African History 6, no. 1 (2015): 37–55. 79 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 475–76.

introduction  ❧ 29

role in countering antitax protests in the hinterland from November 1955 to March 1956. And they were deployed to evict illegal miners from diamond workings around the eastern town of Kono in 1957.80 During the November 1949 labor action at the Enugu colliery in eastern Nigeria, Nigeria Regiment troops stood ready to assist the police who shot dead twenty-one strikers and wounded fifty-one others.81 Subsequently, Nigerian troops supported the police during riots in Kano in Northern Nigeria in April 1953, in eastern Nigeria in February 1958, and in Ibadan in western Nigeria in March 1958. On the eve of Nigeria’s independence, Nigerian soldiers moved into the British Southern Cameroons in 1959 to counter rebels from French Cameroon who were using the territory as a staging area and into Nigeria’s Middle Belt region in April 1960 to help police subdue political violence among Tiv communities. Unlike France, which dispatched West and Central African troops to fight decolonization wars in Indochina and Algeria—and Britain’s white-settler-ruled Central African Federation that sent military forces for counterinsurgency in Malaya—Britain’s West African regiments did not mount operations outside their home territories during the 1950s. This reflected the move toward granting self-government and independence to British West Africa, and specifically, a 1953 British government policy of seeking permission from a colonial territorial government for the external deployment of military units from that territory. This represented a preparatory move toward local governments taking control of their own military forces a few years later.82 Decolonization-era reforms prompted attempts to Africanize the West African officer corps. Colonial authorities founded a school at Teshie on the Gold Coast in 1953 to prepare officer candidates, “Boys’ Companies” and school cadet programs emerged in most territories to mold future leaders, and spaces for West Africans opened in officer training institutions in Britain. Nevertheless, only a small number of West Africans gained commissions, which meant that most West African armed forces, after independence, continued to rely on seconded British officers until national governments 80 Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 88–90. 81 Falola, Colonialism and Violence, 165–67. 82 Miners, Nigerian Army, 28; for the Tiv area in 1960 see Bem Japhet Audu, “Tiv (Nigeria) Riots of 1960, 1964: The Principle of Minimum Force and Counter-Insurgency,” in Ethnic Minority Agitations and Political Development in Nigeria, edited by C. S. Orngu, T. Wuam, and E. T. Ikpanor (Abuja: Donafrique, 2015).

30  ❧  introduction

accelerated recruitment of local officers. In 1956 command of Britain’s West African military units passed to the separate territorial administrations, effectively ending regional structures such as the RWAFF and WAC, with the dismantled units becoming formations like the Nigerian Military Forces and Sierra Leone Military Forces. While Britain created an Army Advisory Council in 1954 to continue West African involvement in imperial defense, the newly independent state of Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) pulled out of the arrangement in 1958, thus rendering it obsolete. As each of Britain’s West African colonies gained independence—Ghana in 1957, Nigeria in 1960, and Sierra Leone in 1961—local military forces became national armed forces. Ceremonial military attachments to Britain ended with the declaration of republics, including Ghana in 1960, Nigeria in 1963, and Sierra Leone in 1971.83 In 1958, given financial concerns, the British administration in the Gambia disbanded the single-company Gambia Regiment, thereby creating a police paramilitary force to ensure internal security in the context of upcoming elections. As such, the Gambia became independent in 1965 without its own military, although it founded one in the 1980s.84 Symbolizing its historic connection to the British colonial military, the new Gambia National Army’s first commanding officer was Colonel Momodou Ndow Njie, who had been born in barracks in the late 1940s during his father’s service as a corporal in the Gambia Regiment.85

83 Miners, Nigerian Army, 33–74; Hutchful, “Army Officer Corps in Ghana,” 163–73; Jimi Peters, The Nigerian Military and the State (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 59–63; Humphrey Asamoah Agyekum, “The Rise and Demise of the Boys’ Company: From Coup Makers to a Footnote in Ghana’s Political History,” Journal of African Military History 3, no. 1 (2019): 33–65. 84 NA (UK) CO 968/610, “Disbandment of the Gambia Regiment,” 1957– 59; Arnold Hughes and David Perfect, Historical Dictionary of Gambia (Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow, 2008), 74 and 80. 85 Kaye Whiteman, “Top Brass in Banjul,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 19–25 February 1990.

Chapter One

Slave Origins The most obvious connection of the early British West African army of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to older West African military systems and ways of warfighting revolved around engagement with the institution of slavery. The mobilization of slave soldiers embodied a common feature of precolonial West African military culture. While the definitions and military roles of West African slave soldiers varied over time and place, the main advantage in utilizing these unfree troops was their personal allegiance to their leader-owner, whether a centralizing ruler or an upstart merchant prince. At the same time, arming enslaved people posed risks, such as the possibility that they could rebel and form their own independent groups or even found new states. Examples of slave soldiers in West African precolonial history are legion.1 Increasing involvement in the transatlantic slave trade expanded the employment of slave soldiers in West African coastal powers such as Asante, Dahomey, and the Yoruba states.2 In addition, and building on the institution of slave soldiery in the early Muslim states of the Middle East and North Africa, the great Muslim empires of West Africa’s interior Sahel zone, such as Mali, Songhay, and Bornu, relied heavily on slave troops for their cavalry armies.3 Nineteenth-century jihadist 1

2 3

John Thornton, “Armed Slaves and Political Authority in Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade, 1450–1800,” in Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age, edited by Christopher Brown and Philip Morgan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 79–94; John Laband, “The Slave Soldiers of Africa,” Journal of Military History 81 (January 2017): 9–38. Sean Stilwell, Slavery and Slaving in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 102–5. Martin Klein, “Slaves and Soldiers in the Western Soudan and French West Africa,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 45, no. 3 (2011): 565–87; Daniel Pipes, Slave Soldiers and Islam: Genesis of the Military System (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981).

32  ❧  chapter one

states in the West African hinterland, particularly the Sokoto Caliphate with its massive enslaved population engaged in plantation labor, made extensive use of slave soldiers as cavalrymen, musketeers, and commanders.4 It appears hinterland Muslim men sometimes served as specialist slave soldiers in traditionalist powers located closer to the West African coast. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Oyo Empire, in what is now western Nigeria, operated a cavalry force dependent on Muslim slave soldiers from the Sahel to the north who knew how to handle horses and whose religion separated them from the rest of local Yoruba society.5 When the British attacked the slave port of Lagos in 1851, enslaved Hausa from the interior defended the town.6 Visiting what is now western Nigeria in 1861, British explorer Richard Burton observed, “The upper Yoruba country, with Hausa and Burnu, supplies an admirable material for native soldiers.”7 With the expanding European colonial enclaves in nineteenth-century West Africa garrisoned increasingly by locally recruited troops, who were cheaper to maintain and less vulnerable to tropical disease than metropolitan personnel, colonial officials had little choice but to interact with the extensive regional military culture of slave soldiery. The established practice in parts of West Africa of utilizing slave soldiers from the Muslim hinterland may have influenced (along with other factors such as stereotypes from British colonial India) colonial preferences for recruits of that heritage who were eventually labeled “warrior races.”8 More specifically, the French in early to mid-nineteenth-century coastal Senegal drew on indigenous Senegambian traditions of slave soldier castes to develop a colonial army that eventually 4 5

6 7 8

Joseph Smaldone, Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 142; Robin Law, “A West African Cavalry State: The Kingdom of Oyo,” Journal of African History 16, no. 1 (1975): 1–15. Oroge, “Fugitive Slave Question,” 65. Richard Burton, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains: An Exploration, vol. 1 (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1863), 297. For these perceptions see Antony Kirk-Greene, “‘Damnosa Hereditas:’ Ethnic Ranking and the Martial Races Imperative in Africa,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 3, no. 4 (October 1980): 393–414; Joe Lunn, “‘Les Races Guerrieres:’ Racial Perceptions in the French Military about West African Soldiers during the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 4 (October 1999): 517–36.

sl ave origins  ❧ 33

became the Tirailleurs Senegalais. Using a system called rachat, French officials paid a bounty equal to the cost of an enslaved man to recruits who then forwarded the money to their owner, which meant, in effect, that the French purchased military slaves. Central to French colonial military recruitment in West Africa that became increasingly important in support of French military campaigns in the region and beyond, the purchase system continued despite the French abolition of slavery in 1848, and variations of it survived until the early twentieth century.9 Notwithstanding Britain’s leading role in abolitionism, British military recruiting in nineteenth-century West Africa shared an intimate relationship with the institutions of slavery and the slave trade. The composition of Britain’s first West African–based regiment, the Royal African Corps (RAC), evolved in relation to local environmental conditions and the ongoing campaign to end the Atlantic slave trade. The first garrisons of Britain’s nascent West African colonial enclaves comprised metropolitan penal troops desperate to avoid severe punishment at home. Arriving in Sierra Leone in 1800, a detachment of the new Goree Corps (later renamed RAC), consisted of European convicts kept in line by a regime of drill, corporal punishment, and rum rations—they were also highly vulnerable to tropical disease, from which many died. Given the unreliability of the white penal soldiers who served life terms, officers of the early RAC recruited a few free African men from around Goree Island in Senegal and Sierra Leone and were enlisted for limited periods. With the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the start of British antislavery naval operations, Africans taken from seized slaving vessels and landed at Freetown represented a new source of military recruits. Designated as “Captured Negroes” or “Liberated Africans” by British officials, these formerly enslaved people lacked freedom as British authorities assigned them to work as indentured servants on settler farms around Freetown and military recruiters conscripted men for life terms in the RAC. Military service offered better alternatives to life as a slave in the Americas or as a bound laborer in Sierra Leone. The Corps’ black soldiers received pay and food, built their own houses in a relatively comfortable part of Freetown called “Soldier Town” distinct from convicts who lived in squalid barracks, they married and had families (unlike their white colleagues), and they possessed higher status than servants or laborers. Over time, the number of European penal troops in the RAC decreased in favor of the increasing 9 Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts, 7–24; Klein, “Slaves and Soldiers,” 565–87; Westwood Davis, “Ceddo, Sofa, Tirailleur,” 518–39.

34  ❧  chapter one

dominance and ultimate monopoly of formerly enslaved African conscripts among the rank-and-file. With this armed force under their direct command, British authorities in coastal Sierra Leone subordinated black settlers from North America and the Caribbean, expanded territorial control at the expense of neighboring indigenous communities, and mounted abolitionist military campaigns against slaver outlets in the region.10 In subsequent years, British colonial officials in other parts of West Africa copied this model of a locally recruited private army drawn largely from once-enslaved men. The first West African soldiers to serve in significant numbers in the British Army were enslaved men who endured the Middle Passage and arrived in the West Indies. Between 1795 and 1807, the West India Regiments (WIR) occupied British possessions in the Caribbean, suppressing slave revolts and fighting Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France. Led by white British officers, these regiments consisted of enslaved black troops of West African, West Central African, and Caribbean origin purchased by the British government specifically for military service. At a time of rising abolitionist sentiment in Britain, the British state purchased 13,400 or more slaves at a cost of £925,000 for service in the WIR. For that period, this amounted to at least 7 percent of all slave imports into the British Caribbean and made the British military the area’s largest single importer of enslaved people. Indeed, it is likely that the British government, including prominent abolitionists, delayed outlawing the slave trade in order to continue purchasing slave soldiers to achieve military objectives in the Caribbean. Around 1806, the British military ordered the purchase of several thousand West African slaves anticipating the end of this source of recruits with the upcoming abolition of the trade in slaves. Most of the WIR slave soldiers originated from West and West Central Africa as British officers preferred to command men not previously enslaved and identified particular African ethnic groups such as those of the Gold Coast as better soldiers, and white plantation owners in the West Indies feared and resisted the arming of locally enslaved black men. From 1807, given British legislation around banning the slave trade and employment of black military personnel, the WIR slave soldiers automatically transformed into “free” troops enlisted for life terms.11 10 Padraic X. Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors: British Anti-Slavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 118–27. 11 Roger N. Buckley, “The British Army’s African Recruitment Policy, 1790– 1807,” Contributions in Black Studies: A Journal of African and Afro-American Studies 5, art. 2 (2008): 1–12; Roger N. Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The

sl ave origins  ❧ 35

As with the West Africa–based RAC, the 1807 abolition prompted WIR officers to seek recruits from among the “captive Negroes” of Sierra Leone. Between 1812 and 1815, the WIR operated a recruiting depot at the former slaving fort on Bunce Island on the Sierra Leone River enlisting “liberated Africans” and giving local chiefs gifts in exchange for indigenous recruits. A scandal over accusations of continued British military slave trading led to the closure of the recruiting depot. While WIR officers initially offered a small cash bonus to men who enlisted in Sierra Leone, British officials in Freetown objected to the payment, pointing out that “captured Negroes” were not free agents but legally at the disposal of the colonial government. As such, British officials in Sierra Leone kept the best recruits for their own RAC and used the Caribbean-based WIR as a vehicle to remove surplus formerly enslaved men from the colony.12 The WIR stepped up its conscription efforts in Freetown. In 1826 the WIR posted a “recruiting company” in Sierra Leone enlisting “captured Negroes” for lifetime military service. Over the next few years, this detachment dispatched shipments of around forty to two hundred men each across the Atlantic to regimental headquarters in Trinidad. At Freetown’s Liberated Africans Yard, the compound holding African people recently disembarked from impounded slaving ships, British officers and NCOs searched for likely recruits of the right age and physical characteristics. Recruiters dismissed the enlistees’ African names as too difficult to pronounce, giving them new English names or other monikers like London, Gibraltar, Mark Antony, or Scipio Africanus (the names were inscribed on cards tied around their necks) and marched them to a church for compulsory Christian baptism. In 1836 and 1837, with WIR expansion, the military conscripted 426 African men as they disembarked from captured slave vessels in the Caribbean. Contrary to the army’s normal practice of splitting up recently enlisted former slaves, most of these West African men concentrated in Trinidad where they staged an unsuccessful revolt in June 1837. During the 1840s and 1850s, although British West India Regiments, 1795–1815 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 60; Roger N. Buckley, The British Army in the West Indies: Society and the Military in the Revolutionary Age (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 137, gives nineteen thousand as the total number of slaves purchased by the British government for military service in the West Indies and that this represents about 10 percent of total slave imports for the period. Buckley also points out that Britain acquired African slaves for service in the Royal Navy and from Portuguese East Africa for service in Ceylon. 12 Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors, 145–53.

36  ❧  chapter one

the WIR continued to focus on the Caribbean, establishing a recruit training depot in Jamaica, the force’s West African commitments increased with the absorption of the RAC in 1840 and the posting of more garrisons in the expanding British coastal colonies of Sierra Leone, the Gambia, and the Gold Coast.13 By 1837 the entire rank-and-file of the RAC and a significant portion of the WIRs consisted of “liberated Africans” enrolled in Sierra Leone, therefore comprising the mainstay of British military personnel in West Africa.14 Compared to the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when British officials spent huge sums purchasing African slaves for service in the WIR, the impressment of formerly enslaved African men represented a much less expensive recruitment strategy.15 Between 1808 and 1863, at least 5,169 “liberated Africans” of diverse origins entered the RAC and WIR at Freetown and then traveled to military stations in other parts of West Africa and the Caribbean. Peaks of enlistment occurred in the late 1810s, late 1820s, and 1840s. From the early 1860s, with the end of the transatlantic slave trade and British naval operations against it, the supply of “liberated” African conscripts dried up and WIR recruiting focused on voluntary enlistment from the West Indies.16 Nevertheless, West African men continued to serve in the WIR as in 1865, the 5th WIR represented “an African regiment, raised entirely from the Yomba and Houssa tribes in and about Lagos.”17

13 A. B. Ellis, The History of the First West India Regiment (London: Chapman and Hall, 1885), 17, 179–80, 189–207, 209, 212, 258; Brian Dyde, The Empty Sleeve: The Story of the West India Regiments of the British Army, St. John’s, Antigua: Hansib Caribbean, 1997, for the names see 37. 14 David Lambert, “‘A Mere Cloak for their Proud Contempt and Antipathy towards the African Race:’ Imagining Britain’s West India Regiments in the Caribbean, 1795–1838,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46, no. 4 (2018): 630. 15 Markus Weise, “A Social History of the West Indian Regiments, 1795–1838” (PhD diss., Howard University, 2017). 16 Richard Anderson, “The Diaspora of Sierra Leone’s Liberated Africans: Enlistment, Forced Migration and `Liberation’ at Freetown, 1808–1863,” African Economic History 41 (2013): 101–38. According to Pearson, late nineteenth-century recruiting was confined to Jamaica and Barbados. See Charles Pearson, “The West Indies and Its Command,” United Service Magazine, no. 786, May 1894, 150–59. 17 A. B. Ellis, Land of the Fetish (London: Chapman and Hall, 1883), 98.

sl ave origins  ❧ 37

The Gold Coast Corps On the Gold Coast, the Dutch initiated colonial military recruiting of enslaved men but removed them from the region. Between 1831 and 1872, Dutch officials at Elmina enlisted around three thousand African soldiers, dispatching them for long periods of service in Indonesia where they fought a series of conquest wars. With the inland Asante Kingdom serving as an intermediary and procurer for the Dutch on the Gold Coast, most of these recruits comprised enslaved men called “Donkos,” who originated from further north in what is now northern Ghana or Burkina Faso or beyond. To avoid violating international bans on the slave trade, the Dutch purchased these men from slave owners and traders, granted the recruits freedom upon enlistment, and recovered the money by deducting a portion of their pay over many years. After completing their contracted military service, some of these ex-slaves and ex-soldiers returned to Elmina where they collected Dutch pensions, but others stayed in Indonesia. West African troops remained in Dutch service in Indonesia until the early 1910s.18 Copying Dutch methods of obtaining slave soldiers, the British established a locally recruited military force in the Gold Coast. At the start of the 1850s, with Britain’s purchase of Danish enclaves in the area, British authorities decided to cut costs by withdrawing WIR troops from local coastal forts replacing them with a three-hundred-strong domestic force known as the Gold Coast Corps, which was later renamed Gold Coast Artillery Corps (GCAC). This unit represented Britain’s first purpose-built and locally based West African regiment, serving as a forerunner for many similar formations that appeared in later years. While enslaved people could claim freedom at British forts along the Gold Coast, few did so as they lacked the means to support themselves there. The start of recruiting for salaried soldiers changed that situation. Enslaved men of northern origin (the “Donkos”) flocked to Cape Coast Castle seeking asylum and wage employment in the military. This caused great resentment among local slaveholders who utilized their labor. To avoid conflict, British officials entered an agreement with local rulers whereby the latter provided “Donko” recruits, who then as soldiers made small monthly payments to their former masters until they had paid a total of £8 (or the market price of a slave). By this method, recruiting for the Gold 18 Ineke van Kessel, “‘Courageous but Insolent’: African Soldiers in the Dutch East Indies as Seen by Dutch Officials and Indonesian Neighbours,” Transforming Cultures eJournal 4, no. 2 (November 2009): 51–84.

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Coast Corps was completed in mid-1852, allowing the transfer of the Gold Coast’s WIR garrison to Sierra Leone.19 The formerly enslaved soldiers of the Gold Coast Corps served the British well for about a decade. In 1853 a Gold Coast Corps detachment of a hundred men with some artillery and rockets was deployed inland from Cape Coast to reinforce local allies against an Asante incursion. Governor Hill reported that “the Gold Coast Corps carried out my orders, and performed their duty in a most satisfactory manner.”20 Furthermore, British officials in the Gold Coast frequently employed the Corps’ NCOs as diplomatic messengers and spies to Kumasi, capital of the Asante Kingdom.21 One of these “intelligent and trustworthy” men was Sergeant Hay, who visited Kumasi in 1853 and reported to the Gold Coast governor on Asante military plans and movements.22 In 1854 a rebellion in Accra incited by British taxation trapped the Gold Coast Corps garrison in Christiansborg Castle until the arrival of naval and WIR relief forces from Sierra Leone and the Gambia.23 Eventually, given its strong antislavery laws, the British government became nervous about the GCAC’s recruitment methods, and in 1862, London rejected a proposal from the unit’s commanding officer that the military directly pay slave owners for the enlistment of their slaves.24 Around the same time, and perhaps given tensions related to the soldiers’ quasi-slave status, GCAC discipline and morale deteriorated, which led troops to stage two mutinies: one in 1862 and another in 1863. The 1862 mutiny stemmed from the unit’s British officers gambling away the money meant to pay their 19 Alfred B. Ellis, A History of the Gold Coast of West Africa (London: Chapman and Hall, 1893), 218–19; Brodie Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa, vol. 2 (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1853), 234. 20 Stephen J. Hill to Duke of Newcastle, Cape Coast, 26 April 1853 in Gold Coast, House of Commons, 1 July 1853. 21 Acting Governor Fitzpatrick to Duke of Newcastle, Cape Coast, 3 August 1853, in Gold Coast, House of Commons, 4 August 1855; Richard Pine to Colonial Office, Cape Coast, 13 February 1863 in Gold Coast, House of Commons, 22 February 1865. 22 Fitzpatrick to Newcastle, Cape Coast Castle, 3 August 1853, in Gold Coast, House of Commons, 4 August 1855. 23 Ellis, West India Regiment, 234–35; Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 208. 24 Newcastle to Governor Pine, Downing Street, 26 September 1862, in Further Papers Relating to the Ashantee Invasion (London, 1874), 69, pt. 4.

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troops who in turn could not pay off their former owners. In 1863 these problems and the return of WIR troops on the Gold Coast (in response to an impending war with Asante) prompted British authorities to disband the GCAC and describe the unit as “useless and unreliable.”25

The Armed Hausa Police Force In August 1861, the British annexed the port of Lagos in what is now Nigeria. Colonial Lagos attracted fugitive slaves from the interior Yoruba states. These slaves became paid laborers for businesses and farms in and around the city. The initial British military garrison consisted of a small WIR detachment almost certainly made up of formerly enslaved West African conscripts. Shortly after the annexation, several British officers in Lagos suggested to the colony’s first governor, Henry Stanhope Freeman, the establishment of a locally recruited military force consisting of formerly enslaved Hausa men from the hinterland. Royal Navy officer John Glover, commander of a British gunboat on Lagos Lagoon who assisted in the administration of the new colony, related his positive experience hiring several Hausa ex-slaves of hinterland Nigerian origin in Sierra Leone in the late 1850s during an expedition to explore the Niger River.26 In July 1862 Governor Freeman, thirsty for military adventure, proposed to his superiors in London that the Lagos colony augment its WIR garrison by forming its own armed corps comprising Muslim Hausa men formerly held as slaves by the surrounding Yoruba communities and now seeking sanctuary in British territory. Freeman also intended that the creation of this unit would weaken the nearby Yoruba states and the Dahomey Kingdom by encouraging their enslaved Hausa to escape and seek enlistment at Lagos. While these powers held many traditionalist local people as slaves, Freeman wanted to recruit Muslim slaves of interior origin in the belief they retained a separate identity from their “pagan” masters that would prove useful in forging a colonial military.27 At 25 Ellis, A History of the Gold Coast, 231. 26 Lady Glover, Life of Sir John Hawley Glover (London: Smith, Elder, 1897), 79; W. D. McIntyre, “Commander Glover and the Colony of Lagos, 1861–73,” Journal of African History 4, no. 1 (1966): 57–79. 27 E. Adeniyi Oroge, “The Fugitive Slave Question in Anglo-Egba Relations, 1861–1886,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 8, no. 1 (December 1975): 61–80.

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the beginning of 1863, the newly arrived Colonial Secretary and Lieutenant Governor of Lagos, Major H. A. Leveson, employed Hausa ex-slaves in his personal hunting party and recommended to Governor Freeman that such men made good soldiers.28 This may have incited Freeman to act on his still unanswered proposal from the previous July. In February 1863, without approval from London but in the context of rising tensions with independent groups around Lagos, Freeman began enlisting formerly enslaved men into the new Armed Hausa Police Force. However, financial limitations of the embryonic colonial state and the fact that many ex-slaves arriving in Lagos did not report to the administration meant that by June 1863, the new unit comprised only forty men.29 From its inception, the organization and training of the Hausa Force came under Major Leveson a veteran of the Indian Army who had fought in the Crimean War and the Italian War of Unification. With scanty resources, Leveson armed the recruits with obsolete 1812 vintage flintlock muskets and machetes and issued a rudimentary uniform.30 The Hausa Force first experienced combat just a few weeks after its formation. In February and March 1863, these soldiers participated in two amphibious raids that subjugated the town of Epe on the east end of Lagos Lagoon. During the first action in February, Major Leveson led his forty Hausa troops in a flanking attack that drove three hundred Epe fighters back into their town, although the major received a severe gunshot wound to the head that led to his return to Britain.31 Reporting on the second operation at Epe in March, in which Hausa skirmishers supported about 130 WIR troops, the British naval officer in command reported that your 25 Houssa men behaved exceedingly well, and I consider if they were well officered, and raised to the strength of two or three companies, they would be 28 Major H. A. Leveson, “The Houssa Contingent,” Times, 4 September 1873. Leveson claimed that he, not Glover, made the original proposal to establish the Armed Hausa Police Force. The issue hinges on exactly when Leveson arrived in Lagos, which is not clear but was probably around January 1863 after Freeman’s letter of July 1862. 29 Oroge, “Fugitive Slave Question,” 61–80. 30 Leveson, “Houssa Contingent,” 10; H. A. Leveson, Sport in Many Lands (London: Chapman and Hill, 1877), xxiv. 31 “The West Coast of Africa,” Times, 13 April 1863; Henry Freeman to Duke of Newcastle, Lagos, 26 February 1863, in Despatches Received by the Government Relating to the Destruction of Epe, Colonial Office, 15 June 1863.

sl ave origins  ❧ 41 invaluable in this colony, as of course they would understand bush fighting, and save the lives of white men, who cannot stand the climate.32

In June 1863, Glover, as acting governor of Lagos, requested permission from London to expand the number of Hausa troops from forty to a hundred, as they had proved themselves at Epe and needed “neither Commissariat nor Barracks.” The Colonial Office approved the enlargement as long as the Lagos Colony supported the force with locally generated funds. Rather than trying to recruit men from among the resident Hausa community of Lagos who appeared hesitant to join the military, Glover enlisted recently arrived runaway Hausa slaves using colonial revenue to compensate their former owners. Yakuba, a “native officer” of the force and probably a Hausa or hinterland ex-slave, assisted Glover in identifying potential recruits. With several years of constant growth, the Armed Hausa Police Force comprised 100 men at the end of 1864, 237 in May 1865, and 300 in February 1866. While it is likely that not all these troops represented ethnic Hausa men, and the unit was probably diverse, colonial officials began using the term “Hausa” to refer to any West African colonial soldier.33 By this time, the growing Hausa Force received better equipment and uniforms, and formed its own band.34 Unlike the Royal Navy and WIR assets available around Lagos but answerable to higher British command, the Hausa Force provided Freeman and Glover with their own private army to suppress rebellions and spread colonial influence.35 From a colonial perspective, the Hausa Force consolidated its reputation in a conflict with neighboring Abeokuta. The defection of slaves to Lagos, including those who joined the new army, caused tension between the Egba people of Abeokuta and the British colony. British authorities in Lagos suspected that the Egba feared the colonial Hausa troops believing there were many more of them than there really were.36 In March 1865, a Lagos force comprising 118 Hausa and 140 West African troops of the 5th WIR 32 Lieutenant Commander B. L. Lefroy to Governor Henry Freeman, 16 March 1863, in Despatches Received by the Government Relating to the Destruction of Epe, Colonial Office, 15 June 1863. 33 Oroge, “Fugitive Slave Question,” 61–80. 34 Glover, Life, 115. 35 Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City, Lagos, 1760–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 110. 36 Oroge, “Fugitive Slave Question,” 61–80.

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supported by rockets and artillery defeated a five-thousand-strong Egba army, lifting their siege of Ikorodu. Located on the north side of the Lagos Lagoon, this town previously accepted British protection as its trade connections provided inland Ibadan with a coastal outlet and therefore threatened the interests of nearby Abeokuta. A British officer, describing the leading role of the Hausa troops in the Battle of Ikorodu, wrote, “The discipline and gallantry of these forces cannot be too highly praised.”37 Militarily effective, the Hausa Force model provided British officials with a way to reduce the expense of garrisoning the empire’s West African coastal outposts. An 1865 report by experienced British officer, diplomat, and colonial governor Harry Ord outlined the benefits of this type of West African paramilitary organization. Besides the usual military duties of guarding storehouses, magazines, buildings, as well as suppressing resistance, the Hausa troops also performed nonmilitary duties such as escorting civil police, messengers, or prisoners. The report recommended the withdrawal of the two WIR companies occupying Lagos, given the high cost of building suitable barracks for them and the ability of the Hausa paramilitary police to protect the colony. Furthermore, Ord advised that regular WIR troops concentrate at Sierra Leone leaving Britain’s minor coastal settlements in West Africa defended by an expanded Hausa Force based on the Lagos model. Seeing advantages to employing former slaves as soldiers, Ord wrote, “These people have a strong antipathy to their former masters, with a considerable aptitude for military duties.”38 These recommendations came into effect over the next decade. In Lagos, with the departure of WIR troops, the Hausa force became more important to colonial power and remained at the center of disputes over enslaved people. In 1867, Glover stationed detachments of Hausa Force soldiers along the land and water routes to the hinterland partly to protect British subjects in the area and help escaped slaves get to Lagos. This policy contributed to the expulsion of European missionaries from Abeokuta later that year. During the 1880s, the British at Lagos stopped compensating 37 Lieutenant Jas. Sealy to Lieutenant Governor Glover, Lagos, 6 April 1865, in Papers Relating to the War Among the Native Tribes in the Neighbourhood of Lagos, London, June 1865. See also Earl Phillips, “The Egba at Ikorodu, 1865: Perfidious Lagos?,” Journal of African Historical Studies 3, no. 1 (1970): 23–35. 38 Report of the Commissioner, Sir H. St. George Ord, London, 9 March 1865 in Report from the Select Committee on Africa (Western Coast), London, 26 June 1865, 359–60, 366.

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owners of escaped slaves, including those who joined the army, which led to increased attempts by these former masters to recover their human property including from among Hausa Force personnel. For example, in 1882, a group claiming to represent the owner of Private Audu Bakashina abducted this soldier while he was participating in a patrol east of Lagos.39 In 1887, at Ibadan, an enslaved Hausa man told visiting British officials that he had once been a member of the Hausa force in Lagos, but another man tricked him into leaving the town, had him abducted, and sold him into slavery.40 Hausa force patrols encouraged enslaved people to escape and faced counteraccusations of abducting women and girls. In early 1892, in preparation for a British operation against Ijebu, given renewed British expansion in the region, the Hausa Force (or Lagos Constabulary) grew from around 250 to 500 troops.41 A cheap and reliable local army, the Hausa Force served as a model for other paramilitary bodies in British West Africa during the Scramble.

The Gold Coast Constabulary In 1872, with the extension of Britain’s possessions in the Gold Coast through the acquisition of Elmina from the Dutch, British colonial officials tried once again to establish a locally recruited military force to ease pressure on overstretched WIR garrisons. This time, and following Ord’s proposals, the Lagos-based Hausa Force provided the nucleus of personnel and served as a template for the new formation. In May 1872, around seventy troops from Lagos arrived at Elmina, relieving the castle’s WIR detachment. Within a few months, the Nigerian Hausa soldiers established relations with Elmina’s Hausa merchants, and some of the troops married local Muslim women. With the success of the experimental Hausa Force detachment at Elmina, British officials proposed the creation of a Gold Coast Armed Police Force consisting of 350 Hausa infantrymen to garrison the territory’s forts and patrol its roads. Cost cutting represented the major advantage of this recommendation. While maintaining 170 WIR troops in the Gold Coast 39 Oroge, “Fugitive Slave Question,” 61–80. 40 Report of Henry Higgins and Oliver Smith, Lagos, 10 February 1887, in Correspondence Respecting the War Between Native Tribes in the Interior (London: Parliament, 1887). 41 Oroge, “The Fugitive Slave Question,” 61–80.

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for a year cost £17,000, the projected annual budget of the entire 350 armed police amounted to £9500. Unlike the WIR soldiers, the Hausa troops provided their own food and sleeping mats, expecting only weapons, uniforms, barracks, and small salaries from the state. In addition, officials considered the Hausa soldiers superior bush fighters to the WIR troops, which were now drawn almost entirely from the Caribbean after the end of Abolitionist naval operations.42 Officials in London approved the foundation of the new Gold Coast force, although they recommended it consist of equal portions of Muslim Hausa and other West African recruits.43 The outbreak of hostilities with the Asante Kingdom changed and accelerated British plans to form a locally recruited Gold Coast paramilitary regiment. In February 1873, in response to the Asante invasion of the coast, British officials quickly dispatched another Hausa Force detachment of one hundred men on a steamer from Lagos to Cape Coast. Upon landing, the Nigerian troops exchanged their Enfield muzzle-loading muskets for upto-date breechloading Snider rifles and were deployed a few miles inland to bolster local groups allied with the British.44 In early April, in the first engagement of the Third Anglo-Asante War, the Hausa Force suffered three killed and a dozen wounded and expended all their ammunition helping the local Fante army repel an Asante attack.45 The subsequent development of British offensive operations against Asante involved the mobilization of many regional troops and auxiliaries. On the Gold Coast, British officials conflated the enslaved “Donko” men of northern origin with the Hausa soldiers of Lagos and once again looked to the former as potential military recruits.46 As explained by an early colonial history of the Gold Coast, the Donkos comprised “Grunshis, Dagatis, Gonjas, Dagombas, and others from 42 J. Pope Hennessey to Earl of Kimberley, Cape Coast, 31 May 1872; Foster Foster to J. Pope Hennessey, Cape Coast, 27 May 1872 in Gold Coast, House of Commons, 30 June 1873. 43 Earl of Kimberley to Governor Hennessey, Downing Street, 11 July 1872, in Gold Coast, House of Commons, 30 June 1873. 44 R. W. Harley to George Berkeley, 9 February 1873; Foster Foster to Captain McEwen, Cape Coast, 23 February 1873; Foster Foster to Lieutenant J. F. Hopkins, Cape Coast, 24 February 1873; Governor Keate to Earl of Kimberley, Sierra Leone, 1 March 1873, in Gold Coast, House of Commons, 30 June 1873. 45 Colonel Harley to Earl of Kimberley, Cape Coast, 12 April 1873 in Further Papers Relating to the Ashantee Invasion, London, 1874. 46 Ellis, Gold Coast, 315.

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the north who had been brought down by the Ashantis for sale after their wars.”47 Thereafter, enlistment into the Gold Coast colonial military transformed enslaved “Donkos” into the “Hausa soldiers” of the Gold Coast. While General Garnet Wolseley assembled and prepared the main British expeditionary force, including metropolitan troops, for the 1873–74 invasion of Asante, Captain Glover arrived in West Africa to expand what he had started in Lagos a decade earlier. For the invasion, Glover assembled a thousand uniformed “Hausa” soldiers and ten thousand local allies for a diversionary attack on Asante via the Volta River. With the exception of 150 Lagos soldiers attached to Wolseley’s command, Glover’s force included all the existing Hausa troops on the Gold Coast and many from Nigeria. Glover’s command served as a military melting pot, turning formerly enslaved men of diverse hinterland origins into the stereotypical “Hausa” soldiers of British colonial imagination. At Accra, where Glover assembled around three hundred serving Hausa troops, local elites resisted the further enlistment of their Donko slaves into the colonial military prompting some enslaved men to rebel against their masters, and at times soldiers forcibly liberated slaves who wanted to enlist. Some recruits showed up at the British fort still wearing chains and carrying attached wooden blocks. To defuse the situation, which included slave owners forming an armed militia to defend their property and workforce, Glover paid them £5 for each of their slaves who joined the army. Since it seemed like the British on the Gold Coast were buying slaves to turn into soldiers, London ordered Glover to discontinue such payments. As a result, Glover enlisted only 250 more Donko or Hausa troops for his expedition and then sent agents to Lagos to recruit more Hausa and Yoruba men as well as some Liberian Kroo (or Kru) to operate riverine vessels.48 By midDecember 1873, Glover’s expedition comprised around 500 Hausa and 400 Yoruba troops in organized units, 160 Kroo sailors, and 19,000 irregular

47 W. Walton Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1915), 85. 48 Glover to Wolseley, Accra, 6 November 1873; Kimberley to Wolseley, Downing Street, 17 December 1873 in Further Papers Relating to the Ashantee Invasion (London, 1874), 19 and 21, pt. 4; John Glover, “The Volta Expedition During the Late Ashantee Campaign,” Royal United Services Institute Journal 18, no. 78 (1874): 317–30; Glover, Life, 157–62. Glover’s article and his biographer (also his widow) fail to mention that he was ordered to stop paying for slaves.

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levies and allies.49 After Britain’s defeat of Asante in 1874, colonial authorities encouraged many of Glover’s “Hausa” to remain in uniformed service on the Gold Coast or Lagos while the Yoruba men returned to their communities in western Nigeria.50 In 1875, in the wake of the war with Asante, British officials established the Gold Coast Constabulary (GCC), comprising a small core of troops from Lagos and the other “Hausa” men enlisted during the war. Among these “Hausa,” of course, were many formerly enslaved “Donko” men from what is now northern Ghana, an area that became the main source of personnel for the British military on the Gold Coast during the subsequent era of colonial rule. By 1879, the GCC consisted of 16 British officers, 3 “native” officers and 1,200 African troops. The fact that the Gold Coast administered Lagos between 1874 and 1886 facilitated further cooperation between the GCC and the Armed Hausa Police Force/Lagos Constabulary including in recruiting as well as interchange of personnel and detachments.51 As such, the two forces evolved along similar lines during the late nineteenth century. Maintaining the strength of the GCC proved difficult as British officials and their agents flitted around the edges of the hinterland slave trade to obtain recruits. Visiting the Gold Coast at the start of the 1880s, Richard Burton noted the enslaved nature of the local colonial military. He observed a “slave garrison of twenty-five Hausas” at Axim and soldiers sent out across the country to “press-gang” recruits. Burton lamented, “The force is injured by enlisting ‘Haussas’ who are not Haussa at all; merely semi-savage and half-pagan slaves.”52 With only marginal results, GCC recruiting parties focused on long-distance expeditions to the slave market of Salaga in what is now northern Ghana and the Niger River hinterland, including the Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria. In 1879, Captain Knapp Barrow led an expedition up the Niger River to Nupe where he enlisted only twentyseven recruits for the GCC. Despite the assistance of the emir of Bida, who paraded his own two-thousand-strong army before Barrow, local men refused to enlist unless they could travel south with their wives, but the expedition’s river vessel lacked enough space. And unsettling rumors of excessive 49 Weekly State of Force in Camp on Volta River, 13 December 1873, in Further Papers Relating to the Ashantee Invasion (London, 1874), pt. 5. 50 Glover, Life, 215–16. 51 David Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 26. 52 Richard Burton, To the Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative, vol. 2 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1883), 88 and 256.

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flogging in the colonial army also discouraged enlistment. At the time of this recruiting tour, many of the area’s single men were away fighting a war between Ilorin and Ibadan, and the many potential recruits working in the trade caravans would arrive in the dry season when the river level was too low for British boats. Barrow’s offer to pay head money to chiefs along the Niger also failed to produce enlistees.53 A series of colonial recruiting agents visited Salaga in the 1880s. In 1880 British officials authorized GCC Native Officer Abdul Karimu to obtain up to 150 recruits at Salaga (likely his home area—as he took leave there) and advanced him £50 to cover “expenses.” Karimu returned to the coast with sixty men and received a bounty for each enlistment. No one asked questions about how he procured the recruits.54 In late 1881 and early 1882, Captain Rupert Lonsdale headed a British diplomatic and trade expedition that traveled from Accra to Kumasi in the Asante Kingdom and then Salaga where he encouraged direct trade with the coast. British authorities instructed Lonsdale to recruit Hausa men at Salaga and bring them back to Accra but not to pay them bounties or to engage with slave traders. Sticking to his orders, Lonsdale failed to secure any recruits. From Salaga, the desperate Lonsdale sent messengers to the Hausa towns of Sokoto and Kano saying, “the British government had the highest possible opinion of the Houssa as a soldier” and inviting Hausa men to travel to Lagos or Accra to join the colonial military.55 Although the GCC continued to experience problems enlisting men, colonial officials hoped that further British expeditions to Salaga and other hinterland centers might secure some recruits. Since recruiting seems much easier in Lagos, the city became the main source of new troops for the GCC with detachments of the Hausa Force/Lagos Constabulary rotated through the Gold Coast enclaves on a sixmonth basis during the early to mid-1880s.56 Another GCC expedition dispatched to Salaga in April 1887, led by Inspector Reginald Firminger, secured 53 NA (UK) FO 881/4092, Captain Barrow to Governor Usher, Accra, 14 November 1879; “Precis of Information on the Gold Coast” (London, 1887), 113. 54 Marion Johnson, “The Slaves of Salaga,” Journal of African History 27 (1986): 356. 55 “Instructions to Captain Lonsdale,” Christiansborg, 15 October 1881; Report of Captain Lonsdale, Accra, 18 March 1882 in Further Correspondence Regarding Affairs on the Gold Coast (London: Parliament 1882). 56 “Visits to the Interior,” Samuel Rowe, 16 August 1884; Samuel Rowe to Undersecretary of State for Colonies, London, 12 August 1884 enclosure Governor Rowe to Captain L. A. Bryden Inspector General Gold Coast

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a hundred recruits, including men who had escaped enslavement. Officials considered the number insufficient and believed that the party arrived too early to encounter the many Hausa trade caravans present in December.57 In 1888, another recruiting expedition led by Riby Williams acquired a few men at Salaga and returned through Kete Krachi, where it press-ganged forty Grunshi men who had escaped slavery in Asante.58 The following year, Gold Coast authorities sent a small expedition led by GCC Native Officer Ali, a man of high standing among interior Muslims and known for carrying out orders with “tact and discretion,” up the Niger River and then overland to Kano and Salaga to obtain two hundred “Hausa” recruits.59 However, Royal Niger Company officials offered little cooperation, seeing the mission as impinging on their sphere of influence, and the Sultan of Sokoto refused to permit recruiting, as men enlisted by agents of the Congo Free State a few years earlier had not returned.60 These GCC recruitment efforts ended given an 1892 civil war in Salaga and the extension of company rule into Central and northern Nigeria. As a result, besides countering French and German expansion in the area, the acquisition of military recruits represented a strong motivation for the 1896 British occupation of Gambaga in what became the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast. Instead of working through unreliable slave markets, the GCC turned to obtaining its “Donko” enlistees directly from their own communities previously victimized by slave raids. Given the good performance of such northern soldiers in the GCC since the 1870s, officials instructed the British expedition to Gambaga to enlist four hundred Mamprussi, Grunshi, and Mossi men and dispatch them to Accra.61

57 58 59 60 61

Constabulary, in Further Correspondence Regarding Affairs on the Gold Coast (London: Parliament, 1885). “Precis,” 113; Johnson, “Slaves of Salaga,” 356. Donna Weaver, “Kete-Krachi in the Nineteenth Century: Religious and Commercial Center of the Eastern Asante Borderlands” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1975). NA (UK) FO 881/5945, Royal Niger Company, London, 1890, Colonial Office to Royal Niger Company, London, 30 August 1889. Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 260–61. NA (UK) FO 881/7002, Further Correspondence respecting the Niger Territories, January to June 1897, Governor Maxwell to Captain Stewart, 29 December 1896; M. J. Holland to Captain Stewart, Accra, 29 December 1896, 95–96.

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During the late 1870s and 1880s, another factor contributing to GCC recruitment and retention problems was that local African states began to form their own “Hausa” forces organized along Western lines and armed with breech-loading rifles. Unfettered by British abolitionist policy, local rulers had much less trouble mobilizing regiments of enslaved soldiers, but what they needed were instructors and leaders experienced in the colonial way of war. Since GCC men enlisted for just three years and received no benefits at the end of their contracts, they often deserted to seek better employment opportunities with other powers. For instance, GCC troops flocked to the Asante Kingdom, where they received twice their normal pay to work as instructors for a corps of well-armed slave soldiers acquired from Salaga. In 1875, “Hausa” troops wearing GCC uniforms trained similar enslaved soldiers for the Juaben Kingdom, which was trying to assert its independence from Asante recently weakened by war with Britain.62 It is highly likely that formerly enslaved GCC troops, perhaps purchased by Glover in 1873, ended up leading slave soldiers in Asante, Juaben, or elsewhere.

Expansion of the “Hausa Force” Model With the growing reputation of Britain’s West African “Hausa” soldiers, other emerging colonial powers recruited in Nigeria and the Gold Coast. In 1883 Seymour Saulez, a British officer representing Belgian King Leopold II’s International African Association, visited Lagos where he enlisted around three hundred men for service in the embryonic Force Publique, which would conquer the Congo River Basin. A British official in Lagos maintained that only 12 percent of the recruits were authentic “Hausa.” Saulez’s recruiting party then moved to Accra, where Native Officer Abdul Karimu, a budding entrepreneur in obtaining West African military personnel, helped them enlist recruits from among some hinterland refugees as well as men dismissed from the GCC for disciplinary reasons and others rejected from the force on medical grounds. Jealously guarding their military personnel, Native Officer Yakuba inspected Saulez’s recruits in Lagos to ensure no Hausa Force deserters were among them; in Accra, British officials dissuaded a few Constabulary troops from enlisting in the Belgian expedition.63 Once 62 Ellis, Land of Fetish, 188–90. 63 NA (Kew) FO 881/4960, “Further Correspondence Respecting Portuguese Claims on the River Congo,” January to March 1884; Governor Rowe to Earl

50  ❧  chapter one

in the Congo, Leopold’s agents backed by their nucleus of West African troops acquired enslaved men from local chiefs and transformed them into the first Congolese soldiers of the Force Publique.64 From the 1880s, the German colonial police and military in Cameroon also recruited “Hausa” men from Nigeria and beyond and other troops from Dahomey, Togo, the Gold Coast and Liberia.65 At the start of the twentieth century, German authorities in Cameroon press-ganged some Nigerians and Sierra Leoneans on visiting ships into the colonial German army. One of these conscripts, a Hausa man called Mbadamassi from Lagos, already serving in the Southern Nigeria Regiment in Calabar, later became involved in a mutiny in northern Cameroon in 1909 resulting in the deportation of himself and his wife to German South West Africa where South African forces detained them during the First World War.66 The extension of British authority inland during the “Scramble” led to the proliferation of British paramilitary forces in West Africa with recruiting still entangled with slavery. Gaining a charter from London in 1886, George Goldie’s Royal Niger Company imposed British claims over the Nigerian hinterland, forestalling French and German ambitions. The Royal Niger Constabulary (RNC), the company’s private army commanded by Captain Seymour Saulez (who had recently finished his stint in the Congo), initially recruited men from outside its area of operations, tapping existing British colonial military centers in West Africa. Some of the first RNC recruits were fifty Hausa and fifty Yoruba men from Lagos who probably had connections to the Hausa Armed Police.67 By 1889 the RNC comprised “five hundred men—Fantis, Hausas and Yorubas—mostly recruited from the Gold

64 65 66 67

of Derby, Accra, 30 January 1884; Assistant Inspector Campbell to Acting Assistant Colonial Secretary, Lagos, 30 May 1883; Assistant Inspector Steward to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 4 October 1883; Assistant Inspector Steward to Assistant Colonial Secretary, Accra, 6 November 1883. Shaw, “Force Publique,” 206. George Ndakwena Njung, “Soldiers of Their Own: Violence, Resistance and Conscription in Colonial Cameroon during the First World War” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2016). Jan-Bart Gewald, “Mbadamassi of Lagos: A Soldier for King and Kaiser, and a Deportee to German South West Africa,” African Diaspora 2 (2009): 103–24. NA (UK) FO 881/6610, Correspondence respecting Royal Niger Company, 1885–87, F. Evans to J. Flint, Lagos, 27 July 1887 (169).

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Coast.”68 In 1890 the majority of RNC troops originated from Elmina on the Gold Coast, where many completed terms in the GCC before signing on with the company.69 Extending company rule over the interior Niger and Benue rivers during the 1890s, the constabulary turned to local recruitment, including many men who enlisted to escape enslavement by local powers. In the Benue area, resentful slave owners damaged company property and ivory caravan leaders threatened to stop visiting company outposts where their slaves deserted. This prompted constabulary officers to pay slave owners three pounds for each of their slaves who enlisted and charge this amount as an advance on the recruits’ salaries that they paid back over time.70 With this successful recruitment strategy, now standard practice in the region, the RNC of the 1890s consisted of a thousand soldiers organized into a Hausa company, a Yoruba company, and an ethnically mixed company of Fante from the Gold Coast and Igala and Borgu men from the Nigerian interior.71 The relationship between compulsion, slavery, and colonial military recruiting continued during the adsorption of the RNC into the new imperial West African Frontier Force (WAFF). In 1898 British Captain N. M. Lynch leading a WAFF recruitment party in the Benue area, offered the king of Gombe military assistance against a local rival in exchange for three hundred recruits. But the king refused, saying he could not compel his free subjects to enlist. The negotiation deteriorated when the Gombe ruler recognized one of his runaway slaves as a corporal within the British detachment. The recruiting party returned to Lokoja with just 129 men, most of whom originated from slavery.72 In forming the Second Battalion WAFF at Jebba on the Niger River in 1898 and 1899, Lieutenant Colonel H. S. Fitzgerald noted, “There is a great difference between Hausas ‘born slaves, the sons of

68 A. F. Mockler-Ferryman, Up the Niger (London: George, Phillip and Son, 1892), 29. 69 NA (UK) FO 881/6098, Further Correspondence Respecting the Royal Niger Company, 1890, A. F. Mockler-Ferryman, Military Notes, 30 June 1890, 101. 70 Ukpabi, Mercantile Soldiers, 42. 71 Anthony Kirk-Greene, “Expansion on the Benue, 1830–1900,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 1, no. 3 (December 1958): 215–37. 72 Ukpabi, “Military Recruitment,” 87–107. There is some confusion over the dates here: Ukpabi gives the year as 1900, but Captain Lynch died in South Africa around the same time. Lynch’s expedition to the Benue took place in 1898.

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slaves’ and those born free.” Although Fitzgerald preferred enlisting the latter, he clearly had experience with the former.73 Yet another copy of the Britain’s Lagos-based Hausa Force sprang up during the conquest of southeastern Nigeria. In 1885, in the context of French and German expansion in West Africa, London declared the Oil Rivers protectorate over the Niger Delta, with British agents signing treaties with local rulers who surrendered their independent foreign relations. The 1893 renaming of this territory as the Niger Coast protectorate signaled Britain’s intention to execute its authority and to this end, colonial officials in the area formed a paramilitary force. As with the RNC in the hinterland, recruiting began outside the conquest area and, in this case, among the Yoruba states that recently accepted British supremacy in the Lagos hinterland of western Nigeria. At its establishment in 1894, the Niger Coast Protectorate Force (NCPF) consisted of 450 men “composed almost entirely of Yorubas recruited principally from Ibadan and Ilesha.”74 Recruiters favored the inland Yoruba city of Ibadan because “the people further in the interior, having been less in touch with civilization, are more sober and trustworthy.”75 While the NCPF rank-and-file originated from Yorubaland, some officers described the soldiers as a mix of Yoruba and Hausa ethnicities or as 95 percent Yoruba-speaking and mostly Muslim. With a headquarters at Calabar and outstations around the Delta, the Protectorate Force of the mid- to late 1890s staged aggressive operations to subdue local communities in what is now southeastern Nigeria.76 In early 1897 the NCPF joined elements of the Royal Navy to subjugate the major indigenous power in southern Nigeria: 73 NA (UK) CO 445/8, “Report by Lieutenant-Colonel H. S. Fitzgerald on 2nd Battalion West African Frontier Force,” 31 March 1899. 74 Report on the Administration of the Niger Coast Protectorate, August 1891 to August 1894 (London: Parliament, 1895), Niger Coast Protectorate Force 1894, Captain Alan Boisragon (16). 75 Foreign Office, Administration of the Niger Coast Protectorate (London: Parliament, 1897), Report on Niger Coast Protectorate Force, 1 April 1895 to 31 March 1896, Captain E. P. S. Roupell (77). 76 Foreign Office, Administration of the Niger Coast Protectorate (London: Parliament, 1897), Report on Niger Coast Protectorate Force, 1 April 1895 to 31 March 1896, Captain E. P. S. Roupell (77); A. F. Mockler-Ferryman, Imperial Africa: The Rise, Progress and Future of the British Possessions in Africa, vol. 1 (London: Imperial, 1898), 287; Report on the Administration of the Niger Coast Protectorate, 1894–95 (London: Parliament, 1895); Report on the Niger Coast Protectorate Force (Constabulary) 1894–95, 4–5.

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the Benin Kingdom. Acknowledging the central role of the Protectorate Force in the successful Benin campaign, a Royal Navy officer wrote, “These troops did a lot of hard work, had a considerable amount of fighting, and reflected much credit on themselves and their officers.”77 With this expansion of the protectorate, the NCPF grew from 450 to 550 men in 1898.78 There is no evidence explaining exactly how the Protectorate Force recruited these mostly Yoruba soldiers from western Nigeria, although it might be reasonable to guess that existing practices around slavery continued. Although Freetown served as a historic center for the conscription of enslaved West Africans into the British military, colonial expansion into the Sierra Leone hinterland prompted the formation of a new paramilitary force with fresh connections to slavery. In 1890 Britain raised the Sierra Leone Frontier Police to secure control of the interior where a series of trade wars disrupted the local economy and where chiefs now signed treaties of submission. Popularly known as the “Frontiers,” most of these troops originated in the hinterland and traveled to Freetown where they enlisted. The Frontier Police grew from around two hundred members in 1890 to 550 in 1894.79 Many of them comprised escaped slaves or members of servile classes. Armed with breech-loading rifles and with the authority granted by a colonial uniform, the Frontier Police garrisoned small outposts throughout the hinterland where they imposed a reign of terror on slave owners and local elites.80 In some cases, police troopers found themselves posted back to their home communities where they took revenge on their former owners. A Temne chief called Pa Suba described the police as “our own escaped slaves—but in Queen’s uniform. They simply come to plunder us”81 In addition, the “Frontiers” actively and passively encouraged desertion among other enslaved people including enslaved women who became their wives and enslaved men who they engaged as laborers. The pro-British Mende ruler Mama Yoko stated that enslaved people flocked to the police. Abuse 77 R. H. Bacon, Benin: The City of Blood (London: Edward Arnold, 1897), 131. 78 Annual Report on the Niger Coast Protectorate, 1898–99 (London: Parliament, 1900), 6. 79 NA (UK) CO 267/385/23243, Sierra Leone: Frontier Police, November 1890. Thanks to Trina Hogg for generously giving me a copy of this file. See also Sierra Leone, Annual Report for 1894 (London: Parliament, 1896), 5. 80 Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 11–18. 81 Report on Insurrection in the Sierra Leone Protectorate, 1898, pt. 2 (London: Parliament, 1899), testimony of Pa Suba, 299.

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by ex-slaves turned colonial soldiers became a major grievance among the chiefs of the Port Lokko area in northern Sierra Leone. The participation of “Frontiers” in colonial military operations to suppress slave raiding and trading furthered these tensions. Indeed, the “Frontiers” fought major engagements against former slaves who comprised the army of Soso leader Karimu in 1891–92 and the Sofa slave soldiers of Samori Toure in 1893 with the later campaign freeing 673 captives. The 1896 British declaration of a protectorate over the Sierra Leone interior, distinct from the older Sierra Leone colony around Freetown, confused the situation, as slave trading became illegal, but domestic slavery survived as a legitimate institution in the hinterland. Together with the imposition of colonial taxation and mistreatment by the “Frontiers,” grievances over the employment of escaped slaves in the police contributed to the 1898 Rebellion that began among the Temne of northern Sierra Leone and spread south to the Mende people.82 Describing the membership of the West African Regiment (WAR), formed during the uprising, a Freetown merchant claimed that “seven-eights are slaves from the interior.”83 A British military magazine described the WAR rank-and-file as “liberated slaves and sons of slaves.”84 The continuation of legal domestic slavery within the protectorate until the 1920s sometimes led to continued disputes regarding the enlistment of enslaved men in the colonial military. As late as 1916, colonial authorities in Sierra Leone paid compensation to chiefs whose slaves surreptitiously enlisted in the Sierra Leone Battalion (SLB) with the soldiers agreeing to the old arrangement of “their freedom being purchased by deductions from their pay or they will be discharged.”85

82 Given overwhelming testimony by traders, officials, and chiefs, the British report on the rebellion concluded that the enlistment of former slaves in the Frontier Police represented a causal factor. Report on Insurrection, pt. 1, 14; for testimony see pt. 2, 87, 90, 148, 151, 241, 368, 377. One Frontier Police British officer contradicted these statements saying that he believed few of the troops had been slaves (201); for operations against Karimu and the Sofas see Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 11–15. 83 Report on Insurrection, pt. 2, testimony of Mr. Lemberg, 268. 84 Navy and Army Illustrated, 9 November 1901, 177. 85 SLA (Freetown), no reference system, Bonar Law to Governor R. J. Wilkinson, Downing Street, 17 October 1916, confidential.

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Conclusion Britain’s colonial army in West Africa emerged in relation to slavery and the slave trade. The first large number of West Africans enlisted in the British military comprised enslaved men specifically bought from slave traders during the 1790s and very early 1800s to serve as slave soldiers in the Caribbean. During the early and mid-nineteenth century, Britain’s abolition of the slave trade and antislavery naval operations led to the conscription of thousands of “liberated Africans” for lifetime service in British forces based in the West Indies and West Africa. Despite different legal terminology, the earlier West African slave soldiers and the formerly enslaved men impressed at Freetown shared common experiences as unfree military labor. After the convenient “liberated African” enlistment pool disappeared in the 1860s, British officers copied existing French and Dutch military procurement methods in the region developing local garrison units in colonial enclaves of the Gold Coast and Nigeria by compensating slave owners for their runaway slaves who joined the army. Perhaps rooted in precolonial military practices, the British and other colonizers cultivated a preference for enlisting enslaved hinterland men of diverse origins though often of Muslim faith who collectively gained the label of “Hausa” soldiers. In the late 1870s and 1880s, British recruiting agents, the most effective of whom were “native officers” who knew the hinterland and its languages and did not attract much attention, traveled long distances attempting to obtain soldiers from interior slave markets. While these military enlistment practices clearly resembled slave purchases illegal in the British context and made higher officials in London uncomfortable, such recruiting measures continued in British West Africa until the start of the twentieth century. Not coincidently, with the consolidation of British colonial rule in the early 1900s and the expansion of a colonial capitalist economy, hinterland areas such as northern Gold Coast and the Benue of Central Nigeria that had previously supplied quasi-slave soldiers continued as the economically marginalized recruiting grounds for Britain’s West African colonial regiments.

Chapter Two

Identities Nigeria and Ghana The history of modern African ethnic identities is much debated. The colonial view of African ethnic affiliations like the Yoruba of Nigeria or the Kikuyu of Kenya (often uncritically called “tribes”) as primordial and static seemed confirmed by the prevalence of ethnic politics in independent Africa. According to this view, which became widely popular in Africa and elsewhere, specific ethnic groups have always possessed their own special traits and loyalties, differentiating them from other broad communities. Nevertheless, and inspired by wider interest in the making of traditions and identities, Africanist scholars of the 1980s and 1990s revised this understanding, presenting modern African ethnic affiliations and stereotypes as relatively recent constructs of the colonial era, resulting from official divide-and-rule policies, missionary education, and the activities of Westernized African elites. Recognizing that broad African linguistic and cultural groups existed prior to colonization, these constructivist scholars maintained that precolonial African identities were complex and multilayered, and that wider ethnic groupings and rivalries only became important from the colonial period onward. Such revision appeared particularly influential in the study of Southern and East African history but less so with regard to West Africa. From around the 2000s, however, other scholars questioned the recent invention theory, claiming that broad African ethnic identities and values around them comprised important concepts well before colonial conquest.1 This academic disagreement may 1

For the broader influence see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); for examples of the construction theory see Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991);

Identities: Nigeria and Ghana  ❧ 57

never achieve resolution given the limited evidence relating to Africa before colonial conquest and the amorphous nature of the concept of identity. Debates over the development of African ethnic identities extend to the continent’s military history. Some of the most well-known African ethnic stereotypes revolve around martial or warrior reputation. In colonial Africa, given the primordial view of African ethnic identities, European officials believed that specific indigenous communities possessed inherent martial qualities and consequently produced effective soldiers. The French in West Africa preferred to enlist the supposedly more “civilized” Sahelian peoples such as the Tukolor and Bambara and were initially dubious of Wolof martial abilities given that group’s history of interaction with Europeans in Senegal. Men from the southern coastal forest of West Africa such as southern Cote d’Ivoire, so French authorities imagined, were too primitive and physically weak for soldiering.2 Cultivated in older parts of their empire, specifically India,3 the British notion of “martial races” meant that colonial officials in Africa preferred to recruit soldiers from remote ethnic groups allegedly uncorrupted by Christian missionaries and/or urbanization.4 However, as highlighted by historians influenced by the constructionist approach to identity, primary sources clearly show that early colonial theories about what African communities constituted “martial races” or “martial tribes” often failed to translate into large numbers of recruits leading to debates and and Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); for a West African perspective see Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent, eds., Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); for a critique of the construction approach see Enocent Msindo, Ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Transformations in Kalanga and Ndebele Societies, 1860–1990 (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2012). 2 Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts, 14–15; Lunn, “Les Races Guerrieres,” 517–36. 3 There is a vast literature on “martial race” theory in colonial India. For some examples, see David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj; The Indian Army, 1880– 1940 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994), 10–22; Thomas Metcalf, Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), chap. 4; Tarak Barkawi, Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War Two (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 44–48. 4 Kirk-Greene, “Damnosa Hereditas,” 393–414. Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2004).

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fluctuating opinions among officers about the military character of colonized peoples. While British officer Frederick Lugard employed nominally Muslim Sudanese former slave soldiers called “Nubians” during the 1890s conquest of Uganda, the need to extend recruiting during and after the First World War led to their replacement by Acholi men from northern Uganda portrayed as similarly martial.5 In Kenya, the fact that the romanticized and famously warrior-like Maasai continued a pastoral lifestyle in their reserve and therefore not fully integrated into the colonial economy dissuaded them from enlisting in the colonial army. As such, from the First World War, British officials focused recruiting on the Kamba, who were more willing to enlist and defined them as a newly discovered “martial tribe.” Likewise, in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) the Ndebele, considered a warrior people (given their historical association with the much-celebrated Zulu), rejected military service for better job opportunities as migrant workers in nearby South Africa, leaving the allegedly nonmartial but impoverished Karanga Shona to fill the ranks of the colonial police and army.6 In short, colonial martial race theory became flexible and was imposed on any group willing to provide recruits: this meant that the reality of enlistment and the rhetoric of ethnic warrior stereotypes rarely jibed in African colonial armies. However, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary, several recent historians question the idea that colonial officials imposed the “martial race” label on African communities who responded to colonial military recruitment given material factors related to their incorporation into the colonial capitalist economy. Following the trend of doubting the wider constructionist view of ethnic identity, revisionists argue that preexisting African military identities and concepts of honor were central in motivating African men to join colonial armies and therefore informed colonial marital race theory.7 Such a reconsideration collapses when looking at the emergence of military identities in Britain’s West African army. Strong military identities existed in precolonial West Africa, but they had little influence on long-term British colonial 5

Holger Bernt Hansen, “Pre-colonial Immigrants and Colonial Servants: The Nubians in Uganda Revised,” African Affairs 90, no. 361 (1991): 559–80; the Germans in East Africa also preferred “Sudanese” soldiers, see Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 48–49. 6 Parsons, African Rank-and-File; Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers. 7 Myles Osborne, Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya: Loyalty and Martial Race Among the Kamba, c.1800 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 101; Giacomo Macola, The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016), 154.

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military recruitment in the region driven by other factors. While this chapter examines the popular ethnic military stereotypes of Nigeria and Ghana that emerged from the colonial era, the next looks at the smaller territories of Sierra Leone and the Gambia where the British ultimately failed to find suitable martial tribes. Robust military identities and stereotypes developed in colonial Nigeria and the Gold Coast (today’s Ghana). Historians of both countries commonly repeat that these colonial armies consisted primarily of Muslim men recruited from the northern hinterland who possessed a martial reputation and excluded those from the southern coastal zone.8 These myths persist as in modern Nigeria where people commonly believe that Muslim northerners control the armed forces and that Christian southerners lack military aptitude. Nevertheless, archived military records reveal that colonial armies in Nigeria and the Gold Coast comprised a heterogeneous rank-and-file that fluctuated over time depending on various communities’ responsiveness to military recruiting, which then influenced changes to British beliefs about the innate martial traits of certain ethnic groups. While colonial militaries in Nigeria and Gold Coast eventually developed a northern-oriented ethos, they were never entirely composed of northerners, and their composition changed over time.

Northern Nigeria: The “Hausa Factor” Since the earliest British colonial military forces in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa consisted of formerly enslaved men from the north, many British officers developed a favorable impression of soldiers from a broadly defined Muslim Hausa hinterland identity. In the late nineteenth century, many of Britain’s locally recruited West African paramilitary units gained the name “Hausa Force,” and “Hausa soldiers” became a catchall phrase to describe any West African colonial troops. Eventually, the British came to see the Hausa as the region’s premier “martial race.”9 However, this did not 8 9

Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 175–76; Ibikunle Adeakin, “Military Identity in Nigeria,” in Forging Military Identity in Pluralistic Societies, edited by Daniel Zirker (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015), 47. Glover, “Volta Expedition,” 317–30; Ukpabi, “Military Recruitment,” 103; Mahdi Adamu, The Hausa Factor in West African History (Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1978), 165–66.

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mean that British officers viewed Hausa people as particularly warlike or violent. British officials and officers were well-aware that the Hausa states of Northern Nigeria had been conquered by the Fulani jihads who established the Sokoto Caliphate in the early 1800s. Although not all British officers in West Africa agreed, many saw the Hausa as particularly disciplined, intelligent, loyal, courageous, and physically strong. In the 1890s, British Hausa language scholar Charles Henry Robinson explained that the Hausa “are a nation not of soldiers but of traders, and though they excel all the coast tribes in their power of fighting, they excel them far more in their trading and commercial enterprise.”10 Comparing these West African troops to another famous “martial race,” a British military publication professed that “the Hausas are not unlike the Ghoorkas (Gurkhas), good-natured, quick, faithful and brave. In physique they are strong and wiry, and their tenacity and endurance are extraordinary.”11 An SNR officer claimed, “The Haussa [sic] is far and away superior to any other west coast tribe, both intellectually and physically.”12 In the 1920s, a British official maintained, “The Hausa is a fierce fighting man, and if properly led . . . is a most excellent native soldier.”13 Readily accepting these compliments, many Hausa soldiers considered the colonial army “their monopoly.” In April 1898, at the camp of the newly formed WAFF in Lokoja, Hausa troops clashed with their Yoruba colleagues “whom they regarded as intruders.”14 The founding WAFF commander and a central player in the British colonization of Nigeria, Lugard preferred Hausa soldiers, although he was pragmatic about recruitment.15 Nevertheless, a few British officers expressed skepticism over the emerging military cult of the Hausa. In 1889, an officer inspecting the Royal Niger Constabulary admitted that the force’s one hundred Hausa troops comprised its “best fighting material,” but he doubted they would fight fellow 10 Charles Henry Robinson, Hausaland: Or Fifteen Hundred Miles through the Central Soudan (London: Sampson Low Marston, 1898), v. 11 Navy and Army Illustrated, 5 May 1900, 167. 12 Lennox, West African Frontier Force, 51. 13 Archibald Campbell Douglas, Niger Memories (J. Townsend, 1927), 66 and 121. 14 NA (UK) CO 445/8, “Report By Lt. Col. T. D. Pilcher, Northumberland Fusiliers, of the work done in 1897 and 1898 in raising and organizing the 1st Battalion West African Frontier Force,” London, 9 March 1899, 13. 15 F. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1922), 575.

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Muslims, and other officers told him that they were unsteady, fired wildly, and made poor NCOs. Within the RNC, 250 soldiers from the Gold Coast called “Elminas” appeared steadier in action, easier to manage, and made effective NCOs.16 In colonial Nigeria, the British-led military contributed to the ongoing expansion of Hausa language and identity.17 This related to the British desire to impose a single working language on the colonial army in Nigeria, which was an area of great linguistic diversity. The original WAFF of 1898–99 comprised Hausa, Yoruba, and Nupe companies, each of which used its own language, and the force used a total of five different languages.18 In 1900, Lugard abolished the ethno-linguistic companies to encourage “the universal use of Hausa as the language of the West African Frontier Force.”19 The informal spread of Hausa language among the rank-and-file had already started. As a WAFF battalion commander observed, “The majority of the Nupe’s can now speak a certain amount of Hausa.”20 Since the British conquest of northern Nigeria at the start of the 1900s had “tapped a good recruiting area,” the NNR halted the enlistment of Yoruba from the south who constituted a substantial portion of the unit. Nonetheless, the British military in newly occupied Northern Nigeria struggled to recruit local Hausa men who preferred earning a living through trade, and therefore, “the difficulty of the mixture of languages seems much the same, since some of the newly enlisted races do not speak Hausa.”21 Serving in the mounted infantry in Northern Nigeria during the first decade of the twentieth century, a British officer wrote: It was misnomer to call the soldier of the N.N. Regt. Hausa, as the proportion of this tribe was small, the recruits being obtained from every direction—some 16 NA (UK) FO 881/5913, Report by Major MacDonald of his visit as Her Majesty’s Commissioner to the Niger and Oil Rivers, March 1890, 81. 17 For Hausa identity see Frank A. Salamone, “Becoming Hausa: Ethnic Identity Change and its Implications for the Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Stratification,” Africa; Journal of the International Africa Institute 45, no. 4 (1975): 410–24. 18 NA (UK) CO 445/8, “Report by Pilcher,” London, 9 March 1899, 4 and 10. 19 F. Lugard, “Colonial Report on Northern Nigeria, 1900–1901,” no. 346, February 1902, 25. 20 NA (UK) CO 445/8, “Report by Pilcher,” London, 9 March 1899, 18. 21 NA (UK) CO 445/19, Report on NNE, 1904, Brigadier G. V. Kemball, 20 February 1905.

62  ❧  chapter t wo of the best coming from far up the Niger in French territory, also from distant Chad and beyond. The term Hausa originated along the coast when all people from the North were heaped together as “Hausas.”22

Problems recruiting Hausa men continued for many years. In 1936, a Northern Nigeria emir stated that his Hausa young men avoided joining the military or police because they would lose status.23 Similarly, by 1939 northern Muslim elites associated the army with immoral practices such as drinking alcohol or sexual promiscuity and, as a result, soldiering became a job for rural pagans and urban poor.24 The percentage of Hausa troops in Britain’s colonial military in Nigeria dropped constantly during the first half of the twentieth century. From 1914 to the mid-1920s, Hausa troops constituted around 40 percent of the rankand-file of the Nigeria Regiment (NR). The numbers declined sharply in the late 1920s, and by 1937, although they were still the largest single ethnic group in the NR, Hausa represented about 20 percent of the troops. The same process did not happen with other Northern Nigerian Muslim ethnicities as between 1905 and 1939, the number of Kanuri men from the northeast and Fulani remained stable with several hundred soldiers from each group. From the mid-1920s, the military compensated for the loss of Hausa and, as we will see, Yoruba troops by increased recruitment from new sources. These included “Middle Belt” and northern traditionalists such as the Tiv, Dakakari, and “unclassified northern pagans.” It also included many labor migrants from adjacent French territory such as present-day Niger and the former German Cameroon, and many “miscellaneous southerners” and unidentified “others.” Reflecting broader society, the NR of the interwar years became increasingly diverse with several dozen different ethnicities and ethnic groupings represented in the ranks.25 22 Herbert C. Hall, Barrack and Bush in Northern Nigeria (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1923), 37. 23 Robert Heussler, The British in Northern Nigeria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 120. 24 Bryan Sharwood Smith, Recollections of British Administration in the Cameroons and Northern Nigeria, 1921–1957: “But Always As Friends” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1969), 140. 25 NA (UK) CO 445/27, Report on NNR, 1908, Brigadier T. Morland, 25 February 1908; CO 445/62, Report on NR, 27 April 1923, Colonel A. H. W. Haywood; CO 820/3/13, Report on NR 1927–28, Colonel S. S. Butler, 9 February 1928; 820/15/13, Report on NR, 1932–33, Brigadier C. C.

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To support its command language, the British military in Northern Nigeria organized Hausa language instruction. The 1902 killing of a British officer in Zaria, related to a misunderstanding created by a Hausa interpreter, inspired Lugard to institutionalize Hausa teaching and examination for British officers in the north.26 In 1904–5, the NNR launched plans to offer Hausa language courses for all its officers. By 1906 British personnel in the north were undertaking “lower standard” and “colloquial” Hausa examinations, and Hausa became an optional subject in the British Army Staff College entrance examination.27 Hausa was also spreading quickly among the regiment’s African troops. In 1905 the NNR commanding officer reported that a mixture of languages represented a temporary problem among recruits as “Most Non-Hausa speaking soldiers after they have been a short time in the ranks, pick up Hausa.”28 A 1907 report maintained, “Hausa is and will always remain the language of the Force as Recruits who do not speak it on joining, pick it up in a very short time.”29 In 1914, Lugard, claiming that the stability of colonial rule created economic opportunities that discouraged Hausa and Yoruba from enlisting, explained that the increasing number of “pagan” recruits “learn Hausa with wonderful facility, so that the language question presents small difficulty.”30 Of course, the regiment’s capacity to teach Hausa language either formally or informally limited the scale of recruiting among traditionalist minorities. In early 1917, Lugard responded with ambivalence to suggestions from London that the NR increase enrolment of northern “primitive pagans” to reinforce Nigerian units fighting in East Africa. He did not object to enlisting some “for they rapidly learn the Hausa language and become practically Hausas, but if any large numbers are

26 27 28 29 30

Norman, 4 March 1933; CO 820/25/4, Report on NR 1936–37, Major General G. Giffard, 18 February 1937. John Edward Philips, “Hausa in the Twentieth Century: An Overview,” Sudanic Africa 15 (2004): 55–84. NA (UK) CO 445/19, Report on NNR, 1904, Brigadier G. V. Kemball, 20 February 1905; CO 445/26, “Hausa,” 27 April 1907. NA (UK) CO 445/19, Lt. Col. A. W. G. Lowry-Cole to High Commissioner Lugard, Zungeru, 11 February 1905. NA (UK) CO 445/25, Report on NNR, 1906–7, Brigadier T. Morland, 16 February 1907. NA (UK) 445/34, Governor General F. Lugard to L. Harcourt, Secretary of State for Colonies, London, 3 July 1914.

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enlisted the language question becomes a source of great difficulty.”31 NR Commandant Francis Jenkins shared this skepticism of enlarging “pagan” enrolment as recruits’ background informed their ability to learn Hausa. He reported that those northern “primitive pagans” who had already enlisted in the regiment were “men who have come into contact with the world outside their own country,” and warned about trouble acquiring recruits from more remote communities as “the language difficulty would be very great if we did get them.”32 While the NR approved a scheme to recruit several hundred “good fighting men” from the interior of occupied Cameroon in 1915, concerns about introducing yet another language to the unit limited the number of recruits.33 The challenges around language are reflected by a photograph of Nigerian soldiers taken during the First World War and published with a caption reading “The Tower of Babel: Twelve men from one Company of Mounted Infantry all of different tribes, each with their own separate language.”34 As the regiment became increasingly diverse during the late 1920s, the new recruit depot in Zaria employed more instructors from minorities who knew the recruits’ languages and could teach Hausa.35 At the start of the 1940s, in the context of a rapidly expanding wartime Nigeria Regiment, a Kaduna-based British officer observed that “Pagans from remote villages who had known little of the language (Hausa) before enlistment soon picked up a rough-and-ready version in the lines.”36 By the 1950s the NR recruited extensively among the “pagans” of Bauchi Province in the north who spoke more than sixty languages and therefore “it became natural for recruits to acquire Hausa as their common mode of speech very quickly.”37

31 NA (UK) 445/40, Governor General Frederick Lugard to Secretary of State for Colonies Walter H. Long, Government House, Nigeria, 13 March 1917. 32 For the quote see NA (UK) CO 445/40, Francis Jenkins to A. H. W. Haywood, Kaduna, 22 February 1917; similar points are made in NNA, Kaduna, SNP 28/1917, Francis Jenkins to Governor, I March 1917, Lagos. 33 NNA (Ibadan) CSO 1629, Nigeria Regiment: Enlistment of Recruits in the Cameroons, 18 May 1915. 34 Nigeria and the Great War, (Lagos: Nigeria Overseas Forces Comfort Fund, no date, 1917 or 1918), University of Ibadan Library. 35 NA (UK) CO 820/3/13, Report on NR 1927–28, Colonel S. S. Butler, 9 February 1928, Lagos. 36 Charles Carfrae, Chindit Column (London: William Kimber, 1985), 39. 37 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 15.

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Mirroring the administrative system of indirect rule in northern Nigeria38 in which British control relied on a compliant network of Muslim emirs, the locally recruited and primarily Hausa NNR of the early 1900s consisted of a Muslim majority. However, fear of the unifying potential of Islam, painfully demonstrated by a 1906 uprising in Satiru,39 influenced the British policy that the regiment contain a sizable portion of non-Muslim troops. This non-Muslim contingent could not be Christian, however, as this would alienate the northern Muslim elites. Just as British officials limited the activities of Christian missionaries in northern Nigeria, officers imposed a near ban on recruiting Christians for the NNR. And in 1910, there was just one Christian among the force’s 3,142 troops. Such religious sensitivity meant that the British recruited from the isolated traditionalist communities of northern Nigeria and the Middle Belt (Central Nigeria) while simultaneously developing Hausa as the unit’s lingua franca.40 As early as 1901, Lugard thought it important to balance the number of Muslim and “pagan” soldiers, and he planned “to make the West African Frontier Force, as far as possible, a Hausa-speaking pagan force.”41 In 1908, as the non-Muslim Yoruba portion of the NNR was rapidly declining in favor of local northern recruitment, WAFF inspector general Brigadier T. Morland emphasized, “It is important to increase the non-Mahummedan [sic] element as much as possible.”42 A year later Morland was pleased to report a rise in the recruitment of “Hausa

38 For indirect rule in Northern Nigeria John M. Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria, 1898–1914 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1985); Muhammad S. Umar, Islam and Colonialism: Intellectual Responses of Muslims of Northern Nigeria to British Colonial Rule (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Andrew E. Barnes, Making Headway: The Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial Northern Nigeria (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009). 39 R. A. Adeleye, “Mahdist Triumph and British Revenge in Northern Nigeria: Satiru 1906,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 6, no. 2 (June 1972): 193–214; Paul E. Lovejoy and J. S. Hogendorn, “Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905–6,” Journal of African History 31 (1990): 217–44. 40 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on the Northern Nigeria Regiment, 1910, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, 31 March 1911. 41 Lugard, “Northern Nigeria, 1900–1901,” 25; Philips, “Hausa in the Twentieth Century,” 59. 42 NA (UK) CO 445/27, Report on NNR, 1908, Brigadier T. Morland, 25 February 1908.

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speaking pagans.”43 Their number increased from 65 in 1907 to 131 in 1908 by extending recruiting to traditionalist communities such as the Tiv and Dakakari discussed below.44 By 1910, there were some 785 “pagans” in the regiment, including 451 who were not identified with a specific ethnic group. The Muslim portion of the rank-and-file dropped from 78 to 75 percent, inciting Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson to write, “I hope it will be possible to maintain this decrease.”45 The trend continued. In 1913 there were 1875 Muslims and 932 “pagans” in the NNR with the latter representing just over 31 percent of the unit. Concurrently, and as stated above, recruits who could not already speak Hausa learned it in the regiment so that in 1913 around twenty-five hundred soldiers spoke Hausa while just 310 did not.46 Upon the amalgamation of Nigeria and its colonial military in 1914, Governor Lugard acknowledged that the “pagan” soldiers of northern Nigeria were “not so liable to be infected by any wave of fanatical religious sentiment such as the temporary success of some ‘Mahdi’ may any day excite.”47 By the mid1930s, the rank-and-file of the colonial army in Nigeria consisted of about 50 percent Muslims, 40 percent traditionalists, and 10 percent Christians.48

43 NA (UK) CO 445/29, Report on NNR, 1909, Brigadier T. Morland, 24 April 1909. 44 NA (UK) CO 445/25, Report on NNR, 1906–07, Brigadier T. Morland, 16 February 1907; NA CO 445/27, Report on NNR, 1908, Brigadier T. Morland, 25 February 1908; NA CO 445/29, Report on NNR, 1909, Brigadier T. Morland, 24 April 1909. 45 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on NNR, 1910, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, 31 March 1911. 46 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report of NNR 1913, Lt. Col. J. B. Cockburn, Kaduna, 6 March 1914. 47 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Governor General F. Lugard to L. Harcourt, Secretary of State for Colonies, London, 3 July 1914; this is also quoted in John Barrett, “The Rank and File of the Colonial Army in Nigeria, 1914–18,” Journal of Modern African Studies 15, no. 1 (March 1977): 106; Barrett mistakenly dates the beginning of recruitment of “pagan” soldiers in northern Nigeria to the First World War. Colonial records indicate it began a decade earlier. 48 NA (UK) CO 820/21/8, Report on NR 1935–36, Colonel W. R. Meredith, Commandant, 12 February 1936, Kaduna.

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Middle Belt and Northern Minorities: “Fighting Pagans” By 1960, minority groups from the Middle Belt, such as the Tiv, featured prominently in the army of newly independent Nigeria.49 During the nineteenth century, the decentralized and traditionalist Tiv, inhabiting the Benue River area of eastern and northeastern Nigeria, gained a warrior reputation for resisting the expansionist and jihadist Sokoto Caliphate further north. Subsequently, between 1900 and 1906, corresponding with the British conquest of northern and eastern Nigeria, a series of British military expeditions sought to bring the Tiv under colonial rule.50 Prejudiced by their Hausa interpreters and soldiers from the north, the British colonizers of this period perceived the Tiv as “wild” and “uncivilized,” and referred to them by the demeaning Hausa term “Munchi.”51 In 1911, the SNR, faced with reduced recruits from Yoruba communities in western Nigeria, recruited several dozen “pagans” from the east and northeast but most were not retained as no one in the unit spoke their languages. Among these recruits were the first Tiv men to enlist in the colonial military. An experiment to groom a few of these “pagan” soldiers as NCOs to train other members of their ethnic groups seems to have failed.52 At the same time that the British were experimenting with Tiv recruits, a two-hundred-strong SNR detachment mounted a punitive raid on Tiv communities, inflicting perhaps a hundred casualties. At the time, British officers were interested in recruiting among the Tiv and other groups in the northeast, but they thought not enough enlisted to judge whether “they will prove successful soldiers.”53 In early 1917, with recruits needed for the East Africa campaign of the First World War, the NR again attempted to enlist Tiv now seen by some British officers as “fighting pagans” distinguished from “primitive pagans” and “non-combatant races” hired as supply carriers. Urged by West African 49 Luckham, Nigerian Military, 181. 50 Obaro Ikime, “The British Pacification of the Tiv, 1900–1908,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 7, no. 1 (1973): 103–9. 51 Moses E. Ochunu, Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 32. 52 NA (UK) CO 445/32, Report on SNR 1911, 6 March 1912, Brigadier General P. S. Wilkinson, Lagos. 53 NA (UK) CO 445/33, Report on SNR 1912, 24 February 1913, Major General P. S. Wilkinson, Lagos.

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recruiting director Colonel A. Haywood, who gained a favorable impression of Tiv fighting abilities leading the 1911 raid on their homeland, Lugard instructed the recruitment of as many Tiv as possible, and it was reported that they made very good soldiers. Nevertheless, some British officers and officials with experience in the northeast remained skeptical of Tiv military potential and believed such “pagans” became demoralized when traveling far from home, which army service would require.54 At the start of January 1918, “a fair number” of Tiv men were in uniform with company commanders praising their soldierly abilities and their rapid acquisition of Hausa language, earning them a positive reputation among Hausa and Fulani troops. Officials justified continued Tiv recruitment on the basis that they proved “more virile and less primitive” than their neighbors around the Benue River and that they had a warrior history of energetically resisting incursions by the Hausa, Fulani, and British. The total number of Tiv soldiers in the NR, however, remained relatively low as in December 1917 they comprised 41 out of 2,144 recruits in training.55 Though only a few Tiv men served outside Nigeria in the First World War (primarily in East Africa), some impressed their officers. In East Africa, a normally unarmed Tiv gun-carrier called Awudu Katsena picked up a rifle and single-handedly repelled a German assault, thereby winning the Military Medal.56 Although British officers thought that the Tiv demonstrated their soldiery potential during the war and thus meriting their expanded recruitment, this group represented a small, declining portion of the downsized NR of the early 1920s. In 1920–21, there were 57 Tiv soldiers out of 4,368 African rank-and-file, and in 1922–23, there were 11 Tiv out of 3,000 Nigerian troops.57 In early 1925, with a renewed emphasis on northern recruiting 54 NA (UK) CO 445/40, Lugard, 31 January 1917; Lugard to Walter H. Long, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 13 March 1917, Lagos; Colonel Francis Jenkins (Commandant Nigeria Regiment) to Colonel A. H. W. Haywood (Director of Recruiting), 22 February 1917, Kaduna. 55 NA (UK) CO 445/44, Nigeria: Recruiting; Major G. W. Moran to Commandant Nigeria Regiment, 1 January 1918, Kaduna; Osuntokun states that the Tiv were first recruited in “substantial numbers” by the colonial army during the war. See Nigeria in the First World War, 252–53. 56 Downes, With the Nigerians, 78–79. 57 NA (UK) CO 445/47, Reorganization Nigeria Regiment 1919, Report by Lieutenant Colonel C. Gibb; CO 445/56, Report on NR, Colonel A. H. W. Haywood, May 1921, Lagos; CO 445/62, Report on the Nigeria Regiment, 27 April 1923, Colonel A. H. W. Haywood, Lagos.

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and concerns that the many recruits from French territory would not remain in Nigeria after discharge (rendering them useless for reserve duty), WAFF inspector general Colonel R. D. F. Oldman endorsed a survey of Tiv country as a military recruiting ground. Although he recognized that the military was not actively recruiting in the Benue area, Oldman stressed that it contained a population of around 430,000 people who, though they disliked leaving home, represented “an intelligent and good fighting race.”58 By early 1926, 40 Tiv were undergoing recruit training at Zaria and although language problems made them “somewhat difficult to handle,” they showed potential as soldiers.59 At the start of the next year, officials declared the Tiv experiment a success, and their recruiting regularized. In the 3200-strong NR, the number of Tiv men increased steadily from 97 in 1927 to 117 in 1928 to 245 in 1931. During the 1930s, the regiment maintained about 200 to 250 Tiv soldiers evenly distributed across all its battalions, which would have indicated that they knew Hausa. Amounting to less than 10 percent of the regiment’s Depression-era strength, the Tiv component was sustained by limited but consistent recruiting in the Benue that produced between ten and twenty-five enlistees per year.60 Although British officers studied Tiv recruits for signs of inherent military aptitude, the incorporation of Tiv men into Britain’s colonial army in Nigeria took place within a broader economic context. The initial increase in Tiv enlistment corresponded with the construction of the railway and the emergence of a colonial capitalist economy, including taxation and cash cropping, in the Benue region during the 1920s. Throughout the Second World War, some six thousand Tiv and two thousand neighboring Idoma men served in the colonial army. Some of these men enlisted in the army to avoid labor conscription in the Jos tin mines where working conditions were extremely dangerous. Most of them were farmers struggling to pay colonial tax given the constant decline of the price of benniseed, their primary cash 58 NA (UK) CO 445/67, Report on NR 1924–25, Colonel R. D. F. Oldman, 12 March 1925, Lagos. 59 NA (UK) CO 445/68, Report on NR 1925–26, Colonel R. D. F. Oldman, 21 February 1926, Ibadan. 60 NA (UK) CO 820/1/17, Report on NR 1926–27, Colonel S. S. Butler, 22 February 1927, Zaria; CO 820/3/13, Report on NR 1927–28, Colonel S. S. Butler, 9 February 1928, Lagos; CO 820/11/9, Report on NR 1930–31, Brigadier C. C. Norman, 15 March 1931, Lagos; CO 820/25/4, Report on NR 1936–37, Major General G. Giffard, 18 February 1937, Lagos.

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crop, during the 1930s.61 According to Nigerian sociologist Justin Tseayo, himself a Tiv, these economic motivations for enlistment meant that “the notion of a ‘martial tribe’ is not sufficient explanation for the Tiv’s massive response to the military call.”62 Yet, the Second World War cemented the Tiv martial reputation. At the end of the 1940s, large numbers of Tiv men continued to enlist in the Nigeria Regiment with about 80 percent of Tiv applicants passing the medical examination, which was a much higher rate than for men from other areas: so British officials arranged to have sixty Tiv recruits dispatched to the army every quarter. Although Tiv recruits struggled during the first few weeks of training—as most could not speak Hausa or English—the addition of more Tiv NCOs as instructors assisted the transformation of these men into soldiers. In 1949, the head of the recruit training center at Zaria wrote, “I have always liked the Tiv as a soldier, and I’m sure they’re popular with other commanding officers.”63 Expanded Tiv military service during the Second World War significantly affected soldiers’ home communities in the Benue area. In the mid-1950s the governor of northern Nigeria, Byran Sharwood Smith, linked Tiv military experience and wartime service to the rise of Middle Belt consciousness in which the marginalized Christians and traditionalists of the lower part of the north around the Benue feared domination by the Muslim Hausa of the upper north in a future independent Nigeria. Smith claimed that Tiv participation in Middle Belt politics could be partly explained by the fact that they were of “fighting stock,” had performed “outstanding” service during the world wars, and would not “let their independence slip.”64 Other accounts maintain that the visit of Nigerian traditional leaders to West African military units in South Asia during the war illustrated to Tiv soldiers the disadvantages of coming from a decentralized society, as they lacked such high-status representatives. Subsequently, a group of Tiv sergeants resolved

61 J. I. Tseayo, Conflict and Incorporation in Nigeria: The Integration of the Tiv (Zaria, Nigeria: Gaskiya Corporation, 1975), 122–25; D. C. Dorward, “An Unknown Nigerian Export: Tiv Benniseed Production, 1900–1960,” Journal of African History 16, no. 3 (1975): 447. 62 Tseayo, Conflict and Incorporation, 125. 63 NNA (Kaduna) MAKPROF MIL 5, “Army Recruiting,” Commander N.R. Training Centre, Zaria to Resident, Benue Province, Makurdi, 2 August 1949. 64 Smith, Recollections, 342; Richard Tersoo Mnenga, J.S. Tarka: The Life of a Charismatic Leader (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2016).

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to create an equivalent position when they returned home.65 Unwilling to return to farming and disillusioned by unfulfilled expectations for good urban jobs, Tiv Second World War veterans played a key role in the emergence of the Tiv political movement during the late 1940s and 1950s. Their efforts eventually motivated the colonial state, in 1947, to recognize the first Tiv paramount chief, a former NR sergeant major turned native authority police chief called Makare Dzakpe. Continuing tensions over the political status of the Tiv homeland in Central Nigeria, and eventually electoral politics, led to violent protest and the deployment of the military to that area in 1947, 1960, and 1964.66 Northwestern Nigeria’s Dakakari (or Dakakeri or Lela) people provide a useful example of a smaller minority group that turned to the colonial military. In the nineteenth century, agricultural and traditionalist communities around Zuru in northwestern Nigeria, collectively called Dakakari, resisted the expansionist Kontagora Emirate, which was part of the Sokoto network and in the first decade of the twentieth century they battled the intruding British colonial state and economy.67 As such, British officials developed a negative opinion of the Dakakari with a 1905 report on Northern Nigeria stating, “The lawless Dakakerri are a source of continual trouble. Even the famine would not induce them to work for the liberal wages offered, and they prefer to live by plunder.  .  . . Coercive measures will have to be employed against this tribe.”68 In 1908, after the Dakakari attacked a British colonial patrol, an NNR punitive expedition ravaged their area.69 That same year, British officers raised the possibility of recruiting “pagan” men from 65 Oliver Owen, “Burma Boys: World War II, Memory and Popular Culture in Central Nigeria,” Popcast, Oxford University, 16 November 2018, https:// podcasts.ox.ac.uk/burma-boys-world-war-ii-memory-and-popular-­culturecentral-nigeria. 66 Tseayo, Conflict and Incorporation, 79–80; Remi Anifowose, Violence and Politics in Nigeria: The Tiv and Yoruba Experience (New York: Nok, 1982), 80–81; for the 1960 and 1964 episodes see Larry Diamond, Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic (London: Macmillan, 1988), 88 and 206; Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria, 182. 67 Colonial Report on Northern Nigeria for 1904, No. 476, November 1905, 72–73. 68 Colonial Report on Northern Nigeria for 1905–06, No. 516, January 1907, 56. 69 Colonial Report on NNR 1908–9, No. 633, March 1910, 16–17.

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Dakakari country (who were “said to make good soldiers”) as a way to dilute the Muslim element of the NNR and compensate for the departure of Yoruba troops from the southwest.70 Within a few months, 101 Dakakari soldiers enlisted with reports that they “have done well.”71 By 1910 the number had grown to 157.72 During the First World War, however, the British suddenly struggled to recruit Dakakari men, with officers highlighting the language barrier created by the fact that few Dakakari spoke Hausa and the reluctance of Dakakari wives to associate with women of other ethnic groups in military garrisons. In 1917, attempting to remedy these problems, the NR formed an ethnically homogenous Dakakari company based at Zungeru, a town in the northwest, and with specially selected Dakakari NCOs who also helped with recruiting.73 The number of Dakakari recruits rose marginally at the end of the war and it took a long time to build the Dakakari Company up to its establishment of 250 troops. During the first half of the 1920s, the total number of Dakakari soldiers in the NR remained around 100. In 1926, as part of a new program to attract an increased amount of northern “pagans” into the regiment, officers renewed efforts to recruit Dakakari men.74 The NR’s assistant commandant conducted a special recruiting tour of Dakakari country hoping to enlist a “considerable number of these Pagans” who, along with the Tiv, were viewed as “men of fine physique and good fighters.”75 The tour was successful and during the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Dakakari contingent gradually increased to around 200. By 1934, the Dakakari Company of First Battalion NR, reached its limit of 120 troops, and it was considered “popular and a success.”76 Additional Dakakari personnel were posted in small groups to other battalions around the country. A new 70 NA (UK) CO 445/27, Report on NNR, Brigadier T. Morland, 25 February 1908, Lokoja. 71 NA (UK) CO 445/29, Report on NNR 1908–09, Brigadier T. Morland, 24 April 1909, Lokoja. 72 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on NNR, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, 31 March 1911, Lokoja. 73 NA (UK) CO 445/44, Nigeria: Recruiting; Major G. W. Moran to Commandant Nigeria Regiment, 1 January 1918, Kaduna. 74 NA (UK) CO 445/68, Report on NR 1925–26, Colonel R. D. F. Oldman, 21 February 1926, Ibadan. 75 NA (UK) CO 820/1/17, Report on NR 1926–27, Colonel S. S. Butler, 22 February 1927, Zaria. 76 The composition of a rifle company changed from 250 to 120 men.

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recruiting system introduced in 1935, involving assigning quotas of recruits to various centers in the north, did not extend to Dakakari country where recruiting took place under “separate arrangements.”77 Although absent from colonial documents, these arrangements revolved around a Dakakari custom called “Golmo” whereby a young man works on his prospective father-in-law’s farm for seven years before marriage. This practice also represents a manhood initiation demonstrating hard work and courage. Nevertheless, up to the 1920s, this long period of initiation and work mitigated against Dakakari men joining the colonial army. To enable Dakakari men to enlist, British officials established a system whereby a Dakakari soldier sent a portion of his salary to his home area’s British district commissioner who forwarded it to his future in-laws, who then counted it in lieu of the customary agricultural labor. Soldiers who had already fulfilled a portion of their Golmo period negotiated with their prospective in-laws to pay off the remaining years. Military service became a substitute for the traditional period of initiative and servitude and furthered the incorporation of the Dakakari community into the colonial cash economy.78 The colonial state’s involvement in making Golmo payments for Dakakari soldiers continued to the 1950s.79 Although the Dakakari recruits learned Hausa during their basic training in Zaria, the Dakakari Company remained the NR’s 77 NA (UK) CO 820/19/9, Report on NR, 1934–35, Brigadier C. C. Norman, 15 February 1935, Lagos; for the quotes see CO 820/21/8, Report on Nigeria Regiment 1935–36, Colonel W. R. Meredith, Commandant, 12 February 1936, Kaduna. 78 Interview with John Alexander Milne, IWM, 15 November 1978, British NCO with the Nigeria Regiment from 1930 to 1939; for more on Golmo see Harold D. Gunn and F. P. Conant, Peoples of the Middle Niger Region; Northern Nigeria (International Africa Institute, 1960); Harris describes the Golmo and hints at the social and economic changes that colonial military service was causing among the Dakakari. See P. G. Harris, “Notes on the Dakarkari Peoples of Sokoto Province,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 68 (January to June 1938): 113–52. Today the hardship and bravery learned during Golmo is credited with encouraging Dakakari men to pursue military careers. See Ismail Adebayo, “Zuru: Kebbi Community where Soldiering is a Family Pride,” Daily Trust, 15 January 2017, https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/general/zuru-kebbicommunity-where-soldiering-is-a-family-pride/180785.html. 79 NNA (Kaduna) Zuru 120, “Soldiers Marriage Divorce Affairs,” Assistant District Officer Zuru to Private Taki Usara, 14 March 1950.

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only ethnically oriented company of the interwar period.80 These factors fostered a strong Dakakari martial reputation. A British colonial official in charge of the Kontagora Division during the Second World War recounted that “the ‘Daks’ were natural soldiers and made excellent NCOs.” Indeed, the crimson sling that Dakakari mothers used to carry their infants in led to a local saying that every Dakakari man had been born wearing a sergeant’s sash. Contributing to Britain’s war effort, the division supplied cotton and “an ever rising flow of recruits from those willing warriors the Dakakerri.”81 Hinting at the cultural impact of military service, an anthropological study of the early 1940s reported that Dakakari horn music resembled British military bugle calls and that the Dakakari made jewelry out of rifle cartridge clips obtained from the nearby Nigeria Regiment outpost at Zuru.82 A Dakakari soldier with fifteen years’ service in the Nigeria Regiment and a veteran of the Cameroon campaign of the First World War, Baragai Dabai accompanied a 1926 British trans-Sahara expedition that traveled from Northern Nigeria to Morocco. He was selected “simply for his stout-heartedness and amply justified his inclusion in the party.”83 Conducting a reenlistment campaign in northwestern Nigeria for Second World War veterans in 1946, Major T. W. Bonser reported on his visit to the Dakakari people: It has, I think, long been recognized that the Dak makes one of the RWAFF’s best soldiers due to a natural fighting instinct, loyalty and amenability to discipline. The reception to the party by the chiefs and inhabitants of Zuru was most impressive, and the first march of the band through the town drew over 2000 men, women and children marching behind in step! They are most militarily 80 Interview with Murray Lewis, IWM, 20 May 1979, commander of Dakakari Company from 1931 to 1933; CO 820/29/6, Report for the Nigeria Regiment, 1937, Brigadier D. P. Dickinson, 26 March 1938, Kaduna. 81 Smith, Recollections, 124–26. Ashley Jackson discusses how the traditional Tswana initiation called Bogwera helped prepare men for military training during the Second World War. See Ashley Jackson, Botswana, 1939–45: An African Country at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 60. 82 R. T. D. Fitzgerald, “The Dakarkari Peoples of Sokoto Province, Nigeria: Notes on Their Material Culture,” Man 42 (March–April 1942): 25–36. 83 D. R. G. Cameron, “A Journey Across the Sahara from Kano to Ouarghla,” Geographical Journal71, no. 6 (June 1928): 540; D. R. G. Cameron, A Sahara Venture (London: Edward Arnold, 1928), 7.

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By the late colonial period, the Dakakari gained popular association with the military and their warrior status seemed timeless. In the early 1960s, an American anthropologist studying the Dakakari claimed, “Their main occupations have always been farming and soldiering.”85 The Dakakari martial reputation continues today. “If there is one profession that the Dakarkari people of Zuru in Kebbis State are obsessed with it is the army,” reads a recent Nigerian newspaper report. “To every Zuru adult, there is no profession as dignifying as the military. In every Kilela’s (Dakarkari) family, it is common to find up to ten members of the family enlist[ed] in the army.”86 While Dakakari communities defended themselves from historic invaders, a specific colonial administrative program launched their special relationship with the Nigeria Regiment and the modern Nigerian armed forces.

The Rise and Fall of the Yoruba as a Colonial Martial Race Focusing on the late colonial era, some scholars assume that the British colonial military excluded Yoruba men from western Nigeria.87 One study of the Nigerian army of the 1950s and 1960s claimed, “the Yoruba, were most unwilling soldiers.”88 This, however, had not always been the case as many Yoruba men enlisted in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial army in Nigeria, and many British officers of that period considered the Yoruba a martial people. In the mid-1890s, after the British subjugation of the Yoruba states, Yorubaland became a productive area for colonial military recruitment. In 1898–99, Yoruba soldiers made up about half of the nine-hundred-strong first battalion of Lugard’s original WAFF, mostly recruited around Lagos and 84 ORDP, Bonser, “Re-enlistment Drive,” 20 November 1946, Major T. W. Bonser, Kaduna, Nigeria. 85 Allen Bassing, “Grave Monuments of the Dakakari,” African Arts 6, no. 4 (Summer 1973): 36–39. 86 Adebayo, “Zuru: Kebbi Community.” 87 E. C. Ejiogu, The Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria: Political Evolution and Development in the Niger Basin (London: Routledge, 2011), 160. 88 Miners, Nigerian Army, 27.

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Ibadan in western Nigeria and then posted to Lokoja at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers. Lieutenant Colonel T. D. Pilcher, the battalion’s commander, considered the Yoruba as better soldiering material than the Hausa, and he was particularly impressed by Yoruba men from Ibadan knowing the history of the city as a regional military power that had countered jihadist forces from the north. Pilcher applauded his Yoruba troops as “quick, intelligent and good shots, clean and neat in their appearance.” Seeing the historic military accomplishments of specific West African states as tied to individual skilled leaders, Pilcher questioned some of his British colleagues’ obsession with imagined martial races: “I have often doubted whether there really is any great difference in the fighting qualities of the different tribes.”89 Lieutenant Colonel H. S. Fitzgerald, commander of the WAFF’s second battalion, reported that the best Yoruba soldiers originated from the historic “war camps of Ogbomosho and Ikerun” and from Ibadan but that those from Oyo, which had declined as a precolonial military power at the start of the nineteenth century, proved useless. Mostly recruited at Ibadan and then deployed north on the Niger River at Jebba, the second battalion consisted of four Yoruba and two or three Hausa companies. Fitzgerald believed that his mostly Yoruba and Hausa troops were essentially the same in that they were “wonderfully amenable to discipline” but could become “easily discontented and mutinous” under impatient officers.90 Another WAFF officer of the late 1890s maintained, “The Yoruba is more amenable to discipline, cleaner and more intelligent . . . and appears to strive more than the Hausa to acquire the knowledge requisite to a fighting man.”91 At the start of the twentieth century, the large number of Yoruba enlisted in the colonial army in Nigeria prompted admiration of their martial qualities among British officers. The composition of the Lagos Battalion, formed in the 1860s as the Armed Hausa Police Force and representing the first locally recruited British colonial military unit in what would become Nigeria, did not reflect the primarily Yoruba population of the local hinterland. By 1902, when the battalion became part of the regional WAFF, some 344 out of its 474 soldiers were identified as Hausa, and it is noteworthy that these men had been born in Lagos and did not originate from the north. At the time, the battalion

89 NA (UK) CO 445/8, “Report by Pilcher,” 9 March 1899, 24. 90 NA (UK) CO 445/8, West African Frontier Force Reports for 1897–98, Lieutenant Colonel H. S. Fitzgerald, 31 March 1899, Aldershot. 91 Willcocks, From Kabul to Kumassi, 179.

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contained only 87 Yoruba troops, of whom twenty were bandsmen.92 The Lagos Battalion’s amalgamation with the new WAFF at the start of the 1900s meant that the unit’s favorable conditions of service for Lagos Hausa such as special housing and generous holidays for Muslim religious celebrations were eliminated and the booming port economy of Lagos opened up better opportunities. By 1905 the number of Hausa recruits joining the battalion sharply declined as experienced soldiers retired and new Hausa recruits no longer came from Lagos’ Hausa community but from among labor migrants arriving from northern Nigeria. As such, the number of Yoruba recruits admitted to the Lagos Battalion almost doubled. Although British officers realized that the location of the unit in western Nigeria meant “it would be easy to enlist any number of Yorubas,” they preferred to maintain the unit’s Hausa tradition and were willing to retain vacancies in a vain hope that Hausa men would enlist.93 The character of the Lagos Battalion further changed by its absorption into the expanded SNR. Although based in southeastern Nigeria with headquarters at Calabar, the SNR of the early 1900s consisted mostly of Yoruba soldiers recruited from the west around the Lagos hinterland, including Ibadan. Over 900 of the regiment’s 1,347 troops were Yoruba. Ethnically diverse, the unit also included several hundred Hausa soldiers, men from a dozen other ethnicities including eastern Nigerian ones and a few troops from the neighboring territories of Gold Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.94 Around 1907, the British military establishment in the western and eastern portions of southern Nigeria amalgamated, which meant that the SNR absorbed the longestablished and hitherto primarily Hausa Lagos Battalion. Within the new and larger SNR formation, Yoruba troops represented an overwhelming majority. A skeptical British official reported that “the increase in the proportion of Yorubas is regrettable as though good peace soldiers they are not a very martial race.”95 Brigadier Morland’s hope that the expansion of the railway would enable more Hausa to travel south to join the SNR proved futile, and the enlistment of southeasterners such as the Igbo was hindered 92 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on Lagos Battalion, Brigadier G. V. Kemball, Lagos, 12 February 1903. 93 NA (UK) CO 445/23, Report on Lagos Battalion, Brigadier T. Morland, Lagos, 22 December 1905. 94 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on SNR, Brigadier T. Morland, Calabar, 5 December 1905. 95 NA (UK) CO 445/28, notes on Inspector General’s report, 24 February 1908.

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by continued military operations in that area and British prejudice toward them. With Morland recognizing that Yoruba communities represented an almost limitless source of recruits, the number of Yoruba soldiers in the SNR increased as the number of Hausa decreased.96 In 1909, the SNR’s largest ethnic contingents of recruits were 195 Yoruba and 80 Hausa.97 At the start of 1910 Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Trenchard, a veteran of seven years fighting in southeastern Nigeria who had just reorganized the SNR (and later founded the Royal Air Force), responded to administrative demands that he persist in trying to recruit southeasterners. He maintained, “From a Military point of view I consider the Yoruba is the best fighting man, indigenous to the country.  .  . . I think it better to keep enlisting our well tried race of Yorubas.”98 In 1913, just prior to its integration into the new NR, the SNR consisted of two similar battalions; one centered on Lagos in the west and the other on Calabar in the east. Each battalion comprised around 950 soldiers of which 540 were Yoruba and 320 were Hausa with the rest originating from many different ethnic communities including a small but growing number of southeasterners.99 The Yoruba represented the premier colonial soldiers of southern Nigeria seen by many British officials as a “fighting race” and therefore differentiated from other southern ethnic groups categorized as “non-combatant races.” During the First World War, Nigeria’s Governor Lugard thought that “recruiting must of course be limited to the fighting races chiefly Hausa and Yoruba.”100 The prevalence of Yoruba soldiers in the colonial military of southern Nigeria did not last. In 1913, twelve hundred Yoruba soldiers filled the ranks of Nigeria’s colonial military. Encompassing just under a quarter of the fivethousand-strong force, they were by far the second-largest ethnic group in the ranks and a large majority in the southern-based battalions. However, 96 NA (UK) CO 445/28, Report on SNR, Brigadier T. Morland, Calabar, 11 January 1908. 97 NA (UK) CO 445/30, Report on SNR, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, Lagos, 12 January 1910. 98 NA (UK) CO 445/30, Lieutenant Colonel H. Trenchard, Commanding Officer, Southern Nigeria Regiment to Governor, Southern Nigeria, Lagos, 20 January 1910; for a biography see Russell Miller, Boom: The Life of Viscount Trenchard: Father of the Royal Air Force (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2016). 99 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on NR, February 1914, Brigadier C. Dobell, Appendix IV. 100 NA (UK) CO 445/40, Recruiting in Nigeria, F. Lugard, 31 January 1917.

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by 1919 the number of Yoruba troops in the NR dropped dramatically to 464, and by 1927 there were only 126 left, with most approaching the end of their service.101 Why did this happen? While British officials during the First World War intended to focus southern military recruiting on the apparently martial Yoruba,102 several developments hindered these efforts. In 1911 officials noticed that increased civilian wages in western Nigeria were starting to undermine military recruitment, but a pay raise for soldiers temporarily fixed the problem. However, the WAFF inspector general reported, “The increasing wealth of the Western Province where the greater proportion of our Yoruba recruits hail from—as well as the greater demand for well-paid labour on the Railway and in the Forest Department mitigates greatly against us keeping up the high standard so emphatically necessary for a soldier.”103 Along with economic change, western Nigeria was also becoming a center of anticolonial protest beginning in 1908 with a massive demonstration against water fees in Lagos. It was probably not a coincidence that during the next year, several recruiting parties toured Yorubaland without garnering a single enlistment.104 The colonial imposition of direct taxation in southern Nigeria in 1914, coupled with tensions related to the First World War, incited further violent resistance in Yorubaland, such as in Oyo in 1916 and Abeokuta in 1918. Complaints by African soldiers who returned to Nigeria from the Cameroon campaign in 1917 further discouraged recruiting in already troubled Yorubaland. Many returned troops demanded outstanding pay, rumors circulated of the denial of pensions to disabled veterans and that soldiers fighting in Cameroon had suffered greatly from hunger, and there was confusion over the granting of service medals.105 101 NA (UK) CO 445/51, Report on NR, May 1920, Colonel A. H. Haywood, p. 3; CO 820/3/13, Report on NR 1927–28, Colonel S. S. Butler, 9 February 1928, Lagos. 102 NA (UK) CO 445/41, Recruiting, Colonel A. H. W. Haywood to War Office, 5 February 1917, Zungeru. 103 NA (UK) CO 445/32, Report on the SNR 1911, 6 March 1912, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, Lagos. 104 NA (UK) CO 445/51, Report on NR, 1920, comments on report by Colonel G. T. Mair, Commandant, 14 June 1920, Kaduna. It seems the recruiting failure of 1909 was not widely reported at the time. 105 NA (UK) CO 445/47, reorganization Nigeria Regiment 1919, Report by Lieutenant Colonel C. Gibb; some of these points were made by Barrett, “Rank and File,” 105–15.

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In early 1917, with Nigerian troops fighting in East Africa, the colonial administrator of Oyo reported that military service had become very unpopular in the area and that he was working with local chiefs to encourage recruiting.106 As a result, and within the context of colonial indirect rule, the traditional leader (or Alafin) of Oyo compelled 150 men to enlist at Ibadan in 1917, but most of them deserted within a few days. At the end of 1917, there were 2144 recruits attending military training centers in Nigeria but only 217 were Yoruba.107 The use of traditional rulers to promote recruiting was almost certainly counterproductive, as their new administrative role in collecting tax, an authority they had never previously held, alienated them from their people.108 The 1914 amalgamation of the SNR and NNR as the Nigeria Regiment, concomitant with the administrative unification of Nigeria, produced a military institutional culture that favored recruiting in the north but not in the south. Officials located the headquarters of the new NR in Kaduna, a town recently founded by Lugard as the northern capital and established other important military facilities slightly farther north in Zaria. Furthermore, almost all of the regiment’s officers studied Hausa language and passed formal Hausa examinations, including those serving with southern-based battalions. Although British officers were required to pass a language test in Hausa or Yoruba before the end of their first tour of duty in Nigeria, many considered the latter much more difficult to learn, meaning that very few took that option.109 This likely reflected Hausa’s evolution and spread as a trade language throughout West Africa and Yoruba’s many complex regional variations. In 1919 and the early 1920s, British officers in Nigeria worried over the continuing decline in the quantity and quality of Yoruba recruits. The economic lure of civilian life continued to undercut army recruiting among Yoruba communities in the west, where successful agricultural cooperatives 106 NA (UK) CO 445/40, Nigeria Recruiting 1917, Francis Jenkins, Commandant, Nigeria Regiment to Colonel A. H. W. Haywood, Assistant Director Recruiting West Africa, 22 February 1917, Kaduna, 3; the antitax rebellions see Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 132. 107 NA (UK) CO 445/44, Recruiting, 1918, Major G. W. Moran, 1 Jan 1918, Kaduna. 108 Falola and Heaton, History of Nigeria, 132. 109 NA (UK) CO 445/44, Recruiting, 1918, Major G. W. Moran, 1 Jan 1918, Kaduna.

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with state support emerged during the interwar era. In 1920 British officers believed that the primary reason for lack of recruits was that Yorubaland offered attractive economic prospects for traders and the comparatively low pay of African troops did not match the rising cost of living.110 Lamenting the loss of a good recruiting area, the commander of the Nigeria Brigade wrote that “Yorubaland used to produce the best, but now only the most inferior. It is probably a matter of pay or lack of it.”111 Lieutenant Colonel C. Gibb, whose Nigerian battalion of both Hausa and Yoruba soldiers fought well in Cameroon and East Africa, reported that “it would be a matter for regret if this large source of supply which has produced so many excellent soldiers, had to be closed.”112 These concerns inspired a series of attempts to revive Yoruba enlistment. Another attempt was made for the Alafin and other Yoruba chiefs to encourage recruiting, officers experimented with forming entirely Yoruba companies also considered a security risk given recent protests in Yorubaland and the relocation of Fourth Battalion headquarters to Ibadan was hoped to have a positive impact on local enlistment.113 Although some suitable Yoruba recruits applied to join the NR in 1921 and early 1922, postwar military reduction meant that these men were not enrolled and found alternative employment. Consequently, men from other ethnic groups and regions replaced Yoruba soldiers discharged at the end of their contracts.114 When recruiting restarted a few months later in western Nigeria, so few Yoruba came forth that military authorities abandoned a plan to form an all-Oyo platoon within the Ibadan-based Fourth Battalion.115 Around 1923 and 1924, the colonial military in Nigeria gave up trying to recruit Yoruba men. And within the context of a major postwar 110 NA (UK) CO 445/51, Report on NR, May 1920, Colonel A. H. Haywood, 3. 111 NA (UK) CO 445/47, Reorganization Nigeria Regiment 1919, comments by Brigadier General Cunliffe. 112 NA (UK) CO 445/47, Reorganization Nigeria Regiment 1919, comments by Lieutenant Colonel C. Gibb. 113 NA (UK) CO 445/56, Report on NR, March 1921, Colonel A. H. W. Haywood; Enclosure to Governor’s Confidential Dispatch, Colonel G. T. Mair, Commandant, 6 March 1921; Colonel G. T. Mair to Acting Governor of Nigeria, 21 April 1921, Kaduna. 114 NA (UK) CO 445/60, Report on NR 1922, Colonel A. H. W. Haywood, 5 April 1922, Lagos. 115 NA (UK) CO 445/62, Report on NR 1923, Colonel A. H. W. Haywood, 27 April 1923, Lagos, 20.

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reorganization, the NR shifted the focus of enlistment to the north. In 1923 Haywood wrote a report for the Colonial Office on military manpower in British West Africa that categorized hinterland peoples, including those of Nigeria’s north and Middle Belt, as natural “combatants” suitable for the colonial army and labeled the inhabitants of the coastal forest belt, including Nigeria’s Yoruba and Igbo, as intrinsically “non-recruitable.” The paper erroneously stated that there had never been any problem recruiting Hausa men from northern Nigeria and omitted previous Yoruba military service.116 After the First World War, most of the men joining the southern-based Third and Fourth Battalions were either labor migrants from the north or northerners rejected by the First and Second Battalions in their home region. At this point, recruiting and recruit training fell under the responsibility of each separate battalion. The governor reported, “In the Yoruba country men of that race are not offering themselves for enlistment and men of other southern races have been tried and found unsuitable.”117 In 1924, in the wake of Haywood’s report emphasizing interior “martial races,” the NR established a central recruit training depot in the northern town of Zaria and divided the northern region into a network of areas, each with a quota of recruits. With their training completed at Zaria, including Hausa language instruction in a Hausa environment, new soldiers received appointments to battalions and other units across the country.118 By the late 1920s, it appeared that the few remaining Yoruba soldiers represented the last ones in the NR, and the Yoruba language examination option for officers fell away. As such, the Yoruba lost their colonial reputation as a martial race. With the decline of one Yoruba military stereotype, another arose. In May 1930, the NR experimented with recruiting signalers among young Yoruba men who had attended Western-style schools and were literate in English. Missionary education was much stronger in western Nigeria than the north or center. The regiment’s introduction of wireless communication during the 1920s had revealed that the existing complement of predominantly northern and Middle Belt soldiers did not have sufficient English proficiency to train as 116 NA (UK) CO 537/954, “Report on the Combatant Manpower of the Native Races of British West Africa,” 4 July 1923. 117 287NA (UK) CO 445/64, Recruiting Depot, 24 March 1924, Governor Hugh Clifford to Secretary of State for the Colonies J. H. Thomas, Government House, Nigeria, 4 March 1924. 118 NA (UK) CO 445/67, Report on NR, Colonel R. D. F. Oldman, 12 March 1925, Lagos.

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signalers, who had to read and write messages composed by British personnel unfamiliar with Hausa. The new signals training center in Zaria became the preserve of a small group of around sixty or seventy educated Yoruba troops who represented by far the largest single contingent of Yoruba soldiers in the NR at that time. It took these men half the time to train as signalers compared to other Nigerian troops.119 The new communications specialization of Yoruba troops resulted in their being stereotyped as “not quite up to the physical standard of the regiment” but “intelligent and quick to learn.”120 Two decades earlier, when officers saw the Yoruba as a “fighting race,” their physical size was rarely, if ever, mentioned. During the mid-1930s, the NR’s Zariabased artillery battery, widely accepted as the best subunit in the regiment, displayed the perceived physical and intellectual differences between northerners and southerners. The mostly Hausa gunners were specially selected for their impressive physique so they could manhandle the guns, and a section of Yoruba signalers and other specialists were characterized as small, educated, and more intelligent.121 As signalers, the NR’s few Yoruba soldiers worked in all company and battalion headquarters in close proximity to British officers. This caused bitterness among some racist British personnel who perceived the Yoruba (and later Igbo) signalers as being too clever and trying to expose the inadequacies of their white superiors. Similar factors led to conflict between the educated Yoruba signalers and uneducated Hausa riflemen. Since the signals training center was located in the north, the Yoruba communications specialists stood out and experienced isolation.122 The case of Yoruba enlistment in the Nigeria Regiment shows the fickleness of British opinions about African martial races. Over a twenty-year period, from around 1910 to 1930, Yoruba soldiers went from dominating the ranks of the infantry in southern Nigeria to occupying an important technical-intellectual niche within the modernizing but northern-oriented NR. From the British perspective, the Yoruba comprised a martial race when 119 NA (UK) CO 820/11/9, Report on NR, 1930–31, Brigadier C. C. Norman, 15 March 1931, Lagos; CO 820/15/13, Report on NR, 1932–33, Brigadier C. C. Norman, 4 March 1933, Lagos. 120 NA (UK) CO 820/17/12, Report on NR, 1933–34, Colonel W. R. Meredith, Commandant, 10 March 1934, Kaduna. 121 NA (UK) CO 820/21/8, Report on NR, 1935–36, Colonel W. R. Meredith, Commandant, 12 February 1936, Kaduna. 122 Interview with Leslie Muir Angus, IWM, 21 April 1979, British Sergeant Major in the Nigeria Regiment Signals School from 1929 to 1931.

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many of them enlisted in the army. They became a nonmartial race when they turned away from recruiters to pursue better civilian opportunities and then an intellectual martial race specializing in military communications. Yoruba ascendency over signals throughout the 1930s foreshadowed the much broader recruitment of Western-educated southern Nigerians into technical positions during the military expansion of the Second World War.

The Southeast: “Too Impatient of Any Form of Authority” Paradoxically, the popular stereotype of communities in southeastern Nigeria, where the Igbo constitute the largest ethnic group, as nonmartial seems to stem from their long resistance to colonialism. During the first decade of the twentieth century, the British colonial army mounted numerous expeditions to conquer the Igbo and other mostly decentralized peoples in this region.123 Notwithstanding this violent context, British officers attempted to recruit men in the southeast. In 1905, the SNR experimented with enlisting soldiers from the Ibam ethnicity of the Cross River. As the regiment’s Ibam gun carriers performed well in action, British officers thought this community represented “the best of the local native races as regards fighting qualities.”124 By 1908, however, the attempt to recruit Ibam men had failed, which was explained on the basis that “most of the local tribes are too impatient of any form of authority to submit voluntarily to military discipline.”125 At the time, the only southeasterners in the SNR were twenty-eight Efik from Calabar, mostly bandsmen, and twenty-five soldiers from other groups. The lack of southeastern recruits stimulated suggestions from officers that the regiment should import Asante troops from the Gold Coast, where they had fought the British several times, but this did not transpire, as there was a ban 123 A. E. Afigbo, The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885– 1950 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006); John Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria, 1898–1914 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1985); J. W. Nwabara, Iboland: A Century of Contact With Britain, 1860–1960 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1978); M. A. Okoro and M. B. Ezumah, Perspectives on Aro History and Civilization, vol. 1 (Lulu, 2014); Andrew Godefroy, ed., Bush Warfare: The Early Writings of General Sir William Heneker (Kingston, ON: Government of Canada, 2009). 124 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on SNR, Brigadier T. Morland, Calabar, 5 December 1905. 125 NA (UK) CO 445/28, notes on Inspector General’s report, 24 February 1908.

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on enlisting such a rebellious people in the colonial army.126 The main difficulty in recruiting from groups in southeastern Nigeria like the Ibam was that military instructors from other parts of the country could not speak their languages. Around 1911 and 1912, British officers discussed the likelihood of enlisting Ekuri men from the east side of the Cross River as their language was similar to the Tiv also being targeted for recruitment.127 While it appears that the Ekuri experiment was unsuccessful, this period saw the first enrollment of Igbo soldiers in the colonial army in Nigeria.128 In 1917, facing recruiting demands for the East Africa campaign, the colonial military undertook another experiment in the southeast by enlisting some 250 Ezza men, although there were the usual concerns about language. While British officers were aware of the historic military prowess of the Ezza among the broader Igbo people, the trial failed, as many of the men deserted the Okigwi training center due to their seeming reluctance to travel away from their home on army service. Therefore, officers stopped recruiting among the Ezza and focused on enlisting other Igbo and Bene men in the region.129 The British continued to think that since men from the southeast had worked as gun and supply carriers during the recent conquest campaigns, they might graduate to the ranks of armed soldiers. Although some three hundred Igbo recruits left a positive impression on British officers at the Ibadan training center in 1917, Brigadier F. G. Cunliffe misidentified a group of partially trained and physically unfit northern soldiers who arrived in East Africa in 1918 as Igbo and therefore concluded that all Igbo were militarily inferior to other Nigerian peoples. Lugard realized that Cunliffe, who had no experience among the Igbo, had made a blunder, but the matter dropped amid the armistice.130 Nevertheless, British officers’ negative mili126 NA (UK) CO 445/28, Report on SNR, Brigadier T. Morland, Calabar, 11 January 1908. 127 NA (UK) CO 445/32, Report on the SNR, 1911, 6 March 1912, Brigadier General P. S. Wilkinson, Lagos. 128 NA (UK) CO 445/33, Report on SNR, 1912, 24 February 1913, Major General P. S. Wilkinson, Lagos. 129 NA (UK) CO 445/40, Governor General Frederick Lugard to Secretary of State for Colonies Walter H. Long, Government House, Nigeria, 13 March 1917; CO 445/44, Nigeria: Recruiting; Major G. W. Moran to Commandant Nigeria Regiment, 1 January 1918, Kaduna; for Ezza pre-colonial military history see Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (London: Macmillan, 1976), 75–93. 130 John Barrett, “Colonial Army in Nigeria, 1914–18,” 107–8.

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tary attitude toward southeastern Nigerians continued. At the start of 1919 Brigadier Cunliffe, reporting on the NR’s experience during the First World War, stated that “Ibos, Ezzas and the Cross River tribes are not, as a general rule, of any value.”131 This arbitrary opinion partly informed the exclusive northern recruiting policy initiated in the 1920s. The small number of Igbo soldiers in the NR declined steadily from 147 in 1920 to 38 in 1928. During the 1930s, there appear to have been no Igbo soldiers nor any other southeasterners in the NR, or their number was so low that they counted among several hundred members of unspecified “other tribes” or “tribes not mentioned above.”132 It is also not coincidental that this departure of southeasterners from Nigeria’s colonial army overlapped with the introduction of direct taxation in the southeast in 1926 and the consequent intensification of anticolonial resistance in the area such as the famous 1929 “Women’s War” and continuing antitax protest during the Depression years. Southeastern Nigeria was not a friendly place for military recruiters.133 British officers began to see southeastern Nigerians as too tainted and softened by Christian missions and Western civilization to make good colonial soldiers meant to be stoic and unquestioning. Nonetheless, the enormous military mobilization of the Second World War coupled with the decline of resistance in the southeast and the military’s need for literate soldiers for technical services resulted in the enlistment of thousands of southeasterners, including Igbo, in Nigeria’s colonial army. They often served in support roles such as clerks, drivers, mechanics and signalers reinforcing the notion that southerners, in general, were not true fighting men.134 A Yoruba signaler who enlisted in 1941 later remembered that “the Hausas regarded the 131 NA (UK) CO 445/47, reorganization Nigeria Regiment 1919, 31 January 1919, Brigadier General Cunliffe. 132 NA (UK) CO 445/51, Report on the Nigeria Regiment, May 1920, Colonel A. H. Haywood; CO 820/3/13, Report on the Nigeria Regiment for 1927– 28, Colonel S. S. Butler, 9 February 1928; CO 820/11/9, Report on the Nigeria Regiment for 1930–31, Brigadier C. C. Norman, 15 March 1931, Lagos; CO 820/25/4, Report on the Nigeria Regiment for 1936–37, Major General G. Giffard, 18 February 1937, Lagos. 133 Chima Korieh, The Land Has Changed: History, Society and Gender in Colonial Eastern Nigeria (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2010), 123–61; Gloria Chuku, Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 1900–1960 (London: Routledge, 2015), 203–33; Falola and Heaton, History of Nigeria, 133–34. 134 Miners, Nigerian Army, 24.

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southerners joining the army at that time as odd people who were in a job not meant for them. To them, we were like imposters.”135 After the Second World War, Britain’s downsized colonial military in Nigeria reverted to a northern-focused recruiting policy and southerners, particularly the Igbo, considered too politically conscious and therefore a security risk, were demobilized.136 This era witnessed Nigeria’s 1945 general strike, the rise of the National Council of Nigeria, and the Cameroons (NCNC) led by American-educated Igbo journalist Nnamdi Azikiwe and the radical “Zikists” who called for the violent expulsion of the British.137 Reacting against the rise of Nigerian nationalism in the south, British officers and NCOs in the late 1940s Nigeria saw Igbo troops as “too clever” and disparaged them with the India-derived term “savvy wallas.”138 In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Northern Nigerians enlisted as either military tradesmen or nontradesmen (meaning infantry) while southerners (westerners and southeasterners) could only join the military as tradesmen making up about 20 percent of the annual intake. Additionally, the many southerners living and working in the north could not enlist in the military in that region and would have to return to their home areas to do so, therefore discouraging many recruits. In 1950 the commander of the NR instructed British officials in the north, “We only want men of northern origin, and Tivs from Benue.”139 Originating with the military expansion and modernization of the Second World War, the division of Nigeria’s military forces into combat and support elements continued in the postwar years and furthered ethnic polarization within the army with infantrymen predominantly coming from the north and rear-echelon troops from the south. Given the decolonization process of the 1950s, and related attempts to Africanize the officer corps of Britain’s West African colonial army, many of 135 Sampson Adesugba, Union Soldier: The Autobiography of Sampson Adesugba (Lulu.com, n.d.), 34. 136 Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 175–76. 137 Falola and Heaton, History of Nigeria, 144–45; Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani, Britain, Lefts Nationalists and the Transfer of Power in Nigeria, 1945–1965 (New York: Routledge, 2006). 138 IWM, Interview with Harold Mathewson Conn, 13 August 2004, NCO in the Nigeria Regiment from 1947 to 1949. 139 NNA (Kaduna) KANPROF 3732A, “Guide to Administrative Officers When Selecting Recruits for Enlistment in the RWAFF,” 1 April 1948; D. B. Wright, Acting Secretary Northern Provinces, Kaduna to Resident Kano, 21 September 1948; for the quote see Brigadier to Residents, 10 July 1950.

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the initial Nigerian officers were Igbo whose home region offered comparatively better opportunities for Western education through the activities of Christian missionaries. This caused tension within the Nigerian army of the 1960s whereby a mainly northern and poorly educated rank-and-file with a martial self-image resented their new southeastern officers seeing them as inferior soldiers.140 Such attitudes persisted. At the beginning of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70), British diplomats and Nigeria’s northern military rulers underestimated the principally Igbo troops of secessionist Biafra as “a rabble of cooks and bottle washers who would be no match for the Britishtrained Nigerian Army.”141

Gold Coast Originating as an expeditionary force from Lagos sent to the Gold Coast in the 1870s, the Gold Coast Regiment (GCR) of the early twentieth century consisted of a core of Hausa and Yoruba soldiers recruited from Nigeria and supplemented by some Mende and Temne troops from Sierra Leone. In 1902, the first battalion GCR, based in the south with around thirteen hundred men, operated nine companies including four comprising Nigerian troops and one made up of men from Sierra Leone. The regiment actively recruited in Lagos and in 1902, some 100 recruits originated from there compared to 210 from the Gold Coast.142 Nevertheless, it was becoming obvious to officials that Nigerian and Sierra Leonean troops serving on the Gold Coast suffered poor morale as they lacked wives and disliked the local food. These issues sometimes led to desertion. As such, in 1905 British military authorities planned to phase out the regiment’s Nigerian and Sierra Leonean soldiers, many of whom were about to finish their terms of service and expand recruitment among the indigenous people of the Gold Coast.143 This ambition, however, faced several limiting factors. Firstly, from the 1890s, the 140 Miners, Nigerian Army, 12–74; Luckham, Nigerian Military; Ali Mazrui, ed., The Warrior Tradition in Modern Africa (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1977), 148. 141 Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue (New York: Putnam, 2015), 154. 142 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Annual Report 1st Battalion GCR, 1902, Major W. Reeve, 1 January 1903. 143 NA (UK) CO 445/19, Report on the 1st Battalion GCR, 1905, Brigadier G. V. Kemball, Sekondi, 23 March 1905.

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Fante men of the southern Gold Coast developed a tradition of enlisting in the colonial civil police (much disparaged by officers and men of the GCR), and southern people enjoyed other employment options in their home area’s coastal economy.144 Secondly, colonial authorities imposed a ban on military recruitment in Asante located in the middle of the territory. While the Asante Kingdom had a well-known military history, including having fought the British several times during the nineteenth century, the Asante rebellion and siege of the British garrison at Kumasi in 1900 made British officials distrustful of them as colonial soldiers. For this reason, a 1905 proposal by British officers to recruit Asante men for military service in southern Nigeria was rejected by colonial officials. WAFF inspector general Brigadier Morland, who thought colonial military experience would encourage loyalty among the Asante, considered it “foolish not to make use of good fighting material.” At the same time, the GCR’s first battalion was short 150 African troops, and its numbers were “falling off.” 145 Having witnessed Asante bravery when he commanded the British expeditionary force that relieved Kumasi in 1900, General James Willcocks recommended gaining their allegiance and “to enlist them if possible in our Forces, when I do not believe they would be surpassed as soldiers by any West African natives.”146 However, British fear of the Asante continued and in 1907, the GCR’s new commanding officer, Colonel C. P. H. Carter, another veteran of the 1900 conflict, was “strongly against their enlistment as he considers that they would be a danger.”147 Both these factors prevented colonial military recruiting in southern and central Gold Coast during the early twentieth century. By 1900, there was already a long history of European colonial armies enlisting men from what is now northern Ghana. During the mid-nineteenth century, the Dutch at Elmina and the British at Cape Coast purchased enslaved men of northern origin and enlisted them in colonial armies. Called Donkos, and often originally captured by the Asante, some of these northern men originated from present-day Burkina Faso and the Niger River

144 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 76. 145 NA (UK) CO 445/22, Report on the 1st Battalion GCR, 1906, Brigadier T. Morland. 146 Willcocks, From Kabul to Kumasi, 383. 147 NA (UK) CO 445/24, Report on the GCR, 1906–7, Brigadier T. Morland, Accra, 30 April 1907; see also Ukpabi, “Military Recruitment,”104.

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Bend in what is now Mali.148 From the late 1870s to 1890s, British and African officers from the Gold Coast Constabulary (GCC) traveled north to the slave market of Salaga and to the hinterland of Nigeria trying to enlist enslaved men or runaway slaves as “Hausa” soldiers.149 At the same time, the Asante Kingdom copied the British colonial force creating its own uniformed “Hausa” regiment of enslaved northerners including many from Moshi, Dagomba, and Grunshi communities in what is now northern Ghana.150 In the late 1890s, with the British occupation of Asante, British colonial forces moved into what became the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast and signed treaties with the French and Germans that delineated the area’s borders. In 1901, the GCC garrisons in the north along with Mossi volunteer cavalry became the second battalion of the renamed Gold Coast Regiment that came under the WAFF umbrella.151 The presence of this second GCR battalion with around six hundred troops in the Northern Territories stimulated recruiting among many of the decentralized peoples of that region, formerly the targets of slave raids, which was becoming a source of migrant labor for the colonial economy of the south. In 1904, Lieutenant Colonel W. Morris, the battalion’s commanding officer, reported, “I consider that this Protectorate is a most valuable recruiting ground, the men are of excellent physique, most amenable to discipline and very anxious to learn their work. Service in the local Battalion is very popular.”152 By 1905 the great majority of the battalion originated from the Northern Territory, particularly among the Grunshi, and some soldiers came from remote areas in neighboring French and German territories.153 In 1906 the GCR adopted a single battalion structure that facilitated expanded recruiting in the north with the new northern troops posted to subunits across the entire country. Very quickly, northern Grunshi men comprised the regiment’s largest single ethnic group, overtaking Nigerian Yoruba.154 Over the next few years, as more Yoruba 148 Van Kessel, “African Soldiers in the Dutch East Indies,” 51–84; Ellis, Gold Coast, 218–19. 149 Johnson, “Slaves of Salaga,” 341–62. 150 Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century, 617–19. 151 Aboagye, Ghana Army, 28 and 33–34. 152 NA (UK) CO 445/18, Report of the 2nd Battalion GCR, Lieutenant Colonel W. Morris, Gambaga, 26 April 1904. 153 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on 2nd Battalion GCR, 1905. 154 NA (UK) CO 445/24, Report on GCR, 1906–7, Brigadier T. Morland, Accra, 30 April 1907.

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soldiers finished their contracts and departed for Nigeria, the numbers of northern Gold Coast men in the regiment increased, with strong contingents from the Dagomba and Fulani, and Moshi and Wangara men from French territory very well represented. The imposition of colonial taxation by the French in what is now Burkina Faso prompted men to cross the border into British territory to seek work including within the colonial army. In 1908 Colonel Carter wanted to extend recruitment to other communities in the Northern Territories, reporting that “if more Kanjargas and Frafras could be obtained it would be an advantage, they both make excellent soldiers.”155 In 1911, as Frafra men began to enlist, the regiment’s commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel W. Reeve wrote, “They will make very good soldiers, they have fine physique. I believe them to be possessed of courage.”156 Newly identified by the British as a martial race, and indeed newly categorized as a distinct ethnicity, the Frafra comprised a number of linguistically similar but decentralized communities along the border with modern Burkina Faso. The number of Frafra men in the regiment grew from 18 in 1908 to 130 at the start of 1914. Simultaneously, the number of southern men in the regiment remained minimal.157 As the number of northern soldiers increased, the GCR adopted a company organization based on northern ethnic identities to avoid “language difficulty,” and from 1912 new recruits went directly to an appropriate ethnically oriented company for training and integration.158 By 1910, soldiers from the north formed the majority of the regiment. According to a colonial transport officer who studied African languages, the northern communities had been rendered “uncivilized” and “savage” by slave raiding and that within colonial military service northern men “rapidly improve, and it is hard to believe that they are of the same tribe as 155 NA (UK) CO 445/27, Report on GCR, 1907–1908, Colonel C. H. P. Carter, Kumasi, 17 June 1908. For French taxation see Elliott P. Skinner, The Mossi of the Upper Volta: The Political Development of a Sudanese People (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964), 156–57. 156 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on GCR, 1910, Lieutenant Colonel W. Reeve, 6 March 1911. 157 NA (UK) CO 445/27, Report of the GCR, 1907–1908, Colonel C. H. P. Carter, Kumasi, 17 June 1908; CO 445/34, Report on GCR, 31 March 1914, Brigadier C. W. Dobell. 158 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on the GCR for 1910, Lieutenant Colonel W. Reeve, 6 March 1911; CO 445/32, Report on the GCR, 1912, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, 13 April 1912.

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their brothers who have lived their life in their own country.”159 Writing a survey of the various ethnic groups of the Gold Coast, one colonial official concluded that “the reputation of the Grunshi or Dagarti (for example) as a useful and reliable soldier appears to be due not so much to his undoubted intelligence, as to his superiority over the native of coast or forest in physique and simplicity of character.”160 Although it built on previous associations of the colonial military with northern slave soldiers (but also through enlistment problems in the southern and central areas), the conversion of the GCR into a force primarily recruited from the Northern Territories occurred in the decade prior to the outbreak of the First World War. The need for more military personnel during the First World War initially challenged the GCR’s growing northern character. In 1915, given manpower needs related to the Cameroon campaign and the lack of what were perceived as high-quality recruits now coming from the Northern Territories, British officers and officials on the Gold Coast ignored the previous objections to recruiting Asante and began enlisting them in the colonial military. Like soldiers of other ethnic groups, Asante recruits formed their own subunit as few instructors could speak their language, and it was believed they did not get along well with northerners who they had previously enslaved. Rejecting the notion of martial races, acting governor Arthur Ransford Slater foresaw the development of something like a national military force and hoped that eventually “we may see an Ashanti Company, a Fanti Company, and possibly an Akim Company. . . . I would earnestly deprecate therefore any steps which might discourage the development of the Gold Coast Regiment into a really representative unit.”161 Advocates of recruiting the Asante pointed out that they had become loyal to Britain as evidenced by their participation in the Boy Scout movement. However, skeptical officials who suspected that profitable cocoa production would keep large numbers of Asante men away from the military proved correct and created the colonial idea that they were no longer a true warrior people.162 For the British, a single generation 159 F. W. H. Migeod, The Languages of West Africa, vol. 1 (Freeport, NY: Libraries Press, 1971), 8. 160 C. E. Cookson, “The Gold Coast Hinterland and the Negroid Races,” Journal of the Royal Africa Society 14, no. 60 (April 1915): 307. 161 NA (UK) CO 445/35, Acting Governor Gold Coast A. R. Slater to A. Bonar Law, Colonial Secretary, Accra, 25 October 1915. 162 NA (UK) CO 445/35, Acting Governor Gold Coast A. R. Slater to General Officer Commanding, Douala, Cameroons, Aburi, 21 July 1915; A. R. Slater

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resulted in the transformation of the Asante from the most feared martial group in West Africa to peaceful and prosperous farmers. This reinforced the colonial opinion that “the best men in the Regiment belong to the North Country tribes”163 and recruiting continued to focus on that region with the Moshi, Grunshi, and Frafra comprising the largest contingents of enlistees in 1915.164 Between 1914 and 1918, about fifty-six hundred African men joined the colonial military on the Gold Coast. Around thirty-eight hundred (or 69 percent) of them were from the Northern Territories where the quasi-military administration of the area facilitated a coercive system of recruitment slightly reminiscent of the early period of slave soldiery. Colonial-appointed authoritarian chiefs, eager to please their British superiors, applied coercive methods of labor recruitment to pressure local men into “volunteering” for the army. About 30 percent of the men recruited in the north originated from neighboring French territory or from communities that straddled the frontier. Since the southern region had a more democratic form of traditional governance, and institutions like the press and humanitarian organizations kept watch over the colonial administration, recruitment operated in a less coercive manner and relied on making assurances to recruits on issues related to marriage, funerals, and debts. As such, about sixteen hundred wartime recruits, or 26 percent of the total, came from the coast and Asante. In some areas and in combination with other factors, colonial pressures for African communities to supply recruits prompted violent resistance.165

to A. Bonar Law, Aburi, 21 July 1915; David Killingray, “Military and Labour Policies in the Gold Coast during the First World War,” in Africa and the First World War, edited by Melvin E. Page (New York: Palgrave, 1987), 160. 163 NA (UK) CO 445/35, Lieutenant Colonel R. A. de B. Rose, Commanding Officer GCR to the Colonial Secretary, Gold Coast, Cameroons, 10 December 1915. 164 NA (UK) CO 445/35, WAFF Recruiting, Gold Coast, Gold Coast Regiment Quarterly Return, 31 December 1915. 165 Roger Thomas, “Military Recruitment in the Gold Coast during the First World War,” Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 15, no. 57 (1975): 57–83; Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry, “African Agency and Cultural Initiatives in the British Imperial Military and Labor Recruitment Drives in the Gold Coast (colonial Ghana) during the First World War,” African Identities 4, no. 2 (2006): 213–34; David Killingray, “Repercussions of World War I in the Gold Coast,” Journal of African History 19, no. 1 (1978): 39–59.

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The First World War experience, including recruiting problems in most of the country and the perception that northerners represented the best Gold Coast troops sent to East Africa, reinforced the GCR’s preference for recruits from the Northern Territories.166 Haywood’s 1923 report on recruiting in West Africa recognized the historic military exploits of the Asante, but he declared that cocoa farming had made them soft and “they now appear to have lost all desire for war, and are extremely reluctant to enlist.” Continuing, he wrote that northerners comprised 75 percent of the GCR and that “all the tribes of the Northern Territories provide good soldiers.”167 During the interwar years, and with the support of British administrative officials, the northern Gold Coast became the traditional recruiting zone for the colonial military, and the number of southerners in the GCR dropped to almost nothing. African soldiers from other colonial territories were also present in the ranks, but their numbers shrank. At the end of the First World War, 141 “Jaunde” recruits from the former German territory of Cameroon enlisted in the GCR and moved to the Gold Coast where they became admired for their soldiering skills.168 Concentrated at GCR headquarters at Kumasi, many of the Cameroonian soldiers served in the regiment for three or four years, around half of them remained for ten years, and a few were still in the ranks almost twenty years later on the eve of the Second World War. While the regiment had long recruited labor migrants from neighboring French territory, officials stopped the practice in 1925 given concerns that former soldiers returned to their homes across the border would prove unable to serve in the reserve or return to their old unit during mobilization for war.169 The interwar period saw a shift in the GCR enlistment. Despite the growing northern character of the Gold Coast military, many domestic northern recruits deserted once they moved south to the training center at Kumasi, which resulted in more desertions from the GCR than all other interwar era WAFF units combined. In 1927, therefore, the regiment relocated its recruit depot to Tamale in the north in the hope that remaining close to their homes and wives might discourage desertion among recruits. Since the desertion problem continued, the recruit depot moved back to the more convenient 166 NA (UK) CO 445/46, Recruiting, Gold Coast, Brigadier R. A. De B. Rose, General Officer Commanding 2nd WAFF Service Brigade to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 17 December 1918. 167 NA (UK) CO 537/954, “Report on the Combatant Manpower,” 4 July 1923. 168 NA (UK) CO 445/50, Report on GCR, 1919. 169 NA (UK) CO 445/64, Report on GCR, 1924; CO 445/67, Report on the GCR, 1925; CO 820/25/5, Report on the GCR, 1937.

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location of Kumasi the next year. Authorities also felt that Kumasi represented a better location for recruit training as many instructors were available from the regimental headquarters and Kumasi itself was becoming a source of northern recruits arriving in the Asante region as labor migrants.170 By the start of the 1930s, recruiting within the Northern Territory became problematic. As local mines employed many men, only physically unfit men showed interest in the army, and the mobilization of chiefs and colonial officials failed to encourage enlistment. In 1936, the GCR’s commanding officer toured Navrongo and Lawra, formerly reliable recruiting districts in the far north near the French border but failed to find enough men. Recruiting tours in the north continued, but results remained poor. Although some British officers blamed the lack of recruits from the north on the return of the recruit depot to far-off Kumasi, recruiting and economic trends had changed. By the second half of the 1930s, the military shifted its recruiting efforts southward to the stranger settlements or Zongos of Kumasi and Accra where northern migrant workers readily enlisted if they could not find better jobs. The GCR’s recruits were still of northern origin but they enlisted in the south.171 The interwar years embodied a period of linguistic confusion and transition for the GCR. Before 1914, northern recruits entering the regiment usually spoke only their home language, prompting officers to group them into ethno-linguistic companies.172 The ethnic company structure disappeared by the end of the First World War, and during the 1920s soldiers of many different ethnicities were distributed evenly across subunits. The lingua franca of the GCR was officially Hausa given the special role of colonial troops from Nigeria in founding the force in the 1870s and the fact that Hausa existed throughout the Gold Coast as a trade language. However, a 1924 GCR report noted that using Hausa as a medium of instruction was “peculiar in a population that has no Hausas.”173 Since very few recruits spoke Hausa and a few spoke it poorly, the recruit depot devoted considerable time to Hausa language instruction. Given this language environment, it became 170 NA (UK) CO 445/68, Report on GCR, 1926; CO 820/4/10, Report on the GCR, 1928; CO 820/5/15, Report on GCR, 1929. 171 NA (UK) CO 820/11/11, Report on GCR, 1931; CO 820/16/1, Report on GCR, 1933; CO 820/20/4, Report on Gold Coast Regiment, 1935; CO 820/21/9, Report on GCR, 1936; CO 820/25/5, Report on GCR, 1937. 172 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on 2 GCR, 1905. 173 NA (UK) CO 445/64, Report on GCR, 1924.

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difficult for British officers on the Gold Coast to acquire enough Hausa to pass their compulsory Hausa examination required by the end of their first year of service. In 1924, the one GCR officer qualified to conduct Hausa examinations was on leave, and in 1928 only nine of the regiment’s forty officers had passed colloquial Hausa.174 Another problem with this system was that while the officers learned the supposedly “pure” Hausa spoken in Nigeria and for which there were textbooks, the African troops acquired a localized and “ungrammatical” version called “Northern Territory Hausa.”175 Problems with Hausa as a command language informed GCR efforts to promote English. Right after the First World War, the GCR launched English-language instruction for its soldiers. In 1922–23, a schoolmaster from the Gold Coast Department of Education was attached to the regiment to train company schoolmasters to teach English classes for NCOs and soldiers in a regimental school. Officers emphasized English instruction, including reading and writing, among signalers and young West African NCOs who might learn more readily than their older colleagues. Although 274 soldiers passed an elementary English test, and ten band boys attended school daily during 1923, English instruction remained nonsystematic, and soldiers only attended class when it became possible to spare them from regular duties. Furthermore, officers considered the English textbooks unsuitable for the military and that the teaching was “parrot-like,” and teachers used an awkward approach of translating all English into Hausa, which was also a new language for many of the soldiers. All this led to a deterioration in GCR signals capability. In 1927, language problems in recruit training, where recruits learned both English and Hausa, resulted in a suggestion to limit intakes to one or two ethnic groups at a time so that vernacular languages could become the medium of instruction.176 In 1928, the GRC commanding officer requested expert assistance in determining a new language policy for his linguistically troubled unit. He obtained reports from the Gold Coast Department of Native Administration, 174 NA (UK) CO 445/64, Report on GCR, 1924; CO 820/4/10, Report on the GCR, 1928. 175 NA (UK) CO 820/5/4, “WAFF: Gold Coast: Lingua Franca,” 1928, Commander GCR to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 7 May 1928. 176 NA (UK) CO 445/62, Report on GCR, 1923; CO 445/64, Report on GCR, 1924; CO 445/67, Report on the GCR, 1925; CO 445 820/2/10, Report on GCR, 1927; CO 820/5/4, “WAFF: Gold Coast: Lingua Franca,” 1928, Commander GCR to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 7 May 1928.

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provincial commissioners, and Achimota College. The idea of switching the GCR to an indigenous language of command received some support but appeared impractical given linguistic diversity. The most common first language among the mainly northern soldiers was Mole, which comprised seven or eight related language groups such as Moshi, Frafra, and Dagarti. However, officials considered Mole a very difficult language to learn with many local variations, and over 60 percent of the troops did not know it. The language of command in sister WAFF regiments also appeared relevant as Hausa would facilitate joint operations with the Nigeria Regiment while English would become useful in working with units from Sierra Leone. The need for formal Hausa instruction seemed less urgent as officers thought that the men would pick up Hausa during their off-duty hours largely spent in the “Hausa” environment of the Gold Coast zongos and that they would acquire it quickly from Nigerian troops if they had to work with them. Some officials thought that learning English in the GCR would better enable discharged soldiers to secure civilian employment and would help spread English in the northern region, thus promoting social differentiation from neighboring French territory. Given the First World War experience, authorities anticipated that in a future war, the regiment’s officers who knew African languages would quickly become casualties, replaced by others who only knew English. It was reported that Indian units fighting in France had encountered problems when their British officers who spoke Indian languages, the practice of which was described as a “fetish,” were killed and replaced by new ones unable to communicate with the troops. The example of the French colonial military in West Africa, in which soldiers learned French as a command language, and officers studied Bambara to get to know their men, seemed attractive. Based on this study, the WAFF inspector general ordered that English, not the “awful pidgin of Sierra Leone,” would be the lingua franca of the GCR and that officers and British NCOs would take examinations on “Northern Territory Hausa.” The new policy launched in 1929, although officials recognized it would take time for the regiment to make a full linguistic transition.177 By 1931 the first month of recruit training in the GCR was devoted entirely to learning rudimentary English. That year, the regiment reported progress with English teaching to the rank-and-file, and 193 men passed an English test. In 1934, given that most recruits could not read or write any 177 NA (UK) CO 820/5/4, “WAFF: Gold Coast: Lingua Franca,” 1928; CO 820/5/15, Report on GCR, 1929.

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language, officers made special arrangements to enlist “semi-educated” literate boys from northern schools who were then trained as signalers. Under the modernizing inspector general Giffard, and predicting the upcoming global war, the entire RWAFFF formally adopted English as its working language in 1937 to enable the integration of non-Hausa-speaking officers. Within the GCR, this accelerated the ongoing transition to English as officers no longer took compulsory Hausa examinations, and any remaining formal use of Hausa among the soldiers ended. Prompted by the wider RWAFF language policy, three government schoolmasters attached themselves to the regiment, and they popularized English by using it to teach regimental history. By 1939 British authorities recognized that the GCR had made more progress in English language instruction than any other colonial unit in British Africa.178 As happened in Nigeria, the Second World War led to the recruitment of men from parts of the Gold Coast not well represented in the colonial army. Wartime military expansion dramatically increased the number of southerners and Asante in the GCR, and these men enlisted in new support units established on the Gold Coast that hosted WAC headquarters. In May 1940 recruiting launched in the south, and in September, it began in Asante with the approval of the Asantehene (king) who became an honorary colonel in the Home Guard. The hesitancy of Asante recruits to accept orders from NCOs of historically subordinate northern backgrounds informed the creation of a special Asante battalion. With the fall of France in the summer of 1940 and most of French West Africa under a hostile Vichy regime, the GCR reinstated recruiting of men from neighboring French territories, some of whom had been members of the French colonial military. By 1943 the 32,969 soldiers of the much-enlarged GCR comprised 9,901 southerners (30 percent), 1,633 Asante (4.9 percent), 14,040 northerners (43.5 percent), 6,408 men from French territories (19.4 percent), and 987 others including Nigerians, Sierra Leoneans, and Liberians (2.9 percent). The number of Fante, a prominent southern ethnic group, in the regiment jumped from 13 in 1937 to 1,301 in 1942; a 10,000-percent increase. The rise in the number of Asante soldiers appeared similar.179 Seth Anthony, the first fully commissioned black African officer in the British Army who led Gold Coast troops 178 NA (UK) CO 820/11/11, Report on GCR, 1931; CO 820/20/4, Report on GCR, 1935; CO 820/25/5, Report on GCR, 1937; CO 820/34/1, Report on GCR, 1939. 179 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 265, 292, 452; NA (UK) CO 820/25/5, Report on GCR, 1937.

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in combat in Burma, explained that in his GCR battalion “all tribes were represented. . . . There were Ewes, Gas, Fantis, Akwapins, Ashantis, Dagoumbas, Frafra, etc. They were almost all literate and were volunteers. Almost all of them held jobs in peace-time in various Government departments.”180 The primarily northern character of the GCR returned during the postwar era of the late 1940s and 1950s. Although the rhetoric of “martial races” became unfashionable, British officers continued to describe northerners as members of “infantry tribes.” The postwar regiment contained some southerners and their generally better access to education meant that they remained prevalent in logistical units and a few gained commissions within the context of attempts to Africanize the officer corps. Nevertheless, southerners were discouraged from joining the late colonial army because the postwar economic boom created better civilian opportunities, and the military was involved in suppressing growing nationalist protest in the south. Some British officers believed that maintaining a predominantly northern army would counter growing anticolonialism in southern Gold Coast. As such, upon independence in 1957, Ghana had a military in which 60 percent of the personnel originated from the north, and most of the new officers were from the south.181

Conclusion The British constructed strong military stereotypes around ethnicity and region in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, but at the same time, the membership of these colonial regiments usually did not reflect such ideals. British officials labeled and relabeled communities, with the Yoruba and Asante initially seen as martial but then becoming nonmartial. A number of factors influenced the development of military recruitment and consequent martial reputations in these colonial territories. While the colonial army in Nigeria initially comprised Yoruba men from the west and Hausa men from the north (both defined as martial by British officers), these communities began avoiding enlistment because of better economic opportunities as well as factors like antitax protest in the west and moral objections in the north. Originally enlisted as a buffer against possible rebellion by Muslim troops, traditionalist (pagan) minorities from Central Nigeria like the Tiv and others from parts of 180 ORDP, Killingray, Seth Anthony to David Killingray, 16 January 1981. 181 Killingray, “Imagined Martial Communities,” 128–29; Baynham, Military and Politics in Nkrumah’s Ghana.

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the north like the Dakakari eventually flocked to the army given the impoverishment of their home areas within the wider colonial economy. British officers initially attempted to enlist men from southeastern Nigeria and saw some of these communities as warrior-like but failed because of language problems, continued resistance in that area, and administrative mistakes. British officers branded communities that provided soldiers as martial while those that failed to do so became nonmartial even if they had a distinguished precolonial military history and/or previously provided many recruits to the colonial army. While the interwar-era Nigeria Regiment cultivated a northern ethos given the use of Hausa as a command language and the location of important military centers in the north, the rank-and-file reflected increasingly diverse ethnic and regional origins. On the Gold Coast, southerners like the Fante avoided enlistment, as they enjoyed better opportunities in the vibrant coastal economy, and colonial authorities banned recruitment of the resistance-prone Asante until the First World War, by which time successful cocoa production kept them away from the army. These developments rendered a once-stereotypical warrior race essentially nonmartial in British eyes. The only place left for colonial military recruiting in the Gold Coast was the impoverished north, where slavers had previously victimized the area’s many decentralized communities that had supplied some enslaved soldiers to regional armies, and the rise of colonial mining in the region meant that the military eventually looked to northern labor migrants traveling south. While British officials imagined the incredibly diverse communities of northern Gold Coast as comprising a collective martial race, the territory’s army became an option for northern men already engaged in migrant labor. A northern ethos did not fully develop in the GCR as Hausa proved unworkable as a lingua franca inspiring an early shift to English and the military remained based in the central city of Kumasi in the Asante region. In both Nigeria and the Gold Coast, Second World War mobilization brought many supposedly nonmartial southerners into the colonial military diluting the prevalence of hinterland troops. In the late 1940s and 1950s, however, demobilization and the rise of nationalism in southern regions with more developed education systems prompted British officers to reemphasize recruiting from imagined martial communities in the north. On the eve of independence, consequently, Nigerian and Ghanaian militaries represented polarized organizations with predominantly northern combatant troops and mostly southern logistical units. An important reason why such polarization did not exist before the Second World War was that the West African army of the earlier colonial period comprised mostly infantry regiments lacking significant support elements.

Chapter Three

Identities Sierra Leone and the Gambia The British tried but failed to construct martial races in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. While robust and well-known martial identities and reputations emerged in colonial Nigeria and the Gold Coast, British officers in the two smaller West African territories struggled to find communities on which to impose similar designations. Despite a history of intense precolonial warfare in the area, and after many colonial experiments and changing opinions about military recruiting, British authorities labeled all Sierra Leonean and Gambian men as lacking the inherent qualities needed to make good soldiers. At the same time, the need for military personnel to provide internal security in these territories and to fight wars in other places meant that the British still recruited many Sierra Leoneans and Gambians into the colonial army. During the Second World War, British officers in Sierra Leone and the Gambia admitted that colonial martial race theory represented a fantasy. Before colonial conquest, powerful military identities existed within the societies of both Sierra Leone and the Gambia. During the nineteenth century, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, where the British had already established the respective coastal enclaves of Freetown and Bathurst (Banjul), experienced intensive warfare. Central to the fighting of these wars were growing mercenary bands composed of armed young men, popularly called “war boys,” from various ethnic groups who wore magical amulets believed to protect them from bullets and received a share of loot from their campaigns.1 War boys fought with guns and swords, specialized in ambushes and

1

Danny Hoffman, The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 68.

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raiding in the bush environment, and built defended stockades.2 In Sierra Leone, local powers fought a series of “trade wars” over control of commerce with the coast and in the Gambia, traditionalist communities and Jihadist Muslims waged war on each other. In the 1890s, during the so-called Scramble for Africa, the British pushed into the hinterland of both territories in a race with the French to secure the region. In Sierra Leone, in 1890, the British created the locally recruited Frontier Police that gradually extended colonial authority over the interior with the proclamation of a protectorate in 1896. However, in 1898, a widespread rebellion by both Mende and Temne peoples, the largest ethnic groups in the territory, against British rule broke out in Sierra Leone given oppression by the Frontier Police, abolition of the local slave trade, erosion of chiefly power, and in particular the imposition of colonial taxation. With troops from the West Indies and the newly raised WAR, another locally recruited unit, the British fought a tough bush war to suppress the “Hut Tax Rebellion.” Simultaneously, British expansion up the Gambia River faced resistance from Jihadist leaders Fode Silla, who surrendered in 1894, and Fode Kabba, who continued fighting until 1901.3 Upon colonial conquest, which they resisted vigorously, Sierra Leoneans and Gambians were no strangers to warfare. With conquest complete, the British created permanent locally recruited colonial military units in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. While the British had relied on soldiers from the West Indies and other parts of Africa to conduct the conquest campaigns, including a unit from Nyasaland (Malawi) brought to the Gambia, this was not sustainable for long-term colonial occupation. At the start of the twentieth century, the British Colonial Office extended its WAFF military structure, which originated in Nigeria, over Sierra Leone and the Gambia. In 1901 the Sierra Leone Frontier Police became the “Sierra Leone Battalion of the WAFF,” and in 1902, a small Gambia Company formed from scratch. The only regional unit remaining outside the WAFF hierarchy, and under the British War Office, the WAR 2 3

See accounts of warfare in Imodale Caulker-Burnett, The Caulkers of Sierra Leone: The Story of a Ruling Family and Their Times (London: Xlibris, 2010). Leray Denzer and Michael Crowder, “Bai Bureh and the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War of 1898,” in Protest and Power in Black Africa, edited by Robert Rotberg, and Ali Mazrui (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 169–212; Arthur Abraham, “Bai Bureh, the British and the Hut Tax War,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 7, no. 1 (1974): 99–106; David Skinner, “Islam in Kombo: The Spiritual and Militant Jihad of Fode Ibrahim Silla Ture,” Islamic Africa 3, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 87–126.

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guarded the strategically important port of Freetown until its disbandment for financial reasons in 1928.4

Sierra Leone During the 1890s, colonial military recruitment in Sierra Leone did not focus on any imagined martial group. When the Frontier Police formed in 1890, the unit’s British officers considered ethnic diversity important with “every tribe and every language being represented” in the ranks.5 Recruiting focused on men from inland areas outside Freetown “so they can speak the Country languages.” Acknowledging that literate recruits from Freetown’s Krio community could prove useful to the paramilitary Frontier Police, British officers thought their “broken English” unhelpful in patrolling the newly colonized hinterland that became the Sierra Leone Protectorate where knowledge of indigenous languages became important.6 This established a tradition of colonial military recruiting in Sierra Leone that focused on inland communities that comprised the vast majority of the population and avoided enlisting Krio men from Freetown. The British War Office initially intended to form the WAR from a single imagined martial community in Sierra Leone, but the plan never materialized. In 1898, in the context of Sierra Leone’s “Hut Tax Rebellion,” British officials meant for the new WAR to be primarily composed of Mende troops from the southern protectorate with recruitment eventually extended to the Temne in the north. British officers with experience in Sierra Leone advised the War Office that Mende men “will make the best soldiers, they have much more pluck and warlike instincts than the Timminies [sic], the later have deteriorated by contact with civilization at Freetown; they are more useful as

4 5 6

Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 40. J. J. Crooks, A History of the Colony of Sierra Leone (London: Brown and Nolan, 1903), 297. NA (UK) CO 267/385/23243, Sierra Leone Frontier Police, Major McDonald Moore, Acting Inspector Frontier Police to Colonial Secretary, Sierra Leone, Freetown, 6 October 1890. While historian Festus Cole argues the British excluded Krio men from the Sierra Leone Battalion because they were educated and therefore seen as potential troublemakers, the earliest evidence points directly to language issues. See Cole, “Defining the ‘Flesh,’” 283.

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hammock boys, house boys.”7 However, on the ground in Sierra Leone, the WAR’s composition quickly mirrored that of the ethnically diverse Frontier Police, the leadership of which conducted the initial recruiting drive for the new regiment.8 In June 1899, a 575-strong element of the WAR comprised near equal contingents of Mende and Temne soldiers, who together made up about two-thirds of the unit reflecting their status as the territory’s largest ethnic communities. Furthermore, the WAR included troops from sixteen other ethnicities including a few from the Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia, and Portuguese Guinea. During the 1898 rebellion, the WAR grew to about fourteen hundred men organized into two battalions with troops recruited from “uncivilized” peoples in the protectorate.9 By 1906, at which time the WAR consisted of a single battalion of a thousand men, the ethnic composition remained about the same, with Mende and Temne contingents each representing just over 30 percent of the rank-and-file and the remainder consisting of small numbers from many other ethnic groups and a few soldiers originating from French territory. Furthermore, about fifteen Krio men from Freetown formed the core of the regimental band where their literacy was important.10 The SLB of the WAFF, the rebranded Frontier Police, tried to maintain a balance of Mende and Temne troops. Around 1910, given the battalion’s redeployment south and east to secure the frontiers with neighboring Liberia and French colonial territory, the number of Temne recruits decreased dramatically as the colonial military no longer had a presence in their northern home area. Seeing this as a problem that would lead to an ethnic imbalance among the SLB rank-and-file, British officers dispatched special recruiting teams to Temne country but with limited success. At the same time, the SLB’s greater presence in the south facilitated further Mende enlistment. As such, the battalion tried to counter the growth of a Mende majority by starting to recruit more soldiers from among the Kissi of the Sierra Leone, 7

NA (UK) CO 267/443, “West African Regiment,” for the creation of the unit see Evelyn Wood to Colonel E. R. P. Woodgate, 2 April 1898; for the quote see Wilfred Russell Howell to Captain Smith, 3 September 1898. 8 NA (UK) CO 267/443, “West African Regiment,” War Office to Colonial Office, 6 April 1898. 9 For “uncivilized” see Killingray, “Mutiny of the West African Regiment,” 444; for the 1899 ethnic composition see Crooks, Sierra Leone, 344. 10 H. W. Grattan and E. W. Cochrane, “Trypanosomiasis in the West African Regiment, Sierra Leone,” Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps 6, no. 6 (May 1906): 525.

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Liberia, and French Guinea tri-border area who had resisted French colonization in the 1890s. In 1914, the extension of the colonial railway north to Temne country and the stationing of an infantry company at Makene in northern Sierra Leone prompted more Temne to join the battalion. Just before the First World War, British officers thought that the potential for recruiting among the Mende of southern Sierra Leone was ultimately limited and that “the introduction of the Temne element will have a good effect on the morale of the force.”11 Official concern over Mende dominance in the SLB stemmed from fear of their involvement in traditional secret societies like Poro and the man-leopard killings of the early 1910s. During the First World War, colonial authorities considered it important to keep the Mende portion of the SLB under 50 percent of the unit’s total strength “on account of possible internal trouble—Leopards, Alligators, etc.”12 Nevertheless, and still reflecting the old Frontier Police, the SLB remained ethnically heterogeneous, with nineteen to twenty different ethnic communities, including some men from coastal peoples such as the Sherbro and Krio, represented in its ranks. Given the battalion’s primary role of maintaining internal security, officers considered this ethnic and linguistic variety important from an operational perspective as it meant that the unit had “guides and interpreters at its disposal in almost any district.”13 During the first two decades of the twentieth century, British officers described all Sierra Leonean soldiers in martial terms. After suppressing the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion, involving repeated skirmishes and assaults on rebel stockades, the deployment of the WAR and some Frontier Police during the 1900 Asante Rebellion solidified the colonial reputation of Sierra Leonean soldiers as natural bush fighters and scouts. After commanding British forces in Asante, James Willcocks reported that the WAR soldiers “are born scouts and in this capacity were constantly used in this most harassing and dangerous work.”14 For Colonel A. F. Montanaro, who also fought in Asante, “the 11 NA (UK) CO 445/33, Governor E. M. Merewether to L. V. Harcourt, 13 January 1913; Report on SLB, 1913, Major General P. S. Wilkinson. 12 NA (UK) CO 445/35, WAFF: Recruiting, 21 December 1915; personnel files from the Sierra Leone archives indicate that a great many Sierra Leone soldiers of the Second World War era possessed Poro scarification. 13 NA (UK) CO 445/30, Report on SLB, Freetown, 2 May 1910, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson. 14 UK (NA) FO 2-524, Willcocks to Secretary of State for Colonies, 17 December 1900.

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soldiers of the West African Regiment, recruited as they are from among the Mendis and Timmanis [sic] .  .  . are born hunters and trackers—their country being similar to Ashanti in regard to dense forest—make admirable scouts.”15 Positively compared to the famously martial Gurkhas from Nepal who served in the British Army, Sierra Leonean troops comprised “short, thick-set men, with good legs” and were particularly skilled in bush warfare. In 1913 WAFF Inspector General Wilkinson, who observed SLB field training, wrote, “The majority of the rank and file are men who were born in the bush, and their work . . . showed an intimate knowledge of bush tactics and fighting.”16 Although not specified in colonial reports, the association of Sierra Leonean troops with this sort of warfare seemed to indicate that the British believed that it was the people of the protectorate who possessed these traits and not those of Freetown. This martial reputation spread to other units as British officers on the Gold Coast, around 1906, wanted to retain their Mende and Temne soldiers from Sierra Leone who were “invaluable as scouts in the thick bush.”17 The bush warrior stereotype did not survive the First World War as British authorities felt that Sierra Leonean troops from the WAFF and WAR performed poorly in the Cameroon campaign of 1914–16. In part, tactical defeats at Yabassi in October 1914 and Harmann’s Farm in March 1915, where soldiers from Sierra Leone faced intense German machinegun fire, contributed to this new negative image.18 WAR commandant Brigadier E. Howard Gorges wrote that “the test was too tormenting, more than black flesh and blood could bear, and in spite of the steadfast example of their officers and British NCOs neither ‘Momo’ nor ‘Bokari’ would on this occasion face any more of the maxim music.”19 These alleged problems, including obviously false statements by Nigeria’s Governor Lugard that Sierra Leoneans had engaged in mass rape and looting, meant that Sierra Leonean infantry did not accompany other West African combat units to East Africa, though 15 C. H. Armitage and A. F. Montanaro, The Ashanti Campaign of 1900 (London: Sands, 1901), 126. 16 NA (UK) CO 445/33, Report on SLB, 1913, Major General P. S. Wilkinson. 17 NA (UK) CO 445/24, Report on GCR, 1906–7, Brigadier T. Morland, Accra, 30 April 1907. 18 TNA, WO 95/5388/6/1/1 and WO 95/5388/6/2/1, “Cameroons: West African Regiment;” F. J. Moberly, Military Operations: Togoland and the Cameroons (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1931), 124–29, 140–41. 19 Gorges, Great War in West Africa, 202–3.

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many Sierra Leonean supply carriers supported the British campaign in that region.20 A 1916 report on the WAFF by Charles Dobell, the Canadian commander of British forces in Cameroon, stated that most West African ethnic groups “provided excellent fighting material, the only exceptions being the Mendis and Timinis. Men from these two tribes of whom the Sierra Leone Battalion is largely composed, do not appear to possess the necessary qualities to fit them as soldiers to meet troops led and trained by Europeans and armed with machine guns and modern rifles.”21 While some officers attributed these failings to an insufficient number of European leaders in these units during a difficult campaign, and pointed out that Sierra Leonean troops had done well as part of the Gambia Company in Cameroon, others decided that “the Sierra Leone Protectorate supplies poor fighting material.”22 As a result, Sierra Leone became Britain’s only West African territory not to send armed soldiers to fight in the East Africa campaign of the First World War. Now classified as natural supply carriers, thousands of Sierra Leonean porters served in East Africa and the Middle East. During the last two years of the conflict, WAR infantry companies garrisoned Lome in Togo, Bathurst in the Gambia, and were deployed to Northern Nigeria to guard against Islamist incursions from French territory.23 In 1921, given postwar austerity, the strength of the SLB shrank by half though the unit maintained the usual proportions of soldiers from different ethnic groups. Among the twenty different ethnicities represented in the battalion’s rank-and-file, the most prevalent were the Mende with 25 percent, Kissi with 20 percent, Kono with 16 percent, and Temne with 15 percent. As in Nigeria and Gold Coast during the interwar period, British officers discouraged recruiting men from neighboring French territory who might depart Sierra Leone after their term of full-time service and therefore become unavailable for duty in the reserve. While there were a few Krio in the ranks

20 Festus Cole, “Sierra Leone and World War 1” (PhD diss., University of London, 1994), 44–141. 21 NA (UK) CO 445/37, “Report on WAFF,” 16 May 1916, Major General Charles Dobell. 22 NA (UK) CO 445/55, Report on SLB, 1921, Governor R. J. Wilkinson to W. S. Churchill, Freetown, 9 June 1921. 23 Cole, “Sierra Leone,” chap. 2.

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of Sierra Leone’s colonial army during the first decade of the twentieth century, after the First World War their numbers shrank to almost none.24 During the 1920s, British officers in West Africa became obsessed with the idea of focusing military recruitment on specific martial communities. Given the demise of the colonial stereotype that all men from the Sierra Leone hinterland naturally possessed bush-fighting skills, British commanders launched a search to identify martial groups in the territory. During the interwar years a colonial view developed that the protectorate’s largest ethnic groups, which were gaining greater access to Western education, were no longer suitable for military service as “The Mende man was generally considered too peaceable by nature and the Temne too quarrelsome.”25 Colonel Haywood’s 1923 report on martial and nonmartial races in West Africa concluded that Mende and Temne men “do not possess the courage and determination necessary to make good fighting material, although they are excellent as porters.” Furthermore, and referencing France’s celebrated Tirailleurs Sénégalais, the document claimed that “The best recruits come from the tribes on the Northern and North-eastern border, where there is probably an admixture of Senegalese blood.”26 By 1924 British officers became impressed by some supposedly warlike hill communities of the northern and eastern Sierra Leone Protectorate such as the Susu, Limba, Koranko, and Yolunka, and by the Kissi who lived in the southeastern tri-border area. From 1925, Kissi and Kono men from eastern Sierra Leone became the largest ethnic groups in the SLB, as the number of Mende and especially Temne troops steadily sank. In 1928 the battalion began exclusively recruiting among the Kissi, Kono, and some small northern communities believed to produce the best soldiers. Since these peoples lived in supposedly “backward” areas, officers saw them as less contaminated by Western influences and their relative poverty encouraged enlistment. As the number of different ethnic groups in the unit declined from about twenty to just eight, British officers thought narrowing the recruitment base would also facilitate military instruction by 24 NA (UK) CO 445/55, Report on SLB, 1921, Governor R. J. Wilkinson to W. S. Churchill, Freetown, 9 June 1921. 25 ORDP, Hugh McCartney, 6 November 1980. McCartney worked for Unilever in Sierra Leone in the late 1930s and became an officer in the SLB at the start of the Second World War. 26 NA (UK) CO 537/954, “Report on the Combatant Manpower Considered Available from the Native Races of British West Africa,” Colonel A. Haywood, 3 July 1923.

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similarly reducing the number of languages spoken in the unit.27 Although few records survive from the WAR, it appears this unit followed a related recruitment policy. The WAR formerly consisted of about 70 percent men from the large Mende and Temne groups, but in the regiment of the 1920s, “the Koranko, Susu, Yalunka from the North were more favoured. They were less exposed to the influence of the towns and trading posts in the South.”28 The experiment with limiting recruitment for the SLB to select ethnic minority groups with imagined martial traits did not last long. A few communities located in isolated areas could not supply enough recruits to sustain the battalion. On taking command of the SLB in 1932, Lieutenant Colonel M. A. Green conducted a personal study of the fighting capacity of Sierra Leone’s ethnic communities and concluded that they were mostly the same except for the Temne and Limba, both from the north, “who had not good reputations.” While he continued to direct recruiting towards the supposedly more warrior-like Kono, Koranko, and some small northern groups, Green planned to enlist more Mende men who “can be the best type of soldier, but care is needed in the recruiting of this tribe.”29 With their martial reputation arbitrarily restored and recruiting reopened, the Mende once again joined the battalion in large numbers and by the eve of the Second World War, they regained their place as the SLB’s largest single ethnic group. Around the same time, Temne and Limba soldiers remained very few given colonial stereotypes of these peoples as “not amenable to discipline.” The battalion’s commanding officer thought that a Sierra Leonean man of any ethnic group could become “soldier-like and proficient” through training but he did not come from “warrior stock and is excitable and easily led away.”30 It appears that the WAR, just before its disbandment in the late 1920s, ended the shortlived policy of trying to recruit mostly from imagined martial minorities and regretfully returned to a broader approach. A British officer who served with the WAR in 1927–28 and then transferred to the SLB from 1928 to 1932, recollected that “In both the WAR and RWAFF we recruited from the many 27 NA (UK) CO 445/64, Report on SLB, 1924; CO 445/68, Report on SLB, 1926; CO 820/3/14, Report on SLB, 1928; CO 820/6/16, Report on SLB, 1929; ORDP McCartney. 28 ORDP, Major A. J. Chrystal, written account c.1980, Chrystal served as an officer in the WAR from 1921 to 1924. 29 NA (UK) CO 820/16/4, Report on Sierra Leone Battalion, 1933, Lieutenant Colonel M. A. Green, 31 March 1933. 30 NA (UK) CO 820/34/9, Report on Sierra Leone Battalion, 1939.

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tribes in Sierra Leone, but the main tribes were Mendis and Timinies, both great tribes in the past, but now decadent.” This officer also stated that literate Krio men from Freetown served as signalers and clerks in the WAR of the 1920s.31 The enormous military demands of the Second World War finally crushed British officers’ fantasies about the inherent fighting prowess or lack thereof of Sierra Leone’s ethnic groups. Given the strategic importance of Freetown, further threatened by hostile neighboring Vichy French territories, the SLB quickly expanded into a regiment of three battalions one of which eventually embarked on combat operations in Burma. While all Sierra Leonean ethnic communities including Freetown Krio enlisted in the colonial army, the majority Mende and Temne were “recruited in large numbers.” With their generally higher level of literacy and Western education, new soldiers from the Mende and Temne communities tended to progress faster and further in the more technically oriented Second World War military than more experienced but uneducated troops from remote and allegedly warrior-like communities.32 Although some British officers continued to harbor negative ideas about Temne men, platoons consisted of mixed ethnicities and there was no official policy of ethnic favoritism.33 The practice of recruiting from all of Sierra Leone’s ethnic groups continued after the war. During the 1950s, “Recruits were selected from all Tribes. The officers tended to regard the Battalion as a whole—the tribal structure was of little consequence.”34 Language also informed military identity. Given the heterogeneous composition of the SLB, there was a clear need for a lingua franca or command language, but the Hausa language employed in Nigeria and the Gold Coast was not widely known in Sierra Leone or the Gambia. The ethnically diverse 31 ORDP, Major C. V. Lane, 24 November 1980. 32 ORDP McCartney; a rough survey of uncatalogued Second World War era military personnel files located in the Sierra Leone Archives at Fourah Bay College in Freetown indicate a mix of ethnicities; for the context of Sierra Leone and the Second World War see Andrew Stewart, “An Enduring Commitment: The British Military’s Role in Sierra Leone,” Defence Studies 8, no. 3 (September 2008): 351–68; Jackson, British Empire and the Second World War, 226–28. 33 ORDP, Lieutenant E. Niesielski, 10 February 1981. Niesielski was an exiled Polish officer who served as a platoon commander in 1st Battalion, SLR, during the Second World War. 34 ORDP, Major D. P. Monckton, written account c.1980. Monckton served in 1st Battalion SLR from 1955 to 1958.

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Sierra Leone Frontier Police and its successor, the SLB, employed a pragmatic attitude toward language. By the early 1920s, the SLB adopted the Sierra Leone version of Pidgin English, now called Krio, supplemented by different indigenous languages. However, in 1925 the WAFF inspector general banned the use of Pidgin English by the military in Sierra Leone and the Gambia and directed units to adopt “simple English.” British officers thought that the type of Pidgin English spoken in Sierra Leone was “particularly virulent” and “deeply engrained,” and “some white men take an active pleasure in using this terrible jargon.” The governor of Sierra Leone agreed, describing Pidgin as a “deplorable language” and a “blot on English civilization in Sierra Leone.”35 While an African schoolmaster joined the unit in the 1920s and began teaching English classes to NCOs and soldiers, officers thought the textbooks unsuitable for military training and the instruction focused on “highbrow English” learned in “parrot fashion.” The 1928 movement of SLB headquarters and one of the unit’s two companies from the “backcountry” to Freetown to replace the defunct WAR very likely reinforced the use of Pidgin by the rank-and-file.36 However, the official desire to adopt formal English as a command language and the simultaneous focus on recruiting imagined martial minorities contradicted each other. Although the unit narrowed the number of ethnic groups it recruited during the 1920s partly to simplify language issues, it became apparent that men from the supposed “martial tribes” of the remote north and east experienced significant difficulty learning English with which they had little experience. Officers considered the problem a “great bugbear” and in one SLB company, simple drill commands represented the only English understood by the troops.37 These language problems almost certainly informed the unit’s abandonment of narrow martial race recruiting at the start of the 1930s. While some British officers disparaged men from the Mende and Temne majority groups as spoiled by exposure to Western civilization and education, these troops knew Pidgin and enough English to understand and communicate with their superiors. 35 NA (UK) CO 445/67, Report on SLB, 1925, see enclosed letter from Governor A. R. Slater to L. S. Amery (Colonial Secretary), Freetown, 28 April 1925. For broader context see C. Magbaily Fyle, “Official and Unofficial Attitudes and Policy Towards Krio as the Main Lingua Franca in Sierra Leone,” in African Languages, Development and the State, edited by R. Fardon and G. Furniss (New York: Routledge, 1994), 44–54. 36 NA (UK) CO 820/6/16, Report on SLB, 1929. 37 NA (UK) CO 820/30/1, Report on SLB, 1938.

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In 1933 the battalion’s three schoolmasters were reassigned as clerks since “the attempt to teach the men good English or to increase their vocabulary substantially, has not met with sufficient success.”38 English instruction was then limited to the six-month recruit course which included daily two-hour language classes. When English became the official working language of the entire RWAFF in 1937, the SLB found itself behind in terms of language instruction and once again searched for schoolmasters to offer continuous English lessons.39

The Gambia Although Bathurst represented one of the oldest British colonies in West Africa, the Gambia became the last British territory in the region to establish a permanent albeit small locally recruited military unit. Early efforts to convince Gambians to join the colonial army had been unsuccessful. Discussing a British attempt to enlist Gambian men for the 1873 invasion of Asante on the Gold Coast, a British war correspondent wrote, “The Gambia is one of the great oil rivers, and people can earn their shilling a day so easily that unlimited drill and fatigue work, and the excitement of fighting the Ashantis, were insufficient to induce them.”40 Such factors led colonial authorities in the Gambia to recruit police from Sierra Leone. In late 1895, tensions between the non-Muslim Sierra Leonean men comprising a newly formed Frontier Police and Gambian Muslims led to a riot in Bathurst and the disbanding of the force.41 An 1898 proposal to recruit Gambian men for the WAR, busy suppressing the Hut Tax Rebellion in Sierra Leone but struggling to find medically fit local recruits, experienced limited success.42 During the late nineteenth century, the continued prospect of exchanging the Gambia

38 NA (UK) CO 820/16/4, Report on SLB, 1933, 5. 39 NA (UK) CO 820/25/6, Report on SLB, 1937; CO 820/30/1, Report on SLB, 1938; CO 820/34/9, Report on SLB, 1939. 40 G. A. Henty, The March to Coomassie (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874), 37. 41 “The Police Riot in the Gambia Colony,” Times, 6 December 1895. 42 NA (UK) CO 267/440, “West African Regiment Recruiting,” Governor Sierra Leone to Colonial Secretary, 19 September 1898.

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with France for another colonial territory meant that it remained the only British possession in West Africa without its own paramilitary formation.43 When the Gambia Company of the WAFF formed in 1902, British officers recruited some two-thirds of its 120 African soldiers from Sierra Leone. With the recent end of resistance to the extension of British rule upriver, the British maintained a policy of restricting Gambian personnel to one third of the company out of fear that “in the event of trouble they would throw in their lot with their own kith and kin.”44 However, by 1908, it became clear that this policy no longer made sense as most “Gambian” recruits who enlisted in the unit, based near coastal Bathurst, came from far upriver and from the neighboring French territory that surrounded the small British colony. Within less than two years, half the company originated from Sierra Leone while the other half comprised locally recruited men, although most of those had crossed the border from Senegal. For the British, relying on Sierra Leonean troops to garrison the Gambia presented a number of problems. Recruiting men from Sierra Leone became expensive, as they needed transport to and from the Gambia; the practice hindered the development of a reserve force as discharged Sierra Leoneans returned home and were therefore unavailable, and some British officers believed them inferior to the locally enlisted soldiers. Soldiers recruited in the Gambia came from the interior and French territory because men from around Bathurst earned relatively high salaries and indeed, the Gambia attracted Sierra Leonean labor migrants searching for employment. As such, British officers in the Gambia developed a positive view of the Bambara, recognized for their service in the French colonial army since the mid-1800s, as “exceptionally good men” and “very good soldiers.”45 The French considered the Bambara, along with other peoples who lived in the Sahel grasslands, as a “warrior race” and thought them more civilized and virile than other Africans who lived in the coastal forest.46

43 Harry A. Gailey, A History of the Gambia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), 110. 44 NA (UK) CO 445 27, Inspector’s Report on Gambia Company WAFF, minute of 28 May 1908. 45 NA (UK) CO 445 27, Report on the Gambia Company, Bathurst, 29 April 1908, Brigadier T. Morland; for the Bambara in French service see Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts, 14. 46 Lunn, “Les Races Guerrieres,” 517–36.

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By 1914 a military personnel crisis developed as the Gambia Company’s original contingent of soldiers from Sierra Leone completed their twelveyear term of service and left the force. It continued to prove difficult for the military to compete with civilian wages in Bathurst and local men wishing to pursue a career in uniform often joined the police, as it offered 50 percent higher pay, less rigorous discipline, and more free time. As a result, the Gambia Company continued to recruit men from Sierra Leone, turning away many as unsuitable. The fact that most came from the large Mende ethnic group raised objections from British authorities who considered it “undesirable to have too large a proportion of any one tribe in the company.”47 At the time, ethnic diversity did not pose an impediment to communication as the small size of the company, around 120 men, meant that it operated a school in which “all recruits are taught to speak, read and write English.”48 By 1915, with an increase in soldiers’ pay and the onset of the First World War, military recruiting in the Gambia improved. When half the company departed for the Cameroon campaign, it was possible to bring the Bathurst garrison back up to full strength, and surplus recruits went away disappointed.49 Nevertheless, by 1917, it became clear to colonial officials that largescale military recruitment would not be feasible in the Gambia as local labor was “expensive and always unstable as regards numbers.”50 After the First World War, British authorities in the Gambia made efforts to enlist more local Gambians into the military and avoid recruits from French West Africa. While this effort related to the wider British desire to create an effective reserve of former soldiers in each West African territory, the proximity of the French colonial border in tiny Gambia encouraged desertion among troops originating from French areas. In the early 1920s, British traveling commissioners in the Gambia experienced some success in recruiting local men for the army. By 1923, some 66 percent of soldiers in the Gambia Company had been born in the territory. This changed the ethnic 47 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on the Gambia Company, WAFF, 14 May 1914, notes. 48 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on the Gambia Company, 1914, Brigadier C. M. Dobell. 49 NA (UK) CO 445/35, Governor Edward John Cameron to Secretary of State for the Colonies, Bathurst, 13 April 1915. 50 NA (UK) CO 445/38, Governor Edward John Cameron to Colonel A. W. H. Haywood, Assistant Director of Recruiting, West Africa, Bathurst, 12 March 1917.

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composition of the unit. Before the First World War, the largest groups of soldiers were Bambara from French territory and Mende and Temne men from Sierra Leone. But now locally born Fula (Fulani) soldiers constituted a relatively large majority, and there were an increasing number of Serahuli troops. The pastoral Fula and the agricultural Serahuli, both strongly Muslim communities, had historical origins deeper in the interior of West Africa and during the nineteenth century, they moved into what later became the Gambia. Simultaneously, though, the Gambia Company remained diverse, with soldiers from at least eighteen different ethnicities.51 Nevertheless, recruiting of Gambians continued to be unreliable as at times half the available recruits originated from French West Africa. This situation prompted official proposals to obtain more recruits from Sierra Leone and for the military to find civilian work for discharged soldiers from French territory to encourage them to continue living within the Gambia where they could serve as reservists. Proposals to amalgamate the Gambia Company into the SLB related to recruiting issues but also official debates over how to defend Freetown given major budget cuts to the garrison there.52 Haywood’s 1923 military manpower report explained recruiting difficulties in the Gambia “as probably due to the affluence of the natives and the ease with which they can make money in the ground-nut business.”53 During the interwar period, as in Sierra Leone, British officers in the Gambia searched for local martial races. According to WAFF inspector general Haywood, “The Jolas, Fullas and Sarahoulis are the only three tribes of the Gambia to furnish recruits; these men are much the same type as recruited by the French for their ‘Senegalese Tirailleurs.’ They make excellent soldiers.”54 Ideas about the alleged superiority of French West African 51 NA (UK) CO 445/55, Report on the Gambia Company, 1921; CO 445/62, Report on the Gambia Company, 1923; for the history of Gambia’s ethnic groups see Arnold Hughes and David Perfect, A Political History of the Gambia, 1816–1994 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 10–24. 52 NA (UK) CO 445/64, Report on the Gambia Company, 1924; CO 445/67, Report on the Gambia Company, 1925; CO 445/63, “Replacement of West African Regt. By WAFF,” 8 June 1923. 53 NA (UK) CO 537/954, “Report on the Combatant Manpower,” Haywood, 3 July 1923. 54 NA (UK) CO 537/954, “Report on the Combatant Manpower,” Haywood, 3 July 1923. Haywood was incorrect that the Jola had always enlisted in the Gambia Company. He probably confused the word “Jola” with “Jollof.”

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troops remained very powerful, and it appears that the British in the Gambia wanted to create their own Anglophone version of the Tirailleurs. In 1927 British officers attempted to restructure the Gambia Company so that it consisted entirely of troops from the Fula and Serahuli communities. Similar to Sierra Leone, official desires to narrow recruitment also related to language issues. While Pidgin English served as the lingua franca of the Gambia Company, most recruits did not know this language before enlistment, and British officers worried that the mix of too many vernaculars hindered instruction and might cause serious communication problems during wartime when Gambian troops would integrate into larger forces. It appears that the previous emphasis on English language training in the Gambia Company fell away around the time of the First World War. Although some British officers perceived the Fula and Soninke as “martial tribes” and dreamed of creating ethnically oriented platoons within the company, the new martial race policy failed, as no more of these men than usual came forth to enlist and the neglect of recruiting among other supposedly less martial communities caused a shortfall in the annual intake. In 1928, recruiting reopened to all of the Gambia’s ethnic groups, monetary bonuses for recruits and their chiefs increased, and the company brought some recruits from Sierra Leone to compensate for the previous year’s failed experiment. Since British officers now regretfully predicted the company would remain multiethnic, English language instruction resumed for the African rank-and-file and continued throughout the interwar period. RWAFF inspector general Butler lamented that military recruiting in the Gambia would always prove difficult, describing Gambians as “un-warlike and well-off.”55 The Great Depression saved the Gambia Company. As British officials discussed the possibility of disbanding the independent small unit and garrisoning Bathurst with a detached company from the SLB, the 1929 worldwide economic crisis led to more unemployed Gambians applying to join the colonial military. According to the unit’s diary for 1929, “The Company is over strength now and as recruits still continue to present themselves for enlistment every opportunity is being taken of getting rid of bad soldiers.”56 By 1931 the Gambia Company was still slightly larger than its official establishment and kept a waiting list of applicants. Amalgamation with the SLB was set aside, and this was further justified by the official opinion that any 55 NA (UK) CO 820/1/3, Report on Gambia Company, 1927; CO 820/4/6, Report on Gambia Company, 1928. 56 NAG (Banjul), CSO 24/1, Gambia Company History Book, vol. 1, 1929.

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future internal security operations in the Gambia would require local troops who could speak Gambian languages. During the 1930s, recruiting generally followed existing ethnic patterns in the unit but with a few new developments. As before, most of the Gambian enlistees came from “Upper River,” which became the company’s traditional recruiting area, Fula men remained in the majority, and some men from French territory and Sierra Leone continued to enlist. Nonetheless, a relatively significant number of men from the Gambia’s large Mandinka ethnic group began to join the company and a few literate English-speaking Bathurst “Creoles” became signalers working with newly arrived radios.57 Not all British officers of this period expressed negative opinions of their Gambian troops. A junior officer who arrived in 1936 recalled, “Our soldiers were of magnificent physic (sic) and extremely keen on their job . . . no specifically selected tribes.”58 Despite the lack of colonial martial reputation, many Gambians enlisted in the greatly expanded military during the Second World War. In the early days of the conflict, a British official in Bathurst made dire predictions about the potential for military recruiting in the Gambia as he believed that Gambians were “incapable of hard work .  .  . somewhat unenterprising,” and that “it would be impossible to deprive the Gambian of his regular sexual intercourse without upsetting his mental health.”59 At the start of 1941, British officials in the Gambia canceled recently imposed ethnic quotas for military enlistment, opening the army up to any Gambian men who met physical requirements. 60 During 1940, voluntary recruitment proved very successful, with the Gambia Company quickly expanding into a thousand-strong battalion. Officials noticed that men from the Jola ethnic group, which had previously avoided enlistment with the Gambia Company and actively resisted French conscription across the southern border in the Casamance region of Senegal, now eagerly joined the British colonial army. By March 1943, there were 1,250 Gambian soldiers in the First Battalion Gambia Regiment, which was on operational service bound for Burma. The 57 NA (UK) CO 820/12/3, Report on Gambia Company, 1931; CO 820/17/10, Report on Gambia Company, 1934; CO 820/25/7, Report on Gambia Company, 1937; CO 820/30/1, Report on Gambia Company, 1938. 58 ORDP, T. N. Hawtin, written account c.1980. 59 NAG, CSO 4/64, “Manpower and Recruitment,” D. Bayley, minute 12 December 1939. 60 NAG, CSO 4/64, “Recruiting,” Captain J. Hawtin, Bathurst to Colonial Secretary, Bathurst, 13 March 1941.

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locally based Second Battalion Gambia Regiment trained replacements, and seventeen hundred Gambian troops served in other British military units.61 Given the Gambia’s small population, this military contribution to the war effort represented the equivalent of Nigeria raising two hundred battalions.62 The Gambia continued to supply small numbers of recruits throughout the rest of the war, including by imposing a limited form of conscription that also applied to other West African territories, but this became increasingly difficult to enforce, with men needed for agricultural production. While some intakes of recruits included roughly 10 percent to 35 percent from French territory, complaints from French colonial officials after the fall of the Vichy Regime prompted the British to terminate the practice.63 The Second World War experience seems to have encouraged many British officers who served in the Gambia Regiment to abandon martial race theories. As one officer remembered, “There did not seem to be any attempt to recruit from one tribe rather than another; their representations in the battalions appeared to correspond closely with their proportion in the Gambia’s population. Mandingoes were the most numerous, followed by Jollof, then Fulani, and minority tribes, Jola, Bambara, Serahuli, Serere. Most seemed to be from the Gambia itself, few from Senegal.”64 Remembering his time as a company commander of the Gambia Regiment in Burma, N. D. Poulson wrote, “I don’t think I can fairly distinguish one tribe from another for its martial qualities. There were brave and efficient soldiers in each of them, but there was no real soldiering tradition in the Gambia.”65 George Laing, who commanded a Nigerian company in East Africa in 1940 and First Battalion Gambia Regiment in Burma, arrived at “the conclusion that all tribes and Africans are equally good as each other and prove themselves in action, 61 NAG, CSO 4/64, “Conscription in the Gambia,” Commissioner, South Bank Province to Colonial Secretary, Bathurst, 24 January 1941; NAG, CSO 4/65, “Recruitment in the Gambia,” Commander Gambia Area to Governor, Bathurst, 30 March 1943. 62 NAG, CSO 4/64, Commissioner’s Office, Georgetown, 11 February 1941. Nigeria raised about fourteen infantry battalions. 63 NAG, CSO 4/66, “Recruiting in the Gambia,” Commissioner North Bank Province to Colonial Secretary, 30 June 1944; Commissioner Upper River Province to Colonial Secretary, 31 May 1944; West African War Council, 4 July 1944. 64 ORDP, J. A. L. Hamilton, 29 November 1981. 65 ORDP, Major N. D. Poulson, 10 September 1980.

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according to the leadership they receive! I also believe the same applies to Europeans of whatever nationality.”66

Conclusion The colonial military history of Sierra Leone and the Gambia illustrates the essential hollowness of British martial race theory in Africa. During the 1920s, the height of the martial race craze in Britain’s African colonies, British officers in Sierra Leone and the Gambia attempted to narrow military recruitment to a few alleged martial peoples, but the experiments failed as these minority communities did not supply enough men to sustain colonial units. In both territories, men who joined the colonial military tended to come from a wide array of ethnic groups, each producing a relatively small number of recruits each year. Although the personal perspectives of Sierra Leonean and Gambian recruits is now almost impossible to determine because of a lack of sources typical of the colonial context, the available evidence provides no indication that precolonial military values or identities that certainly existed represented a significant factor in colonial enlistment. The nineteenth-century concept of a “war boy” might have influenced early British opinions of Sierra Leonean troops as natural bush fighters, as did the memory of the 1898 rebellion, but this view quickly fell away. British perceptions of the alleged martial virtues of various Sierra Leonean and Gambian peoples were arbitrary and constantly changing based on different factors. For example, from the late 1890s to the 1940s, British officials briefly labeled the Mende people of Sierra Leone as a martial group and then recast them as decadent given Western influences and finally restored their martial status until the concept became obsolete. These shifting military policies around identity related to practical matters affecting recruiting such as language instruction, location of military garrisons, plans to create a reserve force, and the changing economic situation. Although some British officers eventually developed unfavorable opinions about the military aptitude of all Sierra Leoneans and Gambians, thousands of men from these countries and representing all their ethnic groups enlisted in the colonial army during the early twentieth century, and their numbers swelled during the Second World War when many of them fought in Burma.

66 ORDP, George Laing, 16 November 1981. Emphasis in original.

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British officials’ failure to decide on a strong martial race for Sierra Leone and the Gambia raises an interesting possibility about the legacy of the colonial military in West Africa. Scholars often point to the colonial emphasis on recruiting African soldiers from among imagined martial tribes as forming the historical context for ethnic factionalism in postcolonial African armed forces that contributed to military coups and mutinies. The classic example of this trend is 1960s Nigeria, where officers from supposedly nonmartial (southeastern) and martial groups/regions (northern) staged coups and countercoups that led to the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70).67 Although the British tried but failed to find imagined martial races in Sierra Leone and the Gambia where colonial armies became ethnically heterogeneous, the postcolonial militaries of these countries experienced similar ethnic factionalism and politicization. In independent Sierra Leone of the 1960s, the government of Albert Margai favored and expanded the number of military officers from his own southern-based Mende ethnic group, while the subsequent administration of Siaka Steven reversed the trend replacing them with others from the president’s Temne people of the north. This led to coups, countercoups, and mutinies. Taking power in a 1994 military coup, the Gambian regime of Yahya Jammeh promoted army officers from his own Jola ethnicity causing factionalism within the military.68 Given the absence of strong imagined martial or nonmartial identities in colonial Sierra Leone and the Gambia, perhaps colonial military history is not at the heart of postcolonial military problems in these countries.

67 Luckham, Nigerian Military. 68 Larry J. Woods and Timothy R. Reese, Military Interventions in Sierra Leone: Lessons from a Failed State (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army Combined Arms Center, 2008), 11–12; Maggie Dwyer, Soldiers in Revolt: Army Mutinies in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 144.

Chapter Four

Religion Closely related to identity, religion represents a popular topic in African History. For West Africa, the many important and well-studied themes include the arrival of Islam via medieval trans-Saharan trade routes, missionary Christianity along the coast and Muslim revitalization movements in the interior during the nineteenth century, religious syncretism involving traditional beliefs, the rise of independent African churches during the colonial era, and postcolonial religious extremism.1 However, the religious dynamic within the colonial and postcolonial militaries of West Africa, a region where militaries have played a central role in postcolonial politics and warfare, lacks similar scholarly attention. David Killingray, groundbreaking historian of the British colonial military in West Africa, highlighted that “next to nothing is known about the religious experiences of African soldiers.”2 The root of this problem is that European officers, structurally and socially distant from the African rank-and-file, authored the available evidence. This alienation was most acute when it came to the potentially controversial and fundamentally personal subject of religion. Making the most of limited primary sources, social histories of African troops in other colonial militaries contain short sections on aspects of their religious history. In British East and Central Africa, the KAR evolved from a primarily Muslim to a mostly Christian force with officers using religion as a disciplinary tool.3 Reflecting broader change, African police and soldiers in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) initially practiced traditional beliefs, but by the 1940s most were Christians working in 1

For overviews see Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present (Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World, 1995); Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels, eds., The History of Islam in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000). 2 Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 251. 3 Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 124–28; Lovering, “Authority and Identity,” 214–21.

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a Christian institutional ethos with a few becoming prominent clergy.4 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Germany’s mainly Muslim African soldiery expanded Islam across German East Africa provoking resentment among European Christian missionaries.5 French colonial authorities attempted to ensure loyalty among Muslim African troops by facilitating religious observance and appointing imams to counter First World War German and Ottoman propaganda. French officers also organized army pilgrimages to Mecca during the 1950s to boost the morale of Muslim West African soldiers fighting Muslim insurgents in Algeria.6 Nevertheless, the religious history of Britain’s locally recruited West African army remains obscure.7 Despite limited sources, it is clear that religion comprised a fundamental but constantly changing feature of military culture and life in British West Africa. The point becomes clear by examining West African troops’ religious affiliations, religious observance in the colonial army, and the military appointment of Christian chaplains and Muslim imams.

Religious Affiliations Influenced by previous stereotypes cultivated in colonial India, British officers engaged in the late nineteenth-century conquest of West Africa often preferred employing Muslim troops. Some of these officers also believed that Muslim communities more likely comprised martial races with inherent soldierly traits. To some extent, this overlapped with the existing West African institution of employing enslaved soldiers of Muslim and hinterland origin that transferred over to the early colonial armies in the region. This British preference for Muslim troops, however, changed during the transition from conquest to occupation in West Africa. Garnet Wolseley, who led an invasion of Asante in 1873–74 and became one of Victorian Britain’s most famous 4 Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers, 104–8. 5 Moyd, Violence Intermediaries, 170–74. 6 Fogarty, Race and War in France, 169–201; Ginio, The French Army and its African Soldiers, 123–40. 7 Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 189–90 offers a starting point; Ubah, Colonial Army and Society in Northern Nigeria, 205–8 briefly discusses Islam before the First World War; Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 232–34 summarizes religion composition of the GCR but without access to newly available primary sources.

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generals, held positive views about the military abilities of Muslim African troops. He “attributed much, if not all, their superiority as soldiers to the fact that their worship of one God alone, the Creator of all things, elevates their minds above the machinations and superstitions of idolatry, and raises them accordingly in spirit and in courage above the fetish-worshipping tribes around them.”8 Quickly, though, British anxiety over the potential of Islam to mobilize anticolonial resistance mitigated against building an overwhelmingly Muslim army in West Africa, especially considering the region’s recent history of jihad. In 1902, Lugard, who established an indirect rule system in Northern Nigeria that relied on the co-option and cooperation of Muslim emirs, thought it important to balance the number of Muslim and traditionalist (called “pagan” or “heathen”) soldiers. From the colonial administrative unification of Nigeria in 1914, Lugard continued this policy as the territory’s first governor.9 In 1904, WAFF inspector general Brigadier Kemball warned that Muslim troops should not be “overindulged” and highlighted the security advantage of mixed Muslim and non-Muslim companies employed in the GCR.10 While the early British colonial military in Nigeria contained a robust majority of Muslim troops, their numbers constantly decreased. Established in the 1860s during the British takeover of Lagos, the Armed Hausa Police Force included many formerly enslaved men of interior origin and therefore the unit adopted a Muslim ethos.11 By 1902 this formation, now the Lagos Battalion of the WAFF, consisted almost entirely of Muslim Hausa troops born in Lagos, and they resided in a distinct Muslim Hausa civilian neighborhood along with soldiers’ families and ex-soldiers and their relatives.12 The 1906 folding of the Lagos Battalion into the newer SNR, with battalions 8

Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life, vol. 2 (Westminster, UK: Archibald Constable, 1903, 293). 9 F. Lugard, “Colonial Report on Northern Nigeria, 1900–1901,” no. 346, February 1902, 25; NA (UK) CO 445/34, F. Lugard to L. Harcourt, 3 July 1914. 10 Killingray, “Colonial Army,” 119. 11 Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City, 110–11; John H. Hanson, The Ahmadiya in the Gold Coast: Muslims Cosmopolitans in the British Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 42–45. 12 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on the Lagos Battalion, Brigadier G. V. Kemball, Lagos, 12 February 1903. Throughout the colonial period, British military records did not differentiate different branches of Islam practiced by West African soldiers.

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in Lagos and Calabar, diluted the Muslim composition of Britain’s army in Nigeria’s coastal region as traditionalist Yoruba became the largest component and traditionalists from the east and “Middle Belt” interior began enlisting. In Lagos, the battalion brought the Muslim Hausa settlement under formal military control, evicting unauthorized civilians.13 In the late 1890s, the original WAFF that prosecuted the conquest of the Nigerian interior consisted of Hausa troops described as Muslims and Yoruba soldiers whose religion was unrecorded but were likely traditionalists.14 In Nigeria, the percentage of Muslims among the colonial army’s African rank-and-file steadily waned. In 1910 the NNR that garrisoned the predominantly Muslim hinterland, comprised 2,355 or 75 percent Muslims and 785 or 25 percent traditionalists with a single Christian soldier. In 1913 the 1875 Muslims and 932 traditionalists of the NNR denoted a religious proportion of 69 percent and 31 percent, respectively.15 The 1914 amalgamation of the NNR and SNR as the Nigeria Regiment (NR) further reduced the percentage of Muslims in the ranks. By the 1930s respectable Muslims in Northern Nigeria avoided soldiering, seeing it a lowly occupation associated with immoral behavior like drinking alcohol and sexual promiscuity.16 Although the overall trend in early twentieth-century Nigeria showed a decline in the prevalence of Muslim soldiers, the colonial military became a venue for religious conversion. An officer of the NNR Mounted Infantry battalion pointed out that plans by “senior officers to introduce Pagan recruits into their companies for the better balancing of religious feeling invariably ended in the Mohammedanizing of these Pagans.”17 In 1910 Wilkinson expressed concern about NNR companies garrisoning predominantly Muslim centers for too long as “at such places there is often a difficulty in enlisting a sufficient number of Hausa speaking pagans, nor are such

13 NA (UK) CO 445/28, Report on SNR, 11 January 1908; CO 445/32, Report on SNR, 24 February 1913. 14 Willcocks, From Kabul to Kumassi, 178. 15 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on NNR, 1910, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, 31 March 1911; CO 445/34, Report on NNR 1913, Lt. Col. J. B. Cockburn, Kaduna, 6 March 1914. 16 Heussler, British in Northern Nigeria, 120; Smith, Recollections of British Administration, 140. 17 Hall, Barrack and Bush, 43.

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pagans for long resistant to Mahomedan [sic] influences.”18 The religiously integrated company organization and the military’s employment of Muslim religious leaders to discourage mutiny among Muslim troops also facilitated conversion to Islam by traditionalist soldiers.19 During the early twentieth century, most West African colonial soldiers in the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone followed traditional beliefs. Beginning as an offshoot of the Lagos military garrison, the paramilitary GCC of the 1880s and 1890s was comprised of Muslims but the return of the original Nigerian soldiers to their home territory diluted the unit’s religious character. Thinking that Muslims made particularly good soldiers, British authorities in the Gold Coast regretted the recruitment of “pagans” from the north where Islam had a limited presence. Indeed, the British built mosques for ex-soldiers in the zongos of southern towns vainly hoping that this would stimulate recruiting among Muslims. By 1901, when part of the paramilitary GCC transformed into purely military GCR, only two Muslim companies remained.20 By 1905 most of the recruits for the GCR, now under the regional WAFF, comprised traditionalists from remote and impoverished northern communities that became the territory’s primary recruiting pool.21 In the 1910s and 1920s, the Freetown-based WAR comprised 20 percent Muslim soldiers, mostly from northern Sierra Leone and neighboring French territory, grouped into two companies and the rest were traditionalists with a smattering of Christians in the band. Within the WAR, some traditionalists converted to Islam.22 Some hinterland outposts reflected slightly different demographics. In 1911, of the three WAR companies garrisoning Karene in the north, about half the troops and their family members identified as Muslims.23 While there is little information on the religious composition of the Sierra Leone Frontier Police of the 1890s that became the SLB of the early 1900s, the unit shared a similar ethnic and regional makeup to 18 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on NNR, 1910, Brigadier P. S. Wilkinson, 31 March 1911. 19 Raphael, Through Unknown Nigeria, 280–81. 20 Killingray, “Colonial Army,” 232; Killingray, “Imagined Martial Communities,” 123; Hanson, Gold Coast, 46. 21 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on 2nd Battalion GCR, 1905. 22 SOAS Library, Wesleyan Missionary Society, MP-SOA-MMS-06-20-004-007, “Mosque, Freetown, 1910.” Oxford Records Development Project, Weston Library, MSS. Afr. s. 1734 (ORDP), A. J. Chrystal. 23 Sierra Leone: Census of 1911 (London: Waterlow, 1912), 33.

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the WAR, making it reasonable to think that its religious character was comparable.24 During the 1930s British military authorities in West Africa began recording the religious affiliations of locally recruited soldiers, presenting a clear picture of that element of the force’s character. Within the NR, Muslims remained the majority, but their numbers continued to decline as the presence of traditionalists and Christians increased. In 1933 the NR consisted of 1,763 (56 percent) Muslims, 1,099 (35 percent) traditionalists and 273 (9 percent) Christians, and by 1937, there were 1,582 (51 percent) Muslims, 1,205 (39 percent) traditionalists and 309 (10 percent) Christians. At the start of 1939, there were 1,527 (47 percent) Muslims, 1,320 (41 percent) traditionalists and 379 (12 percent) Christians among the Nigerian soldiers.25 In the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, traditionalists remained the majority among African troops, although the small Muslim and Christian contingents grew. In 1933 the GCR comprised 510 (76 percent) traditionalists, 138 (20 percent) Muslims and 27 (4 percent) Christians, and in 1937, there were 452 (57 percent) traditionalists, 299 (38 percent) Muslims and 46 (6 percent) Christians. The growth in the GCR’s Muslim minority reflected the unit’s increased reliance on recruiting among northern labor migrants in the zongos of Kumasi and Accra.26 The SLB, in 1933, consisted of 278 (73 percent) traditionalists, 55 (15 percent) Christians and 47 (12 percent) Muslims, and in 1938 there were 257 (59 percent) traditionalists, 98 (23 percent) Christians and 78 (18 percent) Muslims.27 Much smaller than its counterpart formations in British West Africa, the Gambia Company reflected territorial demographics remaining an overwhelmingly Muslim unit during the 1930s. The phasing out of recruiting in Sierra Leone and greater local enlistment, including some men from Senegal, meant that the company’s traditionalist and Christian elements almost disappeared. It is also likely that some of the Christian and traditionalist soldiers in the Gambia converted to Islam during 24 Crooks, A History of Sierra Leone, 344; NA (UK) CO 445/27, Report on the SLB, 18 April 1908. 25 NA (UK), CO 820/15/13, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 16 March 1933; CO 820/25/4, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 18 February 1937; CO 820/29/6, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 3 February 1939. 26 NA (UK) CO 820/16/1, Report on GCR, 2 April 1933; CO 820/25/5, Report on GCR, 18 March 1937. 27 NA (UK) CO 820/16/4, Report on SLB, 1 May 1933; CO 820/34/9, Report on SLB and the Gambia Company, 21 March 1939.

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their military service. At the end of 1933 the Gambia Company comprised 84 (62 percent) Muslims, 38 traditionalists (28 percent) and 14 (10 percent) Christians, and by 1938 there were 120 (86 percent) Muslims, 13 (9 percent) traditionalists and 7 (5 percent) Christians. The next year there were no traditionalists left.28 In the entire RWAFF, during the late 1930s, Muslims and traditionalists each represented about 44 percent of the rank-and-file while Christians amounted to around 11.5 percent. Indeed, the force’s traditionalists slightly outnumbered its Muslims.29 Despite the absence of precise records for the religious composition of Britain’s West African colonial army during the Second World War, it is clear a Christian revolution took place. Dramatic military expansion and requirements for Western-educated troops suitable for new military technical and support services resulted in the enlistment of masses of men originating from now predominantly Christian southern and coastal communities not previously seen as recruiting grounds and perceived by colonial officials as nonmartial. For the first time, large numbers of Christian Krio men from Freetown and Catholics from southeastern Nigeria entered the colonial army. This transition also related to broad social change, whereby people in marginalized regions long targeted by colonial military recruiters, such as the Tiv of Nigeria’s “Middle Belt,” transformed from primarily traditionalist to members of Christian missionary denominations. One British general claimed that during the war, West African soldiers amounted to 47 percent Christians, 33 percent Muslims, and 20 percent traditionalists.30 Of course, 28 NA (UK) CO 820/17/10, Report on the Gambia Company, 1 March 1934; CO 820/30/2, Report on the Gambia Company, 28 February 1938; CO 820/34/9, Report on SLB and the Gambia Company, 21 March 1939. 29 These figures differ from those presented by General Sir William Platt, “The East African Force in the War and their Future,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 93/571 (1948): 413, which claims that the RWAFF in 1939 consisted of 70 percent Muslim, 20 percent traditionalist, and 5 percent Christian troops. This inaccuracy reappears in Killingray, “Colonial Army,” 233; and the figure for Christians is reduced to 2 percent in Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 111. It is worth noting that the RWAFF unit reports from the 1930s that contain information on religious affiliation remained unavailable at the National Archives (UK) until the 1980s. 30 Platt, “East African Force,” 413. The inaccuracy of Platt’s 1939 figures, which inflated the number of Muslim troops, casts doubt on his Second World War estimate. Given sources from the early 1950s (see below), the percentage of Christians during the war was probably higher than 47 percent.

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not all the Christians who joined the army during the war came from predominantly Christian areas or served in support units. Originating from French colonial territory around Lake Chad, Hama Kim’s grandfather was a Muslim, but his father had converted to Christianity and sent his son to the Sudan Interior Mission school at Kano in Northern Nigeria. The teenage Hama Kim enlisted in 1940 as a Christian and fought as an infantryman in Burma, his life saved by a pocket Bible that stopped a Japanese bullet. Years later, after Nigeria’s independence, career soldier RSM Hama Kim married a Muslim woman and converted to Islam.31 Surviving military records show that despite demobilization in the late 1940s, Christians continued to comprise a majority of Britain’s West African colonial army after the Second World War. In 1952 Britain’s West African soldiers included around 9,500 (or 57 percent) Christians, 4,500 (or 26 percent) Muslims, and 3,000 (or 17 percent) traditionalists. In Nigeria and the Gold Coast, the small but growing elements of Christian troops during the prewar era now constituted solid majorities. In early 1950s Nigeria, there were 4,381 (59 percent) Christian, 2,000 (27 percent) Muslim and 1,070 (14 percent) traditionalist soldiers. On the Gold Coast, at the same time, there were 3,050 (53 percent) Christians, 1,500 (26 percent) traditionalists, and 1,200 (21 percent) Muslims.32 On the Gold Coast, the number of Christians within the army continued to rise. Upon the country’s independence as Ghana in 1957, its army consisted of 3,248 (57 percent) Christians, 1,253 (22 percent) Muslims, and 1,200 (21 percent) traditionalists.33 Based on British officers’ accounts, and the fact that the postwar military in Nigeria funneled southerners into tradesmen positions, Nigerian and Gold Coast combat units likely contained a larger proportion of Muslims and traditionalists than the mostly Christian support elements.34 The trend in Sierra Leone was different as Muslim troops increased from the smallest element of the late 1930s to become the majority in the early 1950s. Simultaneously, the proportion of traditionalists shrank, and the number of Christians grew 31 Ronald W. Graham, “There Was a Soldier: The Life of Hama Kim MM,” Africana Marburgensia, Special Issue 10 (1985): 9–10. 32 AH (Kaduna), Northern Provinces Secretariat (NPS) 2/2/18, District Commanders Conference, Status of Imams, “Breakdown of District by Religions,” January 1952. 33 PRAAD (Accra) RG 14/4/85, “Chaplains: Ghana Military Forces,” 1956–69, “Proposed Ghana Army Chaplains Department,” 22 October 1957. 34 For example, see ORDP, Major William Catcheside, 25 September 1980.

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substantially. This change reflected the wider expansion of Islam in Sierra Leone during the colonial period.35 In Sierra Leone and the Gambia in the early 1950s, there were 1,260 (53 percent) Muslim, 780 (33 percent) Christian, and 360 (15 percent) traditionalist soldiers.36 On the eve of independence, the militaries of Nigeria and Gold Coast included Christian majorities, while those in Sierra Leone and the Gambia were mostly Muslim.

Religious Life Muslims practiced their faith within Britain’s West Africa army from its inception. In nineteenth- century South Asia and West Africa, Muslim soldiers in British colonial forces adhered to what some historians call “‘barracks’ Islam that included a demonstrative religious practice and engagement of mallams to receive esoteric protection and healing.”37 During the 1870s, British officers and officials in West Africa popularly called the men of Lagos’ Armed Hausa Police “Salt-water Mohamedans” as they did not observe all Muslim restrictions. While these soldiers consumed alcohol and sometimes became drunk, they strictly refrained from eating pork. And during the 1873 Asante campaign, some Hausa troops became enraged when pig’s blood almost contaminated their water source.38 In addition, the soldiers celebrated Muslim holidays, and military buglers substituted Christian hymns they knew how to play to sound the predawn call to 35 Mohammed-Bassiru Sillah, “Islam in Sierra Leone: The Colonial Reaction and the Emergence of a National Identity,” Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 15, no. 1–2 (1994): 121–43; David Skinner, “The Influence of Islam in Sierra Leone History: Institutions, Practises and Leadership,” Journal of West African History 2, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 27–71. 36 AH (Kaduna), Northern Provinces Secretariat (NPS) 2/2/18, District Commanders Conference, Status of Imams, “Breakdown of District by Religions,” January 1952. This report combines the figures for Sierra Leone and the Gambia. Although greatly expanded during the war, the Gambia Regiment of 1952 consisted of a single company, meaning that most of the soldiers recorded here resided in Sierra Leone. In addition, there is no breakdown of religious affiliation in combat and support units. 37 For the quote Hanson, Gold Coast, 32; Nile Green, Islam and the Army in Colonial India: Sepoy Religion and the Service of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 136. 38 “The Houssa Force,” Times, 3 September 1873.

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prayer.39 During battles against the warriors of Asante, Muslim colonial troops advanced “chanting verses from the Koran”40 and “with tremendous yells, invoking Allah and the Prophet.”41 The initially partial and adaptive “Barracks Islam” of the early British colonial military in West Africa gradually became more complete. The troops of the Lagos Constabulary gained significant religious privileges. In the late nineteenth century, these soldiers took a month off duty for Ramadan though this changed to a five-day holiday at the start of the twentieth century. At the time, other Muslim units in British colonial Africa and India received a oneday Ramadan holiday. Over time, adherence to Muslim practices in the unit became stricter as the troops studied Arabic language under an army schoolmaster and, as discussed below, received religious instruction from an imam. Given this religious ethos, the few traditionalist Yoruba men who joined the battalion almost all converted to Islam. In his 1903 report on the Lagos Battalion, WAFF inspector general Kemball stated, “The men are far more observant of the forms of their religion than any body of their co-religionists I have met within West Africa.”42 Known as the Fourth Battalion, Nigeria Regiment, the same Lagos-based infantry unit serving in Cameroon in 1915 took a day’s break from constructing defenses to observe Ramadan.43 One of the battalion’s senior soldiers, Sergeant Major Bawa Yawuri, left the army after the First World War, becoming a well-known civilian imam in Lagos until his death in 1945.44 “Barracks Islam” became a routine but varied feature of life in Britain’s West African army. The WAR in early twentieth-century Sierra Leone maintained a unit mosque in Freetown with every Muslim soldier donating sixpence from his monthly salary for its upkeep.45 A British officer with the NR during the late 1930s and early 1940s observed that Muslim soldiers 39 Hanson, Gold Coast, 48. 40 Winwood Reade, The Story of the Ashantee Campaign, London: Smith, Elder, 1874, 178. 41 “The Houssa Force.” 42 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on the Lagos Battalion, 12 January 1903. 43 NA (UK) WO 95/5387/6, “War Diary: 2 Battalion Nigeria Regiment,” 1915. In the Cameroon campaign, Fourth Battalion, Nigeria Regiment, became known locally as Two Battalion Nigeria Regiment. 44 “16 Imams Conduct Funeral for Late Bawa,” West African Pilot, 31 January 1945. 45 ORDP, Chrystal.

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“followed the normal habits of the Mohammedan although they were not so rabid about it as some I have met elsewhere.”46 At times, nevertheless, the NR encouraged a pious approach to Islam as during the Second World War marches were routinely halted to allow for Muslim prayers and in the 1950s, Muslim “practices were followed strictly—Ramadan, etc.”47 Fighting in Burma during the Second World War, the mostly Muslim Gambian soldiers “were by no means fanatical in their belief, but they were sufficiently devout to possess copies of the Koran in Arabic characters, to say their prayers, to observe the major fasts and to abstain from pork and alcohol. The nearer they approached the Japs the more devout they became, an increase in piety that was shared with the Christians.”48 With the military expansion of the Second World War, some members of the Muslim reformist Ahmadiyya movement in Lagos, originating in India and popular with some Nigerian intellectuals, joined the colonial military and the group’s youth league held celebrations when their soldiers returned home from overseas.49 According to Abdul Aziz Brimah, son of the head of a Muslim community in Accra who served with the GCR in Burma, “This fight we took like a Jihad, a Holy battle. So it was allowed to us Muslims.”50 During an official visit to India and Burma during the Second World War, Nigeria’s Emir of Katsina motivated West African Muslim troops, telling them that the Emperor of Japan had declared himself god, and therefore it was the duty of Muslims to fight the Japanese and their leader “as there was no God with the exception of the true God (Allah).”51 Britain’s West African army accommodated Muslim troops’ partaking in religious festivals and Friday prayers. During the 1930s and 1940s, British officers in Nigeria and the Gold Coast saw Ramadan as the year’s most difficult period as fasting troops lacked the energy needed for work, and nightly over-consumption of food and sometimes alcohol resulted in morning 46 47 48 49

ORDP, T. B. Gibbons, 22 September 1980. ORDP, J. Leniewski; B. O’Gorman, 23 June 1981. ORDP, D. M. Cookson, “With Africans in Arakan,” 1969, 4. “Regimental Sergeant Major M.A. Onilenla is Given Warm Welcome on Return from India,” West African Pilot, 15 October 1945. 50 Statement of Al-Haji Abdul Aziz Brimah, https://memorialgates.org/history/ ww2/participants/african/aziz-brimah.html, accessed 24 February 2021. 51 ORDP, Leniewski. This memoir mistakenly identifies the Sultan of Sokoto as the visitor, but it was in fact the Emir of Katsina, see RWAFF News, 27 November 1944.

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hangovers.52 Although the Nigeria Regiment and GCR of the 1930s and 1940s gave Muslim soldiers sheep, goats, and extra food for Ramadan feasts, West African units sometimes postponed Ramadan observance during field operations.53 When West African soldiers traveled to Britain for the 1946 Victory Parade and the 1952 Coronation, military authorities arranged for Muslims to observe Ramadan and acquired approval from a London mosque for troops to forgo fasting if they decided to do so.54 Overall, this tolerant approach proved effective with serious religiously motivated protest an exceptionally rare occurrence in Britain’s West African army. In an isolated case that occurred among Nigeria Regiment troops preparing for deployment to East Africa in 1917, Sergeant Tanko Kura convinced twenty fellow Muslim recruits to desert over a misunderstanding that they were to fight against Turkish coreligionists.55 The different religious cultures of West African regiments sometimes caused tension. During a temporary posting to Freetown during the late 1930s, the almost entirely Muslim Gambia Company’s practice of holding a one-day holiday on Ramadan and conducting prayers in civilian attire provoked objections from the commanding officer of the local SLB, which had no such practice at that time. Given grumbling among the Gambian soldiers strongly supported by their British company commander, Sierra Leone authorities allowed them to hold their usual Ramadan event. In addition, the Muslim Gambians complained bitterly about having to participate in the SLB evening ritual of singing the Christian “Lord’s Prayer.”56 The approach to Friday prayers varied over time and place as, for example, in the Gold Coast during the 1930s soldiers usually did not work on Fridays while in Nigeria during the 1950s Friday prayers took place outside duty hours.57

52 ORDP, J. K. Chater; Anthony Read, 7 December 1980; G. F. Upjohn, 19 December 1980. 53 ORDP, T. P. Newberry, 16 November 1981; W. Catcheside, 25 September 1980; A. C. Davidson-Houston, 19 September 1980. 54 NAG (Banjul), CSO 10-293, Coronation, Military Contingent, 7 October 1952. 55 Barrett, “Colonial Army in Nigeria,” 112–13. 56 NA (UK) CO 820/35/6, “Reorganization of the RWAFF: Interchange of Gambia Company with a Sierra Leone Company for Training Purposes,” 1938. 57 ORDP, Catcheside; Read.

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The West African colonial army also organized special prayer services. During the Second World War, West African Muslim soldiers onboard a ship passing through the Red Sea on route to South Asia participated in special prayers led by their imams as the vessel neared the holy site of Mecca. In 1944, the 82nd (West Africa) Division in South Asia held joint Muslim, Christian, and traditionalist funeral services for soldiers who had died during training.58 Interreligious events occurred inconsistently. At a 1952 Armistice Day ceremony in Sierra Leone, the SLB conducted a combined Muslim and Christian service, but the next year this was forbidden. And during the January 1953 regimental day Muslim and Christian soldiers attended separate services.59 Colonial military authorities rarely demonstrated any hostility to Muslim soldiers. In a rare incident, an SLB commanding officer of the early 1930s banned the enlistment of Muslim soldiers, but his successor quickly reversed the policy.60 Soldiers’ adherence to Muslim constraints around diet and alcohol varied. While a Muslim cook in the Gambia Regiment in Burma refused to prepare bacon, some of the “laxer believers” drank alcohol at a party held in India to celebrate the end of the war.61 As the Nigeria Regiment concentrated in Kaduna in preparation for deployment to East Africa in the early days of the Second World War, local Muslim authorities gave soldiers permission to eat tinned “bully beef ” consisting of meat from animals not slaughtered in the appropriate manner.62 In Burma, some West African Muslim troops ate pork, believing they had leave to do so given the privations of combat.63 There were also instances during the Second World War when British officers deceived Muslim West African troops into eating meat not prepared according to religious requirements.64 A British officer with the NR during the Second World War, including in Burma, thought that “nobody was particularly religious” and remembered some Muslims enjoying alcohol and “womanizing.”65 Another British officer who led Nigerians in Burma remembered things 58 ORDP, Killingray file, Rev. P. A. Ettrick to D. Killingray, 25 November 1979; George Youell, Africa Marches (London: SPCK, 1949), 6–7. 59 ORDP, C. H. R. Hyde, 7 August 1980. 60 NA (UK) CO 820/16/4, Report on SLB, 1933. 61 ORDP, Cookson, “Africans in Arakan,” 16, 95. 62 ORDP, J. R. Filmer-Bennett. 63 ORDP, Upjohn. 64 IWM, interview J. E. Hayes, 2 February 1979. 65 IWM, interview K. D. Warren, 24 May 2007.

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differently, saying that Muslim soldiers firmly abstained from alcohol.66 During the 1950s, drinking and drunkenness among Nigerian soldiers appeared rare, and warrant officers and NCOs who were “devout Muslims” strictly limited alcohol consumption among all troops even when stationed in the southern and mainly Christian town of Enugu.67 Overseas service during the Second World War exposed West African Muslim soldiers to other Muslim communities. For instance, West African troops serving in Egypt took official tours of prominent Cairo mosques.68 Although authorities tried to control the movement of off-duty African colonial troops in overseas theatres, Muslim West African soldiers interacted with their South Asian coreligionists. In a rarely documented example, a Muslim community in India organized a Muslim funeral for a Gold Coast sergeant and buried him in a civilian Muslim cemetery.69 In an epic story of survival behind Japanese lines in Burma, Sierra Leonean Sergeant David Kargbo and Nigerian soldier Isaac Fadoyebo pretended to be Muslims to gain assistance from Burmese Muslim civilians. Sergeant Kargbo guided the performance by quoting the Koran: he had grown up as a Muslim who then converted to Christianity when he attended a mission school.70 While West African soldiers in India faced some anti-Muslim hostility from local Hindus, Gambian troops in Burma got along well with Rohingja people “regarded with favour as fellow Mohammedans.”71 Although there had long been a few Christians among Britain’s West African soldiers, and their numbers grew in the early 1930s, organized Christian life within the colonial military emerged during the Second World War. Initially, Britain’s colonial military institutions in West Africa lacked Christian services or churches. In the 1920s and 1930s British and African Christian personnel in the West African colonial army, including those based in overwhelmingly Christian towns like Enugu in southeastern Nigeria, had to leave their garrisons to attend religious services in nearby mission churches. Furthermore, there was almost no official interaction between the military and missionaries, and the army banned Christian proselytizing among the 66 67 68 69 70

IWM, interview J. B. Bell, 7 September 1990. ORDP, Catcheside; E. S. Hibbard, 10 September 1980. RWAFF News, 20 June 1944. ORDP, Killingray file, interview Eric Lanning, 11 December 1979. Barnaby Phillips, Another Man’s War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain’s Forgotten African Army (London: Oneworld, 2014), 113–14. 71 ORDP, Cookson, “Arakan,” 7, for quote see 52.

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African rank-and-file.72 Yet elements of a Christian ethos were beginning to develop, particularly in Sierra Leone. When the WAR received its official regimental colours in 1907, which consisted of a George’s Cross, the Bishop of Sierra Leone consecrated the flags.73 In the SLB of the 1930s (and probably earlier), each evening began with the mostly Muslim and traditionalist troops reciting the “Lord’s Prayer” and singing the British national anthem. Usually led by the African RSM, this ritual took place whether the battalion or its subunits were in barracks or out in the bush. The inspiration for this “treasured tradition of the battalion” stemmed from an uprising, possibly the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion, when a young British officer in charge of a besieged Frontier Police detachment taught his men these verses to keep up their morale.74 Another version of the story dates the beginning of the ritual to 1892 with a British officer teaching the men the national anthem and Native Officer Johnson, a Creole man from Freetown, teaching them the Lord’s Prayer.75 As head of WAC from 1940, George Giffard supported the construction of military churches in West Africa and ordered the building of a chapel at his headquarters in Achimota, Gold Coast.76 The appointment of military chaplains during the Second World War, discussed below, accelerated the establishment of military churches with support from senior officers and colonial officials. In 1944, at the bidding of the senior Gold Coast chaplain, army engineers transformed a recreation hall in Accra into the first official chapel for African soldiers in West Africa, with altar equipment designed and made by Lady London, wife of the territory’s colonial secretary. During the chapel’s dedication ceremony, African troops prayed alongside the Londons and British officers while listening to Christian religious music played by the GCR band.77 The first military church established in Nigeria was located at 72 ORDP T. B. Gibbons, 22 September 1980; E. H. Grant, 30 October 1980; Upjohn; Read. 73 “Presentation of Colours to the West African Regiment,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 4 January 1908; NA (UK), CO 445-51, “Colours for WAFF,” 7 June 1920. 74 “Tales of Sierra Leone,” Western Daily Press and Bristol Mirror, 19 April 1939, 8; ORDP, H. McCartney, 6 November 1980. 75 Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 29. 76 ORDP, A. Bishop, 10 November 1978. 77 “Soldiers Build Own Chapel in Camp,” RWAFF News, 6 June 1944; RWAFF News, 13 June 1944, 1.

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Enugu where there were many Christian soldiers from the south: with three chaplains, this church became well organized and popular.78 The new West African Artillery School interdenominational church in Accra gained the name of Saint Barbara, patron saint of gunners, and its dedication featured a religious reading by the unit’s commanding officer. By October 1945 WAC boasted twenty-five military churches with ten in Nigeria, nine in the Gold Coast, four in Sierra Leone, and two in the Gambia.79 West African training camps in India also included durable church buildings usually converted from some other use.80 The West African army brought its Christian ethos to Burma where field services promoted a sense of interracial religious fellowship. During combat operations against the Japanese, British officers and West African soldiers gathered for outdoor Christian services with impromptu crosses and altars fashioned from scraps of wood, and altars covered with parachute silk.81 A GCR company commander in Burma recalled these well-attended services: “We made a point of avoiding any question of precedence here. Officers and BNCOs, African soldiers and carriers, all knelt side by side as they arrived. It was not deliberate policy; it merely seemed right and natural.”82 A letter from a Catholic chaplain described “mass being said in a slit trench only a few hundred yards from the Japanese. The African assistant held the crucifix in one hand and a sten gun in the other.”83 Of course, not all Christian religious celebrations among West African soldiers in India and Burma were pious. Lance Corporal G. M. K. Lawson, a signaler from the Gold Coast waiting for repatriation in South Asia in early 1946, wrote “On the Xmas day this unit celebrated Christmas and New Year festival. . . . For this occasion the CO, known as Major Hardie, gave Rupees one thousand (1000) which was spent on cows and drinks. Everyone had his share and those who could drink got drunk and happy.”84 78 Youell, Africa Marches, 55, 96. 79 “New Church Dedicated in Accra,” RWAFF News, 17 October 1945. 80 “Bishop Confirms West Africans,” RWAFF News, 13 June 1945. 81 “Jungle Service,” RWAFF News, 18 April 1945. 82 ORDP, A. J. Smithers, “Past Tense: A Memoir of the RWAFF,” September 1980. 83 “Army Chaplain Writes of His Experiences with the Troops in the IndiaBurma Front,” West African Pilot, 5 May 1945. 84 ORDP Hamilton, Letter from G. M. K. Lawson to Hamilton, South East Asia Command, 3 February 1946.

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Churches quickly became part of Britain’s West African military institution during the Second World War, and their construction continued in the postwar years. During the 1950s, the Enugu-based NR battalion maintained several of its own churches; an Anglican one attended mostly by British officers and a Roman Catholic one popular among local Igbo troops and their families.85 In the early 1950s, a British officer at the Zaria recruit training center, surprised by the number of Christian soldiers in mostly Muslim Northern Nigeria, gained permission to rebuild “our church (St. Barnabas).”86 Transferred to Ibadan in the southwest, the same officer arranged the construction of a military church called St. Chad’s with altar furnishings donated by colonial government departments and consecrated by the venerable British chaplain-general Victor Joseph Pike. Inspired by the new church, Muslim troops at Ibadan asked for a mosque, and army authorities helped them build it.87 Later in the 1950s, a British company commander organized his fellow Catholic Nigerian soldiers at Zaria to construct a Catholic church called Saint Benedict’s, which would house a holy relic from Italy. The church opened its doors with a regimental parade attended by the local Catholic bishop, and missionary priests visited to conduct mass.88 Although there were some garrison mosques in West Africa at the time, there was no similar flurry of mosque construction during or after the war. In the late 1950s, for instance, the Kaduna garrison in Northern Nigeria had a Christian church, but Muslim troops attended civilian mosques.89 With the establishment of garrison churches, Sunday church parades and services for Christian personnel and their families became a regular feature of West African army life during the 1940s and 1950s.90 During the Second World War, Nigerian soldier Isaac Fadoyebo attended prayer services every morning organized by the pious British major who commanded his medical unit in Sierra Leone.91 Similarly, GCR signaler John Kwashi, who was a student at Gold Coast People’s College in Accra when he enlisted, recalled his journey to South Asia in 1944 when a British chaplain organized Christian 85 86 87 88 89 90

ORDP, Hibbard. ORDP, T. N. Hawtin. ORDP, Hawtin. ORDP, S. F. B. Francis, 1981. ORDP, John Meyrick. ORDP, R. L. Markham, 15 September 1980; Leniewski; P. C. Oakleigh-Walker. 91 Phillips, Another Man’s War, 36.

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prayer services on the troopship.92 The practice of West African military Christianity reflected distinct regional styles of worship. The RWAFF head chaplain during the late 1940s recalled the devotion of African soldiers in attending Christian services: “You couldn’t keep them out! They were most enthusiastic and that went for their families as well.”93 According to another chaplain, West African troops “are keener than the average English soldier to be at some form of divine service on Sunday. The desire to sing and sing loudly is pronounced. Nor will they be denied it without resistance.”94 At times, African NCOs stepped into the role of clergy. In late 1950s Nigeria, the absence of a chaplain at the military garrison in Kaduna meant that RSM Numan, a Christian from Northern Nigeria, led Sunday services supported by a portable organ and with large crowds of soldiers and dependents singing hymns.95 From its origin, Britain’s West African army forbade Christian proselytizing as it might incite mutiny among the force’s Muslim troops.96 This rule did not seem to apply or became impossible to enforce among African soldiers who emerged as informal Christian leaders and embarked on their own missionary work within the ranks during the Second World War. From the start of the conflict, Nigerian troops who were members of the missionary Swedish Lutheran Church on the Jos Plateau, a historic Middle Belt recruiting zone where local communities engaged in an ongoing religious transformation from traditionalist to Christian, formed small prayer and Bible reading groups led by their sergeants with each soldier possessing his own Hausa Bible. Older African NCOs like Sergeant Yohannes Zuru, a convert from Islam to Christianity, held Sunday services in Hausa language and later served as assistants and interpreters for military chaplains.97 As the wartime army grew, many Muslim and traditionalist soldiers converted to Christianity inspired by “men of their own tribes who made themselves missionaries and pastors in their military units.”98 Within a Nigeria Regiment company attached to the Chindit force in India and Burma, several Nigerian NCOs competed for the souls of their troops. While Sergeant Umoru Numan from 92 IWM, interview with John Kwashi, 2006. 93 ORDP, L. V. Headley, September 1980. 94 Youell, Africa Marches, 85. 95 ORDP, H. J. Bartholomew, 10 February 1981. 96 ORDP, Headley; Leniewski; O’Gorman; G. T. N. Solomon. 97 ORDP, Rev. Pete A. Ettrich, “RWAFF from a Padre’s Point of View,” 1979. 98 Youell, Africa Marches, 59.

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Adamawa in northeast Nigeria constantly read his Bible and held unofficial Sunday morning Christian services that attracted his traditionalist soldiers, Sergeant Adamu Hadeijia ensured that “even the weakest in the Prophet’s ranks held out against Umoru’s proselytizing zeal.”99 Back in Sergeant Numan’s home area, where the first generation of African Christian leaders was just beginning to emerge, European missionaries wrote letters to local men serving in the army and African church assistants checked in on soldiers’ wives.100 Communicating with his bishop back home in southeastern Nigeria, a soldier called William N. Esom wrote, “Here in the Middle East, many of our Nigerian soldiers who were before joining the army, Pagans, are now Christians and we are happy to have them all. Many have been baptized and confirmed by the Rt. Rev. Gelsthorpe who comes from the Sudan. He never fails to visit us every year.  .  . . All the catechists we have here from Nigeria are doing a good job among the soldiers here.”101 A West African newspaper reported that the bishop of Egypt and Sudan performed religious confirmation services for Nigerian soldiers serving in the Middle East.102 These Second World War–era Christian converts included some former Muslim troops from Northern Nigeria who endured shame and ostracism when they returned home and struggled to find places of worship in civilian life.103 In 1950s Nigeria, there was great demand for baptism and Bibles among African soldiers, and army chaplains conducted Christian confirmations for soldiers and their relatives.104 The once cold relationship between the military and missionaries warmed considerably. In Enugu, during the 1950s, “Roman Catholic priests were most active in the Battalion, spending long hours with the soldiers and drinking much gin in the officers’ mess.”105 In the late 1940s, British and African military personnel in Nigeria, Gold Coast, and Sierra Leone attended Christian leadership courses held in 99 Carfrae, Chindit Column, 85. Sergeant Umoru Numan won a Military Medal for leadership and courage in combat. See NA (UK) WO 373/37/777, “Recommendation for Award for Umoru Numan, Sergeant,” 26 April 1945. 100 Niels Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria: A Study in Middle Belt Christianity (London: British Academic, 1994), 66–68. 101 Youell, Africa Marches, 101. 102 “Nigerian Soldiers are Confirmed in Egypt,” West African Pilot, 23 January 1945. 103 Youell, Africa Marches, 61 and 66. 104 ORDP, Solomon. 105 ORDP, Hibbard.

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conjunction with missionaries.106 In 1956, in soon-to-be-independent Gold Coast, the British military commander reported, “At the Regimental Training Centre in Kumasi our officiating chaplain is in fact from Wesley College so that every recruit gets a good indoctrination on Christian and Wesleyan lines, if he is a Protestant.”107 While British officers once kept their religious lives detached from their African subordinates, the former now became examples of Christian virtue. A 1951 pamphlet for British personnel preparing for posting to West Africa reminded, “Your personal example as a Christian soldier from Britain has a marked influence.  .  . . The sight of a British officer or NCO worshipping with his men will testify to their Christian faith and will be a great example and help to others.”108 Most British officers remained uninterested in ministering to their troops though there were exceptions such as one junior officer in the Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment (QONR) of the 1950s who conducted evangelical work among African soldiers and later became a civilian missionary in Nigeria.109 Senior officers expressed different attitudes toward religion. In the Gold Coast during the 1940s and 1950s, one British commanding officer conducted his own regular Sunday services and obtained permission from the bishop of Accra to preach to his men while another, out of respect for the Muslim and traditionalist soldiers, banned missionaries from the unit and dispensed with the Christian consecration of the regimental colours.110 Given its association with officers, officials, and missionaries, and recognizing that African troops became important religious agents, it might be appropriate to describe Christianity in Britain’s West African army as a form of command Christianity that differed significantly from the force’s “barracks Islam.” While many African troops self-identified as “pagans,” Muslims and Christians harbored varying degrees and types of traditional beliefs and engaged in traditional spiritual practices. During the 1892 Ijebu campaign in western Nigeria, the mostly Muslim troops of the Lagos Constabulary refused 106 ORDP, Headley. 107 PRAAD (Accra) RG 14/4/85, “Chaplains: Ghana Military Forces,” 1956–69, Major General A. G. V. Paley, General Officer Commanding, Gold Coast Military Forces to Secretary of Defence, Accra, 22 October 1956. 108 ORDP, C. Williams, enclosed “So You Are Coming to West Africa: A Pamphlet for British Officers and Other Ranks Posted for Service in West Africa,” 1951. 109 ORDP, O’Gorman. 110 Youell, Africa Marches, 86; ORDP, Newberry.

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to cross the Osun River, believing their enemy had used a human sacrifice to enlist the assistance of the river goddess.111 Fifty years later, a British Army psychiatrist serving in South Asia during the Second World War reported that “at heart, most of the Coast boys, whether professing Christianity or not, are pagan and the greatest single belief throughout the colonies is the Juju—the conferring of the magic power for good or evil on an inanimate object by a ceremony. It is unshakable belief for most of the troops and it is therefore not surprising to find it invoked in every mental upset.”112 Fighting in Burma in 1944, the soldiers of one Gambian company began to think themselves victims of a curse or juju, as they had endured a cholera outbreak and suffered heavy casualties at an engagement around Kaladan village. In response, officers disbanded the unfortunate company changing its designation from “D” Company to “X” Company and reassigning soldiers throughout the battalion. Gambian CSM Sammy Williams declared the curse over and talk of it ceased especially after some battlefield successes.113 It is difficult to reconstruct the expression of traditional spirituality among Britain’s West African soldiers. Traditional activities, collectively called “juju” in West Africa, occurred away from officers who knew little about local culture seeing it as exotic and primitive. Many British officers’ memoirs contain first or secondhand accounts of African soldiers who believed themselves cursed, sometimes by a fellow soldier, with some victims sent to consult traditional healers whose cures were often effective. Some cases ended in tragedy such as violence, unexplained death, or suicide.114 British officers learned to “treat ju-ju seriously” with afflicted soldiers given a day off work and counseled by another soldier of the same ethnic group who might understand the problem.115 A British officer who served in Enugu in the 1950s recalled that civilian traditional healers “practiced their craft within the camp area, and whilst not condoned, the British military authorities did little to interfere.”116 On occasion, British officers employed a “juju man” 111 A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast (London: Chapman and Hall, 1894), 30. 112 Captain N. Dembovitz, “Psychiatry among West African Troops,” Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps (February 1945), 71. 113 Estep, “Empire’s Smallest Regiment,” 171; ORDP, Cookson, “Africans in Arakan,” 51, 66, 73, 74, 86; Laing. 114 ORDP, Catcheside; J. H. Davis; Headley; C. V. Lane. 115 ORDP, Interview with D. Rooney, 22 February 1979. 116 ORDP, Hibbard.

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to intimidate African soldiers into surrendering stolen equipment.117 There is limited evidence, and only related to the Second World War era, that a select few African soldiers became well known for possessing supernatural powers.118 Traditional markings such as scarification were common among Britain’s West African soldiers denoting membership of a particular ethnic group or secret society.119 Enlistment records from Sierra Leone from the 1920s to 1940s show that many soldiers belonged to the Poro secret society as appropriate scarification patterns were evident on their bodies and diagrams of these patterns drawn on their enlistment forms. Reflecting the complexity of religion and culture in West Africa, the Sierra Leonean soldiers with Poro markings included traditionalists, Muslims, and Christians.120 The wearing of protection charms represents a consistent aspect of the West African military experience from precolonial times to the present. The historic production, trade, and use of magical protection amulets in West Africa are well known.121 During the 1873–74 Anglo-Asante War, Muslim imams accompanying the Armed Hausa Police manufactured protection amulets from small pieces of paper bearing Koranic quotations.122 An early twentieth-century photograph shows an armed Nigerian colonial soldier of 117 IWM, interview Charles C. A. Carfrae, 24 October 1988. 118 Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 111. 119 IWM interview Alexander J. Belither, 12 April 1978; Leslie Muir Angus, 21 April 1979. 120 SLA (Freetown), no referencing system; For Poro scarification see Brian Haydan, The Power of Ritual in Pre-history: Secret Societies and Origin of Social Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 267; Katrina Keefer, “Group Identity, Scarification and Poro Among Liberated Africans in Sierra Leone, 1808–1819,” Journal of West African History 3, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 1–25. 121 Robert Handloff, “Prayers, Amulets and Charms: Health and Social Control,” African Studies Review 25, no. 2–3 (June–September 1982), 185–94; David Owusu-Ansah, “Islamic Influence in a Forest Kingdom: The Role of Protective Amulets in Early 19th Century Asante,” Trans-African Journal of History 12 (1983): 100–133; David Owusu-Ansah, “Prayers, Amulets and Healing,” in The History of Islam in Africa, edited by N. Levtzion and R. Pouwels (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), 477–88; David Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 45. 122 “The Houssa Force,” Times, 3 September 1873.

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the period wearing a number of traditional protection charms on his neck and waist.123 A British officer fighting wars of conquest in southeastern Nigeria in the early twentieth century wrote, “The Yoruba .  .  . will cover himself with all kinds of charms previous to going to fight, in order to keep off the enemy’s bullets. The Hausas are also superstitious but not nearly to such an extent.”124 Nigerian soldiers fighting in East Africa during the First World War possessed charms that they believed rendered them invulnerable to gunfire or invisible to the enemy, but they also recognized that Germany’s African colonial troops might possess more powerful talismans.125 Reporting on Nigerian troops in North Africa in 1942, a newspaper correspondent wrote, “Most of the Yorubas wear charms and jujus. One of them showed me his juju, for which he paid £4 and which he claimed to be complete protection against any weapon. And to support his belief there is the true story of another Yoruba who, wearing his juju, walked through a storm of rifle and machine-gun fire and was unharmed.”126 Interviewed for a television documentary seventy years later, Nigerian Burma veteran Africa Banana produced a small tattered packet from under his hat saying “Bullets couldn’t touch me because I was protected by this charm.”127 Consistent with this practice, two types of protection amulets were popular among the Muslim soldiers from the Gambia who fought in Burma. Some were leather pouches containing folded paper with Koranic inscriptions, while others consisted of traditional versions “produced by witch doctors with unknown ingredients.” Some Gambian soldiers such as Private Mumene Jallow made the Koranic amulets for their comrades, and several British officers wore them. Simultaneously, according to one British officer, Sierra Leonean Muslim soldiers did not wear “jujus.”128 The use of such charms extended beyond warfare. At a 1937 Nigeria Regiment sporting event, the official program 123 Kirk-Greene, “Nigerian Military History,” between pages 140 and 141. 124 Lennox, West African Frontier Force, 52. 125 Bature, “Beho Chini,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, March 1918, 324–34. 126 “West Africans in North Africa,” Gold Coast Observer, 8 October 1942. 127 “WWII’s Forgotten Army: West African Soldiers in Burma: Guardian Features,” 14 August 2015, accessed 10 July 2020, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DWIHOIZVZtE. 128 For the quote see ORDP, J. A. L. Hamilton, 29 November 1981; N. D. Poulson, 10 September 1980. The Kachikally Museum in Bakau, Gambia displays a traditional “juju” obtained from a veteran who wore it in Burma.

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warned that teams displaying or claiming to possess a juju or traditional charm faced disqualification.129

Chaplains Although uniformed Christian chaplains represented a standard feature of the British metropolitan military and the militaries of self-governing British dominions like Canada and South Africa, they did not exist in Britain’s African colonial army until the Second World War.130 An episode from the early history of Britain’s West African military illustrates why it had no chaplains. In 1902 a Wesleyan missionary in Sierra Leone teaching African soldiers to read took it upon himself to apply for an honorary position as unit chaplain. The SLB commanding officer rejected the submission, stating, “There is no appointment such as applied for, and in a force like the WAFF where there are men of different religions it is not desirable.”131 In a colonial force, Christian chaplains might incite Muslim or traditionalist protest and, as evident later, British officers in Africa worried that chaplains could destabilize the military racial hierarchy. In August 1940, as the war expanded to Africa, a few British Army chaplains arrived in Sierra Leone as part of the growing Freetown garrison, but most did not remain there long given bouts of malaria and frequent transfers. With massive enlistment of West African Christians into the army, including many graduates of mission schools and members of mission churches, European missionaries in the region pressured authorities to provide regular religious services and guidance for African soldiers. Nevertheless, British officers in West Africa expressed reservations about engaging army chaplains, as they believed it would weaken discipline by giving African troops an alternative chain of command to direct their complaints. The deadlock was broken when General Giffard took over WAC and became “the biggest single 129 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 315. 130 Edward Madigan, Faith Under Fire: Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2011); Duff Crerar, Padres in No Man’s Land: Canadian Chaplains and the Great War (Montreal: McGill-Queens, 2014); Peter Houston, “South African Anglican Military Chaplains in the First World War,” South African Historical Journal 68, no. 2 (2016): 213–29; Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 125; Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 112, 131 SLA (Freetown), CSO 3302/1902, Officer Commanding, SLB, WAFF to Colonial Secretary, 31 August 1902.

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factor”132 in the introduction of uniformed chaplains to Britain’s West African army. A “devout Christian” who prayed every morning and evening, Giffard’s personal religious belief informed his policy on chaplains.133 The early planning for the creation of WAC, particularly its hospitals, included the concept of appointing chaplains, although in 1940 military officials believed they should comprise Anglican and Catholic denominations and “that European clergy only are required.”134 At a “Chaplains Conference” held at Achimota in the Gold Coast in February 1941, Anglican, Methodist, and Catholic civilian senior clergy based in the Gold Coast and Nigeria told military authorities they supported the engagement of military chaplains but were too short staffed to provide much assistance. The conference negotiated financial terms involving travel and accommodation for the army’s part-time employment of civilian pastors.135 In 1941, John Stockdale gained appointment as the first deputy assistant chaplain general for WAC based at headquarters in Accra, and other British Army chaplains arrived subsequently. Nonetheless, the small number of British chaplains in West Africa, and their inability to minister to large numbers of linguistically diverse African soldiers of many denominations, prompted the West African military to engage the part-time services of local civilian clergy as “officiating chaplains.” These temporary chaplains were initially white missionaries; however, in August 1942, the shortage of suitable candidates compelled the army to hire African-ordained clergy from mission denominations. Clergy from independent African churches remained unwelcome, though many West African soldiers adhered to these indigenous Christian movements. With the impending deployment of West African troops to South Asia, the West African chaplain general’s office proposed the full-time appointment of uniformed and commissioned African chaplains to accompany operational units overseas. Heavily invested in the existing 132 Youell, Africa Marches, 25; Giffard’s role is confirmed by R. H. Bassett, “The Chaplains with the West African Forces,” Journal of the Royal Army Chaplain’s Department 49 (July 1950): 21–24. 133 ORDP, Bishop. 134 PRAAD (Accra) CSO 222/9/121, “Chaplains Required for Service with the Military Forces in West Africa,” 1940–41, Brigadier F. A. S. Clarke to Chief Secretaries of Nigeria and Gold Coast, 14 September 1940. 135 PRAAD (Accra) CSO 222/9/121, “Chaplains Required for Service with the Military Forces in West Africa,” 1940–41, “Minutes of Chaplains Conference,” 25 February 1941.

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racial hierarchy of the colonial army, British officers in West Africa resisted commissioning Africans especially since army chaplains started their careers as captains, therefore making black chaplains equal to or of a higher rank than most other white officers in a battalion. While the War Office questioned paying African chaplains the same salary as European chaplains—as the former did not minister to as many Christian troops—colonial officials supported the principle of equal pay, pointing to the recent case of Seth Anthony from the Gold Coast who became the first black African to receive the same commission as British officers. A compromise determined that African chaplains started their military service at the newly and specially created rank of chaplain fifth class, equivalent to lieutenant with the possibility of promotion to captain at full pay. Since the lowest rank for British Army chaplains was chaplain fourth class, corresponding to captain, all new black chaplains became subordinate to all white chaplains and equal to or of lower rank than most other white officers. Commissioned at a special 1943 ceremony in Lagos Cathedral, WAC’s first African chaplains were David Richard Oyebode from western Nigeria, Henry Hunter (who had been born in the Gambia but lived in Lagos), and Obadiah Datubo Brown from southeastern Nigeria. Given their status as some of the only black officers in British West Africa, these new chaplains experienced ostracism by overtly racist white Rhodesian officers working in the region. By August 1944, six African chaplains served, including Rev. Amos Solarin, a Methodist minister in Ibadan, Nigeria, whose brother Tai Solarin flew with the RAF in Europe. Later in 1944, padres G. K. Amfopo from the Gold Coast, Solarin, and Hunter shipped out to India and eventually Burma.136 Those chaplains who did not go overseas ministered to the troops at home in West Africa, particularly at military hospitals, and served as liaisons with civilian churches. For instance, in May 1945, Rev. Oyebode presented a report on his military work to the Anglican synod in Lagos, prompting it to send an official message of goodwill by cablegram to Nigerian troops in Burma.137 136 PRAAD (Accra) CSO 22/5/51, “African Chaplains for Service with the Military Forces,” 1943, Resident Minister to Governors of Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, 1 March 1943; Youell, Africa Marches, 26–33; “RWAFF has Six African Army Chaplains Now,” RWAFF News, 1 August 1944. Tai Solarin later became a well-known Nigerian educationalist and postindependence human rights activist. 137 “Anglican Synod Sends Goodwill Message to the Nigerian Warriors in Burma,” West African Pilot, 3 May 1945. David Oyebode served as the

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After the war, African chaplains returned to their civilian parishes and uniformed black African chaplains disappeared from Britain’s West African army. In 1952, seven British Army chaplains, five Protestant and two Catholic, served in West Africa. Nigeria and Gold Coast each had two chaplains, a single chaplain attended both Sierra Leone and the Gambia, and they relied on assistance from a regional network of civilian “officiating chaplains” comprising ten Protestant and twelve Catholic clergy. Among the Protestant support clergy were three Africans; one at Lagos, another at Abeokuta in Nigeria, and one at Takoradi in the Gold Coast.138 Black West African chaplains reappeared in the military at the end of the 1950s in the context of West African governments transforming colonial armies into armed forces of sovereign states and Africanizing their officer corps. In the Gold Coast, only a few months before the territory became independent Ghana in 1957, British military authorities started discussing appointing Ghanaian chaplains, and British Army chaplains continued to service the Ghana Military Forces for several years. In 1959 African chaplains received commissions in independent Ghana and soon-to-be independent Nigeria.139

Imams The employment of Muslim religious scholars called maulvis by Britain’s colonial army in India informed similar practices in Africa.140 Engaged by the GCC in the 1870s, a Muslim imam delivered “voluntary instruction” to the troops and taught language lessons: Hausa for British officers and English for drummer boys. During the late 1880s, the British administration in the Gold Coast built a mosque at Elmina for Muslim soldiers and paid a salary Anglican Bishop of Ibadan from 1956 to his death in 1960. Nigeria Today, 1960, 45. 138 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, District Commanders Conference, Status of Imams, “State of Chaplains and Imams,” January 1952. 139 Miners, Nigerian Army, 62; Aboagye, Ghana Army, 210; PRAAD (Accra) RG 14/4/85, “Chaplains: Ghana Military Forces,” 1956–69. 140 For India see Green, Islam and the Army, 87; Barkawi, Soldiers of Empire, 29. For Imams in the Second World War German military see Xavier Bougarel, “Islam, a ‘Convenient Religion’? The Case of the 13th SS Division Handschar,” in Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies in the Twentieth Century: Far from Jihad, edited by X. Bougarel, R. Branche, and C. Drieu (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 137–59.

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to its imam.141 In this conquest period, British officers in West Africa usually referred to imams as “priests.” In 1902 the First Battalion GCR employed three “priests” within its regular establishment, although records do not specify their duties; several years later the short-lived Second Battalion, located in the Northern Territories, included a single “priest.”142 Three priests continued to work within the GCR during the First World War, and in 1923 two still remained part of the “non-combatant” element of regimental headquarters. Nonetheless, their employment stopped around 1925 with a unit reorganization that imposed standard British infantry battalion structure.143 Among the GCR “priests” was Yesufu Dagomba who had joined in 1903 and served for almost eleven years until discharged as “medically unfit” in July 1914. Given his surname, he probably originated from the Dagomba ethnic group of northern Gold Coast that emerged as a traditional recruiting area. His rank was “priest” with pay equivalent to an African corporal. While priests were not entitled to gratuity payments on discharge like combatant soldiers, Dagomba’s “exemplary” service inspired his commanding officer to grant him a corporal’s gratuity.144 Late nineteenth-century British colonial paramilitary forces in Nigeria included imams. In 1889, the RNC included two “priests” though their religious affiliation and duties remain unclear.145 One reason the RNC employed “mallams” was to counter rumors that the British intended to compel Muslims to renounce their religion.146 In 1905 the strongly Muslim Lagos Battalion of the WAFF reported that its eight civilian employees included a “priest” and an “Arabic schoolmaster.”147 Simultaneously, the Calabar-based SNR engaged two “priests” although most of the troops were not Muslims. With the absorption of the Lagos Battalion into the SNR, all 141 Killingray, “Colonial Army,” 233; Adamu, The Hausa Factor, 167–68. 142 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report of the First Battalion GCR, 1902, 1 January 1903; CO 445/22, Report of the Second Battalion GCR, 1905, 31 December 1905. 143 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on GCR, 31 March 1914; CO 445/62, Report on GCR, 28 March 1923; CO 445/67, Report on GCR, 1924–25, 1 April 1925. 144 NA (UK) CO 445/34, “Gratuity to Priest Yesufu Dagomba,” 24 July 1914. 145 Ukpabi, Mercantile Soldiers, 42. 146 Raphael, Unknown Nigeria, 281. 147 NA (UK), CO 445/14, Report on the Lagos Battalion, WAFF,” 12 January 1903; CO 445/23, Report on the Lagos Battalion, WAFF,” 22 December 1905.

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three priests remained at their stations. Just prior to the First World War, the enlarged SNR maintained two priests with one in Lagos and the other in Calabar.148 Among them was Sakariyawo who enlisted as a soldier around 1893 and gained promotion to sergeant in 1894. Designated as “priest” and interpreter in 1898, he served in the SNR and eventually the NR until his death in July 1919. Given his twenty-six years of “long and faithful service,” authorities paid his four wives and two young sons a gratuity equal to the highest African rank of sergeant major and travel money.149 Around 1900, Lugard appointed imams to the colonial army in northern Nigeria.150 The early twentieth-century NNR enlisted uniformed imams who became subject to military discipline and accompanied Muslim soldiers in combat.151 In 1920, Fourth Battalion NR engaged two “priests” stationing one at Lagos and another at Ibadan. The Ibadan one was a private in the battalion who resigned and “re-enlisted as a mallam.” A British officer considered them “very useful at both places” and when military funding for “priests” ended, he continued to pay them for a year out of profits from the unit’s sale of soda water.152 No imams served within Britain’s West African army during most of the 1920s and all of the 1930s but, like the issue of chaplains, this situation changed during the Second World War. In late 1942 British officials decided to appoint imams in West African army units comprising a large number of Muslim troops. The new policy sought to impress local Muslim leaders, particularly the emirs of northern Nigeria, to secure their cooperation with wartime recruiting.153 By November 1942, the arrival of Allied troops in 148 NA (UK), CO 445/20, Report on SNR, 5 December 1905; CO 445/28, Report on SNR, 11 January 1908; CO 445/30, Report on SNR, 31 January 1910; CO 445/32, Report on SNR, 11 March 1912. 149 NNA (Ibadan), N2699/1919, “Sakariyawo, No. 286, Late Priest and Interpreter, Nigeria Regiment,” 23 October 1919. 150 Chinedu N. Ubah, “The British Occupation of the Sokoto Caliphate: The Military Dimension, 1897–1906,” Paiduma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, Bd. 40, 1994, 90, fn28. 151 Raphael, Unknown Nigeria, 280–81. 152 NNA (Ibadan), CSO 26, “Priests Engaged for Nigeria Regiment,” Major E. L. Salier, Commanding Officer Fourth Battalion Nigeria Regiment, Lagos to Headquarters Nigeria Regiment, Kaduna, 23 August 1920; Captain Winter, Ibadan to Adjutant, Fourth Battalion Nigeria Regiment, 5 April 1922. 153 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, “Appointment of Imams to the Army,” Chief Secretary Lagos to Area Commander Lagos, 10 November 1942.

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principally Muslim countries like Morocco, Algeria, and Libya meant that it became important for the British Empire to encourage goodwill among its Muslim subjects. In northern Nigeria, the Sultan of Sokoto as head of Islam in the territory and the emirs, upon whom the British indirect rule system depended, had already requested that the colonial army hire imams. These Muslim authorities also wanted input in selecting candidates. For the emirs, who had looked down on colonial regiments as decadent organizations, military imams would oversee “the spiritual welfare and moral well-being of the Moslem soldier” including abstention “from such practices as drinking and gambling which are abhorred by Moslems.”154 Across British West Africa, military units requested imams and reported the number and primary place of origin of their Muslim soldiers. Civilian Muslim leaders in the soldiers’ home areas, in consultation with British officials, nominated candidates for selection as military imams.155 Britain’s West African army engaged imams under distinct conditions of service. They comprised civilian employees of the military and not enlisted personnel. Unlike soldiers who contracted for a set number of years’ service, imams could resign or have their employment terminated on a month’s notice. While they normally wore civilian attire and provided their own food and housing at their permanent garrison, the imams received military clothing, food, and lodging in the field. Additionally, higher military authorities encouraged unit commanding officers to find the imams suitable accommodation in barracks and to facilitate imams’ religious duties. To supplement their income, the military authorized imams to charge a small fee to soldiers for writing letters on their behalf.156 In early 1943, military imams were hired across northern Nigeria, including five from Kano, six from Zaria, three from Sokoto, three from Borno, one from Yola, one from Katsina and one from Gwandu, and one from Ilorin emirate, although it was technically in western Nigeria. The imams served in units spanning Nigeria including parts of the predominantly Christian south such as Lagos and Enugu. The posting of many imams to recruiting depots in the north including at Zaria, Sokoto, Maiduguri, Bauchi, and Yola demonstrates their importance in convincing 154 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, “Imams for the Army,” 9 December 1942. 155 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, “Appointment of Imams,” Area Headquarters, Nigeria, 5 December 1942. 156 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, “Appointment of Imams,” Area Headquarters, Nigeria to Secretaries of Northern and Western Provinces, 29 January 1943; “Conditions of Engagement of an Imam in the RWAFF,” 19 February 1943.

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Muslim men to enlist reassuring them that the army represented a place of upstanding moral behavior.157 During the Second World War, imams helped maintain morale among West African soldiers in operational areas. The commander of a West African convalescent depot in India in 1944, recalled that “the more sincere imams . . . most from Nigeria (possibly from the Gold Coast too) who visited the troops in India, were popular and well received.”158 Immediately after the war, as West African troops in South Asia awaited repatriation, the senior imam of 82nd (West African) Division was “of the greatest help in keeping the troops in good spirits.”159 Audu Dono represents one of the few West African military imams for whom there is a detailed account of war service. As an ordinary enlisted soldier from northern Nigeria, he worked as a driver for 102 Field Regiment, West African Artillery from 1940 to 1941 in the East Africa campaign. Next, he accompanied his unit to Sierra Leone where he continued as a driver. In 1943 the Sultan of Sokoto appointed Audu Dono as the imam of his artillery regiment that deployed to Burma. From November 1944 to May 1945, he served as a unit imam in Burma carrying his usual military equipment in addition to the books, documents, and “vestments of an Imam.” Dono then became imam of a larger formation such as a brigade or division until August 1945. Throughout the Burma campaign, he conducted “services, discussion groups and lectures” that were attended by “hundreds” of African soldiers. The citation for Dono’s British Empire Medal (BEM) illustrates the primary military role of imams. “At particularly trying moments during the campaign he never failed to encourage and exhort those of every faith; his example and the deep respect with which all AORs (African Other Ranks) learnt to regard him was of the greatest value to morale.”160 At the end of the war, several West African soldiers who served with distinction in Burma became military imams while awaiting repatriation in south Asia. Originating from Tamale, a recruiting zone in northern Gold Coast, Corporal Mohomman Dagomba was an infantry section commander in Eighth Battalion GCR, 81st (West African) Division in Burma. 157 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, “Appointment of Imams,” Area Headquarters, Nigeria to Secretary Northern Province, 12 February 1943. 158 ORDP, Major E. C. Lanning, August 1981. 159 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 473. 160 NA (UK) WO 373/82/384, Recommendation for Award, Imam Auduo Dono, 13 December 1945.

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In February 1944, with his patrol ambushed by the Japanese, he rescued a wounded British sergeant and organized his platoon’s tactical response under heavy fire. This resulted in an award of the Military Medal. By October 1945, when Corporal Dagomba was in India, he had transformed into a military imam wearing appropriate Muslim-style civilian attire.161 A twenty-five-year veteran of the colonial army and a member of a well-known Gambian religious family, RSM Samba Silla served as senior soldier and military icon of First Battalion Gambia Regiment. During the Burma campaign his maintenance of discipline in combat earned him the BEM. The battalion’s commanding officer wrote, “He has a very quiet personality but has a remarkable influence with the troops, and controls them with great firmness.”162 A company commander described RSM Silla as “a tower of strength in more ways than one, being over six foot tall.”163 In late 1945, while in India awaiting repatriation, RSM Silla transformed into an imam though he continued wearing his uniform making him stand out among his new colleagues with their robes and turbans.164 Some of the West African military imams in Burma appeared remarkable in other ways. Originating from Kano in Northern Nigeria, Abubakar Ali had been returning from pilgrimage to Mecca in 1935 when captured by the Italian army in Ethiopia. In 1941, during the East Africa campaign, troops from the Gold Coast rescued Ali who returned to Nigeria where he became an army imam and shipped out to Burma with Nigerian forces. Despite his seventy years, Freetown’s Imam Chiarru Malik Bah marched alongside his Sierra Leonean soldiers through Burma.165 The service of imams within Britain’s West African colonial army continued after the Second World War. In the late 1940s, the Nigeria Regiment recruit training center at Zaria hosted two mosques as well as a church, and Christian chaplains and Muslim imams conducted a weekly “padre’s hour” for men of their faith.166 By around 1950, twenty-three imams worked in 161 NA (UK) WO 373-34-426, Decoration Recommendation for Corporal Mama Dagomba, 24 May 1944; “West African Imams Visit New Delhi,” RWAFF News, 17 October 1945. 162 NA (UK) WO 373/82/444, Recommendation for Award, RSM Samba Silla, 12 September 1945. 163 ORDP, Hawtin. 164 RWAFF News, 17 October 1945. 165 RWAFF News, 17 October 1945. 166 A Recruit, “My First Days in the Army,” Nigerian Citizen, 22 December 1949.

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WAC with eleven in Nigeria, six in the Gold Coast, and a total of five in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. They held the ranks of either senior or junior imam. Unlike the army’s Christian chaplains who attended a geographic area, military imams belonged to a specific unit. Units with over five hundred Muslim troops had two imams, one senior and one junior, and units with fewer Muslims had one senior imam. While imams’ service conditions were similar to the war years and they remained civilian employees, senior imams held military status equivalent to an RSM, and junior ones were equal to a sergeant. However, the role of Muslim emirs in recruiting imams fell away. In many instances, unit commanding officers appointed imams identified by the unit’s African RSM in consultation with “local Muslim authorities.” In the early 1950s, this prompted concern among British officers and Muslim elites that many military imams were “not of the standard required to carry out their proper duties.”167 The Kaduna-based Imam Usuman Maruwa was “impressive,” but most other military imams were “the ordinary village Mallam-type; adequate in their way but of little learning and with no social background.” In the context of an increasingly Christian army, imams became of such little influence that the mosque at the Zaria training center in Northern Nigeria was “used as a latrine by unbelievers.”168 In the early 1950s, as Nigeria moved toward self-government creating a pressing need to commission African officers, the civil secretary of northern Nigeria and the commanding officer of the Nigeria military region recommended granting imams officer status to reinvigorate the position. Since most Nigerians qualified to become officers comprised southern Christians, British officials hoped that elevating imams might convince northern emirs to assist in recruiting suitable Muslim officer candidates and to support Muslim enlistment more broadly. For British authorities, the point of elevating military imams became important, “to demonstrate that the RWAFF is taking an active interest in the moral and religious welfare of the Moslem troops. So long as the unit imam is of a relatively inferior status, as he is at present, the view of the Emirs and Sharia Schools is that the RWAFF does not take the

167 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, “Status of Imams,” District Commanders Conference, 1952; “Employment of Imams,” Major General C. B. Fairbanks, Headquarters, Nigeria Region to Headquarters, West Africa Command, 23 October 1951. 168 AH (Kaduna), NPS 2/2/18, Report on Imams in the Army, Civil Secretary, Northern Nigeria, 29 May 1952.

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religious question seriously enough.”169 The Sultan of Sokoto and the emirs of Zaria and Gwandu told a senior British official “it was necessary to raise the status of Imams, both in order to get the right type of man and to exert a good influence on recruiting.” British officials interpreted this as a request for military imams to gain officer standing similar to Christian chaplains.170 The WAC hierarchy rejected the proposal to commission imams but granted them equal status with the army’s civilian Christian teachers who enjoyed respect. Moreover, WAC directed that “the highest possible Muslim authority,” preferably the Sultan of Sokoto, nominate candidates for the position of military imam and that a unit commanding officer “must give due consideration” to this recommendation.171 Additional reforms included the appointment of three senior imams to oversee Muslim religious activities in WAC, increased pay for imams, the introduction of paid Musezzins to recite the call to prayer at military mosques, and the formation of an imam selection panel chosen by the Sultan of Sokoto and the Shehu of Bornu that would convene at Kaduna. Authorities also recommended that new military imams be thirty to thirty-five years old as “less mature men would stand in great danger in the army of being corrupted by taking up drinking, gambling and by general promiscuity.”172 The emirs appear to have cooperated with these efforts as, for instance, in August 1952 the Emir of Zaria nominated five “suitable” candidates as military imams.173 Usuman Maruwa BEM, based in Kaduna, became the senior military imam for British West Africa and while the military wanted to send him on pilgrimage to Mecca to boost his religious status, it could not legally fund travel unrelated to service.174 Although they lacked commissions and uniforms, West African military imams enjoyed considerable esteem among British officers and African 169 AH (Kaduna) NPS 2/2/18, “Employment of Imams,” Major General C. B. Fairbanks, Headquarters, Nigeria Region to Headquarters, West Africa Command, 23 October 1951. 170 AH (Kaduna) NPS 2/2/18, note to “Your Excellency,” 23 April 1952. 171 AH (Kaduna) NPS 2/2/18, “Imams,” Major N. L. Dodd, Headquarters Nigeria Region, 8 January 1952. 172 AH (Kaduna) NPS 2/2/18, note, 13 June 1952. 173 AH (Kaduna) NPS 2/2/18, E. Cocksedge, Civil Secretary, Northern Nigeria to Nigeria Military Region, 29 August 1952. 174 AH (Kaduna) NPS 2/2/18, Commander, North Eastern District, Nigeria, Kaduna to Civil Secretary, Northern Nigeria, 14 March 1953; P. H. G. Scott, Civil Secretary, Northern Region, Nigeria to Commander, North Eastern District, Nigeria, 1 April 1953.

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soldiers. Within a unit’s hierarchy during the 1950s, the imam occupied a position roughly equivalent or higher to the African RSM who was senior soldier and chief disciplinarian. A British officer who served in Enugu, Nigeria, in the 1950s, remembered that whenever there was trouble with an African soldier “I invariably sought guidance, before judgement from the African RSM or the Mallam.”175 Military imams performed numerous duties. They conducted Hausa language lessons for new British officers, taught soldiers’ children, held off-duty religious instruction for African soldiers, supervised the religiously appropriate slaughtering of animals, organized religious celebrations such as Ramadan and conducted Muslim funerals. Furthermore, they sometimes provided British officers with advice on traditional West African beliefs as they pertained to soldiers.176 Military imams had to exercise religious toleration and pragmatism as they worked within a diverse organization led by Christian foreigners and in which training and operations could subordinate Muslim requirements. One British officer who served in Nigeria in the 1950s recalled his battalion imam as “a very good chap . . . not too holy.”177 In Nigeria, with the rise of Muslim northern politicians to national political office prior to independence, the status of army imams increased and in 1958, army imam Malam Musa recited a prayer for Prime Minister Abubakar Balewa upon his visit to the military depot in Lagos.178 It took West African independence for military imams to gain equality with uniformed Christian chaplains with, for example, imams receiving commissions in Nigeria around 1960 and in Ghana around 1962 and joining expanded chaplaincy departments.179

Conclusion Religion embodied an important and dynamic aspect of Britain’s West African colonial army. Some embryonic West African units of the conquest era consisted mostly of Muslim troops, but by the interwar years, the 175 176 177 178

ORDP, Hibbard; ORDP, G. R. A. Pickford. ORDP, Chater; S. E. B. Francis, 1981; ORDP, G. Laing, 1981; Upjohn. ORDP, Catcheside. “Prime Minister Inspects Military Depot in Lagos,” Daily News, 31 May 1958. 179 Miners, Nigerian Army, 114–15; PRAAD (Accra) RG 14/4/85, “Chaplains: Ghana Military Forces,” 1956–69.

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force comprised a mixture of traditionalists and Muslims. The number of Christian soldiers increased during the 1930s, and they became a sizable majority during the 1940s and 1950s. This transition resulted from both the Second World War expansion of recruiting in Christian regions and broad religious change in parts of West Africa long providing military recruits. Some West African territories, given local contexts, bucked the trend, as most Sierra Leonean soldiers of the early 1900s were traditionalists. But from the 1940s, most were Muslims, reflecting the spread of Islam in that area. While the practice of Islam by West African soldiers varied over time and place, British commanders accommodated Muslim prayers, festivals, and dietary restrictions. From the 1940s, given the enlistment of many Christian soldiers and the support of British officers, Christian life flourished in the West African army with the construction of garrison churches and organization of religious services. British officers, once alienated from the army’s religious life, became examples of Christian virtue, and zealous Christians among the African rank-and-file actively sought to convert traditionalist and Muslim colleagues. Whereas many West African soldiers practiced a type of “barracks Islam” throughout the colonial era, a command Christianity associated with colonial authority and missionaries emerged within the army from the Second World War. The expression of traditional beliefs among West African soldiers, including Muslims and Christians, remained constant during an era of otherwise dramatic change. The Second World War led to the appointment of Christian chaplains and Muslim imams in Britain’s West African army. They encouraged recruiting in their religious communities and bolstered soldiers’ morale, especially in combat. Their existence, however, challenged the colonial racial hierarchy as African chaplains became a temporary wartime measure commissioned at a subordinate rank, and imams were civilian employees associated with the African rank-and-file. This changed with the transformation of Britain’s regional West African colonial army into separate national armed forces during the late 1950s and early 1960s, whereby West African chaplains and imams became officers.

Figure 1. A company of the Sierra Leone Frontier Police around the time of the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion. One of the few “native officers” of the force stands just left of the British officer in the center. National Army Museum.

Figure 2. Three noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and their wives, 2nd Battalion Northern Nigeria Regiment 1901. The NCOs are Sergeant Major Bobie, Sergeant Musa, and Corporal Taubu (standing, left to right). The wives (seated) are unnamed. The picture may have been taken at Bauchi in northeastern Nigeria. National Army Museum.

Figure 3. A soldier of the Royal Niger Constabulary shaves his wife’s head in Asaba, southeastern Nigeria, in 1897. Artokoloro / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 4. Dan Daura: Enlisting in Frederick Lugard’s West African Frontier Force (WAFF) in 1898, Sergeant Major Dan Daura served in the Mounted Infantry Battalion of the Northern Nigeria Regiment and Nigeria Regiment. He fought in most of the battles of the British conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate of Northern Nigeria and participated in the Cameroon campaign of the First World War. After the war, he joined the Gold Coast Police, briefly returned to the Nigeria Regiment as a recruit instructor, and eventually headed the civil guard in Kano during the 1930s. R. R. Oakley, Treks and Palavers, London, Seeley, Service and Company, 1938.

Figure 5. Gambia Company: The governor of the Gambia inspecting the Gambia Company at Bathurst (Banjul) around 1910. The Gambia Company comprised the smallest territorial element of Britain’s West African Frontier Force (WAFF). Early twentieth-century postcard, postmarked 1910.

Figure 6. Troops recruited by the British during the First World War occupation of the German colony of Cameroon. Many Cameroonians enlisted in the Nigeria Regiment and Gold Coast Regiment with some serving long military careers. National Army Museum.

Figure 7. Wea Figure 7. Wearing the distinctive Kilmarnock hat of the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF), soldiers from the Gold Coast Regiment visit Britain for a shooting competition in 1937. Smith Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 8. The band of the West African Regiment (WAR) in Sierra Leone during the early 1920s. Among Britain’s locally recruited military regiments in the region, the WAR was the only one not included within the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) structure. Early twentieth-century postcard, postmarked 1924.

Figure 9. A group of Nigerian soldiers from 81st (West African) Division visit with their Imam in Burma in 1944. National Army Museum.

Figure 10. Queen Elizabeth II inspects troops during the presentation of new colours to the 2nd Battalion Nigeria Regiment at Lagos in January 1956. National Army Museum.

Chapter Five

Symbols Scholars easily dismiss the history of military visual symbols such as uniforms, badges, flags, and ceremonies as inconsequential and antiquarian. However, symbols like these have long constituted a feature of soldiers’ daily experience and have played an important role in forging military identities and military culture. In South Asia, the British colonial reinvention of Indian military identities during the nineteenth century revolved partly around the introduction of new visual elements like insignia and uniforms.1 Similarly, Britain’s West African army of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries used visual symbols to nurture a colonial military culture that maintained the colonial state. Soldiers from colonial Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia wore symbols, carried symbols, participated in rituals around symbols, and represented symbols themselves. British officers and officials invented these visual symbols and the traditions associated with them in a program to build an imagined military community within West Africa’s colonial society.2 Such symbols conveyed ideas about military service designed to enhance soldiers’ morale and therefore enhance military effectiveness, but these devices also said something about the West African soldier’s position within regional colonial society and the larger British Empire. Within the context of interpretations of empire, it is possible to understand these symbols as concurrently “orientalist” in that they presented an exoticized image of West Africans as an inferior and racialized “other” and “ornamentalist” in that they reproduced a socially hierarchical empire and promoted

1 2

Kaushik Roy, “The Construction of Regiments in the Indian Army: 1859– 1913,” War in History 8, no. 2 (2001): 127–48. Eric Hobsbawm and Terrance Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

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affinities between colony and metropole.3 These military symbols included uniforms, military bands and music, insignia and unit flags (or “colours”), and the involvement of West African soldiers in public spectacles particularly in Britain. Regrettably, and typical of the history of colonial Africa, Britain’s West African soldiers did not leave behind their own accounts of how they viewed these symbols, leaving historians to depend on evidence authored by colonial observers.

Uniforms Uniforms comprise a central element of military life. Broadly speaking, uniforms encourage the “militarizing of civilian bodies”4 transforming “individual strength into collective power.”5 The enormous economic and technological resources mobilized by governments to manufacture uniforms speak to their centrality in developing militaries.6 Looking at the British example of the early 1800s, Scott Hughes Myerly states, “The uniform was the army’s trademark and symbol—a distinctive dress that immediately set the soldier off from everyone else.”7 While minor distinctions in uniform including badges or emblems promoted unit identity and morale, “very plain uniforms were associated with a lower status and a lesser—or absent— degree of honour.”8 Beyond insignia, the wearing of well-worn uniforms often denotes membership in a veteran unit separated from other troops 3

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978); David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 4 Jane Tynan, “A Visual and Material Culture Approach to Research War and Conflict,” in The Routledge Companion to Military Research Methods edited by Alison Williams, K. Neil Jenkings, Matthew F. Rech, and Rachel Woodward (London: Routledge, 2016), 306, 314. 5 Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the `Ancien Regime’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 229. 6 Jane Tynan, “‘Tailoring in the Trenches:’ The Making of First World War British Army Uniform,” in British Popular Culture and the First World War, edited by Jessica Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 71–93. 7 Scott Hughes Myerly, British Military Spectacle: From the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 8. 8 Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 87; the point is repeated by French, Military Identities, 86.

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whose crisp new uniforms denote lack of experience.9 For African soldiers in European colonial forces, uniforms conferred additional prestige as a style of Western clothing unaffordable to many African people of that time and associating the wearers with the authority of the colonial state.10 At times, the perceived power and prestige, as well as the tangible benefits of a uniform such as free rail transport, led to its wearing by imposters who were not really members of colonial security forces.11 Indeed, in colonial East Africa, a controversy developed over who was entitled to wear Boy Scout attire.12 While the formation of European-led locally recruited colonial armies in nineteenth- century Africa introduced Western-style uniforms to the continent, the specific pattern of uniforms worn by African colonial soldiers differed from those of their metropolitan counterparts. As with other empires, Britain enlisted troops from among subjugated peoples, portraying some of these communities as innately martial and incorporating stylized features of their national attire into special military uniforms. This process began in the British Army in the eighteenth century with the formation of kilted Scottish Highland regiments. The trend continued during Britain’s nineteenthcentury colonization of India where exotically dressed colonial formations emerged such as Gurkhas carrying intimidating knives and ethno-religious regiments wearing a variety of turbans—with the Sikh version becoming central to later Sikh identity. Simultaneously, the nineteenth-century British metropolitan army also adopted fashionable frontier military traditions and exotic costumes from other empires such as eastern European themed Hussars and lancers.13 At the start of the twentieth century, characteristically 9

Maren Tomforde, “‘My Pink Uniform Shows I Am One of Them:’ Sociocultural Dimensions of German Peace Keeping Missions,” in Armed Forces, Soldiers and Civil-Military Relations: Essays in Honour of Jurgen Kuhlmann, edited by G. Caforio, C. Dandeker, and G. Kummel (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2009), 37–57. 10 Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 117. 11 “Civilian Says Soldier Gave Him Military Uniform to Wear,” West African Pilot, 3 November 1941. 12 Timothy Parsons, “The Consequences of Uniformity: The Struggle for the Boy Scout Uniform in Colonial Kenya,” Journal of Social History 40, no. 2 (December 2006): 361–83. 13 Allan Carswell, “Scottish Military Dress,” in A Military History of Scotland, edited by E. M. Spiers, J. A. Crang, and M. J. Strickland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 627–47; Roy, “Regiments,” 127–48;

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dressed West African soldiers contributed to a panoply of well-established British imperial military styles. The uniforms British officers issued or sometimes sold to West African soldiers evolved over time. Garrisoning Britain’s early nineteenth-century West African coastal enclaves like Freetown and Bathurst (Banjul), the British convicts and conscripted West African liberated slaves of the Royal African Corps (RAC) wore essentially the same uniform as the British Army.14 In 1863, cash-strapped colonial officials in newly occupied Lagos issued the first recruits of the Armed Hausa Police Force with red woolen caps and white cotton shorts; however, within several years, they received better uniforms, which consisted of red Turkish trousers and dark blue tunics.15 By the 1880s and 1890s, as British rule in West Africa pushed inland, British officials and chartered companies founded new paramilitary forces such as the Sierra Leone Frontier Police, Niger Coast Protectorate Force, RNC, GCC, and WAR. These troops generally sported a simple blue serge uniform and sporadically a light khaki field version. They wore red pillbox hats, sometimes with boots or sandals with puttees; but mainly the troops went barefoot. These uniforms also reflected military hierarchy, with African NCOs wearing chevrons, red sashes, and extra braid, and the very few African officers (a position abolished in the early twentieth century) donned more ornate uniforms comparable to those worn by European officers.16 Late nineteenthcentury West African constabulary uniforms represented simplified and lowcost versions of those worn by metropolitan British soldiers, although red caps and bare feet reflected a dash of the exotic.

Barkawi, Soldiers of Empire, 25; Thomas S. Adler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European Empire and Exotic Uniforms (New York: Berg, 1999). 14 Ricketts to Murray, Sierra Leone, 17 November 1828 in “Accounts and Papers relating to Diplomatic and Consular Establishments; Colonies,” 1830, vol. 21, 50; Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors, 125. 15 H. A. Leveson, “The Houssa Contingent,” Times, 4 September 1873; Glover, Life, 115. 16 London Illustrated News, 23 November 1895; Getty Images, “Hausa Members of the Royal Niger Constabulary, Nigeria 1895,” Hulton Archive, Huty1600406, https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/ hausa-members-of-the-royal-niger-constabulary-nigeria-1895-newsphoto/73604525; “Sierra Leone Frontier Police, June 12, 1897,” Alamy Stock Photos, Image Number R58826; “Frontier Police: Sierra Leone,” https:// digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/archives_sleone/63/.

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The creation of Britain’s regional military structure in West Africa at the turn of the twentieth century corresponded with movement toward an explicitly exotic uniform for West African troops. Upon forming the original WAFF in Nigeria in 1898, Lugard designed a new uniform he hoped to become common to all British colonial troops in West Africa. Light khaki uniforms suitable for the tropical environment replaced the heavier and more expensive blue serge. While Lugard eventually supervised the implementation of a single uniform for almost all the West African regiments, he believed that retaining some variations between the battalions served as an advantage “promoting esprit de corps.”17 Submitting color drawings to the Colonial Office, Lugard based his uniform designs on what he interpreted as the traditional Hausa clothing of Northern Nigeria also popular, so he thought, among the Yoruba men of western Nigeria. In that period, British officers like Lugard fantasized that the Hausa and Yoruba ethnic groups possessed natural martial features, and colonial military recruiting focused on these communities. Characterized by a knee-length West African–style tunic, Lugard’s proposed uniform consisted of basic “work dress” with a wedge cap and a more ornate “full dress” adding a blue cummerbund, brown sleeveless Zouave jacket, and black fez with a tassel. Both versions featured soldiers in bare feet.18 A modified type of Lugard’s design, with a shorter tunic but more vibrant color, came into effect at the start of the twentieth century as the WAFF absorbed West African constabularies, transforming them into component territorial regiments. During regular workdays, WAFF troops across the region wore a plain khaki blouse and shorts along with a green Kilmarnock cap; during formal occasions, they added a cummerbund in regimental color, a red Zouave jacket with yellow braid for infantry, a blue Zouave jacket with yellow braid for artillery, and a red fez with regimental color tassel. Supplementary to the usual rank markers, African sergeants and sergeant majors displayed elaborate gold braids on the front of their Zouave jackets. WAFF soldiers typically walked barefoot, but they received Indianstyle leather sandals called Chupplies to protect their feet in rough terrain 17 NA (UK) CO 445-4, “Uniform for Native Soldiers, WAFF,” 10 October 1898, emphasis in original minutes. 18 NA (UK) CO 445-4, “Uniform, WAFF,” Colonel F. D. Lugard to Colonial Secretary, 8 October 1898; T. Stapleton, “Martial Identities in Colonial Nigeria (1900–1960),” Journal of African Military History 3, no. 1 (2019): 1–32.

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or on long marches, and the British-style parade boots of some units disappeared.19 The absence of boots related to British stereotypes of Africans as primitive and London’s frugal method of administering African colonies. A British officer who served with the Nigeria Regiment in the 1930s thought, “The Hausas had enormous feet, and looked all wrong in boots; those who had to wear them were met with ridicule by the others.”20 On the other hand, British officers and NCOs seconded to command the WAFF wore standard British Army tropical uniforms, including sun helmets and tall leather boots. As with other colonial militaries in Africa and elsewhere, this dissimilarity between the uniforms of British leadership and West African troops reinforced a racial hierarchy. Such distinctions, nevertheless, were not entirely novel, as the class system of the metropolitan British military meant that officers had long worn slightly different and more elegant uniforms from NCOs and privates. In British colonial armies such as in West Africa, existing British military symbols related to class blended with new symbols associated with race. As Jane Tynan contends, separate uniforms for colonial soldiers contributed to “encoding social inequities.”21 In fashioning West African soldiers’ uniforms, British officials and officers drew on various elements to invent a new regional and colonial military tradition. British experience with the Egyptian Army informed the practice of West and East African colonial troops wearing a typically Turkish-style fez, itself a relatively recent adaptation by the Ottoman military, and this fashion caught on with the armies of other European powers in Africa.22 The Kilmarnock hat and Zouave jacket became distinct features of the WAFF uniform, setting it apart from that of other colonial militaries on the continent. Originating in Scotland, the Kilmarnock hat worn by West African troops seems copied from Britain’s older colonial Gurkha Regiments enlisted in Nepal.23 The presence of the West India Regiment (WIR)—incorporating a mix of impressed “liberated Africans” and African-descended men from the Caribbean—in British West Africa during the nineteenth and early twentieth 19 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 39, 49, 289. 20 ORDP, R. M. Allen, 30 September 1980. 21 Tynan, “Visual and Material Culture,” 313. 22 Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 118. For the fez as an Ottoman national headdress see Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808–1908,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no.1 (January 1993): 8–9. 23 Roy, “Regiments,” 133; https://thegurkhamuseum.co.uk/the-gurkha-hat/.

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century introduced Zouave military culture to the region. The concept of Zouave regiments with unusual uniforms originated when the French army recruited North African Berber men during the French conquest of Algeria in the mid-1800s. French Zouave formations eventually comprised white French soldiers, and by the 1860s, this colorful military fashion statement gained popularity in the United States and Latin America. First exposed to French Zouaves during their participation in the Crimean War (1853–56), an admiring Queen Victoria requested a British regiment adopt the glamorous Zouave outfit. Accordingly, the WIR that had employed a regular British Army uniform during the first half of the nineteenth century, converted to the Zouave tradition during the late 1850s adopting a red Zouave jacket, red fez wrapped in a white turban, blue pantaloons, and white spats with boots. The implementation of the Zouave uniform signified the transition of Britain’s black Caribbean soldiers from a mostly indistinct part of a broad colonial military to exotic “native” troops popular during imperial parades and led by apparently professional white British officers identifiable by their normal army attire.24 Military efficiency becomes secondary in the transformation of the WIR into Zouaves. During the 1873–74 Asante Campaign, for example, a British medical officer grumbled that the WIR Zouave uniform was too heavy for tropical conditions, causing health problems such as severe headaches.25 By the 1890s, the GCC’s uniform showed some Zouave influence, comprising a blue Zouave jacket with red piping and red cummerbund, red fez, and white spats over boots.26 As the only West African military formation under British War Office control and that remained outside the WAFF structure of the Colonial Office, the Freetown-based WAR retained a plain-looking constabulary uniform, although with red fez and cummerbund (and bare feet) until the unit’s disbandment in 1928.27 24 Richard Smith, “Loss and Longing: Emotional Responses to West Indian Soldiers during the First World War,” in The British Empire and the First World War, edited by Ashley Jackson (New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2016), 419–28; Richard Smith, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2004), 110. 25 Gore, Medical History of our West African Campaigns, 76. 26 Getty Images, “West African Constabulary at Chelsea Barracks,” June 1897, 97r/28/huty/7376/11. 27 “Postcard dated 1924 Band of West African Regiment,” https://worldwarwonders.co.uk/ product/76-postage-dated-1924-band-of-west-african-regiment-sierra-leone/.

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In addition to their uniform, some of Britain’s West African soldiers wore military decorations or medals signifying individual achievements such as long service, involvement in specific military campaigns, and heroism in combat. Unit commanding officers submitted written nominations for these awards arbitrated by higher authorities. For most of the colonial period, the racial hierarchy of Britain’s colonial army meant that African soldiers were ineligible for some of the highest military awards, receiving special African versions of decorations like the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM). Long-serving and particularly accomplished African senior NCOs sometimes received the British Empire Medal as a career capstone with the letters BEM written after their names. Still, medals remained exceptional with most soldiers never receiving one.28 Although it is almost impossible to reconstruct what West African colonial troops thought about decorations, archives preserve numerous requests from serving and former soldiers for replacements of lost medals or granting of decorations they thought they deserved. There are many examples. At the end of the First World War, the Nigeria Regiment’s Sergeant Major Ojo Ibadan successfully applied for replacement medals stolen from his house in Ibadan while he had been away fighting in Cameroon. The new medals arrived from the prime minister’s office in London.29 In 1931, former GCR soldier Billi Kanjarga, a veteran of the Cameroon and East Africa campaigns with fifteen years’ service, received three First World War service medals hitherto illegally denied him because of a 1917 court-martial conviction of neglect for letting a German prisoner escape.30 A 1946 military report on the reenlistment of Second World War veterans from around Sokoto and the Dakakari area of northwestern Nigeria indicated that “three is a great demand among the ex-soldiers for their issue of Medal Ribbons.”31 Clearly, these men attached some value or meaning to their medals, and their possession granted special status within colonial society.

28 For decorations in other African colonial forces see Parsons, African Rank-andFile, 119 and Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts, 141. 29 NNA (Ibadan) CSO 34/1919, Sergeant Major Ojo Ibadan, 3 January 1919; Milner to Governor of Nigeria, Downing Street, 9 June 1919. 30 PRAAD (Accra) CSO 22/6/4, Ex-Private Billi Kanjarga, Award of Medals, 1930–31. 31 ORDP, Bonser, “Re-enlistment Drive,” 20 November 1946, T. W. Bonser, Kaduna, Nigeria.

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In British West Africa, honor guards of WAFF soldiers sporting red fezzes, red Zouave jackets, and rifles—sometimes accompanied by correspondingly dressed marching bands playing stirring music—became regular participants in public events including the arrival or departure of a governor, royal, or diplomatic visits; the opening of new facilities; monarchs’ birthdays; and coronations, durbars, military tattoos, and holidays. The sight of uniformed African troops at official ceremonials created a martial ethos, reminding both colonizers and colonized of the military power reinforcing British rule and inspiring a sense of grandeur associated with the British Empire. In colonial West Africa, residents of towns observed uniformed colonial soldiers marching through the streets, participating in official occasions, or standing guard on the governor’s residence. In rural areas, occasional “flag marches” by troops and sometimes military musicians reminded communities of the colonial state and its coercive arm and sometimes inspired young men to enlist. At the opening of a new hospital in 1938 in the Gambia, as reported by a local newspaper, “The soldiers in their full ceremonial dress with their fixed bayonets glittering under the brilliant sunshine added to the dignity and majesty of the occasion.”32 Notwithstanding the British trope involving African soldiers walking in bare feet, military authorities of the interwar era began to explore introducing better footwear for West African colonial forces. From the WAFF’s formation around 1900, West African troops received one pair of leather Chupplies annually with a spare set held in unit stores.33 Complaints about the inferior quality of Chupplies started almost as soon as they were issued, as broken straps and chafing led to many men taking off their footwear and carrying them on the march.34 Photographic evidence suggests that these sandals saw only rare use during the force’s early years. However, conducting field operations without footwear resulted in injuries collectively known as “cut feet,” which could hobble soldiers for days or weeks. The service of West African troops in the African campaigns of the First World War highlighted these problems. In 1916 the commander of the Gambia Company, recently returned from Cameroon, insisted that his men needed to wear Chupplies and puttees constantly during bush warfare training, but his

32 Gambia Echo, 25 April 1938. 33 Haywood and Clark, West African Frontier Force, 289. 34 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on 1st Battalion GCR, 1902.

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superiors disapproved.35 West African troops fighting in the tough conditions of German East Africa during the First World War received normal British Army boots, although officers claimed they slowed the men and injured their feet and that the troops discarded them. Medical officers, however, highlighted that the use of footwear in East Africa reduced the instance of parasitic infection and injury among West African troops and recommended universal employment of boots or strong Chupplies.36 Immediately after the war, Nigeria Regiment senior officers agreed that their troops needed improved footwear (e.g., leather bush shoes) but that the standard army boot weighed too much for tropical conditions. In 1919, based on the experience of the Cameroon campaign where Chupplies had become worn out in a few days, the Nigeria Regiment’s Fifth Battalion (Mounted Infantry) acquired special permission to issue standard British Army boots instead of leather sandals, with the boots coming from a stockpile meant for a Nigerian Brigade that never deployed to the Middle East.37 In 1921, WAFF regiments conducted extensive trials of new footwear including a canvas-topped boot and the regular military boot. GCR officers reported that both versions proved “too heavy and cumbersome, the men’s movements being greatly hampered thereby.”38 During the experiment, the Nigeria Regiment equipped different battalions with different types of footwear. In the Kadunabased First Battalion and Artillery Battery, canvas-topped boots became awkward and clumsy and soldiers “complained that the toecap hurt and bruised the toe joints.” Based in Nigeria’s far north, the Fifth Battalion (Mounted Infantry) wore normal army boots during dismounted operations, finding that they provided sufficient protection against thorns and reptile bites but also seemed “heavy and cumbersome.” Based on these trials, officers recommended the continued employment of Chupplies but with enhanced ankle protection and a thicker sole and worn with thick woolen socks. This also represented the cheapest option for new footwear arrangements. None of the 35 NA (UK) CO 445/37, “Gambia Company: System of Training - Chupplies,” 24 July 1916. 36 PRAAD (Accra) ADM 1/843, Lieutenant Colonel T. M. Russell-Leonard to Director of Medical and Sanitary Services, Lagos, 29 October 1918. 37 NA (UK) CO 445/47, “Reorganization of Nigeria Regiment,” 17 April 1919; NNA (Ibadan) N322/1919, “Mounted Infantry 5th Battalion Nigeria Regiment: Supply of Ankle Boots,” 26 May 1919. 38 NA (UK) CO 445/57, “Boots: Native Rank-and-File,” Lieutenant Colonel G. Shaw, Commanding Officer, Gold Coast Regiment, Kumasi to Colonial Secretary, 18 May 1921.

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official military correspondence about Chupplies and boots mentioned symbolism or stereotypes with authorities emphasizing that West African soldiers “must become accustomed to wearing footwear.”39 Although some WAFF battalions of the 1920s permitted men to wear their Chupplies around barracks and during routine duties, official policy limited the use of these sandals to marches across country or on stony roads. Officers worried that constant usage would result in the Chupplies “wearing out in a short time.”40 In 1927 trials with a more substantial “Gurkha Pattern” Chupplie and leather sock manufactured in India led to the RWAFF adopting a comparable bush shoe produced in West Africa.41 A decade later, with Italy’s 1935 deployment of chemical weapons in Ethiopia and the growing likelihood of another world war, the RWAFF and other colonial forces began harmonizing their uniform, including boots, with the metropolitan British Army.42 While the soldiers from remote and marginalized communities who made up Britain’s West African army for most of its history never demanded boots, the enlistment of West African men with Western education in the late 1930s prompted some expectation for boots and general equal treatment with white troops. For example, delays issuing boots contributed, partially, to a 1939 mutiny by soldiers from Freetown’s Westernized Krio community who had not previously served in large numbers in colonial regiments but now comprised a newly formed artillery unit.43 During the Second World War, with the aim of improving military effectiveness and in the new context of reducing racial distinctions, Britain’s African soldiers switched to regular British Army “battle dress” uniforms 39 NA (UK) CO 445/56, “Boots: Native Rank-and-File,” 23 August 1921, “Footwear Report,” Lieutenant Colonel J. Sargent, Acting Commandant Nigeria Regiment, Kaduna, 18 July 1921. 40 NA (UK) CO 820/1/17, Report on the Nigeria Regiment 1926–27, 22 February 1927. 41 NA (UK) CO 820/2/11, Chupplies, 1927; CO 820/10/11, Report on the Sierra Leone Battalion, 1931. 42 NA (UK) CO 820/25/4, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 1937. 43 Cole, “Defining the `Flesh,’” 275–95; for boots in Britain’s East African forces see Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 118–19; for Western-educated African police demanding boots in 1930s Rhodesia see Stapleton, African Police and Soldiers, 156–57; expectations for footwear went beyond the military: as in 1936 football players in colonial Brazzaville demanded the right to wear boots during games. See Phyllis Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 110–12.

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including boots, although an Australian-style slouch hat set them apart from metropolitan troops with berets. However, the old colonial uniform, including red fez, Zouave jacket, and shorts—but now with boots and puttees—remained the British West African military ceremonial costume until independence in the late 1950s and 1960s. Some British officers’ accounts from the 1950s suggest West African troops were still unaccustomed to constantly wearing boots, preferring to take them off during field activities.44 Although available records scarcely reflect the voices of West African soldiers, there were no obvious objections to items like fezzes or Zouave jackets. Many memoirs by former British officers who served in West Africa between the 1920s and 1950s concur that West African troops took greater pride in their uniforms and military appearance than metropolitan British soldiers did and that the former relished performing ceremonial parades before large audiences.45 During the decolonization era of the late 1950s or early 1960s, however, exotic colonial-style uniforms became unpopular among Western-educated West Africans, with a freshly commissioned Nigerian officer describing the fez and jacket as “fit only for performing monkeys.”46 Likewise, a British officer who served in Sierra Leone during the 1950s recalled that the Zouavestyle uniform “was not popular with the soldiers because it caused the civilian population to dub them `the barrel organ monkeys’ whenever they appeared on parade.”47 After independence, and with ambitions to become sovereign and respected modern states, the governments of the former British West African colonies replaced exotic colonial dress uniforms with Western-style ceremonial uniforms almost identical to those of the metropolitan British military. In the Ghanaian Army, soldiers cast off their Zouave jackets and fezzes, donning new scarlet tunics and peaked hats evocative of British guards’ regiments.48 Ironically, West African independence led to greater Westernization in this aspect of regional military culture. 44 ORDP, H. J. Bartholomew, 18 February 1981; J. K. Chater, n.d., served in Nigeria during the 1950s and early 1960s. 45 For some examples see ORDP, W. Catcheside, 25 September 1980; A. J. Chrystal; Davidson-Houston; Filmer-Bennett; F. H. G. Higgins, 25 October 1980. 46 Miners, Nigerian Army, 103. 47 Stewart West, “The Military, Policing and Decolonization in Sierra Leone, 1953–57,” Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, Working Paper No. 4, May 2013. 48 John Keegan, World Armies (London: Macmillan, 1983), 217; Nigerian Army Magazine, 1963, 10.

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Military Bands Military bands complemented the visual symbols of uniforms and medals. The fact that newly formed British paramilitaries in late nineteenth-century West Africa quickly established bands illustrates that authorities considered music central to creating a martial ethos and promoting military identities. During the Victorian period, bands became institutionalized in the metropolitan British Army as “music made soldiers better at being soldiers; it was a potent devise for raising morale when little else availed for that purpose.”49 At the same time, the entourages of precolonial West African rulers usually included many musicians, thus associating music with power in the region.50 Shortly after its formation in 1860s Lagos, the Armed Hausa Police Force formed its own band that played during diplomatic meetings with neighboring Yoruba leaders.51 The 1896 unfurling of the Union Jack over the Asante Kingdom, signifying its new status as a British protectorate, featured the bands of both the Asante royals and the colonial Hausa constabularies.52 Faced with a reorganization of the Lagos Battalion at the start of the twentieth century, the Lagos governor maintained, “It would be a great mistake to discontinue the band. It is popular with the battalion and with the people. It may not supply scientific music, but it pleases the members of this community.”53 When the WAR disbanded in 1928, the governor of Sierra Leone ensured that the regiment’s instruments and trained bandsmen transferred to the SLB, as Freetown needed a brass band for its many ceremonial events. The governor considered the SLB’s existing fife and drum band insufficient. Referencing a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, an official noted that “in West Africa it is frequently found necessary, as the Duke of Plaza-Toro found it, to travel with a full band.”54

49 Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow, Music and the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 14. 50 Alexander Akorlie Agordoh, African Music: Traditional and Contemporary (New York: Nova Science, 2005), 37. 51 Glover, Life, 115. 52 R. S. S. Baden-Powell, Downfall of Prempeh: A Dairy of Life with the Native Levy in Ashanti, 1895–96 (London: Methuen, 1900), 62–64. 53 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on Lagos Battalion, 1903, Governor to Chamberlain, Lagos, 19 January 1903. 54 NA (UK) CO 267/625/14, “Military Band for Freetown,” 1928.

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The ethnic composition of West Africa’s colonial military bands often differed from the majority rank-and-file as musicians tended to originate from coastal communities with greater access to Western education and familiarity with Western-style music. Around 1900, the band of the Lagos Battalion, a predominantly Hausa formation, consisted of Yoruba men, and some of the only Krio soldiers in Freetown’s WAR formed the unit band.55 In keeping with nineteenth- century British military practice, West African regiments enlisted “boys” as musicians contracting them for twelve years so they could grow into skilled performers instead of the usual six years for soldiers.56 During the early 1920s, the Nigeria Regiment included eighty bandsmen and ten band boys with qualified musicians earning a proficiency bonus on top of their salary and superfluous trained musicians absorbed into rifle companies.57 At times, enlistment as a band boy served as a convenient way to sidestep military age requirements to turn a promising young teenager into a soldier. In 1940 the thirteen-year-old Hama Kim, athletic and with an uncle fighting in East Africa, enrolled as a band boy in the Nigeria Regiment but never trained with the band, joining the other older recruits in the infantry.58 All Britain’s West African battalions formed bands led by army bandmasters from Britain with the importance of military music continuing throughout the colonial era. Supplementing uniforms, badges, and special flags, bands enabled West African regiments to develop their own military identities by playing distinct regimental marches and songs. In Nigeria and the Gold Coast, the Hausa northern military ethos included the development of a ritual whereby buglers played a song called the “Hausa Farewell” for departing British officers.59 In a diplomatic role, Britain’s West African army bands sometimes crossed the border to play at official events in French territory such as in 1919 when the band of the Fourth Battalion Nigeria Regiment from Ibadan spent a week performing in Dahomey (now Republic

55 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on Lagos Battalion, 1903; Grattan and Cochrane, “West African Regiment,” 525. 56 NA (UK) CO 445/29, “WAFF: Enlistment of Boys,” 16 September 1909. 57 NNA (Ibadan), CSO 09458, “Bandsmen: Nigeria Regiment—Conditions of Service,” 1923. 58 Graham, “There Was a Soldier,” 14. 59 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 496–97; Aboagye, Ghana Army, 69.

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of Benin).60 In early 1945 the SLR band, selected from among all the RWAFF unit bands, toured India and Burma, performing for the public, various military forces, and for dignitaries at official receptions. The tour also included Burma’s Arakan region where the Sierra Leonean musicians staged concerts in jungle clearings close to the front line for West African troops taking a break from combat.61 During the Second World War, West African units serving in overseas theaters formed their own bands for military and public performances. These bands included West African pioneers based in the Middle East and 51 West African Convalescent Depot in India, consisting primarily of troops from Nigeria and the Gold Coast, who played for hospitalized soldiers and on All India Radio.62 Attesting to the popularity of the GCR band, a school marching band in 1940s Accra adopted the same Zouave military attire, prompting a warning from colonial authorities that the style was not meant for civilian use.63 The profile of military music only increased after the Second World War with army bands representing a constant feature of public ceremonials including those marking important political transitions. In 1951, the GCR band led by Drum Major Salifu Ali BEM featured prominently in a special military display organized for the Gold Coast’s newly elected legislative council.64 At the same time, band service became attractive as “the Bandsmen received a proportion of the money obtained from Band engagements.”65 Military bands profoundly influenced popular culture in West Africa and beyond. The introduction of sheet music and new instruments by the colonial military and police, together with the musical inspiration of Caribbean soldiers from the WIR, contributed to the development of distinctive West

60 NNA (Ibadan) CSO 1490/1919, “Bands of the Nigeria Regiment,” 7 July 1919. 61 “Band of RWAFF,” West African Pilot, 12 January 1945, 1; “Sierra Leone Regiment Band Receives General Burrows,” West African Pilot, 17 April 1945, 4; IWM, K9693, photograph, “Sierra Leone Regimental Band in Burma, c.1945.” 62 “West African Bandsmen in Middle East,” RWAFF News, 7 February 1944; RWAFF News, 3 October 1945. 63 PRAAD (Accra), 4429, “Uniform Resembling that of the Royal WAFF,” 1944. 64 PRAAD (Accra), RG 14/4/87, “Military Displays, Ceremonial, Parades, etc,” 1951. 65 ORDP, S. C. Hancock (officer in the GCR during the late 1940s).

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African popular music styles.66 During the Second World War, as American servicemen brought jazz to West Africa, West African musicians-turned-­ soldiers performed “highlife” and “juju” music at army clubs in Kenya.67 Back home in the 1950s, West African military bands played popular music like highlife during public performances.68 After independence in the late 1950s and 1960s, European-style military bands remained a feature of West Africa’s national armed forces though with slightly more influence from indigenous musical culture.69

Insignia and Colours During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, military authorities employed symbols, ceremonies, and written and oral histories to foster the development of regimental identity and esprit de corps in the metropolitan British Army. Ideally, a British regiment constituted an “imagined community” based on a special collective identity, family-like camaraderie, and common sense of honor that transcended military hierarchy and potentially motivated soldiers to sacrifice their lives. Visual symbols of regimental identity included rituals and ceremonies, badges and buttons with heraldic symbols, and flags known as “colours.” In the British Army and its colonial subsidiaries, the colours occupied the ritual center of regimental life. Although units once took the colours into battle to show their location and serve as a rallying point, the increasing range and accuracy of firearms in the late nineteenth century restricted their use to important ceremonies. New officers and recruits learned about the symbols exhibited on the colours, and all personnel were expected to treat these special flags with great reverence. When carried on parade, the colours warranted a salute from passing soldiers, and when not in use they were displayed in the regimental officers’ mess or 66 John Collins, “The Early History of West African Highlife Music,” Popular Music 8, no. 3 (October 1989): 221–30; for the impact of military bands in colonial East Africa see Terence Ranger, Dance and Society in East Africa, 1890–1970: The Beni Ngoma (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). 67 “Nigerians in East Africa,” West African Pilot, 8 August 1941. 68 PRAAD (Accra) RG 14/4/5225, Press Cuttings, “Military Band Entertains Hospital Patients,” Northern Territories Page, 25 January 1956. 69 Michael Olutayo Olatunji, “The Indigenization of Military Music in Nigeria,” Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society 40, no. 1 (December 2012): 427–93.

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battalion headquarters. Rules overseen by military officials and the College of Heralds governed the design of British Army colours finally approved by the monarch. Every battalion in a regiment carried two of these flags; the king’s or queen’s colour usually of standard army configuration and the more distinctive regimental colour that reflected the unit’s history and symbols. Emblazoned on the regimental colour, names of historic engagements in which the unit had distinguished itself called “battle honors” highlighted a glorious past meant to motivate those in the present. Army authorities vetted regimental claims for battle honors, and regulations limited the number exhibited on colours. Colours comprised the subject of the most significant regimental rituals. The presentation of new colours involved a bestowal by the monarch or representative and consecration by clergy, a ceremony called “trooping the colour” represented a formal parade where the colours were marched before all ranks, and old or worn-out colours were “laid up” in a funeral-like event at a church. A city or town government honored a battalion by granting it the “freedom of the city” involving a parade through the streets with drums beating, bayonets fixed, and colours unfurled. Carried by junior officers and escorted by a team of senior NCOs, the colours exemplified the main physical manifestation of regimental identity.70 Raised in a haphazard manner, Britain’s West African paramilitaries of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conquest era lacked official insignia and colours. Compared to metropolitan British regiments, the military identity and culture of these colonial formations seemed incomplete. Without colours, West African units did not perform the usual military rituals associated with these sacred objects. Informal attempts to create emblems demonstrated a desire on the part of some British officers and perhaps the African rank-and-file to adopt these aspects of military life. Photographs from the very early 1900s show WAFF artillerymen, a small elite group in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, wearing a flaming grenade hat badge and a few soldiers displaying metal unit shoulder titles such as “NNR” for Northern Nigeria Regiment.71 The unique status of the Sierra Leone–based WAR as the only British West African regiment under War Office (rather than Colonial Office) dominion 70 French, Military Identities, 85–90; Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 95–99. 71 NAM 1978-07-7-29, “British Officers and African NCOs of the Battery of the Gold Coast Regiment, 1906;” NAM. 1978-07-8-4, “The Gold Coast Regiment Battery, c.1909;” and NAM 1978-07-7-29, “Sergeant Major Bobie, 2nd Northern Nigeria Regiment, 1901.”

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and its place within the imperial garrison of Freetown likely facilitated its early development of military cultural symbols. At a December 1907 ceremony in Freetown, the governor of Sierra Leone presented colours to the WAR. Typical of similar rituals in Britain and elsewhere in the empire, the bishop of Sierra Leone consecrated the colours as the WAR band sang hymns, and the regiment then executed a “trooping” of the colours. Straightaway, the new colours served to inspire a mythical glorious regimental history. During the handover ceremony, the governor’s speech emphasized that the regiment had been “born in war” raised, as it was, during Sierra Leone’s 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion and then quickly dispatched to the Gold Coast to help suppress the 1900 Asante Rebellion. Although the governor neglected to reference the 1901 mutiny by WAR soldiers in the Gold Coast, he hinted at the unit’s redemption, as increased “discipline and military value” earned the granting of colours, thus signifying the start of “its full military life.” The ceremony ended with the WAR band playing “God Save the King” and the troops, carrying their new colours, marched back to barracks singing a song expressly composed for the event.72 At this moment, no other British West African colonial regiment possessed colours or conducted such ceremonials. Participation in First World War campaigns elevated the status of African and other colonial military formations within the British Empire. In 1917, the League of Empire, a British organization dedicated to promoting imperial patriotism, presented a silk Union Jack flag and shield to each of the WAFF, KAR, and several other colonial forces in gratitude for their wartime service. The WAFF shield and flag were eventually displayed at the Nigeria Regiment headquarters at Kaduna with replica shields sent to the other West African units. While the presentation ceremony at the Colonial Office in London had no impact on West African soldiers fighting in German East Africa, it foreshadowed the awarding of official colours that would play a central role in fostering military culture within these regiments.73 In 1916, given the activities of West African soldiers in Togo and Cameroon, the War Office approved the granting of colours to each WAFF battalion normally under Colonial Office authority. The subsequent deployment of West 72 “Presentation of Colours to the West African Regiment,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 4 January 1908; Killingray, “Mutiny of the West African Regiment,” 441–54. 73 “Flags for Colonial Regiments: A Tribute of Gratitude,” Western Daily Press, 7 May 1917; NA (UK) CO 445/65, “Historical Records of Sierra Leone Battalion,” 26 May 1924.

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African units to East Africa confirmed Britain’s obligation to recognize their war service through presentation of colours. This would align West African regiments more closely with British military traditions. In 1919 and 1920, with the end of the world war, British colonial and military officials, heraldry experts, and scholars devised the WAFF colours along with the badges, symbols, and mottos they would display. The first step involved producing WAFF insignia. While the concept of adopting a palm tree symbol for the WAFF seems to have originated in the Colonial Office, the officers of the GCR proposed a lion motif, as this animal inspired admiration among the troops and appeared on the 1900 Asante War Service Medal. The palm tree, previously included on some British West African colonial crests and already regarded as a regional symbol, won out with support from the officers in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia. Starting in the early 1920s, and unlike most British infantry regiments each with a distinct badge, all WAFF regiments displayed the palm tree on hat badges, buttons, documents, and signage, and in the middle of battalion colours.74 Designing the colours for WAFF regiments involved substantial discussion and debate. In 1920 the Nigeria Regiment and WAFF inspector general held an officers’ conference on colours at Kaduna. Within a few months, the British College of Heralds produced prototype designs, and language specialists at London’s School of Oriental Studies provided the proper spelling of Arabic and Hausa mottos. These consultations led to the modification and finalization of the WAFF palm tree insignia with more realistic-looking leaves and a longer trunk based on a similar image on West African silver coins distributed by the British mint. As in the metropolitan British Army, each WAFF battalion received a standardized king’s colour in the form of a Union Jack (with the name of the force and territorial regiment at the center) and a special regimental colour bearing local symbols. Every WAFF regimental colour featured a particular background color, a distinct territorial device in the flag’s corners, and sometimes a unit motto. Reflecting Colonial Office concerns and expertise, religious sensitivity influenced the design of the WAFF colours. To avoid offending the West African army’s many Muslim soldiers, officials rejected a suggestion that WAFF regimental colours copy the WAR regimental colours containing a George’s Cross. At the same time,

74 NA (UK) CO 445-46, “Colours for Gold Coast Regiment,” 16 April 1919; CO 445-48, “Colours for WAFF,” 4 September 1919; CO 445-51, “Colours for WAFF,” 7 June 1920.

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a suggestion to adopt Islamic green for all WAFF regimental colours clashed with some officials’ desire to employ an existing official territorial color.75 Each WAFF battalion received distinct regimental colours. For the Nigeria Regiment, a battalion’s regimental colour comprised Islamic green, included the distinct battalion number such as 1, 2, 3, or 4 in the upper left corner and displayed the Koranic quotation “Victory is for God Alone” in Arabic script, which remains the Nigerian Army’s motto today. Nigeria Regiment officers initially proposed a rising sun as their regimental symbol, but it proved difficult to embroider the device on the flags. As the largest military formation in British West Africa and at times the only WAFF regiment with more than one battalion, the Nigeria Regiment employed numbers to distinguish the colours of its different battalions. For its background, the GCR regimental colour adopted the official Gold Coast territorial color of “old gold” already displayed as an unofficial patch on officers’ headgear. The GCR’s regimental colour also included the unit’s preferred lion emblem in each corner and the motto “Always Ready” in Hausa language written in Arabic characters. The Sierra Leone territorial color of blue became the background for the SLB regimental colour featuring a badge of an elephant—an animal already displayed on some colonial crests in the territory—in each corner. But the unit’s officers refused to adopt a motto. While the regimental colours of the Nigeria Regiment and GCR bore the battle honors “Ashanti 1873–74” and “Ashanti 1900,” the SLB regimental colour lacked battle honors as its forerunner, the Sierra Leone Frontier Police, had not participated in those conflicts. Like all British Army colours, the final designs received royal authorization from King George V.76 The example of the Gambia Company, a unit too small to merit its own colours, demonstrates the importance associated with these symbols in developing British military culture. In 1921, as officials deliberated appropriate WAFF military emblems, the Gambia’s governor and the Gambia Company commander requested colours for the formation. They contended that the Gambia Company represented the territory as a separate WAFF component 75 NA (UK), CO 445-51, “Colours for WAFF,” minutes plus Colonel G. T. Mair, Commandant Nigeria Regiment to Colonial Secretary, 3 May 1920; NA (UK) CO 445-53, “Colours for WAFF: Submits Proposal for King’s Approval,” 6 December 1920. A small Frontier Police continent went to Asante in 1900 but that did not qualify for a battle honor. 76 NA (UK), CO 445-51, “Colours,” minutes plus Colonel G. T. Mair, Commandant Nigeria Regiment to Colonial Secretary, 3 May 1920; NA (UK) CO 445-53, “Colours for WAFF: Submits Proposal for King’s Approval,” 6 December 1920.

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like its counterparts in Nigeria, Gold Coast, and Sierra Leone, and its men had fought well in Cameroon and East Africa during the First World War. Officials in the Gambia claimed that the honor would augment “‘Esprit de Corps’ and would be beneficial from the point of view of discipline and efficiency.” Lacking colours, the Gambia Company appeared an incomplete and second-rate military formation lacking important symbols and rituals. Nonetheless, British Colonial Office and military authorities thought “the idea was absurd,”77 and the matter dropped until the Gambia Company expanded and received regimental status during the Second World War. In 1951, its status elevated by participation in the Burma campaign, the Gambia Regiment received king’s and regimental colours, but the honor did not last long.78 Given the 1958 disbanding of the Gambia Regiment, a move related to impending British decolonization and the tiny colony’s financial limitations, the unit conducted a final parade through Bathurst concluding with a ceremonial surrendering of its colours to the governor.79 In early 1922 British junior officers brought the new British-manufactured WAFF colours by ship to the appropriate battalions in West Africa where governors presented them in elaborate and well-attended public ceremonies. Worried about potential religious objections among Muslims, colonial officials omitted the Christian consecration of the WAFF colours customary in British Army regiments, including Sierra Leone’s WAR.80 In a series of ceremonies held in March and May 1922, Nigeria’s governor, Sir Hugh Clifford, conferred colours on each of the four battalions of the Nigeria Regiment at Kaduna, Ibadan, Lokoja, and Calabar. As usual, colours inspired the telling and retelling of mythical regimental histories. At each location, the governor’s speech outlined the special history and perceived military attributes of each battalion: mentioning, for example, the precision drill of the troops at Kaduna, the wartime bravery of Battalion Sergeant Major Belo Akure of Ibadan, and the historic location of Lokoja as the WAFF birthplace. At these 77 NA (UK), CO 445-45, “Colours for WAFF: Gambia Company,” 8 March 1921; Telegram, C. H. Armitage to Colonial Secretary, Bathurst, 11 February 1921. 78 NA (UK) CO 820/73/4, “Colours: King’s and Regimental, West Africa,” Governor Gambia to Secretary of State, 6 April 1951. 79 “Handing Over Regimental Colours to His Excellency the Governor,” Gambia Echo, 27 January 1958, 1. 80 PRAAD (Accra), “Consecration of the Colours, 2nd Battalion, Gold Coast Regiment,” 1946.

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events, the governor stressed the important contribution and sacrifice of the Nigeria Regiment during the Great War and particularly at the 1917 Battle of Mahiwa in East Africa, which he designated as “the heaviest engagement ever fought upon African soil in the recorded history of the Continent.”81 In an obvious case of “invented tradition,” Governor Clifford suggested that March 17 (or Saint Patrick’s Day), the anniversary of the First Battalion receiving its colours at Kaduna, become the Nigeria Regiment’s “Regimental Day,” marked with a feast. The regiment adopted this practice and continued it until after the Second World War.82 In late May 1922, in Daru, Sierra Leone, Governor A. R. Slater presented colours to the officers and men of the SLB. More than two thousand spectators, including official guests such as the WAFF inspector general, WAR officers from Freetown, colonial administrators, officials from neighboring French territory, and twenty-two Sierra Leonean chiefs attended the event. About a hundred demobilized Sierra Leonean veterans of First World War operations in Togo and Cameroon also appeared at the ceremony, provided with railway passes by the colonial administration. The governor and WAFF inspector general gave speeches summarizing the battalion’s history and explaining the significance of the colours as the most important unit symbol conferred by the king as a reward for service during the war. “They have been won,” the governor declared, “by the valour and faithfulness of all who have fought in the battalion in the days gone by. Many of those are dead. This flag is their flag as well as yours and in the years that are to come when you are fighting for the honour of this flag, remember that the spirits of the dead will be watching to see whether you are worthy of the regiment that they served in and loved.”83 Governor Slater’s emphasis on the colours as symbols of dead military ancestors likely resonated with the traditional beliefs of many Sierra Leonean soldiers.84 A similar process related to designing and issuing colours took place within British East Africa’s KAR around the same time. Unlike those in West 81 NA (UK) CO 445-60, “Presentation of Colours to the Nigeria Regiment,” 15 May 1922. 82 NA (UK) CO 445-60, “Presentation of Colours to the Nigeria Regiment,” 15 May 1922; “Medals for RWAFF,” Nigeria Review, 28 February 1948. 83 NA (UK) CO 445-60, “Presentation of Colours to Sierra Leone Battalion,” 13 June 1922. 84 For a similar point about the Liberian flag see Nevin, “Uncontrollable Force,” 288.

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Africa, KAR colours comprised a common design given the formation’s status as a single regiment with battalions in different territories. In 1923 the governors of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and Nyasaland conferred colours on the four KAR battalions. In 1930 KAR troops received an official badge inspired by those of the British Army’s Rifle Regiments.85 After each world war, the British War Office compiled a list of suitable battle honors and asked regiments to assemble committees to make recommendations concerning which ones they were entitled to. To qualify for a specific battle honor, the headquarters and at least half of a battalion had to have participated in the relevant engagement. Furthermore, regiments were limited to displaying ten battle honors per conflict on their colours, and all battalions of a regiment exhibited the same battle honors. While War Office officials vetted applications for battle honors, regimental committees claimed as many as possible to boost their unit’s historical glory.86 Since they now had colours on which to display battle honors, Britain’s West African regiments took part in these processes. After the First World War, WAFF officers wrote brief accounts of their units’ wartime activities and submitted them to the War Office as evidence in support of battle honor applications. In 1924, for example, the Nigeria Regiment received the battle honors “Duala, Garua, Banyo, Cameroons 1914–16” and “Behobeho, Nyangao, East Africa 1917– 18.” The challenge of reconstructing the history of a small unit during large operations resulted in official disagreement over the battle honors due to the Gambia Company. Eventually, the Gambia Company gained “Cameroons, 1915–16” and “Nyangao, East Africa, 1917–18,” though it lacked colours on which to emblazon these titles.87 Following the Second World War, authorities circulated another call for battle honor applications and requested the return of colours belonging to battalions formed during wartime expansion and subsequently disbanded as part of demobilization.88 In turn, the Nigeria Regiment and GCR received battle honors related to the Second World War’s East Africa and Burma campaigns, and the SLR and Gambia Regiment received battle honors associated with Burma.89 Aligned to the receipt of battle honors, West African regiments implemented the British military 85 Moyse-Bartlett, King’s African Rifles, 261. 86 French, Military Identities, 89. 87 NA (UK) CO 445-66, “WAFF—Battle Honours,” 25 August 1924. 88 NNA (Kaduna) ZARPROF 4149, “Battle Honours Awards and Regimental Colours,” Memo from Lagos Sub-Area, 15 July 1946. 89 Haywood and Clark, West African Frontier Force, 283.

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practice of identifying a special regimental holiday named after one of its most well-known engagements. As a result, 24 January became Myohaung Day, memorializing a battle in Burma, with some West African militaries still celebrating this event today.90 Following the 1922 conferral of colours, WAFF units began performing “Trooping of the Colours” ceremonies to highlight important events happening within the British Empire. These impressive public military performances promoted imperial identity and loyalty, and the appearance of British officials and West African traditional chiefs reinforced imperial hierarchy within the context of the region’s indirect rule system. With their colours and military rituals, Britain’s West African troops no longer comprised nondescript low status occupation forces supervising colonized people: they became an integral part of British imperial pageantry and propaganda. Describing a 1931 “Trooping” ceremony in Kumasi, Gold Coast, attended by Asante dignitaries and many people, a colonial newspaper reported, “When the soldiers marched past the Flag, with their usual grandeur and precision, the scene became intensely animated and spectacular. All who witnessed it felt the dignity of the occasion, which was all the more enhanced by the presence of the school children.”91 In late March 1937, to celebrate the forthcoming coronation of George VI, the GCR “Trooping of the Colours” in Kumasi attracted a “large attendance” including all European residents and the Asantehene (king) and chiefs of the Asante Kingdom. With Governor Arnold Hodson presiding over the occasion, the parade included honor guards from the two GCR battalions and the regiment’s light artillery battery. The event wrapped up with a special inspection of the GCR’s coronation contingent, consisting of British officers and West African soldiers soon to depart for London. At a critical moment in the ceremony, Private Yessufu Hausa let a snake bite his leg rather than interrupt his rigid “present arms” drill position. Officers emphasized this as an example of the GCR soldiers’ “discipline” and “devotion to duty.”92 The Nigeria Regiment’s Third Battalion celebrated Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation by “trooping its Colours” at Lagos racecourse in front of one of the largest crowds ever assembled in the city.93 90 Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 156. 91 “Trooping the Colour,” West Africa Times, 23 March 1931. 92 PRAAD (Accra), CSO 22/6/95, “Trooping of the Colours of the Gold Coast Regiment, RWAFF,” 30 March 1937; CSO 22/6/96, “Trooping of the Colours of the G.C. Regt.” 25 April 1937. 93 “Nigerians Troop the Colour,” Times, 3 June 1953.

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Association with the British royal family augmented the status of West African soldiers within the empire. In 1925 King George V became the WAFF’s royal patron, accepting appointment as the formation’s first colonel in chief. Consequently, WAFF inspector general Colonel Butler recommended to the Colonial Office that the force take the title “Royal” suggesting that the name King’s African Rifles (KAR) affiliated the East African colonial army with the monarch. Sanctioned by the four West African governors, the War Office and the king, the title Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) came into effect in early 1928. British officials expressed relief that the new title would not change the formation’s popular nickname of “Waffs.” In turn, all RWAFF badges, buttons, and colours transformed to reflect the new designation. British officials and officers believed the adoption of RWAFF signified more than superficial terminology. Referring to the title “Royal,” a British colonial official wrote, “There is no doubt in the substantial value in its appeal to the African soldier and to the West African generally. I believe these things count for a good deal in fostering and maintaining the African loyalty.”94 A humorous story from the SLB, nevertheless, illustrated that perhaps West African soldiers did not immediately appreciate the royal connection. The commanding officer’s poor Pidgin English, the battalion’s working language, meant that his announcement of the new title and the king’s special place in the force inspired cheering among the soldiers who erroneously believed it meant he was being replaced by a new officer.95 The “Royal” designation led to alterations in the design of the West African force’s uniform and colours. In 1932, consistent with Britain’s other royal regiments, RWAFF soldiers’ Zouave jackets were given blue collars, and the hitherto differently colored regimental colours became a uniform blue.96 Most RWAFF battalions received new colours during the 1930s, involving another series of presentations and parades. By 1936 the SLB and all six battalions of the Nigeria Regiment possessed new colours conferred by colonial governors at elaborate ceremonials. On May 12, 1937, the day of George VI’s coronation, Governor Hodson presented colours to the new Second Battalion 94 NA (UK) CO 820-2-14, “Title of WAFF,” 1927, minute by S. J. Cole, 18 July 1927; Colonial Secretary L. Amery to George V, 13 March 1928; for the position of colonel in chief see French, Military Identities, 166. 95 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 320. 96 PRAAD (Accra), CSO 22/4/32, “Regimental Colours of Units of the Royal WAFF,”1932, “Regimental Orders, Gold Coast Regiment,” Kumasi, 11 June 1932.

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GCR in Accra before a “very large gathering” of Europeans and Africans, including chiefs. Instead of retiring the old colours originally issued in 1922, they were transferred to the older First Battalion GCR to become that unit’s colours. The ceremony concluded with a twenty-one-gun salute fired by the GCR artillery battery. In his speech, the governor explained the significance of the new royal blue regimental colour and stated, “To honour your Colours is part of your creed. It is the trait of the fighting caste. It is stronger even than death itself.”97 Notwithstanding the absence of soldiers’ accounts, it would be a mistake to think that such sentiments made no impression on the young men of the RWAFF shortly before the Second World War. Britain’s West African army received another round of honors during the 1950s decolonization era. In this case, military ceremonies and titles aimed at bolstering loyalty to the British Commonwealth and encouraging newly self-governing West African territories to retain nominal affiliations with Britain when they became independent states. Given the dissolution of the RWAFF regional structure in 1956, the British government affixed royal designations to the separate West African regiments now under local command. In January 1956, Queen Elizabeth II commenced a royal tour of Nigeria, where regions were about to gain self-government, attending a Myohaung Day service at Lagos Cathedral and presenting new colours to the Second Battalion Nigeria Regiment in a ceremony attended by fourteen thousand spectators in Lagos. After inspecting the First Battalion at Kaduna, the Third Battalion at Enugu, and the Fifth Battalion at Ibadan, the queen announced from Kano that the Nigeria Regiment was renamed the Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment (QONR).98 To promote its history, the QONR opened a regimental museum in Zaria in 1956 and published pamphlets highlighting its famous battles and showing pictures of recently commissioned Nigerian officers.99 On another royal tour, the duke and duchess of Gloucester visited Nigeria in 1959 and attended a QONR military tattoo 97 PRAAD (Accra), CSO 22/4/33, “Regimental Colours Gold Coast Regiment, Royal WAFF,” 1936–37, “Speech of His Excellency the Governor,” 12 May 1937; Colonel M. A. Green to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 13 May 1937. 98 “Boisterous Welcome to the Queen at Lagos,” Times, 30 January 1956; “Nigerian Forces Honoured,” Times, 31 January 1956; “Nigeria Royal Tour in Last Phase,” Times, 16 February 1956; Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 479–80. 99 Arewa House (Kaduna), ND/A77, “Regimental Museum: Nigeria Military Forces,” n.d.; ND/A78, “Our Regiment,” Crownbird Series, No. 29, n.d.

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in Kaduna.100 In April 1960, accentuating the royal connection six months prior to Nigeria’s independence, the queen inspected a QONR detachment visiting Buckingham Palace.101 In November 1961, in a royal tour of newly independent Sierra Leone, the queen conferred new colours on the renamed Royal Sierra Leone Regiment in Freetown.102 Despite these royal visits and honors, including knighthoods for West African political leaders, Britain’s former colonies in West Africa eventually cut ties with the monarchy and declared republics. The transition of West African states into republics compelled changes to military symbols. The new administrations retained some of the old traditions, dropped others, and invented a few of their own. Throughout the region, during the early 1960s, the defunct RWAFF’s palm tree badge gave way to new national crests and republican eagles. In 1959 British officers and officials seconded to independent Ghana, anticipating the country’s announcement of a republic, decided that each of the three battalions of the Ghana Regiment (formerly GCR) should continue the British practice of carrying two colours. Apart from the formation’s name change, the regimental colour remained the same as in colonial times, including battle honors, while the queen’s colour changed from a Union Jack design to the national flag of Ghana with the Ghana Army crest in place of the central Ghana star. The flagpoles utilized detachable tops, facilitating the replacement of the British lion with a republican eagle, and the crown emblem on the queen’s colour was lightly attached to ease removal. Since Queen Elizabeth II canceled a 1959 visit to Ghana, Prince Phillip presented the new colours to the Ghana Regiment and presided over the trooping and withdrawal of the old colonial colours.103 Comparable processes took place in the other republics of former British West Africa with, for instance, the “Queen’s Own” and “Royal” designations dropped in Nigeria after 1963.104

100 101 102 103

“Display for Duke of Gloucester,” Times, 20 May 1959. “Royal Engagements for Coming Months,” Times, 19 April 1960. “Dam Workers Postpone Strike for Royal Visit,” Times, 27 November 1961. PRAAD (Accra), RG 14/4/86, “Regimental Colours,” 1958–59; “Duke in Ghana, 1959,” https://www.britishpathe.com/video/duke-in-ghana-1. 104 Miners, Nigerian Army, 103.

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Visits and Tours During the colonial era, Britain’s West African soldiers occasionally traveled to Britain to attend important occasions such as coronations, royal funerals, parades, and exhibitions. These ostentatious ceremonials displayed the hierarchical organization of Britain and its empire with the monarchy at the top and others living under its seemingly gracious protection.105 Similar to other colonial soldiers from the Caribbean or India, West African troops’ involvement in such events constituted a form of imperial propaganda, demonstrating the power of British rule to transform supposedly primitive peoples into loyal subjects and capable soldiers defending the empire. Nevertheless, those Britons and others who witnessed and interacted with visiting West African soldiers may have questioned how much longer they would require imperial tutelage.106 The growing medium of photography expanded the public exposure of West African soldiers in Britain as their images appeared in newspapers, magazines, and postcards. These photographs illustrated the exotic appearance of the West Africans, but they also constantly portrayed the troops as dignified military professionals. The question of whether these images of West African soldiers represented them as racialized “others” or “domesticated exotics” remains open to interpretation. While West African soldiers taking part in these events symbolized colonial transformation, their presence also demonstrated the integration of West African colonial regiments into Britain’s larger imperial military. This message appeared obvious to people in Britain, but the West African troops also certainly took it home with them. Some soldiers from Britain’s early West African paramilitary forces visited Britain in the late nineteenth century for training and this led to their partaking in public ceremonial events. During the 1890s, the Sierra Leone Frontier Police dispatched “selected NCOs” for instruction at the School of Marksmanship at Hythe and the “Guard’s School” at Chelsea.107 In July 105 Cannadine, Ornamentalism, 109–11. 106 John MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984); Melissa Bennett, “‘Exhibits with Real Colour and Interest:’ Representations of the West Indian Regiment at Atlantic World’s Fairs,” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-slave Studies 39, no. 3 (2018): 558–78. 107 NA (UK) CO 445/65, “Historical Records of Sierra Leone Battalion,” 26 May 1924.

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1893 eight troops from Lagos’ Armed Hausa Police Force attended military instruction in Britain. These men also paraded at the Colonial Office where Colonial Secretary Lord Ripon awarded them with medals for gallantry during the previous year’s conquest of Ijebu in western Nigeria. In addition, the Lagos troops played “a prominent part” in the wedding ceremony of Prince George and Princess Mary, the future king and queen.108 Around the same time, a few West African bandsmen attended the British Army’s music school at Kneller Hall in London. By 1908, however, British officials discouraged these individual or small group training visits, citing cost and the increasing availability of army instructional resources in West Africa.109 Over the next few decades, West African troops visited Britain as part of contingents for specific events. In June 1897, as the colonial conquest of West Africa unfolded, delegations from West African paramilitaries, including the Sierra Leone Frontier Police, RNC, and GCC visited Britain for the festivities around Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Such epic events demonstrated imperial military power and unity. Contradicting racial stereotypes, the Gold Coast detachment included both a “native officer” and a European officer, and most of the West African troops wore British Army boots. Lodged at London’s Chelsea Barracks, the West Africans and other colonial soldiers toured prominent structures like the Houses of Parliament, enjoyed theatrical performances, received a special Jubilee Medal, and interacted with Londoners. Sierra Leone Frontier Police bugler “Little Tom” won a bugling competition for the colonial detachments. The West African troops, together with colleagues from other parts of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Canada, comprised a five-hundred-strong colonial contingent inspected by the duke of Connaught during a public parade at Chelsea Barracks and joined the grand jubilee procession through London led by distinguished Victorian military leader General Frederick Sleigh Roberts.110 108 “The Hausa Constabulary,” Derby Daily Telegraph, 6 July 1893. 109 NA (UK) 96/358/10, Request for Bandsmen to Receive Instruction at Kneller Hall, Governor Sir Frederick Hodgson, Gold Coast, 8 March 1900; CO 445/27/2685, Instruction of Bandsmen at Kneller Hall, 24 January 1908. 110 “Inspection of the Colonial Troops,” Morning Post, 12 June 1897; “The Diamond Jubilee,” Chelsea Observer, 26 June 1897; Getty Images, “West African Constabulary at Chelsea Barracks,” June 1897, 97r/28/huty/7376/11; “Sierra Leone Frontier Police, June 12, 1897,” Alamy stock photos, image no. R58826; Turay and Abraham, The Sierra Leone Army, 28; John Mitcham, Race

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With the delayed coronation of Edward VII, the visit of 150 West African soldiers to Britain during summer 1902 extended for three months. Disembarking at Plymouth in early June, the West African contingent’s core comprised thirty-two men from the GCR, forty-nine from the SNR, and thirty-two from the NNR. Arriving separately, the delegation also included two dozen men from the Lagos Battalion and groups from the SLB and WAR of Sierra Leone. In early July, the West African coronation contingent, including a mountain gun carried by Nigerian porters wearing long robes, and commanded by WAFF inspector general Brigadier Kemball, marched to the Colonial Office for inspection by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain. Speaking to the troops, Chamberlain pointed out that many of them wore medals earned in wars in West Africa, therefore highlighting their importance in extending British rule in the region. As during the 1897 Jubilee, West African troops visiting Britain for the 1902 coronation wore footwear, although in this case they sported Chupplies instead of boots. The men of the WAR, outside the WAFF structure, remained an exception, always appearing barefoot. The West African soldiers initially stayed at Alexandra Palace in north London, eventually moved to the British Army establishment at Aldershot to practice drill and occasionally toured London.111 In Britain, published photographs of the West African detachments featured positive captions such as “the Northern Nigeria Regiment—a smart and soldierlylooking set of men” and “the Lagos Regiment, who have fought for us before and are ready to fight again.”112 In May and June 1908, one hundred men from the Freetown-based WAR journeyed to London for the Royal Naval and Military Tournament.113 and Imperial Defence in the British World, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 102–4. 111 “Coronation Contingents,” Sunderland Daily Echo, 7 June 1902, 6; “Mr. Chamberlain and the West African Troops,” Times, 8 July 1902; “Coronation Medals Stolen,” Manchester Courier, 15 August 1902; “Naval and Military Intelligence,” Times, 1 September 1902; see photographs published in “From Afric’s Sunny Shores,” Navy and Army Illustrated, 9 August 1902. 112 “From Afric’s Sunny Shores,” Navy and Army Illustrated, 9 August 1902. For more on colonial photography see David Killingray and Andrew Roberts, “An Outline History of Photography in Africa,” History in Africa 16 (1989): 197–208; Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, “Under Imperial Eyes, Black Bodies, Buttocks, and Breasts: British Colonial Photography and Asante ‘Fetish Girls,’” African Arts 45 (Summer 2012): 46–57. 113 “The Royal Naval and Military Tournament,” Field 111, 2 May 1908.

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Launched in the 1880s, this public event raised money for military charities such as widows’ funds by staging competitions such as tugs-of-war, bayonet fighting, and equestrian sports as well as demonstrations of military skills and operations. Rapidly becoming an important part of the London social season, the tournament introduced colonial themes in the 1890s inspired by the unfolding “Scramble for Africa.”114 The 1897 tournament highlighted a reenactment of the recent British conquest of the Benin Kingdom in southern Nigeria but with white British troops in “black face” playing the role of Britain’s Niger Coast Protectorate Force as well as their enemies.115 Around the time his regiment received its colours in 1907, WAR commandant Colonel A. F. Montanaro proposed his soldiers’ participation in the tournament. At west London’s Olympic Exhibition Center, the WAR’s display included a mock-up of a West African “jungle” including plants brought from Sierra Leone with a clearing on one end and a wooden log stockade on the other. While some Sierra Leonean soldiers wearing traditional African costumes performed a “devil dance” and held trials of mock prisoners in the stockade, others in uniform demonstrated a military operation involving small groups advancing along parallel jungle paths, traversing a river, and converging to attack the fortification.116 The WAR contingent did not compete in the military competitions, focusing exclusively on its theatrical performance. Appearing at the tournament, members of the British royal family such as King Edward VII, Queen Alexandra, and the Prince of Wales appeared fascinated by the West African soldiers.117 A journalist noted that many WAR troops wore medals earned fighting wars in support of the British Empire, stating, “These cheerful black warriors are becoming very popular with the crowd.”118 While in London, and foreshadowing the control of other African control troops who served in Europe during the First World War, the Sierra Leoneans quartered at the Exhibition Center and 114 “The Royal Military Tournament of 1885,” Illustrated Naval and Military Magazine 3, 1886, 263–70; Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and Music: Britain, 1876–1953 (Manchester, UK: University of Manchester, 2001), 212–18. 115 See photographs NAM 1966-12-43-167 and NAM 1966-12-43-168, “Capture of Benin, Military Tournament, 1897.” 116 “The Royal Naval and Military Tournament,” Field 111, 2 May 1908, 724; “The Prince and Princess at the Tournament,” Times, 25 May 1908; “Presentation of Colours to the West African Regiment,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 4 January 1908. 117 “Their Majesties at the Tournament,” Times, 23 May 1908. 118 “The Prince and Princess at the Tournament,” Times, 25 May 1908.

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could only leave the complex escorted by a British officer or NCO.119 In addition to the tournament, the WAR soldiers visited Windsor Castle and paraded at Buckingham Palace where the king inspected them, and they sometimes dinned at local tearooms. Rejecting the custom of West African troops wearing footwear when visiting Britain, the WAR contingent went with bare feet: this in combination with their red fezzes attracted attention from curious Londoners.120 In 1924, three Nigerians from the colonial military visited London for six months to partake in the British Empire Exhibition. Staged at what became Wembley Stadium, and inspired by similar shows in the nineteenth century, the exhibition sought to revive waning British domestic interest in the empire that faced disquiet in India and the dominions, as well as competition from other world powers such as the United States. Among large pavilions dedicated to colonial territories including India and East Africa, the West African exhibition comprised a “walled city” modeled on Kano in Northern Nigeria and contained displays of trade goods and culture from Britain’s colonies in that region. The Nigeria Regiment’s RSM Belo Akure, his wife Obiyi, and Battery Sergeant Major (BSM) Belo Ojo joined the dozens of other West Africans inhabiting the “walled city.” For visitors, observing these soldiers provided an imperially defined performance of West African colonial military identity. The sergeant majors played a theatrical role guarding the pavilion, interacting with visitors and posing for photographs, and colorized pictures of them wearing medals and exotic uniforms were sold as souvenir postcards. Decorated veterans of the First World War, the sergeant majors embodied the contribution of West Africans to Britain’s efforts in that recent conflict. RSM Akure appeared an authentic war hero with decorations for bravery during conquest wars in southeastern Nigeria in the early 1900s and in both Cameroon and East Africa during the First World War. During the grand Empire Pageant, a reenactment of British Empire history with around fifteen thousand participants that ran over several days, RSM Akure carried a flag emblazoned with the word “Nigeria” and BSM Ojo rode a horse accompanying traditional cavalry from Northern Nigeria.121 A few other West African soldiers, police, and uniformed court messengers took part in the 119 Jeffrey Green, Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain, 1901–1914 (London, 1998), 14. 120 “The King and the West African Regiment,” Mercury, 5 June 1908. 121 Philip Grant, “Belo Akure—A Nigerian First World War Hero at Wembley,” Wembley History Society, July 2017; Daniel Stephen, The Empire of Progress:

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exhibition. The SLB’s Corporal Mahdi Kabba joined the caste at the ‘Sierra Leone Village,” although nothing is known about his activities there. While he appeared to lack the medals and war hero reputation of his Nigerian colleagues, a postcard picture of Corporal Kabba highlighted his tall stature and Mandingo ethnicity.122 The participation of West African troops in imperial victory parades became contentious. Given racial violence in British ports at the end of the First World War, British officials excluded African and Caribbean soldiers from the 1919 London victory celebrations. When WAFF officers and West African governors protested, imperial authorities responded that there had been no time to bring African troops to Britain for the event. The emergent West African press criticized the hypocrisy of sending African troops to fight for Britain while excluding them from the victory parade.123 Imperial officials did not repeat the mistake at the end of the next war. In June 1945, West African soldiers serving in Burma marched in a British Empire victory parade in Rangoon to mark the end of war in Europe.124 In June 1946, a large West African contingent joined the Victory Parade in London, with the West African troops preceded by their unit colours and wearing the same battle dress uniforms as other British Army personnel.125 The experience of West African troops visiting Britain changed after the Second World War. The conflict shifted British attitudes toward empire with paternalism yielding to new ideas about working in partnership with colonized people toward common economic development.126 West African solWest Africans, Indians and Britons at the British Empire Exhibition, 1924–25 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 122 “Corporal Mahdi Kabba—A Mandingo,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Accession Number 2014.5192, accessed 11 July 2020, https://collections.mfa. org/objects/622223; T. N. Goddard, The Handbook of Sierra Leone (London: G. Richards Limited, 1925), 243. 123 John Siblon, “Negotiating Hierarchy and Memory: African and Caribbean Troops from Former British Colonies in London’s Imperial Spaces,” London Journal 41, no. 3 (2016): 299–312; James K. Mathews, “World War I and the Rise of African Nationalism: Nigerian Veterans as Catalysts for Change,” Journal of Modern African Studies 20, no. 3 (September 1982): 501–2. 124 “Victory Parade in Rangoon,” Times, 16 June 1945. 125 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 474; “The Victory Parade: The West African Contingent Passes the Saluting Base, 8 June 1946,” Alamy, Image ID G38GEH. 126 Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 257.

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diers visited Britain more frequently after the Second World War, including by air, with their travels reported in British and West African newspapers as upbeat human-interest pieces. Unlike their predecessors of the early twentieth century, the individual West African soldiers who visited Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s enjoyed freedom of movement suitable for trusted military professionals. Among the first to attend postwar courses were Sergeant Majors Umo Bassey and Abuekwee Shadrach from Nigeria and Sergeant Major Tay Amanya from Gold Coast, who spent two months in England in 1947. Sightseeing in London, the trio stayed at YMCA hostels and navigated the underground railway system. They visited the Royal Military Tournament, London’s Zoological Gardens, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, Buckingham Palace, and the Horse Guards Parade.127 After a few decades of absence, West African military musicians returned to Kneller Hall. In 1958 a Nigerian newspaper featured a picture of QONR bandsmen Private Ignatius Nwauzora and Corporal Hamid Osazuwa playing the clarinet and cornet, respectively, at the British Army music school.128 A policy to Africanize the hitherto all-white officer corps also resulted in West African soldiers journeying to Britain, where they symbolized colonial reform. In 1948 the army flew Sergeant Victor Ugboma to Britain where he became the first Nigerian soldier to appear before a War Office officer selection board and subsequently attended officer training. At the end of 1949, a Nigerian newspaper published a photograph of a smiling Army Cadet Officer R. A. Shodeinde, a former company sergeant major and war veteran, “who flew to the United Kingdom to complete his officer’s course.”129 During the 1950s, a small number of West African officer candidates attended RMA Sandhurst such as Lieutenant Hassan Usman, son of the Emir of Katsina in Northern Nigeria.130 Concurrent with these individual training visits, West African regiments continued to dispatch contingents to Britain for important ceremonials. In June 1953 West African forces sent 35 officers and 107 troops from Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia to Britain to join the colonial contingent for the coronation of Elizabeth II.131 In 1960, a few months before 127 128 129 130

“RWAFF Trio Home from England,” Gold Coast Observer, 17 October 1947. Daily Times, 10 January 1958. Nigerian Citizen, 25 December 1925. “First Nigerian Officer?” Nigeria Review, 10 April 1948; “New Nigerian Army Officer,” Daily Times, 20 June 1959; Miners, Nigerian Army, 36. 131 NAG (Banjul), CSO 84/293, “Coronation Military Contingent,” 7 October 1952, Secretary of State for the Colonies to West African Inter-territorial

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Nigeria’s independence, a QONR band and detachment, wearing Zouave jackets, fezzes, and shorts, attended the Royal Tournament in London.132 A few West African troops, principally long-serving senior NCOs, visited Britain several times. RSM Abu Brima Seisay of First Battalion Sierra Leone Regiment flew to Britain for the funeral of George VI in 1952 and returned for Elizabeth II’s coronation the next year. The Nigeria Regiment’s RSM Chari Maigumeri, notable for his service as a German colonial soldier in Cameroon during the First World War, attended the 1937 coronation of George VI, the 1946 victory parade, the king’s funeral in 1952, and the 1953 coronation.133 Also from the Nigeria Regiment, and a veteran of the Burma campaign where he served as a teenage infantryman, Sergeant Major Hama Kim traveled to Britain three times in the 1950s to attend military courses, enjoying clubs and cinemas in his spare time.134 It would be unrealistic to think that these West African senior soldiers’ experience in Britain did not influence their engagement with colonial military culture at home.

Conclusion When Britain’s West African soldiers shined their palm tree badges and buttons, polished their boots (once they received them), cleaned their uniforms, straightened their hats, endlessly practiced drill movements, saluted their colours, marched to stirring martial music, and performed public ceremonials, they were living a military culture that still exists in the region. Visual symbols like uniforms, emblems, rituals, and public events formed key elements in the production of British colonial military identity and culture in West Africa within a broader imperial context. In terms of how scholars have interpreted visual aspects of empire, the distinct features of West African soldiers’ uniforms, particularly quasi-Zouave attire, could represent an orientalist program to portray these troops as racialized “others.” Yet, from an ornamentalist perspective, the exotic West African uniform emerged at the end of the nineteenth century when many other colorful and exotic Secretariat, 30 September 1952. 132 “Royal Tournament March Past 1960,” https://www.britishpathe.com/video/ royal-tournament-march-past. 133 ORDP, Hyde, Diary First Battalion, Sierra Leone Regiment, 1951–1953; NA (UK) WO 373-16870, “Award Recommendation RSM Abu Brima Seisay,” 11 June 1960; “Iron Cross RSM for Coronation Parade,” Times, 7 May 1953. 134 Graham, “There Was a Soldier,” 42–44.

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costumes enjoyed popularity within British imperial military circles some wore by white metropolitan troops and others by colonial soldiers in India, the Caribbean, and Africa. Though some elements of West African military uniforms originated with racial stereotypes, particularly the lack of footwear, there is little evidence that British officials designed exotic uniforms to demean West African soldiers. While West African troops took pride in their uniforms for most of the colonial era, these distinct costumes began to fall out of fashion in the mid-twentieth century over concerns about military efficiency, heightened sensitivities about racial segregation, and a desire to express modern aspirations. As with fluctuating civilian fashion trends, exotic colonial uniforms became popular but then declined with changing contexts. In the early twentieth century, the granting of insignia and particularly official colours to West African forces signified their evolution from colonial paramilitaries to fully fledged members of the wider British military tradition. Resulting from thoughtful design, badges promoted unit identity and the colours served as important ritual objects at the center of events that defined military culture. Though the images of palm trees, lions, and elephants reflected clichéd West African themes, these were no different from insignia of other British metropolitan regiments with their own designs and ethos including exotic animals. Visits by West African troops to Britain comprised a visual spectacle integrating them into the imperial military family, but the context changed during the colonial era. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the presence of West African and other colonial detachments in British imperial parades and exhibitions displayed the majestic scale, diversity, and transformative potential of the empire. Sometimes, West African soldiers performed theatrical roles reinforcing British ideas about exotic and primitive Africa. After the Second World War, with the empire’s decline, West African military visits to Britain symbolized colonial reform and new ideas about equality.

Chapter Six

Health Growing interest in the history of military medicine,1 colonial medicine in Africa2, and African militaries has not translated into a rich historiography on the health of Africa’s colonial armies. With limited primary sources, excellent pioneering social histories of African colonial soldiers recognize the importance of medical services and health but vary in attention devoted to this theme.3 A recent study of military medicine in Britain’s late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century West India Regiments (WIR), initially recruited from enslaved and conscripted West African men and eventually men of African descent in the Caribbean, traces the evolution of racial thought among white British authorities who initially saw black soldiers as almost superhuman 1

Examples include Mark Harrison, Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Geoffrey Hudson, ed., British Military and Naval Medicine, 1600–1830 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007); Mark Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 2 Examples include Meghan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness, (Cambridge: Polity, 1991); Adell Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism and Diaspora in West Africa (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996); John Iliffe, East African Doctors: A History of the Modern Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Anna Greenwood and Harshad Topiwala, Indian Doctors in Kenya, 1895–1940: The Forgotten History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Festus Cole, “Sanitation, Disease and Public Health in Sierra Leone, West Africa, 1895–1922: Case Failure of British Colonial Health Policy,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 2 (2015): 238–66; John Rankin, Healing the African Body: British Medicine in West Africa, 1800–1860 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2015). 3 Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 160–65; Killingray, Fighting For Britain, 96–98; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 104–5.

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but then highlighted their alleged medical vulnerabilities.4 Most histories of Britain’s West African colonial army of the late nineteenth and twentieth century neglect health as a distinct subject as they appeared before the advent of military or colonial medical history or lacked appropriate sources.5 Nevertheless, in West Africa, a region popularly known as “the White Man’s Grave,” the preservation of health among military personnel represented a crucial factor in extending and maintaining British colonial rule. Archival documents and memoirs indicate that Britain’s West African army helped pioneer Western-style medical facilities in the region, as it rigorously pursued two sequential health-related objectives among its European and African personnel. While efforts to minimize the impact of tropical diseases during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries enjoyed considerable success, the subsequent campaign against sexually transmitted diseases from the 1920s to 1940s proved a dismal failure. As such, the engagement of Britain’s West African soldiers with the evolving colonial health system comprised a significant part of their daily military experience and of the region’s colonial military culture.

Tropical Disease and Military Health during the “Scramble” for West Africa During the formative years of Britain’s West African colonial army, tropical diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and various gastrointestinal problems represented the force’s overriding health concern. The prevalence of tropical disease had long restricted European colonial penetration of the region’s interior. Throughout the early and mid-nineteenth centuries, tropical disease seriously weakened British military garrisons and hindered operations along the West African coast. While locally enlisted West African troops such as liberated slaves conscripted into the WIR functioned effectively in their region’s environment, British personnel suffered appalling death rates including up to 150 percent in the Gambia. Reflecting new approaches to military 4 5

Tim Lockley, Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments, 1795–1874 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force; Ukpabi, Mercantile Soldiers; Ukpabi, The Origins of the Nigerian Army; Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army; for medical inspection of recruits see Ubah, Colonial Army and Society in Northern Nigeria, 208–12; for an important exception see Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 349–54.

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and tropical medicine, the British expeditionary force that invaded the Asante Kingdom in 1873–74 imposed a strict health regime involving filtering water to counter gastrointestinal illnesses like dysentery, daily doses of quinine to stave off malaria, and regular medical inspections. Despite these precautions, the force still suffered more casualties from disease than from combat.6 Such experiences informed, in part, the colonial military structure that emerged in British West Africa of founding units with a small number of British leaders and a majority of locally recruited troops that eventually comprised the WAFF and WAR. Between 1898 and 1910, a revolution in tropical medicine facilitated the extension of British rule into West Africa’s interior and the consequent growth of Britain’s colonial army in the region. This medical revolution involved crucial discoveries about the spread of malaria, the establishment of centers to study tropical medicine, and the creation of Britain’s colonial West African Medical Staff (WAMS). It also included the fitful growth of colonial medical services and attempts to impose “tropical sanitation” in West Africa such as provision of protective clothing and screening, mosquito eradication, and draining stagnant water. As a result, death rates among Europeans in West Africa fell from around fifty or sixty per thousand in the 1890s to 20.6 in 1903 and 13.9 in 1911, and a more dramatic decrease in the percentage of Europeans invalided from the region due to disease. Although “tropical sanitation” initially benefited European colonialists and provided an excuse for stricter racial segregation in colonial towns as African people took the blame for spreading disease, these measures eventually extended to Britain’s West African soldiers.7 In the late 1890s, health became a major consideration in the creation of the original WAFF that secured British rule over Nigeria’s hinterland. The force’s medical staff consisted of 8 civilian medical officers, 4 civilian nurses and 14 NCOs from the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). Led by Dr. 6

7

Albert A. Gore, A Contribution to the Medical History of our West African Campaigns (London: Bailliere Tindall and Cox, 1876); Alan Lloyd, The Drums of Kumasi: The Story of the Ashanti Wars (London: Longmans, 1964), 84–85; Philip Curtin, Disease and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Raymond E. Dummett, “The Campaign against Malaria and the Expansion of Scientific Medical and Sanitary Services in British West Africa, 1898– 1910,” African Historical Studies 1, no. 2 (1968): 153–97: Ryan Johnson, “The West African Medical Staff and the Administration of Imperial Tropical Medicine, 1902–14,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38, no. 2 (2010): 419–39.

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Wordsworth Poole, a Cambridge medical graduate who had recently served in Nyasaland (Malawi), the WAFF medical staff comprised two field hospitals (one for each of two battalions) and a base hospital. Between April 1898 and the end of March 1899, some 20 percent of the WAFF’s 156 British officers and NCOs died mostly from malaria and Blackwater fever, and fifty-five of them returned to Britain due to illness. The WAFF’s medical officers conducted “microscopic research” on the causes of malaria that represented the most common ailment within the force, with most British personnel treated for it several times per year. Dr. Poole piloted an ultimately inconclusive experiment involving the use of quinine as a prophylaxis against malaria with British officers and NCOs taking various doses at different rates and some taking none.8 His extensive medical report on the WAFF provided statistics and tables on illnesses, fatalities, and treatments among the British leadership and made specific recommendations to improve the force’s health. The report’s coverage of the African rank-and-file, however, consisted of a vague paragraph concluding that “there was always a large amount of sickness among the native troops” mostly from dysentery, diarrhea, and guinea worm.9 Reflecting similar medical priorities, WAFF battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel H. S. Fitzgerald, in 1899, reported that “preserving the health of the Europeans of the battalion naturally occupied much of my thoughts.” Based at Jebba on the Niger River, the battalion boiled and filtered drinking water, but when this became contaminated, Fitzgerald arranged the delivery of a soda water machine that solved the problem.10 Tropical disease also took a toll on other British West African units as the GCC, in 1898, reported that about one fifth of its troops suffered from guinea worm.11 At the start of the twentieth century, WAFF became an umbrella organization for almost all Britain’s locally recruited military units in the region, and the force came under Colonial Office authority. As such, WAFF units did not have their own military doctors but worked with colonial doctors

8

“The West African Frontier Force,” Lancet, 31 March 1900, 952; Obituary of Dr. Wordsworth-Poole, British Medical Journal, 18 January 1902, 181; (UK) CO 445-8, Colonel F. D. Lugard, “Report on Organization of and Work Done by the W.A. Frontier Force, 1897–8,” 13 March 1899, 7–8. 9 NA (UK) CO 445/9, Medical Report, WAFF, Dr. Wordsworth Poole, 31 March 1899, for the quote see p. 27. 10 NA (UK) CO 445/8, WAFF Reports, F. S. Fitzgerald, 31 March 1899. 11 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 351.

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from the WAMS.12 In addition, British Army officers collaborated with colonial officials in establishing hospitals serving both soldiers and civilians in West Africa. There were no large purely military hospitals in British West Africa until the Second World War. While British military garrisons in early twentieth-century West Africa organized their own medical inspection rooms for initial assessment of patients, WAFF regulations stipulated that sick or injured soldiers were to undergo treatment in hospital.13 Given the racially segregated structure of West African colonial medical and military facilities, European hospitals with better resources treated British personnel and less developed native hospitals attended African soldiers. As the colonial military upheld British rule in West Africa, protecting the health (and therefore the efficiency) of the force became an early priority. Across British West Africa, military units stationed in established coastal towns accessed well-established, higher-quality hospitals, while those venturing into the interior founded new medical facilities. In much of British West Africa, the expansion of colonial military occupation and Western-style biomedicine went hand in hand. In the early 1900s, WAFF soldiers based in the ports of the older coastal colonies enjoyed some of the best medical care available in West Africa. The first hospital in Lagos comprised a barracks building initially built for the WIR garrison in the 1860s.14 In 1902, the WAFF inspector general described the hospital used by the Lagos Battalion as “the best and most comfortable I have seen, not only in West Africa but in India.”15 In 1905 the Native Hospital in Lagos opened a special ward for soldiers that “was excellent in every way.”16 Simultaneously, soldiers of the SNR attended “an excellent native hospital” in Calabar, and most of the unit’s outlying garrisons in southeastern Nigeria were located near a hospital.17 In 1902 the GCR benefited from the construction of a new hospital complex in Accra funded by the colonial railway.18 At the start of 1914, the military garrison in Accra 12 NA (UK) CO 445/47, “Reorganization of Nigeria Regiment,” 31 January 1919, Brigadier F. G. Cunliffe. 13 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on SNR, 5 December 1905. 14 Spencer H. Brown, “A Tool of Empire: The British Medical Establishment in Lagos, 1861–1905,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 37, no. 2 (2004): 309–43. 15 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on Lagos Battalion, 13 January 1903. 16 NA (UK) CO 445/23, Report on Lagos Battalion, 22 December 1905. 17 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on SNR, 5 December 1905. 18 NA (UK) CO 445/14, Report on First Battalion, GCR, 1 January 1903.

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operated its own small hospital with serious cases transferred to the local civilian hospital.19 In Freetown, the WAR founded a medical inspection room at Wilberforce Barracks and accessed the well-established Freetown hospital. With the WAR’s disbandment in the late 1920s, the SLB inherited these facilities with authorities, considering it a much healthier environment for British personnel.20 From its inception in 1901, the WAFF’s Gambia Company remained at the port of Bathurst “where the colonial hospital is an excellent one and sick men have every comfort.”21 During the dry season, the company trained at Cape Saint Mary’s where a “native dispenser” provided medical care. Since this area was only eight miles from Bathurst, personnel needing serious medical attention went to hospital there, and by 1914, the installation of a telephone had enabled the summoning of a doctor. Although the Gambia Company moved permanently to new barracks at Cape Saint Mary’s in 1922, its troops continued to access the Bathurst hospital with medical transportation enhanced by motor vehicles.22 Colonial military occupation of the West African hinterland led to a frenzy of constructing medical infrastructure. The growing presence of military units across the Nigerian hinterland prompted colonial authorities to establish new medical facilities. By the start of the First World War, all WAFF garrisons in Nigeria had access to hospitals, including at Ibadan, Lokoja, Zungeru, Katsina, Kano, and Sokoto. Military centralization resulted in the closure of small military outstations far from hospitals.23 Walter Miller, a pioneering Christian missionary in early twentieth-century northern Nigeria, believed the well-organized military did more than mission societies to establish Western medical care in the region.24 With the 1914 combination of southern and northern Nigeria into the single colonial territory of Nigeria, the establishment of new military infrastructure in Zaria and Kaduna led to 19 20 21 22

NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on GCR, 31 March 1914. NA UK, CO 820-6-16, Report on SLB, 6 February 1929. NA (UK) CO 445/22, Report on Gambia Company, 3 April 1906. NA (UK) CO 445/32, Report on Gambia Company, 30 November 1912; CO 445/55, Report on Gambia Company, 19 December 1921; CO 445-68, Report on Gambia Company, 23 December 1925. 23 NA (UK) CO 445-/25, Report on NNR, 16 February 1907; CO 445/27, Report on NNR, 25 February 1908; CO 445-28, Report on SNR, 11 January 1908; Ralph Schram, A History of the Nigerian Health Services, Ibadan University Press, 1971, 109 confirms that the colonial military built the first hospitals in Lokoja, Jebba, Zungeru, and Zaria. 24 Schram, Nigerian Health Services, 154.

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the building of hospitals in those northern centers. With military support from the Nigeria Regiment, Nigeria’s colonial medical facilities experienced further development in the 1920s.25 Similar trends happened in other British West African territories. In the Gold Coast, the first hospitals constructed in the Asante region and the Northern Territories resulted directly from military occupation treating both civilians and soldiers.26 In 1905 the medical situation in Asante varied as the native hospital at Kumasi was “well kept and well supplied,” but the hospital at Mampon outstation was poorly equipped, and its lone medical officer feared patients suffering serious injury or illness would not survive.27 Concurrently, colonial medical facilities used by the GCR in the Northern Territories “appeared to be thoroughly satisfactory” with a newly redesigned and well-equipped hospital in Gambaga where “the sick are made comfortable and well looked after.”28 In 1906 with the construction of new hospitals and the arrival of medical supplies, military authorities reported “great improvement in the medical arrangements in Ashanti.”29 On the eve of the First World War, medical services in Asante improved with an expansion of the overcrowded Kumasi hospital and new facilities at Kintampo and Sunyani.30 In 1908 the growth of the SLB headquarters and garrison at Daru, in eastern Sierra Leone, incited colonial authorities to improve the small local hospital constructed of mud walls and a grass roof. By 1912 a larger permanent hospital, with separate civilian and military wards, serviced the two SLB companies located there. Over the next two years, the Daru hospital upgraded with a concrete veranda and medical instruments and sterilization facilities considered sufficient by the principal medical officer. Furthermore, the SLB cooperated with colonial medical authorities opening small, temporary, and poorly equipped hospitals at the up-country outstations of Wulade, 25 NA (UK) CO 445/32, Re-organization of NNR, Governor Henry Hesketh Bell to Lewis Vernon Harcourt, Secretary of State for Colonies, 2 January 1912; CO 445-33, Report on NNR, 1 April 1913; CO 820/1/17, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 27 February 1927. 26 Stephen Addae, The Evolution of Modern Medicine in a Developing Country: Ghana 1880–1960, (Durham, UK: Durham Academic, 1997), 109. 27 NA (UK) CO 445/19, Report on First Battalion GCR, 3 April 1905. 28 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on Second Battalion GCR, 18 February 1905. 29 NA (UK) CO 445/22, Report on First Battalion GCR, 14 February 1906. 30 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on GCR, 31 March 1914.

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Kaballa, Teasani, Kenre Lahun, and Bandajuma.31 Immediately after the First World War, military authorities considered the Daru hospital “quite satisfactory and well-equipped” and the smaller hospitals at Kenre Lahun and Bandajuma were “satisfactory,” and they influenced the construction of a new hospital at the northern center of Makeni in the early 1920s.32 Hitherto deployed across the interior Sierra Leone Protectorate, the SLB’s partial transfer to the port of Freetown prompted a change in its medical infrastructure. The battalion’s small outstations closed, such as at Makeni where the barracks existed in an insalubrious environment. Centralized at Freetown and Daru, the Depression-era SLB featured “adequate” medical facilities.33 With the stabilization of health among the British leadership of the colonial force, the West African rank-and-file became the next medical priority. During the early twentieth century the health of Britain’s West African colonial army dramatically improved with the provision of better hospital facilities, well-built barracks, sanitation systems, and sources of clean drinking water. For example, the persistence of soldiers suffering from waterborne diseases at the NNR garrison of Lokoja, where drinking water came from the Niger River, prompted the digging of new wells in 1911 and resulted in remarkable health improvement.34 In 1913 the NNR reported better health among its troops with significantly reduced hospital admissions and fewer medical discharges.35 In 1912 the number of medical releases among the GCR’s African rank-and-file decreased and the unit reported, “The health of the European officers and noncommissioned officers has been good. There have been no deaths.”36 In Sierra Leone, soldiers’ deaths decreased substantially in the years prior to the First World War.37 Simultaneously, West African soldiers became a convenient and compliant group on which 31 NA (UK) CO 445/27, Report on Sierra Leone Battalion, 18 April 1908; CO 445/32, Report on SLB, 13 May 1912; CO 445/33, Report on SLB, 13 January 1913; CO 445/34, Report on SLB, 15 April 1914. 32 NA (UK) CO 445/50, Report on SLB, 9 June 1920; CO 445/62, Report on SLB, 10 February 1923. 33 NA (UK) CO 820/6/16, Report on SLB, 6 February 1929; CO 820/10/11, Report on SLB, 10 January 1931. 34 NA (UK) CO 445/31, Report on NNR, 31 March 1911; CO 445-32, Re-organization of NNR, 2 January 1912. 35 NA (UK) CO 445/33, Report on NNR, 11 March 1913. 36 NA (UK) CO 445/32, Report on GCR, 17 June 1912. 37 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on SLB, 31 May 1914.

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to conduct experiments related to tropical disease. In 1905, for example, British Army medical officers examined the entire thousand-strong WAR in Freetown for trypanosomiasis injecting blood from infected soldiers into rodents to study the effects and tracing the disease among soldiers’ extended families.38

Military Sexual Health during the “Scramble” and First World War Preoccupied with tropical disease and hospital development, military and medical officials in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century West Africa seemed out of step with their colleagues in Britain and other parts of the empire regarding sexually transmitted disease among soldiers. Coinciding with the expansion of British colonialism in West Africa and efforts to counter tropical disease, metropolitan British authorities became concerned about the potential for sexually transmitted diseases to undermine the strength and efficiency of the metropolitan British military. From the 1860s to 1880s, the British government attempted to promote the sexual health of its soldiers and sailors through a series of Contagious Diseases (CD) acts that subjected suspected female prostitutes to compulsory medical inspections and detained those with sexually transmitted diseases in prisonlike hospitals. Initially applied to communities near naval or army establishments, the CD regulations eventually spanned all of Britain.39 For comparable reasons related to military health, British colonial regimes in Asia carried out registration and medical inspections of prostitutes from the late eighteenth century. During the mid- to late nineteenth centuries, British colonial administrations in parts of the Caribbean and Asia, and British settler states in North America, southern Africa, Australia, and New Zealand adopted CD ordinances similar to those in Britain (and these sometimes predated the metropolitan version). At the same time, however, British authorities in West African colonial enclaves like Freetown and Lagos neglected to adopt such measures.40 This 38 Grattan and Cochrane, “Trypanosomiasis in the West African Regiment,” 524–40. 39 Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 40 Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003), 41; Erica Wald, Vice in the

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partly reflected early nineteenth-century British medical myths of black people as inherently sexually promiscuous and possessing near immunity from sexually transmitted disease.41 While British doctors in mid-nineteenth-­ century Sierra Leone showed concern over sexually transmitted diseases among their African patients, these ailments failed to inspire official policy, as they did not jeopardize British control, and treatments did not exist.42 During the “Scramble for Africa,” British officials showed little anxiety about sexually transmitted diseases among colonial military units in West Africa. In the early 1880s syphilis affected about 20 percent of the WIR soldiers at Cape Coast Castle in the Gold Coast, and gonorrhea represented a common condition in the ranks. However, colonial authorities ignored pleas by medical officers to take steps to reduce what they called “venereal disease” (VD) in the unit.43 One scholar suggests that lack of regulation around sexually transmitted diseases in Britain’s West Africa colonial army during the late nineteenth century, particularly in Sierra Leone, was rooted in racial sexual stereotypes of black soldiers, a large pool of local recruits, and a realization that British-style CD laws would prove unenforceable in the region.44 In the WAFF of the late 1890s, British authorities’ only worry over venereal disease was that metropolitan British military personnel would introduce syphilis to the Nigerian hinterland. While recognizing the potential for sexual health problems to undermine his soldiers’ effectiveness, WAFF commander Lugard expressed alarm about “the deplorable and sometimes fatal effects of introducing this disease among a native population in Africa.”45 Despite thorough screening, seven British NCOs arrived in Nigeria with syphilis, and medical staff sent five of them home.46 In turn, British NCOs traveling to Nigeria were forbidden to disembark at ports such as Las Palmas Barracks: Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 1780–1868 (Cambridge: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 41 Lockley, Military Medicine, 77. 42 Rankin, Healing the African Body, 80–82. 43 British Parliamentary Papers, Army Medical Department Report for the Year 1881, vol. 23 (London, 1883), 50. 44 Richard Phillips, Sex, Politics and Empire: A Post-colonial Geography (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006), 121–22. 45 NA (UK) CO 445/9, Medical Report, WAFF, F. Lugard to Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, London, 4 October 1899. 46 NA (UK) CO 445/9, Medical Report, WAFF, Dr. Wordsworth Poole, 31 March 1899, 16.

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in the Canary Islands and Freetown, where they risked contracting this “loathsome disease.”47 The rule did not apply to officers given their assumed class superiority and sexual self-control. With seven cases of syphilis and two of gonorrhea among the WAFF’s 156 British personnel during 1898, Dr. Poole reported, “There was very little venereal disease contracted in the country.”48 While gonorrhea ranked among the five or six most common ailments among the WAFF’s African rank-and-file, medical officers did not consider it a problem compared to the often-fatal waterborne diseases that captured their attention. Expressing typical British obsession with ethnic stereotypes, Dr. Poole reported that the dirty habits of the Hausa troops meant they suffered more from sexually transmitted disease and other illnesses than the cleaner Yoruba and Nupe soldiers did.49 For British officers and officials, sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea appeared a normal feature of African soldiers’ lives, and authorities devoted resources to countering tropical diseases that constituted an immediate threat to military efficiency, especially among the British leadership. During the early twentieth century, sexually transmitted diseases remained a low health priority for Britain’s West African colonial army. While authorities tolerated VD among African troops and rarely recorded its occurrence, British personnel faced punishment for failing to uphold civilized standards of behavior. In 1907 Quartermaster Sergeant D. Moon, a hard-drinking British NCO with the NNR in Lokoja, received a reprimand for contracting VD, and the next year he sealed his fate by appearing drunk on parade during a visit by the WAFF inspector general resulting in his dismissal.50 Based in northern Gold Coast, the Second Battalion GCR experienced a significant increase in sexually transmitted disease among its troops around 1904 and 1905 but authorities remained much more worried about the prevalence of guinea worm that accounted for most illness in the unit inspiring vigorous investigations into water supplies.51 For the period of 1911 and 1912, the GCR reported sixty-six hundred instances of soldiers receiving hospital

47 NA (UK) CO 445/5, WAFF, 1899, Colonel J. Willcocks to Secretary of State for Colonies, Jebba, 18 March 1899. 48 NA (UK) CO 445/9, Medical Report, WAFF, 14. 49 NA (UK) CO 445/9, Medical Report, WAFF, 27. 50 NA (UK) CO 445/26, WAFF, 1907, Acting High Commissioner Northern Nigeria, Zungeru, 19 February 1908. 51 NA (UK) CO 445/20, Report on Second GCR, 1905.

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treatment but that “venereal diseases have not been prevalent.”52 The 1914 annual report on the Nigeria Regiment mentioned, almost in passing, that Sokoto’s native hospital segregated VD patients in a separate section.53 Compared to other West African units, and perhaps reflecting the influence of the British imperial garrison at Freetown, the SLB appeared far more proactive about sexually transmitted diseases following broader British military policy. In 1904 a district medical officer conducted monthly inspections of the Sierra Leonean troops to “prevent the aggravation and increase of venereal and other diseases.” The unit enforced the British Army rule that concealing venereal disease constituted an offense with accused soldiers facing charges and punishment upon release from hospital. Furthermore, reflecting the antifemale ethos of Britain’s old CD acts and predicting future trends in the region, SLB officers enlisted the assistance of civilian district commissioners to remove “infected women” from the barracks.54 At this time, few other West African units enforced any rules around soldiers contracting sexually transmitted diseases. In 1909, for instance, the commander of the Gambia Company accepted the apparent ambiguity that “the health of natives and Europeans has been good” though “venereal diseases are rather prevalent among the men.” This officer’s report and related correspondence neglected to propose any plans or policies to counter what appeared like a routine health situation in the Gambia Company.55 In the decade before the First World War, medical knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases advanced considerably with the development of accurate tests and new chemical treatments. Worried about loss of personnel and weakened efficiency, the British military of the early twentieth century actively engaged the new methodologies and treatments though mostly for white troops.56 During the First World War, massive military expansion, as well as the presence of large numbers of British soldiers in Europe and the Middle East, prompted a disagreement among officers, politicians, and activists about prevention of sexually transmitted disease in the ranks. The debate pitted pragmatists against moralists with military officers and civilians on both sides. Pragmatists advocated use of new chemical prophylaxis, including the establishment of military preventative treatment centers where personnel 52 NA (UK) CO 445/32, Report on the GCR, 1912. 53 NA (UK) CO 445/34, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 1914. 54 NA (UK) CO 445/19, Report on SLB, 1904. 55 NA (UK) CO 445/29, Report on the Gambia Company, 1909. 56 Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics, 122–24.

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who had just had sex underwent chemical disinfection through penile irrigation and the use of personnel disinfection kits. Conversely, moralists including military chaplains and civilian clergy opposed such precautions that seemed to encourage casual sex. These concerns led to military lectures and propaganda that stressed moral conduct, explained the medical and social dangers of VD, and portrayed women as predatory spreaders of illness. There was also the provision of wholesome recreational activities for off-duty soldiers and eventually a ban on troops visiting brothels in other countries. Both sides of the debate, however, agreed on the importance of offering the latest treatments to men who had already contracted sexually transmitted disease. In addition, military discipline became a deterrent as men experienced regular and humiliating VD inspections of their genitals, and those hospitalized for VD treatment had their pay withheld and leave canceled. Eventually, dire military manpower problems during the war tipped the argument in favor of the pragmatists, with the British Army directing soldiers to attend preventative disinfection stations in 1916 and distributing personnel prophylaxis packets in 1918. Nevertheless, these preventative measures were generally unavailable to many British colonial black and brown troops from Africa and Asia serving in Europe, as to do so meant indirectly sanctioning their sexual relations with white women. Fear of interracial sex informed the confinement of black South African military laborers in western Europe to their camps, and Britain’s Indian Army established preventative treatment centers after the war and only in India.57 Continuing earlier trends, these debates and anxieties about VD did not materialize in Britain’s West African army of the First World War. From 1914 to 1916, all the WAFF regiments serving in German Cameroon experienced substantial problems with waterborne diseases and malaria without the benefit of medical infrastructure. In June 1915 almost half the Nigerian troops 57 Mark Harrison, “The British Army and the Problem of Venereal Disease in France and Egypt during the First World War,” Medical History 39 (1995): 133–58; Antje Kampf, “Controlling Male Sexuality: Combating Venereal Disease in the New Zealand Military during Two World Wars,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 2 (May 2008): 235–58; Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics, 147–52; for treatment of sexually transmitted disease in the British West Indies Regiment see Glenford Howe, Race, War and Nationalism: A Social History of West Indians in the First World War (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), 146–49; for similar points about the imperial German military see Lisa Todd, Sexual Treason in Germany during the First World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

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in Cameroon were struck down with sickness.58 Subsequently, West African troops deployed to German East Africa given horrendous health problems caused by tropical disease among British, South African, and Indian troops in that theater.59 Among the rank-and-file of the Nigeria Brigade that fought in East Africa, cases of sexually transmitted disease comprised only 98 out of 6,265 hospital admissions. The main causes of hospitalization included 1,024 cases of dysentery; 831 men wounded in combat; 725 instances of respiratory problems and pneumonia; 623 soldiers suffering from digestive diseases caused by lack of food and hungry men eating wild roots, leaves, and berries; and 482 bouts of malaria. Of the 633 Nigerian troops who died in East Africa, 344 succumbed to gunshot wounds while gonorrhea accounted for only 14 deaths. In his twenty-page report on the campaign, the brigade’s senior medical officer devoted two short sentences to venereal diseases, stating that these “were not prevalent among the troops” with a marginal note reflecting a racial stereotype by claiming this was “excellent for West African troops.”60 A 1917 report described Nigerian troops in East Africa as “a collection of heart broken skeletons.”61 In East Africa, given high altitudes and cold temperatures, Gold Coast troops suffered terribly, and some died from pneumonia—an unfamiliar illness that inspired “superstitious fears.”62 The types of injuries and ailments sustained by Nigerian and Gold Coast soldiers in East Africa related to their grueling experience of almost constant operations in remote areas and little interaction with local people themselves suffering displacement and starvation.63 Sexually transmitted diseases represented a minor issue. Furthermore, military recruiters in West Africa paid little attention to sexually transmitted disease among enlistees. In 1918, a 58 Moberly, Military Operations, 136, 275, 291. 59 Timothy Stapleton, “The Africanization of British Imperial Forces in the East Africa Campaign: 1917,” in Turning Point Year: The British Empire at War in 1917, edited by Douglas E. Delaney and Nikolas Gardner (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017), 139–59. 60 NA (UK) CO 445/44, Overseas Contingent, Nigeria Regiment, Medical Report, 24 March 1918, Lieutenant Colonel T. M. Russell Leonard. 61 NA (UK) CO 445/40, “Nigerian Overseas Contingent,” 1917, F. Lugard to Walter Long, 12 October 1917. 62 Clifford, Gold Coast Regiment in the East Africa Campaign, 14. 63 Ross Anderson, The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign, 1914–1918 (Stroud, UK: Tempus , 2004); Strachan, First World War in Africa; Edward Paice, Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007).

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troopship carrying 360 Gold Coast soldiers to East Africa stopped over at Durban where South African authorities admitted 181 of them to hospital including 64 with venereal disease.64

VD Paranoia during the Interwar Years During the interwar era, Britain’s West African army no longer faced a grave threat from tropical disease, although it remained a consistent factor in the region. By the start of the 1930s, it became rare for a European officer or NCO to die in West Africa, and there were very few fatalities among the larger number of African troops. In the Nigeria Regiment, during 1931– 32, the health of European personnel was “generally satisfactory” with one British NCO dying of unknown causes after returning home. Among the three thousand Nigerian soldiers, there were only sixteen deaths from a dozen causes such as yellow fever, cerebral blood clots, jaundice, pneumonia, dysentery, and cancer.65 In 1932 none of the Europeans in the GCR died, and 25 percent of hospital admissions among British personnel amounted to sports injuries and “not climatic conditions.” Simultaneously, only two out of seven hundred African soldiers died, one from unknown causes and another from a road accident, and “Guinea Worm is treated as a preventable disease. This has considerably reduced the number of men suffering from this disability.”66 Similarly, in 1933 the SLB reported that “the health of the Europeans has been good” with no deaths and very few hospital admissions, and “malarial fever has not been very prevalent in either station and the Medical authorities have been able to make quick cures of the few men who have had attacks.” Simultaneously, among the battalion’s 381 African soldiers, one passed away from heart disease.67 During 1933, the Gambia Company reported no deaths or hospital admissions among its five British officers and NCOs, and only one death, a case of sudden acute appendicitis, among its 136 African troops.68 Referring to the prevalence of malaria in

64 PRAAD (Accra), ADM 1/839, telegram from Governor General of Union of South Africa to Colonial Secretary, 15 August 1918. 65 NA (UK) CO 820/15/13, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 16 March 1933. 66 NA (UK) CO 820/16/1, Report of GCR, 27 February 1933. 67 NA (UK) CO 820/16/4, Report on SLB, 1 May 1933. 68 NA (UK) CO 820/17/10, Report on Gambia Company, 1 March 1934.

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the GCR of the 1930s, a retired British officer stated, “We had got the thing more or less under control.”69 Just as Britain’s West African army seemed relatively secure from tropical disease, officers identified another health emergency that threatened military efficiency and therefore colonial control of the region. By the 1920s, urbanization, migrant labor, and extended transport systems resulted in the proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases throughout colonial West Africa starting with large coastal towns and moving to interior communities. In 1920 a civilian venereal disease clinic opened in Accra, Gold Coast, and in 1927 reported that 75 percent of the city’s residents between eighteen and forty-five years old suffered from sexually transmitted disease. Officials reported high infection rates among prisoners, porters, police, and soldiers who were subject to medical inspection. During the late 1920s labor migration spread sexually transmitted diseases into northern Gold Coast, which also comprised the major recruiting zone for the colonial army.70 In the early 1920s Dr. Cameron Blair, Nigeria’s deputy director of sanitary services, considered venereal disease the territory’s “gravest medical problem” and worse than the influenza pandemic, an ongoing smallpox epidemic, and a meningitis outbreak in Sokoto.71 In the late 1920s syphilis and gonorrhea represented the third and fourth most common “infective diseases” in Sierra Leone after malaria and yaws.72 Nevertheless, medical confusion between venereal syphilis and non-venereal yaws led to exaggeration of sexual transmission.73 It was at this point that VD became a major concern for Britain’s West African colonial army. 69 ODRP, Grant. 70 Florence Ejogha Nkwam, “British Medical and Health Policies in West Africa, c.1920–1960,” Doctoral Thesis, University of London, 1988, 4; K. David Patterson, Health in Colonial Ghana: Disease, Medicine and Socio-economic Change, 1900–1955 (Waltham: MA: Crossroads, 1981): 75–76; Addae, Modern Medicine, 355–60. 71 Schram, Nigerian Health Services, 191. 72 Venereal Disease Information, vol. 11, no. 1 (Washington, DC: US Treasury Department, 1930), 165. 73 Guillaume Lachenal, “A Genealogy of Treatment as Prevention (TASP): Prevention, Therapy, and the Tensions of Public Health in African History,” in Global Health in Africa: Historical Perspectives on Disease, edited by Tamara Giles-Vernick and James L. A. Webb (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013), 79.

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Britain’s West African army began to obsess over reducing sexually transmitted diseases among the rank-and-file in the wake of the influenza pandemic, which hit the region’s military garrisons in September 1918. In Sierra Leone, 80 percent to 90 percent of SLB soldiers became sick, around a dozen died of the flu, and the unit’s outposts lost communication with Freetown for two weeks. Around 90 percent of the Gambia Company fell ill, and seven soldiers died. Of the Nigeria Regiment’s 2,800 troops organized in five battalions across the country, 1,900 were admitted to hospital and 64 died.74 Although shocking, the pandemic had little impact on planning around military health in British West Africa. While reports on lessons from the Nigeria Regiment’s recent operations in Cameroon and East Africa emphasized the need for the force to have its own medical staff and failed to mention sexually transmitted disease,75 it appears that officials imposed the British Army’s punitive VD rules on military garrisons in Nigeria sometime during the First World War. At the end of the conflict, British authorities in Nigeria debated how to approach VD among soldiers and experimented with new policies. In November 1918, hoping to induce men suffering from sexually transmitted diseases to seek early treatment, the Nigeria Regiment tentatively canceled weekly VD inspections and restored the pay of soldiers admitted to hospital with these ailments. Approving of this change, Nigeria’s acting governor stated that venereal disease “is so rife throughout most parts of Nigeria that I regard it as a serious menace to the country.”76 In 1919 military and medical authorities in Nigeria debated whether to counter VD among soldiers by frequent inspections and punishments or by constructing family-oriented apartment-style accommodation to encourage troops to marry and pursue sexual monogamy. Military officers criticized the latter proposal, put forth by a medical official, for not recognizing the supposed sexual promiscuity of African soldiers and for the high cost of construction. By around 1920 the Nigeria Regiment realigned itself with the standard British Army anti-VD regime, reintroducing monthly genital inspections and fines for hospitalized

74 NA (UK) CO 445/65, “Historical Records of Sierra Leone Battalion,” 26 May 1924; CO 445/47, “Report on Nigeria Regiment for 1918,” 2 June 1919; NAG (Banjul), CS0 24/1, “Gambia Company History Book,” vol. 1, September 1918. 75 NA (UK) CO 445/47, “Reorganization of Nigeria Regiment,” 17 April 1919. 76 NA (UK) CO 445/47, Report on the Nigeria Regiment, 1919, Acting Governor to Secretary of State for Colonies, 13 May 1919.

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troops who had allegedly hidden their condition.77 Nigerian deputy sanitary director, Dr. Blair, considered fining VD-afflicted soldiers as a foolish and counterproductive policy.78 Becoming WAFF inspector general in early 1924, Colonel R. D. F. Oldman expressed alarm at the high number of troops with sexually transmitted diseases, and he began to calculate the number of working days lost through hospital treatment. He concluded that VD posed a serious and hitherto neglected threat to WAFF military efficiency. For 1923 the Nigeria Regiment reported 450 VD cases but lacked records on lost working days, and within the GCR, VD represented one of the most common ailments accounting for around 2,500 lost days. While the SLB failed to keep records of VD cases, Oldman suspected a high number and he disapproved of the unit’s policy of treating infected men in barracks and not in hospital. Consequently, Oldman recommended that all WAFF units conduct fortnightly VD inspections, register and check women living in barracks, and initiate early preventative measures in consultation with medical officials. He also worried that the large number of men with cuts on their feet and legs would similarly hinder military effectiveness and, therefore, recommended distribution of puttees and footwear.79 WAFF units differed in their response to Oldman’s anti-VD recommendations. In Nigeria, authorities zealously followed his directions stepping up VD inspections of troops, constructing Early Preventative Treatment (EPT) rooms at all military stations, and officers lectured on the dangers and avoidance of sexually transmitted diseases. By 1927 all Nigeria Regiment battalions possessed working EPT rooms actively used by soldiers, and reports expressed hope that although total VD cases had increased, the number of working days lost to treatment were in decline. Continuing the anti-VD effort into a new decade, RWAFF inspector general Colonel S. S. Butler encouraged Nigeria Regiment officers and British NCOs to “make a determined effort to

77 Saheed Aderinto, When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1958 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 96–99. 78 Schram, Nigeria’s Health Service, 191. 79 NA (UK) CO 445/64, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 9 April 1924; (UK) CO 445/64, Report on GCR, 2 March 1924; (UK) CO 445/64, Report on SLB, 29 April 1924.

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cope with this evil.”80 In 1933 authorities intensified these measures. Each Nigeria Regiment battalion operated one or two EPT rooms, a Nigerian medical orderly and European officer or NCO conducted monthly VD inspections, soldiers unable to work given VD treatment had pay withheld with a greater reduction for those admitted to hospital, and concealment of the disease resulted in further fines and demotion. Furthermore, some Nigerian units subjected soldiers’ wives to VD inspections, with those found infected expelled from barracks.81 However, in early 1934 the commandant of the Nigeria Regiment, Colonel W. R. Meredith, admitted that the regime of inspections, EPT rooms, pay stoppages, and disciplinary action failed to curb sexually transmitted disease among the rank-and-file. Consequently, the regiment and medical authorities introduced a more systematic approach to inspecting women living in barracks with these activities conducted by the “magajia” or head woman of the company or battalion who received some medical training.82 Nigerian women seeking approval to live in barracks with their soldier husbands underwent examination by British doctors, assisted by magajias, who rejected those found to have sexually transmitted diseases.83 This had little impact on the problem of sexually transmitted diseases in the army. From 1933 to 1935, the VD situation in the Nigeria Regiment remained consistent with about a thousand men, or one-third total strength, infected each year. Annually, this led to around thirteen hundred hospital admissions and about four to five thousand lost working days. A frustrated Colonel Meredith, in 1936, reported that “all practicable steps have been taken to improve the situation, but . . . so long as the extreme prevalence of the disease continues amongst the civil population, and is regarded with apathy by them, a real and lasting improvement cannot be expected as regards the Troops.”84 A junior officer who served in the Nigeria Regiment in Enugu in the late 1930s remembered, “We had orders to conduct periodic VD 80 NA (UK) CO 820/3/13, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 9 February 1928, Colonel S. S. Butler. WAFF received royal title in 1928. 81 NA (UK) CO 820/15/13, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 4 March 1933, Brigadier C. C. Norman; Imperial War Museum, interview with Alexander John Belither, 4 December 1978. 82 NA (UK) CO 820/17/12, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 10 March 1934; (UK) CO 820-19-9, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 15 February 1935. 83 IWM, Interview with Leslie Muir Angus, 21 April 1979. 84 NA (UK) CO 820/21/8, Report on Nigeria Regiment, Remarks, 31 January 1936.

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inspections, but combating VD seriously would have been a hopeless task.”85 A British NCO in Nigeria in the late 1920s and 1930s maintained that since contracting VD signified manhood for young Nigerian men, almost every recruit joined with it, and almost every soldier had had it at some point.86 While the GCR implemented frequent VD inspections, Gold Coast medical officials resisted WAFF inspector general Oldman’s 1924 recommendation for the establishment of military EPT rooms.87 In late 1925, given the inspector general’s insistence, an EPT room opened at regimental headquarters in Kumasi but not in the garrisons at Accra, Tamale, and Kintampo. The inspector general considered the Kumasi EPT room successful given a slight reduction in the unit’s VD cases, but medical authorities wrote scathing reports pointing out that the facility was operated by an illiterate soldier who did not clean the equipment or use enough disinfectant on the patients. The doctors feared that Kumasi’s EPT room represented a danger for spreading sexually transmitted diseases and other infections and that VD in Kumasi may have decreased further without the EPT room as it had in other areas. In addition, the medical officer at Kintampo believed that troops stationed there would not utilize an EPT room if one became available. As such, medical authorities recommended the GCR create a comprehensive and properly staffed VD treatment clinic like the civilian one in Accra and that inspections and treatment extend to soldiers’ wives. Agreeing with the medical officials, the governor requested plans and budgets for constructing a military VD clinic and an improved ETP room at Kumasi, and suspended plans for new EPT facilities in other garrisons.88 However, with personnel changes and financial limitations in the late 1920s, the Gold Coast medical department quickly reversed its opinion advising the governor that building a VD clinic at Kumasi was too expensive and unlikely to make an impact, as 85 ORDP, R. M. Allen, 23 September 1980. 86 IWM, Angus. 87 NA (UK) CO 445/67, Report on GCR, 1 April 1925, Colonel R. D. F. Oldman. 88 NA (UK) 820/2/10, Report on GCR, 1927; Governor Slater to L. S. Amery, Colonial Secretary, Accra, 24 August 1927; Dr. F. S. Harper (Director of Medical Services) to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 8 July 1927; William Spiteri to Director Medical Services, Accra, 20 June 1927; E. Morris Franklin to Director Medical Services, Kumasi, 28 June 1927; “Report on Treatment of VD at the ‘Early Treatment Centre’ Kumasi,” J. F. Southward, Kumasi, 27 June 1927; E. W. Wood-Mason to Director Medical Services, Tamale, 13 June 1927; G. Saunders to Director Medical Services, Kintampo, 31 May 1927.

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the rate of VD infection among soldiers at Kumasi would remain consistent with the nearby “native town.” Distracted by a guinea worm outbreak that temporarily immobilized a company at Tamale and prompted the digging of a new well, GCR authorities continued the existing system of VD management involving inspections and EPT rooms proliferated. At the start of 1929 the regiment reported a 50 percent reduction in cases of sexually transmitted disease, although the success was short lived.89 During the 1930s, military authorities in the Gold Coast accepted that about one quarter of their soldiers, still hesitant to use the EPT rooms, would always suffer from VD.90 Although the regiment tried to reduce the number of lost working days related to treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, this figure increased dramatically in the middle to late 1930s. Officers explained this as the result of more vigorous medical intervention.91 In 1925, despite their skepticism about VD inspections and EPT rooms, medical authorities in Sierra Leone succumbed to official pressure, agreeing to the creation of experimental EPT huts at military barracks.92 With EPT installation delayed for over a year, an angry inspector general Oldman blamed the medical men for an increase in sexually transmitted disease and related lost working days within the SLB, which he pointed out “has far the highest incidence of VD in all the WAFF.”93 While Oldman also insisted that wives of VD-infected soldiers undergo inspection and treatment or face expulsion from barracks, medical authorities warned that this could

89 NA (UK) CO 820/4/10, Report on GCR, 1928; Colonel S. S. Butler to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 10 April 1928; Governor’s Deputy to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 16 June 1928; CO 820/5/15, Report on GCR, Brigadier S. S. Butler to Colonial Secretary, 7 January 1929. 90 NA (UK) CO 820/16/1, Report on GCR, 1933, “Health Statistics of African Ranks,” Colonel H. H. Beattie 27 February 1933; CO 820/18/5, Report on GCR, 1934, “Health Statistics of African Ranks,” Colonel H. H. Beattie, 28 April 1934. 91 NA (UK) CO 820/20/4, Report on GCR, 1935, “Health Statistics of African Ranks,” 14 March 1935, Colonel H. H. Beattie; CO 820/25/5, Report on GCR, 1937, “Health Statistics of African Ranks,” Colonel M. A., Green, 15 February 1937. 92 NA (UK) CO 445/67, Report on SLB, 1925, Enclosure, 21 May 1925. 93 NA (UK) CO 445/68, Report on SLB, 13 April 1926, Colonel R. D. F. Oldman.

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further encourage concealment.94 With the governor’s intervention, EPT huts were built in late 1926, and over the next two years RWAFF inspector general Butler credited them with a significant reduction in cases of sexually transmitted disease and associated lost days among Sierra Leone’s soldiers.95 The SLB’s fight against VD suffered a serious setback, however, in June 1928 when the unit’s headquarters and one of its two companies moved to Wilberforce Barracks in Freetown. While military authorities believed that the “cool climate,” “social life,” and “civilization” of Freetown enhanced the physical and mental health of British personnel, the context of life in a port city and supposedly the lack of EPT facilities at the new barracks led to a huge increase in VD among African soldiers. When compared with the previous year, the number of troops infected with VD increased by almost 100 percent, resulting in just over 50 percent more lost days. Unsurprisingly, the company stationed in Freetown experienced much more sexually transmitted disease than the company that remained in remote Daru.96 In the early 1930s officers reported the instance of sexually transmitted disease in the SLB decreased substantially given the establishment of a VD clinic in Freetown and the continuation of EPT facilities. The numbers dropped from 68 VD cases and 538 lost days in 1928 to 15 cases and 195 lost days in 1930.97 However, VD rates increased again over the next two years, prompting Lieutenant Colonel M. A. Green, who took command of the battalion in October 1931, to question the accuracy of previous records. During 1932–33, ninety-five soldiers representing a quarter of the battalion’s strength presented with sexually transmitted disease, and treatment accounted for 351 lost days. The absence of trained orderlies in the EPT rooms rendered them ineffective and risked spreading infection through improperly cleaned apparatus. While Green emphasized punishing troops for concealing VD and believed it led to earlier reporting and treatment, he estimated that 75 percent of the men had a history of sexually transmitted disease and admitted that there was no way to solve the problem, as “the women are as badly diseased as the men. A cure is difficult as it is impossible

94 NA (UK) CO 445/68, Report on SLB, 1926, Acting Governor to Colonial Secretary, Sierra Leone, 31 August 1926. 95 NA (UK) CO 820/2/1, Report on SLB, 26 March 1927, Colonel S. S. Butler; CO 820-3-14, Report on SLB, 10 March 1928, Colonel S. S. Butler. 96 NA (UK) CO 820/6/16, Report on SLB, 6 February 1929. 97 NA (UK) CO 820/10/11, Report on SLB, 22 January 1931.

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to keep the men away from the women even during treatment.”98 This precipitated a dispute over how to approach VD in the battalion. Military officers wanted to continue punishing soldiers accused of concealing VD, but colonial and medical officers thought these measures counterproductive. While officers wanted to bring soldiers’ wives “under medical control,” colonial and medical officials pointed out that compulsory VD inspection of women was impossible and likely to cause “trouble,” with some recommending a less controversial periodic general medical examination of all women and children living in barracks. Soldiers diagnosed with sexually transmitted disease were encouraged to convince their wives to seek medical intervention, but this rarely happened.99 The number of Sierra Leonean soldiers affected by VD jumped from ninety-one in 1933 to 184 (or half the unit) in 1934, prompting commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Harding to concede, “I cannot account for the increase over last year.”100 During the late 1930s, the percentage of men with sexually transmitted disease dropped back to around one quarter of the roughly four-hundred-strong battalion. A series of commanding officers expelled unauthorized women from barracks and continued, in vain, to urge authorities to impose compulsory VD inspections for all soldiers’ wives and especially for those women whose husbands had contracted sexually transmitted disease. On the eve of the Second World War, the SLB commander emphasized the need to introduce serious punishments for afflicted soldiers, and he wrote, “Never, in any African Battalion have I seen such appalling figures on account of Venereal Disease.”101 The Gambia Company delayed Inspector General Oldman’s anti-VD campaign given an unusual outbreak of malaria among British officers and official deliberations over the continued viability of the small unit. In 1925, with 98 NA (UK) CO 820/16/4, Report on the SLB, 1933, “Health Statistics of African Ranks,” 31 March 1933, Lieutenant Colonel M. A. Green. 99 NA (UK) CO 820/17/9, Report on SLB, 1934; minutes, 25 June 1934; P. Cunliffe-Lister; “Health Statics of African Ranks,” 31 December 1933, Lieutenant Colonel M. A. Green; Minute by Lieutenant Colonel Harding, 6 December 1934. 100 NA (UK) CO 820/17/9, Report on SLB, 1934, “Health Statics of African Ranks,” 31 December 1933, Lieutenant Colonel M. A. Green; for quote see CO 820-19-15, Report on SLB, 1935, “Health Statics of African Ranks,” 2 March 1935, Lieutenant Colonel G. P. Harding. 101 NA (UK) CO 820/25/6, Report on SLB, 1937, “Health Statics of African Ranks,” 2 March 1937; CO 820/34/9, Report on SLB, 1939, “Health Statics of African Ranks,” 28 February 1939.

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these issues resolved, Oldman reported that the company’s annual “Venereal Disease rate is heavy, 22 cases involving a loss of 319 working days,” and he repeated recommendations for frequent inspections and early preventative treatment.102 Nevertheless, medical officials in the Gambia opposed the military’s approach to combating sexually transmitted disease. They maintained the difficulty in determining if soldiers were purposefully concealing VD, that punishment deterred early reporting and treatment, and that EPT rooms were “impractical.”103 Supported by the Colonial Office, military authorities pointed to the Gambia Company’s high VD rate and insisted on the installation of EPT rooms and periodic surprise inspections by medical officers. In 1928 these measures were implemented despite a decline in sexually transmitted disease in the unit.104 While VD cases within the Gambia Company remained very few during the early 1930s, this changed in the second half of the decade when authorities reported a substantial increase in infected men and consequent lost days. During 1938, when the Gambia Company temporarily moved to the bustling port of Freetown in Sierra Leone, almost half of the men contracted sexually transmitted disease and lost days more than doubled. Soldiers who failed to report their condition paid fines and remained confined to barracks for fourteen days, and those who missed more than twenty-one days duty for VD treatment lost some or all of their annual leave. In early 1939 Inspector General Giffard reported, “The incidence of venereal disease in the Gambia Company is deplorably high.”105 Taking over as RWAFF inspector general in 1936, the modernizing Giffard sided with the medical officials in the debate over sexually transmitted disease. He expressed horror at the percentage of the region’s troops affected by VD and quickly moved to have the Colonial Office abolish the associated pay stoppage, as he believed it encouraged concealment. Giffard stressed the importance of educational programs and revived the idea that 102 NA (UK) CO 445/64, Report on the Gambia Company, 6 February 1924; CO 445-67, Report on the Gambia Company, 5 May 1925. 103 NA (UK) CO 820/1/3, Report on the Gambia Company, 1927, Governor C. H. Armitage to Secretary of State for Colonies, Bathurst, 23 December 1926. 104 NA (UK) CO 820/4/6, Report on the Gambia Company, 14 December 1927; CO 820-7-8, Report on the Gambia Company, 20 April 1929. 105 NA (UK) CO 820/12/3, Report on the Gambia Company, 19 April 1931; CO 820-17-10, Report on the Gambia Company, 1 March 1934; CO 820/21/11, Report on the Gambia Company, 1 March 1936; for the quote see CO 820/34/9, Report on the Gambia Company, 21 March 1939.

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transitioning from barracks to separate family accommodation for soldiers would reduce sexually transmitted disease in the military.106 The continued increase in VD cases in the Nigeria Regiment, with around eleven hundred troops infected in 1937 and 1938, prompted the formation’s commandant to request the reintroduction of financial punishment, but Giffard supported medical officials who thought that approach was counterproductive.107 As officials argued policy, soldiers sought their own solutions to sexually transmitted disease. Although colonial records are silent on the issue, West African troops traveled far in search of traditional remedies for these afflictions despite criticism of such treatments by British doctors. During the late 1930s and 1940s, in the Gambia and Gold Coast, traditional medicine enabled several severely stricken soldiers facing discharge from the army to return to duty.108

Military Health and West Africa’s Second World War During the Second World War, Britain’s West African army transformed into WAC under War Office jurisdiction and received a dramatic upgrade in military medical facilities and personnel. Whereas the force previously depended on medical staff from the colonial administration, it now boasted its own uniformed military medical administrators, nurses, and doctors (including specialists). By late 1942 WAC operated twelve general military hospitals, seven field ambulance units, five field hygiene sections, four hospital trains, two malaria laboratories, and other support elements across the region.109 Large military hospitals opened in the Gold Coast, which was also the location of WAC headquarters. In 1941, 37 General Hospital opened in Accra with racially segregated wards consisting of two hundred beds for Europeans and eight hundred beds for Africans. And 52 General Hospital opened 106 NA (UK) CO 820/25/4, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 18 February 1937, Major General George Giffard and memo, 7 September 1937, W. Ormsby-Gore. 107 NA (UK) CO 820/29/6, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 26 March 1938, Brigadier P. M. Dickinson; (UK) CO 820/34/7, Report on Nigeria Regiment, 3 February 1939, Major General George Giffard. 108 ORDP, T. A. Kennedy-Davis, 23 July 1980; T. A. Newburry, c.1980. 109 ODRP, F. D. Nield, enclosed, Sunday Adekunle Majekodunmi, “The Development of Health in the Nigerian Armed Forces,” London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, June 1972, 30–32.

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at Takoradi, eventually relocating to South Asia in support of 81st (West African) Division.110 In Nigeria, the war resulted in the establishment of military hospitals in Lagos and Kaduna, and medical reception stations at Abeokuta, Ibadan, Zaria, and Enugu. Opening in 1944, 68 General Hospital in Lagos contained twelve hundred beds in racially segregated wards.111 Some Second World War–era military hospitals still function in postcolonial West Africa including 37 Military Hospital in Accra, 68 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital in Lagos, 44 Military Hospital in Kaduna, and 34 Military Hospital in Freetown. These wartime medical facilities treated a huge number of West African soldiers for a wide variety of health problems and injuries including an outbreak of bilharzia that jeopardized the deployment of a Nigerian brigade to South Asia,112 and military medical personnel inoculated tens of thousands of troops against diseases like typhoid and yellow fever.113 Nevertheless, sexually transmitted diseases remained a challenge to Britain’s West African army. When the Second World War began, the British Army still punished soldiers who contracted VD, withholding pay during hospitalization and canceling their leave. While authorities quickly abolished these measures, recognizing that they led to troops concealing illness and seeking unofficial cures, soldiers who failed to report symptoms of sexually transmitted disease continued to face some disciplinary action such as loss of proficiency pay and demotion. The army maintained EPT stations, but they were much less effective in reducing the instance of sexually transmitted disease than the condoms that circulated widely among metropolitan British military personnel. The British military’s new approach to VD consisted of lectures stressing duty to family, regiment, and country and forward treatment in field ambulance units that discouraged men from purposely contracting VD to escape the front and to return soldiers quickly to their units. Facilitating this policy, new medicines accelerated treatment times. During the previous war, syphilis treatment took about ten weeks and gonorrhea five to seven weeks, but by the early 1940s, this changed to four weeks for early syphilis and four to five 110 Addae, Modern Medicine, 110–11; Aboagye, Ghana Army. 111 Schram, Nigerian Health Services, 254. 112 Major General C. R. A. Swynnerton, “Bilharziasis and the 1st (West African) Brigade,” Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps (1 April 1957): 98–101. 113 SLA (Freetown), service records of Second World War–era soldiers include vaccination records.

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days for gonorrhea. The introduction of penicillin in 1943 and 1944 further reduced treatment times to around eight days for syphilis and one or two days for gonorrhea. Simultaneously, British military authorities placed brothels in the Middle East and North Africa under a regime of medical inspections and tried to expel street prostitutes from areas frequented by soldiers.114 During the Second World War, the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases among Britain’s West African soldiers reached new heights despite the proliferation of military medical facilities and new medicines. The wartime mobilization of British West Africa greatly intensified the spread of VD throughout the region. At the start of 1942, the rate of troops with new VD infections amounted to 43.2 percent in Nigeria, 39 percent in the Gold Coast, 34.8 percent in Sierra Leone, and 20.4 percent in the Gambia.115 In 1943, VD infection rates among West African soldiers amounted to 50 percent in the Gold Coast, 28 percent for Sierra Leone, and 12 percent for the Gambia. In Nigeria in 1944, gonorrhea affected 62.5 percent of soldiers.116 Colonial authorities in West Africa worried about the mounting financial cost of treating more VD cases among military personnel and blamed prostitutes for the increasing prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases. The arrival of large numbers of American and metropolitan British soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the region led to an increase in sex work and trafficking of women across colonial borders to engage in prostitution. As such, colonial administrations in Nigeria and the Gold Coast imposed the first legal restrictions on prostitution among West Africans in those territories.117 British officers who served with West African units during the war recalled the prevalence of sexually transmitted disease. A former officer remembered 114 Harrison, Medicine and Victory, 43–46, 98–108, 152; For treatment times see Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics, 124; Kampf, “Controlling Male Sexuality,” 242–43. 115 Aderinto, When Sex Threatened the State, 100. 116 Major R. R. Willcox, “Venereal Disease in West Africa,” Nature 157 (30 March 1946): 416; “Venereal Disease in British West Africa,” Lancet (17 May 1947): 684. 117 Aderinto, When Sex Threatened the State, 100; Saheed Aderinto, “‘The Girls in Moral Danger:’ Child Prostitution and Sexuality in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria, 1930s to 1950,” Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 1, no. 2 (2007): 19; Carina Ray, “World War II and the Sex Trade in British West Africa,” in Africa and World War II, edited by Judith Byfield, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 339–56.

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that the young men at the Nigeria Regiment recruit depot in Zaria in the early 1940s benefited from the army’s high protein diet but that “the most common complaint was VD.”118 A transport officer who served in Nigeria during the early 1940s and then with 81st (West African) Division in Asia recalled “a very high level of venereal disease.”119 Another British officer who led Nigerian troops during and after the war explained the army’s high level of sexually transmitted disease on its “endemic” nature in West Africa.120 A Polish officer with the SLB claimed, “Gonorrhea was, perhaps, the most significant health problem.”121 Yet again, British medical officers blamed the problem on West African women, lamenting there was little point in treating soldiers for VD given the “untreated heavily infected female population.”122 Official alarm over sexually transmitted disease waned among West African units deployed to operational theaters. Once soldiers went overseas, VD became one of a few trivial “short term problems” compared to other health issues.123 West African troops onboard troop ships bound for East Africa suffered major outbreaks of measles and chickenpox, which affected 80 percent of troops. Despite additional medical personnel, resources, and facilities on troopships steaming to South Asia, there were disease outbreaks, including mumps; and some West African soldiers died from pneumonia and cerebrospinal meningitis particularly at ports in South Africa and India. In the high-altitude environment of East Africa, the West Africans again suffered badly from pneumonia, and in the jungles of Burma, cholera became a killer.124 A Gambian company about to embark on operations in Burma suffered fifteen deaths, 10 percent of its total strength, from a sudden cholera outbreak, prompting soldiers’ fears about evil spirits in the forest.125 While British troops in South Asia during the early 1940s experienced high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, this changed during 1944–45 when VD 118 119 120 121 122 123 124

ORDP, T. W. Bonser, 22 July 1980. ORDP, M. L. Crapp, January 1982. ORDP, F. H. G. Higgins, 28 October 1980. ORDP, E. Niesielski, 10 February 1981. Willcox, “Venereal Disease,” 419. ORDP, J. Leniewski, c.1980. ORDP, R. R. Ryder, November 1981; J. F. Linder, c.1980; ORDP, MSS. Afric. 1734 (108), Additional Material from Hamilton, Major General G. C. Woolner, “81 (West African) Division: Report on Campaign in Burma, Winter 1943 to Spring 1944,” July 1944, 3. 125 ORDP, D. M. Cookson, “With Africans in Arakan,” 1969, 32.

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rates became negligible, which is precisely when most West African troops arrived in the region. This decline of VD was associated with new medicines, forward treatment policies, and the ramping up of offensive action in Burma where the war “was characterized by rapid movement and . . . the troops had few opportunities to dally with civilians.”126 British forces operating in Burma endured diseases like malaria, dysentery, and typhus; however, West African troops, compared to their British and Indian colleagues, experienced the lowest rates of sickness, which officials attributed to their relative resistance to malaria and “great physique.”127 An official report on 81st (West African) Division in Burma omitted VD stating that the “health of the troops was excellent” as soldiers used their mosquito nets and took daily doses of antimalarial mepacrine, and the strict policy of never billeting troops in civilian villages, which “avoided all kinds of infection.”128 Once fighting ended, however, West African units waiting for months at repatriation camps in India again experienced high levels of sexually transmitted disease.129 During the war, with the development of the large WAC structure and its support facilities, British military polices about VD could be more thoroughly enforced in West Africa and among West African soldiers. In West Africa, as elsewhere, the British military maintained EPT facilities, experimenting with methods and medicines. In one unit, some 40 percent of troops already had gonorrhea when they used the EPT facility and only did so to shield themselves from disciplinary charges. During a three-month trial, another unit compelled every soldier returning to camp after being away “on pass” to undergo emergency prophylactic treatment, but this failed to curb sexually transmitted disease. Medical authorities attributed this to men leaving camp without official passes and sneaking women into barracks, not to mention poor performance by African orderlies administering treatment. In yet another unit, where the soldiers enthusiastically used the EPT room with twenty to thirty visitors per night assisted by a full-time African orderly, authorities expressed disappointment over some three hundred VD cases within three months. Medical officials experimented by using sulfathiazole, an early antimicrobial drug used in VD treatment, as a prophylactic against sexually transmitted disease at three military garrisons in West Africa, but the results were mixed. Commanding officers disliked the fact 126 Harrison, Medicine and Victory, 230. See p. 198 for high VD rates in India. 127 Harrison, Medicine and Victory, 210–11. 128 ORDP, Woolner, “81 (West African) Division,” 43. 129 ORDP, W. T. Breadmore, November 1981.

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that soldiers could avoid a morning’s work by seeking treatment for allegedly having sex the previous night. After the war, the WAC’s army venereologist declared, “Prophylactic centres were a failure.” An experiment with distributing condoms to troops proved much more effective. They had not been widely issued in West Africa given officials’ contradictory concerns that soldiers would sell them to civilians and that West Africans disliked using them during sex. In an Accra-based unit, the circulation of four thousand condoms over a four-month period cut the number of VD cases in half from 250 during the previous quarter to 120.130 Wartime military anxiety over sexually transmitted disease presented some opportunities to West African soldiers and civilians. Some Second World War–era West African soldiers tried to fake VD to escape duties, delay imprisonment, or leave the army. They used toothpaste, whitewash, ointments, the contents of prophylactic tubes, and plant extracts as bogus urethral discharge. Unable to obtain these items, military prisoners sometimes faked VD by using real discharge from infected cellmates. Additionally, some soldiers employed plant juices or battery acid to create penile sores, and sometimes doctors struggled to distinguish these from authentic symptoms. Outside the barracks, the popularization of antibiotics by the military led to some soldiers selling their VD medication to civilians and fraudsters manufactured chalk tablets stamped with the well-known pharmaceutical logo “M&B.”131 Influenced by racial stereotypes, some British officers thought that West African soldiers seemed almost oblivious to having sexually transmitted diseases. A GCR report from the 1930s suggested that VD “does not usually materially affect the efficiency of the men.”132 An officer with the Nigeria Regiment in Kaduna during the late 1930s and early 1940s suggested, “The incidence of VD was probably higher than it was elsewhere, but it seemed to inconvenience them less than it would others.” He remembered a Nigerian 130 Willcox, “Venereal Disease,” 418–19; R. R. Willcox, “Venereal Disease in British West Africa,” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 22 (June 1946): 74–75. While these articles are very similar, the March 1946 version does not mention condoms, while the June 1946 one does. The location of these units is not given. 131 Willcox, “Venereal Disease,” 418; Willcox, “Venereal Disease in British West Africa,” 67; for similar actions by German soldiers in the First World War see Todd, Sexual Treason, 64. 132 NA (UK) CO 820-18-5, Report on GCR, 1934, “Health Statistics of African Ranks,” Colonel H. H. Beattie, 28 April 1934.

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soldier who won a ten-mile race despite having what a doctor described as a “record dose.”133 A British officer who led Gold Coast troops during the Second World War recalled “the high incidence of venereal disease amongst the men. But none of the men seemed very put out by the affliction.”134 Of course, West African soldiers were not the only military personnel contracting sexually transmitted disease in the region. In the 1940s, and probably at other times, British authorities pretended that British officers and NCOs posted to West African units did not contract VD, as doing otherwise would admit that some were having sex with West Africans and therefore violating the colonial racial-sexual taboo. In the Gold Coast, during the Second World War, medical officers secretly treated British officers and NCOs for VD and authorities sent a young Rhodesian home for “further venereal treatment.”135 A British officer who served in the Gold Coast and Nigeria and led West African troops in Burma recalled that some British personnel had West African mistresses, but their popularity declined after “a BNCO died hideously from some form of VD.”136 In Kumasi during the late 1940s, British military personnel became “thin on the ground at one time because of the high proportion that were down with venereal disease.”137

Military Health in Postwar West Africa During the postwar period, with African colonial forces now permanently under War Office jurisdiction, British officers and officials continued to debate policies around sexually transmitted diseases in the West African army. In 1947 the War Office removed financial penalties for British Army personnel undergoing VD treatment in hospital. The previous policy was discriminatory as it stopped proficiency pay and therefore did not apply to tradesmen and officers who did not receive such pay, and medical officials had always opposed penalties believing they discouraged reporting and early treatment. A new program materialized whereby army “personnel who by their conduct expose themselves to the risk of contracting VD” had to report to an EPT 133 134 135 136

ORDP, T. B. Gibbons, 22 September 1980. ORDP, E. C. Lanning, August 1981. ORDP, E. C. Lanning, August 1981. ORDP, A. J. Smithers, “Past Tense: A Memoir of the RWAFF,” September 1980, 15. 137 ORDP, W. T. Breadmore, November 1981.

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facility, undergo “prophylactic treatment,” and sign a logbook. With the rule published in unit orders, anyone who contracted sexually transmitted disease but who had not signed an appropriate logbook faced charges for neglecting to obey orders. This presented problems in Britain’s West African army. Some unit commanders objected to applying the scheme to African enlisted soldiers, as many were illiterate and could not sign a logbook. Commanders also refused to publish the order with regard to European officers and NCOs as it would “lower their prestige,” citing that only 1 or 2 percent of European personnel suffered from sexually transmitted disease. Though advised by his top medical officer that education represented the only effective method of VD prevention, WAC’s commander decided to implement the policy for African soldiers but punishments “should be applied in moderation” at the “discretion of unit commanders.” Additionally, to both preserve its racial hierarchy and comply with the War Office directive, WAC kept the policy’s application to Europeans secret by having units include the order in a confidential book that all incoming British personnel read and signed.138 During the late 1940s and 1950s, the incidence of sexually transmitted disease among Britain’s West African soldiers remained relatively high, although the official paranoia over this issue that had characterized previous decades subsided. As before, VD transmission continued to be more prevalent in units garrisoning large urban areas. For example, an officer with the GCR in the late 1940s recalled that sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers were more widespread in Kumasi than in remote Kintampo. He stated, “We lost a lot with VD, gonorrhea and the MO would inspect the soldiers during PT and wet patches on the front of the shorts told its own story.”139 An officer who served in Enugu, Nigeria in the late 1950s remembered that “the soldiers, in the main, remained well and fit although the incidence of venereal disease was much higher than in a British battalion.”140 Conversely, VD declined in some units. An officer who served with the QONR battalion in Abeokuta in the late 1950s, remembered that various “worm diseases” presented the most persistent health problem and that a sudden outbreak of

138 NA (UK) WO 269-141, Quarterly Historical Report, Headquarters West Africa Command, 1 January to 31 December 1947, Minutes of District Commanders Conference, 28 August 1947, “Brief for District Commanders Conference; Venereal Disease.” 139 ORDP, T. A. Newberry, c. 1980. 140 ORDP, E. S. Hibbard, 10 September 1980.

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“Asian flu” rendered the unit inoperable for two weeks. Besides that, “The soldiers were fairly healthy and we had little VD.”141 After the war, the wide availability of penicillin in British West Africa reduced the gravity of sexually transmitted diseases in the colonial military and finally rendered EPT rooms obsolete. By 1956 military hospitals in Nigeria treated most soldiers with VD as outpatients. For medical officers, the most urgent health issues were early detection of tuberculosis among soldiers and the widespread presence of schistosomiasis among recruits from northern Nigeria where the disease was rife.142 Summing up the colonial military’s sexual health during the 1950s, an officer who commanded a platoon in Enugu stated, “Venereal infection was a problem but kept in check by modern drugs.”143

Conclusion The West African environment presented daunting health challenges for Britain’s colonial military. Countering tropical disease, initially among European leadership and then among the African rank-and-file, represented the top medical priority of Britain’s West African army during its foundational years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Tropical disease had the potential to undermine British rule in West Africa, as sick and dying officers and soldiers could not maintain internal security in the context of African resistance. To maintain military health, and in collaboration with colonial authorities, Britain’s WAFF of the early 1900s contributed to the extension of Western-style medical facilities to the West African interior predating missionary efforts in many places. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the focus on tropical disease and the nature of First World War campaigns in Africa meant that Britain’s West African army did not share concerns over sexually transmitted disease found in the metropolitan British military or its offshoots in the dominions or India. This changed after the First World War given success in the struggle against tropical disease and the simultaneous spread of sexually transmitted diseases across West Africa, including within the colonial army. From the 1920s to the 1940s, British 141 ORDP, W. R. A. Catcheside, 25 September 1980. 142 ORDP, T. W. M. D’Arcy, 12 November 1981, Minutes, Assistant Director of Medical Services Conference, Lagos, 28–29 August 1956. 143 ORDP, B. O’Gorman, 18 October 1981.

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authorities debated how best to reduce what they saw as an epidemic of VD among West African soldiers. Senior officers imposed disciplinary measures, chemical preventative treatments, and genital inspections on the troops but medical personnel and a few officers disagreed wanting more education and improved living conditions. Many colonial officials blamed the spread of VD on West African women, but it was only in Nigeria that soldiers’ wives experienced aggressive medical inspections and expulsion from barracks over sexual health. To the endless frustration of British senior officers, none of these measures had any impact on the spread of VD among the West African rank-and-file. During the Second World War, officials canceled some of the worst punishments for West African troops who contracted sexually transmitted diseases and those who fought in East Africa and Burma encountered much more dangerous medical problems. Nevertheless, and despite the arrival of condoms and better medication, the wartime West African colonial army still obsessed over the spread of sexually transmitted diseases but made no progress in countering them. From the 1920s to 1940s, official debates over VD prevention in Britain’s West African army generally mirrored those within the wider British and dominion militaries with the exception that morality seemed missing from the official discussions in West Africa. While records do not explain the absence of this moral discourse, Christian British officers and officials were religiously alienated from the mostly Muslim and traditionalist West African soldiers of the interwar period, and Christian military chaplains arrived only during the Second World War shortly before the circulation of antibiotics. The medical history of Britain’s West African army reveals success in its early struggle against tropical disease, while the subsequent goal of reducing VD in the ranks proved frustrating and elusive. Official paranoia about sexually transmitted disease in the West African military only subsided after 1945 with the introduction of efficacious medication, although VD continued to represent a common ailment in the postwar force.

Chapter Seven

Women A combination of European and African military cultures and histories informed the involvement of women in Britain’s West African colonial army. Up to the 1700s, western European armies included large numbers of women mostly categorized under the vague heading of “camp followers.” These women provided various support services including soldiers’ wives and children who foraged for food and firewood, merchants who sold food and liquor, and cooks, laundresses, tailors, and sex workers. From the middle 1700s, the number of “camp followers” in European armies gradually decreased with the development of formal military logistical systems to maintain an increasing number of troops, the rise of Enlightenment ideals of femininity that disapproved of women’s presence during wars and the changing status of soldiers from hired mercenaries to citizens serving the nation. During this period, the British Army imposed severe restrictions on marriage among its all-male troops indirectly encouraging what became a stereotypical military “culture of womanizing and misogyny.”1 This process of reducing the informal involvement of women continued in the Victorian-era British Army given military professionalization and centralization, the wider development of separate social and economic spheres for men and women, and the idealization of Christian marriage and nuclear family life coming out of industrialization. As previously discussed, a series of nineteenth-century Contagious Disease Acts (CD Acts) attempted to protect the sexual health and military effectiveness of Britain’s male soldiers and sailors by imposing a regime of medical inspections and detention on female sex workers. By the late nineteenth century, the period of the so-called Scramble for Africa, the British Army and many of its western European counterparts became increasingly male institutions as female “camp followers” almost disappeared, 1

Jennine Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century: “The Girl I Left Behind Me” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 8.

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and the small number of women and children associated with the military comprised members of officially regulated nuclear families.2 Historians know much less about the participation of women in African armies before the twentieth century. While evidence for the role of women in precolonial African warfare remains very limited, the infrequency of standing armies and the absence of logistical services means that the situation in many places likely resembled the “camp follower” culture of early modern European armies. Female fighters like the “Amazons” of Dahomey and celebrated female military leaders such as Queen Nzinga of Angola or Queen Amina of Zazzau (Zaria) in Northern Nigeria were extremely rare in precolonial Africa, with women more typically providing male combatants with food, firewood, intelligence, and motivation. In addition, capturing women to increase the productive capacity of communities represented an important objective of precolonial African wars.3 Given the history of West African women’s involvement in precolonial wars and the absence of significant logistical services in Britain’s regional colonial army until the 1940s, women played a central role among Britain’s West African soldiers. During the conquest era of the late nineteenth century, Britain’s paramilitary forces in West Africa depended on informal entourages of female “camp followers,” with the term remaining in official use throughout the colonial era, and eventually a large number of formally recognized army wives comprised a core element of the Waffs and Wars. In short, many women experienced military life in Britain’s West African regiments. The involvement of women in Britain’s West African army is difficult to reconstruct. Authored by male British colonial officials and officers, a small number of primary sources provide scant information. If the British officers who produced the archival documents were distant from their West African male soldiers, then they were even more alienated from the West African women associated with the colonial military. Furthermore, and with some notable exceptions, British senior officers exhibited little interest in the female members of their units. The regular annual and biennial reports of West African regiments submitted from around 1900 to 1939, though they provide detailed information on many subjects, say almost nothing about the women living in unit barracks or outposts. It is clear, however, that 2 3

Myna Trustram, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Richard Reid, Warfare in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 9–10, 64–65.

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while West African women could not enlist in Britain’s colonial army, many women lived in army accommodation and integrated into military life as soldiers’ wives and daughters.

West African Women and the British Colonial Army For most of the colonial era, a large number of West African women lived in military barracks in British West Africa. An 1884 report on the conquest era GCC indicated, “Almost all the men have wives and children.”4 In 1916, in the Gold Coast, eight hundred military wives lived in the Kumasi cantonment receiving subsistence allowances for their soldier husbands who were away serving in First World War theaters.5 Census records from early twentieth-century Sierra Leone show that a very substantial number of women lived in military establishments, and in some outposts they comprised a majority. In 1911 the main WAR barracks at Wilberforce in Freetown housed 1,066 male and 670 female residents. Simultaneously, the WAR garrison in Sierra Leone’s northern Karene District comprised 983 people with 561 males and 422 females. Of these, there were 393 soldiers, 295 military wives, and 244 schoolchildren of both genders.6 In 1931, Freetown’s Wilberforce Barracks, recently made the headquarters of the WAFF’s SLB, accommodated 646 people comprising 387 males and 259 females. At the same time, in the town of Daru in eastern Sierra Leone, the SLB garrison included 61 soldiers, 40 male civilian workers, and 131 women and girls.7 When A Coy of the Sierra Leone Regiment transferred from Freetown to Daru at the end of 1952, it comprised 2 British officers, 100 African soldiers, 78 wives, and 62 children.8 The Gambia Company, in 1929, comprised 142 West African soldiers, 142 wives, and 71 children.9 4 5 6 7 8 9

Further Correspondence respecting Affairs on the Gold Coast, London: Parliament, July 1885, Sir S. Rowe to Colonial Office, London, 16 August 1884, 120. Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 218. Colony of Sierra Leone: Report and Summary of the Census of 1911 (London: Waterlow and Sons, 1912), 21, 34. Sierra Leone: Report of the Census 1931, 72, 159. ORDP, Hyde, Diary First Battalion, Sierra Leone Regiment, 1951–1953. NA (UK) CO 820/7/18, “Transportation of Troops between Sierra Leone and the Gambia,” 1929. While the regular reports of the Gambia Company

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The only period when a large number of women did not live in Britain’s West African barracks was during the massive and temporary military expansion of the Second World War.10 Even then, in early 1940s Kaduna—a military town in Northern Nigeria—army wives expelled from their homes moved to the nearest civilian neighborhood, secretly returning to barracks at night to be with their husbands. While most British officers looked the other way during these nighttime visits, a new commanding officer in Kaduna tried to eliminate them, but he changed his mind once the African sergeant majors warned of dissatisfaction among the troops.11 Of course, officially recognized military wives were not the only women who visited or resided in military cantonments. A surprise nighttime inspection at the Enugu barracks in eastern Nigeria in the 1950s revealed the presence of two hundred unauthorized civilians, including many women authorities labeled as prostitutes.12 Unlike France’s West African soldiers who traveled with their wives during deployments to Morocco and Madagascar in the early twentieth century, Britain’s West African soldiers left their partners behind when they embarked on campaigns in other parts of the region or beyond. During the world wars, however, both British and French colonial African forces left their wives at home when they shipped out to operational theaters.13 There were some exceptions, however, as during the First World War a detachment of Gold Coast soldiers was accompanied by women and children in neighboring German Togoland.14 One particular incident from the conquest era demonstrates the integral nature of women to Britain’s West African army but also the precariousness of their lives. At the end of 1873, in the context of unfolding British operations against the Asante Kingdom, a detachment of Hausa soldiers occupying Cape Coast Castle shipped to Accra, and two days later their wives and children boarded another steamer bound for the same destination. In that early period, colonial authorities considered military families important for the same period say almost nothing about women and children, they were counted as part of transportation plans regarding the defense of the Gambia. 10 Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 187. 11 Carfrae, Chindit Column, 32; ORDP, Leniewski. 12 ORDP, Brian O’Gorman, 18 October 1981. 13 Sarah Zimmerman, “Mesdames Tirailleurs and Indirect Clients: West African Women and the French Colonial Army, 1908–1918,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 299–322. 14 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 229, fn93.

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enough to arrange and pay for their transportation. Described as Hausa and Fante, the military women represented a mixture of people of mostly interior origin like many of the male soldiers of that time but also local people from the coast. Prior to departure, the military wives “violently assaulted” some colonial police who boarded their ship to remove two enslaved women who had deserted their owner, a “principal native lady” of Cape Coast, to follow the colonial troops. A British judge, portraying his view of the life of West African army women, warned the two runaway slaves of becoming the “servants and mistresses of Houssas in a dangerous campaign at the end of which they would probably be caste adrift.”15 A few colonial accounts provide fleeting glimpses into the life experience of military wives in the British West African army. When an RNC expedition returned by riverboat to its base at Lokoja in 1897, “All the wives came down to see their husbands return, and affectionate greetings took place, the former taking charge of their husbands’ superfluous luggage and bundles of loot, as the latter marched up through the town, headed by the drums and pipes.”16 It appears that sharing in the plunder obtained during wars of conquest represented one of the benefits of West African army wives in the late nineteenth century. During the conquest era, some West African military wives often accompanied their soldier-husbands on campaigns. In 1900, Yanoh, wife of Private Doubloon of the Sierra Leone Frontier Police contingent sent to the Gold Coast to help subdue the Asante Rebellion, received a financial grant as compensation for wounds received during operations.17 Observing some GCC soldiers after an early battle of the same war, a British officer wrote, “Occasionally a Haussa woman would force her way through the crowd to bring food and water to her lord and master.”18 Describing the role of military wives in British West Africa, a former British Army chaplain who visited the region in the 1930s wrote, “Few women have more control

15 Report of Judge Marshall to Sir Garnet Wolseley, Cape Coast, 24 December 1873, Royal Commission on Fugitive Slaves: Report of the Commissioners, Minutes of the Evidence and Appendix (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Officer, 1876), 194. 16 Seymour Vandeleur, Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger (London: Methuen, 1898), 296. 17 NA (UK) CO 445/65, “Historical Records of Sierra Leone Battalion,” 26 May 1924. 18 Armitage and Montanaro, Ashanti Campaign, 32.

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over their husbands than these good soldiers’ helpmates. Outwardly, without rights, they are not subservient. They are the traders and diplomats.”19 In British West Africa, military wives served as status symbols for their soldier husbands. Beginning from the early twentieth century, and possibly earlier in some places, official regulations governed incorporation of soldiers’ wives into military establishments. Forbidden to bring women into barracks, newly enlisted recruits lived in communal accommodation, making them much easier to control and to evict if they did not pass their probationary period of around six months. Once fully trained, a soldier could apply to his commanding officer for permission to live with a wife in the unit’s married quarters, which usually consisted of distinct small family dwellings the size of which increased with the occupant’s rank. The number of soldiers approved for married life depended on the availability of suitable accommodation. And eventually, the majority of barracks in British West Africa consisted of married quarters. In some units, married quarters comprised separate small houses of one or two rooms, while in others they formed large blocks of apartments. From the early twentieth century, a prospective army wife was interviewed by the battalion commanding officer and, from at least the 1930s, underwent a medical inspection for sexually transmitted disease. By the 1930s, each formally approved soldier’s wife wore an identity disc bearing her name and her husband’s service number. Reflecting military hierarchy and West African polygyny, privates were limited to one wife, sergeants to two wives, and sergeant majors to three wives though long service and good conduct earned soldiers the right to bring in an additional wife and perhaps live in a larger residence. Many other soldiers’ wives lived outside military establishments such as those rejected or ejected by military authorities or who exceeded their husbands’ limit of wives or who looked after property and/or relatives elsewhere.20 Military wives enjoyed specific benefits. Additional to accommodation and access to their husbands’ salaries and allowances, including while units were away on campaign, widows received gratuity payments due to soldier spouses who died before discharge from the army. In the case of polygynous

19 Rev. P. B. Clayton, “The Royal Waffs,” Times, 18 April 1933. 20 Raphael, Through Unknown Nigeria, 281; ORDP, Major E. S. Hibbard, 15 September 1980, Hibbard served in the Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment in the 1950s; for identity discs see IWM interview, John Alexander Milne, 15 November 1978.

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families, officials divided the gratuity between a deceased soldier’s wives.21 In the late 1930s, Nigeria Regiment authorities encouraged military families to erect privacy screens around their dwellings to boost morale and “assist in attracting a better type of man and woman into the Regiment.”22 Living in the military’s married quarters with distinct dwellings for nuclear families, army wives bought furniture such as beds and decorated their homes with bedspreads and consumer accessories. Soldiers’ wives and children received free medical care at colonial hospitals that developed during the early twentieth century and greatly expanded during the Second World War. In 1950s Nigeria, some British officers’ wives ran antenatal and postnatal clinics for West African soldiers’ wives and children.23 While the colonial military had long provided different kinds of education to West African soldiers and their children, the army set up formal children’s schools in barracks right after the Second World War.24 It remained difficult for wives of new soldiers to support themselves during their husbands’ probationary period when they lacked family privileges. In 1953, a recruit at the Zaria training center in Nigeria who did not yet qualify for marriage allowance wrote to the civilian district officer in Zaria: “My wife has been worrying me for some financial assistance. I cannot meet up the expenses because of my poor salary as I am in training. And in real sense the poor lady is suffering very much from poverty.”25 Records only hint at domestic violence in military families. In one incident in Sierra Leone in 1940, Corporal James Sengah received a “severe reprimand” for “creating a disturbance by beating his wife.”26 Women provided essential logistical services for Britain’s West African army, which generally lacked such infrastructure until the Second World War. In colonial military garrisons, women prepared meals, maintained 21 SLA (Freetown), FF 65/1911, “Recommending the Grant of a Gratuity to the Wife of the Late Private Saidu Bompeh,” 30 August 1911; NNA (Ibadan), CSO 620/1919, “Lance Corporal Itanda Ilorin, Nigeria Regiment,” 14 March 1919. 22 NNA (Kaduna) SNP 26672/S1, “Royal West African Frontier Force: Recruitment,” Colonel Dickinson, Commandant, Nigeria Regiment to Secretary, Northern Provinces, Kaduna, 22 January 1937 23 ORDP H. J. Batholomew, 18 February 1981. 24 PRAAD (Accra), RG 14/4/128, “Children’s Schools—African Soldiers,” 1951–53. 25 NNA (Kaduna), ZARPROF MIL 23, “Soldiers Personnel Affairs,” Adamu Ankwa to District Officer, Zaria, 30 March 1953. 26 SLA (Freetown), no reference system, personnel file of 36013 James Sengah.

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living quarters, and washed clothing, while some women accompanied units on operations in the local area. Observing the Armed Hausa Police Force from Lagos during the 1873–74 Anglo-Asante War, a British newspaper correspondent wrote, “They always have some women with them—about half a dozen to each hundred men—to do their cooking. They look upon it as undignified for soldiers to do their own cooking.”27 This practice continued as in the 1920s WAR in Sierra Leone, “Meals were prepared and cooked by the women attached to the company, either wives or followers. There were no cookhouses or dining rooms.”28 In the Nigeria Regiment of the 1930s, soldiers in garrison received a monetary ration allowance in lieu of the military providing them with food. Using the ration allowance to buy food, soldiers’ wives cooked for their families, including their husbands, and at times single soldiers “became ‘paying guests’ of their married friends.”29 Some military women operated barrack markets where recruits and single soldiers used their allowance to buy prepared meals, and clothing and other items were also available for purchase.30 An officer with the Nigeria Regiment in Enugu during the 1930s recalled, “On the line of march the wives etc. (camp followers) followed at a respectful distance, and when the Battalion stopped for a meal or for the night, they caught up and fed their men and also themselves, also brought up clean clothing etc.”31 Called the “Mammy System,” the same feeding procedure existed within the GCR of the 1920s and 1930s, and units conducting field maneuvers always took along some wives to cook for the troops.32 Around 1940, in the GCR, the transition from wives cooking all meals to soldiers preparing their own food in the field with a view to deploying for overseas service without women proved more difficult than most aspects of training.33 During the interwar era, in the Gambia Company, soldiers’ wives cooked for their husbands, but single soldiers employed “cooking women” mostly from the Jola ethnic group in the south who lived in the barracks but did not usually engage in sex with the men.34At times, units of Britain’s West African army contracted local women 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

“The Houssa Force,” Times, 3 September 1873. ORDP, Chrystal. ORDP, Filmer-Bennett; A. G. Proudlock, 29 September 1980. IWM Milne; ORDP, Davidson-Houston. ORDP, R. E. F. R. Jones. ORDP, Grant; Sir Anthony Read. ORDP, A. J. Smithers, September 1980. ORDP, A. J. Chrystal.

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to provide logistical support. For example, when the Enugu-based battalion of the Nigeria Regiment conducted field training during the 1920s, the unit contracted a group of women referred to as “17 Platoon” to carry water from a river to the soldiers’ camp, but they did not “officially” remain in the camp after this work.35 With the arrival of War Office logistical services in West Africa during the Second World War, soldiers “received African Rations in kind and were no longer looked after by their wives etc. The Rations were cooked in bulk and meals served in companies.”36 After the Second World War, Britain’s West African army returned to the previous system of giving soldiers monetary ration allowances meaning that women living in military garrisons resumed their role as unofficial army cooks and food entrepreneurs.37 That also meant the resumption of barrack markets operated by army wives. A British officer who served in Nigeria during the transition to independence observed that “very many soldiers’ wives were market mammies who set up little stalls along the side of the road selling ground nuts, beetle, Yam etc. In this way they supplemented the family income and indeed in many ways exerted a lot of influence.”38 In Nigeria, during the 1950s, a soldier’s wife called Mammy Maria Ochefu originating from the Idoma area of the Middle Belt, a popular army-recruiting zone, began selling gruel at military markets in Kaduna and Zaria. Gaining the popular name of “Mammy Markets,” allegedly after Mammy Ochefu whose husband later commanded a battalion in the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70) and served as a military governor during the 1970s, these women’s businesses continue to thrive around the military establishments of independent Nigeria.39 During the 1950s, some army wives still accompanied Nigeria Regiment companies during recruiting tours.40 In addition to logistical services, and as discussed in previous chapters, colonial officers considered married soldiers more stable and less likely to misbehave, desert, or mutiny. 35 36 37 38 39

ORDP, J. F. Armstrong, 26 June 1980. ORDP, Jones. ORDP, S. Kent-Payne, 10 November 1980. ORDP, Kent-Payne. “Buhari, Gowon were my Regular Customers When I Started—Ochefu, Mammy Market Founder,” Punch, 28 October 2017, https://punchng.com/ buhari-gowon-were-my-regular-customers-when-i-started-ochefu-mammymarket-founder/. Mrs. Ochefu believes she founded Mammy Markets, but evidence indicates such businesses existed before she was born. 40 ORDP, J. D. C. Lyon-Maris.

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To supervise and control military women, Britain’s West African army drew on an established regional institution. In the Muslim quarters of some West African towns, women elected a particularly morally upright and industrious woman to lead them calling her a magajia or “women’s leader” in Hausa.41 The exact origins of this position within British West African colonial forces remain unclear, but it is likely that it emerged organically among the primarily Muslim paramilitary units of the late nineteenth century, such as the Armed Hausa Police Force in Lagos. By the early twentieth century, the magajia existed as a formal position with a small salary within Britain’s West African army. Within WAFF regiments, the soldiers’ wives in each company elected one of their own to become the “head woman” or magajia. Though the head woman was usually a mature person, her husband’s rank did not usually matter, with many magajias married to junior NCOs and sometimes privates. The magajia imposed discipline on military women who committed offenses or caused disturbances, and for serious cases she convened a “women’s court” of other soldiers’ wives to conduct a trial of the accused. The head woman brought repeat offenders or a woman who had committed a grave offense before the battalion commanding officer who possessed the authority to expel a woman from barracks and revoke her official “camp follower” status.42 In the 1930s, a former British Army chaplain compared the magajia to a British literary character representing a zealous pursuit of conventional standards of behavior: “She is the Regimental Mrs. Grundy: she is a chaperon, a business woman, a vaccine enthusiast, a matrimonial agent, a She-dragon of Mohamedan propriety. For all this she receives 4s a month.”43 More simply, a British sergeant major with the Nigeria Regiment during the 1930s described magajias as “motherly souls.”44 In the Gambia Company, the position of “head woman” existed, although not called “magajia.”45 In the early 1950s, the head woman of the Gambia Company was the senior 41 F. C. Fayorsey and K. R. Amolo, “Empowering Queen Mothers and Magajias in the Fight against HIV/AIDS,” CEDPA/Ghana, 2003, 3, https://pdf.usaid. gov/pdf_docs/Pnact917.pdf; for the meaning of Magajia see Justus Adim Nzemeka, “Wives of Military Personnel in Nigerian Barracks, 1905–1999” (PhD diss., University of Lagos, 2015), 164. 42 NA (UK) CO 445/51, “Regimental Standing Orders: Jurisdiction of Native Courts over Camp Followers,” 25 October 1920; IWM Milne; ORDP, R. J. Bartholomew, 10 February 1981; Davidson-Houston; Filmer-Bennett; Read. 43 Rev. P. B. Clayton, “The Royal Waffs,” Times, 18 April 1933. 44 IWM Milne. 45 ORDP, Chrystal.

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wife of Company Sergeant Major Ousman Jobe’s two wives. She wore a uniform and red sash similar to her husband and was “responsible for discipline among the wives in the married quarters.”46 In Britain’s West African army, the magajia’s responsibilities included the cleanliness of married quarters, supervision of the military wives’ market, defusing family squabbles, assisting the commanding officer in vetting prospective army wives who wanted to live in barracks, and dealing with any problems related to women. Serving as an intermediary between the military wives and British authorities, the magajia participated in regular commanding officers’ inspections of the unit’s married residences. During ceremonial occasions, an army head woman wore a paramilitary uniform consisting of a khaki tunic over a civilian dress and sometimes a military hat, and in the fashion of sergeant majors, a sash and occasionally a pace stick.47 Reflecting some regional and regimental variations, magajias in Northern Nigeria greeted officers with a feminine curtsy while those in southern Nigeria saluted like male soldiers.48 As it does in wider postcolonial West African civilian society, the position of magajia continues to exist in the militaries of independent Ghana and Nigeria where she represents the wives of enlisted personnel, serving as a spokesperson to high authorities.49 Britain’s colonial forces in East Africa also employed similar sash-wearing head women but the institution was slightly less democratic, as they were always wives of sergeant majors and carried whips to beat other army women who deviated from expected standards of behavior.50 The centrality of women to military life in West Africa, including their important roles in logistical support and maintaining morale, meant that British officers sometimes went to great lengths to track down runaway soldiers’ wives and reconcile estranged army couples. In addition, West African soldiers and British officers shared a belief that the former’s military service created an obligation for the army and colonial state to help them sort out their marital problems. West African archives contain many examples. In 1925 Private Peter Owerri of Third Battalion Nigeria Regiment at Calabar assaulted his wife Christianna Nwayiamadi, who sought refuge with her 46 ORDP, G. Allt, 9 July 1980. 47 IWM Milne; ORDP, Brian O’Gorman, 18 October 1981; ODRP Hibbard; ORDP H. J. Batholomew, 18 February 1981; ORDP, W. R. A. Catcheside. 48 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 316–17. 49 “Ghana; The Powerful Magajia,” 11 June 2001, https://allafrica.com/ stories/200106100002.html. 50 Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 153.

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brother, chief of a nearby community. Through the brother, military and civilian authorities arranged for Christianna to return to Peter once the latter had sent her five pounds for travel and medical expenses.51 Military and civilian authorities also became involved in marriage disputes involving issues around soldiers’ payment of traditional bride price or dowry. Around 1911, in Calabar, Nigeria Regiment soldier Belo Ibadan began living with a woman called Alimotu who originated from Lagos and was “given to him for marriage by her elder brother.” The marriage was formalized around 1915 with a Muslim ceremony and the alleged payment of an £11 dowry to the bride’s family. When Belo Ibadan left the army in 1919, after sixteen years service, the relationship deteriorated and Alimotu “fell in love” with Police Sergeant Agbei Ifon, who already had two wives. A confrontation between the two men led to Belo Ibadan’s brief detention in police cells and the departure of Alimotu, who went to live with Sergeant Ifon in the town of Opobo. Former soldier Belo Ibadan, emphasizing his years of military service, appealed to colonial officials to make Sergeant Ifon return his wife or refund his dowry. However, Alimotu insisted no dowry existed, therefore rendering legal action impossible.52 In 1930, at Okigwi in southeast Nigeria, a woman named Janie left her husband, ex-Corporal Salu Ikari, to live with serving Private Isa Katsina. The dispute ended up before civilian colonial authorities who ordered Private Katsina to pay ex-Corporal Ikari £11 compensation for the dowry the latter had paid to Janie’s family. Although Private Katsina agreed to a payment scheme, his relationship with Janie quickly deteriorated with the woman handed back to ex-Corporal Ikari in the presence of colonial officials. Ex-Corporal Ikari then returned a payment made by Private Katsina.53 In 1953 Sergeant Malashangev of the Nigeria recruit training center at Zaria went on leave in Makurdi in the Middle Belt where he married a woman called M’guna Nengi paying £26 as bride price to her father. Subsequently, after the couple returned to Zaria, another man claiming to be

51 NNA (Enugu), OWDIST 9/11/39, West African Frontier Force, 1939, District Officer Oweri to Officer Commanding, HQ Wing, Third Nigeria Regiment, Calabar, 4 August 1925. 52 NNA (Enugu), CALPROF 5/11/443, “Discharged Soldier Belo Ibadan,” Belo Ibadan to Resident, Calabar, 15 June 1921. 53 NNA (Enugu), ABADIST 13/14/54, WAFF, District Officer Owo Division to Office Commanding, HQ Wing, Third Battalion, Nigeria Regiment, Calabar, 2 June 1931.

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M’guna Nengi’s biological father demanded payment of dowry or return of his daughter.54 Military wives became a distinct class in many West African communities. Civilians viewed soldiers’ wives as strangers, as they often, though not always, originated from their husbands’ home areas and ethnic groups and not their garrison’s host community. Many army wives came from remote and impoverished recruiting areas and must have felt and seemed out of place in the large towns where many cantonments were located. The role of colonial soldiers in maintaining internal security and suppressing protest almost certainly contributed to this alienation. In the late 1890s, Old Calabar’s “Soldier Town” represented an ethnically distinct neighborhood of mostly Yoruba people from western Nigeria living in a southeastern Nigerian port. The home of the Niger Coast Protectorate Force’s married soldiers and their families, “Soldier Town” served as a base for military wives who made money by engaging in trade with the local community.55 As strangers and spouses’ of salaried colonial employees, army wives often had to pay higher prices in local markets, and this led to hostility. In colonial Nigeria, military “camp followers” including soldiers’ wives were exempt from facing charges before a “native court” convened by traditional leaders appearing instead before “civil courts” presided over by European officials.56 Nigerian military wives valued this privilege, but not all British civilian colonial officials recognized it. In November 1918, in Ankpa in central Nigeria, food scarcity and accusations of civilians overcharging soldiers’ wives led to repeated disturbances at a market. Native authority police intervened and arrested a particularly vocal military wife called Gombo, charging her with breaking public property for accidently knocking over a market fence during the tussle. The police took the woman to an acting British district officer who directed them to the area’s native court. Some other soldiers’ wives then intercepted the native police, escorting Gombo to the native authority, yelling at them that military women could not be tried by a “blackman’s court.” A few more police arrived and drove off the army women. Hearing a rumor of Gombo dragged naked through the streets by the native police, five soldiers rushed to the native court where they assaulted the police and court officials. In the subsequent 54 NNA (Kaduna), MAKPROF 280 vol. 2, RWAFF, Captain I. M. Aylwin to District Officer Makurdi, Zaria, 15 September 1956. 55 Alan Boisragon, The Benin Massacre (London: Methuen, 1897), 39. 56 NA (UK) CO 445/51, “Regimental Standing Orders: Jurisdiction of Native Courts over Camp Followers,” 25 October 1920.

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civil trial of the soldiers, another British district officer rejected a letter from their Nigeria Regiment company commander citing the regulation exempting “camp followers” including military wives from native courts. Given contradictory evidence about the series of brawls, the court convicted just one soldier of assault, sentencing him to four months imprisonment, which was considered excessive by military authorities. The native court released Gombo, as she had been so “roughly treated” by the native police that she needed assistance to walk.57 Gombo, the other soldiers’ wives, and their husbands clearly saw themselves as separate from the indirect rule customary legal system experienced by most ordinary Nigerians.

The Second World War The military expansion of the Second World War brought many more women into association with Britain’s West African army. But at the same time, the fact that they did not live in barracks meant that it became difficult for them to claim benefits. The vast majority of West African soldiers’ wives of the first half of the 1940s never saw the inside of a barracks and did not experience integration into the community of army women with its rules, support structures, markets, and magajias. As such, they were less involved with the army as an institution and very likely did not form the same type of tight group as previous generations of military wives. Wives of troops away in other parts of West Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia received marriage allowance and a portion of their husbands’ salaries, called an allotment, from the colonial administration. However, wives who became sick or otherwise delayed and who could not report to their district commissioner to claim the money went without any financial assistance from the military. In some cases, British colonial army wives originally from neighboring French territory returned home to visit or stay with their relatives and could not claim the money from British authorities on the other side of the border. Returned soldiers encountered administrative delays in claiming unpaid allowances and allotments meant for their wives though at times they were successful.58 Many soldiers’ wives lost or never received their allotment 57 NNA (Kaduna), CSO 166/1918, “Soldiers: 2nd Battalion NR: Conviction in Civil Court,” December 1918. 58 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/4/71, “GC 61731, Henry R. Boye Ai’Kins—Petition for Refund of Unpaid Allotment to his Wife,” 1 October

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cards. Colonial officials experienced great trouble locating many military wives for whom they possessed uncollected cards, and nonliterate soldiers struggled to identify accurate addresses for their wives. To discourage fraud, officials issued fresh cards with new numbers every year, and replacement cards were only given out after an audit to determine if the lost card was in use.59 Eventually, though too late for many, West Africa Command (WAC) began directly paying soldiers’ dependents, dispatching paymasters in trucks to various communities and announcing information about allotments over radio programs.60 Living outside British West Africa’s military garrisons, Second World War–era wives lacked the support structure of other army spouses and the military as an institution. West African archives contain numerous official petitions and complaints from Second World War–era soldiers serving overseas and their wives back home attesting to the difficulties of a long-distance marriage. As historian Oliver Coates reveals, such petitions from Ijebu in western Nigeria show that difficulties over money were not the only problems encountered by military wives who lacked emotional support and protection from sexual violence by their in-laws and others. As a result, many wartime wives in West Africa felt abandoned and sought new partners.61 Letters from soldiers and their families from across Nigeria reflect the same themes and more than a few tragic stories. In the Northern Nigerian city of Kano, a woman called Uwa passed away from fever around 1944 or 1945 when her husband Private Musa Kano was serving in South Asia leaving their two young children, ages two and six, without a caregiver. Since the late Uwa could no longer collect the military allotment she was using to provide for her offspring and her absent husband did not have any relatives, local traditional authorities cared for the orphans until Private Kano’s return.62 At the

59 60 61

62

1946; CSO 22/4/172, “GC27638, Ex-Pte. J. F. Ali—Petition for Payment of Arrears of Allotment Due to His Wife,” 23 January 1947. NNA (Enugu), AHODIST 14/1/203, West African Frontier Force, Command Paymaster, Lagos to District Officer, Ahoada, 27 March 1941. “How Your Wives Get Paid,” RWAFF News, 11 July 1945. Oliver Coates, “‘The War, Like the Wicked Wand of a Wizard, Strikes Me and Carry Away All That I Have Loved:’ Soldiers’ Family Lives and Petition Writing in Ijebu, Southwest Nigeria, 1943–45,” History in Africa 45 (2018): 1–27. NNA (Kaduna) KANOPROF 5822, “Troops: Matters Relating to Welfare and Wellbeing,” Camp Commandant, 5 West Africa Infantry Brigade to Welfare Officer, Calcutta, 3 May 1945.

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end of 1943, Queenie Jimoh wrote to her soldier husband in India, Private Jimoh, telling him that his father had passed away and that the father’s relatives had taken possession of his parents’ house in Lagos, evicting his mother. Writing from Asia, Private Jimoh reminded colonial officials that he had volunteered and not been conscripted for the army in 1940 and pleaded with them to protect his mother and wife.63 In some instances, and reflecting the experience of Second World War–era personnel in many places, West African soldiers stationed abroad received news from home that their wives had left them for new husbands, and a few troops repatriated to find wives impregnated by other men. These cases led to many disputes, mediated by colonial officials, involving the return of dowry funds to jilted soldiers. In 1942, a young woman from southeastern Nigeria engaged to marry a soldier, but when she moved north to Kaduna to be close to him, she discovered he had contracted a sexually transmitted disease, and he physically abused her. Fellow southeasterners living in Kaduna assisted the young woman to return home where she agreed to marry a civilian, leading to a confusing quarrel over dowry payments.64 In 1944 Bintu Agbeke Davies of Lagos wrote an apologetic letter to her husband in India, Corporal S. A. Davies, admitting, “I have conceived for another man through mistake, and I am regretting of the same.” Bintu’s mother drove her out of her house, and an angry Corporal Davies, who had arranged for allotment payments to his wives and children and sent them extra money, petitioned colonial officials to arrest Bintu and the man who had impregnated her.65 The system of allowances and allotments remained open to abuse and fraud. Colonial officials were supposed to pay these funds to women, but it was easy to impersonate a soldier’s wife and the role of male relatives as intermediaries complicated the situation. Rumors circulated among West African troops in India and Burma that African clerks back home denied allotment cards to their wives and then corruptly issues the cards to their own spouses 63 NNA (Ibadan) COMCOL 2338, “Communication of Soldiers Nigeria Regiment,” Private Jimoh, India Command to Commissioner of the Colony, Lagos, 26 January 1944. 64 NNA (Enugu) OWDIST 10/1/536/540, “Complaints from Soldiers,” for the unnamed woman who moved to Kaduna see District Officer Owerri to India Command, 27 June 1944. 65 NNA (Ibadan) COMCOL 2338, “Communication of Soldiers Nigeria Regiment,” Bintu Agbeke Davies, Lagos to Corporal Davies, India Command, 18 February 1944; Corporal S. A. Davies, India Command to Commissioner of Colony, Lagos, 15 March 1944. Emphasis in original.

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who collected the money and destroyed the cards if suspected of fraud.66 These fears proved correct. In August 1943, just before his deployment to Nigeria and then Burma, GCR Private Samuel Otinqulah Annan arranged for his wife Chochoe Maku to receive marriage allowance and salary allotment while he was away. Since Private Annan was undergoing training at the army clerk school in Agogo in the Asante area, and his wife lived in Accra on the coast, he mailed her the allotment card needed to claim the money, sending it to a local native court for collection by his uncle who was head of the family. However, Kofi Provencal, an official of the native court, intercepted the letter, sent Private Annan a bogus telegram, whereby his uncle seemed to confirm receipt of the document and fraudulently used the card to draw Chochoe Maku’s payments until April 1945. Although a veteran’s organization called the Gold Coast Legion helped the demobilized Private Annan win a civil suit against Mr. Provencal in late 1946, the latter failed to return the money, and the police and colonial government refused the former soldier’s pleas for assistance.67 With their husbands away in Burma, some military wives married civilian men but continued to claim the army marriage allowances and salary allotments from the first spouse. After two years in Burma, demobilized Private Nicolas Obeng returned home to the Gold Coast in 1946 to discover that Afua Akonnobea, his wife and mother of his three children, had left him for another man but still collected his entire salary using the money to open a trading business. He unsuccessfully sued his former wife.68 A similar situation happened in Gboko in Nigeria’s Benue area where a corporal returned home in January 1946 to find that his wife had run off with £256 he had sent home, sold his belongings, and burned his books and certificates.69 Returned soldiers launched numerous complaints with officials over the wrong person having collected their allotments, and West African

66 “Soldier in South East Asia Command Says Allotment System Needs Reviewing,” West African Pilot, 15 March 1945. 67 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/4/175, “Ex.GC 63550 Private S. O. Annan, Gold Coast Regiment, Claim for Refund of His Wife’s Allotment Fraudulently Obtained by Mr. Kofi Provencal,” 1946–47. 68 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/4/174, “GC 62076 Pte N. Obeng— Assistance Required to Recover Part of Allotment Drawn by His Wife,” Nicolas Obeng to Governor, Asamankese, 22 January 1947. 69 “Wife Robs Soldier of £256,” Southern Nigeria Defender, 18 February 1946.

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newspapers predicted trouble over the issue.70 Disputes over wives’ allotments occasionally led to violence. In 1947, in northeastern Nigeria, former soldier Hassan Bagermi used a spear to kill two men and injure another in a dispute over his wife’s allotment.71 A 1946 report on reenlistment of veterans in Northern Nigeria concluded, “There is no doubt that the marriage allowance has been greatly abused, and some District Officers put the figure as high as 50%.”72 During the Second World War, West African soldiers serving outside their home territories sometimes married women who then returned home with them. In other countries, these women were called “war brides.”73 British military authorities discouraged West African soldiers from marrying women in India, but a few marriages took place, compelling colonial governments to pay for the travel of soldiers’ wives and children from South Asia to parts of West Africa. According to colonial documents, the only Gold Coast soldier to marry an Indian woman was Private Amedegisa Hukpoti, who returned home with his wife and their six-month-old daughter. It appears that some Nigerian troops such as Lance Corporal Clement Boyd also took Indian brides, but they faced criticism from friends and family at home. It was much more common for West African soldiers to marry when posted to other parts of West Africa where they encountered few restrictions from authorities. Soldiers from the Gold Coast married women in the Gambia, soldiers from Nigeria married women in the Gold Coast, and so on. Military regulations stipulated that on demobilization, authorities had to arrange the transportation of a soldier’s dependents to the British territory where the soldier had enlisted. In some cases, soldiers deferred their postwar discharge to ensure that the army paid for the travel of their wives and children from one part of British West Africa to another. The situation became complicated when these soldiers originated from outside British colonies. The many soldiers originating from French West Africa who married women in British territories demobilized, together with their families, at the closest location to 70 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 219. Other colonial forces experienced similar problems including Germany’s East African Schutztruppe, see Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 155. 71 “Alleged Murder at Yerwa,” Nigeria Review, 12 April 1947. 72 ORDP, Bonser, “Re-enlistment Drive,” 20 November 1946, Major T. W. Bonser, Kaduna, Nigeria. 73 Miki Ward Crawford, Katie Kaori Hayashi and Shizuko Suenaga, Japanese War Brides in America: An Oral History (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010).

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the border of their original French colony. Liberians also became involved. A Liberian man called Sunday Wiah enlisted in the British military in the Gold Coast in 1939 and served in East Africa with a light artillery battery. In 1943 Wiah’s unit arrived in Lagos, Nigeria, where he married a Liberian woman called Takwi Sonor living in that city. With demobilization in 1946, the military transported the Liberian couple and their child from Nigeria to the Gold Coast, expecting them to make their own way home to Liberia.74

British Women in the West African Army A few British women also inhabited the military establishments of colonial West Africa. In the late 1890s, Lugard’s original WAFF in Nigeria included three nursing sisters among its medical staff, but after they returned home, there would be no more female military personnel in British West Africa until more British nurses arrived during the Second World War.75 Perhaps given the special status of their regiment as falling under War Office jurisdiction, some WAR officers brought their wives to Sierra Leone at the start of the twentieth century, but they usually stayed for just one season. Although no specific regulation forbade WAFF officers’ wives from accompanying their husbands to West Africa, the formation maintained a ban on wives of British personnel until after the First World War.76 European missionary families had lived in West Africa for a long time, but WAFF authorities considered the region environmentally unsuitable for British women and children. As a result, and in the context of colonial racial sexual taboos, British male officers sometimes entered into semisecretive sexual relationships with West African women.77 Less influenced by the colonial context, the few hundred Polish officers who served in West Africa during the Second World War showed less inhibition in this regard.78 74 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/4/278, Repatriation of Wives of African Other Ranks, 1944–48, 30 January 1948; For the Nigerians see “Indian Wife for Nigerian Soldier,” West African Pilot, 13 November 1945. 75 NA (UK) CO 445/9, “Medical Report: WAFF, January 1898–March 1899,” 12 October 1899. 76 NA (UK) CO 445/37, “WAFF: Sierra Leone: Wives of Officers,” 23 November 1916; ORDP, Chrystal. 77 Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 157. 78 Healy, Polish White Infusion, 288.

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The arrival of a significant number of British officers’ wives occurred during the interwar period when the West African army centralized in larger cantonments with better accommodation, and internal security operations became less frequent. During the 1920s, some of the very few senior officers based at battalion or regimental headquarters brought their wives to West Africa. However, these women did not stay for their husband’s full tour, and some returned home for health reasons and played no role in garrison life.79 In the late 1920s, some British officers refused to undertake a second tour of duty in West Africa unless they could take their wives along, but authorities queried the expense of extending the privilege to junior officers and worried that it would reduce their mobility. Nevertheless, officials concluded that “the presence of a wife tends to keep an officer in good health and also to raise the standard of living in a station.”80 By around 1930, British officers conducting second tours in the region and British NCOs could bring their wives to West Africa, though they did not accompany their husbands in the field. This development led to the construction of more married quarters for British personnel, which in the opinion of some officers “detracted .  .  . from the pleasant mess life which had previously existed.”81 Whereas almost all British officers had once lived in the regimental mess engaging in sports and drinking sessions that promoted group identity, some now pursued a separate domesticated lifestyle. Since most British Army officers in West Africa were young and unmarried, the number of British military wives in the region remained small. During the 1930s, an officer’s wife lived in West Africa for about half of their husband’s eighteen-month attachment and “after a very short time in Nigeria usually looked awful—increasingly sallow and unkempt. They would have nothing to do with the native hair dressers.”82 Without children—who remained banned and stayed at boarding schools in Britain—and with the assistance of local domestic servants, British military wives in West Africa enjoyed a leisurely lifestyle, playing golf and tennis (and occasionally polo), riding horses, attending officers’ dinner parties and dances, taking drinks at European-only clubs, and accompanying their husbands on hunting trips in rural areas. Indeed, they lived 79 ORDP, Colonel J. F. Armstrong, June 1980. Armstrong served in the Nigeria Regiment in the 1920s. 80 NA (UK) CO 445/68, “WAFF: Nigeria: Officers’ Wives,” 22 April 1926. 81 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 316; See also Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 172. 82 ORDP, Brigadier R. M. Allen, 14 October 1980.

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in something of a closed military and colonial world, interacting minimally with West African civilians. With the start of the Second World War, and the temporary disbanding of military family life in the region, British military wives departed West Africa for Britain or sometimes South Africa. In 1940 a small number of adventurous British women followed their RWAFF husbands to Kenya during the East African campaign but remained there afterward or went to Britain or India.83 In the postwar years of the late 1940s and 1950s, more British military wives, along with their children, arrived in West Africa, though they often had to wait a few months for married quarters to become available. The postwar British military wives usually stayed in the region for most of their husband’s tour, supported by new military hospitals, schools, shops, and clubs. In addition to their still-busy social and sporting schedule—but reflecting changing social views around gender in Britain—some British military wives of the 1950s gained employment with the colonial civil administration or businesses or volunteered in hospitals or churches.84 Generational divides emerged among the officers’ wives, with one expressing surprise “at the attitude of the more senior officers’ wives to the Nigerians. It seemed to me to be one of impatience and superiority.”85

Conclusion Britain’s West African colonial army comprised a large number of women rarely mentioned in historical records. Lacking formal logistical services for most of their history, West African regiments relied on soldiers’ wives to prepare food, clean uniforms, and maintain barracks. Furthermore, authorities usually considered women a stabilizing influence on West African soldiers, reducing instances of desertion and mutiny. West African soldiers’ wives living in colonial army barracks adhered to military discipline supervised by a network of head women who reported to British officers. Diverging from the antimarriage Victorian-era British Army, formations like the WAFF and 83 ORDP, Lieutenant Colonel F. H. G. Higgins, 28 October 1980; Lieutenant Colonel T. B. Gibbons, 22 September 1980; F. H. Jaekel; Ennals; Filmer-Bennett. 84 ORDP, Brigadier H. J. Bartholomew, 10 February 1981; Major E. S. Hibbard, 15 September 1980. 85 ODRP, Colonel J. K. Chater, quote from Mrs. Anne Chater, c. 1980.

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WAR developed promarriage policies with most established soldiers taking a wife and living in distinct married accommodation. In addition to their military support role, many military wives displayed an entrepreneurial spirit using part of their husbands’ salaries to launch trading businesses and open food stalls. In the colonial era, West African military wives developed their own group identity, as local communities surrounding the barracks usually considered them strangers, and at times this led to tension and violence. The experience of these military wives during the Second World War was very different from those before or after. While the massive scale of the Second World War army and the introduction of organized logistical systems led to the temporary expulsion of military wives from barracks, colonial authorities went to great lengths to support soldiers’ wives and maintain their marriages, although at times the system broke down. Wartime activities also led to greater diversity among West African soldiers’ wives, some of whom originated from different colonial territories than their husbands. With demobilization in the late 1940s, Britain’s downsized West African force resumed its formal promarriage attitude, and soldiers’ wives and children returned to military cantonments.

Chapter Eight

Flogging British colonial forces in Africa and other parts of the world relied on violent punishment or more commonly the threat of violent punishment to maintain discipline among the rank-and-file.1 Racism informed this practice as during the early nineteenth century, when flogging applied as a punishment to all British troops and could mean hundreds of lashes, the black soldiers of the WIR were more likely to be beaten and beaten more severely than their white colleagues.2 Britain established its locally recruited West African paramilitary forces during the late nineteenth century around the same time that the metropolitan British Army outlawed official corporal punishment. Nevertheless, Britain’s African forces continued to use flogging as a disciplinary instrument among African soldiers until the Second World War. The existence of corporal punishment within military law in British Africa reflected white officers’ racist attitudes towards African troops but also the existence of flogging within the broader legal frameworks in these colonies. Within the system of indirect rule, Britain administered most of its African territories through a network of African traditional leaders governing by local customary law that often included options to inflict corporal punishment on offenders.3 During the first half of the twentieth century, one of 1

Douglas Peers, “Sepoys, Soldiers and the Lash: Race, Caste and Army Discipline in India, 1820–50,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 23, no. 2 (1995): 211–47; David Killingray, “The ‘Rod of Empire:’ The Debate over Corporal Punishment in the British Colonial Forces, 1888– 1946,” Journal of African History 35, no. 1 (1994): 201–16; Radhika Singa, “The ‘Rare Infliction’: The Abolition of Flogging in the Indian Army, circa 1835–1920,” Law and History Review 34, no. 3 (August 2016): 783–818. 2 Lockley, Military Medicine, 74–76. 3 For instance, see Steven Pierce, “Punishment and the Political Body: Flogging and Colonialism in Northern Nigeria,” Interventions: International Journal of Post-colonial Studies 3, no. 2 (2001): 206–21.

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the main differences between the experience of British metropolitan and West African soldiers was that many of the latter experienced or witnessed formal flogging. In Britain’s colonial African army, flogging represented one of the most serious among a number of punishments including imprisonment, fines, demotion, and dismissal available for authorities to impose on African soldiers convicted of violating aspects of military law. Most soldiers charged with offenses appeared before their commanding officer, who possessed the authority to deal summarily with a range of offenses but those accused of the most serious crimes faced trial by court-martial, presided over by a panel of officers with greater powers of punishment. Flogging represented both a legal punishment and an element of military culture performed as a ritual, whereby an African NCO using a hide whip or cane inflicted an assigned number of lashes on an offending soldier who had to lie on the ground before his entire unit. It represented a form of humiliation and deterrence. Reinforcing the racial hierarchy of these colonial units, white officers determined and observed punishment but remained aloof from its violent implementation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British commanders of African colonial battalions or other delegated officers possessed the authority to unilaterally sentence African soldiers to flogging for a series of offenses. Such powers were limited, however, as in 1888 when British authorities recalled an officer of the GCC for inflicting an excessive seventy-two lashes on one soldier. While British Army officers seconded to West African units argued for the use of physical punishment to restrain West African troops who they saw as uncivilized and unhindered by other punishments like detention, British colonial officials constantly worked to reduce the severity of military flogging and were worried that it would incite African protest. The ambiguity of trying to civilize Africans through patently uncivilized flogging was not lost on British officers and officials. During the late nineteenth century, different British territorial administrations and military commanders in Africa established varying policies regulating the number of lashes imposed for offenses. In the 1890s, with Britain’s West African paramilitaries operating under separate rules, British officers in the Gold Coast and the Niger Coast Protectorate became limited to inflicting a maximum of thirty-six lashes on an African soldier appearing before a military court. Within several years, and after considerable bureaucratic debate, twenty-four strokes became the maximum sentence of corporal punishment for units of the regional WAFF, and this number remained the standard for the next five

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decades.4 Britain was not the only colonial power to employ flogging as a formal disciplinary measure among African soldiers as, for instance, the practice became common in German territories up to and during the First World War, and in Cameroon it included the flogging of soldiers’ wives.5 At the start of the twentieth century, each of Britain’s West African regiments practiced different cultures of flogging despite the creation of the common WAFF military structure. The most extensive military flogging took place in Northern Nigeria, where the British had recently defeated the Sokoto Caliphate and continued to subdue Islamist resistance. A 1905 report highlighted a deterioration of discipline within the NNR with “a considerable number of offences and .  .  . a good deal of serious crime” while flogging was “excessive and increasing.” In addition, the WAFF inspector general considered that a new type of whip “cannot but act as a deterrent to service in the N. Nigeria Regt.”6 In 1904 the NNR conducted 495 floggings. Colonial authorities in northern Nigeria explained the prevalence of corporal punishment in terms of the region’s recent military occupation and ongoing operations. Relevant factors included the NNR’s many small military outposts commanded by young and rash officers, the impracticality of sentencing soldiers to prison when they were constantly on patrol, and lack of food at garrisons in Zaria and Bauchi, which led to disciplinary problems. After the WAFF inspector general expressed disapproval of this violent disciplinary culture, the number of floggings in the NNR dropped to 239 in 1905 with most of these occurring at small outposts and among the Mounted Infantry Battalion that served as a quick reaction force.7 Surviving monthly reports from the NNR for 1905 show flogging represented a routine disciplinary measure almost as common as other serious punishments like imprisonment

4

Killingray, “Rod of Empire,” 201–16; UK (NA) CO 445/26, “WAFF: Corporal Punishment,” 10 June 1907; NA (UK) FO 881/6467, Niger Coast Protectorate, Constabulary Ordinance, 1894. 5 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 108–110; Njung, “Soldiers of Their Own,” 58, 62–63. 6 UK (NA) CO 445/19, “Report on NNR,” 20 February 1905. 7 UK (NA) CO 445/26, “WAFF: Corporal Punishment,” 10 June 1907; NA (UK) CO 445/25, “Report on Northern Nigeria Regiment,” 16 February 1907; for famine and flogging see Report on Northern Nigeria for 1904 (London: Stationery Office, 1905), 121.

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or fines.8 Broadly, however, this practice was not out of place in northern Nigeria where, in 1906, British provincial courts administered 201 floggings comprising a total of 3,230 lashes and local emirs continued to impose corporal punishment through customary law.9 Although not mentioned in military documents, it is possible that the extensive use of flogging in the precolonial Sokoto Caliphate of Northern Nigeria, a practice that carried over into colonial customary law, informed corporal punishment in the area’s colonial regiment immediately after the conquest.10 The colonial military culture of flogging appeared slightly less aggressive in early twentieth-century southern Nigeria. When the WAFF took over the Lagos Battalion, the oldest existing British colonial unit in West Africa at the time, the inspector general considered its disciplinary system too lenient and encouraged the governor to reverse a local policy forbidding the commanding officer to sentence a soldier to both flogging and imprisonment.11 In 1905 a report on the Calabar-based SNR stated that “discipline is good. Corporal punishment is seldom resorted to.”12 Nevertheless, this unit conducted 106 floggings in 1904 and 98 the next year, and its amalgamation with the Lagos Battalion resulted in an increase to 142 cases in 1906.13 Although it performed far fewer official floggings than its sister regiment north of the Niger River, the SNR similarly conducted numerous conquest and punitive operations in southeastern Nigeria in this period. There is no firsthand account of a West African soldier who experienced flogging, but it is worth noting that ritualized corporal punishment did not always alienate troops from the military. For example, in 1905 Private Basua of the SNR received twenty-four lashes for striking an NCO after which he reenlisted three times, attained promotion to sergeant, served in the Cameroon

8 9 10 11 12 13

NNA (Kaduna), SNP 955/1905, Monthly Reports of the NR Regiment, 1905. NNA (Kaduna), SNP 160/1907, “Floggings,” 1 November 1907; Pierce, “Punishment and the Political Body,” 206–21. For flogging in precolonial Sokoto see Mohammed Bashir Salau, Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate: A Historical and Comparative Study (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2018), 83 and 95. NA (UK) CO 445/14, “Report on Lagos Battalion,” 12 January 1903; NA (UK) CO 445/23, “Report on Lagos Battalion,” 22 December 1905. UK (NA) CO 445/20, “Report on SNR,” 5 December 1905. UK (NA) CO 445/26, “WAFF: Corporal Punishment,” 10 June 1907.

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campaign of the First World War, and then applied for permission to remain in the service beyond eighteen years.14 Compared to those in Nigeria, British colonial regiments in the rest of West Africa exercised much greater restraint with corporal punishment. The GCR reported eighteen cases of flogging in 1906 and ten in 1907, affecting a tiny portion of the unit’s fifteen hundred troops.15 Up the West African coast, flogging appeared even less popular among British officers serving in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. By 1907 the SLB, despite its many remote garrisons and its 1905 suppression of a rebellion among the Kissi people, had not sentenced a soldier to flogging “for many years” and officers observed that this bolstered their troops’ status within colonial society.16 In the same period, the Gambia Company, despite (or perhaps because of ) a mutiny when the small unit formed in 1901–2, had never flogged a soldier, although several of its “boys” received canings.17 Notwithstanding these low instances of military flogging, corporal punishment represented an element of wider colonial law within these territories.18 While a lack of records makes it difficult to determine the extent of corporal punishment carried out in the WAR, comprising part of the imperial garrison of Freetown, excessive flogging contributed to a 1901 mutiny among its troops in the Gold Coast. Nevertheless, the fact that the mutineers flogged some of their fellows who did not maintain military standards of behavior and cleanliness during the mutiny shows how ingrained the practice had become.19 In 1907 the British government instructed governors in West Africa to amend local laws to abolish the routine use of corporal punishment in West 14 NNA (Ibadan) CSO 2055/1919, “Sergeant Basua, Nigeria Regiment,” 20 July 1919. 15 UK (NA) CO 445/22, “Report on 1st Battalion GCR,” 9 March 1906; CO 445/24, “Report on the Gold Coast Regiment,” 15 May 1907. 16 UK (NA) CO 445/27, “Report on SLB,” 18 April 1908. 17 UK (NA) CO 445/17, “Report on the Gambia Company,” 12 June 1904; CO 445/27, “Report on the Gambia Company,” 3 January 1908. The issue of corporal punishment is absent in reports on the Gambia Company; UK (NA) CO 445/26, “WAFF: Corporal Punishment,” 10 June 1907. 18 Ordinances of the Gold Coast, Ashanti and Northern Territories, 1919, 59; The Laws of the Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone (London: Government Printer, 1946), 610–13; A Revised Edition of the Ordinances of the Colony of the Gambia (London: Government Printer, 1926), 194. 19 Killingray, “Rod of Empire,” 208, Killingray, “Mutiny of the West African Regiment,” 441–55, for quote see 447.

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African military units during peacetime. Commanding officers retained the right to order the flogging of African soldiers during “active service” (i.e., wartime) or for offenses committed against civilians during an organized march referred to as “in the line of march.”20 WAFF inspector general Colonel Thomas Morland recommended the reform based on what he had seen during a recent tour of West African units, and he took particular inspiration from the lack of corporal punishment in Sierra Leone. For British authorities, an African soldier who did not have to fear flogging to remain under discipline commanded respect within colonial society and served as a clear symbol of the civilizing mission of British rule. Justifying the new policy, British officials noted that French military authorities did not flog their well-respected Tirailleur Senegalais, although they appeared ignorant of the other types of physical punishments endured by these troops. For British colonial administrators who wanted to see the eventual abolition of corporal punishment in African colonial forces, “The most objectionable feature of military flogging is its use as an ordinary and customary means of preserving discipline.” However, the same authorities desired to preserve the practice to deter the worst crimes, especially with regard to the abuse of civilians “if our soldiers are not to get the reputation among ignorant natives as legalized bandits.”21 Seen in a wider context, this reform made military law in British West Africa much less violent than civil law and prison regulations that imposed corporal punishment for a variety of offenses with these systems continuing in many places after independence.22 Similar reforms around flogging took place in other parts of the British Empire as new regulations in India in 1911 eliminated corporal punishment for soldiers in peacetime except when it applied under Indian civil law.23 The new policy created an almost uniform culture of corporal punishment across Britain’s West African army, resulting in significant change for soldiers in hitherto flogging-prone Nigeria but not for their counterparts in other 20 NNA (Kaduna) SNP 3730/1907, “Abolish [sic] of Flogging as a Punishment for Soldiers in Peacetime,” Downing Street to Sir Percy Girouard, High Commissioner for Northern Nigeria, 30 August 1907. 21 UK (NA) CO 445/26, “WAFF: Corporal Punishment,” 10 June 1907. 22 Pierce, “Punishment and the Political Body,” 206–21; Stacey Hynd, “‘Insufficiently Cruel’ or `Simply Inefficient’? Discipline, Punishment and Reform in the Gold Coast Prison System, c.1850–1957,” in Miller, V. and Campbell, J. (eds.) Transnational Penal Cultures: New Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance (London: Routledge, 2015), 19–35. 23 Singa, “Rare Infliction,” 783–818.

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territories. In the NNR, where hundreds of troops had received lashes, the number of floggings dropped to less than ten per year in the period leading up to the First World War. The unit’s officers, some of whom initially expected their units to fall into chaos under the new policy, assessed the ban on corporal punishment as having either no impact or a positive impact on discipline. Despite incidences of protest among its soldiers in 1907 and 1912 resulting in imprisonment, the SNR reported no cases of flogging in the same period. In the year leading up to the 1914 unification of the Nigeria Regiment, the NNR reported two floggings while the SNR reported none. Soldiers convicted of serious offenses like desertion or theft faced several or more months of imprisonment with hard labor and “dismissal with ignominy” forfeiting their postservice gratuity and precluding them from future government employment.24 The few cases of flogging in the NNR now mostly took place during “active service” operations. During the 1909 Gussoro punitive expedition, for example, Private Garuba, who fell asleep on sentry duty despite a warning of possible enemy attack, and Private Kamsuli, who accidently shot and wounded a British sergeant while standing sentry each received twentyfour lashes.25 In the GCR, where flogging had been infrequent, the number of cases decreased minimally though never disappeared. While some GCR officers worried that the elimination of corporal punishment would lead to behavior problems among their soldiers, the unit cultivated a reputation for good and eventually excellent discipline.26 Nothing changed for troops in the SLB and Gambia Company where flogging had long fallen out of favor.27 In parts of the region, nevertheless, soldiers convicted of offenses by civilian courts continued to experience flogging such as the NNR’s Machine Gun Carrier Salihu Kano who, in 1911 at Kano, received three years imprisonment and twenty-four lashes for misusing his military authority to seize firewood from a civilian and then sell it for profit.28 24 UK (NA) CO 445/29, “Report on NNR,” 24 April 1909; CO 445/33, “Report on NNR,” 11 March 1913; CO 445/28, “Report on SNR,” 11 January 1908; CO 445/33, “Report on SNR,” 4 February 1913; CO 445/34, “Report on the Nigeria Regiment,” 18 February 1914. 25 NNA (Kaduna) SNP 990/1909, “WAFF, NN Regiment Reports (Monthly) for 1909,” Return of Floggings, May 1909. 26 NA (UK) CO 445/29, “Report on GCR,” 11 January 1909; CO 445/34, “Report on GCR,” 31 March 1914. 27 NA (UK) CO 445/33, “Report on SLB,” 13 January 1913; UK (NA) CO 445/34, “Report on the Gambia Company,” 24 April 1914. 28 NA (UK) CO 445/32, Rex vs. Salihu Kano, 29 December 1911.

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With the outbreak of the First World War, some British officers in West Africa appeared eager to exercise the wartime option of inflicting corporal punishment on their men. In the two years leading up to the war, the GCR had imposed only one sentence of flogging.29 However, in 1914, the regiment’s use of flogging jumped to twenty-six with some instances occurring before the declaration of hostilities. Most of these sentences were imposed on soldiers accused of looting from civilians during the invasions of German Togoland and Cameroon. A few of the GCR floggings exceeded the regulated twenty-four strokes. In Togoland, Private Nuaga Moshi received forty lashes for drunkenness and causing a disturbance on a train, and two other soldiers received thirty each for “irregular conduct whilst on sentry post.” When Colonial Office officials pointed out the illegality of these punishments, the unit commander blamed an unsuitable officer subsequently transferred out of the force.30 In 1915, some GCR soldiers at Kumasi received eighteen and twenty-four lashes for being absent from parade and in one case for attempting to stab a woman. Private Batie Grunshi, who missed parade at 7 a.m. but who was found in barracks an hour and a half later, received eighteen lashes and forty-eight hours of “Field Punishment Number One,” which involved being tied to a stake. While Colonial Office authorities considered service in the campaign theaters of Togoland and Cameroon as constituting “active service” and therefore opening up the possibility of flogging, they did not believe that this status extended to the regular garrisons in British territories like the Gold Coast. Furthermore, it appeared unlawful to combine the punishments of flogging from colonial military law and Field Punishment Number One that did not exist in colonial policy but only in the British metropolitan Army Act. A Colonial Office official worried “there is a danger of this flogging business becoming common again in the WAFF.”31 When military officials countered that “active service” applied in any British territory including Britain itself and that this also subjected West African troops to punishments under the Army Act, the Gold Coast governor issued a proclamation canceling such conditions in the territory: he worried that corporal punishment undermined recruiting and encouraged

29 NA (UK) CO 445/33, “Report on GCR,” 1 May 1913; CO 445/34, “Report on GCR,” 14 March 1914. 30 NA (UK) CO 445/35, “Corporal Punishment, G. C. Regt.” 16 July 1915. 31 NA (UK) CO 445/35, “Corporal Punishment, G.C. Regt.” 5 November 1915.

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desertion.32 The temporary wartime extension of War Office command over the Colonial Office WAFF regiments added to the confusion. The flogging of four Sierra Leonean soldiers in Cameroon in 1915 led to disagreements over War Office and Colonial Office regulations with officials declaring it illegal to combine punishments from these sets of rules.33 With West African troops stopping over at South African ports on their way to and from the German East Africa campaign, the Pretoria government insisted that these units not perform floggings as the practice might incite protest among black South Africans. At the end of the war, a GCR officer inflicted corporal punishment on African troops in South Africa, prompting outrage in the local press and concern among officials.34 Within Nigeria, the army’s subjugation of a series of wartime uprisings, such as among the Egba of the southwest, led to an increase in military flogging but nothing compared to pre-1907 levels. During these internal operations, the Nigeria Regiment flogged fourteen soldiers in 1917 and fourteen in 1918.35 It is difficult to determine how many Nigerian, Sierra Leonean, or Gambian soldiers endured flogging during the campaigns in German colonies. During the interwar era of the 1920s and 1930s, formal military flogging fell out of fashion in Britain’s West African army with no reported cases in any unit; at the same time, authorities expressed satisfaction with discipline.36 Several factors informed this change. In postconquest West Africa, small military outstations where most floggings had occurred almost disappeared as troops concentrated in a few large garrisons in towns where experienced senior officers made decisions, soldiers experienced greater supervision, and postwar and Depression-era austerity meant there were fewer troops to commit offenses. In addition, the conditions under which African soldiers were eligible for corporal punishment became rare as the number of internal security operations declined, which reduced “active service” time. Fewer 32 NA (UK) CO 445/36, “Corporal Punishment, G.C. Regt.” 10 January 1916. 33 NA (UK) CO 445/35, “Field General Courts Martial—Proceedings,” 25 August 1915. 34 Ubah, Colonial Army and Society, 283; NNA (Ibadan), CSO 628/1919, “Stoppage of Infliction of Corporal Punishment on Native Soldiers,” 15 March 1919. 35 NA (UK) CO 445/44, “Annual Report on the Nigeria Regiment for 1917,” 17 July 1918; CO 445/47, “Annual Report Nigeria Regiment 1918,” 2 June 1919. 36 From 1920 to 1939, reports on WAFF/RWAFF units show no use of corporal punishment. See NA (UK) CO 445 series.

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outposts to maintain meant that soldiers found themselves less likely to be “in the line of march” between garrisons. Offenses committed by soldiers against civilians in towns did not qualify for military corporal punishment, although civil law still applied and could result in flogging imposed by local courts. West Africa was not the only place in the British Empire where military flogging further declined during the interwar years, as authorities completely banned it in India in 1920 given objections by Indian nationalists and political leaders.37 At the same time, however, a flogging culture persisted within Britain’s colonial military in East and Central Africa informed by a more intensely racist settler ethos. While KAR soldiers in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Nyasaland continued to undergo formal floggings during the 1920s,38 this was not the case for their counterparts in Nigeria and the Gold Coast. This illustrates the slightly different nature of colonialism in these regions as British officers in West Africa realized that their tiny numbers meant that they could not afford to blatantly alienate the locally recruited rank-and-file. Although formal corporal punishment disappeared from Britain’s West African army for about twenty years between the world wars, a culture of informal flogging continued to exist as a way to discipline men for petty offenses. During the interwar years, officers sometimes gave an offending soldier a choice between a three-shilling fine and a few unofficial lashes inflicted by an African NCO. As with the ritual judicial flogging, officers remained remote from the actual violence as it would undermine their status and credibility. According to many officers’ accounts, West African troops always opted for an informal beating or “six for arse” as it ended quickly unlike loss of income that affected their livelihood and families. Officers often likened this informal practice to their own boyhood experience of corporal punishment in British schools, and they justified illegal flogging by claiming that Africans preferred that disciplinary option and with racist tropes that they were naturally less sensitive to pain.39 In 1937, based on an initiative by the modernizing RWAFF/KAR inspector general George Giffard, British commanding officers of African units including in East Africa lost the authority to summarily impose corporal 37 Singa, “Rare Infliction,” 816. 38 Kevin K. Brown, “The Military and Social Change in Colonial Tanganyika: 1919–1964” (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 2001), 195–202; Lovering, “Authority and Identity,” 182–85; Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 186–88. 39 ORDP, Colonel J. F. Armstrong, June 1980; Major E. C. Lanning, August 1981.

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punishment now limited to courts-martial under the existing “active service” and “line of march” conditions. Governors in each colonial territory altered existing laws to reflect this policy except in Nigeria and Tanganyika, where administrative oversights meant that the local regulations pertaining to military corporal punishment remained the same. In 1940, during the East Africa campaign of the Second World War, KAR senior officers and governors of East African territories urged the Colonial Office to return powers of corporal punishment to commanders of African colonial battalions. They argued that flogging was necessary to maintain discipline among African troops during operations and that wartime conditions made it difficult to arrange courts-martial in the field, and they pointed out that commanding officers of Nigerian and Tanganyika formations in the East African theater were exercising their authority to impose corporal punishment. Colonial Office officials, who recognized the much greater enthusiasm for flogging among KAR officers compared to their RWAFF counterparts, turned down the request, citing many reasons. The officials feared that an expansion of corporal punishment among African soldiers might prompt protest from black civil rights organizations like the British-based League of Coloured Peoples and become fodder for enemy propaganda, given that flogging did not exist among white units. Furthermore, colonial officials raised concerns over the possible abuse of corporal punishment by the many officers who lacked experience leading African troops newly appointed to larger African formations and by officers from overtly racist settler colonies like Southern Rhodesia posted to West or East African units.40 Replying to a 1942 complaint by the League of Coloured Peoples about the flogging of Nigerian troops, the Colonial Office explained that under the new policy only courtsmartial could impose corporal punishment, meaning that “flogging cannot now be awarded for trivial offenses.” The Gambian press happily reported that no Gambian troops experienced flogging and that the new regulation was “a step in the right direction.”41 During the Second World War, “active service” conditions meant that some of Britain’s West African soldiers again experienced formal corporal punishment. At Enugu in 1940, the Third Battalion of the Nigeria Regiment organized “a full-scale parade . . . to witness the flogging of two private soldiers who had struck and NCO. To the roll of drums they were marched on parade and lay face down on the ground. They received six strokes

40 NA (UK) CO 820/41/18, “Flogging,” 1940. 41 “Flogging in Nigeria,” Gambia Echo, 16 November 1942.

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(backhand back stroke) of a raw hide whip on each buttocks.”42 Military cultures clashed when West African units arrived in East Africa to work with locally based officers more invested in the flogging of black troops. However, times had changed, and one British officer who witnessed a flogging at a West African Reinforcement camp near Nairobi in 1941 considered the ritual “disgusting.”43 Given that West African governors, some British MPs, Gold Coast chiefs, and West African newspapers expressed disapproval of military flogging, West Africa Command (WAC) issued its own local prohibition on corporal punishment and banned informal beatings in the early 1940s. This change in attitude also very likely related to the increasing enlistment of literate Christian men who were less likely to experience corporal punishment in the civilian legal system, had ties to missionaries and political activists, and were able to express their grievances in writing. Although officers in some units ignored the injunction and continued to tolerate unofficial beatings, some West African soldiers knew their rights, and complaints about such practices led to the invention of alternative forms of unofficial punishment. Giffard continued his crusade against flogging during the war. Becoming commander-in-chief of British forces in India and Burma in 1943, he suspended the flogging of African troops in that theater. While the service conditions of African soldiers fighting in East Africa in 1940–41 appeared reminiscent of earlier colonial conflicts, including the use of ritualized flogging, their participation in the Burma campaign of 1943–45 led to reforms that discouraged corporal punishment. At the same time, African nationalists from East Africa led by Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya used the British and African press to appeal for an end of flogging in Britain’s African army in Burma. Nonetheless, corporal punishment remained on the books for African soldiers given official worries about a breakdown of discipline among units waiting for repatriation and the continued existence of flogging in West African colonial civil law.44 The election of a left-wing Labour Party government in Britain in July 1945 renewed hopes among African activists including those from West Africa for the total abolition of military flogging of African troops, calling the practice “a relic of barbarism.”45 British officers’ 42 ORDP, K. R. S. Trevor. 43 ORDP, Lanning. 44 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 247–48; ORDP, Lanning; ORDP, Captain A. J. Smithers, September 1980; “Flogging of Africans in Burma Continues,” West African Pilot, 26 February 1945. 45 “African Groups in UK Protest to Labour Regarding Flogging of African Troops,” West African Pilot, 29 October 1945.

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claims that African troops preferred flogging to other forms of punishment was thought by West African Westernized elites to be “stupid.” An editorial in a Nigerian newspaper asked, “If European soldiers could be considered above flogging, why should African troops be subject to it?”46 In May 1946, with the war over, the Colonial Office instructed governors in West and East Africa to end military corporal punishment.47 However, the practice of officers sanctioning or ignoring unofficial beatings of West African soldiers by senior NCOs continued into the 1950s.48

Conclusion In the conquest era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain’s West African army comprised different cultures of flogging, with troops in Northern Nigeria enduring many official beatings while those in the Gambia hardly knew about the practice. During the years leading up to the First World War, the imposition of the regional WAFF structure and objections from civilian colonial officials prompted a uniform approach to flogging in the West African regiments and further restrictions on its implementation. Despite a brief revival of corporal punishment during the First World War, the WAFF/RWAFF set aside formal flogging during the interwar era, differing from comparable colonial forces in settler-oriented East Africa. While some British officers continued to see their West African troops as uncivilized brutes only kept in line by the threat of the lash, the constant reduction in the use of formal corporal punishment reflected official hopes around the rising social status of the colonial army in the region. Although authorities again resuscitated military flogging in West African units during the Second World War, the modernization of African colonial forces during that conflict and objections from civilian African activists led to the final elimination of official corporal punishment. That said, despite fluctuations in official policies on military flogging, West African soldiers consistently faced corporal punishment on an informal basis within the colonial army and as subjects of civilian customary law.

46 “Flogging of African Soldiers,” West African Pilot, 30 October 1945. 47 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 247–48. 48 ORDP, W. R. A. Catcheside, 25 September 1980; J. K. Chater, c.1980.

Chapter Nine

Mutiny Greatly feared by military commanders, mutinies represent soldiers’ revolts against military authority, ranging from passive strikes where troops refuse orders to violent insurrections. Throughout the history of Britain’s West African colonial army, African soldiers staged a series of protests characterized by their officers as mutinies. The occurrence of such incidents clearly formed a pattern. While mutinies happened more commonly during the early years of Britain’s West African army in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, another spate of these episodes took place during the Second World War and in the 1950s, just a few years before the withdrawal of British colonial rule. They did not take place during the interwar era of the 1920s and early 1930s when British colonialism in Africa seemed at its most secure. Mutinies happened during periods of war and peace and involved troops from all Britain’s West African territories of Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia. In addition, it is almost certain that many more of these disturbances took place among British West African forces than indicated by the available evidence. Authorities covered up some events, the records of some inquiries and military trials are lost, oral histories point to incidents for which there are few if any accessible official records, and some archival documents allude to episodes for which there are no detailed accounts.1 Nevertheless, the frequency of mutinies among Britain’s West African soldiers appears not much different from those of troops from American, British, or Canadian armies of the same period. During the American Civil War (1861–65), for instance, federal and confederate forces experienced over two hundred different episodes defined as mutiny by officers.2 1 Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 128. 2 For some examples see Webb Garrison, Mutiny in the Civil War (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2001); R. Alton Lee, “The Army ‘Mutiny’ of 1946,” Journal of American History 53, no. 3 (December 1966):

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In explaining soldiers’ protests, a recent study of army mutinies in the states of postcolonial Central and West Africa found that such incidents did not represent simple acts of indiscipline. These episodes differed from the military coups that became common in parts of independent Africa in that mutineers did not aim to take over the state. Rather, mutinies usually began over soldiers’ specific material grievances and/or perceived injustices that were symbolic of larger problems within the military; they served as desperate attempts by frustrated troops, ignored or blocked by their immediate superiors, to communicate with higher military leadership. Additionally, although it appeared that postcolonial African mutineers sought to challenge or overturn existing military hierarchies, they often attempted to create their own hierarchies and saw themselves as military professionals.3 It is possible to protect this theory of postcolonial African mutinies back in time and use it to interpret similar events that took place within Britain’s West African colonial army, the predecessor of modern forces in the region. An examination of colonial-era mutinies reveals many of the same factors related to troops’ grievances and their attempts to appeal to higher command. During protests described as mutinies, Britain’s West African soldiers did not seek to overthrow the colonial state but to improve their service conditions. Most colonial military forces in Africa experienced mutinies of varying types. During the late nineteenth-century Scramble for Africa, several revolts by African troops in colonial service represented serious threats to the ongoing imposition of colonial rule. For instance, in Leopold II’s Congo Free State of the 1890s, African soldiers from the Force Publique mutinied against extremely abusive European officers and mounted two protracted rebellions against the colonial regime. These soldiers’ uprisings signified some of the most serious examples of African resistance in Leopold’s Congo.4 In 1897, in conquest-era Buganda, British-led Sudanese soldiers took up arms against their superiors as they had not received pay in six months and they made common cause with local Muslim coreligionists engaged in a struggle against 555–71; Julian Putkowski, British Army Mutineers, 1914–1922 (London: Boutle, 1998); Craig Leslie Mantle, The Apathetic and the Defiant: Case Studies of Canadian Mutiny and Disobedience, 1812–1919 (Toronto: Dundurn, 2007); Howard G. Coombs, ed., The Insubordinate and the Non-compliant: Case Studies of Canadian Mutiny and Disobedience, 1920–Present (Toronto: Dundurn, 2007). 3 Dwyer, Soldiers in Revolt, 4–8. 4 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York: Mariner, 1999), 126–29.

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the embryonic colonial state and its local Christian supporters.5 Throughout colonial Africa, the dramatic military expansion and stresses of the Second World War prompted an increase in mutinous behavior by soldiers. In 1937 and 1944, troops from Britain’s Somaliland Camel Corps mutinied over inferior pay and working conditions, and wider concerns about the nature of British colonialism in Somaliland. The 1944 mutiny caused British authorities to disband the troublesome unit.6 In Kenya, African military pioneers rejected labor on road-building projects as they had enlisted to fight, and African signalers refused to endure the embarrassment of having their heads shaved. In 1942 men of Britain’s 25th East African Brigade at Massawa, Eritrea, disobeyed orders to embark on a troopship, as they had not had leave. In the Middle East, African pioneers from British Basutoland (today’s Lesotho), frustrated by issues such as slow repatriation, assignment as prison camp guards, and an extreme disciplinary regime, went on strike in 1945 and mounted a violent prison rebellion in 1946. During the Second World War’s Burma campaign, there were several occurrences of East African soldiers under British command refusing orders in combat. And on rare occasions, soldiers assassinated unpopular officers.7 One of the most famous incidents of African military mutiny during the Second World War took place in 1944 at a military camp at Thiaroye in Senegal, where African troops of the French army who had been prisoners of war in Europe protested their missing back pay and lack of pensions. French guards shot and killed at least 35 of them.8 In August 1945, several thousand French African troops serving in liberated France rioted and attacked a theatre that refused them admission.9 In 5

O. W. Furley, “The Sudanese Troops in Uganda,” African Affairs 58, no. 233 (October 1959): 311–28. 6 Jama Mohamed, “The 1937 Somaliland Camel Corps Mutiny: A Contrapuntal Reading,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, no. 3 (2000): 615–34; Jama Mohamed, “The 1944 Somaliland Camel Corps Mutiny and Popular Politics,” History Workshop Journal 50, no. 1 (Autumn 2000): 93–113. 7 Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 129–33. 8 Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts, 100–4; Raffael Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II, Cambridge University Press, 2014, 253–68. 9 Nancy Lawler, “A Brief Account of Ivorian Tirailleurs Senegalais in the Second World War, mostly in Their Own Words,” in Colonial Soldiers in Europe: “Aliens in Uniform” in Wartime Societies, edited by Eric Storm and Ali Al Tuma (New York: Routledge, 2016), 73.

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1944, in the Belgian Congo, another generation of Force Publique troops mutinied over poor service conditions and a misunderstanding about compulsory medical vaccination, with this disturbance unfolding within the context of broader civilian labor disputes.10 Sudanese colonial troops engaged in a series of mutinies during the British colonial era. A Sudanese battalion staged a violent uprising in Khartoum in 1924, Sudanese soldiers conducted strikes and assaulted civilians in Eritrea during the Second World War, and southern Sudanese military personnel launched an insurgency against the transfer of power to an independent, northern- dominated Sudan government in 1955.11 With the decolonization of African countries, the transition of colonial armies into the national armed forces of sovereign states led to a sequence of mutinies in the former Belgian Congo in 1960 and the former British territories in East Africa, particularly Tanganyika (Tanzania), in 1964.12 As this history shows, mutiny among African colonial troops usually took place within the context of some larger crisis or transition such as colonial conquest, the Second World War, and decolonization. Within African historiography, nationalist scholars tended to place such mutinies within the panorama of anti-colonial resistance movements while materialist historians saw them as similar to civilian labor strikes in pursuit of better working conditions. Given an aversion to studying military history, Africanists tended to minimize the military context of mutinies by African colonial troops.

The Conquest Era Mutinies by West African troops under British command started in the middle to late nineteenth century almost as soon as Britain began forming locally recruited paramilitary units in their coastal colonial enclaves in the 10 Bruce Fetter, “The Luluabourg Revolt at Elisabethville,” African Historical Studies 2, no. 2 (1969): 269–77. 11 Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 107–9; K. D. D. Henderson, The Making of Modern Sudan: The Life and Letters of Sir Douglas Newbold (London: Faber and Faber, 1953), 225–26; John Gai Yoh, Revolution on Equatoria Mountains: The Story of the Torit Mutiny (Trenton, NJ: Africa World, 2018). 12 Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (London: Zed, 2007), 97–99; Timothy Parsons, The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).

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region. In October 1862, a severe mutiny happened within the Gold Coast Artillery Corps (GCAC), a unit formed a decade earlier to garrison British coastal defenses in what is now Ghana. Some eighty troops based at Cape Coast Castle attempted to kill their British officers who had gambled away the men’s salaries. While the gunners of the GCAC had recently developed a reputation for poor discipline, the issue of pay may have been particularly sensitive given that a portion of the soldiers’ salary went to local chiefs to pay for the former’s freedom. Previously, the chiefs held these men as slaves and agreed for them to enlist in the British colonial army on condition that they would gradually pay compensation to their former owners. Without their squandered pay, the men risked a possible return to enslavement. Driven from the castle by officers and other troops not engaged in the dispute, the armed mutineers ensconced themselves in a village about four miles away and rejected surrender terms delivered to them by a British sergeant major. Over the next few days, three British warships arrived at Cape Coast, bringing a Royal Navy landing party and GCAC reinforcements from another detachment at Accra, and a hundred local civilian volunteers took up weapons and formed a town militia. After about a week, the hungry and besieged mutineers, who had failed to obtain food from civilians with whom they had bad relations, capitulated to local chiefs who handed them over to the British military. Shipped to the military center of Sierra Leone, the prisoners appeared before a military court that convicted them of mutiny. Gunner Charles Wellseley and Bugler William Neizer, considered ringleaders of the mutiny, returned to Cape Coast where they were executed by firing squad, and two other soldiers received sentences of penal servitude for life. While forty-eight men received various less severe prison terms, thirty others benefitted from pardons as officials believed their youth and lack of English language skills diminished their responsibility during the affair. To discourage further mutinies, a detachment of Royal Marines remained at Cape Coast Castle. The men of the GCAC continued to harbor grievances over low pay, from which they also had to buy their own food. They were well aware that the black soldiers of the West Indian Regiment (WIR) performed the same duties at Cape Coast but received much higher salaries together with free rations.13 The trouble did not stop, and in March 1863, Governor Richard 13 Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti, 485, 499–502, 513; A. B. Ellis, West African Islands (London: Chapman and Hall, 1885), 178; J. J. Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settlements from 1750 to 1874 (London: Routledge, 2013), 345–47.

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Pine reported that “within the last few days a considerable portion of the men of the Gold Coast Artillery have shown, in my very presence, the most insubordinate and mutinous disposition.” Pine considered that only one third of the GCAC comprised loyal troops while the rest were “(to say the least of it) doubtful characters.”14 These disciplinary and morale problems within the GCAC took place within the context of inconsistent and troubled leadership caused by environmental medical problems among British personnel. Over a twelve-year period, tropical disease claimed the lives of twenty of fifty-seven of the GCAC’s British officers along with six of its eleven British sergeant majors. In 1863, given rising tensions with the inland Asante Kingdom over control of coastal trade and the arrival of military reinforcements from the West Indies, British authorities disbanded the GCAC “which, apart from having mutinied, had given a great deal of trouble for some time past and was considered quite useless and unreliable.”15 It would take the British another decade and a war with Asante before they again established a locally recruited military formation in the Gold Coast. Associations with slavery continued to represent a sensitive topic in Britain’s embryonic West African army of the nineteenth century. During the 1873–74 Anglo-Asante War, a unit of Hausa soldiers from Nigeria serving in the Gold Coast refused orders to build a field fortification insisting, “that they were soldiers, not slaves to work.” This was a powerful statement considering that slavery existed in West Africa and that many of the colonial soldiers of this period were formerly enslaved men from the interior purchased or recruited by the British at regional slave markets.16 To the Hausa troops, engaging in manual labor equated them with slaves and lowered their status as armed soldiers. When a British junior officer called Lieutenant Gordon tried to arrest the instigators of the strike, the Hausa troops became aggressive and chased him into a small guardhouse. With the quick arrival of detachments of British sailors and other West African infantrymen, the Hausa soldiers obeyed instructions to lay down their rifles and were marched away from the scene of the incident. Authorities detained the supposed leaders of the mutiny, sending them to Cape Coast Castle for a court-martial, the results of which remain unknown. After being compelled to apologize to Lieutenant Gordon, the remainder of the former mutineers led by the same 14 Governor Pine to Duke of Newcastle, Accra, 10 March 1863 in Military Operations on the Gold Coast, House of Commons, London, June 1864. 15 Claridge, History of the Gold Coast, 523. 16 Johnson, “Slaves of Salaga,” 341–62.

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officer fought well against the Asante during the rest of the war.17 Compared to the Cape Coast mutineers of 1862, and given the immediate wartime context of 1873–74 in which the British were reluctant to imprison a large number of useful fighting men, the Hausa troops were relatively successful in communicating their displeasure over conducting humiliating work associated with slavery. Once this grievance disappeared, they went back to their duties. Several poorly documented mutinies took place in early 1895 in the midst of the British occupation of the West African interior. During a march to Atabubu in the Gold Coast hinterland, fifty-six men of the GCC mutinied and later faced court-martial at Accra.18 Around the same time, some of the Hausa Armed Police at Lagos engaged in two separate mutinous incidents related to “prolonged duties upcountry and . . . some grievance against the native police.” They appeared before a court-martial convened by Admiral Frederick Bedford commander of the West Africa Squadron.19 The details of these incidents remain unclear. A number of mutinous incidents occurred among British-led West African troops engaged in the conquest of the Nigerian hinterland. In July 1898, an altercation broke out within a force of RNC, the armed wing of the chartered Royal Niger Company, based at Fort Goldie on the Niger River. Many of the constabulary’s African soldiers had recently participated in an expedition to subjugate the Kebbi or Argungu Emirate in northwest Nigeria, an operation meant to preclude French ambitions in the area, and the troops expected transportation downriver to their headquarters at Lokoja where their families and regular housing were located. As such, the RNC troops became disappointed when they received orders to travel back upriver to Illo while their British constabulary officers returned to Lokoja. The arrival of new and unfamiliar British officers of the recently created WAFF that was absorbing the company army also caused anxiety in the ranks. On the afternoon of 16 June, since expected canoes carrying the troops’ supply of rice had not arrived, the Constabulary soldiers received half their normal rations and some trade cloth in lieu of monetary ration allowance. The new British WAFF officers told the men to exchange the cloth with local people for additional food. However, the men rejected the cloth, became angry, and 17 Frederick Boyle, Through Fanteeland to Coomassie: A Diary of the Ashanti Expedition (London: Chapman and Hall, 1874), 63–64, and 83. 18 “Mutiny of West African Police,” Edinburgh Evening News, 23 March 1895. 19 “Mutiny of Houssa Troops,” Nottingham Evening Post, 18 April 1895.

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started shouting; then they rushed toward the guarded structure containing their rifles. Although some officers fled in panic, others restored order within fifteen minutes with the accused ringleaders of the incident immediately flogged before the rest of the unit. A short time later, a similar incident transpired among WAFF troops who refused to eat issued corn instead of their preferred rice, and they destroyed some corn in protest. The men eventually assembled before their officers with each soldier compelled to accept some corn under the supervision of two armed British NCOs instructed to shoot anyone who rejected the food. Concurrently, in yet another incident, a small group of Constabulary men under arrest for disobedience tried to escape and seize weapons. They stopped when a WAFF guard shot their leader dead, and afterward authorities shipped the remaining prisoners down the Niger River to larger military camps.20 In most of these cases, the mutineers clearly communicated displeasure about insufficient amounts and types of food, as well as concerns related to the changing structure and leadership of the force. When compared to the Hausa troops who protested in the Gold Coast back in the 1870s, these Nigerian mutineers were less successful in obtaining redress, perhaps reflecting insurmountable logistical problems related to food in the vast Nigerian interior and the particularly brutal colonial military culture of conquest-era central and northern Nigeria. A tragic incident that happened in the Sierra Leone Protectorate illustrates that West African soldiers knew their rights better than some officers did. At the end of August 1900, the theft of a large safe containing £178 from the guardroom of the Sierra Leone Frontier Police garrison at Karene prompted Captain R. Cockburn to confine his company to barracks as a way of compelling the men to surrender the thieves. The men could not see their families, who lived with them at the garrison, except for when their wives delivered daily meals to the barracks. Cockburn also stopped the troops’ pay for three months to recoup the lost money. Furthermore, the recent events of the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion weighed on the captain’s mind, making him fearful of conspiracies. In mid-September, after two weeks of confinement, the troops pleaded with their officer to allow them out of barracks so they could help find the thieves, but he refused. Later that day, twenty-two of the men wearing full uniforms and carrying their rifles forced their way out of the barracks and began marching to Freetown where they planned to present their case to a senior officer. Chasing the fugitives to a river crossing where he found them disembarking a canoe on the opposite bank, Cockburn 20 Willcocks, From Kabul to Kumasi, 212–14.

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yelled at the men to stop and when they did not obey, he fired his revolver at them and ordered his escort of four troops to fire as well. The bullets killed Private Lamina Yonnie and wounded Private Bubu Fullah, and the rest of the men scattered into the bush and eventually returned to the garrison. At a subsequent inquiry, Bubu Fullah testified, “We broke out of barracks because the confinement pressed too hard on us and because the Captain said we were not to get pay for three months. We wanted to go to Freetown to see the Inspector General.”21 Cockburn justified his use of lethal force by claiming that he was acting to suppress a mutiny, but an official board of inquiry concluded that no mutiny had occurred as the men’s detention without charge constituted an unlawful act and that they had a right to appeal to a superior officer. Indeed, as the troops had not committed mutiny nor convicted of an offense, Cockburn now faced a murder charge. Governor Cardew sympathized with Cockburn, but Colonial Office officials believed he acted with “considerable want of discretion.”22 While a Freetown court convicted Cockburn of manslaughter and sentenced him to one month’s imprisonment, the governor pardoned him the same day, and the officer quickly returned to Britain. Cockburn continued his military career with the Suffolk Regiment and lost an arm fighting on the Western Front during the First World War.23 In this case, the supposed mutineers clearly sought to pursue their grievances with higher leadership, and they succeeded despite the high cost. In the Gold Coast, in early 1901, Sierra Leonean soldiers of the WAR staged the most serious mutiny in the history of British colonial forces in the region. Formed in 1898, the new unit had a traumatic recent history fighting a grueling war to suppress the Hut Tax Rebellion in Sierra Leone and then becoming the target of civilian riots in Freetown. In early 1900, with the bulk of the British military tied up fighting in South Africa, the WAR soldiers joined an expeditionary force to the Gold Coast to relieve the siege of Kumasi and put down the Asante revolt. As there had been several incidents 21 NA (UK) CO 267/454, “Mutiny of Frontier Police at Karene: Report and Proceedings of Court of Inquiry and Board of Investigation,” 6 November 1900. 22 NA (UK) CO 267/454, “Mutiny of Frontier Police at Karene: Report and Proceedings of Court of Inquiry and Board of Investigation,” 5 January 1901. 23 “Capt. Cockburn,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 15 December 1900; Turay and Abraham, Sierra Leone Army, 28; For Cockburn see Essex Review 60 (1951): 218.

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involving WAR soldiers “arming themselves and marching off when something they did not like happened,” Sierra Leone’s Governor Frederick Cardew expressed concern over discipline within the unit, although he acknowledged they “behaved very well during the present campaign in Ashanti under very trying circumstances.”24 During operations in Asante, the WAR soldiers were at the vanguard of several desperate assaults on rebel fortifications and suffered significant casualties.25 Ashanti Field Force commander Colonel James Willcocks praised the fighting abilities of the WAR soldiers but pointed out that the men commonly engaged in theft and assault—and possibly even murder—and therefore needed a firm hand to control. For Willcocks, who chastised WAR commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Charles Burroughs for treating his men too leniently during the campaign, “The men are far more difficult to discipline than any other troops employed with the Force.”26 When the WAR detachment departed Freetown in June 1900, Sierra Leone’s Governor Cardew told the men they would be away for three months and the end of operations against the Asante rebels in September meant that the soldiers expected to go home. However, the WAR’s return to Freetown delayed for many months, and the troops became anxious as rumors circulated that they would remain in the Gold Coast for six years. In addition, the WAR experienced many hardships while waiting around in Kumasi, the capital of Asante. These included lack of pay, meager rations, poor accommodation, limited medical assistance, deteriorating uniforms and equipment, a ban on visiting the town, and erratic discipline that involved frequent flogging for minor offenses and direct physical abuse by the commanding officer. Perhaps trying to heed Willcocks’s advice to impose firmer discipline, Burroughs created a regime of inconsistent tyranny combined with neglect. The mutiny triggered in mid-March 1901 when Colonel Burroughs announced that he was departing for leave in England, a privilege he was taking eleven days early, and that the unpopular adjutant would take over the unit. That same day, 178 men failed to report for duty, taking their weapons, ammunition, and seven days’ rations. The next day, 242 WAR soldiers left Kumasi, picked up another company at Kwisa, and began an orderly march toward 24 NA (UK) CO 267/454, “Mutiny of Frontier Police at Karene,” F. Cardew to J. Chamberlain, 27 October 1900. 25 Robert Edgerton, The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred Year War for Africa’s Gold Coast (New York: Free Press, 1995), 217–28, 232–35. 26 NA (UK) FO 2/524, J. Willcocks to Colonial Secretary, Cape Coast, 17 December 1900.

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the coast where they planned to arrange transport to Freetown. Burroughs, the other officers, and the remaining troops followed the roughly four hundred mutineers to Cape Coast. During the march, the mutineers maintained military discipline by electing the well-respected Private Morlai Mandingo as their “colonel” and appointing company commanders and buglers, several troops were flogged for looting and neglecting to clean their rifles, and others were punished for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. They arrived at Cape Coast at the end of March where a British officer gave them money to buy food (instead of stealing it from civilians), and they agreed to stay at a local school that had been serving as a temporary barracks. The mutineers’ mood became more confrontational when Burroughs visited the school and demanded that they surrender their weapons and embark on a ship called the Sherbro that had arrived to take them to Sierra Leone. While forty wavering men complied with the order, the remainder seized control of the beach and the ship’s boats to prevent more of their comrades from defecting, and they placed sentries on a bank they thought contained their wages. On 30 March, the mutineers assembled before Cape Coast Castle where Burroughs promised to give them their pay if they disarmed and boarded the ship. When “Colonel” Mandingo prevented some of the men from accepting the offer, two British NCOs forcibly arrested him, prompting the mutineers to flee back to the school. The following day about half the mutineers returned to Cape Coast Castle where they paraded with the other WAR troops and witnessed the execution of Private Mandingo, court-martialed the previous day, by a firing squad composed of the locally recruited GCC. The mutineers at the castle received some of their outstanding pay, boarded the Sherbro, and were eventually disarmed. That evening, the ship departed with 188 mutineers and 178 loyalist troops. When it arrived in Sierra Leone four days later, officials arrested twenty-one of the former. Refusing to surrender, 160 remaining mutineers at Cape Coast embarked on what looked like an epic westward trek along the West African shore toward Sierra Leone, which would take them through French territory and Liberia and therefore provoke an international incident. Without their elected colonel, the mutineers’ previous discipline deteriorated as drunken soldiers looted communities along the way. Two ships, the HMS Forte from Freetown and the Dwakwa, with a small constabulary contingent from Cape Coast, intercepted the mutineers at Axim in early April, but they once again rejected an offer of money and refused to surrender their weapons and embark for Sierra Leone. The Forte continued to Cape Coast where it picked up 250 soldiers of the Central African Regiment (CAR), a unit from

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Nyasaland (Malawi) that had also helped to suppress the Asante rebellion, who landed at Beyin before the mutineers arrived. At Atwarboe, where a swamp would funnel the marching mutineers along the coastal road, CAR troops dug trenches and prepared for battle. On 10 April, the mutineers fell into the ambush with the CAR, engaging them with rifle and machine-gun fire from land while the Forte bombed them from offshore. After a ten-minute firefight that killed a dozen mutineers, the rest fled; by the end of the day, 134 men were prisoners aboard the Forte. Although the British warned French officials that some renegades might cross the border, local chiefs in the Gold Coast assisted in the apprehension of the twenty remaining fugitives.27 An official inquiry held in Freetown blamed Burroughs’s poor leadership for the mutiny, although he retired instead of facing charges and later inherited a family estate in Orkney. The result of the inquiry, together with the British view of the African soldiers as childlike (and therefore not fully responsible for their actions), meant that few of the mutineers faced prosecution and the vast majority continued their military service. Of those courtmartialed, six received death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, and thirteen others endured various terms of imprisonment.28 In April 1901, the return of WAR soldiers, whose “appearance on landing bespeaks hardships, toil and privations,” inspired sympathy from the Freetown press.29 The Westernized African intellectuals of the Gold Coast Aborigines Protection Society thought the WAR soldiers had been driven into mutiny, or in the ordinary parlance have struck, owing to the wretched treatment they have been subjected to . . . the main thing that led them to this, is the paltry sum allowed them for subsistence which is threepence a man . . . three penny bit in hand, plus nothing to buy, gives the sum, hunger, multiply this by starvation, and you have it—mutiny.30

Several years later, eight of the convicted mutineers received pardons from the Sierra Leone governor at a public ceremony in Freetown to mark the king’s birthday.31 At least one dismissed former mutineer was not done with 27 Killingray, “Mutiny of the West African Regiment,” 441–54. 28 Killingray, “Mutiny of the West African Regiment,” 441–54; Edgerton, Fall of the Asante Empire, 247. 29 “The West African Soldiers,” Weekly News, 13 April 1901. 30 Gold Coast Aborigines, “The West African Regiment,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 11 May 1901. 31 “Release of Military Prisoners,” Weekly News, 14 November 1903.

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the colonial military. Lance Corporal Benjamin, a veteran of the Frontier Police of the 1890s and dismissed with ignominy from the WAR in the wake of the mutiny, traveled to Bathurst in 1904 and enlisted in the Gambia Company where he gained a favorable reputation with his officers who knew his background.32 The 1901 WAR mutineers experienced severe neglect and abuse brought about by a near collapse of military structure and leadership, and they attempted to re-create that structure to facilitate their return home. The history of Britain’s locally recruited army in the Gambia began with a mutiny. From the formation of the WAFF’s Gambia Company in 1901, in a territory where resistance to colonial rule in the interior had ended just a few months earlier, the unit’s soldiers demanded increased pay through staging a series of “demonstrations” and committing many “minor offenses.” As a result, an unusually high number of desertions plagued the unit in its formative months. The crisis peaked in December 1903 when Gambia Company troops launched “an agitation” prompting the colonial governor to investigate their complaints and grant them a subsistence allowance when they were away from the garrison. Nevertheless, the soldiers deemed this concession insufficient and, in the words of WAFF inspector general Brigadier Kemball, “attempted a sort of strike to enforce their demand for extra pay.” Locally recruited soldiers, Gambians and Senegalese, mounted the protest rather than the Sierra Leoneans, who had formed the nucleus of the new company. Though documentation of these events appears vague, the December incident was “nipped in the bud without any actual disturbance.” To discourage future protest, officers discharged eleven alleged instigators including three who received short prison sentences. Another soldier was imprisoned but not dismissed from the army, and the company sergeant major was demoted to sergeant. There were no more demonstrations within the Gambia Company, and many of the troops seemed satisfied with their situation reenlisting at the end of their contracts.33 While the inspector general’s report was careful in its description of the supposedly unsuccessful protest, the 1903 unit diary presented a less discreet picture. “In December there was an attempt at a mutiny which was immediately quelled. As a result, the men were allowed 3’ extra pay when absent from headquarters.”34 32 NA (UK) CO 445/27, “Lance Corporal Benjamin,” 5 November 1908. 33 NA (UK) CO 445/17, “Report on the Gambia Company, 1904,” 6 May 1904. 34 NAG (Banjul), CSO 24/1, “Gambia Company History Book,” 30 November 1901 to 7 December 1937.

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The soldiers’ protest influenced changes in the Gambia Company. Kemball attributed the disturbance to leadership and accommodation problems. He thought that the company relied too much on British NCOs, African NCOs lacked influence, and British officers were out of touch with their men. Subsequently, the company enhanced the status of African NCOs, who began to bring the soldiers’ concerns directly to British officers. Since British authorities believed that living in a common barracks had given Africans an opportunity to engage in their allegedly natural inclination to “plot and combine together,” the unit constructed new accommodation consisting of separate small houses where the troops could live with their wives and children. Life within a nuclear family, authorities hoped, would serve to distract African soldiers from grievances over conditions of service. During the year it took to construct the new houses, the Gambia Company soldiers lived in the town of Bathurst with married men paid a special allowance to cover extra costs. In 1906, the inspector general reported that “though the number of minor offenses remains large, there has been no repetition of the irregular and almost mutinous behavior.”35 As illustrated by the interventions of the territorial governor and WAFF inspector general, the mutineers articulated their complaints to higher authority and enjoyed some success in acquiring better stipends and housing. During the first half of the twentieth century, the Gambia Company developed a comparatively relaxed disciplinary atmosphere combined with a well-respected combat reputation earned during the First World War. At the start of the twentieth century, British officers obsessed over potential Muslim rebellion in northern Nigeria given the conquest of the region’s Sokoto Caliphate from 1901 to 1903, the Islamist Satiru Uprising in 1906 and continuing pacification operations.36 In April 1909, Major A. J. Digan, a British officer of the NNR, noticed a sudden and surprising deterioration in the attitude of his fifty-four-man detachment at Abuja. Although the men seemed reluctant to work and exhibited a sour mood, Digan tried but failed to identify the cause of discontent. Mostly originating from the Nupe ethnic 35 NA (UK) CO 445/17, “Report on the Gambia Company, 1904,” 6 May 1904; CO 445/22, “Annual Report,” 1 February 1906; “Report on the Gambia Company, 1906,” 24 May 1906. 36 R. A. Adeleye, “Mahdist Triumph and British Revenge in Northern Nigeria,” 193–214; Paul E. Lovejoy and J. S. Hogendorn, “Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905–06,” Journal of African History 31 (1990): 217–44.

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group of central Nigeria, a community well represented in the regiment at the time, the troops comprised “a particularly steady and well conducted company” that had recently partaken in a punitive expedition against the Dakakari people of northwestern Nigeria. Digan, who had fought in the Gold Coast and served in Nigeria for a long time, knew his men well, having led them for seven years; his capable company sergeant major had been with the unit for eleven years. Digan discovered, however, that some soldiers had been attending Muslim religious meetings where Mallam Mamodu, an escaped political prisoner, was preaching against the British. Some soldiers were overheard making seditious remarks and Digan believed that they had been concealing their identities by putting on civilian dress and sneaking away from camp at night to meet with Mamodu. Fearing that a clique of soldiers and African NCOs conspired to mutiny, Digan had Mamodu arrested and detained in the outpost’s guardroom. Furthermore, the officer telegraphed his worries to his superiors who immediately dispatched two hundred NNR troops from their posts at Zungeru and Keffi to reinforce Abuja. British authorities expressed confidence in the relief force, as many of its soldiers were “pagan” and therefore not likely influenced by Muslim sentiments. When the reinforcements arrived at Abuja, they found nothing out of the ordinary, and Digan’s detachment quickly transferred to Zungeru to remove it from the scene of possible trouble. Authorities court-martialed nine soldiers accused of making subversive statements, and they received sentences ranging from three years penal servitude and dismissal from the army to a year’s imprisonment with hard labor. The fate of Mamodu is unknown. The NNR commandant, Colonel W. Strickland, suspected that Digan had exaggerated the matter though he acknowledged the major’s experience and conceded that prompt action might have averted a disaster. One British official attributed the disquiet to the fact that Abuja was a small and isolated post where excessive drinking caused problems.37 While the absence of court-martial records for the nine soldiers means that historians do not know their side of the story, the incident illustrates the fundamental uncertainty of British officers in their African troops. Around the same time, in southeastern Nigeria where colonial forces carried out a series of brutal conquest expeditions against the area’s decentralized communities, the SNR experienced several mutinous incidents though details remain obscure. In 1907 men of the SNR company that garrisoned 37 NNA (Kaduna) SNP 6, 50/1909, “Unrest of Troops at Abuja;” Ubah, Colonial Army and Society, 206–7.

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Bende “behaved in a mutinous manner” at a local courthouse where some of their wives were sentenced to imprisonment for causing a disturbance in a local market. A sergeant accused of leading the protest faced court-martial and received a long prison term. British officers believed that the absence of the African company sergeant major who was away at the time contributed to the affair and his return brought stability.38 In 1913, there was an “outbreak of insubordination” in Number 8 Company of the SNR at Calabar resulting in the punishment of 42 men.39

The First World War and Interwar Years Mutinies among Britain’s West African soldiers became rare during the First World War notwithstanding the grueling conditions experienced in Cameroon and East Africa. In September 1918, near the end of the war, soldiers of the Nigeria Regiment Special Service Brigade who were preparing for ultimately aborted deployment to the Middle East became openly disaffected, and many deserted. Given the seriousness of the situation, local officials called Nigeria’s governor and WAFF founder Frederick Lugard to Zaria. As Lugard addressed the assembled unit, soldiers began murmuring that they had done their part for the war effort and that their grievances over pay remained unresolved. Lugard then dispatched Sergeant Major Mama Zozo to direct the other African sergeant majors to consult with their men and report on the complaints. Consequently, Lugard discovered a long list of problems. Soldiers who fought in German Cameroon never received a promised monetary bonus, those returned from East Africa received decreased pay rates while new recruits gained higher “active service” pay, and men not fed for many months in East Africa lacked an expected retroactive ration allowance. Lugard personally resolved these grievances as well as other unknown complaints from four soldiers. With the brigade returned to order, the governor blamed the affair on British NCOs who prevented African soldiers from expressing their troubles to their officers. Lugard pointed out that the brigade’s British leaders “had in some cases treated them (the soldiers) as ‘Niggers’ and in one case it appears a Non-commissioned officer had struck a man on parade. Such a state of things would make the best native troops in Africa unwilling to go on service with such officers and Non-commissioned 38 NA (UK) CO 445/28, “Report on NNR,” 24 February 1908. 39 NA (UK) CO 445/33, “Report on SNR for 1912,” 24 February 1913.

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officers.” There were no further problems with the unit as it never deployed to the Middle East and demobilized with the November armistice.40 The incident illustrates that Lugard, a veteran of many colonial wars leading African troops, knew well that soldiers prevented from communicating their concerns to higher authority would find a more disruptive way of expressing themselves. There are very few recorded incidents of mutiny or widespread disciplinary problems among Britain’s West African soldiers during the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. During the 1919 “anti-Syrian” riots in Sierra Leone, some WAR and SLB soldiers abandoned guard duties to join the looters and in Sumbuya, three WAR troops led the mob.41 For the Colonial Office, who scrutinized the appointment of officers to the WAFF and KAR, problems in the WAR resulted from poor leadership as its British officers lacked suitability to command African troops and originated from inferior class and educational backgrounds. Some officers rejected by the Colonial Office for service in Africa eventually turned up in the WAR mess.42 Tried by civil colonial courts, SLB soldiers involved in the rioting faced fines and prison terms ranging from one to six months.43 In Nigeria, colonial intelligence reports indicated that some Nigeria Regiment soldiers had been involved in planning the 1933 Lagos police mutiny that happened because of the cancellation of allowances in the context of the Great Depression. However, military personnel did not participate in the police protest suppressed by army units brought in from Kaduna in the north.44 The absence of soldiers’ dissent during this interwar period of military austerity and downsizing, that included the 1928 disbanding of the WAR, and reduced internal security operations during the “High Tide” of colonial rule indicates that army 40 NA (UK) 445/44, “Disaffection in 1st WAFF SB at Zaria,” November 1918; Lugard to Secretary of State for Colonies, 8 October 1918. 41 Martin Kaniki, “Attitudes and Reactions towards the Lebanese in Sierra Leone during the Colonial Period,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 7, no. 1 (1973): 108. 42 NA (UK) CO 445/48, “Future Administration of the WAFF,” Jenkins to Beattie, 30 May 1919. 43 NA (YUK) CO 445/50, “WAFF: Sierra Leone: Employment of Military in Aide to Civil Power,” 13 March 1920. 44 Abimbola Omotayo Adesoji and Emmanuel Olukemi Rotimi, “Managing Police Grievances in a Depressed Economy: The Lagos Colony Police Mutiny of 1933,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 48, no. 2 (2014): 257–74.

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mutiny in British West Africa related to stress caused by military expansion and wartime deployments. All this changed at the end of the 1930s as Britain’s West African army began to grow and transform in preparation for an anticipated global conflict. In January 1939, a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, the African gunners of the new Sierra Leone Heavy Battery, Royal Artillery, at Freetown felt frustration over their service conditions. On the night of Sunday 29 January, the gunners held a meeting to organize a protest and the next day, instead of proceeding to their usual Monday morning work, they presented their British commander with a letter outlining complaints about allowances, salaries, lack of electric lights in their quarters, and particularly the military’s failure to issue boots promised upon enlistment. The commander refused to address the letter until his men assembled on parade. Some 150 men then delayed parading for forty-five minutes and displayed their annoyance by wearing shorts and T-shirts instead of the required uniform. Gunner Emmanuel Cole, a Krio man from Freetown who had been one of the first to enlist in the unit upon its formation in 1937, emerged as the troops’ representative. He asked the British officers why black soldiers, who endured tight supervision, did not have the same privileges as their white colleagues of the same rank who visited town wearing civilian clothing. The next day, 31 January, armed British personnel supported by Sierra Leonean infantrymen quickly suppressed the gunners’ strike. Arrested and court-martialed for mutiny and other offenses, eleven of the main agitators received various prison sentences. Informing the gunners’ strike and the military’s decisive response, protest by the nationalist West African Youth League and a series of civilian labor actions embroiled Freetown during the previous few months. Indeed, officials found Gunner Cole in possession of receipts that indicated contact with the Youth League. Another important factor influencing the strike was that the newly formed unit comprised many literate Freetown men suitable to operate artillery and communications equipment, but they expected higher standards of living and could express themselves in writing unlike the uneducated hinterland troops who usually made up the colonial infantry in Sierra Leone.45 Once again, this example shows that disgruntled African troops tried to communicate their problems to higher authorities in this case through a petition, an action seen as potentially mutinous within the British military context. Although senior officers worried about nationalist plots, and rebuffed Gunner Cole and his 45 Cole, “Defining the ‘Flesh,’” 275–95.

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colleagues, British officials recognized the changing aspirations and needs of African colonial troops who received boots and improved service conditions during the Second World War.

The Second World War and After Britain’s West African troops became involved in a number of mutinous incidents during the Second World War, although in some cases detailed records are unavailable. Several of these disturbances in the Gold Coast appear reminiscent of the 1939 Freetown gunners’ mutiny and likely involved relatively better-educated troops employed in logistical units and with higher aspirations for life within the colonial army. In the Gold Coast in late 1939, military drivers paraded in old civilian clothing and pajamas, instead of uniforms, to protest transfer away from their families. The arrival of GCR infantrymen, generally uneducated men from the Northern Territories, restored discipline, and some of the demonstration leaders received short prison sentences. In 1945 soldiers working at a military hospital in Accra, Gold Coast refused orders until they received “white man’s food” and angry troops at the port of Takoradi attempted to free some of their colleagues from jail.46 Fragmentary records hint at a series of mutinies or near mutinies in West Africa, Asia, and the Middle East during the war. In late October 1942, after a mysterious incident, military courts convicted five sergeants from the Nigeria Regiment of inciting mutiny and sentenced each to five years imprisonment though they were released after a year for good behavior.47 A report on British operations in East Africa mentioned that a “Nigerian Battalion stationed for a period in Addis Ababa gave at one time cause for anxiety.”48 Between October and December 1944, seven West African soldiers serving in India faced charges of mutiny though the specifics of these cases remain unclear.49 In July 1945 news of the closure of the West African Pilot newspa46 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 251–53; Holbrook, “Gold Coast,” 208 mentions 11 new recruits charged with mutiny in the Gold Coast in October 1939. 47 NNA (Enugu) OW 6274, “Petition from ex-Sergeant Audu Zaria,” 28 December 1946. 48 NAG (Banjul), CSO 4/270, “African Troops—Conduct in the East Africa Campaign,” 29 October 1941, Cipher Telegram, 29 July 1941. 49 Kaushik Roy, “Discipline and Morale of the African, British and Indian Army Units in Burma and Indian during World War II: July 1943 to August 1945,” Modern Asian Studies 44, no. 6 (November 2010), 1279.

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per by the Nigerian colonial state caused anger among West African soldiers serving in Burma who “might mutiny” and in Palestine where they planned to organize a one-day mass conference. It is possible, of course, that the West African press exaggerated these reports to enhance its own reputation.50 Several oral histories appear to confirm that Nigerian troops mutinied at a West African military hospital in India, possibly incited by the arrest of a fellow soldier for having a sexual relationship with a white nurse, and that the rioters raped nurses in revenge. After British troops subdued the rebellion, an unknown number of Nigerian soldiers convicted of mutiny were transported to prison in Port Harcourt, Nigeria where they hanged around 1947.51 Crowded with bored young men on long voyages, troopships taking West African soldiers to or from war theatres became scenes of misbehavior. In 1944 officers forbade West African soldiers on their way to India to leave their ship that had stopped over at Rabat, Morocco, because officers disapproved of them potentially having sex with the town’s white prostitutes. Ignoring the order, the West Africans disembarked and marched on the city, but armed white South African troops turned them back to the port. In 1945 West African soldiers on a ship carrying them home from Asia removed their insignia and roughed up British officers and NCOs in an episode described as approaching mutiny.52 A mutiny among West African soldiers that occurred in India just after the war illustrates the pressures created by waiting for repatriation. One evening in October 1945, in Madras province, two companies of troops from 4 (West Africa) Auxiliary Group, Sierra Leone Regiment, engaged in a “heated discussion” in the African canteen over a haircut allowance called “barb money” that officers had promised them but that turned out not to exist. When Sergeant Blanco claimed that only NCOs would receive the money, the angry troops chased him away and marched to the officers’ quarters to demand the “barb money.” According to a rare military legal document related to the incident, “The Europeans in attempting to stop the 50 “African Troops May Mutiny at the News of Ban on Pilot,” West African Pilot, 21 August 1945. 51 IWM, Conn; IWM Marshal Kebby, interview, 1989; Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 132. A British sergeant major, Conn maintained that British hangman Albert Pierrepoint traveled to Nigeria to conduct the executions. Marshal Kebby, a Nigerian soldier originally called Smart Ebbi who fought in Burma and later became a journalist and radical nationalist, claimed to have participated in the riot. 52 Killingray, “Colonial Army,” 252–54.

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men maltreating Sergeant Blanco used such violence to aggravate the troops further causing a mutiny to occur from a mere ‘palaver.’”53 The Auxiliary Group’s acting commanding officer, who confronted the men, was beaten and chased away while the commanders of the two rebellious companies were coerced into signing a document agreeing to the haircut payment. Colonel L. A. Holloway, the substantive commanding officer who had worked in the Nigerian civil service for many years, returned to the unit’s lines and persuaded the irritated men to go to their barracks. The next morning the same troops refused to parade and assembled in the African canteen from where they marched toward the unit headquarters. When the mutineers began heading toward the armory, a Gambia Regiment infantry company already deployed to the camp used “fists and rifle butts” to drive the men back to their accommodation. During the remainder of the day, the soldiers continued to reject orders and officers sent to negotiate with them heard about grievances over lack of “barb money” and delay of repatriation. On the second morning of the episode, given that more armed infantry arrived around their barracks, the “spirit of the rebellion had diminished,” and the men slowly obeyed orders to assemble on parade. Those accused of leading the mutiny and committing offenses during the disturbance were loaded onto trucks and later faced military trials while Colonel Holloway “harangued” the remainder. Subsequently, ninety-two men faced court-martial for mutiny with some acquitted and others receiving sentences ranging from three to ten years’ imprisonment with hard labor as well as ignominious discharge from the army, which meant loss of service benefits. The two company commanders and the acting commanding officer transferred away from the unit. A subsequent inquest failed to establish a single cause of the incident explained as stemming from inconsistency in paying “barb money” to some units and not others, and an earlier unfulfilled promise by the divisional commander that the unit would return home quickly. British officers suspected that some of the mutinous troops had been in contact with Indian nationalists while on leave, but this remained unproven. Like other mutineers in the history of the West African army, the 1,750-strong unit had earned a good war record, providing 81st (West Africa) Division with frontline supply carriers who, between December 1943 and February 1945, had been involved in almost constant combat on the Arakan Front in Burma. It seems likely that poor 53 Sierra Leone Archives (Freetown), Service Record of SLA 3001551 Joe Bauma, “Review of Sentences Awarded by Court Martial,” 24 December 1956.

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leadership created a context for mutiny as the one company that stood apart from the protest had a British commander who knew Sierra Leone well, had led his company since formation, and “who had a rapport with his men subtly different from that of other officers.”54 As with many other mutinies, the “barb money” incident began when soldiers demanding redress of grievance experienced physical abuse by European officers, which escalated the tensions further enflamed by the arrival of armed infantry. In the wake of the Second World War, West African soldiers were hardly alone in expressing discontent over repatriation delays, with massive riots plaguing US forces in Asia and the Pacific in the same period.55 For those Sierra Leone troops convicted of offenses related to the mutiny, the impact of the incident continued for a long time. Private Joe Bauma, a man in his twenties from southern Sierra Leone and of Mende ethnicity, volunteered for the army in 1942 and performed well during his war service in India and Burma from 1943 to 1945. After the incident, Bauma and probably others spent about a year in military detention in India where they faced court-martial. Bauma was convicted of mutiny. In October to November 1946, Bauma shipped from India to Sierra Leone with other military prisoners under “special escort” and began serving his ten-year sentence in a military prison. However, given his involvement in an escape, authorities moved him to the civilian prison in Freetown where he remained making raffia cloth until 1951, given the reduction of his sentence to five years. Unlike other veterans, he lacked a postservice gratuity payment, and his discharge status disqualified him for government jobs and programs for ex-servicemen.

54 ORDP, Richard R. Ryder, “Mutiny in India by Sierra Leone Troops of 4 (WA) Auxiliary Group, Sierra Leone Regiment, Autumn 1945,” 7 July 1982. As the unit’s adjutant, Captain Ryder was well positioned to know about these events and subsequent disciplinary actions. While it appears that records of the courts-martial and inquiry are not available, the incident is confirmed by the service record of SLA 3001551 Joe Bauma held at the Sierra Leone Archives (Freetown). Bauma received a sentence of ten years, later reduced to five years. Based on Ryder’s account, the incident is mentioned in Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 183 and Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 133. Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 139, n61, incorporates a 1993 interview with a former British officer of the Gambia Regiment who observed the incident. 55 Lee, “Mutiny of 1946,” 555–71.

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Military authorities considered him “a man who has lost his previous good character through a serious lapse.”56 In post–Second World War Nigeria, in the context of the deployment of colonial soldiers to counter rising African nationalist protest and intensified civilian labor actions, logistical troops who were mostly literate southerners engaged in protest over military conditions of service. In 1948 men from the Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (EME) workshop in Lagos staged an orderly march on Government House to highlight poor administration and leadership. Stopped on the road by the commanding general, the protesting troops acquiesced to his urging them to return to barracks. Two other disturbances among soldiers in Lagos, one at the Ordnance Depot and another in a company of the West African Auxiliary Service Corps, occurred around the same time. In 1951 some engineers stationed at Kaduna in Northern Nigeria marched toward town demanding to see the military area commander, but an infantry battalion intercepted and halted them. In May 1952, at the Command Ordnance Depot in the Yaba neighborhood of Lagos, some one hundred logistical soldiers organized a protest over their poor accommodation, and this turned into a riot during which the mutineers burned army property and injured several British officers as well as British and African NCOs. Military police assisted by infantrymen of mostly Northern Nigerian origin suppressed the mainly southern mutineers reflecting the regional polarization of the army emerging in late colonial Nigeria. Thirty-one “ringleaders” of the protest were court-martialed and sentenced to several years’ imprisonment.57

Conclusion As with recent mutinies in postcolonial African armed forces, mutinies by Britain’s West African colonial troops did not amount to mindless breaks in discipline. From the 1860s to 1950s, West African soldiers like Private Morlai Mandingo in 1901 and Gunner Emmanuel Cole in 1939 periodically engaged in protest over what they saw as serious grievances and sought to appeal to higher command for intervention. In many cases, attempts by 56 Sierra Leone Archives (Freetown), Service Record of SLA 3001551 Joe Bauma. 57 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 475, 478; Miners, Nigerian Army, 24–25; Daily Echo, 1 August 1952, 1 and 25 August 1952.

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junior or mid-level officers to block soldiers’ communication with superior authorities turned these protests into violent altercations. Conversely, Lugard’s 1918 intervention shows the responsiveness of West African colonial soldiers to a high-level officer who listened to their complaints and did something about them. There is little evidence that these incidents represented anticolonial movements, and the resemblance of these episodes to civilian labor strikes was not particular to colonial Africa as most army mutinies in other parts of the world, including the famous French Army mutiny of 1917,58 involved refusal to carry out orders or continue normal military work. The timing of these mutinies among Britain’s West African colonial troops illustrates the importance of stress caused by the formation of new units or command structures, wartime deployments or operations, repatriation delays, and the incorporation of new communities into the military.

58 John Williams, Mutiny 1917 (London: Heinemann, 1962).

Chapter Ten

Murder and Mayhem Aside from their involvement in the colonial state’s internal security operations or other military campaigns, Britain’s West African soldiers committed acts of brutal violence against civilians across the region and at different times during the colonial period. To be clear, West African soldiers engaged in independent acts of violence against West African civilians separate from the “everyday and extraordinary violence”1 they perpetrated on behalf of the colonial state. On the other hand, and beyond the context of anticolonial rebellion, civilians did not always remain passive victims of such arbitrary military abuse and they periodically attacked soldiers. Examples of seemingly random violence by Britain’s West African soldiers against civilians seemed to occur more commonly in the conquest era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, faded away during the interwar era and became rampant again during the Second World War. Historians of the British colonial military in East and Central Africa have identified a similar periodization of soldiers’ maltreatment of civilians.2 In this way, the ebb and flow of such unofficial violence paralleled official flogging and incidents of mutiny within Britain’s West African army. Acts of informal everyday violence also took place among Britain’s West African soldiers who sometimes inflicted terrible abuse on each other and attacked troops from units originating from other territories. A recent study of the extreme violence perpetrated by Soviet soldiers against civilians during the Second World War offers some useful points for understanding the mistreatment of civilians and sometimes colleagues by Britain’s West African colonial troops. For the Soviet case, violence by military personnel against civilians did not represent pointless or mindless acts but “served as a mode of self-expression among soldiers.” As total institutions, armies including those of the Soviet Union and British West 1 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 9. 2 Parsons, African Rank-and-File, 135–37; Lovering, “Authority and Identity,” 269–75.

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Africa establish “their own set of harsh orders, symbols and social hierarchies, providing soldiers with little space outside the institution and nurturing a perception of `us against them.’”3 In colonial West Africa, these violent acts carried out by soldiers seemed to express their sense of separateness and superiority when compared to civilian communities and occasionally colleagues from other regiments or of lower rank. Absent a large body of written accounts by ordinary soldiers and civilians, these disturbing events illustrate the place of the West African soldier within the region’s colonial society and how that changed over time.

The Conquest Era In addition to the wars of conquest that characterized the Scramble for Africa, the turn of the nineteenth century witnessed extensive violence between Britain’s West African soldiers and civilians throughout the region. In June 1899, in Freetown, a fight broke out between WAR soldiers who comprised Mende, Temne, and other ethnicities from the interior, and police and prison warders who were Krio people from the town. Given the killing of a policeman during the fray, Krio civilians formed mobs that attacked and stoned WAR troops and their supply carriers. As a result, Sierra Leone’s governor directed the scattered WAR detachments centralized at Kortright Hill just outside Freetown, but he refused military suggestions to move the unit further into the hinterland protectorate. An important factor contributing to the riot was Krio anger over violence their community had endured at the hands of Mende insurgents during the Hut Tax Rebellion of the previous year. Following the assaults on Mende and other hinterland soldiers of the WAR, Krio gangs attacked Mende civilians throughout Freetown. Since the mostly Krio police sympathized with the Freetown mob, Caribbean troops from the WIR restored order in the port city.4 Within a short time, the WAR shipped out to the Gold Coast where the unit helped suppress the Asante rebellion, and after that, many of its troops mutinied. 3 4

Kerstin Bischl, “Presenting Oneself: Red Army Soldiers and Violence in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45,” History: The Journal of the Historical Association 101, no. 346 (July 2016): 467. NA (UK) CO 267/446, No. 16754, “Disturbances through Affray Between West African Soldiers and Police,” 29 June 1899, Acting Governor Matthew Nathan to Colonial Secretary J. Chamberlain, 14 June 1899.

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In Freetown, relations between soldiers and civilians remained tense and sometimes turned violent. Simultaneous with the WAR’s 1901 mutiny in the Gold Coast, a scuffle between wives of WAR soldiers and civilian children in Freetown escalated into a massive brawl between troops and civilians on the Wilberforce parade ground to the horror of those attending the nearby Wesleyan church. A Freetown newspaper reported, “Sticks, stones, belts, clubs, gun-butts and what not were then used freely. . . . The actions of these soldiers were brutal and barbarous. They nearly deprived one woman of her skull; her head was smashed by the butt-end of a gun from a cowardly soldier.”5 In another incident later that year, and that mirrored many similar episodes throughout the region, several WAR soldiers “severely assaulted” a trader who refused to lower prices.6 WAR troops also became notorious for stealing agricultural produce around Freetown. At the end of 1911, an official noted, “The majority of people living in Wilberforce who used to farm have given it up, owing to having their crops destroyed by the W. A. Regt.”7 Of course, other imperial troops of the Freetown garrison engaged in violence against civilians such as Caribbean WIR infantry and artillerymen who, in March 1902, rampaged through a market, assaulted residents, and broke windows.8 European and Krio residents of Freetown distrusted the Sierra Leonean WAR troops, associating them with the perceived savagery of their interior homeland. At the end of 1906, a rumor circulated in Freetown about the disarming and confinement of the WAR’s Muslim troops, but the regiment published a denial.9 In 1908, news of the WIR’s impending withdrawal from Freetown prompted a newspaper correspondent to express skepticism that the WAR’s hinterland soldiers would suppress a rebellion in the protectorate, although they had done so a decade before. Lurid stories circulated about WAR soldiers deserting with large amounts of ammunition and their membership in mysterious secret societies such as Poro.10

5 6 7

“Serious Disturbance at Wilberforce,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 6 April 1901. “Militarism at Rutifunk,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 19 October 1901. Sierra Leone Archives, Freetown, LM504/1911, “Destruction of Cassava Farm,” Mr. W. J. Battis, 14 December 1911. 8 Abdul Mortaleb, “The Disturbances in Town,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 8 March 1902. 9 “A Denial,” Weekly News, 5 January 1907. 10 “Threatened Disbandment of the West Indian Regiment,” African Mail, 16 October 1908.

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At the start of the twentieth century, West African soldiers in the Gold Coast committed numerous atrocities against civilians. At Cape Coast, GCR troops became notorious for “disgraceful and brutal conduct.” In late 1902, some soldiers invited a palm wine merchant into their barracks where they drank all his wine and then beat him to death. In a similar incident, soldiers consumed all the wine being sold by a twelve-year-old girl who they beat to a bloody pulp and broke all her wine pots. Calling the soldiers “uniformed cannibals,” a local newspaper put pressure on traditional leaders and the Westernized elite of the Gold Coast Aborigines Protection Society who complained to the colonial military prompting assurances from a British officer that these incidents would not repeat.11 In less than a year, however, soldiers standing guard at Cape Coast Castle chased some children and several adults who tried to intervene were badly beaten including a Mrs. Yankuma who was stripped naked and dragged violently to a police station and later fined by a court.12 Some of the few West Africans with access to precision firearms, colonial soldiers sometimes embarked on shooting sprees that colonial officials described using the psychological term “running amok.”13 In 1902 a GCR corporal ran “amok” wounding seven people presumably with his rifle.14 At the start of the twentieth century in Kano, a city in Northern Nigeria, a soldier detained for “insolence and insubordination” escaped the guardroom with a rifle and ammunition. Running “amok” in the parade ground, he called for all Bature (white men) to come forth so he could shoot them, and then he carefully took aim and shot five officers’ horses that were the only targets available. After taking another shot at the local hospital, the escaped soldier died from shots fired by some of his colleagues who carefully stalked him.15 11 Gold Coast Leader, 29 November 1902 and 6 December 1902. 12 Gold Coast Leader, 23 May 1903. 13 Originating in European colonial observations of some indigenous Asian societies, the term “running amok” or “amok” continues to exist in the field of psychiatry to describe a sudden violent attack by an individual suffering from mental illness. It is associated with terms like “spree killing” and “mass shooting.” See Manuel L. Saint Martin, “Running Amok: A Modern Perspective on a Culture Bound Syndrome,” The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 1, no. 3 (June 1999): 66–70. 14 NA (UK) CO 445/14, “Report on 1 GCR,” 1 January 1903. 15 Constance Larrymore, A Resident’s Wife in Nigeria (London: George Routledge, 1908), 107.

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A mass shooting carried out by a soldier in Sierra Leone illustrates his alienation from local civilians. At the end of 1912, “B” Company of the SLB, popularly known as the “Frontiers,” had recently arrived on Sherbro Island on the Atlantic coast of southern Sierra Leone. Usually posted at the military center of Daru in the eastern hinterland, the company deployed to Sherbro to augment colonial security operations related to a series of 1911 murders allegedly committed by “human leopards” that British officials associated with the Poro secret society. The soldiers assisted in some 336 arrests, including several local chiefs in relation to the murders and provided security for the subsequent trials and executions that reinforced British authority.16 Nervous colonial officials brought some Gold Coast soldiers to Sierra Leone to bolster security and put units in Nigeria on alert for possible deployment.17 In this troubled atmosphere, the Sherbro community almost certainly viewed the newly arrived SLB soldiers as instruments of foreign occupation and oppression. The horrific violence of the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion remained a recent memory for many civilians, soldiers, and officials. In 1912, during the Leopard trials, British authorities seemed concerned to avoid letting abuse by soldiers push the people of Sherbro too far and possibly provoke wider resistance. Over a period of about two months, local civilians made a series of complaints about soldiers’ behavior to British officials that resulted in the dismissal of four soldiers who were humiliated by having to return their uniforms in front of their assembled colleagues. One of these soldiers was also imprisoned. From the soldiers’ perspective, they resented that the civilians they were protecting from “being eaten by leopards” appeared to be conspiring against them with the active encouragement of a local chief. Among the troops was Private Surie Kamara, a thirty-five-year-old ethnic Mandingo man from Koinadugu in northern Sierra Leone, who had served in the army for five years and who probably could not read or write. Far from home, he had little in common with the southerners of Sherbro and was increasingly angry with them. Private Kamara’s sergeant major told him that the civilian complaints had brought shame on the company and advised him to protect 16 Katrina Keefer, “Poro on Trial: The 1913 Special Commission Court Case of Rex vs. Fino, Bofio and Kalfalla,” African Studies Review 61, no. 3 (September 2018): 56–78; K. J. Beaty, Human Leopards: An Account of the Trials of Human Leopards Before the Special Commission Court; With a Note on Sierra Leone, Past and Present (London: Hugh Rees, 1915), 27, 120. 17 NA (UK) CO 445/48, “Reorganization of WAFF and KAR,” 5 May 1919, memo on WAFF by Lieutenant Colonel Beattie, 4 April 1919.

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himself by always carrying ammunition for his rifle when he left the unit barracks. The sergeant major, who promised to help Kamara obtain promotion, joked that he should kill some civilians and then flee across the border to Liberia. As it turned out, Private Kamara took this quip seriously. One morning in late December 1912, Kamara was in a village where he asked a local woman selling food for something to eat but she denied the request. In turn, Kamara took some of the woman’s food, provoking her to threaten to report him to the military authorities, to which the soldier warned, “If you do you will never complain again.” Upon returning to his barracks, Kamara saw his company assembling on the parade ground where he also observed the same woman along with her young son. Taking his rifle, bayonet, and ammunition, Kamara then walked to three nearby villages where he shot dead three men and a woman he mistakenly believed was the one who had reported him. During his rampage, Kamara spared a man because he said he was from Murray Town, a section of Freetown, and could recite the alphabet, presumably associating him with colonial civilization. Eventually, a local farmer tackled and disarmed the renegade soldier just as a detachment of troops turned up to investigate the commotion. In his subsequent statement to the district commissioner, Kamara maintained that “I thought that when I came down from Daru that the Frontiers could do what they liked in this part because the people had done bad. . . . The white men believe the natives more than the frontiers. If a rising took place we would die for the white people.” A medical doctor confirmed Kamara’s sanity, as he did not appear to suffer from delusions. On 1 April 1913, after his murder conviction by the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, Private Kamara was hanged in Freetown prison.18 Back in North Sherbro, a rumor spread that the colonial state had ordered Kamara to shoot people to punish the community for the human leopard murders.19 Kamara’s actions and statements reveal that he saw himself as an agent of colonial authority engaged in the justified subjugation of the rebellious and ungrateful Sherbro people for whom he and other soldiers had nothing but contempt. For Kamara, colonial authorities betrayed soldiers like him by stripping them of their superior status on the word of supposedly inferior civilians. 18 SLA (Freetown), no reference system, “Rex. Vs. Surie Kamara,” Circuit Judge to Colonial Secretary, 11 February 1913; Clerk of Councils to Colonial Secretary, Memorandum, 29 July 1913. 19 William Brandford Griffith, The Far Horizon: Portrait of a Colonial Judge (Ilfracombe, UK: Arthur H. Stockwell, 1951), 217.

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During the First World War, Britain’s West African soldiers sometimes abused civilians in the German colonies where operations took place. Most of these incidents amounted to “looting,” but sometimes they involved assault with knives.20 One episode illustrates violence between West African soldiers from different British territories. In late December 1917, a potentially deadly fight broke out between soldiers of the WAR from Sierra Leone and the GCR stationed in Lome in occupied German Togoland. Brewing tensions between men of the two regiments escalated when, on Saturday 29 December, about forty WAR soldiers went to the civilian market carrying sticks. When eighty GCR soldiers showed up, the outnumbered WAR men fled with their rivals chasing them through a local settlement and a cassava farm back to their barracks. A WAR British officer, Captain E. L. Hewitt, tried to stop the GCR troops, but they threw sticks and rocks at him and continued the pursuit. The fleeing WAR men then entered their unit’s armory; brushing aside a shocked Sergeant Lamina Seisy, who was in charge of security, they broke open the weapons locker and took eight rifles. Regaining his composure, the sergeant firmly refused to open the ammunition store. Using a few rounds found scattered around camp, the armed WAR men fired at the pursuing Gold Coasters, three of whom suffered minor wounds. Captain Hewitt, several British and African NCOs, and a British police officer disarmed the WAR soldiers, and the Gold Coasters returned to their training center. In the subsequent inquiry held in Lome, some of the Gold Coast men claimed that Captain Hewitt escalated the violence by firing a revolver at them, but Hewitt and the WAR soldiers testified that he had been unarmed. While the officer presiding over the Lome inquiry concluded that Hewitt’s testimony was not creditable and recommended the captain for court-martial, another inquest held in his home posting of Freetown exonerated him. It appears that none of the African troops involved in the incident faced prosecution, and the WAR detachment in Lome promptly returned to Freetown to avoid further trouble.21 The apparent disappearance of such incidents during the interwar era is important. It suggests that soldiers’ violence against civilians (and sometimes each other) before and during the First World War related to the 20 UK (NA) CO 445/35, “Corporal Punishment, G.C. Regt.” 16 July 1915; UK (NA) CO 445/35, “Corporal Punishment, G.C. Regt.” 5 November 1915. 21 NA (UK), CO 445/43, “Disturbance at Lome Between W.A. Regt. And the G.C. Regt. 29 December 1917,” 24 June 1918; CO 445/45, “Disturbance at Lome Between GCR and WAR,” 24 July 1918.

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atmosphere of colonial conquest. Some of Britain’s early twentieth-century African soldiers had previously experienced or conducted precolonial style raiding and pillaging of communities, but there is limited direct evidence that this informed later behavior when in uniform. Historians know next to nothing about the preenlistment history of Britain’s West African soldiers of the “Scramble” era. One exception is Private Makam Kamara, who before joining the WAR in Sierra Leone in 1902, captured and sold over twenty people into slavery and fought the French three times in his home area across the colonial border.22 Private Kamara had been a “war boy” comprising a class of young men who fought as mercenaries in the late nineteenth-century conflicts of the Sierra Leone hinterland. While it is possible that precolonial warfare practices influenced soldiers’ behavior toward civilians, the context of the many colonial pacification campaigns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is difficult to ignore. The West African colonial soldiers who destroyed civilian communities and seized food when on official punitive expeditions could hardly forget about those experiences when inhabiting a garrison town and interacting with local people. Violence permeated the military culture of Britain’s West African colonial army during its early period. After the First World War, however, few of the young men who formed the West African colonial army had experience of precolonial raiding. And as resistance to British rule waned, there were far fewer (and in many places no) colonial internal security operations for many years. Furthermore, during the 1920s and early 1930s, daily interaction between soldiers and civilians decreased as the colonial military in British West Africa shrank, with a reduced number of troops redeployed from a network of small outposts positioned across vast areas to a few centralized garrisons in large towns.

The Second World War Episodes of West African soldiers’ violence toward civilians rose dramatically during the Second World War. Interestingly, official records related to many of these incidents survive in West African archives and not in Britain. This raises the strong possibility that more of these episodes took place but that the documentation was lost or destroyed. Important contextual issues related to the war years included the dramatic expansion of Britain’s West African 22 Grattan and Cochrane, “West African Regiment,” 537. The few other soldiers discussed in this piece had no prior experience of warfare.

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military, the establishment of military camps and barracks among communities that had rarely ever seen a soldier, and the movement of units from their home territory to other parts of the region—a practice that had not happened much in previous years. Most of the episodes of mass violence in this era reflected a pattern whereby a small-scale altercation between soldiers and civilians escalated when a large number of soldiers attacked a civilian community. West African soldiers from various territories became involved in a series of violent confrontations in the Gambia beginning at a time of great threat from surrounding Vichy French territory. More widespread than historians have acknowledged, these incidents surpassed “typical wartime clashes between soldiers and civilians” or “a normal amount of testiness.”23 In proportion to its small size, the Gambia may have experienced more violence between soldiers and civilians than other parts of British West Africa. In late 1941 the fourth battalion of the GCR camped next to the town of Brikama with soldiers spending much of their off-duty time in the town square. Tensions brewed between the civilians who saw the Gold Coast soldiers as arrogant and overbearing and the soldiers who accused local merchants of overcharging them for goods. British officers observed that cultural differences also contributed to the conflict, as Gambians regularly engaged in loud arguments and exchanged insults without getting into physical fights, but the Gold Coast soldiers took such words more seriously. On the evening of Monday 24 November 1941, an argument between an extraterritorial Fulani shopkeeper and a Gold Coast soldier deteriorated into a brawl between about a dozen civilians and soldiers in which Private Obuasi Dogarti died from a blow to the head with a blunt instrument. The local governmentappointed chief (or Seyfu) and his messengers and a military police corporal proved unable to control the situation. Driven from the town, the small group of Gold Coast soldiers involved in the initial incident returned to their camp where they rallied more of their comrades and counter-attacked the town burning twenty-two houses. Soldiers and civilians sustained injuries, including some who required hospitalization, and one soldier suffered a gunshot wound to the arm. The violence ended when a military fire brigade arrived on the scene, and armed troops cordoned off the area. Subsequently, 23 Donald R. Wright, The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, The Gambia (London: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), 198. This book outlines just one in a series of violent altercations documented in files in the NAG (Banjul).

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officials charged four civilians with murder or manslaughter, one soldier with arson, and several other civilians and soldiers with assault. Although military authorities immediately banned soldiers from entering Brikama, suspicions fell on the Gold Coast troops when three more houses in the town burned, as well as that of the community’s Muslim leader over successive nights in early December. Eventually, and as recommended by an official inquiry, colonial authorities collected £100 from the residents of Brikama, and this money, equivalent to the amount paid to the next-of-kin of a soldier killedin-action, was sent as compensation to the family of the late Private Dogarti in the Gold Coast. At the same time, the military paid a total of £220 compensation to Brikama residents who lost their homes.24 On the evening of Saturday 26 September 1942, another fight broke out at Yundum, not far from Brikama, where around four hundred Nigerian soldiers from 5 (West Africa) Auxiliary Group engaged in construction work at the airfield. The incident began when some Nigerian soldiers roughed up a Gambian civilian on the grounds of illegitimately wearing army clothing, and some Gambians insulted the Nigerians saying they were not real soldiers but laborers. Events then spiraled out of control as Nigerian soldiers went from compound to compound beating up civilians and yelling, “Kill the bastard Gambians!” Wilson Plant, the British civilian commissioner in charge of Southern Bank Province, accompanied by a few Gambian government messengers and a Gambian policeman, tried to stop the violence but the enraged Nigerians, brandishing sticks and other improvised weapons, refused to back down, yelling insults and death threats at the officials. Plant, who remained unmolested, was shocked at the brazenness of the Nigerian troops who assaulted his messengers and the police constable in front of him. The soldiers eventually wandered back to military lines where officers confined them to barracks for the next month. Although Plant later charged forty-one Nigerian soldiers with the serious crime of riot, a civil court acquitted them, failing to establish that they had intended to act together. Three of the Nigerians who confessed to assault received three-month prison sentences, and another spent a month in jail for making threats. Plant considered this disturbance more dangerous than the one that had happened at Brikama the year before, since at Yundum the rampaging Nigerian troops ignored the orders of a European official. For Plant, the Yundum incident 24 NAG (Banjul), CSO 3/392, “Military Relations with SBP,” Minute Paper, 9 December 1941; Report of Commission of Inquiry into Disturbances at Brikama, 24 December 1941.

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represented “the most serious threat to law and order of which I have heard in the Gambia!”25 On Sunday 28 June 1942, a serious altercation took place between Nigerian military pioneers and Gambian soldiers at the town of Kerewan in the Gambia’s Northern Bank Province. Early in the day, three Nigerian troops accosted a Gambian civilian called Momadu Maneh for wearing an army shirt; as it turned out, the shirt was obtained upon applying to join the Gambia Battalion, and he was staying with Gambian soldiers camped nearby. After some civilians broke up the fight, Maneh returned to the Gambian company camp and reported the incident to his sergeant major, who sent him and a corporal to the nearby Royal Engineers yard to identify the Nigerian assailants. On the way, several other Gambian soldiers joined the party. The group arrived at the yard and identified the three Nigerian pioneers, but a British NCO sent them away and told them to report the incident through the appropriate chain of command. After work that day, the three Nigerians went to Kerewan town to find their accusers and became involved in a fight with several of the other Gambian soldiers who had visited the engineering yard. Both sides called reinforcements from their respective camps, and the result was a brawl between more than two dozen soldiers armed with hammers, iron bars, and knives in the middle of town. One Nigerian arrived at the fight armed with a rifle, but some of his cooler-headed comrades took it from him. Although civilians stayed out of the violence, a large crowd of spectators gathered at the scene. Just as about twenty more Gambian troops were about to join the fight, a truckload of British NCOs and the Northern Province commissioner arrived and dragged the two sides apart. Two Nigerian pioneers and one Gambian soldier suffered serious injuries that required treatment in a hospital. The three Nigerians involved in the original incident appeared before a civil court with two found guilty of assault and fined, and a conviction on an unrelated charge of theft led to Maneh’s imprisonment. British officials feared that the incident had almost dragged in civilians and came close to escalating into a riot as at Brikama and that it undermined Gambians’ wartime morale. A Kerewan elder told the commissioner, “All these soldiers were sent to the Province to defend us, but if they are now fighting among themselves, that is a great shame, and it

25 NAG (Banjul), CSO 3/393, “Military Relations with Southern Bank Province,” 28 September 1942; for quote see the report by Wilson Plant, 17 September 1942.

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seems that if this sort of argument is arising between us, we cannot defeat our enemies.”26 At the start of 1943, a company of West African military pioneers camped near the village of Berending on the northern bank of the Gambia River. Over the previous weeks, there had been two alleged attempted rapes of local women by pioneers. Military authorities, responding to complaints from community elders, intervened to prevent the troops from loitering at a laundry area where they were “becoming far too familiar with the village girls.”27 On the evening of 5 January 1943, a group of pioneers attended a local dance performance where a civilian drummer called Demba Sonko assaulted a pioneer sergeant. After warnings from the local headman (alkali) and the pioneer sergeant major, the angry Sonko went to his house, returned wearing traditional protection amulets on his arm, and led other civilians, some armed with machetes, to attack the pioneers. As the outnumbered pioneers withdrew to their camp, some of them threatened to burn the village and later that evening several fires broke out. Given further intervention by the headman and the sergeant major with their respective constituencies, tensions subsided, and there was no more fighting. Later, a civil court convicted Sonko of assault, sentencing him to fourteen days imprisonment with hard labor, and he was compelled to pay a good conduct bond to the local administration. The British pioneer company commander protested to the civilian commissioner that his men would see Sonko’s sentence as too lenient and therefore seek revenge on the village, but it appears that this act never transpired.28 In late 1944, at Brikama, Gambian soldiers became resentful over interrogations by local Gambia police investigating a series of thefts of military property. The troops became enraged when police, including a British police sergeant called Goode, apprehended a soldiers’ wife in Brikama and accused her of being in possession of stolen sports attire that, as it turned out, legitimately belonged to her husband, who was an army physical training 26 NAG (Banjul), CSO 3/415, “Military Relations with N.B. Province,” Commissioner Northern Bank Province to Colonial Secretary, 8 July 1942. 27 NAG (Banjul), CSO 3/415, Commissioner North Bank Province to Colonial Secretary, 8 January 1943. 28 NAG (Banjul), CSO 3/415, “Military Relations with N.B. Province,” Rex vs Demba Sonko, 7 January 1943; Commissioner North Bank Province to Colonial Secretary, 8 January 1943; Wright, The World and a Very Small Place, 198–99.

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instructor. During the incident, the woman argued with police and initially refused to hand over the items. That night, 19 October 1944, the woman’s husband gathered an angry mob of forty to sixty soldiers who, armed with sticks, machetes, and firebrands, marched on Brikama town where they burned down the police station and adjacent police accommodation and looted the personal belongings of the police and their families. While the outnumbered Gambian police quickly changed into civilian clothing to avoid the wrath of the rioters and then fled, Sergeant Goode attempted to arrest a soldier, prompting the crowd to assault him and throw rocks as he ran away. A police messenger with a machete cut on the back of his neck represented the only serious injury. Observing the flames, the commissioner of South Bank Province found the military unit’s commanding officer who quickly mustered the rest of the battalion to disperse the mob. At a battalion parade held the next day, the policemen failed to identify the assailants, as it had been too dark during the attack, and some were afraid of reprisals by the soldiers. No troops faced charges over the incident, but the unit was banned from the town for a week, extra police patrols were organized, and Brikama’s six African police and Sergeant Goode transferred to other areas.29 Similar incidents took place in the Gold Coast during and just after the war. In March 1940, several hundred GCR soldiers attacked civilian communities at Bantama near Kumasi in the Asante area. The incident began when a small party of soldiers collecting firewood became embroiled in an altercation with some civilians who claimed ownership of the wood. One soldier fell unconscious from a blow to the head, and civilians stood over him debating whether to kill the man. That evening, when troops at the War Depot in Kumasi heard a rumor that three of their comrades had been killed in the confrontation, “practically all the rank and file of the regiment started running to the village.” Although two British officials stopped most of the troops on the road, around two hundred armed with “cutlasses and cudgels” had already arrived at the village. Amid the darkness and confusion, the soldiers descended on the wrong community, where people knew about the earlier incident but felt safe enough to prepare evening meals. As one British police officer who arrived at the scene later reported, We found about 200 soldiers completely overrunning a compound house and beating the inhabitants and ransacking their belongings and a scene of desolation as if the Huns at their worst had been there. Blood was all over the places. 29 NAG (Banjul), CSO 3/394, “Disturbance at Brikama: Destruction of Police Lines by Military,” 23 October 1944.

murder and mayhem  ❧ 309 One old woman had her ear badly torn off and there was an old man with a cut on the back of his head; another man with his shoulder cut open as if someone had tried to hamstring him. Some other men had cuts on their heads, having been beaten with sticks.30

The soldiers “flogged the people,” tore door and window frames out of the walls, smashed pots and dishes, burned cloth, killed chickens, and stole money, gold jewelry, clothing, and other items. Thirteen civilians were injured, with seven later admitted to hospital. Rushing to the scene, some British officers and police ordered the soldiers to stop the assault and marched 187 of them to Fort Kumasi for detention while others secretly returned to their barracks through the bush. Although villagers heard soldiers yelling that they wanted to get revenge on “the Ashantis,” the attackers comprised troops from other parts of the territory as well as Asante, and some civilian victims knew their attackers.31 In one case, a Frafra soldier from the north saved an Asante woman from having her belly cut open by Asante troops. While the army paid compensation to the villagers, military authorities felt that the soldiers had been provoked and that there were too many to charge. Five soldiers considered as ringleaders faced civil convictions, each receiving several months’ imprisonment. The Gold Coast press published articles blaming the incident on the soldiers, prompting the GCR leadership to issue a public statement explaining that civilians had started the violence over firewood and that many of the soldiers were new recruits not yet fully indoctrinated into military discipline.32 In January 1946, another altercation took place at Bantama where soldiers from Kumasi spent some of their free time in the evenings. In this case, the soldiers involved were in transit in Kumasi as they normally belonged to Fourth Battalion GCR based in the northern town of Tamale. Several days before the incident, tensions mounted as some troops took small items like cigarettes and kola nuts from Bantama merchants without paying for them, a common starting point in many violent altercations between soldiers and civilians. The continuation of such theft led to a violent riot involving about 30 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/6/149, Statement of Senior Superintendent W. A. Govan enclose in Superintendent M. L. Fraser, Kumasi to Police Headquarters, Accra, 15 March 1940. 31 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/6/149, Proceedings of an Inquiry Held at Kumasi, 3 April 1940, statements of Ama Sei and Adjoa Kyigyenaye. 32 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/6/149, press cutting, Spectator Daily, 2 April 1940.

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a hundred partly intoxicated soldiers eventually pushed off the street by a force of civil and military police. As usual, authorities banned troops from visiting Bantama and stationed military police in the area.33 In August 1941, violence broke out at the Gold Coast port of Takoradi between local soldiers and Kroo dockworkers from Liberia. Two Kroo and five soldiers were killed, and 4 Kroo and 17 soldiers suffered serious injuries. For several months before the incident, Gold Coast soldiers insulted, abused, assaulted, and robbed Kroo civilians including women. Passing the military camp on their way to work at the harbor, Kroo men routinely shouted insults at military personnel. Tensions climaxed when some soldiers roughed up a Kroo woman carrying the corpse of a child that fell on the ground where the troops kicked it, violating taboos around the treatment of the dead. The next evening Kroo men armed with clubs, machetes, knives, and axes attacked isolated groups of soldiers around the town where most of the military casualties occurred. This led to a clash at the Kroo Compound between three hundred armed Kroo and bands of soldiers wielding clubs, knives, and boards with nails driven through the end and led by some British officers and NCOs. With the arrival of the police and Takoradi’s military “Fortress Commander,” the soldiers obeyed an order to return to barracks. The next day the Kroo refused to go to work at the harbor, instead holding funerals for their dead comrades. Two days later, an altercation at the local aerodrome ended when soldiers guarding the facility aimed their loaded rifles at some Kroo workers. News of the incident incited several hundred Kroo who had just returned to work at the harbor to again take up their weapons and begin marching on the aerodrome until turned back by police and other officials. Back at their compound, the Kroo workers returned to their jobs at the harbor once they received assurances from railway and shipping officials of the safety of their women from the soldiers. The police did not use force against the Kroo as colonial authorities knew that the port was dependent on their labor and a strike would hold up vital wartime shipping. Although the Kroo refused to identify specific soldiers involved in the violence, a dozen Kroo faced charges related to the incidents receiving prison terms ranging from several months to a year. British officials had the military camp surrounded with a barbed wire fence, prohibited soldiers from visiting the Kroo compound, and assigned more civilian and military police to patrol the town.34 33 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana) CSO 22/6/149, “Disturbance involving Military,” Police Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 18 January 1946. 34 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana), CSO 22/4/425, “Fracas between Soldiers and Kroos at Takoradi,” 20 August 1941.

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By September 1941, just after the disturbances at Takoradi, soldiers of a GCR company garrisoning the nearby western Gold Coast seaside town of Axim adopted “a very truculent attitude towards the townspeople.”35 It appears that most of the soldiers originated from the inland Asante region and looked down on the coastal residents. Soldiers complained about numerous issues including the predictable issue of civilian merchants overcharging them but also orders from the local traditional leader banning women from consorting with soldiers and civilians making derogatory remarks about them. Conversely, civilians blamed military personnel for petty theft and assault, sexually harassing women, abusing their authority at security roadblocks, and displaying an attitude of superiority and impunity. These tensions boiled over during the local Kuntum festival. A detachment of four troops marching through the town became embroiled in a scuffle with some possibly intoxicated men who blocked their way declaring they were not afraid of the soldiers, and other civilians joined the fray armed with sticks and machetes. The roughed-up soldiers escaped by drawing their bayonets to frighten off their assailants. On hearing about the incident, most of the 160 soldiers stationed in the town left their accommodation and assaulted any civilians they could find. Several civilians ran into the ocean to escape the onslaught and one drowned. In another part of town, civilians insulted, pushed, and threw rocks at a British officer, trying to send the soldiers back to barracks. To avoid further trouble the company camped outside of Axim for the remaining week of the festival.36 While military officers blamed the civilians for the violence, colonial officials and police officers pointed fingers at the troops. Indeed, the Gold Coast police commissioner reported that the African has a tendency once he gets into uniform to adopt an oppressive and tyrannical attitude towards those of the populace who have not this privilege and this is especially true of the soldiers at present round and about Accra and it is not an exaggeration to say that much resentment has been engendered thereby.37

35 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana), CSO 22/4/426, “Fracas between Soldiers and Civilians at Axim,” Police Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 13 September 1941. 36 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana), CSO 22/4/426, “Fighting at Axim,” 6 September 1941; Inquiry, 12 September 1941. 37 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana), CSO 22/4/426, Police Commissioner to Colonial Secretary, Accra, 18 October 1941.

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During the Second World War, Nigeria became the scene of frequent violence between soldiers and civilians. From the early days of the conflict, the growing number of Nigerian troops committed numerous violent acts against civilians that sometimes resulted in civil court cases. Not only did military drivers flagrantly ignore traffic regulations creating dangerous situations, but sometimes they assaulted other motorists and road workers in the wake of accidents. Recommending that the military conduct a formal investigation into these incidents and educate soldiers on the rights of civilians, a Lagos newspaper declared, “Some soldiers see themselves above the law.”38 Wartime newspaper reports from Lagos are replete with stories about soldiers’ abuse of civilians. In April 1941, soldiers Fagbowun Turner and Thomas Nwafor assaulted a palm wine merchant who was too busy to serve them, and they resisted arrest so viciously that the police had to let them go and apprehend them later at their barracks. A civil court gave them a choice between paying a fine and serving a month in prison.39 A few weeks later in early May 1941, during a riot in Lagos involving at least four hundred people, police arrested a blood-soaked soldier holding a machete in one hand and a dagger in the other: he had just cut off a civilian man’s ear.40 In August 1941 an eighteen-year-old soldier called Musa Yeruwa, while attending a social function in Lagos, used a knife to cut a young woman called Bolaji Obadeyi who refused to have sex with him; he then stabbed her brother and two police constables who came to her rescue. In the subsequent trial, and on the urging of the police prosecutor who highlighted the increase in violent crime committed by soldiers against civilians in Lagos, the judge sentenced Musa to a year imprisonment.41 In December 1941, on a Lagos street, a soldier called Hassan Yeruwa grabbed a young woman who had ignored his sexual advances and then stabbed her protesting father several times in the hand. During Hassan Yeruwa’s civil trial, the prosecutor spoke of the “frequent lawlessness that were [sic] being exhibited by the soldiers,” and the 38 “Our Soldiers and Discipline,” West African Pilot, 29 August 1941, 2; “Military Lorry Drivers,” West African Pilot, 23 April 1941; “Military Driver Is Fined £10 For Assaulting Road Maker,” West African Pilot, 6 May 1941. 39 “Soldiers Assault Palm Wine Seller and Special Constables,” West African Pilot, 2 May 1941. 40 “Depositions Begin in Police Charges against Soldier,” West African Pilot, 14 May 1941. 41 “Soldier Who Wounded Young Damsel Gets Twelve Months,” West African Pilot, 27 August 1941.

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magistrate decided to set an example sentencing the defendant to six months in prison with hard labor.42 In a letter to the West African Pilot, Private Walter Ndekwu of the West African Army Medical Corps (WAAMC), urged his comrades to stop abusing civilians: “The Imperial Army should not be converted into a canopy for rascaldom.”43 In October 1943, in southeastern Nigeria, angry traders attacked soldiers who had taken expensive imported items such as velvet and silk without payment. Around the same time and in the same region, at a market in Auchi, a soldier tried to steal yams kicking the pregnant woman who was selling them in the stomach and hitting her husband. Subsequently, some 200 soldiers rampaged through the market.44 There is also evidence that violence broke out between soldiers and civilians in Calabar in November 1943. Maintaining secrecy, colonial authorities warned local newspaper editors that wartime regulations prohibited publication of information on the “inquests of the victims of the recent Calabar disturbances.”45 Similar incidents took place in northern and central Nigeria. Sometime in 1943 Nigerian troops recently returning from the East Africa campaign passed through Kafanchan railway station, where they engaged in misbehavior serious enough to attract government attention though the details of the incident are now lost. In 1943 soldiers in Shendam, a community in the Middle Belt, were involved in “Assaults on inoffensive pagans and other acts of hooliganism have been frequent with loss of property and injury in some cases.” Some Nigerian soldiers believed they had a right to abuse civilians. Private Garbo Shendam of No. 2 Auxiliary Group, spread a false rumor of the arrest of the local British district commissioner for imprisoning a soldier accused of assaulting a civilian. Private Sambo Langtang of First West Africa Light Battery, sent a letter written in the Plateau language of Tarok (Yergam) to a local chief protesting the arrest of soldiers by a headman. The letter expressed particular hatred toward the Native police and threatened that “the 42 “Soldier Who Held Girl and Wounded Her Father in Gaoled,” West African Pilot, 11 December 1941. 43 “Private W.C. Ndekwu Advices Colleagues to the Chivalrous,” West African Pilot, 28 October 1941. 44 Falola, Colonialism and Violence, 74. 45 NNA (Enugu), OW 5338, “Incidents at Calabar between the Soldiers and the Civilians,” 9 November 1943; for mention of the 1943 incident see David Pratten, Man-Leopard Murder Mysteries: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 257.

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soldiers are coming to wreak destruction in your district . . . we soldiers have the power to come and deprive you of your Chieftainship and even to drive the D. C. out of the black man’s country.”46 In early 1943 two incidents in Kano involved Nigerian soldiers using their military-issued rifles to murder civilians. Although units in garrison locked up arms during off-duty hours, troops conducting guard duty and field training always carried their weapons. Ammunition, however, remained strictly controlled and kept in a guarded and locked room from where authorities distributed it for specific purposes such as target practice. The first killing in Kano happened in February 1943, but the details remain unknown. The second incident took place in early March 1943 when Corporal Garba Peni took advantage of a lapse in security to steal ten bullets from the ammunition guardroom. He loaded his rifle, went to the house of a civilian called Momo Gwadabawa, and shot him dead. Previously, the corporal’s wife had been lodging in that house, and he blamed Gwadabawa for her recent death during childbirth. Following the murder, Corporal Peni used his rifle to commit suicide. Alarmed colonial officials in Kano insisted on the army keeping all firearms and ammunition locked up at all times, but military authorities refused as such a restriction would hinder training for war.47 On the evening of Sunday 16 September 1945, Nigerian soldiers from the Thirteenth Battalion Nigeria Regiment and Four Gunner Company rioted in the northern town of Kaduna. The affair began when a group of Nigerian police dressed in civilian attire arrested and beat up two drunk Nigerian soldiers for trying to sell a clock suspected as stolen property. Later, British officials claimed that the conflict related to ethnic rivalry, as one of the policemen was an Igbo man from the southeast, and the two soldiers were both northerners. Exaggerated rumors about the incident quickly circulated among other Nigerian soldiers who armed themselves with sticks and machetes and assembled before a military police post and fire station, breaking every window in both buildings. African NCOs tried to stop the soldiers but could not. When confronted by a British officer who fired a warning shot with his pistol, the roughly hundred-strong mob divided into 46 AH (Kaduna), NPS 8/2/20, “Military Discipline,” Provincial Office, Jos to Secretary, Northern Provinces, 8 October 1943; “Translation,” No. 72525 Sambo Langtang, 4 July 1943. 47 NNA (Kaduna) KANOPRO 5228, J. R. Patterson, Resident, Kano to Secretary, Northern Provinces, Kaduna, 26 March 1943; “Shooting Incident at Kano,” Commander, Nigeria Area to Secretary, Northern Provinces, Kaduna, 10 May 1943.

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smaller groups and left the area. The largest group proceeded to the Native Administration police station and police barracks where they staged a “semiorganized attack” that freed prisoners and terrorized the police. Lastly, the rioting soldiers spread through Kaduna breaking into and looting shops and houses. While the civilian police withdrew, several British officers and NCOs organized motorized military patrols that drove the rioters back to their barracks and arrested a few of them. In the aftermath of the affair, civilian and military courts convicted nineteen Nigerian soldiers of offenses related to the riot. Found guilty of burglary, stealing, and rioting, the thirteen troops who appeared before civilian courts received sentences ranging from eighteen months to seven years imprisonment with hard labor. Facing less severe military justice, the remainder received prison terms ranging from forty-two days to nine months. Two dozen Kaduna civilians who had their property destroyed during the riot obtained compensation from the British military. British civilian and military officials debated the cause of the disturbance. For the civilian authorities, the riot formed part of a larger pattern of misbehavior by African soldiers with the incident itself attributed to poor military discipline, a misunderstanding among troops that they were not subject to civilian law, and the presence of military prisoners in a civilian police station. Given the riot between Hausa and Igbo civilians in the central Nigerian mining town of Jos in October 1945, British officials were quick to highlight “tribal animosity” as a factor in the Kaduna incident. British Army officers, however, maintained a narrower view that the Kaduna riot stemmed from a small and unfortunate altercation in which the civilian police had acted inappropriately.48 In India, during the Second World War, relations between West African troops and Indian soldiers and civilians deteriorated. West African soldiers looked down on Indian civilians, disliked sharing hospital facilities with Indian troops, and accused Indians of stealing the packages they sent home. In turn, Indians spread rumors that Africans were cannibals. There were a number of violent clashes between West African soldiers and Indian civilians including one, in mid-1944, in which West Africans killed six Indians and 48 AH (Kaduna), NPS 8/2/20, “Disturbance by African Soldiers at Kaduna;” “Declaration,” W. E. Savage, Court President, 3 October 1945; L. H. Goble, Secretary Northern Province to Chief Secretary of Government, “Disturbance in Kaduna on 16th September 1945,” 29 October 1945; “Proceedings of Court of Inquiry,” 14 to 22 February 1946, Kaduna; Leonard Plotnicov, “An Early Nigerian Civil Disturbance: The 1945 Hausa-Ibo Riots in Jos,” Journal of Modern African Studies 9, no. 2 (August 1971): 297–305.

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raped Indian women. In Burma, the situation became worse as West African troops, bitter over lack of leave, experienced more violent altercations with Burmese civilians than British or Indian soldiers did.49 During the Second World War, and reminiscent of events earlier in the century, African soldiers became involved in two shooting incidents described as “running amok” at the Yaba military base in Lagos, Nigeria. In November 1944, Private Aston Iwoalabo faced accusations of stealing several machetes, and a group of African NCOs beat him and threatened to make him disappear. The next day, after the same NCOs humiliated him again, Private Iwoalabo put on his uniform and equipment, took his rifle, and went to the parade ground where he confronted one of the abusive sergeants and shot him dead along with two other soldiers. Subsequently, Iwoalabo fired two shots in the air, saluted the flag, and marched to his company commander’s office where he surrendered. A civilian court sentenced him to death.50 In April 1945 Private Kofi Dagarti, a “middle-aged” Gold Coast soldier attached to the Nigeria Regiment, became involved in a dispute with a British officer over lack of payment of allowances to his wife back home. Escaping military detention, Dagarti stole a rifle and ammunition to take revenge on the officer, but instead he shot a soldier called Samuel Adebiyi who tried to stop him. Unable to find his intended victim, Dagarti fled the base and later shot a civilian wine tapper called Yusufu Bafari, who he encountered in the bush. Both victims died. A week later, police detectives tracked down the fugitive soldier and arrested him. Later, after a widely reported trial resulting in a murder conviction, the chief justice of Nigeria sentenced Dagarti to hang.51 Similar incidents took place elsewhere in British West Africa such as in April 1944, in the Gold Coast, when a suspected “lunatic” soldier escaped his cell and stole a rifle and bayonet that he used to stab two guards, one of whom 49 Roy, “Discipline and Morale,” 1269–70, 1277–78; Killingray, Fighting for Britain, 128. 50 “Young Soldier is Found Guilty of Murdering Three Comrades,” Daily Service, 7 December 1944; Aderinto, Guns and Society, 211–12. 51 “Middle Aged Soldier is Still at Large with Rifle and 50 Rounds of Ammunition,” West African Pilot, 17 April 1945; “Army PRO says Fugitive Gold Coast Soldier Has Killed Two People and Is Still at Large,” West African Pilot, 19 April 1945; “Soldier Who Ran Amuk is Captured,” Daily Service, 21 April 1945; “Yaba Killer Kofi Dagarti Will Face the Gallows for the Murder of Fellow Soldier,” West African Pilot, 12 June 1945; Saheed Aderinto, Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria: Firearms, Culture and Public Order (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 211–12.

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died.52 Of course, soldiers did not have to use firearms to engage in lethal violence. Two weeks after arriving back in Lagos from war service in Burma, a Nigerian soldier named Anthony Kida killed his colleague Private Nfunye in a drunken brawl. As Nfunye had provoked Kida and cut him with a razor, a judge acquitted the latter of manslaughter.53

Extortion While instances of extreme bullying among West African troops sometimes led to tragic results, some soldiers found other ways to victimize and exploit their colleagues. Corruption began early in Britain’s West African army. During the 1890s, a Krio paymaster of the Sierra Leone Frontier Police in Freetown embezzled salary money, leaving troops unpaid for five months.54 Some West African NCOs opportunistically used their authority and perceived influence to extract money from their subordinates. Rooted in an established regional culture of paying tributes or dashes for services, colonial military law strictly forbade such practices. In colonial Sierra Leone, an unofficial system existed in which soldiers made regular payments of “grace money” to their NCOs who, in turn, tried to keep them out of trouble. It was essentially a protection racket in which soldiers failing to pay would conveniently run afoul of the disciplinary system. Attempts by British officers to eliminate the practice proved difficult given soldiers’ hesitance in reporting an NCO who held power to retaliate against them. The situation compounded as some soldiers, especially new recruits, did not know enough English to communicate with their officers, and African NCOs served as intermediaries and interpreters with British superiors who were distant and unapproachable figures. The position of African company sergeant major, a “father-figure” to the troops, offered clear opportunities to collect unofficial fees.55 52 PRAAD (Accra, Ghana), CSO 22/5/80, “Lunatic Soldiers,” Memorandum, 20 April 1944. 53 “Soldiers on Charge of Manslaughter is Set Free on Grounds of Extreme Provocation,” West African Pilot, 6 June 1945. 54 NA (UK) CO 445/65, “Historical Records of the Sierra Leone Battalion,” 26 May 1924. 55 SLA (Freetown), no referencing system, Officer Commanding West African Field Force to Colonial Secretary, 11 November 1910.

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In a few cases, West African NCOs faced charges over these matters resulting in detailed military and legal records. Joseph Anslow, likely a Krio resident of Freetown, joined the Sierra Leone Frontier Police in 1894 participating in the subjugation of hinterland communities and the suppression of the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion during which he suffered a wound in combat. Like most of the “Frontiers,” Anslow transitioned into the new SLB at the start of the twentieth century, becoming part of the regional WAFF structure. Promoted to company sergeant major in 1904 and serving as the top soldier at a series of isolated company outposts, Anslow began compelling his troops to buy gin that he sold illegally and to pay him “grace money” and other types of unofficial fees. While British officers recognized that Anslow performed his military duties efficiently, they long suspected him of soliciting bribes from his troops, but there was never any concrete evidence. Around 1906, he faced charges related to these activities that almost resulted in his dismissal from the army, and three years later authorities passed him over for promotion to RSM, which would have made him the highest-ranking African soldier in the battalion. In 1910 Corporal Musa Bambara, a French colonial army veteran serving with the SLB company at Kanre Lehun, reported that CSM Anslow had been charging him “grace money” and that he had demanded an extra payment to let the soldier’s two wives live with him in barracks, contrary to the local regulation that only one wife could do so. Anslow disliked Bambara and other ethnic Mandingo soldiers who had served in the French military, as they could speak “fluent French” and communicate directly to some British officers. Evidence of Anslow’s corruption finally emerged as one of Bambara’s wives, his “boy” and an experienced soldier called Private John Simbo, supported the accusation and appeared as witnesses at a summary trial. As a result, SLB commander Major E. P. Newstead demoted Anslow to private and then dismissed him from the force without his expected service gratuity. According to Major Newstead, Anslow “used his position and his education simply to extort money from his more ignorant subordinates.”56 Relocating to Freetown, Anslow hired a lawyer who successfully petitioned the governor to overturn the dismissal, as a commanding officer lacked the authority to impose such a sentence on an NCO. Anslow refused a subsequent written order to return to SLB headquarters as a private, claimed that he could not receive a fair retrial by court-martial (which did have the power to dismiss him), and demanded a proper discharge meriting gratuity payment. Given different legal systems operating in the Freetown colony where 56 SLA (Freetown), no referencing system, Officer Commanding West African Field Force to Colonial Secretary, 11 November 1910.

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Anslow resided and the hinterland Sierra Leone Protectorate garrisoned by the SLB, another petition to the governor prevented the former sergeant major’s impending arrest as a deserter, and he remained a civilian, although it is unclear whether he ever received a gratuity.57 Enlisting in the SLB in 1929, Ansumanah Farmah served for a decade in the junior ranks until wartime expansion suddenly accelerated his career with promotion to sergeant in May 1941 and company sergeant major a few months later in August. Appointed as sergeant major of a recruit training company at Freetown, Farmah immediately began collecting money from his soldiers with promises to keep them out of trouble or secure promotion and other desirable career appointments. Predictably, CSM Farmah exploited his subordinates’ lack of English language and their organization into ethno-linguistic training platoons dependent on specific African NCOs as interpreters. CSM Farmah served as an interpreter and vetted all complaints before forwarding them to the British CSM to whom he was subordinate. Nevertheless, some men went over Farmah’s head to lodge complaints about him once it became apparent that their promotions and other requests were not forthcoming. In October 1942 a court-martial convicted Farmah of extorting money from a dozen soldiers, reducing him to the rank of private and imposing a £5 fine. Lucky for Farmah, the expanding wartime army still needed experienced NCOs. Farmah quickly worked his way back up the rank structure, gaining promotions to corporal in May 1943 (during a short posting to Nigeria) and to sergeant upon return to Freetown that October. At the end of the war, he reenlisted for three years, gaining a financial bonus, and served with First Battalion SLR until his release in early 1947.58

Conclusion During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, widespread acts of unauthorized and everyday violence committed by West African colonial soldiers against civilians reflected the grander and more organized violence of ongoing colonial conquest and possibly earlier practices of warfare in the 57 SLA (Freetown), Joseph Anslow to Governor Leslie Probyn, 31 October 1910; Petition of Joseph Anslow, 14 February 1911; NA (UK) CO 445/31, Despatch from Sierra Leone, 10 March 1911; NA (UK) CO 445/31, WAFF, 1911. 58 SLA (Freetown), Service Record of Ansumanah Farmah, Court Martial Proceedings, October 1942.

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region. For West African colonial troops of that era, violent acts demonstrated their perceived superiority over almost everyone else. At times, and completely outside military campaigns, tensions ran so high that a few West African soldiers took their rifles and shot local civilians. This type of soldier violence toward civilians subsided during the interwar period given the context of reduced military operations and the downsizing and centralization of the colonial army. The resurgence of violence between soldiers and civilians in Second World War–era British West Africa reflected another period of military expansion and general uncertainty. A series of incidents involved some common features. The spreading of rumors quickly escalated small altercations into massive riots. Through violent actions, in which they were usually the aggressors, West African soldiers again expressed their special military identity gained through affiliation with the colonial state and their contempt for civilians. The greatly increased numbers of troops became more prevalent within colonial society, and military authorities had difficulty restraining them. West African soldiers strongly objected to civilians wearing items of military clothing, demanded the sexual attention of civilian women, expected cheap or free goods from merchants, and disliked the authority of civilian police. Predictably, civilians resented such expressions of superiority and entitlement and reacted by protecting their interests and taking revenge. Reflecting their own version of this “us versus them” attitude, British military officers usually blamed these episodes on civilians, and British colonial officials blamed them on the soldiers. While most of these examples of Second World War–era violence involved riots or large brawls between soldiers and civilians, the former’s access to lethal weapons led to a repeat of “running amok” shootings.

Chapter Eleven

Former Soldiers It is difficult to measure the impact of former colonial soldiers on British West Africa. During the colonial era, most soldiers served the usual minimum term of six years in the army and then returned to civilian society, thus disappearing from the military archival record. Over the whole colonial era, hundreds of thousands of men served in Britain’s West African army, yet it is almost impossible to systematically trace them after discharge. Nevertheless, the popular notion that West African veterans of the Second World War returned home to continue their struggle for freedom and democracy through the nationalist movement obscures a more significant and empirically demonstrable impact of former colonial soldiers in the region. Throughout the period of British rule, a significant number of West African ex-soldiers continued their old military role of maintaining British control, becoming junior functionaries and enforcers for different parts of the colonial state and economy. These former soldiers turned colonial agents were usually those who had served longer-than-average terms in the army, fought in wars, received decorations, achieved promotion, and/or performed well. The most seasoned soldiers with around twenty years’ service were still in their forties upon discharge and usually had wives, young children, and extended family members to support. The army became an avenue into a second career. While these ex-soldiers possessed experience, skills, and proven reliability useful to the colonial state, British officials and officers clearly felt obliged to help them gain suitable and respectable paid positions. British officers in West Africa regularly circulated notices to civilian government departments about upcoming discharges of long-serving soldiers, recommending their employment in forestry, colonial police, native police, courts, prisons, and as uniformed messengers. At times, officers loaned travel money to recently discharged NCOs enabling them to take up government employment in other parts of the country or other territories. Similarly, colonial officials often wrote to the West African military looking for soon-to-retire

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African NCOs with supervisory and training experience to fill key positions.1 In colonial West Africa, a former soldier emerging from a successful military career and still physically fit represented a valuable and scarce human resource. Replacing one uniform with another, British West Africa’s former soldiers favored second careers in the colonial police. In the early 1920s, dozens of former soldiers, including many First World War veterans, served in the colonial police in Lagos and other parts of southern Nigeria.2 Their chests adorned with medals, war veterans appeared as impressive police and symbols of colonial loyalty and service. After soldiering with the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War, Corporal Awudu Sokoto joined the Nigeria police in 1928, serving in Kano for the next twenty years.3 Sergeant Major Ali Delma served eighteen years in the colonial military in Nigeria, starting with the RNC in the late 1890s and taking discharge from the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War, and then joined the police for another fifteen years. In 1931, on leaving the police at fifty-three years old, he gained a senior position with the native authority police in central Nigeria. Sergeant Major Baberu Madeija enlisted in the colonial army in Nigeria in the early twentieth century, received a DCM for gallantry in East Africa during the First World War, and then served in the police in Makurdi in central Nigeria until 1934. Originating from northeastern Nigeria, Sergeant Babelli Nafada enlisted in the Nigeria Regiment in 1914 and served throughout the First World War and then worked in the Nigeria police from 1920 to 1934, taking his discharge in Makurdi.4 In 1959 Second World War Burma veteran Corporal Bongarau Numan trained hundreds of recruits at the Northern Police College in Kadana.5 In the Northern Nigerian city of Kano, the civil guard consisted of “time expired men of the Royal West African Frontier Force and Government Police.” During the 1920s and 1930s, its heads included Sergeant Alyo, who had served in the French colonial army and 1 2 3 4 5

NNA (Kaduna) MAKPROF 985, “Discharged Soldiers and Police, Employment of,” 1931–37. NNA (Enugu) CSE 1/86/146, “List of Ex-Soldiers Now Serving in the Police,” Commissioner Colony Police to Secretary Southern Provinces, Lagos, 14 March 1922. “Police Medals Presented at Kano,” Nigeria Review, 21 June 1947. NNA (Kaduna) MAKPROF 985, “Discharged Soldiers and Police, Employment of,” 1931–1937. “Corporal Bongarau Numan,” Daily Times, 16 June 1959.

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then the WAFF during the Asante Uprising of 1900, and Sergeant Major Dan Daura OBE, a twenty-one-year veteran of the military in Northern Nigeria who then worked for two and a half years with the Gold Coast police.6 While former soldiers comprised most of the police in the Gold Coast during the very early twentieth century, they lacked the education necessary for regular police duties, becoming restricted to the paramilitary “escort police” entirely recruited from ex-members of the GCR. Since most GCR troops of that time originated from the Northern Territories, which also served as a pool of migrant labor for the mines, mining companies in the Gold Coast hired many ex-soldiers as mine police, recruiters, and interpreters.7 An officer of the Gambia Company in the late 1930s remembered that “at the end of their service the majority of Africans returned to their place of recruitment, joined the local police or prison warders (there was frequent liaison between the British police and military officers) or lived on their gardens which were gradually extended as and when they could afford to buy more land or stock.”8 Ex-soldiers also filled uniformed and other positions in colonial administrative departments. In the 1920s, the accomplished Nigerian soldier RSM Belo Akure worked as an orderly in the Forestry Department in western Nigeria, a position that helped support his three wives and children. Revealing the advantages of employing accomplished former soldiers, Akure’s British supervisor later wrote, “I always liked to take him with me when I had any particularly difficult task on hand. He was a tower of strength and his good humor, combined with a strong sense of discipline, made him invaluable if occasion arose to deal with the truculent headman or chief.”9 Enlisting in the Calabar-based SNR in 1904, Sergeant Adeshina Ibadan served in the First World War campaigns in Cameroon and East Africa and was wounded in action in the latter. Immediately after the war, his commanding officer “at some trouble obtained this man the post of Keeper of the

6

7 8 9

For Sergeant Alyo see Willcocks, From Kabul to Kumasi, 340–341; NA (UK) CO 445/67, “Service of CSM Dan Daura, Nigeria Regiment,” 4 November 1925; London Gazette, 3 June 1927; Crown Colonist, vol. 2, 1932, 126; Richard Oakley, Treks and Palavers (London: Seeley, 1938), 240, 256. Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 379. ORDP, Kennedy-Davis. Richard St. Barbe Baker, Men of the Trees: In the Mahogany Forests of Kenya and Nigeria (New York: Dial, 1931), 204–5.

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Calabar Lunatic Asylum.”10 After long service in the WAFF, Sergeant Major Arri and Sergeant Auta Moma Machina gained employment as couriers in the provincial administration of Borno in northeastern Nigeria. After both developed serious health problems and became destitute, officials granted them government pensions in 1924, although Sergeant Auta passed away before receiving payment.11 In 1947, following a long career in the Nigeria Regiment, including three years’ service in Second World War theaters and award of the BEM, RSM Jibbo Kwonni became assistant chief warder of the Native Administration in Sokoto in northwestern Nigeria. However, he clashed with some of the traditional elites such as the Sarduana of Sokoto, which led British colonial officials and the Sultan of Sokoto, in 1949, to create a special position with a higher-than-normal salary for him as “Head Station Messenger” at nearby Gwandu, where he worked for the colonial government inspecting building repairs. Authorities accommodated the somewhat difficult RSM out of respect for his military service but also because “the Sokoto ex-servicemen, over whom he has outstanding influence and of whom he is the acknowledged leader, all feel that he is being victimized.”12 An episode from 1958 illustrates the sense of obligation many British officers felt toward the retiring long-service NCOs upon whom they had depended, and the NCOs themselves felt entitled to a new opportunity. Upon his retirement, Burma veteran CSM Sale Azare of the QONR in Kaduna asked his company commander Major William Catcheside to find him a civilian job. While Catcheside secured the ex-sergeant major a well-paid position as head steward of the Kaduna club, the patriarchal Fulani Muslim Azare quickly abandoned the position, as he refused to take orders from the British woman who managed the facility. Subsequently, Azare went to live in a nearby village for a few weeks until Catcheside, who felt “I had to do something for him,” used connections to have the sergeant major hired as warden of a youth hostel in Kano. In 1960, the year of Nigeria’s independence, former CSM Azare received the British Empire Medal (BEM) and he eventually returned to his home area of Lake Chad to focus on raising his herd of cattle.13 10 NNA (Ibadan) CSO 2882-1919, “Sergeant Adeshina Ibadan,” 24 October 1919. 11 NNA (Kaduna) NPS 2301/1923, “Ex-Couriers,” Acting Resident Bornu to Secretary Northern Provinces, 1 April 1924. 12 NNA (Kaduna) SOKPROF 204, “Ex-RSM Jibbo Kwonni,” Resident Sokoto to Secretary Northern Provinces, 14 February 1949. 13 ORDP, Catcheside; Supplement to the London Gazette, 1 January 1960.

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Not all former soldiers succeeded in these official positions. Sergeant Amadu Malabu soldiered in the Nigeria Regiment from 1936 to 1946 serving in East Africa and Burma during the Second World War. In 1953, given the forty-year-old’s military career and ability to speak English, Hausa, and Fulani (and write Hausa), he gained the position of uniformed government messenger in Yola in northeastern Nigeria. However, in 1955, the native court in Yola convicted Malabu of making a false statement before the same court, and he was sentenced to three months in jail, resulting in the ex-sergeant’s dismissal from government service.14 In some instances, ex-soldiers used their military careers to try to leverage other opportunities from the colonial state. Joe Duke, a member of a prominent trading and royal family in Calabar, left school in 1905 to enlist in the SNR and served a typical six-year term, taking discharge in 1911. Officers considered his service “exemplary.” After leaving the army, Duke followed his family tradition and became a palm oil merchant. In August 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, Duke responded to an invitation from local colonial officials, volunteering as a civilian “interpreter” for British military intelligence given his familiarity with the riverine system that constituted the nearby border with German Cameroon. He worked in an intelligence capacity, leading scouting patrols for about three months. He experienced skirmishes with German forces and returned to civilian life as the Cameroon campaign moved away from the border area. Later, Duke received the British War Medal in recognition of his service. After the war, Duke became a colonial appointed warrant chief collecting tax and presiding over a native court, and during the 1920s he gained contracts working for a colonial hospital and “lunatic asylum” in Calabar. In 1937, following some unsuccessful tender applications for contracts with the local prison, Duke submitted a petition to the colonial administration requesting a position he called “permanent contractor,” which he claimed officials had promised him during the war. To support his claim, Duke explained the sacrifices he had made to serve in the military as enlistment in the SNR cut short his schooling, and his absence on war duties in 1914 allowed his competitors in the palm oil trade to overtake him. British officials clearly respected Duke and sympathized with his

14 NNA (Kaduna) 5432, Resident, Adamawa Province, Yola, 26 August 1952; Muhamadu Alkalin Jimeta to SDO Adamawa, 14 November 1955.

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proposal, but they could not offer him a position that did not exist.15 Despite this disappointment, he had already gained a lot from military connections. More broadly, British colonial and military authorities in West Africa attempted to promote the welfare of discharged soldiers and war veterans. During the First World War, the WAFF created a system of gratuity payments and pensions for soldiers disabled by wounds and discharged from the army.16 While West African veteran amputees received custom-made artificial limbs, many experienced delays in delivery of these prosthetics and suffered psychologically and economically in the postwar years.17 The work of military review boards evaluating veterans for disabled status (and therefore pensions) continued into the 1930s.18 To some extent, separate territorial administrations pursued different policies and programs for ex-soldiers. After the First World War, veterans in Nigeria received rent-free land and exemption for paying tax, but this did not happen everywhere in British West Africa.19 At times, colonial officials worked with traditional leaders such as the emirs of Northern Nigeria to allocate land to disabled First World War veterans.20 In the Gold Coast, officials reserved some positions in the paramilitary escort police and other government departments for returning First World War veterans. During the interwar years, a few Gold Coast veterans received land grants, and an employment bureau placed ex-servicemen in state and private sector jobs arranging for employers to allow them to attend military training as part of the GCR reserve.21 In 1933, the RWAFF introduced vocational training in subjects such as construction, road building, 15 NNA (Enugu) CSE 1/85/7445, “Chief Joe Duke: Petition for Engagement as a Permanent Contractor in Recognition of his War Services,” 1937. 16 NA (UK) CO 445/44, “Disability Compensation to Native Rank and File,” 19 August 1918. 17 NA (UK) CO 445/50, “WAFF: Gold Coast: Artificial Limbs for Natives,” 22 November 1920; George N. Njung, “Amputated Men, Colonial Bureaucracy, and Masculinity in Post-World War I Colonial Nigeria,” Journal of Social History 53, no. 3 (Spring 2020): 620–43. 18 PRADD (Accra) CSO 22/6/13, “Privates Long Boy and Kuluku Chambah, Ex-Soldiers of the GCR, recommending grant of disability pension,” 1937. 19 NNA (Kaduna) NPS 661/1922, “Garba Mandara DCM, Company Sergeant Major; Exemption from Payment of Rent and Rates in Townships,” 11 February 1922. 20 NNA (Kaduna) NPS 568P/1918, “Soldiers (Discharged) of the Nigeria Regiment,” 9 October 1918. 21 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 380–84.

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agriculture, and police duties for soldiers approaching the end of their service. In Nigeria, officers planning the scheme considered a job in the Yan Doka, or native police, as particularly well suited to ex-soldiers, arranged for them to take a special training course at Kaduna, and sought approval from local authorities for the employment of specific men.22 British officers in the Gold Coast expressed skepticism over vocational training, pointing out that most discharged soldiers readily found work, especially in the police, and sometimes assisted by the Labour Bureau.23 While officers resented the directive to begin vocational training at the same time that the budget-conscious RWAFF eliminated army schoolmaster positions, the Nigeria Regiment of the 1930s sent some soldiers on courses at the Native Department.24 Attempts by British officials to help discharged soldiers not only related to a sense of moral obligation. The appearance of desperately impoverished and sometimes disabled former soldiers, some with twenty years’ service and wearing war medals, seeking assistance at public army recruitment events dampened the enthusiasm of potential recruits.25 Immediately after the Second World War, however, demobilization committees and centers, training programs, and land schemes could not keep pace with the massive number of returning soldiers. While resettlement of demobilized troops tended to proceed smoothly in the remote and conservative hinterland areas where most returned to farming, the more developed economies of coastal regions could not absorb all the returned soldiers in the way many expected. Although West Africa’s Second World War veterans formed their own organizations to lobby for greater economic opportunities, they played no greater role in the postwar nationalist movement than any other social group.26 Indeed, there were Second World War veterans among the police who arrested, brutalized, and sometimes killed nationalist protestors in West Africa during the 1950s.

22 NNA (Kaduna) JOSPROF 99/1933, “Vocational Training: Nigeria Regiment,” 18 April 1933. 23 NA (UK) CO 820/16/1, “Report on GCR,” 1933. 24 NA (UK) CO 820/21/8, “Report on Nigeria Regiment,” 1936. 25 ORDP, Bonser, “Re-enlistment Drive,” 20 November 1946, Major T. W. Bonser, Kaduna, Nigeria. 26 Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 384–415; Korieh, Nigeria and World War II, 250.

Conclusion Informing the experience of ordinary soldiers and their families, the military culture of Britain’s West African army evolved through periods of instability and decentralization separated by a few decades of stabilization and centralization. During its formative years in the late nineteenth century, Britain’s West African military was unstable and dispersed, comprising separate paramilitary units made up of many men who had escaped enslavement and enslaved men indirectly or directly purchased by British agents at Cape Coast, Lagos, or interior slave markets who were transformed into colonial soldiers. This situation often put the early British paramilitary forces at odds with local West African elites who lost their labor to the colonial army, and slaves who had become soldiers exacted revenge on former oppressors both real and imagined. In this period, British officials and ordinary West Africans applied the term “Hausa soldiers” to the men of diverse hinterland origins (and usually some past association with slavery) who joined Britain’s West African constabularies in what is now Nigeria and Ghana. The term “Hausa soldier” did not exist in Sierra Leone, although some of the same processes related to formerly enslaved men were evident. At the same time, men from other communities enlisted in these colonial forces, including large numbers of Yoruba from western Nigeria and almost every ethnic group of Sierra Leone. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Muslim troops dominated the ranks in Nigeria, the Gold Coast, and the Gambia (and formed a sizable minority of those in Sierra Leone), a simplified and adaptive form of Islam developed in Britain’s West African army supported by military imams and occasionally Arabic teachers and mosques. While a racial hierarchy dominated these colonial paramilitaries all led by British commanders, a few prominent “native officers” helped with recruiting and provided local knowledge important for military operations. Although similar to the institution of “native officers” in British colonial India, there were far fewer such leaders in West Africa. Fighting numerous wars of conquest that expanded British rule inland, these West African paramilitary regiments set up a network of many small military outposts to supervise subjugated

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populations, impose colonial policies like taxation, and quickly suppress resistance. In the context of this decentralized invasion and occupation force, in which leadership and logistics were often problematic, Britain’s West African colonial soldiers engaged in mutinous behavior to address grievances and violently abused civilians, including some incidents where individual soldiers went on shooting sprees. Military disciplinary regimes varied considerably from territory to territory with, for instance, soldiers in Northern Nigeria flogged on a routine basis, while those in the Gambia hardly ever experienced formal corporal punishment. From the origin of these formations, a large number of West African women lived among the soldiers and accompanied them on campaigns, providing key logistical support such as foraging and cooking food. This reflected the “camp follower” ethos that had characterized precolonial African and early modern European armies differing greatly from the predominantly male British Army of the late nineteenth century. Since overcoming tropical disease and establishing basic health-care infrastructure preoccupied British officers in the region, Britain’s West African army departed from the metropolitan army model of the time by not bothering about the spread of sexually transmitted disease in the ranks, seeing it through a racist lens as a normal feature of African soldiers’ lives. In these early days, Britain’s West African paramilitaries were not yet fully incorporated into the imperial military family, as West African troops wore simple uniforms and often lacked many of the regimental symbols, traditions, and rituals characteristic of British military identity. Nonetheless, West African soldiers began visiting Britain in the late nineteenth century to participate in important imperial ceremonials joining better-known colonial regiments from other parts of the empire and developing their own military identity and style. Illustrating soldiers’ diverse experience, this conquest-era West African army included Native Officer Mama Nakaru who served twenty-three years in the Lagos Battalion fighting wars in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, and Gunner Charles Wellseley of the Gold Coast Artillery Corps and Corporal Morlai Mandingo of Sierra Leone’s WAR who led mutinies against abusive British officers. Other examples include Private Garuba of the NNR, who received twenty-four lashes for sleeping on sentry; Private Surie Kamara of the SLB who went on a killing spree of local civilians; Sierra Leone’s Bugler Little Tom, who won an award at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in London; and Lance Corporal Benjamin, who jumped from the Sierra Leone Frontier Police to the WAR to the Gambia Company. Among the few West African women named by colonial records and associated with the West

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African army, Yanoh of Sierra Leone accompanied her “frontier” husband on campaign in the Gold Coast while Mrs. Yanduma of Cape Coast town suffered a terrible assault by “Hausa” soldiers. The unification of the WAFF military structure around 1900 initiated a process that stabilized and centralized Britain’s West African army. This process involved the gradual adoption of generally common standards of training, administration, conditions of service, and uniforms. The experience of the First World War, in which West African troops fought in Togo, Cameroon, and East Africa, signaled the end of the conquest era and the transformation of the WAFFs and WARs from low-status colonial occupation troops into a significant British imperial military resource. During the 1920s and 1930s, the West African soldiers of Britain’s colonial army experienced stabilization and centralization. As the number of troops shrank given postwar budget cuts, and resistance to colonial rule evolved from violent rebellion to new forms of protest such as economic boycotts and labor actions, the colonial military establishment decommissioned its many scattered outposts and centralized around a few larger barracks or cantonments in major towns. The West African army regularized military family life as soldiers’ wives came under formal military organization supervised by uniformed headwomen or magajias. Most military accommodation comprised married quarters for nuclear families, and women cooked food and cleaned uniforms and ran a network of small businesses catering to uniformed personnel and civilians. Military commanders became more involved in their soldiers’ married life intervening in disputes over dowries and attempting to mediate troubled marriages. In this period, soldiers and their families emerged as a distinct social group, estranged to some extent (though not completely) from wider civilian communities. Reflecting the interwar years as the apex of colonial rule, Britain’s West African army stabilized as mutinies among troops stopped and acts of everyday violence by soldiers against civilians diminished significantly. Similarly, ritualistic flogging of soldiers vanished as a formal disciplinary tool though instances of informal and secretive corporal punishment still occurred. During this period and related to their service in the First World War, Britain’s WAFF regiments gained important regimental symbols such as distinct insignia and colours, enabling them to live out the full range of British ceremonial military culture including rituals, displays, and myths, thereby fostering a greater sense of military identity. Dressed in colorful uniforms, soldiers carrying rifles and flags and accompanied by marching bands became a typical feature of official public events in West Africa, promoting

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an atmosphere of British imperial majesty and power. While soldiers occasionally deployed to suppress protest, including the breaking of strikes, as they were then doing in other parts of the world, the colonial army generally became a more institutionalized element of the state and society in British West Africa. In terms of religion, the interwar years saw Britain’s West African soldiery become more representative of the region’s wider population. The West African rank-and-file transitioned from primarily Muslim to an even mix of Muslims and traditionalists, with the growth of a significant Christian minority related to the need for literate troops to operate new communications equipment as well as the wider expansion of Christianity in the region. This religious character varied from territory to territory as there were more Muslim troops in Nigeria—where they comprised a little over half of the soldiers—than in the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, where most military personnel identified as traditionalist. Although British officers continued to accommodate the practice of Islam among their West African troops, military imams disappeared at the start of the 1920s, and the army’s command structure continued to stay out of religion. In addition, officials made efforts to expand the use of English as a common regional command language to replace Hausa, which most soldiers did not know; Pidgin English, which British senior officers hated; and a host of indigenous languages used in recruit training and informally throughout the force. With the abolition of “native officers” a few years before the First World War, and the absence of imams, the racial hierarchy of Britain’s West African force was at its starkest during the interwar years. During the 1920s, as their force shrank and stabilized, British officers in West Africa gained space to obsess over their troops’ martial identities and sexual health. While the interwar period represented the height of colonial officials’ fixation over recruiting from a limited number of imagined martial races, the ethnic composition of the West African regiments remained extremely diverse and often increased in diversity. In this period, the Nigeria Regiment fostered a northern ethos through teaching Hausa language, establishing important military centers in the north, abandoning recruiting in the south, and promoting the myth of Hausa martial superiority. Nevertheless, the number of Hausa and Muslim soldiers from the north steadily decreased with more members of impoverished traditionalist minorities, including many from central Nigeria like the Tiv and northern marginalized “pagan” groups like the Dakakari enlisting in the colonial army. In the Gold Coast, where important military infrastructure stayed mostly in the central region of Asante, recruiting shifted from heterogeneous communities in the

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marginalized Northern Territories, where men now flocked to work in mines, to northern labor migrants already seeking jobs in the central and southern regions. In Sierra Leone and the Gambia, attempts to narrow recruiting to a few remote communities perceived as producing better soldiers completely failed, and units continued to reflect ethnic variety. Similarly, and related to the small size of the interwar-era force, British officials discouraged the enlistment of men from French colonial territories in order to promote the growth of a reliable military reserve of recently discharged soldiers in West Africa, but this never worked very well. As the West African army became leaner and more centralized during the interwar era, and the threat of tropical disease became manageable, British officers fixated over sexually transmitted diseases among the rank-and-file, finally introducing strict anti-VD measures long employed in the metropolitan British Army. During the 1920s and 1930s, soldiers endured random and humiliating inspections of their genitals, lost pay if hospitalized for sexually transmitted disease, and underwent chemical disinfection at special facilities. To the endless frustration of officers, none of these measures did anything to limit the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Britain’s West African regiments. Although authorities generally blamed the spread of sexually transmitted disease on West African women, military harassment of soldiers’ wives happened more frequently in Nigeria than in the other territories. After all, and despite taking up the misogyny of the metropolitan army, Britain’s West African regiments still relied on women for logistical support. This was the West African army where First World War veterans like Belo Akure and Chari Maigumeri of the Nigeria Regiment and Granda Dikale of the GCR passed on established regimental traditions to new soldiers, including future NCOs like Samba Silla of the Gambia and Sai Banna of Sierra Leone. It also included Nigerian military wives like Obiyi, who attended the 1924 British Empire Exhibition near London; Christiana Nwayiamidi, who returned to her abusive soldier husband after the intervention of officers; and Gombo, who clashed with rival market women and considered herself above the justice of a “native authority.” Mobilization for the Second World War destabilized and revolutionized Britain’s West African army. Theories of recruiting from imagined martial races living in remote areas became unfashionable given Nazi racial ideology. And literate West African men from coastal communities, previously not well represented in the colonial army but now essential for operating new technologies and support services, enlisted in massive numbers. Fostering military polarization, the appearance that literate southern soldiers seemed

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to replace women as the main logistical providers for the army may have prompted nonliterate hinterland infantrymen to see their new colleagues as less than masculine. The new religious affiliations of soldiers illustrate the dramatic change in the composition of the West African army of the Second World War and very likely further encouraged polarization within the ranks. During and immediately after the war, most of Britain’s West African troops identified as Christian including in Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Broader social change was also at work in this transformation as the number of traditionalist soldiers declined sharply within a very short time as more people in Nigeria and Gold Coast converted to Christianity, just as the success of Islam in Sierra Leone resulted in a mostly Muslim soldiery in that territory. While British officers still accommodated the historic practice of Islam within the ranks, and military imams returned to encourage recruiting and reassure Muslim elites, commanders and newly appointed chaplains now fostered an officially Christian ethos through army churches, Sunday church parades, and coordination with missionaries. At the same time, Muslim and Christian soldiers continued to practice elements of traditional belief such as wearing protective amulets and participating in secret societies like Poro in Sierra Leone. For a moment, the West African army’s racial hierarchy faced some theoretical challenges with the appointment of black Christian chaplains as uniformed junior officers and the full commissioning of several black officers from the Gold Coast. During the Second World War, barrack family life temporarily disappeared with the colonial state and military creating a decentralized and often faulty system for tens of thousands of new soldiers to support their dependents through payments made at civilian communities across the colonial territories. The vast majority of British West Africa’s army wives of the Second World War never saw a magajia, cooked for soldiers, or had their homes inspected by officers. This, together with the fact that many of the troops in this massive wartime force came from communities with little recent history of colonial military service and only served short terms of several years, meant that the Second World War–era West African army was probably more integrated into the region’s broader society than at any time in its history. The unstable wartime situation led to a return of some themes from the region’s late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial military. Aside from combat in East Africa and Burma, the West African army of the Second World War became a much more violent organization than it had been during the interwar era. The enormous size of the wartime West African army

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and the pressure of overseas deployments led to fighting among soldiers and rampant violence between soldiers and civilians including a reappearance of occurrences when individual troops “ran amok” with deadly weapons. These factors, together with higher expectations for service conditions among Western-educated soldiers and delays over repatriation from war theaters, led to a resurgence of mutinous actions in some West African units. Likewise, some West African troops once again endured formal disciplinary flogging given strict wartime regulations and influence from East African regiments where the practice had never disappeared given the more intensely racist settler ethos of that region. While the anti-VD practices of the interwar years continued in West Africa’s Second World War army, they seemed less important given other health concerns related to a very large force, overseas deployment with associated and dire medical problems, and the establishment of a distinct West African military medical service including a flurry of hospital construction. As in the late nineteenth century, the West African army was becoming too busy to worry about soldiers’ sexual health. The West African army of the Second World War was so large that it is easy to forget the stories of its individual soldiers. Among the West African troops who served in Burma, for instance, Hama Kim of Nigeria enlisted as a child soldier and pursued a long military career including during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70); the GCR’s Corporal Dagomba saved his platoon during a jungle ambush and then became a military imam; and Seth Anthony led Gold Coast troops as the first fully commissioned black African officer in the British Army, later becoming a diplomat for independent Ghana. Also among the West Africans in Burma were Amos Solarin of western Nigeria, who worked as a uniformed Christian chaplain and then returned to the Methodist church; Private Amedegisa Hukpoti, who arrived home in the Gold Coast with his Indian wife and their young child; and Joe Bauma of Sierra Leone, who carried supplies in the jungle but became involved in a mutiny in India that landed him in Freetown prison after the war. Experiences of West Africa’s many wartime army wives varied enormously from the Gold Coast’s Chochoe Maku who had her military allocation money stolen by a corrupt junior official to Nigeria’s Bintu Agbeke Davies whose in-laws kicked her out of their house after she became pregnant by another man. In the late 1940s and 1950s the much smaller peacetime West African army attempted to reestablish its prewar stability and way of life, but much had changed. Soldiers’ wives and children returned to centralized military cantonments, once again the scene of family life, where they encountered

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greatly improved medical and educational facilities left over from the war. Postwar West African army wives such as Nigeria’s Maria Ochefu resumed their logistical roles of cooking and cleaning and their entrepreneurial activities that became the military “Mammy Markets” of today. Formalizing the previous interwar era situation, imperial authorities banned official flogging of colonial troops, although sometimes unofficial beatings continued behind the barracks. New medical treatments and attitudes finally ended commanders’ distress over sexually transmitted disease that continued to affect soldiers but once again became a minor issue as military doctors addressed higher-priority health problems. While the force’s very few wartime black officers, including those who were Christian chaplains, disappeared during demobilization—bolstering the racial hierarchy in the late 1940s—the move toward self-government for West African territories prompted belated and insufficient efforts to Africanize the officer corps in the mid- to late 1950s. Although the language of martial race theory dropped from official postwar colonial policies, officials funneled uneducated men from marginalized hinterland communities including Muslims and Christians with long histories of colonial military service into infantry battalions, while educated Christian troops from coastal areas continued to dominate the new logistical services. Such polarization had not existed before the Second World War, as the West African army lacked significant support elements in that era and therefore had not needed educated troops. After the war, West African militaries, particularly in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, polarized along regional, ethnic, and religious lines with dire consequences for the future, including military coups against the postcolonial state. Of course, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, where colonial martial race recruiting had wholly failed and military polarization seemed less pronounced, experienced similar postindependence problems. Colonial military symbols and identity also changed in the late 1940s and 1950s. West African soldiers emerged from the war wearing the same ordinary working uniform as metropolitan British troops, but the retention of exotic Zouave ceremonial dress by the RWAFF infantry regiments became unfashionable within a society increasingly disapproving of racial distinctions. West African troops continued to visit Britain as members of contingents for imperial parades but now also as military professionals taking training courses within a new framework of colonial reform. The periodic mutinous behavior seen during the war did not end. In the nationalist ethos of the postwar years, when colonial officials employed West African soldiers to suppress growing civilian protest, some troops staged their own

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demonstrations related to complaints over conditions of service. At the same time, and continuing a long trend dating back to the early twentieth century, soldiers discharged after successful careers found new jobs in the colonial state, particularly in uniformed services like the police and prisons. Although historians continue to debate the political impact of war veterans in the 1950s, many of them as serving soldiers or members of other security forces helped prop up colonial rule during its dying days. Military culture in British colonial West Africa was complex and dynamic, reflecting a mix of European and African influences and changing contexts. Over time, the ethnic, regional, and religious composition of the force became increasingly diverse, with some episodes of radical transformation. In some periods, Britain’s West African soldiers exhibited mutinous behavior toward officers and indulged in terrible violence against civilians; yet at other times, these events did not happen. Military health matters initially focused on tropical disease and the provision of basic biomedical services, shifted primarily to sexually transmitted disease, and then returned to improving general medical infrastructure. Women and children associated with the West African army changed from informal camp followers to formally supervised military families living in cantonments to long-distance wartime dependents spread across the region and then back to the barracks again. While British military symbols like insignia and uniforms became central to inventing military identities in West Africa, some of these symbols eventually became outmoded and reminiscent of colonial oppression. Despite these constant changes, Britain’s West African soldiers also experienced some consistent factors. The colonial racial hierarchy remained dominant, although at times British officers worried about challenges, troops continued to practice some traditional beliefs such as wearing magical charms, military wives engaged in entrepreneurship, and discharged soldiers frequently found second careers with the colonial state.

Appendix Biographies Since colonial authored documents offer scant information about the individual soldiers who made up Britain’s West African army, these mini-­biographies seek to illustrate the life experience of a few of these almost forgotten men. In the absence of detailed service records for most West African military personnel, those who received special awards or punishments are usually the only ones who stand out from the almost anonymous rank-and-file. Reflecting a variety of territories and periods, the following soldiers represent examples of the tiny number whose names appear more than once in colonial military records or other documents.

Bawa Yawuri: Bush-Fighter Turned Imam Around 1870 Bawa Yawuri was born in Ilorin, the most northerly Yoruba town in western Nigeria conquered by Fulani jihadists from further north about fifty years earlier. The name Bawa Yawuri indicates Hausa ethnicity and family origins further north. At some point, he traveled around 220 miles south from Ilorin to the British coastal enclave of Lagos with the circumstances of this movement remaining unknown. At the start of the 1890s, when he was around twenty years old, Bawa enlisted in the Lagos Constabulary, previously known as the Armed Hausa Police.1 He was a Muslim like most of the other soldiers in that Lagos-based colonial paramilitary formation, which included an imam and Arabic teacher, and generously accommodated Muslim religious life. In 1892, as a young soldier, Bawa participated in the British colonial subjugation of the Yoruba state of Ijebu about sixty miles northeast of Lagos. Bawa was among 165 troops from the 1

“Veteran of Four Wars Dies About Aged 70,” West African Pilot, 30 January 1945.

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Lagos Constabulary who joined 150 GCC and one hundred Sierra Leone– based WIR soldiers as well as allies from the nearby Yoruba state of Ibadan for the attack on Ijebu. At the Battle of Imagbon, in mid-May, Bawa and the other colonial troops fought their way through thick forest and waded across the forty-yard-wide Osun River under enemy fire to defeat the seven thousand to eight thousand–strong Ijebu army. Like the other soldiers from Lagos, Bawa may have hesitated to cross the river given a rumor that the Ijebu people had made a human sacrifice to secure assistance from the river goddess Osun—or perhaps it was enemy bullets that discouraged them. In that engagement, Bawa witnessed one of the first battlefield deployments of the Maxim machine gun, used by the British to devastate the Ijebu defenders and enabling the colonial troops to cross the river and secure key locations. The Lagos Constabulary detachment, very likely including Bawa, remained to occupy Ijebu while the rest of the expedition returned to their home territories. 2 As a colonial soldier, Bawa traveled beyond Nigeria. In 1896 he shipped out to the Gold Coast with a detachment of around a hundred Lagos Constabulary, who once again joined elements of the GCC and WIR as well as British metropolitan troops to occupy Kumasi, capital of the Asante Kingdom, which became a British protectorate without a fight. During this expedition, Bawa likely saw a British officer called R. S. S. Baden-Powell who led local allies and who later founded the Boy Scout movement.3 In 1899 Bawa traveled by ship to Britain to undertake a course at the British Army’s School of Musketry at Hythe in Kent, being one of the last NCOs from his unit to do so.4 After his musketry course, Bawa returned to West Africa in time to take part in the column that relieved Kumasi during the Asante Rebellion of 1900.5 The first relief contingent to arrive in the Gold Coast, 2 3 4 5

A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London: Chapman and Hall, 1894), 28–31; “The Jebu War,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 18 June 1892. R. S. S. Baden-Powell, Downfall of Prempeh: A Dairy of Life with the Native Levy in Ashanti, 1895–96 (London: Methuen, 1900), 69. “Veteran of Four Wars Dies About Aged 70,” West African Pilot, 30 January 1945. “Sergeant Major Bawa Yawuri,” West African Pilot, 1 May 1941. This article states that Bawa Yawuri served in the “Ashanti War of 1892, and the Kumasi War,” which is likely a reference to the Ashanti Medal with a clasp bearing the name “Kumasi” given to those who defended and relieved the fort there in 1900.

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a force of 250 Lagos Constabulary that landed at Cape Coast at the end of April and immediately fought its way north through the bush to Kumasi suffering 139 casualties among its rank-and-file. Many of these Lagos troops then participated in Governor Hodgson’s breakout from Kumasi, fighting their way back to the coast and sustaining another one hundred casualties. Thirty-nine Lagos men remained behind as part of the small force that defended the British fort at Kumasi. A second contingent with a hundred soldiers from Lagos arrived at Cape Coast in early May and, with survivors from the first contingent, formed part of a much larger colonial army that advanced to Kumasi and subdued Asante resistance. Some Lagos Constabulary troops may have fought their way to Kumasi twice.6 There is no way to know exactly which Lagos contingent Bawa was part of, but later he wore an Ashanti Medal with a clasp indicating service in the relief of Kumasi. After his trips to Britain and Gold Coast, Bawa served in colonial conquest operations in other parts of Nigeria. From November 1901 to March 1902, he was among three hundred Lagos Battalion troops who joined fourteen hundred others from the Southern Nigeria Regiment (SNR) and Northern Nigeria Regiment (NNR) in an offensive against the Aro Confederacy that blocked British control of the interior of southeastern Nigeria between the Niger and Cross rivers. Utilizing riverboats and forest trails, four British-led columns overcame stiff resistance by Igbo communities and converged on the Aro capital of Arochukwu which was burned.7 At the end of January 1903, Bawa and his Lagos Battalion comrades marched north to Kano to form a reserve during the British conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate. Kano had been occupied just before they arrived in that northern walled city. A few years later, in 1906, Bawa’s Lagos Battalion amalgamated with the SNR becoming the Second Battalion of that formation. Discharged in 1908, Bawa completed what was then the maximum service of eighteen years, which involved two reengagements of six years each and positive evaluations from his British superiors.8 His rank on discharge remains unknown but given later events, he was either a sergeant or sergeant major. While it is not clear exactly what 6 7 8

Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 51–59; C. H. Armitage and A. F. Montanaro, The Ashanti Campaign of 1900 (London: Sands, 1901), 133. Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 63–66. “The Kano Expedition,” Times, 27 January 1903, 3; Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 69–73; “Sergeant Major Bawa Yawuri,” West African Pilot, 1 May 1941.

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Bawa did after leaving the Lagos Battalion, he almost certainly served in the military reserve for a few years, which led to his eventual return to full-time military duty. With the start of the First World War in 1914, Bawa reenlisted in his old unit now known as the Fourth Battalion of the Nigeria Regiment, which became No. 2 Battalion of the Nigeria Field Force during the Cameroon campaign. As an experienced soldier and leader, Bawa’s skills were much in demand in preparation for the war. Bawa served as sergeant major of “D” Company, meaning he was the senior African soldier in a subunit of around 130 men with about a dozen other Nigerian NCOs reporting to him and with the primary responsibility of maintaining discipline.9 As other elements of the Nigeria Regiment advanced overland across the border into Cameroon encountering unexpectedly strong German defenses, Bawa’s battalion arrived in Calabar in southeastern Nigeria in anticipation of a German counter­ offensive that did not transpire. In late September 1914, Bawa and his battalion embarked on the transport ship Boma, which joined a British flotilla carrying Nigerian, Gold Coast, and Sierra Leonean as well as French colonial Senegalese soldiers that conducted an amphibious landing at the German port of Duala. For the next fifteen months, Bawa’s unit fought to secure the southern riverine region of Cameroon, and eventually his battalion became the first to occupy the German center of Yaunde on New Year’s Day 1916 with retreating German forces moving into neutral Spanish territory. Bawa’s battalion suffered badly from the harsh conditions of the campaign as, by mid-1915, only 291 out of 577 men were fit for duty. The arrival of reinforcements from Nigeria brought the battalion’s effective strength up to 383 by August. It is not clear if Bawa was among the many British and Nigerian soldiers sent home because of illness or if he remained in Cameroon for the entire campaign.10 After the occupation of Cameroon, Bawa again left the army and settled in Lagos where he became an imam under the name Abdul Kadid. Popularly known as “Major Bawa,” the short, heavyset, and cheerful man with a loud voice and sporting his trademark cigar and military medals became a wellknown figure in interwar-era Lagos. It appears he had two wives and at least five children and/or grandchildren. During the early years of the Second World War, the West African Pilot newspaper highlighted Bawa as an example 9

NA (UK) WO 95/5387/5, “West Africa: Cameroons: 2 BN Nigeria Regiment,” 1914–15. 10 Moberly, Military Operations, 291 and 445.

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of a Nigerian soldier who had fought for the British in numerous wars but received little in return besides a small gratuity upon discharge. Talking to a newspaper reporter about the lack of Nigerian officers in the British colonial military of 1941, Bawa opined that a few “native officers” existed in the old Lagos Constabulary and that as a sergeant major, he had sometimes led his company during operations. Because of the newspaper article about him, military officials in Lagos hired the seventy-year-old Bawa as an orderly in their records department and arranged for him to receive a small pension. Bawa passed away in January 1945. Sixteen imams as well as leaders from the Ilorin community in Lagos presided over his funeral, also attended by Nigeria Regiment soldiers who helped carry the body to the cemetery.11

Dan Daura: Horse Soldier “Dan Daura” refers to someone who comes from Daura, a town in the far north of Nigeria close to the modern border with Niger, located in a Sahelian environment where horses have a long history. Britain’s West African soldiers frequently enlisted under surnames that reflected their place of origin or ethnic group and in the early twentieth century, there were around twenty Nigeria Regiment troops called “Dan Daura.”12 On 15 August 1898 a man calling himself Dan Daura enlisted in the British colonial military somewhere in what is now central Nigeria. It is very likely that he was among the two companies of “Hausa” recruits formed in that month by the second battalion of Lugard’s newly established WAFF at Jebba on the Niger River. There is also a possibility that he enlisted with the first battalion WAFF at Lokoja, although there is no record of recruits joining in August, or perhaps he joined the remnants of Royal Niger Constabulary operating in the same region and was absorbed into the WAFF.13 If Dan Daura indeed came from Daura, he was about four hundred miles from home when he enlisted in 11 “Old Campaigner Is Given New Army Job,” West African Pilot, 1 May 1941; “16 Imams Conduct Funeral for Late Bawa,” West African Pilot, 31 January 1945; E. O. Awoniyi, “Major Bawa Yawuri: A Tribute,” West African Pilot, 8 February 1945. 12 The National Archives, UK contains First World War medal cards for twenty different Nigeria Regiment soldiers and gun carriers named Dan Daura. 13 NA (UK) CO 445/8, “Report by Lieutenant-Colonel H.S. Fitzgerald of the Work Done during 1897 and 1898, in Raising and Organizing the 2nd Battalion West African Frontier Force,” 31 March 1899.

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the colonial army. Records do not indicate anything about his background before 1898, but it is conceivable that he worked in a trade caravan or escaped enslavement like many other WAFF recruits of that time. As about twelve hundred of his WAFF colleagues marched off to counter the 1900 Asante Uprising in what is now Ghana, Daura remained with the skeleton force that struggled to maintain embryonic colonial rule along the Niger River in the Nigerian hinterland.14 Daura must have quickly exhibited some leadership gaining the junior NCO rank of corporal within two years of enlistment, which was very rare. In late November 1900 Corporal Dan Daura led a section of ten WAFF soldiers that escorted British official David W. Carnegie from the colonial center of Lokoja to a compound called Tawari, the local ruler of which stood accused of raiding neighboring communities. Initially finding Tawari almost abandoned, Carnegie returned to the compound the next morning, seizing some firearms and ammunition and burning the absent chief ’s house. This time, however, the residents of the settlement were ready. Almost immediately after leaving Tawari, just ten yards from its gate, the patrol was ambushed by villagers who sprang up from some tall grass firing volleys of poisoned arrows—one of which hit Carnegie in the thigh, killing him within a few minutes. Taking charge, Corporal Daura formed his men into a small square around Carnegie’s servants who carried the official’s corpse and for two hours, they fought their way back to a friendly village on the Niger River from where they returned to Lokoja by boat arriving at four o’clock the next morning. WAFF commander Lugard “specially promoted the corporal in charge for his gallantry. Under a heavy fire and overwhelming odds, they safely brought away the dead man, who was buried at the Cemetery in Lokoja.”15 Lugard instantly promoted Dan Daura from corporal to sergeant major, skipping the rank of sergeant.16 A few days later, during the “Bida Expedition of December 1900,” a WAFF company attacked Tawari, blowing open the gate and capturing local leaders.17

14 Northern Nigeria: Report for 1900 (London: Colonial Office, 1913), 22. 15 David Wynford Carnegie, Letters from Nigeria, 1899–1900 (Brechin: Black and Johnson, 1902), Appendix, 4–8, for the quote see F. Lugard to H. M. C, Jebba, 20 January 1901, 8. Lugard did not name the corporal, but the document cited below links the incident to Dan Daura. 16 NA (UK) CO 445/67, “Services of CSM Dan Daura, Nigeria Regiment,” 4 November 1925. 17 Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 61.

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Sergeant Major Dan Daura participated in many of the key battles during the British conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria. Daura’s unit gained the new name Northern Nigeria Regiment (NNR) forming part of the expanded regional WAFF organization. Around 1902, as British rule extended north of the Niger River into an environment conducive to horses and mobile warfare, the NNR established a company of mounted infantry including Daura as a senior soldier. The NNR Mounted Infantry conducted reconnaissance, cut off enemy escape routes from besieged fortified towns, and pursued fleeing foes to prevent them from regrouping. Throughout 1903, Daura’s mounted infantry element expanded to become a battalion of several companies. In March 1903, as the British colonial invasion force was searching for the Kano army, Sergeant Major Daura participated in a reconnaissance patrol led by Captain Wallace Wright, consisting of forty-five mounted infantrymen. Intercepting a group of two hundred enemy cavalry, some of whom were captured, Wright learned that it was the scouting party for the main Kano army. To give the NNR main force a chance to prepare, Wright led his patrol directly toward the bulk of the enemy. Quickly building a thorn-bush defensive enclosure called a zareba, inside of which the patrol formed a square with their horses in the center, the colonial soldiers drove off ten attacks by around a thousand cavalry and two thousand infantry. With the superior firepower of their Lee-Metford carbines, the colonial soldiers fired volleys at the enemy when they were about fifty yards away with many men shot down only five yards from the position. While Daura’s patrol suffered only one wounded man and three dead horses, the Kano army sustained heavy casualties including many important leaders killed. Subsequently, the Kano army retired to the village of Chamberawa where it was routed by another mounted infantry patrol. Captain Wright later received the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for battlefield bravery, for his role in the engagement.18 A little later, Sergeant Major Daura received a wound during the climactic Battle of Burmi, fought in July 1903 some 350 kilometers southeast of Kano, where a five-hundred-strong British colonial force defeated the Sokoto army led by Caliph Attahiru II, who died in the intense fighting. This incident signaled the end of the independent caliphate.19 18 Northern Nigeria: Report for 1900–1911 (London: Colonial Office, 1913), 90–91; London Gazette, 11 September 1903. 19 NA (UK) CO 445/67, “Services of CSM Dan Daura, Nigeria Regiment,” 4 November 1925; Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 73–74.

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In 1906, Sergeant Major Daura was among the NNR Mounted Infantry garrison in the Northern Nigerian city of Kano. He very likely took part in an operation to subdue an Islamist rebellion at Satiru near the city of Sokoto in northwestern Nigeria. In February 1906 the rebels overwhelmed an NNR mounted infantry company from Sokoto, killing three British officers and officials and twenty-five Nigerian soldiers. Immediately, in early March, five hundred NNR troops converged on Sokoto, including around 230 mounted infantry from Kano, and then attacked the rebel town of Satiru. At Satiru, the NNR mounted infantry lured the rebel army to attack the main infantry square, supported the infantry as they seized the town, and then pursued and killed fleeing survivors. Although reports on the battle do not mention Daura, the presence of almost all the mounted infantry from Kano makes his presence highly probable.20 In April 1906 Daura participated in the conquest of the Hadejia Emirate, located about a hundred miles east-northeast of Kano. He was among an NNR force of 186 mounted infantry and 468 infantry supported by machine guns and artillery that marched from Kano to the town of Hadejia. Given the limited food and water available in the arid country, Daura’s mounted infantry rode a day ahead of the expedition’s main body during the weeklong advance. At Hadejia, after the emir rebuked a colonial demand to surrender, the NNR infantry seized one of the town gates, bombarded the emir’s palace, and shot down the emir’s cavalrymen as they attacked. At the same time, Daura’s mounted infantry cut off escape from the other gates and afterward rode through the town rounding up survivors. A report on the operation singled out the important contribution of “Company Sergeant Major Dandara” also wounded during the assault.21 In August 1914, at the outset of the First World War, Sergeant Major Daura of the Fifth Battalion (Mounted Infantry) Nigeria Regiment took part in the Maiduguri column that crossed the border into the northern part of German Cameroon. Daura almost certainly took part in mounted infantry reconnaissance patrols toward the German hill positions at Mora. Unaware 20 Northern Nigeria: Correspondence Related to Sokoto, Hadeija and the Munshi Country (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1906), Major R. H. Goodwin to Brigade Major, Sokoto, 11 March 1906; Major A. D. Green to Major Goodwin, Sokoto, 12 March 1906. 21 Northern Nigeria: Correspondence Related to Sokoto, Hadeija, Colonel Arthur Lowry Cole to High Commissioner Northern Nigeria, Zungeru, 20 May 1906; NA (UK) CO 445/67, “Services of CSM Dan Daura, Nigeria Regiment,” 4 November 1925.

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that the Germans had redeployed their forces inland, the Maiduguri column encountered heavier than expected resistance and withdrew. After several other unsuccessful attacks on Mora in October and November, British and French forces focused their efforts elsewhere in Cameroon. Mora became the last German outpost in the territory to surrender in February 1916. A French officer called Captain Remond who commanded a company of Senegalese Tirailleurs from Chad and some Nigerian mounted infantry during intense fighting around Mora in November 1915 commented that Sergeant Major Daura “is the best Native soldier I have ever seen. I have as much confidence in him as I have in an officer.”22 In September 1916 Daura received permission to extend his military service beyond the usual maximum of eighteen years.23 The ongoing war meant that the colonial army badly needed seasoned soldiers such as him. In January 1917 the experienced horse soldier joined the British columns that entered French territory in what is now Niger in response to a Tuareg rebellion with links to North African Islamists. Daura likely comprised part of the column of two mounted infantry companies that traveled from Kano in Northern Nigeria to Tasawa in Niger, but there was another British column including some mounted infantry that advanced from Sokoto to Madawa. Until their return to British territory in May, Daura’s mounted infantry conducted desert patrols freeing up French forces that also moved up through Nigeria to operate against the rebels further north retaking the town of Agadez.24 Sergeant Major Daura left the Nigeria Regiment in October 1919 after a career of just over twenty-one years. His departure roughly coincided with the disbanding of the Nigeria Regiment mounted infantry element now considered obsolete with the advent of motor vehicles. Like many former West African soldiers, Daura swopped one uniform for another, working as a sergeant major in the Gold Coast police from around late 1919 to November 1923. In August 1924 Sergeant Major Daura took up a temporary one-year 22 Strachan, First World War in Africa, 34; Moberly, Military Operations, 190; for the quote see NA (UK) CO 445/67, “Services of CSM Dan Daura, Nigeria Regiment,” 4 November 1925; WO 372/5/158864, “Medal Card of Dan Daura, Warrant Officer, 5 Nigeria Regiment”; 23 NNA (Ibadan) CSO N2035/1916, “Company Sergeant Major Dandaura,” 11 September 1916. 24 NA (UK) CO 445/67, “Services of CSM Dan Daura, Nigeria Regiment,” 4 November 1925; Jide Osuntokun, “Nigeria’s Colonial Government and the Islamic Insurgency in French West Africa,” Cahiers d’etudes africaines 15, no. 57 (1975): 85–93.

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position at the new Nigeria Regiment recruit training depot in Zaria that standardized induction and initial training of soldiers. He must have represented the quintessential grizzled drill instructor who intimidated young recruits on the parade ground and introduced them to military culture. Referring to Daura, the Nigeria Regiment commandant believed there was “no more suitable man to assist in starting a new formation, he thoroughly justified his selection.” In late 1925 Daura accepted a civilian position as interpreter with the Nigerian Base Metals Company at Jema’a in Northern Nigeria. Since the Nigeria Regiment commandant considered it unfair that Daura had never received a decoration during his now twenty-two and a half years of military service, authorities granted the former sergeant major the Order of the British Empire in 1927, entitling him to write the letters OBE after his name.25 During the 1930s Daura returned to Kano, a place he had lived throughout most of his military service, becoming head of the civic guard that patrolled the streets and monitored the walled city’s gates. His picture was featured in a 1938 colonial memoir.26

Sai Banna: Maintaining the Home Front Sai Banna represents one of British West Africa’s very few long-serving soldiers with an extant but thin personnel file located at the Sierra Leone Archives in Freetown. Originating from agricultural communities in southern Sierra Leone, Sai Banna was born in or around the town of Bo in 1900 and eventually lived in nearby Rotifunk. In the 1920s he identified as belonging to the large Mende ethnic group of the area and practicing traditionalist religion. Although a military doctor later described Sai Banna as having “Poro marks under eyes,” it is not clear if he had been initiated into the region’s secret society, as enlistment documents show no indication of typical Poro scarification on his torso common among other Sierra Leonean soldiers. Sai Banna served in the WAR from 1920 to 1928, although little evidence remains about his experience in that unit aside from his attaining the rank of corporal. He likely served in Freetown’s Wilberforce barracks from where the bulk of his regiment protected the port, but he may have also worked at one of the unit’s outposts in northern Sierra Leone. As a WAR soldier in an era of post–First World War military cuts, Sai Banna witnessed 25 NA (UK) CO 445/67, “Services of CSM Dan Daura, Nigeria Regiment,” 4 November 1925; Supplement to the London Gazette, 3 June 1927. 26 Oakley, Treks and Palavers, 236, 240, 256.

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his regiment shrink from around fifteen hundred troops when he enlisted to about five hundred upon its disbandment in 1928.27 Like a number of other discharged personnel from the defunct WAR, Sai Banna immediately enlisted in the SLB of the RWAFF that relocated its headquarters and one company to Wilberforce. He retained his junior NCO rank and spent most of his subsequent career in the familiar environment of Freetown with two brief postings to the SLB’s other company that garrisoned Daru in eastern Sierra Leone. Within the SLB, Sai Sanna’s military career progressed well as he regularly qualified for proficiency pay, gained several “good conduct” badges, secured promotion to sergeant in 1932, reenlisted for another six-year term in 1934, and received the “Long Service and Good Conduct” medal in 1938. At a time when British military authorities pursued aggressive policies to counter the spread of sexually transmitted disease in the West African army including the SLB, Sai Banna remained unusually healthy. At the start of January 1939, as Britain’s West African army began to prepare for expansion on the eve of the Second World War, Banna gained promotion and appointment as sergeant major of “B” Company in Daru: he seems to have developed some attachment to that area. Although not indicated in his file, Banna almost certainly participated in military operations in support of colonial police during labor actions in interwar-era Sierra Leone, especially in the late 1930s.28 During the Second World War, Sergeant Major Banna reengaged with the army for another three years and eventually the duration of the conflict. He was one of the most senior West African soldiers in Sierra Leone. In 1940, given the enlargement of the SLB into the SLR, Sai Banna became a CSM in the newly formed Second Battalion that trained recruits, some of whom eventually fought in Burma with the First Battalion. In 1941, with the threat posed by adjacent Vichy French territory, he became a CSM in a coastal defense unit ultimately designated as Third Battalion SLR (3 SLR) and in 1943 he became RSM of that formation representing its top African NCO and reporting directly to the British commanding officer. In 1945, after completing a twenty-five-year military career, RSM Banna received the British Empire Medal (BEM) for his work in 3 SLR where his “faithful service, smartness and keenness have been an example to all serving with him.”29 Estimated by an army doctor as a man in his forties, Sai Banna was 27 NA (UK) T161/163, “West African Regiment: Establishment and Disbandment,” War Office to Treasury, 31 March 1922; T161/163, “West African Regiment: Establishment and Disbandment,” 1928. 28 SLA (Freetown), personnel file of Sai Banna. 29 NA (UK) WO 373/157/86/1, “Recommendation RSM Sai Banna,” n.d.

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discharged from the SLR at the end of September 1945 just a few weeks after the surrender of Japan and as part of the general demobilization of Britain’s wartime West African army. At that time, RSM Banna was married to a woman called Lucef Sogbra who lived in a rural area around Hastings just outside Freetown (as army wives did not live in barracks during the Second World War). Upon leaving the army, Banna gave his home address as Maloma Village, located in Kailahun district in eastern Sierra Leone not far from his old garrison at Daru.30 While Sai Banna spent his entire military career in Sierra Leone and did not experience any wars, he played a key role in maintaining the Second World War home front and training soldiers for overseas service.

George Thomas: Service in Two World Wars George Thomas enlisted in the Gambia Company in 1909 just after the initial group of Sierra Leonean soldiers who formed the unit seven years earlier finished their term of service and recruiting shifted to local Gambians. Although Thomas’s early life remains unknown, his name and records of ethnic enlistment suggest he may have been one of the few Bathurst Creoles (also called Aku) in the unit. Most of his comrades originated from remote indigenous communities located upriver. During 1915 and early 1916, Private Thomas was among the Gambia Company that fought in the Cameroon Campaign of the First World War. Since his name appears on the company nominal roll for January 1915 but not October 1915, he may have become sick and returned home at some point or spent time in hospital in Duala.31 Upon returning to Bathurst, Thomas likely experienced some readjustment difficulties as in June 1916, his commander sentenced him to fourteen days’ imprisonment with hard labor for refusing an order and being insolent toward his CSM.32 Thomas then proceeded with the Gambia Company to East Africa where his small unit formed part of the 30 SLA (Freetown), personnel file of Sai Banna. 31 NA (UK) WO 95/5388/4, “War Diary: Cameroons, Gambia Company,” August 1914–March 1916; sickness among troops in Cameroon was very high as in June 1915, the sixty-one-strong Gambia Company in Cameroon comprised thirty-four effective troops as the other twenty-seven were sick. Moberly, Military Operations, 291. 32 NA (UK) CO 445/37, “Gambia Company: System of Training,” 24 July 1916, Return of Severe Punishments, May 1916.

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Nigerian Brigade. For his actions at the October 1917 Battle of Mahiwa, in which the Gambia Company suffered heavy casualties, Lance Corporal Thomas received the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM). In September 1918, about five months after the Gambian troops returned to Bathurst, the influenza pandemic hit West Africa resulting in 90 percent of the company becoming sick and seven dying. Thomas, now a corporal, along with three other soldiers “rendered valuable assistance” during the pandemic meriting a special monetary award. In 1921 Thomas left the army after twelve years in the ranks. While his life during the interwar years remains unclear, Thomas reenlisted upon the outbreak of the Second World War, serving as a sergeant in the First Battalion of the newly expanded Gambia Regiment in which he represented the soldier with the longest history of service. Although his battalion eventually fought in Burma, he remained on the home front engaged in training and defending the Gambia, which was surrounded by hostile Vichy-controlled Senegal. In April 1944, while still working in the army, Sergeant Thomas passed away at his home and was buried with full military honors at Fajara War Cemetery.33

Granda Dikale: Trans-National Soldier Like a number of Britain’s West African soldiers, Granda Dikale served in the colonial militaries of two European powers at different times. A member of the German colonial army in Cameroon during the First World War, Dikale was left behind during the German withdrawal into neutral Spanish territory and captured by the British in December 1915. He supposedly won a German Iron Cross, but this was likely confused with another medal. To address manpower problems, British military authorities in Cameroon enlisted former German colonial soldiers, but the numbers were limited given a lack of officers who could communicate with these men, as they did not understand English or Hausa. As a result, Granda Dikale and around 150 fellow Cameroonians joined the GCR in March 1916 and returned to the Gold Coast with their new unit. Arriving in German East Africa with 33 NAG (Banjul) CSO 3/34, “Gambia Company WAFF: Account of Operations,” April to October 1917; CSO 24/1, “Gambia Company History Book,” vol. 1, September and December 1918; Haywood and Clarke, West African Frontier Force, 251; “Gambia’s Senior Soldier,” RWAFF News, 6 June 1944; https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/ casualty-details/2626644/%20THOMAS%20GEORGE/.

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the GCR in July 1917, Dikale and his compatriots fought their former colonial masters in that region until returning to the Gold Coast in August 1918. Dikale performed extremely well in the East Africa campaign, earning promotion to sergeant and being awarded the DCM and Military Medal (MM). He gained his DCM for involvement in heavy fighting at Narungombe on 19 July 1917 when the GCR together with KAR, Indian and South African infantry assaulted a strongly entrenched German defensive position supported by machine guns and artillery. That day, Dikale’s 790-strong GCR battalion suffered 20 percent casualties with 37 killed and 122 wounded. Although it is impossible to reconstruct his actions during the battle, the fact that some GCR companies lost all their British leaders suggests that Sergeant Dikale took over a subunit at a critical point. More than a dozen GCR members received decorations related to this intense engagement. After the war, Dikale and his fellow Cameroonians returned to the Gold Coast with their regiment where officers admired their soldiering skills. Most of these Cameroonian troops served a six-year term and left the army, but Dikale remained longer and became the GCR’s RSM in the 1920s or perhaps the early 1930s. During the Second World War, a military newspaper featured a picture of the nowretired RSM Dikale wearing his uniform and medals apparently during a visit to his former unit. Although he faded from the historical military record, this Cameroonian soldier is one of the few West African troops to have two pictures of him published over a long period: one as a young man in East Africa around 1917 and another as a middle-aged veteran in 1944.34

Roy Ankrah: A Boxer in the Army A young Roy Ankrah began his boxing career in 1939 as the sport was beginning to professionalize in the Gold Coast, and he won the colony’s 1941 Flyweight and Bantam championships. In Accra, he became known as “The Showboy of the Ring” and eventually as “The Black Flash.” In 1943, with dramatic wartime military expansion, Ankrah enlisted and shipped out to India as part of 81st (West Africa) Division. Although Sergeant Ankrah 34 NA (UK) CO 445/36, “Cameroons Garrison,” 18 March 1916; WO 95/5321/13, “War Diary: Gold Coast Regiment,” March to November 1917; CO 445/50, Report on GCR, 1919; Clifford, Gold Coast Regiment, 93–106, 230, 288; Killingray, “Colonial Army in the Gold Coast,” 186; “RWAFF Veteran,” RWAFF News, 7 February 1944.

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officially worked in a West African transport company and then at a training and reinforcement camp in what is now Bangladesh near the Burma border, his main job in the army involved staging boxing matches to boost soldiers’ morale and the military’s public image. Before a large crowd at “Monsoon Square Gardens” in Calcutta, Ankrah defeated African American Golden Gloves champion Velmond White in the semifinal of the 1945 All IndiaChina-Burma lightweight championship. He fascinated American spectators by boxing in bare feet and sustaining an extremely fast pace. In Asia, Ankrah also participated in exhibition matches including with superstar American champion Sugar Ray Robinson, who fought thousands of bouts to entertain United States servicemen around the world. Upon demobilization, Ankrah left the army in 1947 and then continued his boxing career, winning numerous Gold Coast and West African titles. He moved to Britain in 1950 and became an international professional boxer. In 1951, in London, he defeated Ronnie Clayton of Britain to become the Commonwealth British Empire super-featherweight champion. Back home in the Gold Coast, with rising nationalist sentiment, Ankrah became a hero for defeating Clayton, who signified British colonial rule. Like other African boxers of the 1950s, Ankrah became a symbol of the rising Pan-Africanist movement, and he developed a relationship with proindependence and Pan-Africanist leader Kwame Nkrumah, who became the first prime minister of the self-governing Gold Coast in 1951 and then independent Ghana in 1957. From the mid-1950s, Ankrah returned home and continued to support the development of boxing in Ghana, promoting the sport in poor communities and training fighters for the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. He passed away in 1995.35

35 “West African Boxer Wins Semi-final,” RWAFF News, 31 October 1945; De-Valera NYM Botchway, Boxing is No Cakewalk: Azumah ‘Ring Professor’ Nelson in the Social History of Ghanaian Boxing (Grahamstown, South Africa: Africa Humanities, 2019), 56–58; Adeyinka Makinde, “The Africans: Boxing and Africa,” in Cambridge Companion to Boxing, edited by Gerald Early (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 99–117; Adeyinka Makinde, “Boxing and Pan-Africanism: Kwame Nkrumah Meets Roy Ankrah,” Global Research, 12 February 2019, https://www.globalresearch.ca/ boxing-and-pan-africanism-kwame-nkrumah-meets-roy-ankrah/5668332.

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Index 11th (Africa) Division, 24 12th (Africa) Division, 24 81st (West African) Division, 2, 25, 26, 165, 228, 230, 231, 292, 350 82nd (West African) Division, 2, 26, 133, 151 Abeokuta, Nigeria, 41, 42, 79, 147, 228, 234, abolition of slave trade, 33–35, 44, 49, 55, 102 Abuja incident (1909), 285, 286 Accra, Ghana, 6, 11, 17, 25, 38, 45, 47–49, 95, 126, 131, 135, 136, 137, 140, 145, 181, 192, 207, 218, 222, 227, 228, 232, 240, 253, 276, 278, 290, 311, 350 Achimota, Ghana, 97, 135, 145 Acholi people, 58 Ahmadiyya movement, 131 Akonnobea, Afua, Gold Coast, 253 Aku people, Gambia, 348 Akure, Belo, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 187, 198, 323, 332 Ali, Abubakar, imam, Nigeria, 152 Ali, native officer, GCC, 48 Alimotu, wife, Nigeria Regiment, 247 Alyo, sergeant, Nigeria, 322, 323 Amanya, Tay, sergeant major, Gold Coast, 200 Amfopo, G. K., reverend, 146 amulets, 26, 101, 142, 143, 307, 333 Anglicans, 137, 145, 146

Anglo-Asante War (1873–74), 16, 27, 44, 45, 112, 122, 129, 142, 173, 186, 205, 240, 244, 277, 278 Ankrah, Roy, 350, 351 Annan, Samuel Otinqulah, private, GCR, 253 anti-Syrian riot, Sierra Leone (1919), 23, 288 Anthony, Seth, major, 98, 146, 334 Asnlow, Joseph, sergeant major, SLB, 318, 319 Arabic, 130, 131, 148, 185, 186, 328, 337 Arakan Campaigns, Burma, 25, 26, 181, 292 Armed Hausa Police Force, 12, 16, 39–43, 76, 123, 129, 142, 170, 179, 195, 244, 246, 337 Armistice Day, 133 Aro Expedition (1901), 16 Arri, sergeant major, Nigeria, 324 Asante, 12, 31, 37–39, 47, 48, 49, 89, 90, 92–95, 98, 99, 100, 130, 179, 190, 209, 253, 277, 308, 309, 311, 331, 338 Asante Rebellion of 1900, 14, 16, 89, 105, 184, 241, 283, 297, 338 Asantehene, 98, 190 Axim, Ghana, 46, 282, 311 Axim riot (1941), 311 Azare, Sale, CSM, Nigeria Regiment, 324 Azikiwe, Nnamdi, 87

378  ❧  index Baden-Powell, R. S. S., 338 Bagermi, Hassan, Nigeria, 254 Bah, Chiarru Malik, imam, Sierra Leone, 152 Bakashina, Audu, private, Lagos Constabulary, 43 Balewa, Abubakar, 155 Bambara people, 57, 97, 113, 115, 118, 318 Bambara, Musa, corporal, SLB, 318 Banana, Africa, Burma veteran, Nigeria, 143 bands, 41, 74, 77, 84, 96, 104, 125, 135, 164, 168, 175, 179–82, 184, 195, 200, 201, 330 Banna, Sai, RSM, SLR, 332, 346–48 Barrow, Knapp, captain, 46, 47 Bassey, Umo, sergeant major, Nigeria, 200 Basua, private, SNR, 262 Bathurst (Banjul), the Gambia, 22, 23, 101, 107, 112–14, 116, 117, 161, 170, 187, 208, 284, 285, 348, 349 Battle Honors, 183, 186, 189, 193 Bauchi, Nigeria, 64, 150, 158, 261 Bauma, Joe, private, SLR, 293, 294 Bedford, Frederick, admiral, 278 Benin Kingdom, 13, 53, 197 Benjamin, lance corporal, Sierra Leone/ Gambia, 284 Benue, Nigeria, 51, 55, 67, 68, 69, 70, 76, 87, 253, Bida, Nigeria, 46, 342 Bilharzia, 228 Blair, Cameron, doctor, 218 Blanco, sergeant, SLR, 291, 292 Bobi, sergeant major, NNR, 158 boots, 170, 172, 173, 175–78, 195, 196, 201, 289, 290 Borgu, Nigeria, 51 Bornu, 31, 154 boxing, 19, 350–51

Boy Scouts, 169, 338 Boyd, Clement, lance corporal, Nigeria, 254 Boys’ Companies, 29 Brikama, Gambia, 308 Brimah, Abdul Aziz, GCR, 131 British Army, Metropolitan, 1, 14, 15, 18, 34, 63, 98, 106, 141, 144–47, 169, 170, 172, 173, 176, 177, 179, 182, 183–87, 189, 195, 196, 199, 200, 207, 211, 214, 215, 219, 228, 233, 237, 241, 246, 256, 257, 259, 260, 315, 329, 332, 334, 338 British Empire Exhibition, 198, 332 British Empire Medal (BEM), 151, 152, 154, 174, 181, 324, 347 Brown, Obadiah Datubo, reverend, 146 British Army wives, 255–57 Burma, 2, 9, 25–28, 99, 110, 117–19, 128, 131, 133, 134, 136, 138, 141, 143, 146, 151, 152, 165, 181, 187, 189, 190, 199, 201, 230, 231, 233, 236, 252, 253, 270, 274, 292, 293, 316, 317, 322, 324, 325, 333, 334, 347, 349, 351 Burmi, Battle of (1903), 343 Burroughs, Charles, lieutenant colonel, 281–83 Burton, Richard, 32, 46 Butler, S. S., colonel, 116, 191, 220, 224 Calabar, 13, 50, 52, 77, 78, 84, 124, 148, 149, 187, 207, 247, 248, 249, 262, 287, 313, 323–25, 340 Cameroon, 20, 26, 29, 50, 62, 64, 74, 79, 81, 92, 94, 106, 107, 114, 130, 160, 162, 174–76, 184, 187–89, 198, 201, 215, 216, 219, 261, 262, 266, 267, 287, 323, 325, 330, 340, 344, 345, 348, 349, 350

index  ❧ 379 camp followers, 18, 237, 238, 244, 249, 250, 336 Cape Coast, 37, 38, 44, 89, 212, 240, 241, 276, 277, 278, 282, 299, 328, 330, 339 Cardew, Frederick, 280, 281 Carnegie, David W, 342 carriers, 21, 26, 67, 84, 85, 107, 136, 292, 297 Carter, C. P. H., colonel, 89, 91 Casamance, Senegal, 117 Catcheside, William, major, 324 Catholics, 127, 136, 137, 139, 145, 147 Central African Regiment (CAR), 282 ceremonials, 18, 175, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 187, 190–93, 194, 200, 201, 247, 329, 330 Chad, 20, 62, 128, 324 Chamberlain, Joseph, 196 chaplains, 122, 135–40, 144–47, 149, 152, 153–56, 215, 236, 241, 256, 333, 334, 335 charms. See amulets chickenpox, 230 children, 155, 190, 225, 230, 237–40, 243, 251–58, 285, 298, 321, 323, 334, 336, 340 Chindits, 25, 138 cholera, 141, 230 Christianity, 35, 57, 59, 65, 66, 70, 86, 88, 121–66, 187, 208, 236, 237, 270, 274, 331, 333, 334, 335 Christiansborg Castle, Gold Coast, 38 Chupplies, 171, 175–77, 196 church parades, 137, 333 churches, 35, 134–39, 152, 156, 183, 257, 298, 333 Clayton, Ronnie, 351 Clifford, Hugh, 187, 188 Cockburn, R. Captain, Sierra Leone Frontier Police, 279–80

cocoa farming, 23, 92, 94, 100 Cole, Emmanuel, gunner, Sierra Leone, 289 Colonial Office, 13, 14, 41, 82, 102, 171, 173, 183–85, 187, 191, 195, 196, 206, 226, 266, 267, 269, 271, 280, 288 colours, 182–93, 330 communications equipment, 24, 25, 83, 84, 289, 331 condoms, 228, 232, 236 Congo Free State, 8, 48, 273 Contagious Disease Acts (CD Acts), 211, 214, 237 cooking, 244, 245, 329, 330, 333, 335 coronations, 132, 175, 190, 191, 194, 196, 200, 201 Crimean War (1853–56), 40, 173 Cross River, 84–86, 339 Cunliffe, F. G., brigadier, 85, 86 customary law, 259, 262, 271 Dabai, Baragai, Nigeria Regiment, 74 Dagarti, Kofi, private, Gold Coast/ Nigeria, 316 Dagarti people, 44, 92, 97 Dagomba, Mohomman, Corporal/ imam, GCR, 151, 152 Dagomba, Yesufu, GCR, 148 Dagomba people, 44, 90, 91 Dakakari people, 71–75, 100, 286, 331 Daniels, John, native officer, SNR, 16, 17 Daura, Dan, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 160, 323, 341–46 Davies, Bintu Agbeke, Nigeria, 252, 334 Davies, S. A. corporal, Nigeria, 252 decapitation, 27 decolonization, 18, 29, 87, 178, 187, 192, 275

380  ❧  index decorations, 174 Delma, Ali, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 322 demobilization, 22, 28, 100, 128, 189, 254, 255, 258, 327, 335, 348, 351 Digan, A. J., major, 285, 286 Dikale, Granda, RSM, GCR, 332, 349, 350 disabled soldiers, 79, 326, 327 Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM), 174, 322, 349, 350 Dobel, Charles, general, 107 Dogarti, Obuasi, private, GCR, 304 Donkos, 37, 44–48, 89 Dono, Audu, imam, Nigeria, 151 Doubloon, private, Sierra Leone Frontier Police, 241 Duala, 20, 189, 340, 348 Duke, Joe, SNR, 325, 326 Dutch, 37, 43, 55, 89 Dzakpe, Makare, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 70 East Africa, Second World War, 24, 27, 118, 133, 151, 152, 180, 189, 230, 236, 255, 257, 269, 270, 274, 325, 333 East Africa Mutiny (1964), 275 Efik people, 84 Egba Rebellion, Nigeria (1918), 21, 41, 42, 267 Ekuri people, 85 Elmina, 37, 43, 51, 61, 89, 147 Emergency Preventative Treatment (EPT) rooms, 220–35 emirs, 46, 62, 65, 71, 123, 131, 149, 150, 153, 154, 200, 262, 278, 326, 344 English language, 70, 82, 96, 97, 98, 100, 103, 111, 112, 114–17, 276, 317, 319, 331, 349

Enugu, Nigeria, 5, 29, 134–37, 139, 141, 150, 155, 192, 221, 228, 234, 235, 240, 244, 269 Enugu Colliery Strike (1949), 29 Epe, Nigeria, 40, 41 Esom, William, Nigeria, 139 Ethnicity, invention of, 56–57 extortion, 317–19 Ezza people, 85, 86 Fadoyebo, Isaac, Nigeria, 134, 137 Fante people, 44, 51, 89, 100, 241 Farmah, Ansumanah, sergeant major, SLB, 319 Fez, 171–75, 178, 198, 201 Field Punishment Number One, 266 Firminger, Reginald, inspector, GCC, 47–48 First World War, 10, 13, 19–21, 24, 27, 50, 58, 64, 67, 68, 72, 74, 78, 79, 82, 86, 92–97, 100, 105–8, 114, 115, 116, 122, 130, 143, 148, 149, 160, 162, 174–76, 184, 187–89, 197, 198, 199, 201, 208–11, 214, 215, 219, 235, 239, 240, 255, 261, 263, 265, 266, 271, 280, 285, 287, 302, 303, 322, 323, 325, 326, 330, 331, 332, 340, 344, 346, 348, 349 Fitzgerald, H. S., lieutenant colonel, 51, 52, 76, 206 flogging, 3, 47, 259–71, 279, 281, 282, 296, 309, 329, 330, 334, 335 Fode Kabba, 102 Fode Silla, 102 football, 19, 20 Force Publique, 8, 49, 50, 273, 275 Forte, HMS, 282, 283 Frafra people, 91, 93, 97, 99, 309 Freeman, Henry Stanhope, 39, 40, 41 Freetown, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 22, 23, 28, 33, 35, 36, 53–55, 101, 103,

index  ❧ 381 104, 106, 110, 111, 115, 125, 127, 130, 132, 135, 144, 152, 170, 173, 177, 179, 180, 184, 188, 193, 196, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214, 219, 224, 226, 228, 239, 263, 279, 280, 281–83, 289, 290, 293, 297, 298, 301, 302, 317, 318, 319, 334, 346, 347, 348 Freetown Riot (1899), 297 Freetown Riot (1955), 28 French territories, 21, 23, 62, 72, 69, 91, 93, 94, 97, 104, 107, 113, 115, 117, 118, 125, 180, 188, 250, 282, 304, 345, 347 Fulani (Fula) people, 60, 62, 68, 91, 115–18, 304, 324, 325, 337 Fullah, Bubu, private, Sierra Leone Frontier Police, 280 Gabon, 20 Gambaga, Ghana, 48, 209 Gambia Company, 14, 17, 20–23, 25, 102, 107, 113–17, 126, 127, 132, 161, 175, 186, 187, 189, 208, 214, 217, 219, 225, 226, 239, 244, 246, 263, 265, 284, 285, 323, 329, 348, 349 Gambia Company mutiny (1902–3), 284, 285 Gambia Regiment, 25, 28, 30, 117, 118, 133, 152, 187, 189, 292, 349 Gambia Violence, Second World War, 304–8 Garuba, private, NNR, 265 German East Africa, 20, 122, 176, 184, 216, 267, 349 Gibb, C., lieutenant colonel, 81 Giffard, George, general, 24, 25, 98, 135, 144, 145, 226, 227, 268, 270 Glover, John, captain, 39, 41, 42, 45, 46, 49

Gold Coast Armed Police Force, 43 Gold Coast Artillery Corps (GCAC), 37–39, 276, 277 Gold Coast Artillery Corps mutiny (1862), 276–77 Gold Coast Constabulary (GCC), 12, 14–16, 46–49, 51, 90, 125, 147, 170, 173, 195, 206, 247, 251, 260, 278, 282, 338 Gold Coast Corps, 12, 37–39 Gold Coast Legion, 253 Gold Coast Regiment (GCR), 14, 20–23, 28, 123, 125, 126, 131, 132, 135–37, 148, 151, 174–76, 181, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192, 193, 196, 207–10, 213, 217, 218, 220, 222, 223, 232, 234, 244, 253, 263, 265, 266, 267, 290, 299, 302, 304, 308, 309, 311, 323, 326, 332, 334, 349, 350; identities and languages, 88–109 Gold Coast riots (1948), 11, 28 Gold Coast violence, Second World War, 308–11 Goldie, George, 12, 50 Golmo initiation, 73 Gombe, Nigeria, 51 Gombo, wife, Nigeria, 249, 250 Gonja people, 44 gonorrhea, 212, 213, 216, 218, 228, 229, 230, 231, 234 Goode, police sergeant, Gambia, 307, 308 Gordon, lieutenant, Gold Coast, 277 Goree Corps, 33 Gorges, E. Howard, colonel, 106 gratuity, 17, 148, 149, 242, 243, 265, 293, 318, 319, 326, 341 Great Depression, 22, 116, 228 Green, M. A. lieutenant colonel, 108, 109 Grunshi, Alhaji, RSM, GCR, 20

382  ❧  index Grunshi, Batie, private, GCR, 266 Grunshi people, 44, 48, 90, 92, 93, guinea worm, 206, 213, 217, 223 Gurkhas, 60, 106, 169, 172, 177 Gussoro expedition (1909), 265 Gwadabawa, Momo, Nigeria, 314 Hadeijia, Adamu, sergeant, Nigeria Regiment, 139 Hadeijia, Battle of (1906), 344 Hama Kim, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 128, 180, 201, 334 Harding, G. P. lieutenant colonel, 225 Harmann’s Farm, Cameroon, 106 Hausa, people and language, 32, 39–52, 55, 59–70, 72, 73, 76–83, 86, 88, 90, 95–100, 110, 123, 124, 129, 138, 143, 147, 155, 171, 172, 179, 180, 185, 186, 213, 240, 241, 246, 277, 278, 279, 315, 325, 328, 330, 331, 337, 341, 349 Hausa, Yessufu, private, GCR, 190 Hausa Farewell, 180 Hausa mutiny, Gold Coast (1873), 277 Hay, sergeant, Gold Coast Corps, 38 Haywood, A. H. W., colonel, 9, 68, 82, 94, 108, 115, 144 Hewitt, E. L. captain, 302 Hodson, Arnold, 190, 191 Holloway, L. A., colonel, 292 hospitals, 145, 146, 175, 181, 206–36, 243, 257, 290, 291, 315, 325, 334 Hukpoti, Amedegisa, private, Gold Coast, 254 human-leopard killings, 105, 300, 301 Hunter, Henry, reverend, 146 Hut Tax Rebellion, Sierra Leone (1898), 13, 102, 103, 105, 112, 135, 157, 184, 279, 280, 297, 300, 318 Hythe, School of Musketry, 194, 338

Ibadan, Adeshina, sergeant, Nigeria Regiment, 323 Ibadan, Belo, Nigeria Regiment, 248 Ibadan, Nigeria, 5, 29, 42, 43, 47, 52, 76, 77, 80, 81, 85, 137, 146, 149, 180, 187, 192, 208, 228, 338 Ibadan, Ojo, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 174 Ibam people, 84, 85 Idoma people, 69, 245 Ifon, Agbei, police sergeant, Nigeria, 248 Igala, Nigeria, 51 Igbo people, 77, 82–88, 137, 314, 315, 339, Ijebu, Nigeria, 43, 140, 195, 251, 337, 338 Ikari, Salu, corporal, Nigeria Regiment, 248 Ikorodu, Battle of (1865), 42 Ilesha, Nigeria, 52 Ilorin, Nigeria, 12, 47, 150, 337, 341 Imagbon, Battle of (1892), 338 imams, 122, 130, 133, 142, 147–56, 165, 328, 331, 333, 334, 337, 340, 341 India, 15, 19, 25, 26, 32, 40, 57, 87, 97, 122, 130–34, 136, 138, 146, 147, 151, 152, 167, 169, 171, 177, 181, 194, 198, 202, 207, 215, 216, 230, 231, 235, 252, 254, 257, 264, 268, 270, 290–93, 315, 316, 328, 334, 350, 351 India violence, 315, 316 indirect rule, 65, 80, 123, 150, 190, 250, 259 influenza pandemic, 218, 219, 349 insignia, 182–93, 202, 330 inspector general, WAFF/RWAFF, 14, 17, 24, 65, 69, 79, 89, 97, 98, 106, 111, 115, 116, 123, 130, 185, 188,

index  ❧ 383 191, 196, 207, 213, 220, 222–26, 261, 262, 264, 268, 280, 284, 285 Israel, Adrienne, 11 Iwoalabo, Aston, private, Nigeria, 316 Jallow, Mumeme, private, Gambia, 143 Jammeh, Yahya, 120 Janie, wife, Nigeria Regiment, 248 Jenkins, Francis, colonel, 64 jihad, 31, 60, 67, 76, 102, 123, 131, 337 Jimoh, private, Nigeria, 252 Jimoh, Queenie, 252 Jobe, Ousman, company sergeant major, Gambia, 247 Johnson, native office, Sierra Leone, 135 Jola people, 115, 117, 118, 120, 244 Jos, Nigeria, 69, 138, 315 Jos riot (1945), 315 Juaben Kingdom, 49 Juju, 141, 143, 144 Kabba, Mahdi, corporal, SLB, 199 Kaduna, Nigeria, 5, 64, 80, 133, 137, 138, 153, 154, 176, 184, 185, 187, 188, 192, 193, 208, 228, 232, 240, 245, 252, 288, 294, 314, 315, 324, 327 Kaduna riot (1945), 314, 315 Kaduna Soldiers’ Protest (1951), 294 Kamara, Makam, private, WAR, 303 Kamara, Surie, private, SLB, 300, 301, 329 Kamba people, 58 Kambia incident, Sierra Leone (1931), 23 Kamsuli, private, NNR, 265 Kanjarga people, 91 Kanjarga, Billi, private, GCR, 174 Kano, Nigeria, 19, 29, 47, 48, 128, 150, 152, 160, 192, 198, 208, 251,

265, 299, 314, 322, 324, 339, 343, 344, 345, 346 Kano, Musa, private, Nigeria, 251 Kano, Salihu, gun carrier, NNR, 265 Kanuri people, 62 Karene, Sierra Leone, 125, 239, 279 Kargbo, David, sergeant, Sierra Leone, 134 Karimu, Abdul, native officer, GCC, 47, 49, 54 Katsena, Awudu, Nigeria Regiment, 78 Katsina, Nigeria, 131, 150, 200, 208 Katsina, Isa, private, Nigeria Regiment, 248 Kebbis state, Nigeria, 75 Kemball, G. V., brigadier, 17, 123, 130, 196, 284, 285 Kenyatta, Jomo, 270 Kida, Anthony, soldier, Nigeria, 317 Killingray, David, 10, 11, 121 Kilmarnock cap, 163, 171, 172 King’s African Rifles (KAR), 2, 4, 7, 18, 21, 24, 121, 184, 188, 189, 191, 268, 269, 288, 350 Kintampo, Ghana, 209, 222, 234 Kissi people, 104, 107, 108, 263 Kneller Hall, 195, 200 Kono, Sierra Leone, 29, 107–9 Kontagora Emirate, 71, 74 Koranko people, 108, 109 Krio, Sierra Leone, 17, 103–5, 107, 110, 111, 127, 177, 180, 289, 297, 298, 317, 318 Kroo (Kru), 45, 310 Kumasi, Ghana, 16, 38, 47, 89, 94, 95, 100, 126, 140, 190, 209, 222, 223, 233, 234, 239, 266, 280, 281, 308, 309, 338, 339 Kura, Tanko, sergeant, Nigeria Regiment, 132 Kwashi, John, signaler, GCR, 137 Kwonni, Jibbo, RSM, 324

384  ❧  index Labour Bureau, Gold Coast, 327 Lagos, Nigeria, 12, 16, 17, 32, 36, 39–47, 49, 50, 52, 75, 77, 78, 79, 88, 123–25, 129, 130, 131, 146, 147, 149, 150, 155, 166, 170, 179, 190, 192, 195, 207, 211, 228, 244, 246, 248, 252, 255, 278, 288, 294, 312, 316, 317, 322, 328, 337–41 Lagos Battalion, 13, 16, 17, 76, 77, 123, 130, 148, 179, 180, 196, 207, 262, 329, 339, 340 Lagos Constabulary, 12, 13, 43, 46, 47, 130, 140, 337–41 Lagos police mutiny (1933), 288 Lagos soldiers’ protest (1948), 294 Lagos Yaba mutiny (1952), 294 Laing, George, 118 Langtang, Sambo, private, Nigeria, 313 language, 16, 55, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67–69, 72, 80, 82, 85, 91, 92, 95–98, 100, 103, 109–12, 116, 117, 119, 130, 138, 147, 155, 185, 186, 191, 276, 313, 319, 331 Lawson, G. M. K. lance corporal, Gold Coast, 136 League of Coloured Peoples, 269 League of Empire, 184 Leopold II, 49, 273 Leveson, H. A., major, 40 Liberated Africans, 33, 35, 36, 55, 172 Liberia, 14, 45, 50, 77, 98, 104, 105, 255, 282, 301, 310 Liberian Field Force, 8 Limba people, 108, 109 Little Tom, bugler, Sierra Leone, 195, 329 logistics, 18, 25, 28, 99, 100, 237, 238, 243, 245, 247, 257, 258, 279, 290, 294, 329, 332, 333, 335 Lokoja, Nigeria, 51, 60, 76, 187, 208, 210, 213, 241, 278, 341, 342 Lome incident (1917), 302

Lonsdale, Rupert, captain, 47 Lugard, Frederick, 13, 17, 19, 58, 60, 61–68, 75, 78, 78, 85, 106, 123, 149, 160, 171, 212, 255, 287, 288, 295, 341, 342 Lutherans, 138 Lynch, N. M. captain, WAFF, 51 Maasai people, 58 Machina, Auta Moma, sergeant, Nigeria, 324 Madeija, Baberu, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 322 Magajia, 221, 246, 247, 250, 330, 330 Mahiwa, Battle of (1917), 188, 349 Maiduguri, Nigeria, 150 Maigumeri, Chari, RSM, Nigeria, 201, 332 Makene, Sierra Leone, 105 Maku, Chochoe, Gold Coast, 253, 335 Makurdi, Nigeria, 248, 322 Malabu, Amadu, sergeant, Nigeria Regiment, 325 Malam Musa, 155 malaria, 144, 204–6, 215, 216–18, 225, 237, 231 Malashangev, sergeant, Nigeria Regiment, 248–49 Mallam Mamodu, 285, 286 Mama Yoko, 53 Mamprussi people, 48 Mandingo, Morlai, private, West African Regiment, 282, 294, 329 Mandinka people, 117 Maneh, Momedu, Gambia, 306 Margai, Albert, 120 markets, 244, 245, 247, 249, 250, 332, 335 marriage, 11, 73, 93, 237, 243, 248, 250, 251, 253, 254, 257, 258, 330 martial races, 3, 10, 57–60, 70, 75–77, 79, 82–84, 88, 91–93, 99, 100,

index  ❧ 385 101, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 115–20, 122, 127, 169, 171, 331, 332, 335 Maruwa, Usuman, imam, Nigeria, 153, 154 maxim gun, 16, 106, 338 Mbadamassi, soldier, SNR, 50 measles, 230 Mecca, 122, 133, 152, 154, Mende people, 53, 54, 88, 102–11, 114, 115, 119, 120, 293, 297, 346 Meredith, W. R. colonel, 221 M’guna Nengi, wife, Nigeria, 248, 249 Middle Belt, Nigeria (Central Nigeria), 29, 62, 65, 67, 70, 82, 124, 127, 138, 245, 248, 313 Military Medal (MM), 68, 152, 350 Miller, Walter, missionary, 208 Mole language, 97 Montanaro, A.F. colonel, 105, 197 Moon, D. British sergeant, NNR, 213 Morland, Thomas, brigadier, 17, 65, 77, 78, 89, 264 Morris, W., lieutenant colonel, 90 Moshi people, 90, 91, 93, 97 Moshi, Nuaga, private, GCR, 266 mosques, 125, 130, 132, 134, 137, 147, 152–54 mounted infantry, 18–21, 23, 61, 64, 124, 160, 176, 261, 343, 344, 345 Musa, sergeant, NNR, 158 muslims, 17, 48, 61, 66, 102, 112, 124–29, 131, 132, 133, 134, 140, 142, 148, 153, 156, 187, 331, 335 mutiny, 10, 38, 50, 125, 138, 177, 257, 272–95, 298, 329, 230, 334 Myohaung Day, 190, 192 Nafada, Babelli, sergeant, Nigeria Regiment, 322 Nakaru, Mama, native officer, Lagos Battalion, 16, 17, 329

Narungombe, Battle of (1917), 350 National Congress of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), 87 nationalism, 11, 28, 87, 99, 100, 268, 270, 289, 292, 294, 327, 335, 351 native courts, 249, 250, 253, 325 native officers, 15–18, 41, 46–49, 55, 135, 157, 195, 328, 329, 331, 341 Ndebele people, 58 Ndekwa, Walter, private, WAAMC, 313 Neizer, William, bugler, GCAC, 276 Newstead, E. P. major, 318 Nfunye, private, Nigeria, 317 Niger Coast Protectorate, 12 Niger Coast Protectorate Force (NCPF), 52, 53 Niger Delta, 52 Nigerian Civil War (1967–70), 88, 120, 245, 334 Nigerian Military Forces (NMF), 30 Nigeria Regiment (NR) 2, 14, 19, 20, 21–24, 28, 29, 97, 100, 124, 130, 132, 133, 138, 143, 152, 162, 166, 172, 174, 176, 180, 184–92, 198, 201, 209, 214, 217, 219, 220, 221, 227, 230, 232, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 250, 265, 267, 269, 287, 288, 290, 314, 316, 322, 324, 325, 327, 331, 332, 340, 341, 344–46; identities and languages, 59–88 Nigeria violence, Second World War, 312–15 Njie, Momodou Ndow, colonel, 30 Northern Nigeria Regiment (NNR), 13, 14, 61, 63, 65, 66, 72, 80, 124, 149, 183, 196, 210, 213, 261, 265, 285, 286, 329, 339, 343, 344 Northern Rhodesia Regiment (NRR), 7 Numan, Bongarau, corporal, Nigeria Regiment, 322 Numan, RSM, Nigeria Regiment, 138

386  ❧  index Numan, Umoru, sergeant, Nigeria Regiment, 138, 139 Nupe, 12, 46, 61, 213, 285 nurses, 205, 227, 255, 291 Nwafor, Thomas, soldier, Nigeria, 312 Nwauzora, Ignatius, private, QONR, 200 Nwayiamadi, Christianna, Nigeria, 247, 248 Obadeyi, Bolaji, Nigeria, 312 Obeng, Nicolas, private, Gold Coast, 253 Obiyi, wife, Nigeria Regiment, 198 Oil Rivers Protectorate, 12, 52 Ojo, Belo, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 198 Okigwi, Nigeria, 85, 248 Oldman, R. D. F., colonel, 69, 220, 222, 223, 225, 226 Ord, Harry, 42 orientalism, 167, 201 ornamentalism, 167, 201 Osazuwa, Hamid, corporal, QONR, 200 Owerri, Peter, private, Nigeria Regiment, 247, 248 Oyebode, David Richard, reverend, 146 Oyo, Nigeria, 32, 76, 79, 80, 81 Peni, Garba, corporal, Nigeria, 314 penicillin, 229, 235 pensions, 17, 37, 79, 274, 324, 326, 341 Pidgin language, 97, 111, 116, 191, 331 Pike, Victor Joseph, chaplain-general, 137 Pilcher, T. D., lieutenant colonel, 76 Pine, Richard, 276–77 Plant, Wilson, commissioner, Gambia, 305

pneumonia, 216, 217, 230 Polish officers, 25, 230, 255 polo, 19, 256 Poole, Wordsworth, doctor, 206, 213 popular culture, 181 Poro Secret Society, 105, 142, 298, 300, 333, 346 Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 391 Port Lokko, Sierra Leone, 54 Poulson, N. D., 118 Provencal, Kofi, 253 Queen Elizabeth II, 166, 190, 192, 193, 200, 201 Queen Victoria, 173, 195, 329 Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment (QONR), 140, 192, 193, 200, 201, 234, 324 rachat system, 33 racial hierarchy, 15, 18, 144, 146, 156, 172, 174, 234, 260, 328, 331, 333, 335, 336 Ramadan, 130, 131, 132, 155, Reeve, W., lieutenant colonel, 91 religion, 121–66 Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), 7 Rhodesian officers, 25, 146 Ripon, Lord, 195 Roberts, Frederick Sleigh, 195 Robinson, Charles Henry, 60 Robinson, Sugar Ray, 351 Royal African Corps (RAC), 33–36 Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), 205 Royal Navy, 39, 41, 52, 53, 276 Royal Naval and Military Tournament, 196–98 Royal Niger Company, 12, 48, 50, 278 Royal Niger Constabulary (RNC), 12, 13, 50, 51, 52, 61, 148, 170, 195, 241, 278, 322

index  ❧ 387 Royal Niger Constabulary mutiny (1898), 278 running amok, 299, 316, 330, 334 Sakariyawo, priest, SNR, 149 Salaga, Ghana, 46–49, 90 Salifu Ali, drum major, GCR, 181 Samori Toure, 54 Sandhurst, 200 Satiru Uprising (1906), 65, 285, 344 Saulz, Seymour, 49, 50 schoolmasters, 96, 98, 111, 112, 130, 148, 327 schools, 29, 82, 96, 98, 114, 128, 134, 144, 153, 181, 243, 256, 257 Second World War, 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10–12, 18, 19, 24, 26, 27, 28, 69–71, 74, 84, 86, 87, 94, 98, 100, 101, 109, 110, 117–19, 127, 128, 131, 133–35, 137–39, 141, 142, 144, 149, 151, 152, 156, 174, 177, 181, 182, 187–89, 192, 199, 202, 207, 225, 227, 228, 229, 232, 233, 236, 240, 243, 245, 250–55, 257, 258, 259, 269, 271, 272, 274, 275, 289, 290, 293, 294, 296, 303, 312, 315, 316, 320, 321, 322, 324, 325, 327, 332–40, 347–50 Seisay, Abu Brima, RSM, SLR, 201 Seisy, Lamina, sergeant, SLB, 302 Senegal, 14, 32, 33, 57, 104, 113, 117, 118, 126, 274, 284, 340, 345, 349 Sengah, James, corporal, Sierra Leone, 243 Serahuli people, 115–18 sexually transmitted disease, 3, 204, 211–36, 242, 252, 329, 332, 335, 336 Shadrach, Abuekwee, sergeant major, Nigeria, 200 Shendam, Garbo, private, Nigeria, 313 Sherbro, Sierra Leone, 105, 300, 301

Shodiende, R. A. sergeant major/cadet officer, Nigeria, 200 Shona people, 58 Sierra Leone Battalion (SLB), 14–17, 20, 22, 23, 25, 54, 104–12, 115, 116, 125, 126, 132, 133, 135, 144, 179, 186, 188, 191, 196, 199, 208– 10, 214, 217, 219, 220, 223–25, 230, 239, 263, 265, 288, 300, 318, 319, 329, 347 Sierra Leone Frontier Police, 11, 13, 14, 17, 53, 102–5, 111, 112, 125, 135, 157, 170, 186, 194, 195, 241, 279–81, 284, 317, 318, 329 Sierra Leone Frontier Police mutiny (1900), 279–80 Sierra Leone gunners’ mutiny (1939), 289, 290 Sierra Leone mass shooting (1912), 300, 301 Sierra Leone Military Forces (SLMF), 30 Sierra Leone Protectorate, 13, 22, 103, 107, 108, 210, 279, 319 Sierra Leone Regiment (SLR), 25, 28, 181, 189, 319, 347, 348 Sierra Leone Regiment mutiny, India (1945), 291–94 Sikhs, 169 Silla, Samba, RSM, Gambia Regiment, 152, 332 Simbo, John, private, SLB, 318 Slater, Arthur Ransford, 92, 188 slavery, 31–55 Smith, Byran Sharwood, 70 Sokoto, Nigeria, 47, 48, 71, 150, 151, 154, 174, 208, 214, 218, 324, 344, 345 Sokoto, Awudu, corporal, Nigeria Regiment, 322 Sokoto Caliphate, 13, 32, 46, 60, 67, 160, 261, 262, 285, 339, 343

388  ❧  index Solarin, Amos, reverend, 146, 334 Somaliland Camel Corps mutinies, 274 Soninke people, 116 Sonor, Takwi, Liberia, 255 South Africa, 8, 13, 21, 28, 50, 58, 144, 215–17, 230, 257, 267, 280, 291, 350 South African War (Second Anglo-Boer War) (1899–1902), 14 Southern Nigeria Regiment (SNR), 13, 14, 16, 60, 67, 77, 78, 80, 84, 123, 124, 148, 149, 196, 207, 262, 265, 286, 287, 323, 325, 339 Soviet Army, 296, 297 sport, 18–20, 197, 217, 256, 257, 307, 350–51 Stevens, Siaka, 120 Stockdale, John, reverend, 145 Stickland, W., colonel, 286 strikes, 23, 29, 87, 272, 275, 331 Sudanese, 7, 18, 58, 273, 275 Susu people, 108, 109 syphilis, 212, 213, 218, 228, 229 Takoradi, Ghana, 147, 228, 290, 310, 311 Takoradi riot (1941), 310 Tamale, Ghana, 94, 151, 222, 223, 309 Tanko, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 19 Tauba, corporal, NNR, 158 Temne people, 53, 54, 88, 102–11, 115, 120, 297 Thiaroye massacre, Senegal (1944), 274 Thomas, George, sergeant, Gambia Company, 348, 349 Tirailleurs Sénégalais, 4, 28, 33, 108, 115, 116, 345 Tiv people, Nigeria, 29, 62, 67–72, 85, 87, 99, 127, 331 Tiv Protest, 71

Togoland (Togo) 20, 50, 107, 184, 188, 240, 266, 302, 330 traditional religion, 62, 63, 65–67, 70, 71, 99, 102, 121, 123–27, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 138–44, 155, 156, 188, 236, 307, 331, 333, 336 Trenchard, Hugh, SNR, 78 tropical disease, 2, 13, 21, 32, 33, 204– 11, 213, 216–18, 235, 236, 277, 329, 332, 336 tropical medicine, 205 trypanosomiasis, 211 tuberculosis, 235 Tukolor people, 57 Turner, Fagbowun, soldier, Nigeria, 312 Twi language, 16 typhoid, 228 Ugboma, Victor, sergeant, Nigeria, 200 uniforms, 18, 24, 40, 41, 44, 49, 53, 167–79, 191, 198, 199, 201, 202, 247, 257, 289, 290, 300, 311, 329, 330, 335 Usman, Hassan, lieutenant, Nigeria, 200 Uwa, wife, Nigeria, 251 venereal disease. See sexually transmitted disease veterans, 3, 10–12, 19, 24, 71, 74, 79, 143, 174, 188, 198, 200, 201, 253, 254, 293, 318, 321–27 Vichy France, 24, 25, 98, 110, 118, 304, 347, 349 victory parades, 132, 199, 201 violence against civilians, 296–316 Wangara people, 91 war boys, 101, 119, 303 war brides, 254

index  ❧ 389 War Office, 14, 15, 20, 25, 28, 102, 103, 146, 173, 183, 184, 189, 191, 200, 227, 233, 234, 245, 255, 267 Wellseley, Charles, gunner, GCAC, 276 Wesleyan/Methodist, 140, 144–46, 298, 334 West Africa Command (WAC), 25, 28, 30, 98, 135, 136, 144–46, 153, 154, 227, 231, 232, 234, 251, 270 West Africa Squadron, Royal Navy, 278 West African Army Medical Corps (WAAMC), 25, 313 West African Army Service Corps (WAASC), 25 West African Engineers, 25, 26, 135, 294 West African Expeditionary Force, 25 West African Frontier Force (original, 1898–99), 13, 17, 61, 75, 124, 171, 205, 255 West African Medical Service (WAMS), 205, 207 West African Pioneers, 26, 181, 306, 307 West African Regiment (WAR), 1, 2, 13–18, 20, 22, 23, 54, 102–12, 125, 126, 130, 135, 164, 170, 173, 179, 180, 183–85, 187, 188, 196, 197, 198, 205, 208, 211, 239, 244, 255, 258, 263, 280–84, 288, 297, 298, 302, 303, 329, 330, 346, 347 West African Regiment mutiny (1901), 280–84 West African Youth League (WAYL), 289 West India Regiment (WIR), 34–44, 172, 173, 181, 203, 204, 207, 212, 259, 276, 297, 298, 338 White, Velmond ,351 Wiah, Sunday, Gold Coast/Liberia, 255 Wilberforce Barracks, Freetown, 208, 224, 239, 298, 346, 347

Wilkinson, P. S. brigadier, 66, 106, 124, Williams, Riby, 48 Willcocks, James, general, 89, 105, 124, 281 Williams, Sammy, CSM, Gambia, 141 Wolof, 57 Wolseley, Garnet, general, 45, 122 women, 3, 23, 24, 43, 53, 72, 74, 86, 214, 215, 220, 221, 224, 225, 229, 230, 231, 236, 237–258, 307, 310, 311, 316, 320, 329, 330, 332, 333, 336 Women’s War, Nigeria (1929), 23, 24, 86 wrestling, 19 Wright, Wallace, captain, 243 Yabassi, Cameroon, 106 Yakuba, native officer, Armed Hausa Police, 41, 49 Yanoh, wife, Sierra Leone Frontier Police, 241, 330 Yawuri, Bawa, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 130, 337–41 yellow fever, 204, 217, 228 Yeruwa, Hassan, soldier, Nigeria, 312 Yeruwa, Musa, soldier, Nigeria, 312 Yola, Nigeria, 16, 150, 325 Yolunka people, 108 Yonnie, Lamina, private, Sierra Leone Frontier Police, 280 Yoruba people and language, 31, 32, 39, 45, 46, 50–53, 56, 60–63, 67, 72, 75–84, 86, 88, 90, 99, 124, 130, 143, 171, 179, 180, 213, 249, 328, 337, 338 Zaria, Nigeria, 63, 64, 69, 70, 73, 80, 82, 83, 137, 150, 152–54, 192, 208, 228, 230, 238, 243, 245, 248, 261, 287, 346 Zaria incident (1918), 287, 288

390  ❧  index Zenoah, Hari, native officer, GCC, 16 Zongo, 17, 95, 97, 125, 126 Zouaves, 171–75, 178, 181, 191, 201, 335 Zozo, Mama, sergeant major, Nigeria Regiment, 287

Zungeru, Nigeria, 72, 208, 286 Zuru, Nigeria, 71–75 Zuru, Yohannes, sergeant, Nigeria, 138