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WORLD WAR ONE AND/IN
AFRICA
Brett Shadle
Department of History
Virginia Tech

First shot fired by
soldier in British
service in WW1:
Sgt.-Major Alhaji
Grunshi (Aug. 12,
1914) Last German
general to
surrender: Col.
Paul von Lettow-
Vorbeck (Nov. 25,
1918)

WEST & SOUTHWEST AFRICA
• Togo: Germans had few troops there,
conquered by the British by the end of August
• Cameroon: Germans held out longer, but by
February defeated by French (invading from
south and east) and British (from the west)
• Although a several thousand troops remained
in Spanish territory until the end of the war, in
hopes of retaining a claim to the colony after
the war
• South-west Africa: Germans had few troops,
spread across the colony, by July defeated by
South African troops

EAST AFRICA
• British largely distracted with
Cameroon for first part of the war
• German commander von Lettow-
Vorbeck more concerned with
tying up Allied troops than
retaining the colony or preventing
African rebellion

EAST AFRICA: BUSH WARFARE
• Germans made some brief incursions
into British East Africa – mainly to
disrupt railway
• Early 1916: South Africa and
Portuguese troops prepared to enter
the fighting in East Africa
• von Lettow-Vorbeck decided to engage
in defensive, hit-and-run warfare
• For the next 30 months trekked
across East Africa, fighting but
avoiding pitched battles

EAST AFRICA: CIVILIANS IN WARFARE
• Living off the land – for Germans and
Allies
• Requisition of food and cattle
• British official, December 1916, on
Dodoma:
• “The whole district has been
ransacked for cattle.”
• Germans had taken 26,000 head of
cattle, British in five months took
5,600 head and 100,000 kilograms of
flour
• November 1917 rains failed, as many
as 30,000 people died

Allies
• September 15, 1918, diary of German
Dr. Ludwig Deppe
• “Behind us we leave destroyed fields,
ransacked magazines and, for the
immediate future, starvation.
• We are no longer agents of culture;
our track is marked by death,
plundering and evacuated villages,
just like the progress of our own and
enemy armies in the Thirty Years
War.”

Allies
• British official, 1916, after Belgians
went through Tabora region:
• “It is like proceeding through a
deserted plague stricken land.”

• Transportation and supplies
• Railways?
• Roads?
• Animals?
• People.
• Poor record keeping, informal
recruitment, means number of porters
ultimately uncertain
• Possible numbers:
• At the peak (March 1916), Germans
used 45,000
• Allies used over the course of the war
500,000 to 1,000,000

PORTERS’ EXPERIENCES
• According to one source, fewer than 400 employed by the British died in action
• More deadly:
• Disease
• new disease environments (malaria) or contaminated water (dysentery)
• Malnutrition (either not enough or poorly prepared food)
• Climate
• Exhaustion
• Execution for attempted desertion
• Belgian officer: Another two porters’ corpses on
the road! Shot by the soldiers detailed to
guard them. Not a day passes without one or
more of these unfortunates paying with their
lives for their love of freedom.

PORTERS’ EXPERIENCES
• According to one source, fewer than 400 employed by the British died
in action
• Official British figure for deaths in Carrier Corps: 44, 911
• Likely underestimate
• Second half of 1917: recorded deaths reached 2% per month, while
“wastage” (loss of manpower through illness, desertion, etc.) was
15% per month
• One scholar estimates at least 100,000 Africa porters died, perhaps 2-
3 times that number

MEMORIES OF THE PORTERS
• At least in Kenya and Tanganyika, when word of a new war first began circulating
in the late 1930s, many young men deserted their jobs, some went into hiding, for
fear of being caught up in a new Carrier Corps

AFRICAN SOLDIERS
• Despite some hesitation of using African
troops in a white man’s war, all the
combatants made use of them
• British, Germans, employed them only in
Africa
• French envisioned the colonies as an almost
limitless source of manpower for the war in
Europe
• Had used them extensively in their conquest
of West Africa

FRENCH WEST AFRICA
• At first, French desired African soldiers
mainly as garrison troops to allow French
soldiers to go to front
• After major losses in first two years of the
war, decided instead to put African (and
other colonial) troops in the front lines
• Eventually around 140,000 from French
West Africa fought in France
• 29,000 from Senegal
• 2.4% of the population

FRENCH WEST AFRICA
• Recruiting soldiers
• Through 1917, very few volunteers
• Instead, each chief (many of whom had little
legitimacy) required to fulfill their quota
• Those most likely to be brought forward
• Youth from marginal families
• Orphans
• Younger children
• Children of secondary wives in polygamous
families

FRENCH WEST AFRICA
• Recruiting soldiers
• Compared to slave raids
• Thousands fled
• At times, number of those fleeing equal to
number conscripted
• Armed resistance in areas farthest from French
centers of control
• Called ‘tax in blood’

FRENCH WEST AFRICA
• In France
• Africans often used as “shock
troops” ahead of white units
• Lt. Col. Debieuvre, April 1917:
• [The Senegalese are] above all
superb attack troops permitting
the saving of the lives of whites,
who behind them exploit their
success and organize the positions
they conquer.

“THE WAR FOR RIGHTS”
• Blaise Diagne, representative for Four
Communes, negotiated new rights for soldiers in
exchange for new recruitment campaign
• Veterans to be exempt from corvée (unpaid
communal labor), indigénat (“law” that could be
enforced by French officials without recourse to
the courts), given preference in government jobs
• More volunteers came forward

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORLD WAR ONE
• Death and destruction in Africa, death and debilitating injuries for many soldiers
• Impact of colonialism felt in many areas that had had only limited contact with
European rule
• New political map (with German colonies becoming “Mandates” under the League of
Nations, ruled by Britain, France, South Africa, and Belgium)
• New political ideas in circulation in some areas

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World War One and in Africa

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