Labour Exploitation for Military Campaigns in British Colonial Africa 1870-1945

Abstract

In the vast 6terature on warfare in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, relatively little has been written about the recruitment, organization and deployment of non-combatant labour required to service and supply the fighting line. The hundreds of thousands of general labourers, drawn from all parts of the globe, who served on the Western Front in 1914-18 have been almost completely ignored by historians.' So also have the porters and carriers employed for military operations in tropical Africa during the colonial period. Most modem campaigns in tropical Africawars of conquest, punitive expeditions to enforce alien rule, and the first world warwere fought in regions where terrain, climate, inadequate roads, and the ravages of the tsetse fly made it virtually impossible to use animal transport. Mechanical means of transport were rarely available before 1940 and most military operations were labour intensive, dependent upon large numbers of carriers to sustain long supply lines and fighting soldiers.A few articles have examined particularly the large-scale recruitment of military porters in East Africa and elsewhere during the first world war.2 More generally, details about conscription of labour for war and the social and economic consequences this had on African communities are thinly scattered in a limited number of monographs and unpublished theses based on papers in the Public Records Office and in African archival collections. One or two researchers have collected oral evidence, but that is a rapidly disappearing source.3 The African labourer toiling with his load rarely left any personal record and only a few observers thought his lot worth more than a passing reference. This article describes the policies and practices of the British colonial authorities in tropical Africa to raise large numbers of labourers for military campaigns,

Kenya and the Second World War: A review of the historiographical landscape

“…Such publication included David Easterbrook's "Kenyan Askari in World War II and their Demobilization with special reference to Machakos District," and which was concerned largely with the experience of Akamba soldiers from Machakos District during and after the war (Easterbrook, 1975). Thus, up to the time that Killingray Responding to Killingray's and Rathbone's clarion call for a more systematic study of the experience of the African continent and the Second World War, many scholars, including Killingray himself, started descending on the African continent with far more interest than merely recognizing and declaring how significant the war was to Africa (Clayton, 1987;Dumett, 1985;Echenberg, 1991;Falola, 1989Falola, , 1992Furedi, 1999;Jackson, 1999;Kerslake, 1997;Killingray, 1989;Lawler, 1997Lawler, , 2002Mann, 2006;Westcott, 1986), and this interest rubbed off on Kenya positively, leading to the publication of books, book chapters, and articles focusing on many aspects of Kenya and the war. Unlike earlier works that were only interested in subjects such as the attitude and deportment of African soldiers in the war, and the impact of the war on African nationalism and the struggle for independence, the new scholarship became more variegated, focusing on diverse subjects such as Kenya's economy during the war; Kenya and colonial propaganda during the war; Kenya African women and families during the war; individual Kenyan ethnic groups and their experiences during the war; and masculinity and manliness and their impact on Kenya African experience during the war.…”

Colonial Intrusion and Stages of Colonialism in Chinua Achebe’sThings Fall Apart

“…As Roger G. Thomas (1973) and Kwabena Akurang-Parry (2000) report, the practice also existed in British West Africa even though the British, who were known for a colonizing method based on indirect rule, often used coerced local agents, African chiefs mostly, to recruit the manpower necessary for their mise en valeur policies (Thomas 1973:86–88). David Killingray (1989) also describes how Africans were forced to work to support the British military campaigns between 1870 and 1945. In South Africa, the Native Administration Act of 1927, which was renamed as the Bantu Administration Act of 1927, clearly established a dual legal system, one for the Whites and one for the Blacks, with the effect of transforming “Bantu” areas into reservoirs of cheap and easily exploitable labor.…”

Education Infrastructure and Unsustainable Development in Africa

“…It was not just for the purposes of quelling riots and demonstrations but was effectively used in surmounting opposition to colonial rule, in wars of conquest and punitive expeditions to enforce colonial rule. They were, first, conscripted as general labourers for clearing and building roads, for constructing defensive positions; as porterage for carrying military equipment and food to and from the front line or the scene of military operations; and some were organized into military transport corps under direct military control on a casual basis (Killingray 1989). And as has been variously noted, the advent of WW1 necessitated the recruitment of Africans into the rank and file.…”