The War of thangata: Nyasaland and the East African Campaign, 1914–1918

1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvin E. Page
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
East African ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Military Campaign

During World War I, Africans in Nyasaland were called upon to provide large numbers of soldiers and military labourers for the war effort in eastern Africa. Although a few willingly volunteered, many more objected, and some resisted. In this situation, colonial officals used force to secure the necessary manpower. Africans, therefore, called the conflict ‘the war of thangata’, referring to the growing colonial demands for taxes and for labour rent on European estates. The tasks which the soldiers and carriers were called upon to perform were equally likened to thangata, being ‘work which was done without real benefit’. So far from receiving rewards, Africans found that inadequate food, clothing, and medical care contributed greatly to the sufferings associated with a military campaign. Between 1914 and 1918 wartime manpower requirements, and war service, gave full meaning to colonial rule throughout the protectorate. The response to these demands and this suffering brought, in the form of both traditional and modern religious and social institutions, the first tentative stirrings of African nationalism in Nyasaland.

The War of Legs

Transfers ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Michael Pesek
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
World War ◽  
East African ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Belgian Congo

This article describes the little-known history of military labor and transport during the East African campaign of World War I. Based on sources from German, Belgian, and British archives and publications, it considers the issue of military transport and supply in the thick of war. Traditional histories of World War I tend to be those of battles, but what follows is a history of roads and footpaths. More than a million Africans served as porters for the troops. Many paid with their lives. The organization of military labor was a huge task for the colonial and military bureaucracies for which they were hardly prepared. However, the need to organize military transport eventually initiated a process of modernization of the colonial state in the Belgian Congo and British East Africa. This process was not without backlash or failure. The Germans lost their well-developed military transport infrastructure during the Allied offensive of 1916. The British and Belgians went to war with the question of transport unresolved. They were unable to recruit enough Africans for military labor, a situation made worse by failures in the supplies by porters of food and medical care. One of the main factors that contributed to the success of German forces was the Allies' failure in the “war of legs.”

The Anarchist Press in Egypt before World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Gorman
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Education ◽  
World War I ◽  
State Power ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War

This chapter traces the development of the radical secular press in Egypt from its first brief emergence in the 1870s until the outbreak of World War I. First active in the 1860s, the anarchist movement gradually expanded its membership and influence over subsequent decades to articulate a general social emancipation and syndicalism for all workers in the country. In the decade and a half before 1914, its press collectively propagated a critique of state power and capitalism, called for social justice and the organisation of labour, and promoted the values of science and public education in both a local context and as part of an international movement. In seeking to promote a programme at odds with both nationalism and colonial rule, it incurred the hostility of the authorities in addition to facing the practical problems of managing and financing an oppositional newspaper.

Occupation, War, and the Transformation of the Sanusiyya

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Ryan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Catholic Identity ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Objective ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Sufi Order

Fierce opposition to the Italian invasion of Libya in October 1911 demonstrated the fallacies of Insabato’s predictions that a positive Italo-Sanusi relationship would lead to an easy victory. Nevertheless, Italian colonial officials continued to pursue an alliance with the Sanusiyya as a central objective. During World War I Italian and British officials toyed with the idea of exacerbating divisions within the Sanusi family, descendants of the man credited with founding the Sufi order. Rather than negotiating with the recognized head of the Sanusiyya, Ahmed al-Sharif, officials promoted the leadership of his younger cousin, Idris al-Sanusi. In the context of prolonged war, Idris’s negotiations with European officials met with widespread approval among Sanusi elites. For Italian colonial officials, the development of a power-sharing relationship with Idris meant minimizing the Catholic identity of Italian colonial rule, much to the dismay of missionaries and Catholic political interests in Rome.

Karikatur als Kriegsdienst: Aby Warburgs »neuer Stil zwischen Wort und Bild«, 1914–1918

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95
Author(s):  
Dorothea McEwan
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Active Role ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
War Effort ◽  
War Propaganda

Abstract This article attempts to throw a light on Warburg’s little-known engagement in political caricature during World War I. Though deemed unfit for military service, Warburg was eager to contribute to the German war effort. Perceiving Allied war propaganda as anti-German lies, he recorded what he considered its half-truths and falsehoods in his Kriegskartothek, or war archive. But Warburg, as indicated by his involvement with the short-lived La Guerra del 1914: Rivista illustrata in the early stages of the war, kept looking for a more active role in influencing public opinion: From privately commenting on the output of the Allied press, he went on to offering his own ideas for political caricatures to leading artists like Olaf Gulbransson and Max Slevogt, and to well-established satirical journals such as Simplicissimus and Kladderadatsch.

scholarly journals The heroes’ children: Rescuing the Great War’s orphans

2021 ◽  
pp. 161189442199268
Author(s):  
Friederike Kind-Kovács
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Child Victims ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
New Public ◽  
War Orphans ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Hungarian State

World War I and its aftermath produced a particularly vulnerable group of child victims: war orphans. This group included children whose fathers had fallen in battle, who had disappeared, or who had not (yet) returned home. Most of Europe’s war and postwar societies witnessed the massive presence of these child victims, and responded in various ways to rescue them and secure their future survival. This article offers an exploration of the ways in which the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and then later the post-imperial Hungarian state, became invested in providing care and relief to Hungarian war orphans. In contrast to other groups of child victims, whose parents were blamed for neglecting their parental duties, war orphans as the offspring of ‘war heroes’ profited from the public appreciation of their fathers’ sacrifice for the war effort and the Hungarian nation. The public discourse in the contemporary Hungarian media offers a glimpse into the emergence of a new public visibility of these child victims and of a new recognition of the societal obligation to care for them. Exploring World War I and its aftermath as a telling example of political transformation in the 20th century, the article showcases how war orphans were taken to personify essential notions of war- and postwar destruction, while also capturing visions of postwar recovery. It furthermore examines how welfare discourses and relief practices for Hungary’s war orphans were embedded in contemporary gender norms, notions of proper Christian morality and ethnic nationalism. On this basis, the article assesses the ways in which the case of Hungary’s war orphans not only mirrors the professionalization but also the fundamental transformation of child welfare in the aftermath of World War I.

scholarly journals Flexible Fatherlands: “Patriotism” among Polish-speaking German Citizens during World War I

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-93
Author(s):  
James Bjork
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Passive Compliance ◽  
War Effort ◽  
War Aims

AbstractThis article examines the experiences of Polish-speaking subjects of the German Empire during World War I. Fighting for wartime empires tended to be retrospectively defined as involuntary service to a “foreign” cause. But the author of this article argues that it was very difficult to distinguish ostensibly passive “compliance” from ostensibly active “patriotism.” The apparent tensions between a German imperial agenda and Polish nationalism also proved to be highly navigable in practice, with German war aims often seen as not only reconcilable with but even conducive to the Polish national cause. Drawing on a recent wave of relevant historiography in English, German, and Polish, and incorporating further analysis of individual testimonies, the article explores the various ways in which “non-German” contributors to the German war effort tried to make sense of their awkward wartime biographies.

scholarly journals Propaganda, Censorship, and Book Drives: The Newark Public Library in World War I

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
George Robb
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
World War ◽  
Reading Material ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Women Librarians

This article examines the activities of the Newark Public Library during World War I as a means of highlighting the significant role American libraries played in promoting the nation’s war effort. During the war public libraries were usually the most important information centers in their communities. They distributed books, pamphlets, and posters in support of a wide range of government initiatives, they organized war-related exhibits and classes, and they collected vast amounts of reading material for libraries at military camps. Newark’s chief librarians, John Cotton Dana and Beatrice Winser, oversaw many such patriotic initiatives, but they also became involved in more controversial campaigns to employ women librarians at military camps and to resist wartime calls for censorship of unpatriotic literature.

World War I and the Roaring Twenties, 1915–1929

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-171
Author(s):  
Robert G. Spinney
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War I ◽  
German Population ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The World ◽  
Indirect Impact ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the effects and significant indirect impact of World War I on Chicago. It points out how America was only a combatant in the war for slightly longer than a year, which is a period of time insufficient for the nation to mobilize fully for the war. It also discusses how the World War unleashed anti-German sentiments that severely affected the Chicago's sizeable German population. The chapter analyzes how the war drove Chicago employers to hire large numbers of African American laborers, which triggered a historic migration of southern blacks to the city. It also specifies how the war convinced politicians for ethnic and national allegiances to remain strong among the city's numerous immigrants.

Kentucky Joins the Great War

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Bettez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
German Language ◽  
American Population ◽  
World War ◽  
Support Organizations ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Great War

This chapter covers the commonwealth’s response to World War I and efforts to support the war after the United States entered it in April 1917. It describes support from newspaper editors Henry Watterson and Desha Breckinridge. It also discusses attitudes toward the state’s extensive German American population, including an effort to ban the teaching of the German language in schools and the repression of people deemed disloyal or insufficiently supportive of the war. Kentuckians also rallied to the war effort in a positive way, supporting Liberty Bond and Red Cross campaigns. They joined support organizations such as the Four Minute Men and the American Protective League.

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