Africa and Africans in the World Wars: The Prelude and Disposition for Leveraged Exploitation through Violence and Coercion

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110549
Author(s):  
EC Ejiogu ◽  
Nneka L. Umego

This article argues that there is a set twin repertoires of coercion and violence that consistently characterized Europe’s involvement in Africa starting with its trans-Atlantic slave trade in which millions of able-bodied Africans were transported against their will to the New World where they were forced to labor as chattels in plantations, through the trade in produce commodities, conquest, and de facto occupation of the continent to the two World Wars when African commodity produce and manpower were impressed and utilized in the win the war efforts. Both repertoires remain handy all through the above-listed endeavors, and without them, it could have been extremely impossible for Europeans to successfully pull each one of them off. An analysis that factors both repertoires in reveals that the era of conquest and occupation of Africa flowed seamlessly into the era of World War I when the European powers that colonized Africa relied on them to impress Africans as manpower for its win the war efforts. For one to better understand each of the six endeavors, one needs to understand all six.

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Lloyd E. Ambrosius

One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson led the United States into the First World War. Four days earlier, in his war message to Congress, he gave his rationale for declaring war against Imperial Germany and for creating a new world order. He now viewed German submarine attacks against neutral as well as belligerent shipping as a threat to the whole world, not just the United States. “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind,” he claimed. “It is a war against all nations.” He now believed that Germany had violated the moral standards that “citizens of civilized states” should uphold. The president explained: “We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.” He focused on protecting democracy against the German regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II. “A steadfast concert for peace,” he said, “can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.” Wilson called on Congress to vote for war not just because Imperial Germany had sunk three American ships, but for the larger purpose of a new world order. He affirmed: “We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundation of political liberty.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 204-227
Author(s):  
Milana Živanović ◽  

The paper deals with the actions undertaken by the Russian emigration aimed to commemorate the Russian soldiers who have been killed or died during the World War I in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The focus is on the erection of the memorials dedicated to the Russian soldiers. During the World War I the Russian soldiers and war prisoners were buried on the military plots in the local cemeteries or on the locations of their death. However, over the years the conditions of their graves have declined. That fact along with the will to honorably mark the locations of their burial places have become a catalyst for the actions undertaken by the Russian émigré, which have begun to arrive in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Kingdom of SCS) starting from the 1919. Almost at once after their arrival to the Kingdom of SCS, the Russian refugees conducted the actions aimed at improving the conditions of the graves were in and at erecting memorials. Russian architects designed the monuments. As a result, several monuments were erected in the country, including one in the capital.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 759-775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ota Konrád

The study explores the phenomenon of popular violence in the first months and years after the end of World War I on the basis of a comparison between the Bohemian lands, forming the central part of the newly established Czechoslovakia, and Austria, as another successor state to the former Habsburg monarchy. Aside from the continuities, new forms of violence increasingly emerged in the first years after the end of the war, and also the “language” of violence was transformed. While in Czechoslovakia, the framework within which people were learning to understand the new world was shaped by the national and republican discourse oriented to the future, in Austria the collective identities and mentalities were being formed along the lines of particular party political blocks. In both cases, the nationalization and politicization of violence respectively contributed to the emergence of new forms of popular violence; but at the same time they could also be used for its de-escalation, necessary for the re-integration of society disrupted by the wartime experience. However, even if both countries went out from the war on different paths, the violence stayed part of their political culture and it could be mobilized again.


Author(s):  
Volodymyr Holovko ◽  
◽  
Larysa Yakubova ◽  

The key problems of nation- and state-building are revealed in the concept of the chronotope of the Ukrainian “long twentieth century,” which is a hybrid projection of the “long nineteenth century.” An essential feature of this stage in the history of Ukraine and Ukrainians is the realization of the intentions of socioeconomic, ethnocultural and political emancipation: in fact, the end of the Ukrainian revolution, which began in the context of World War I and the destruction of the colonial system. The third book tells about the contradictions of post-Soviet transit. The three modern revolutions, the development of “oligarchic republics,” the subjectivization of Ukraine in the world through self-awareness of the European choice are visible manifestations of the final stage of the century-old Ukrainian revolution and anti-colonial liberation war. The essential transformations of the Ukrainian project are understood in the broad optics of post-totalitarian transit, the successful completion of which now rules for the national idea of Ukraine. For a wide audience.


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