Unravelling the Past: World War I in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110549
Author(s):  
Anne Samson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
West Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Single Entity ◽  
Conflict In Africa

Africa’s involvement in World War I presents the researcher with challenges that few researchers of the Western Front are likely to encounter. The centenary years of the War have seen a range of publications on the conflict in Africa: from Marike Sherwood who claims little has been written on Africa’s involvement to others who have tended to rely on online articles that are limited in scope and draw on dated publications, thereby perpetuating myths. A handful of researchers are breaking new ground through their accessing of archival material. Authors such as David Killingray and Joe Lunn, writing on West Africa over two World Wars, unwittingly set the scene for how Africa as a whole has been perceived. However, an outcome of the centenary commemorations of the War has been new and varied insights to Africa’s contributions, not least the different approaches taken by Africans and non-Africans, academic and enthusiast, and those interested in the conflicts of French (West) Africa and the rest of Africa. Engagement with the diaspora and people from the across the continent has reinforced the diversity of Africa in contrast to the published narratives and interpretations of the war which have generally been homogeneous in their approach. This study provides an opportunity to explore recent historiographical developments of the war in Africa. In particular, it aims to show that by treating Africa as a single entity (‘Africa is a country’), misconceptions have been perpetuated and experiences of World War II conflated with those of World War I. In addition, the complexities, challenges and rewards of researching Africa’s involvement in World War I are highlighted in the article.

scholarly journals Preface: The Historical Geography of the Hungarian Nation

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-376
Author(s):  
Andrew Ludanyi
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
East European ◽  
The Past ◽  
French And English ◽  
The Subject

The fate of Hungarian minorities in East Central Europe has been one of the most neglected subjects in the Western scholarly world. For the past fifty years the subject—at least prior to the late 1980s—was taboo in the successor states (except Yugoslavia), while in Hungary itself relatively few scholars dared to publish anything about this issue till the early 1980s. In the West, it was just not faddish, since most East European and Russian Area studies centers at American, French and English universities tended to think of the territorial status quo as “politically correct.” The Hungarian minorities, on the other hand, were a frustrating reminder that indeed the Entente after World War I, and the Allies after World War II, made major mistakes and significantly contributed to the pain and anguish of the peoples living in this region of the “shatter zone.”

Colors of the Past: Archive, Art, and Amnesia in a Digital Age

2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1771-1781
Author(s):  
Santanu Das
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Gains And Losses

Abstract This roundtable offers four diverse perspectives on Peter Jackson’s innovative and controversial World War I documentary film They Shall Not Grow Old (2018). Jackson’s film breaks the mold of the documentary genre in its manipulation and montage of the visual and audio archives held at the Imperial War Museum in London. Yet he puts his technical virtuosity and resources at the service of a very traditional interpretation of the war, focusing almost entirely on the experience of young Englishmen on the Western Front. Scholars Santanu Das, Susan R. Grayzel, Jessica Meyer, and Catherine Robson offer their reflections on both the gains and losses of Jackson’s paradoxical original use of historical documents and old-fashioned rendering of the war’s experiential elements. They consider, respectively, the experience of colonial troops, the place of women in the war, and Jackson’s creative, if controversial, interpretation of the visual and aural archive.

France and Fragmentation in West Africa: 1945–1960

1967 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-333
Author(s):  
W. A. E. Skurnik
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Political Life ◽  
World War ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Public Investments ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
Political Units

The term ‘balkanization’, as applied to colonial policy in Africa, frequently suggests a European ‘divide and rule’ policy, intended to fragment pre-existing African unity. An examination of the policy of France towards the former federation of French West Africa indicates that the term is inaccurate to describe French policy.The federation was created by the French for the French. It served to streamline French administration during the period of expansion, to help develop the component territories' economies, and to guarantee the security of French private investments. France conceived of the territories as the basic political units and hence modern political life was implanted there rather than in the federation. Post World War II French public investments flowed chiefly to the territories, common federal services were decentralized as territories acquired expertise and funds to run their own, and the quasi-federal Senate called the Grand Conseil was allowed to expire. Other aspects of French policy had unintended centrifugal effects, such as the metropolitan party structure and consequent dispersal of African representatives in Paris, and the influence of some French parties in Africa. Since 1956, France logically responded to African leaders' demands for more power and eventual autonomy in the territories, and left it to the Africans to decide whether or not to continue their federal relationship.By 1956, the federation had outlived its usefulness to France. It is improbable that the metropole could have ‘saved’ it, because political territorial roots were too strong, the Africans were not agreed, and relations between France and Africa had already become mainly bilateral with the territories directly. Consequently it appears that the federation, a purely French creation, was simply permitted to fade away once its functions were no longer relevant to French needs. It is true that France preferred eight small, powerless states to a strong federation when national independence approached, but ‘powerless’ and ‘strong’ in this context are but relative terms. The story of the federation of French West Africa suggests that such political structures can survive the colonial period only if they are anchored in fundamental African needs; this was not the case with that federation.

Art and Death in French Photographs of Ruins, 1914-1918

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Nicole Hudgins
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Western Front ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Human Losses

The avalanche of ruin photography in the archives, albums, publications, and propaganda of World War I France challenges us to understand what functions such images fulfilled beyond their use as visual documentation. Did wartime images of ruin continue the European tradition of ruiniste art that went back hundreds of years? Or did their violence represent a break from the past? This article explores how ruin photography of the period fits into a larger aesthetic heritage in France, and how the depiction of ruins (religious, industrial, residential, etc.) on the French side of the Western Front provided means of expressing the shock and grief resulting from the unprecedented human losses of the war. Using official and commercial photographs of the period, the article resituates ruin photography as an aesthetic response to war, a symbol of human suffering, and a repository of rage.

No dockers, no empire. The labour question at Dakar during World War I

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 364-381
Author(s):  
Daniel Castillo Hidalgo
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Great War ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
World War ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Economic Roles ◽  
The Great War

The Great War had a major impact on port activity at Dakar in Senegal. It increased bunkering and pushed up demand for daily labourers to provide an adequate service to the allied navies. This article analyses the changes in labour organization in the port during World War I. Based on archival sources held in the National Archives of Senegal, this study explores the ways in which the colonial administration tried to manage labour shortages on the docks. This research provides evidence of the institutional shifts in the colonial regime, where coercion strategies evolved into compensatory incentives to attract African workers. The vital military and economic roles played by Dakar as the gateway to French West Africa also explains the importance of institutional shift during the construction of colonial economic and political hegemony.

The Reichstag and the New Berlin

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Ann Ross
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
German Society ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
History Museum ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Parliament ◽  
The City ◽  
Democratic Country

This work examines the Reichstag’s emblematic role in Berlin’s history. Today the Reichstag is a major tourist attraction and home to Germany’s democratic parliament. However, the building has had a complicated history spanning five distinct times in German history: the Imperial Age and World War I, the troubled Weimar Republic, Nazism and World War II, the divided Cold War, and finally a unified Germany. The progressions of the building mirror those of German society and the city of Berlin over the pasts century, culminating in the vibrant Western European democratic country, city, and building we see today. Specifically, the revitalization of the Reichstag building itself through Christo’s wrapping project and Sir Norman Foster’s reconstruction were vital steps for a torn city to embrace its past while transitioning the building from a history museum into the seat of the German parliament. Furthermore, this change is emblematic of Berlin as a whole, in its quest for its own Hauptstadtkultur as the capital moved back to Berlin from Bonn. Architecture has played a significant role in this New Berlin, and the case of the Reichstag building is no different. Foster’s design, adding a modernist glass and steel dome to the nineteenth century building, emphasizes political transparency while maintaining traces of the past. Focusing on the example of the Reichstag, I argue that this merging of history and hope for the future has proved essential and successful, though often controversial, in recreating a unified, vibrant, and strong Berlin.

Accounting for Civilian Casualties: From the Past to the Future

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas P. Jewell ◽  
Michael Spagat ◽  
Britta L. Jewell
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
World War I ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Excess Mortality ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Civil War

Assessment of the extent of civilian casualties during times of conflict presents significant challenges in data collection, quantitative methods, interpretation, and presentation. In this article, we briefly consider the motivation and use of casualty accounting and review historical approaches to these questions with illustrative comments on the US Civil War, World War I, World War II, and other conflicts. We provide an overview of several accounting methodologies including excess mortality, epidemiologic surveys, direct and indirect counts, multiple list estimation, and crowdsourcing. We reflect on the evolution toward modern approaches to casualty assessments, permitted by both a deeper understanding of human rights and by contemporaneous technological advances in data collection techniques. Our goal is to introduce several areas of research that deserve attention from social science historians and statisticians.

scholarly journals Leonard Hawkes, 6 August 1891 - 29 October 1981

1982 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 125-139
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
Igneous Petrology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Field Worker ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University

Leonard Hawkes, during the past three decades one of the elder statesmen of British geology, was one of the few remaining leaders in the subject who received their training before World War I. A lifelong academic, he devoted his best years to the service of Bedford College in the University of London. A very active field-worker in early years, he became in his time a leading authority on the geology of Iceland, pursuing studies in volcanology, igneous petrology and glaciology. He served as a Secretary of the Geological Society of London for a long period at a critical stage in the history of that Society, and was later on its President. He will be remembered as one of the most amiable of characters in the post World War II scene.

War-Related Deflections of Economic Trends in Eastern and Western Civilizations

1999 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 1021-1024
Author(s):  
David J. Krus ◽  
Edward A. Nelsen ◽  
James M. Webb
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Far East ◽  
Industrial Output ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Far East ◽  
Economic Trends

Economic trends for the Eastern and Western Civilizations were compared over the past three centuries and extrapolated into the next one. The convergence of these trends following World War I was deflected following World War II. Without this war, the combined economies of the Far East countries appeared likely to surpass the industrial output of Western countries around the turn of the 20th and the 21st centuries. The 1941–1945 war with Japan delayed the projected intersection of these trends. Extrapolation of the post-World War II trends to 2040 suggests that, without deflection of these trends, the economies of the Far East countries would be likely to surpass the economies of the Western countries around the middle of the 21st century.

Undivided Loyalty

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-178
Author(s):  
Alison L. LaCroix ◽  
William A. Birdthistle
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Irish Republic ◽  
Meaningful Connections

Alison LaCroix and William Birdthistle examine two works: Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way (2005) and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992), which was made into a film, directed by Anthony Minghella, in 1996. Both novels challenge traditional notions of loyalty in wartime. Although they focus on different wars—Barry on World War I, Ondaatje on World War II—the novels raise a pair of related, crucial questions: Loyalty to what and to whom? The books interrogate the meaning of national sovereignty in an age of empire or imperial decline, as their characters confront law in personal ways. Barry’s novel holds out a slim hope that the birth of the Irish Republic might make comprehensible, even if not justify, the bloodbaths of the Western Front. Ondaatje, however, challenges the primacy of nations, suggesting instead that personal loyalties or regional ties provide the only meaningful connections for individuals uprooted by modern global warfare. Both novels thus force their characters to negotiate an overlapping series of boundaries: local and national political lines, as well as ethnic, familial, and emotional borders.

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