Chemistry

FACULTY :EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

COURSE CODE HIS225

COURSE TITLE:INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY OF AFRICA SINCE 1884

REG. NO EDA/B/01-00831/2017

NAME: FLORENCE WANJIRU GICHINGIRI

PHONE 0710544318

TASK: HIS225 TERM PAPER

LECTURER: DR.REV.FR.KIZITO

SERIAL NO:128

Table of Contents 128.0 Effects of World War 1 on Sub - Saharan Africa 1 128.1 Introduction 1 128.2Economic impacts 2 128.2.1 Development of transport and communication 2 128.2.2 Increase in the prices of imports due to shortages 2 128.2.3 Increased state intervention in the economies of African colonies 3 128.2.4 Shortages of labor for both subsistence and export production in sub-Saharan Africa 4 128.2.5 Fall in agricultural production in Sub Saharan Africa 4 128.2.6 Deterioration of Government revenue 4 128.3 Political effects of world war 4 128.3.1 Rise of African nationalism 5 128.3.2 World war1 broke the myth of European superiority 5 128.3.3 The first world war stimulated white nationalism especially in south Africa 6 128.3.4 After the war the German colonies were formally taken over by the European powers that had occupied them 6 128.3.5The war period enabled the colonial government to complete their conquest process 6 128.3.6The war opened up new windows for many Africans elite 7 128.3.7The war led to the league of nations formation of the 7 128.4.Social effects of world war 1 7 128.4.1 The war resulted to loss of African lives 7 128.4.2The war led to massive destruction of property 8 128.4.3 The war led to African- wide famine 8 128.4.4 The war led to outbreak of epidemics in Africa 8 128.4.5 The war led to separation of families and children remaining as orphans . 8 128.5 Critique 9 128.6 Conclusion 10

i

First World War was essentially a quarrel between European powers which involved Africa, both directly or indirectly ,because at the break of hostilities the greater part of it was ruled by the European belligerents[footnoteRef:2].The war took place in the years between 1914 and 1918.Campaigns were fought on African soils which though they only marginally affected the overall course of the war but had significant implications for Africans .More than a million African soldiers were involved in these campaigns in Europe .Even more men as well as women and children ,were recruited forcibly ,as carriers to support the armies whose supplies could not be moved by conventional methods such as roads ,rail or pack animal. Over 150,000 soldiers and carriers lost their lives during the war .Many more were wounded and disabled .By the time the war ended ,every country in Africa with the exception of the small Spanish territories which remained neutral had been affected in one way or the other .Belgians, British ,French ,Italian and Portuguese administrators were Allied a more or less actively against the German colonies .Even the last remaining independent states on the continent –Liberia ,Ethiopia and Darful became involved. [2: A. Adu Boahen,General History of Africa .vii, University of California press ,London,1985,p.283]

Whether directly involved in the fight or not ,nearly every African territory was affected by the exclusion of the Germans from the African trade ,the wartime shortages of imports caused by scarcity of shipping space or on the brighter side ,sudden booms in demand for strategic goods. The immediate consequence for African of the declaration of war in Europe was invasion by Allies of the Germany’s colonies .Neither side had prepared for war in the sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed there was short lived hope that it might be isolated from the war .Governor Doering of Togo suggested his neighbors in British Gold Coast and the French Dahomey that Togo should be neutralized so that he can spectate of European fighting each other would not be witnessed by their African subjects .[footnoteRef:3] Kelvin Shillington in his work ,History of Africa ,adds that the British joined their French Allies in invading the German colonies of Togo and Cameroon. He says that Togo was easily overrun ,but the struggle for Cameroon took long about two years . [3: Kelvin Shillington ,History of Africa ,Macmillan ,1989,p.343]

Meanwhile the forces of the newly white government of south Africa had occupied the German colony of South West Africa .The longest conflict was in German East and West Africa. Here South African forces joined with the British East and West African troops in campaigns which lasted for the duration of the war.

Through involvement of Africans in the war there was considerable consequences on the Africans ,raging from economic ,social and political impacts.

The world war one stimulated the transport and communication industry through the manufacturing of better motor vehicles , aircrafts and ships. The war introduced the internal combustion engine and with it ,motorable roads to many parts of Africa .In East Africa ,the protracted campaign against the Germans and the problem of moving supplies led to the construction of motorable roads ,such as that from Dodoma in German East Africa to Tukuyu at the North end of lake Nyasa, which reduced to two to three days journey that had hitherto had taken two to three weeks .In those areas where there was sustained military activity, or where transit facilities were required ,ports developed rapidly .Mombasa ,Bizerta ,port Harcourt and Dakar are case in point. In Nigeria ,the Enugu coal mines were opened up during the war to provide the railways with local source of fuel.[footnoteRef:4] Anthony Atmore in his work ,Africa Since 1800 suggests ,that by 1914 the construction of railways and feeder roads had opened most of tropical Africa to some kind of wheeled traffic , with the result that cash crops could be grown and marketed profitably . [4: Anthony Atmore, Africa Since 1800,Cambridge university press,Cambridge,1972,p.283]

After the war generally, there followed a depression in the prices of paid for Africa’s primary products , while knowledge henceforth imported goods would be in short supply led to arise in their prices .[footnoteRef:5]In Uganda there was an overnight increase of five percent in the prices of imports. The pattern of African territories, where in certain cases like Sierra Leone ,they had accounted for eighty percent of the import-export trade. Gemany’s own colonies even before they were occupied by the Allied power ,dominion over the seas were cut off from trade with metropole because of Allied dominion over the seas .Germany ,from being tropical Africa’s major overseas trading partner ,was almost entirely excluded from trading activities in the continent ,for once the allied completed their occupation of the Germans colonies , all Germans nationalists were interned and their plantations ,commercial houses and industries were taken over by the occupying power. [5: A. Adu Boahen,Op.Cit.,p.296 ]

Even in the case of French African territories ,where the French ground nut -milling industry would normally have been able to absorb the oil-seeds hitherto imported by the Germans ,it was unable to do so, as it was located in the Germans-occupied part of north east France . Thus where France had been the major importer of the Gambian groundnut crop, she was now replaced by Britain whose share of the crop rose from four percent in 1912 to forty eight percent in1916.Indeed the dramatic substitution of British for German traders would almost suggest that the was, as far as the African colonies were concerned ,was seen by Britain as an opportunity for economic aggrandizement .While generally the excluded German traders were replaced by national of the governing power of colonies in which they had traded ,in French West Africa, the British made headway against the French because of the mobilization of the French traders .

The depression that followed the outbreak of war soon gave way to a boom in those products needed to boost the Allied war effort .Thus Egyptian cotton role from ES a quintal in 1914 to E8 in 1916-1918.But in increased demand was not always reflected by increased prices, for often the colonial government controlled the prices paid to the producers. Certain countries .Suffered badly throughout the war .To take an example of the Gold coast ,its major export crop of cocoa was not nearly in such demand as, for instance, oilseeds. Furthermore the buying capacity of the African-based import –export houses were severely hampered by the enlistment ,voluntary or obligatory ,of so many of the European personnel ;In French West Africa some seventy five percent of the European traders had left for the war by 1917

While prices of export did not always reflect the increased demand for them because of the controlled prices and while demand for labor ,too was not always reflected in the increased wages ,the prices of imports ,where they were obtainable ,rose throughout the war .While the vast majority of Africans in the subsistence sector were not affected by this inflation ,those in the wage –earning or export crop –producing sectors were .Thus the Egyptian peasant producing cotton found that the benefit he received from increased prices for his product did not offset he steep rise in the cost of fuel, clothing and cereals.

The war witnessed an increased level of state intervention in the economies of the African colonies, whether in the price control ,requisition of food crops ,compulsory cultivation of crops ,recruitment of labour for essential projects or allocation of shipping space.[footnoteRef:6] Generally ,such intervention tended to favour the import –export houses of the colonial power controlling the colony concerned .Thus in Nigeria ,companies like John Holt and the United African company were used as buying agents and had both priority in the shipping space and easier access to loans from the banks ,with the result that smaller import-export companies ,in particular Nigeria-controlled ones suffered. [6: Ibid.p.297]

Demands for traditionally subsistence crops, including yams, manioc and beans, for the feeding of the Allies in Europe and for the armies in Africa or the middle eastern front ,added to the hardship of those outside the subsistence sector and where subsistence was requisitioned as they widely were or paid for at prices below the free-market price ,the producers themselves suffered .Thus by the end of the war the Egyptian fellahin were put to keep body and soul together .what with inflation ,and the requisition of their cereals and animals .In French West Africa the demands for men for the war conflicted with the demands for sorghum ,millet maize and others. Which they would normally have produced .By 1916 ,France was in a desperate situation for food ,for her crop in terms of wheat crop ,her own crop was only forty million quintals. Thus in both these years wheat or substitutes had to be found overseas .North Africa ,so close to France ,was an obvious source of supply and even recently conquered Morocco was enlisted in her revitaillement. But demands were made even as far afield as Madagascar .In addition to such demands ,the subsistence farmer in territories in which campaigns were fought ,particularly in east Africa was subject to the exactions of armies which because of supply problems could not but live off the land.

Demands for troops and carriers as well as for increased production of both export and subsistence crops resulted in shortages of labour in many parts of the continent during the war. Recruitment of carriers in the Northern Rhodesia for the East African campaigns cut off Southern Rhodesia and Katanga from their traditional source of labor and the Belgian administration in the Congo had to conduct forced recruitment of labour for the country’s mines.[footnoteRef:7] The influenza epidemic at the end of the war in east and Central Africa particulary affected the returning carriers and created acute shortage of labour in Kenyan and the Rhodesians. This shortage occurred among the European as well as African personnel, and in Southern Rhodesia ,where white railway workers had hitherto been laid off at will by the employers because of the availability of replacements ,they were not at such a premium that they were able to form unions previously resisted by the employers government. [7: Ibid. ,p.298]

The shortage of imports many have led to a fall in production where agriculture as in Egypt ,was dependent on imports of fertilizers ,farm implements and irrigation machinery ,but it also encouraged the development of import substitution industries in some countries, particularly south Africa where the potentialities of overseas markets for local products came to be realized at this time. In the Belgian Congo ,cut off from the occupied metropolis ,the war was a great stimulus to increased self –sufficiency ,as it was in the early years of the in German East Africa .[footnoteRef:8]The influx British troops in Egypt and the injection of some of$200 million into the economy during the war period was an important stimulus to industrial growth. [8: Ibid.,p.299]

Generally ,government revenue diminished during the war ,since they were largely dependent on duties on imported goods. The colonies nevertheless bore a large part of the burden of the cost of local campaigns apart from making grants to the metropolitan powers to help the war effort. Except where the military exigencies necessitated them ,public works came to a halt and development plans were shelved until after the war. This greatly reduced the Government revenue to a great way in Africa .

Writing in the 1930s , Dr HRA Philip remarked that the experiences of the years from 1914 to 1918 were such as effectively awaken the Kenyan natives from the sleep of centuries. Compared with the research conducted on the political consequences of the war for Africa, comparatively little as has been undertaken under social consequences.

The following are the political effects:

The wars were an end of attempts by Africans to regain the lost sovereignty of their pre-colonial politics, it also saw a rise in demand for participation in the process of governing of the new polities imposed on them by the Europeans.[footnoteRef:9] This demands inspired by president Woodrow Wilson Fourteen Points which were made in reaction to the soviet proposal put forward in October 1917 for the Immediate conclusion of peace without an annexation or indemnity even extended to the right to self determination. In the case of the Arab countries of north Africa, the joint announcement by Britain and France in November 1918 that the allies were contemplating the enfranchisement of peoples oppressed by the Turks ,presented the spectacle of one group of Arabs being offered independence , while another , ruled by those very powers, who were offering freedom to Turkish provinces was denied it. [9: Anthony Atmore,Op.Cit.,p.285 ]

Sa’d Zaghlul’s Wafd party in Egypt took its name from the delegation (Wafd) , he tried to send to the Versailles peace conference to negotiate Egypt’s return to independence[footnoteRef:10]. [10: A.Adu Boahen ,Op.Cit.,p.294]

Similarly in Tunisia , though the war time resident Alapetite ,had kept as firm a group on the nationalists as the British had in Egypt , after the war their leaders sent a telegram to president Wilson of the USA to enlist his assistance in their demands for self determination

While Wilsons Fourteen points did not inspire demand for immediate independence in Africa South of the Sahara, his liberal sentiments encouraged west Africa nationalists to hope that they could influence the Versailles peace conference and also encouraged them to demand a greater say in their own affairs.

As the Sierra Leonean F.W Dove, a delegate to the national congress of British west Africa put it, the time had passed when the African people should be coerced against their will to do things that are not in accordance with their best interests

In the Sudan ,Wilsons fourteen points, coupled with the inspiration of the Arab revolt of 1916, proved a turning point in Sudanese nationalism, informing the attitudes over new generation of politically conscious young men who had passed through government schools and had acquired some modern western skills

The collective war time experience of the Africans was to prove of great significance for the future[footnoteRef:11]. Although the whole of east Africa was now under the British following the defeat of the Germans, the memories of the African soldiers were to prove important in their revised view of the white man. Originally the white man had been a wonder, an enigma. His medicine , religion, technology and arrogance had baffled the east African people. But during the war, the Europeans’ and Africans soldiers ate ,bathed, slept ,fought, were wounded and died together. The African soldiers soon discovered the weaknesses and strengths of the white man. It was discovered that , stripped of his technology ,he was just another man. [11: W.R. Ochieng’, A History of Kenya, Macmillan publishers limited,Nairobi,1985,p.110]

The returning porters and soldiers spread this new view of the white man and much of the self confidence and assertiveness that the Africans displayed after the war had to do with this new knowledge.[footnoteRef:12] What is more the Africans had become aware of themselves as a distinct racial group. While hitherto the Europeans had blamed the Africans for their interethnic rivalries and passed warfare, now the Africans had same various Europeans tribes fighting one another. Even more importantly , the Africans now realized that part of Europeans success in dominating them was due to the later’s political organization in associations .it is surely no coincidence that the first African political organization that arose after the first world war was led by people who had been involved in the war. [12: Ibid.p.112 ]

In South Africa, though the Afrikaner rebellion was speedily put down , the spirit which informed it was not.[footnoteRef:13] As William Henry Vatcher has put it: [13: A.Adu Boahen,Op.Cit.,p.303]

The rebellion reconfirmed what the Boer war had taught, that force was not the answer the

battle must be pitched in the political area. Thus in real sense ,modern Afrikaner nationalism,

conceived in the Boer war, was born in the 1914 rebellion .If the first world war had not

taken place ,the Boers might have been better able to adjust to the conciliatory policy of

Botha and Smuts .The war forced on them the decision to organize first covertly in the form

of the Afrikaner Broader bond ,then in the form of the ‘purified ’National Party.

The German colonies were taken over by the Allies who defeated her. These powers established their administration to these Sub Saharan African countries and colonized them. Thus the French and the British shared Togo and Cameroon , the Belgians got Rwanda and Burundi. [footnoteRef:14]The British kept Tanganyika and the South Africans were awarded South West Africa .In theory each of these new occupying powers held their new territories on behalf of the newly formed . [14: Ibid.p.308]

For the French the years of the war were a period when they completed their conquest of the remaining independent people of their vast west African Empire .

In Kenya the white settlers used the war to make major political changes for the colonial government .They secured the rights of white for direct representatives to the Legislative Councils, where after 1918 formed a majority .[footnoteRef:15]This coupled with the Crown Land Ordinances ,which made racial segregation in the white Highlands possible ,the Native Restrictions Ordinance ,which introduced a pseudo-pass laws for Africans ,and the soldiers Settlement of white soldiers after the war, entrenched in the white minority in a dominant position in Kenya up to the 1950s. [15: W.R.Ochieng’,Op.Cit.,p.112]

There is no doubt that the war opened up new windows for many Africans particularly the educated African elite groups.[footnoteRef:16] Margery Perham has written that it is ‘difficult to overestimate the effect upon Africans ,who had been largely enclosed within a bilateral relationship with their European rulers ,for looking outside this enclosure and seeing themselves as part of a continent and of a world .In many parts of Africa the way gave a boost ,if not always to nationalist activity, at least to the development of a more critical approach by the educated Africans towards their colonial masters .[footnoteRef:17]Bethwel Ogot has suggested that the shared wartime experience of Africans and European soldiers had a similar effect for the less educated .Ogot also points out that, significantly ,several African political leaders in Kenya had either fought or served in the East African Campaigns. In Guinea the return of the ancient combatants heralded strikes, riots in the demobilization camps and attacks on the authority of [16: A.Adu Boahen,Op.Cit.,p.311] [17: Assa Okoth ,A History of Africa 1915-1995Vol.2,East African publishing house ,Nairobi,1979,p.340]

Article 27 of the treaty of Versailles, which was adopted on 14th of February chiefs .settled the problem of the territories which was as a result of the late war, have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the states which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by people not yet able to stand by themselves.

Germany surrendered to the Allies on armistice conditions which rendered her defenseless and incapable of renewing the war and on the understanding that a final peace should be concluded on the basis of the fourteen points .[footnoteRef:18]The league of nations was a basis for the formation of African Union in Africa which aims at maintaining peace in the continent. [18: C.D.M Ketelbey,A History of Modern Times from1789,Oxford university press ,New York,1929,p.438]

The social consequences of the war for Africa varied considerably from territory and depended on the extent of their involvement in particular the degree of recruitment or military activity in them. Unfortunately, until recently relative little attention has been given to the social impact of the war .This is somewhat surprising since for some areas like eastern Africa, the first World war, as Ranger has put it was the most awe-inspiring destructive and capricious demonstration of European’’ absolute power’’

The destruction caused by the Cameroon and east African campaigns caused severe hardships to the rural people of the region. [footnoteRef:20]Their villages were often burned and their food supplies and labor were indiscriminately requisitioned by opposing armies .These left the countries in great suffering. [20: Kevin Shillington,Op.Cit.,p.342]

There was widespread famine in the sub Saharan Africa as most of the African especially the able bodied had been conscripted for the war.[footnoteRef:21] There were only a few Africans left to cultivate the land and therefore the produce was low. Also the massive burning destroyed the food stores and the food available hence the famine after the war [21: Ibid.p.344]

During the war the white spread sexually transmitted diseases to Africans through rape cases as the men had been conscripted into war and no one could defend them .[footnoteRef:22]Also pneumonia spread to Africans due to the cold conditions exposed to during the war in Europe. The lungs clumped together and there were difficulties in breathing leading to some of them dying while in the war. [22: Assa Okoth,Op.Cit.,p.343]

In addition to that was the Spanish influenza epidemic which claimed lives of Africans after their return to Africa in 1918-1919.The influenza epidemic at the end of the war affected the carriers in east and central Africa .Many people died due to the disease.

The large number of Africans recruited in the war left their families and went to fight without hope of reuniting with their family members again [footnoteRef:23].Majority of the able bodied men regardless of the family status were recruited as soldiers and were taken outside Africa to fight in the European war. Those who died in the war left the children as orphans and helpless and suffered a great way. [23: A. Adu Boahen,Op.Cit.,p.312]

128.5 Critique

The European war should not have involved the Africans as it was not meant for them .More so the involvement of Africans in the war brought a lot of suffering to them rather than benefitting them. A lot of Africans suffered death during the war which left them suffering more .The Africans were taken for granted and being involved in the fight that did not belong to them was a way of humiliating them more. We saw at first the troops recruited as soldiers in the war had been promised economic and political priority which on their return they were not rewarded. We find many for example the case of the French Assimile Blaise Diagne after the promise he recruited as many Africans as he could into the war for the European front .The packages of post war reforms in French Black Africa he was promised were never put into effect.

In Madagascar for example, all4500 recruits into French army were said to have volunteered but the great majority of African recruits went into the armies against their will either as forced ‘volunteers ‘or as conscripts .I am sure not a single African who would volunteer to the war which wasn’t theirs with the much humiliation shown to them by colonialists but through the laws enforced in the colonies made them to ‘volunteer’.A great deal of recruitment was undertaken through chiefs who were expected to deliver up the numbers required of them by the political officers .In most cases they did not have difficulties in obtaining ‘volunteers’ ;in others men were impressed by the chiefs and presented to the political rulers as volunteers .Much of the unpopularity of chiefs in Northern Rhodesia after the war can be attributed to their role in recruitment of soldiers and carriers.

In either areas like Algeria ,their contribution to the war was rewarded by economic and political improvements in the status of Algerian which were however opposed by the settlers and perceived as too limited by the emir Khalid ,who strongly criticized the French administration .The many soldiers and porters who were lucky to have returned from the first world war alive and complained about the hardships to which they had been subjected and also about the unpaid wages. The Africans after the much struggle in the war they were paid with fake currency which was abolished and without compensation hence useless to them.

Though the Europeans had forced Africans into the war, to some extent it was ironical as they were giving them an opportunity to learn about the world and fight back the whites .I can say it was a ground for training and preparations to Africans in understanding world politics and trying to get themselves free .We see through that great interaction ,they were able to understand their rights and came back with a lot of energy to fight for their independence. Having understood that the Europeans were not superior to them they would assertively fight for their own independence. The ,myth that existed of European superiority was broken through the experience during the war .This to a large extent contributed much to the African nationalism which eventually led to African independence.

The setting up of the league of nations acted as the forerunner of the formation of the United Nations Organisation (UNO) currently referred to as the United Nations .The organization plays the role that was played by the league of the nation in creation Of international peace. This helped in the decolonization of many African states as it was a mandate in the UN charter.

128.6 Conclusion

The war saw a major change in the climate of international opinion with regard to colonialism. Prior to the war, the European colonial powers had been accountably only to themselves. After the war ,at the Versailles peace conference ,the colonial record of one on them ,Germany ,was examined and found wanting ,according to newly conceived standards of morality concerning the governance of colonial people. Undoubtedly, most of the other colonial powers would have been found equally wanting if their own record had been scrutinized .The idea of administering so-called backward people’s as ‘sacred trust’, though evident in the 1890s in the prohibition of Germany’s colonies on behalf of the league of nation…responsible for the…promotion of the utmost of the material and moral well-being and the social progress of their inhabitants .

Theoretically the principle of international accountability had been underlined , though because of the weakness of the league of Nations ,little could be done ,for instance , about the deplorable conditions of the indigenous inhabitants of south west Africa , administered under mandate by the union. The rights of self-determination ,first enunciated at the congress of the socialists second international held in London in 1896,had also been enunciated by the leaders of a major world ,Woodrow Wilson ,while the newly –emerged Soviet union was to attack all forms of colonialism in Africa. Even if the lest of the subject people did not change much for better in the year following the war, when even willing attempts at reform were shown by the depression.

The intricate negotiations that took place at Versailles over the reallocation of these territories to the allied victors belong properly to the territory of Europe ,though the way I n which Cameroon and Togo were found with little considerations ,was to crate bitterness among certain sections of the population as these territories and their immediate neighbors, in particular the Ewe of Togo and the Gold Coast .As far as the African inhabitants of the former German colonies were concerned ,their lot was not noticeably improved by the change of masters .Indeed some Africans compared their former rulers favorably with their new ones, and in Cameroon and Togo ,a nostalgia for the earlier regime grew as the French introduced the forced labor and the British provided less energetic than the Teutonic origins in developing their territories. France and Britain saw sometimes as temporary stewards in the mandate territories ,the two Togo lands remained less developed spectacularly under the South African ‘stewardship’ ,it was to the benefit of the first growing settler populations as far as the indigenous inhabitants were concerned the brutal German rule was exchanged for that of a government committed to a racist policies and the settlement and exploitation of the country by and for whites .

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