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

Abstract

In the vast literature 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 moder campaigns in tropical Africa wars of conquest, punitive expeditions to enforce alien rule, and the first world war were 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and economic consequences this had on African communities are thinly scattered in a limited number of monographs and unpublished theses based on papers in the Public Records Office and in African archival collections.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,

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