Assess the impact of World War One on Europe's colonial presence in Africa.

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

Assess the impact of World War One on Europe’s colonial presence in Africa.

“ A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined”.

The impact that the First World War had on Europe’s colonial presence in Africa was quite immense. It lead to changes inn the African opinion of Europeans. It also lead to changes in trade that were not to the benefit to Europe’s colonial presence in Africa. By comparing the years before and after World War One we can see the impact this had on Europe’s Colonial presence in Africa.

World War One broke out in the summer of 1914. It began because several nations of Europe had differences that could not be settled by peaceful means. Many tried to stop it right up to the moment that the first soldiers passed into territory of the enemy, but their efforts were to no avail. There were deep and painful conflicts among the countries of Europe that led to the unprecedented calamity of a war that lasted four and a half years, that killed more Europeans and Africans than any event since and that altered the shape of European life forever. The results of World war one lasted well into the decades that followed and indeed was a catalyst for World War Two. So even before the war had finished the impact on Europe’s colonial presence in Africa was starting to show.

In general, the great question of the era was the future role of Germany. United only since 1871, imperial Germany had rapidly emerged as the dominant industrial and military power on the continent. By the close of the century leaders in Berlin were committed to playing an equally great role in European naval affairs and in the world of colonial empire outside Europe. This combination had created a potentially explosive situation. It showed hoe Europe’s colonial position was about to change forever

Germany had begun to insist on intervening in colonial issues especially in Africa. This insistence challenged a pattern existing for more than a century in which Britain had the main voice in such matters. Even before the war started the impact that it would have on Europe’s colonial presence in Africa was beginning to emerge.

The First World War was far more than just a European conflict. On 12 August 1914, Regimental Sergeant-Major Alhaji Grunshi of the West African Frontier Force became the first soldier in British service to fire a round in the war. During this war over two million Africans served as soldiers or labourers and upwards of 200,000 of them died due to disease or were killed in action. The idea that the immense manpower pool of the African colonies might be harnessed for military use was first given its most coherent and ambitious pre-war ...

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They decided to depart from the previous use of African troops, by all other colonial powers. They wanted to transform a small mercenary army designed for duty in Africa into a much larger force intended for eventual use in Europe. Mangin argued that the long-term strategic solution to the growing imbalance between France and Germany lay in the creation of a large African reserve for use in the event of a European war. This proposal was based on three military ideas: that west Africa contained sufficient numbers of young men to create such a reservoir, that military recruitment was feasible and once trained such troops would make good soldiers.

“ The black troops…have precisely those qualities that are demanded in the long struggles in modern war: rusticity, endurance, tenacity, the instinct for combat, the absence of nervousness and an incomparable power of shock. Their arrival on the battlefield would have a considerable moral effect on the adversary”.

Mangin believed that the best soldiers came from what he called the most ‘advanced’ of West Africa’s ‘primitive’ races. He thought that the warrior qualities of this race would render them terrible in the attack. This opinion was the general opinion of the time. Africans were a second-class race and they thought nothing of placing them on the front-line. Successes at Fort Douaumont ensured that these troops were extensively used in France against Germany

From the last quarter of the nineteenth century onwards there was an explosion of European competition for colonies that swept over Africa, which ended with virtually the whole continent, being partitioned between a number of European powers. So it was inevitable that the First World War actually pitted Africans against Africans. The French West Africans were fighting against the German East Africans. Many if not all of these were conscripted into the war so they had no choice but to fight against there own countrymen. This fighting actually awakened in Africans the idea of gaining independence. This idea came about after they seen that the Great nation of Europe was not so invincible after all. The notion of independence was developed further after World War Two but it was the conscription that started it all. This was just another impact of the First World War on Europe’s colonial presence in Africa.

So when the First World War concluded in 1918 there was two primary tasks facing the peacemakers (i) make a settlement with Germany which, so far as they could contrive, would perpetuate a distribution of power in Europe which was unfavourable to German resurgence as an aggressive military state (ii) They had to redraw the map of central and eastern Europe in a way which replaced the old dynastic frontiers by new ones based on realities of national grouping of economic viability and of military security. German colonies were repartitioned between France, Belgium, Britain and the new self-governing British Dominion of South Africa. This was a major impact of the First World War on Europe’s colonial presence in Africa. The victors divided the spoils among themselves. The French secured the larger parts of Togo and Cameroon while Britain took smaller eastern zones, which were administered together with their adjacent Gold Coast and Nigerian colonies. The share of German East Africa passed to Britain as Tanganyika though the Belgians took over the small though thickly populated African kingdoms then known as Ruanda and Urundi, while the South Africans secured South-West Africa. There was one interesting difference between this secondary partition and the original partition back in the 1880’s and 1890’s. The victors were not allowed to become the absolute possessors of the German territories they had acquired.

When Germany surrendered in 1918, the victors who were France, Britain Belgium and South Africa signed up to what is called President Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points. These fourteen points were to act as a basis for the peace settlement. They included the establishment of a league of nation to provide ‘mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike’, and also the principle of self-determination for the peoples in the defeated Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires. This principle was not specifically enunciated for the German colonial empire. But it was eventually agreed that the conquerors of the German colonies in Africa were to be allowed to administer their conquests only under mandates from the League of Nations which provided that they were to serve as trustees for the advancement of their inhabitants. There were a lot more rules for the victors to follow for example they had to send annual reports on their administration and to submit to periodical inspection from, a mandates commission set up by the League Of Nations. Wilson’s fourteen points and the League of Nations and its mandates system seemed to offer hope that the colonial empires in Africa were not intended to be permanent, that international opinion had recognised that one purpose of colonial rule was to create new African nations which would be able to stand by themselves in the modern world. These fourteen points also ensured that European colonial rule in Africa would never be the same again.

Another way in which World War One impacted on Europe’s colonial presence in Africa was the danger it done to their self-belief. This period of self-destruction that Europe had engaged in during the 1914-18 had done a lot to weaken their belief in the innate superiority of their civilisation. As a result of this lack of self-belief they had a lot less faith in the permanence of their empires than they had when they were creating them.

Trade also suffered badly due to World War One. Germany was East Africa’s major trading partner. This partnership had to be completely disbanded due to the war. The money that would have luxury goods was now spent on arms and financing the war. So because there was no market for luxury goods production was stopped completely. The African producers of cash crops were forced to bring their prices down below their market value. Trade also suffered because of the lack of men. Many young men were conscripted into the army as dealt with in a previous paragraph. So there was a severe shortage of labour. World War One brought considerable confusion to colonies under the control of economic factors. The trading pattern that they had been used to was disrupted. This disruption spread all over the world. European colonies were dependant on international commerce. This was a major fault on the behalf of Europe, instead of promoting local trade they made them dependent on international trade instead. International commerce like this could never have continued during the war. Shipping of finished goods was always susceptible to submarine attack.

The First World War was the prelude to the final stage of the scramble for Africa, played out al Versailles. Despite all their misgivings at the outset, the European powers advanced rather than retarded the cause of colonialism between 1914 and 1918. This war reinvigorated territorial ambitions dormant since the turn of the century. The war was a transforming force that weakened Europe’s ability to maintain its African empires. It also pointed out the relationship between the developed and underdeveloped parts of the world. When Germanys African possessions were transferred to France, Britain, Belgium and the new self-governing south Africa this served to put the governing role of the European powers in question, under some scrutiny and they were now bound to govern these territories with a view toward their eventual independence. The war actually resulted in a weakened and diminished Europe and colonial peoples aware of their contribution to the war effort. In the end the outward form and size of the colonial empires seemed intact, but the framework in which they existed had now begun to change in a way not visible before 1914.

Bibliography

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