East African Campaign (1914-918) Part II: War Comes to East Africa

Neutral Hopes

War among the whites was not supposed to happen in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Scramble for Africa and other colonial ventures had been morally justified on the idea of transmitting European civilization to the unenlightened (“White Man’s Burden”). The whites had to set an example by showing they had moved beyond fighting each other. There were another dimension to this ideological reasoning. One was that Europe itself was hoping never to repeat the widespread conflagration of earlier coalition wars, the Napoleonic Wars serving as the most recent example. Europeans had managed to avoid any such conflicts for about a century. What wars there were between the nations included ones that were quick (Franco-Prussian War) or limited in its scope (Crimean War). Thus Europe hoped to prevent any escalation of competing imperial interests into a repeat of earlier disasters.

By not allowing blacks to see white kill white, the Europeans in the colonies were primarily serving their own self-interests. After all, they were perfectly willing to send blacks to kill other blacks. What they realized was that if the supposedly superior whites began to kill each other, it would undermine the image they had cultivated for themselves. Even worse, such a war in the colonies might require the use of black troops against whites, further undermining the hierarchy of race. Thus far the only inter-white conflicts in Africa had occurred between the British Empire and the Boers in Southern Africa, and these were not between the imperial powers, but between just one of them and a defiant group of colonists. It was furthermore restricted to only one part of Africa. World War I would be the true violation of colonial neutrality.

Grover Cleveland: Most Underrated President?

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Joseph T. Glatthaar's The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaign

Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaign. Los Angeles: New York: New York University Press, 1985.

Glatthaar is a Civil War historian who specializes at looking into the lives or the everyday rank-and-file, though he has done work on major generals. He’s a bit of a social historian with a military focus. He’s more well-known for Forged in Battle, which looked at the relationship between black Union soldiers and their white officers. Before that he wrote this overview of Sherman’s force after the fall of Atlanta and up to May 1865. He attempts to show the reader that the various Union armies were unique in their own way. Sherman’s army, which was actually a combination of the Army of Tennessee and the Army of Georgia (actually two corps of the Army of the Cumberland) was primarily made up of westerners who had a more egalitarian view of the army. While there was discipline, officers and men spoke more freely. Officers, up to generals, would sometimes pitch in manually when a wagon or artillery piece needed to be freed from mud or quickly placed. Compared to the Army of the Potomac, they had much less concern for proper drill and proper attire. Two corps from the Army of the Potomac in fact helped make up Sherman’s force and they had trouble adjusting to this new army, which “at first glance… looked more like a mob than an army. They were an unkempt, boisterous, seemingly unruly lot, in no way resembling the stereotypical professional army of the min-nineteenth century...”

East African Campaign (1914-918) Part I: The German Empire

Map of Colonized Africa right before the outbreak of WWI. Courtesy of davidjl123 / Somebody500 via wikimedia at https://brilliantmaps.com/africa-1914/

World War I, also known as the Great War, was labeled thus because it involved nearly every nation on the world in some capacity. Every great power was militarily involved. Despite its status as a “world war”, the bulk of the fighting took place in Europe and the Middle East. There were battles in far-flung theatres amongst the belligerents' colonies, but these were considered side-shows. These theatres also did not last long into the war. Against the Entente’s Britain, France, Belgium, Japan, and later Portugal, the only member of the Central Powers to have colonies was Germany. It could not hold on to is oversea possessions against the British Royal Navy and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Entente’s colonial forces. It would need to win on the European continent and get some or all of its territory back in a post-war settlement. By the end of 1915 all of its colonies had been conquered. All save one.

German East Africa, the crown jewel of the young German Empire, would see fighting all the way past the armistice of November 11, 1918. Led by the determined General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the Germans and their native African soldiers would at first repel Entente intrusions and then lead them on long chases. They would furthermore strike into enemy colonies. Though defeated, Lettow-Vorbeck and his men would gain universal admiration and a considerable body of literature within military history. Many writers have claimed that his efforts diverted valuable resources from Europe, thus helping out the overall war effort. This series will look at several questions. What was the true impact of the East African campaign on the war overall?  How did German East Africa hold on so long? How much was owed to German genius and how much to British mistakes? Were there other factors? And how did the Africans themselves perceive the conflict and how were they affected? Before diving into the war, it would be good to start with a brief history of German East Africa.