Africa and Africans in the World Wars: The Prelude and Disposition for Leveraged Exploitation through Violence and Coercion

Introduction

For any analytical account of especially the prosecution of World War I (WWI) and the involvement and the role of Africans in it to be meaningful, such an account must encompass the methodical exploration of the historiography of both the colonial conquest and the commencement of de facto colonial occupation of the continent and its distinct peoples by Europeans over the course of the implicated period of time. The rationales that underscore this immediate assertion above include the facts that, given that history unfolds itself in an organic and causal pattern, a major historical event, such as the WWI that kicked off virtually on the cusp of Africa’s conquest and colonial occupation by European powers, is bound to rely simultaneously on and equally derive considerably from those repertoires that enabled Europe’s stakeholders on the ground on the continent to, on the one hand, extract and transport millions of able-bodied Africans into chattel slavery in the New World and, on yet another hand, to enable the successful colonial conquest and occupation of the continent. In other words, to better understand the coerced involvement of African manpower, labor, and resources in the prosecution of WWI especially, one needs to factor-in the physical violence that characterized and enabled the trans-Atlantic slave trade in which millions of able-bodied Africans were transported out to Europe and the New World, and of course, the conquest and occupation of Africa into the analysis. The repertoires of interest in all cases are raw violence and coercion. ¹ The relevant point of logic here that validates the assertion about rationales is that almost all the state actors that were involved in the prosecution of WWI are also implicated in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and also in the conquest and occupation of Africa. The point of emphasis here therefore is that it is not coincidental that violence and coercion are consistent repertoires of choice in the extraction of able-bodied Africans for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and in the subsequent conquest and occupation of Africa by the European state actors involved. The analytical assessment and presentation on the coerced mobilization of African resources and involvement of African manpower in the World Wars that ensues here in this article argues that those efforts, that is, coerced and violent mobilization of African resources and involvement of African manpower, are logical extensions of the violent and coerced extraction of able-bodied African manpower in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and subsequently the colonial conquest and occupation of Africa by the European powers involved. In all cases, violence and coercion were handily deployed as repertoires of choice.

Chinua Achebe—testimony of facts

In all of their ramifications, and all through their respective course, the colonial conquest and occupation of Africa and its distinct peoples by European powers constituted violent enterprises that were both rationally planned and systematically implemented. This immediate assertion constitutes the backdrop for any narrative account of all aspects of Europe’s encounter with and endeavors in Africa prior to and sequel to the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. One is specifically talking about the significant roles that organized violence and systemic coercion were made to play to engender and accomplish colonial conquest of Africa and its distinct peoples, on the one hand, and to subsequently sustain their occupation as colonized subjects by the European powers involved, on the other hand. It is called for at this juncture in the discourse to bring in Chinua Achebe’s apt observation, which has been alluded to earlier in the introduction about the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the twin events of colonial conquest and occupation. According to Achebe,

The outburst of European activity across the earth and over the oceans in the period we call the Age of Discovery brought Europe in one bound to the doorstep of Africa, with some dire results for African societies, chief among them the Atlantic slave trade and colonial occupation.

Man is a story-making animal. He rarely passes up an opportunity to accompany his works and experiences with matching stories. The heavy task of disposing others calls for such a story and, (sic) of course, its makers: oral historians or griots in the past; mere writers today. Repression, if and when it does occur, needs also its enabling stories and the singers and writers to compose them. But as we can all appreciate, there will be a wide gulf of difference between the story put out by the first group to explain or camouflage their doings and the constitutive annals made up by those who will struggle to reclaim their history.

Let us imagine that someone has come along to take my land from me. We would not expect him to say he is doing it because of his greed, or because he is stronger than I. Such a confession would brand him a scoundrel and a bully. So (sic) he hires a story teller with a lot of imagination to make up a more appropriate story which might say, for example, that the land in question could not be mine because I had shown no aptitude to cultivate it properly for maximum productivity and profitability. It might go on and say that the reason for my inefficiency is my low I.Q. and explain that my brain had stopped growing at the age of ten. (Achebe, 2000: 59–60)

Achebe continues, Anyone who thinks this is a joke has not read Elspeth Huxley’s African books. Here is a sample from White Man’s Country, one of her nonfiction works:

perhaps it may be, as some doctors have suggested, that his [meaning the African’s] brain is different: that it has shorter growing period and possesses less well-formed, less cunningly arranged cells than that of the Europeans—in other words, that there is a fundamental disparity between the capabilities of his [meaning the African’s] brain and ours [meaning the European’s brain]. (Huxley, 1935: 22, quoted in Githae-Mugo, p. 17, quoted in Achebe, 2000: 59–61)

There is need to let Achebe’s assertion run full course for desired effect:

These opinions were not invented by Huxley. She took them ready-made out of well-worn European folklore about Africa to support her case that Kenya indeed belonged to the white man and that the resident English peer, Lord Delamere, was indisputably its founder. As if this proposition was not surreal enough, Huxley added a strange new element to it: “This country had belonged neither to the black man nor the white, but to the wild animals, and now they were being disposed” (quote in Githae-Mugo, 1978: 15) . . .

Mrs. Huxley, the griot for white settlers, had done her best for her kinsmen. . . [T]he leader of that tribe was a certain nobleman, Lord Delamere, who had gone from his estate in England on a hunting safari to Kenya in Africa, found that he rather liked the place and decided to stay. The British colonial administration that was entrenching itself there was pleased with the august visitor’s decision and awarded him 100,000 acres of prime land it had appropriated when Britain had declared Kenya a crown colony in 1902. Lord Delamere was soon organizing the white farmers of Kenya and its adjoining territories to oppose any recognition of the rights of Africans to the land or their participation in any political activity in the colony (Achebe, 2000: 61–62).

Igboland as case study

Bringing in Achebe’s pivotal observation above to showcase Europe’s self-justification for its violent conquest and occupation of Africa and its distinct peoples clears the ground to use a case study to also furnish an analytical albeit succinct account of the violent processes through which a part of Africa, that is, Igboland, was conquered and subsequently occupied and by so doing disposed for leveraging in subsequent acts of exploitation that include forceful extraction of military manpower and labor to prosecute the World Wars. The same is true about the rest of Africa. As a case study, Igboland is used to showcase what obtained in the rest of the continent.

WWI breaks out, again violence and coercion remain handy repertoires

Although “. . . all of sub-Sahara Africa, with the exception of the republic of Liberia and imperial Ethiopia, was in European hands, parceled out as colonies or so-called protectorates” (Farwell, 1986: 13), the scenario established in the foregoing sections of this article represented the state of affairs that obtained in all of occupied Africa vis-à-vis the conquering powers and Africans at the outbreak of WWI in 1914. Even though somehow nuanced, the situation in South Africa where colonial conquest had given rise to settler occupation was similarly driven and projected by the routine resort to violence and coercion as preferred repertoires of colonial power projection and engagement with indigenous peoples of Africa. Thus, the characterization of the conflict as the Great War by the occupation powers on the continent had nothing to do at all with the interests of colonized Africans.

What the immediate assertion above means in essence is that at the outbreak of WWI in 1914, the preferred twin repertoires of violence and coercion which had enabled the conquest and de facto occupation of the continent were still most handy as tools for Europe’s occupation states in Africa as they braced themselves to source manpower and resources to aid them in their prosecution of the War in campaigns that opened up on the continent and beyond. On their part, when confronted with the continuing and unprovoked violence and coercion from their European invader occupiers at the outbreak of WWI, Africans were not mere sitting ducks without agency for resistance. As was the case during the course of the unprovoked invasion of their homelands, African to resistance against the violent efforts to coerce and compel their participation in a war whose essence they neither understood nor appreciated was varied and in character.

In what had become known as British West Africa, with specific regard to the parts of the greater Niger basin that the British had just carved into the two administrative territories that they had designated as the Southern and Northern Protectorates of Nigeria, respectively, that resistance reflected the character of the social authority patterns that the distinct people that inhabit both territories evolved through the course of time and utilized in their practice of authority in society among themselves in every respective case. The same is true of their respective response to colonial conquest and occupation, the two episodic events that logically flowed into the outbreak of the War, which they were being coerced to participate in by their European occupiers.

According to James K. Mathews (1987),

Prior to 1914, soldiers in British West African armies were primarily volunteers [mostly runaway Hausa slaves]. Throughout their West African colonies, the British established recruiting depots from which recruiting parties visited towns and villages. These recruiting tours, the most successful method used by the British to enlist willing recruits, usually composed of men from the local area led by a British officer, African NCO, or professional “bringer” who received a fee or “bringing money” of about 1 shilling for each recruit enlisted and double that for each ex-soldier. (p. 96)

Often times, the surreal deceptive act of assigning “one of the Regimental bands” (Mathews, 1987: 96) is to accompany the recruitment tour. On such instances, “Young men unaccustomed to such spectacle followed the pied pipers on their rounds and sometimes into the barracks to swear allegiance to the Crown” (Mathews, 1987: 96).

Igboland, which was the most harshly coerced territory in the lower southeast Niger basin by the British with physical violence during the conquest phase, prelude to de facto occupation, is also a classical case study in the sourcing of military manpower by the British prior to and during WWI:

Although the British generally employed volunteers in the army, they relied primarily on conscripts for military porterage, and by 1914 military authorities in British West Africa had considerable experience in “carrier recruitment,” a contemporary euphemism for force labour. A political or military official might demand the services of additional carriers from the villages through which he trekked and if they were not forthcoming simply impress men and sometimes women and children. Gerald Adams, an officer in the Southern Nigeria Regiment, described how he impressed 20 carriers at a town near Abakaliki [in south Igboland] while on expedition in 1910. When one bolted, Adams promptly drew his revolver and shot him dead, explaining that it would have been fatal to let him escape to tell his friends and tribesmen (sic) that white men with soldiers had tried to take him as a carrier, but that he had been too much for them. (Mathews, 1987: 96)

Unlike the French who adopted “a formal policy of conscription in Africa, the British abducted large numbers of [Africans in their Niger basin protectorates, especially in the south] for [combat duties] and in the Carrier Corps” (Mathews, 1987: 96). All over Igboland and in the rest of the distinct nationalities that inhabit the lower southeast alongside the Igbo, the British colluded with the “warrant chiefs” who they appointed as the harbingers of their Indirect Rule policy to “volunteer” their people for the War. According to Mathews (1987: 98), the colony’s highest officials supported these methods. Frederick Lugard in his capacity as the governor-general and his acting commandant of the Nigeria Regiment both agreed that without the pressure being brought to bear on the “warrant chiefs” headmen, and Native Administrations, recruitment quotas would not be met. In late 1914, Lugard ordered that “if the emergency is great, carriers must be impressed” (cited in Ukpabi, 1975).

The varied acts of resistance by the Igbo against impressment for military labor took various forms that ranged from passive to active. In some cases, in Igboland, communities resorted to deal decisively with the warrant chief collaborators. A warrant chief in Obela in Owere Province

was driven from his town and threatened with death should he return. . . because he had endeavored to persuade certain of his people to act as carriers for the transport of telegraph materials from Awetu to Ibu which were urgently required by the troops on the Nigerian frontier. From December 1914 into 1915, Igbo rebellion against impressment into railway labour gangs [led] to the deaths of government clerks and artisans directing work on the half-completed railway from Port Harcourt to the Udi colliery [,which] was of great strategic importance, [because of extreme crucial need for] coal to move troop reinforcements south along the Lagos-Kano rail. Like the Obela rebellion, which was suppressed with the punitive Owere massacre by ‘police and soldiers [in which] two towns [were destroyed] and . . . an unknown number of [Igbo were killed,] this rebellion was also brutally suppressed at the cost of 100 innocent Igbo lives with a volunteer force of European officials and traders assisted by local police. (Mathews, 1987: 101)

In addition, the Igbo communities involved were compelled to “accept” and exerted settlement that included the supply of “2,000 unpaid workers to the Railway Department” by the occupation regime (Mathews, 1987: 101).

Elsewhere in the lower Niger, specifically in Yorubaland and the Benin Commonwealth, where the practice of authority in society is through apex political structures that included constitutional monarchy, the occupation regime took advantage by embracing the monarchs in the belief albeit misplaced that the latter, due to military support from the occupation regime, possessed the absolute authority to supply their people as manpower for the war effort without resistance. Alaafin Ladugbolu of the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo pledged to the regime representative in Oyo, Captain W. A. Ross, “that he would raise 30,000 men and all needed supplies emphasizing that the British should ‘not treat this as an idle boast’” (Mathews, 1987: 97). Oba Eweka II of the Kingdom of Benin made a similar pledge and made good by sending “thousands of men to the carrier recruitment depot at Sapele because, (sic) he declared, ‘the government is my strength’” (Mathews, 1987: 97) against the people.

In the upper Niger, prior to British conquest, the Fulani had instituted their autocracy and hegemony on the aegis of their Sokoto Caliphate empire through jihadi conquest of all of Hausaland and the adjourning principalities. The occupation regime’s quick and smooth co-option of the Hausa-Fulani rulers due principally to the coincidental fact that he set of autocratic social authority patterns that supported Fulani Caliphate rule in the empire were congruent with the authoritarian social authority patterns that enabled colonial occupation and rule, entailed a quick unity of purpose between the regime and rulers of the Caliphate Empire at all levels that translated to a patron–client alliance between the Fulani rulers and the British. The rulers of the Caliphate “who had seen their power and wealth increase under British occupation and rule and who as a result wished to see a continuing expansion of their influence also willingly filled recruiting quotas” (Mathews, 1987: 97).

It is noteworthy to mention even at this juncture that Alaafin Ladugbolu’s willing and self-interested cooperation with the occupation regime in sourcing of military manpower and supplies in Yorubaland was an aberration that derived from the constitutional crises that emerged in Yoruba politics toward the end of the 19th century that partly enabled some ambitious individuals in Yoruba society to attempt to bypass and violate the basis of legitimacy perception in the age-old constitutional system of rule and the procedural checks and balances that guided the practice of authority in Yorubaland (Ejiogu, 2011b). In the case of the Alaafin, British conquest and occupation became yet another avenue for him to usurp not just only extra-constitutional power and authority but to also upstage himself above the Ooni of Ife who is constitutionally imbued in the age-old Yoruba social authority patterns alongside the requisite checks and balances that guided the practice of authority in Yoruba society and as a result regarded as the preeminent monarch in all of Yorubaland by virtue of his place in the mythology of their civilization. The Alaafin’s desire therefore was “to please the British and by so doing, make Oyo, the political centre of Yorubaland” (Mathews, 1987: 97). ⁵

In almost every nationality in the geographical space that the British carved into the Nigerian supra-national state, even though there were “numerous traditional rulers [who] freely supported the British war time manpower effort, the majority of [the traditional rulers] who complied with recruitment demands. . . did so under duress” (Mathews, 1987: 98). G. H. Findlay, an official in the occupation regime in the lower Niger,

noted in January 1917 that he “repeatedly threatened” [traditional rulers] to get carriers, and H. S. W. Edwards, the district officer at Bauchi [in the Caliphate part of the upper Niger], stated in August 1914 that he withheld the Emir’s salary until the required number of carriers were assembled, and he recommended that stiff fines be imposed on chiefs who did not meet recruitment quotas. (Mathews, 1987: 98)

Aside from some of the traditional rulers who played games to outwit the regime, there were also those of them who bluntly “refused to send men to the” regime regardless of threats. In the Edo Commonwealth was Oba Eweka’s request at war’s outbreak of his “chiefs to supply five carriers each and his minor chiefs two each, [fell on deaf ears as] only one chief bothered to respond.” In Yorubaland, right in parts of the Alaafin’s domain in Oyo, Major J. Crookenden found that all traditional rulers he talked to in his bid to “raise troops for the East African campaign” lacked interest and were “apathetic or powerless to produce results” (Mathews, 1987: 98–99). In cases where they complied, many traditional rulers “responded to recruitment demands by sending the British poor physical and mental specimens” (Mathews, 1987: 99):

During October 1914, hundreds of Benin carriers [that were procured courtesy of Oba Eweka II] fled the Carrier Corps mobilization depot in Sapele. . . [and] recruits from Oyo [courtesy of the Alaafin] . . . were deserting en masse because the Alaafin had pressed them into service. (Mathews, 1987: 103)

Throughout the lower Niger, “resistance to wartime recruitment—including rebellion, desertion, and the chiefs’ physical refusal to supply men or their deliberate consideration of poor physical and mental specimens. . . [qualify] as protest against unpopular rulers and the British who kept them in power” (Mathews, 1987: 108).

Throughout the entire Niger basin areas that were carved into what became Nigeria, south and north, and in the distinct nationalities that inhabit them, individuals who were “recruited” or impressed considered it as “their bad fortune [which the dealt with] in a variety of ways [that included the adoption of] passive resistance techniques, such as hiding in the bush, malingering, discarding loads, feigning sickness, and purposely misunderstanding orders” (Mathews, 1987: 102–103). As is the case in Igboland, throughout Yorubaland, conscription sparked rebellions in many towns and communities in which indigenous collaborators of the regime were pounced upon and killed by their own people and the regime stepped in and was only able to suppress the resistance with increased levels of violence and coercion that led to the loss of many more lives of indigenes in all demographic categories.

These stories of refusal and resistance to conscription into the War in the Niger basin under British occupation are replicated in various shades all over the continent, which does not imply in any way that African response to efforts to impress them into the War in various capacities was homogeneous. Even in French West Africa with a long pre-war history of drafting Africans into colonial military involvement, where the more than 10,000 Africans who participated in the French African colonial army at the outbreak of the war came from, those “Africans [ who were involved, subsequently] discovered that the Europeans remained the ‘owners of the war’ still” (Page, 1987: 5).

Notwithstanding their reluctance and in many cases dogged refusal to be drafted as manpower for the prosecution of a war that they rightly perceived as not theirs, Africans were still inserted into WWI in their numbers in various parts of the continent. According to Melvin E. Page, “Not rebellions, protests, or evasions saved Africans from service in the Great War, and their feeble attempts (sic) to avoid recruitment did not nothing to reduce the deception and coercion which were used to ensure their participation” (Page, 1987: 7). Page’s assertion above is a mischaracterization of the resistance by Africans against spirited efforts by their European colonizers to get them involved them in the War. According to Robert Booth, the social affairs correspondence for The Guardian, UK, the

well over 4 million black and Asian men [who] were mobilised into the European and America armies [for the cause of World War I, m]any were conscripted or coerced, particularly in Egypt and the colonies of east and west Africa. . . [through] threats and even kidnappings. In Egypt alone, it has been suggested by the historian David Killingray that three-quarters of the 327,000 men who served were recruited forcibly. ⁶

World War II, a starkly different scenario

World War II (WWII) presented a starkly different scenario in contrast to WWI in the recruitment and deployment of Africans as manpower by their colonizers in the war efforts. For one, transportation technology had evolved more in efficiency and sophistication beyond steam-powered water-sailing vessels and railway trains, all of which rendered the ubiquitous use of human carriers as was the case throughout the course of WWI obsolete for the prosecution of the War in all ramifications. In essence, it was not that there was a shift in the racial attitude of Europeans toward Africans as disposable spoils of colonial conquest and occupation in the occupied territories. The shifts in the dynamics of all relevant global realities were indeed responsible for why the European powers involved in the occupation of Africa shifted in their need for African manpower in the prosecution of WWII.

Furthermore, Germany’s defeat in the previous war, which in turn led to the total loss of all of its occupied territories in Africa, implied that the continent was no longer a de facto theater of active warfare as the case in WWI. By this assertion, one does not imply at all that African manpower was not deployed in combat capacities in WWII. The point of fact instead is that Africans were recruited to enlist as opposed to being conscripted as was the case in WWI when they were mostly conscripted and deployed against their wish as carriers. With the shift in the acute need for African manpower as carriers in the war effort during WWI to acute need for manpower in the various military occupation specialties (MOSs) such as mechanic and driving, clerical duties, and wireless operation, there was indeed no logical need again for forced conscription of African manpower for carrier duties. As a result, Europe’s colonial policymakers in the metropolitan capitals and their administrators on the ground who all over occupied Africa were compelled by exigent realities to also shift tactics that enabled them to attract indigenous men who possessed the requisite measure of Western education and skills to the colonial military depots that dotted parts of the occupied territories for recruitment into the colonial army as candidates for the various MOS.

Contrary to any such notion and presumption, colonial conquest and occupation were not haphazard affairs. Instead, they were consciously adopted schemes that were implemented through consciously devised policies. Which does not in any way imply that as schemes, the quest to accomplish them was underscored by honest-to-God facts in the interest of indigenous people involved. There was no regard for indigenous people and their well-being. Instead, in every case, the occupation regime’s policymakers and administrators operated from the comfort zones they created for themselves from where they gleaned stereotypical presumptions about the “natives” and used the same as the bases of the various policies that they implemented in their quest to achieve their colonial projects on the backs of the “natives.”

To better understand the sourcing and utilization of African manpower in the two wars, one must understand the origins and the imperial motivation that underscored the military formations that the colonial powers put in place in each case to achieve colonial conquest and occupation. Such understanding will reveal the organic link that binds all four social facts, that is, colonial conquest and occupation and the procurement and utilization of African manpower in the two World Wars.

Colonial military formations in West Africa and military manpower

In the parts of West Africa’s Niger basin that the British carved into Nigeria, the “recruitment of indigenous men into colonial military forces” was one of the four crucial elements of state building (Ejiogu, 2011b: 139–165). ⁷ The policy that guided the recruitment of indigenous men into colonial military in Nigeria was as a result of the fact, consciously formulated and implemented to realize the two specific imperial goals of conquest and occupation. Thus, the Colonial Office (CO) was fully involved in all policies on recruitment (Luckham, 1971a: 231). That CO’s involvement was “so much so that up until 1958, [i.e. a mere couple of years prior to the end of colonial occupation in Nigeria on 1 October 1960]) . . ., all decisions on the army. . . were the exclusive preserve of the British War Office in London” (Miners, 1971). It wasn’t, therefore, by happenstance that at the earlier onset of the conquest and occupation of the territories that were carved into Nigeria, a

Lt. John Glover of the Royal Navy who later became the Lieutenant Governor of the Crown Colony of the [Yoruba port city of] Lagos, raised the militia force that he utilized to enforce Compliance to Crown authority in Lagos from runaway Hausa slaves (Kirk-Green, 1964; Miners, 1971). [The same is true about the upper Niger territories that became known as the Northern Protectorate where] the bulk of the forces that [Fredrick] Lugard deployed in Hausaland to defeat and conquer the Hausa-Fulani rulers in 1903 was raised from runaway Hausa slaves as well as other disaffected individuals in the Caliphate empire. . . (Miners, 1971 in Ejiogu, 2011b: 160)

It was, indeed, not per chance that the preference for disaffected runaway Hausa slaves became a recruitment policy even at that onset in sourcing military manpower to enable colonial conquest and occupation in the Niger basin by the British.

Research findings by EC Ejiogu (2011b) indicate that the speed with which the Hausa-Fulani rulers embraced a durable patron–client alliance with the British right after colonial conquest is a function of the congruence between their evolved autocratic social authority patterns that enabled their practice of authority in the Caliphate empire and those of the incipient occupation regime. The contrast was the case in the distinct nationalities that inhabit the lower Niger given that their evolved social authority patterns were fiercely democratic in character and dimensions. What unfolded from the outset therefore was north-south cleavage whereby the British became trustful of the rulers of the Caliphate society and by extension more comfortable with the nationalities that inhabit the upper Nigeria. But in contrast, they were suspicious of and hostile to the inhabitants of the lower Niger.

Thus, from the outset, the military was impacted from its evolutionary phase through its transformation phase. The stigmatization of inhabitants of the lower Niger as ardent opponents of colonial conquest and occupation implied that they were targeted as objects of military subjugation even beyond their respective homeland to as far off locations as the colonial urban centers that emerged and flourished all over Nigeria where their elements migrated to in numbers in search of economic opportunities in their colonial milieu. From whence emanated the colonial policy that defined their members as unfit for recruitment as military manpower. It is also from there that the assumption that informed the inverse policy defined and designated “certain groups that inhabit parts of the upper Niger. . . .as ‘martial tribes’ with ‘martial traits’ and suitable to supply manpower for colonial military forces while the Igbo, Yoruba, and others in the lower Niger were deemed unsuitable” (Ejiogu, 2011b: 160–161).

The factual truth about the preference of the so-called martial tribes—“the Tiv (Munshi), the Numan, the Tangele, the Dakakori, et al. [who] inhabit the remote hilly and stony parts of the upper Niger later known as the ‘Middle Belt’ as infantrymen in the military. . . in Nigeria. . . during the occupation era” (Gutteridge, 1970 in Ejiogu, 2011b: 161; Miners, 1971)—can be found in the geographically far-removed location of their homelands away from the other distinct nationalities who, due to the democratic proclivities of their social authority patterns became perceived as natural opponents of colonial occupation and regime. Their age-old lack of familiarity and as a result, no kindred spirit with the people of the lower Niger, due in the main to the remote location of their homeland in the far-flung hilly parts of the upper Niger—which also saved them from Fulani jihadi conquest earlier in the 19th century—is indeed the core criterion that rendered them suitable for recruitment as military manpower by the British during colonial conquest and before WWI. One can rationally discern that as hard-nosed colonial conqueror-occupiers, the British did not even take the loyalty of their Hausa-Fulani clients for granted on the crucial subject matter of raising reliable military manpower. In essence, from the demographic composition of the standing military forces that they consciously put in place for effective colonial occupation, one would discern that the goal was to still ensure that the Hausa-Fulani rulers were kept in check with a capable military in place at hand if the need arose. “In strategic terms. . . [therefore], it made a lot of sense to enlist military manpower from groups that lacked both homeland proximity and kinship affinity with groups that [are] considered threats to colonial rule” (Ejiogu, 2011b: 160):

The apt explainer here is that, as Gutteridge (1970) puts it, the definitions of “martial tribes” and “martial traits” are derived from the underlying rationale that soldiers who are recruited from nationalities that inhabit remote parts of colonized territories are likely to be more detached, more brutal and more hostile, and as a result more effective in the suppression of anti-colonial uprisings in urban centers far from their own homeland, (Ejiogu, 2011b: 161)

For attestation,

A recruiting mission to West Africa in November 1916 sanctioned by the War Office [in London] to remedy manpower shortage in WWI recommended in favor of recruiting from the so-called “pagan areas” (Haywood and Clark, 1964: 254) in the upper Niger, which “produced a useful and steady expanding volume of material” (Haywood and Clark, 1964: 254) for manpower needs in colonial military forces. (Ejiogu, 2011b: 161)

This recruitment policy which was officially supported by both the War Office and the Colonial Office in London where all ultimate decisions were made (Farwell, 1986: 35) never stopped paying off well for the imperial cause all through de facto occupation in the Niger basin. “For instance, troops raised from these nationalities were deployed to suppress the 1929–1930 anti-tax protests mounted by women in Igboland and the neighboring Ibibiland” (Afigbo, 1966; Haywood and Clark, 1964; Miners, 1971 in Ejiogu, 2011b: 161).

After Lugard felt that he had consolidated the patronage–client relationship that ensued between the occupation regime he imposed and presided over and the Hausa-Fulani rulers of the erstwhile Sokoto Caliphate empire throughout the entire upper Niger extended the regime to also, the lower Niger on the aegis of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the Lagos Colony through his Indirect Rule policy, which he instituted first in the Northern Protectorate as High Commissioner and later through the Amalgamation of 1 January 1914 as Governor-General as his tool and lever of autocratic one-man rule, he then proceeded to adopt the adherence to the Islamic religion, which provides ideological support for Fulani rule, as additional qualifying criterion for recruitment into the military. He also adopted the Hausa language, which the Fulani had earlier adopted as the official language for the conduct of state policy in their Caliphate mostly because of its ubiquity, as the lingua franca in the occupation military (Ejiogu, 2011b). The point of emphasis here is that state building in the Niger basin on the aegis of the occupation regime was indeed a ruthlessly coercive and violent process. The same is also true everywhere else in Africa. The inherent “paradox in a recruitment policy that favored speakers of a language and culture that discouraged literacy in Western technology and education (Gutteridge, 1970) . . . led to the evolution of a vacuum in Western education and technology” (Ejiogu, 2011b: 163) in the occupation regime that gave rise to stark challenges for manpower procurement at the outbreak of WWI and later WWII.

Adherence to Islam per se was not an underscoring criterion that qualified nationalities that inhabit the upper Niger for recruitment as military manpower over the course of time. It was because

[t]he version of Islam that predominated in the Caliphate society was unthreatening to British rule. . . It was noticeably conservative in content and approach, which was why it provided the bases of legitimacy for Fulani authority in the Caliphate society earlier and from the get go. Indeed, those conservative traits produced the situation in which “the cult of the Muslim led to support for men and institutions that were despotic and corrupt (Gutteridge, 1970: 304) in Hausaland and subsequently in the Caliphate empire society.” (Ejiogu, 2011b: 162)

Furthermore,

Islam’s proclivities to resist Western education and its associated provisions of the bases of legitimacy for Fulani authority in Hausaland were also criteria that favored its adherents as opposed to adherents of indigenous African religions or even Christian converts in the lower Niger for recruitment into colonial military forces. (Ejiogu, 2011b: 162)

From 1903 onto the ensuing years, all the European powers—Germany, Britain, and France—that had claims to parts of Africa as derived from the Berlin Act of 1885 sequel to the agreements reached among them at the Berlin partition conference busied themselves with consolidating their military conquest and de facto occupation of their respective territorial claims. “To keep in check the Africans they were ostensibly there to protect, the Germans had in their three largest colonies raised and trained local armies—as did all of the European powers with colonies in Africa” (Farwell, 1986: 34) guided by policies that were dictated by their respective imperial interests.

In West Africa, the British had consolidated their conquest forces into the West African Frontier Force (WAFF). In East Africa, there are Regiments of the King’s African Rifles in Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda, and even in Mauritius. Frederick Lugard and his powerful lobby support had successfully persuaded the Colonial Office to fold the lower Niger (Southern) Protectorate and the upper Niger (Northern) Protectorate together with the Amalgamated decree of 1 January 1914 put him in charge as governor-general. When WWI broke out that same year, the WAFF total force strength stood at 8093—comprising “242 British regular officers seconded to the Colonial Office, 118 NCOs and 7,733 African soldiers” (Farwell, 1986: 35–36). Further disaggregation revealed that out of this total number of African soldiers, the Nigeria Regiment numbered 5426 strong, while the Gold Coast [now Ghana], Sierra Leone, and Gambia Regiments numbered 1,553,617, respectively. In line with the War Office policy, there is no indication that any of the 5426 indigenous men in the Nigeria Regiment is from the nationalities that inhabit the lower Niger.

As is often the case with policies that drive from rational choice(s), they run their full course, and over the course of time, events in society begin to make them or aspects of them untenable. The British policy of excluding indigenous men from nationalities in the lower Niger basin that have social authority patterns that lack consonance with and congruence with the social authority patterns of colonial conquest and occupation from inclusion in their military forces is no exception in this regard. Up until the outbreak of WWI and well into the couple of decades that followed its end in 1918, the War Office in collaboration with the Colonial Office and the men on the ground in the colonies kept adjusting to aspects of the policy of exclusion that real events made untenable. Those aspects included the quest for the carriage of military supplies, which grew to its peak due to the outbreak of WWI and the demands it brought to bear on the British War Office in the various campaigns waged against the Germans in different parts of the continent where Germany had acquired and occupied as its colonial possessions. The men on the ground invoked conscription and all manner of tactics to accede indigenous manpower from everywhere in the Niger basin, upper and lower to meet the needs. The Nigeria Regiment, which had grown to a total of 5426 indigenous men in the infantry unit alone at the outbreak of WWI, had crucial needs for bookkeeping and various clerical personnel. In the light of the official policy that discouraged the propagation of Western education in the entire upper Niger basin, it was only from the nationalities that inhabit the lower Niger basin that the occupation regime could find indigenous men who possessed the requisite qualifications and skills in Western education to enlist to fill the needs for tally and clerical clerks in the Regiment.

That was not all. The expansion of technology into the realms of warfare and its prosecution, which required indigenous men who had acquired those requisite qualifications and skills in Western education kept the pressure on the War Office and its policy on the exclusion of some nationalities from furnishing military manpower. From his time as the first High Commissioner in-charge in the Northern Protectorate, Lugard was

personally, averse to the practice in the lower Niger and other parts of Africa where the propagation of Western education was under the charge of Western missionary agencies. He strongly believed that the propagation of Western education should be integrated with the exercise of colonial power, authority and control while colonial administrators must exclusively determine its contents, scope, and spread. . . [That was why, as] High Commissioner, he favored a system of Western education, which accommodated Islam, its institutions, and scholars, and for the benefit of sons of the Fulani ruling classes as a matter of preference. (Ejiogu, 2011b: 152)

The above state of affairs canalized into the fabric of his patronage–clientage alliance with the Fulani Caliphate rulers and kept the missionary agencies at bay throughout the upper Niger basin. The paucity of qualified personnel to meet the needs for the MOSs then paved the way for young school certificate holders from the lower Niger to present themselves for enlistment into the Nigeria Regiment at the enlistment centers in Enugwu and Lagos at the outbreak of WWII.

The father of the co-author here is one of those enlistees. The day of his enlistment was 2 February 1941. In the detailed autobiographical diaries he kept then, he wrote,

When I had no luck for civil employment, I went and joined [the Army] by Feb. 2, 1941. My entering [the army] was not judged by age or height, but education [because] by then I was very small and young. (Ejiogu, 2011a: 1)

In an oral interview with the co-author here a few years before he passed on 2 May 2011 at the age of 97, young enlistee Royal Signals Corpsman Raymond Chilaka Ejiogu disclosed how his superb education as the holder of the standard six school leaving certificate at the time earned him a slot in the Royal Signals Corps instead of in the Regimental Signals Corps where other enlistees who were adjudged less qualified ended up in at enlistment. With that, his contingent of 25 new enlistees left Enguwu on 7 November 1941 after basic training and journeyed by rail to a destination that was undisclosed to them in keeping with wartime military security protocol, and upon arrival, they found out that they were in Lagos, the colonial capital.

Those of them who were assigned to the Royal Signal Corps later embarked a requisitioned merchant vessel and sailed out and arrived Accra, Gold Coast, now Ghana where they laid over for 5 days, before they sailed again and arrived Free Town, Sierra Leone where they spent 3 months and 20 days waiting for all-clear signal that the seas were safe from prowling German submarines. What became their destination was Mombasa, and then Nairobi, Kenya in East Africa which they arrived on 23 March 1942 after their vessel passed through Cape Town, East London, Port Elizabeth, and Durban, all in South Africa. Their brief stops in Cape Town and Durban for 4 and 6 days, respectively, gave young Royal Signals Corpsman, Ejiogu, and his comrades the chance to witness firsthand aspects of the emerging militarism that characterized insurgent Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa in the post-Anglo-Boer war era. Their time in Cape Town coincided with a public militaristic display that involved a mammoth parade involving Afrikaner males of all ages in military uniform and guns in the streets lined on both sides by their cheering women folks. Such display was prelude to the rabid nationalism fervor that swept the Afrikaner National Party into power in 1948 and paved the way for the systematic implementation of the rigid racist apartheid system of rule that horrified the conscience of global humanity for decades until it was dismantled following the release from jail on life sentence of Nelson Mandela and others who dedicated themselves to the resistance struggle to dismantle it for good.

Conclusion

Europe’s involvement in Africa evolved as a trajectory of organically linked events. The trans-Atlantic slave trade, the commodity trade that succeeded it following the abolition of the former by the participating Euro-American powers, the conquest and de facto colonial occupation of the continent, the extraction of much needed material human manpower for the prosecution of the two World Wars are not episodic European endeavors in Africa. All six endeavors are organically related and are better understood when viewed and analyzed as that, which is exactly was done in the narrative here in this article.