Great War in East Africa
Conference
The National Archives, London
14 July 2012
Great War in East Africa Conference
List of participants
Dr Bjarne Bendtsen, Aarhus University
Dr Tanja Buehrer, Berne, SOAS, GHIL
Peter Charlton, Independent researcher
Steve Eeles
Major (retired) Harry Fecitt MBE TD, Independent researcher, writer
Aimee Fox, Centre for War Studies, University of Birmingham
Dr Dan Gilfoyle, The National Archives
Massowa Haywood
Christopher Hill, Dix Noonan & Web
Tony Janes
Andrew Kerr, Author
Hugh McNair
Mahon Murphy, London School of Economics
Dr Myles Osborne, University of Colorado-Boulder
Kevin Patience, Military historian, author
Dr Ana Paula Pires, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Professor Maria Fernanda Rollo, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Dr Anne Samson, Independent historian, GWEAA
John Samson
John Sankey, British High Commissioner to Tanzania 1982-1985
John Siblon, Birkbeck College
Dr William Spencer, The National Archives
Daniel Steinbach, Trinity College Dublin, University of Exeter
Tim Tawney, ex-KAR/HMOCS, member Western Front Association
Alan Toms, Deputy Chairman BSAP Regimental Association
Sheila Tremlett, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London
Jan van der Fraenen, Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History
Colonel Tim Wright, Chairman The Military Historical Society
Dr Edmund Yorke, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
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Great War in East Africa Conference
Abstracts
Bjarne S. Bendtsen
‘Danes’ at war in East Africa: The case of the blockade runner SS Kronborg
Denmark managed to remain neutral throughout the First World War, but in times of total war with its
expanding use of Handelskrieg, the country obviously could not avoid the effects of the war altogether. A
rather bizarre effect was caused by the belligerents’ abuse of neutral flags at sea, which lead to increasingly
dangerous conditions for neutral sailors. My paper will deal with one such example of neutrality being applied
by a belligerent ship: the blockade runner SS Kronborg, and to the subsequent involvement of its Danish
speaking crew in the war in East Africa.
The 1864 war between Denmark and Prussia/Austria, which led to Denmark’s cession of Schleswig and
Holstein to Prussia, meant that about 30,000 ‘Danes’ had to fight in the German army in the world war 50
years later. Among these ‘Danish’ conscripts, a handful were picked for an adventurous voyage with a supply
ship, cunningly turned into the fake Danish SS Kronborg, bringing supplies to Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops in East
Africa and to the German cruiser SMS Königsberg, blockaded by British men of war in the Rufiji river delta in
Tanganyika. There are at least two memoirs published in Danish about Kronborg’s voyage and the crew’s
participation in Lettow-Vorbeck’s safaris: Nis Kock’s Sønderjyder vender hjem fra Østafrika (1938) and Anker
Nissen’s Sønderjylland Afrika tur retur (1962), and a fictionalized version of Kock’s experiences: the author
Christen P. Christensen’s Sønderjyder forsvarer Østafrika 1914-18 (1937). These books will be the primary
material for the paper, which will focus on the way the soldiers and the author described their participation in
the war, and how the books were received in the Danish public.
Tanja Bührer
Mass Mobilisation of Human Ressources within German East African during World War I
German defence plans for the African empire unanimously stated that in case of a World War, especially with
Great Britain as adversary, the German Navy will not be able to support the colonies. Thus, the colonies will be
cut off of any supplies from Imperial Germany. As the colonies had no strategic or economic values, proposals
for military rearmament were rejected. The military command therefore had to deal with the already deployed
colonial troops which were mainly designed for internal security and police work.
Apart of the settler colony German South West Africa, where the colonial troop consisted of Germans only, no
considerable reinforcements of the German settlers could be expected. In the Cameroons and German East
Africa the colonial troops consisted of African mercenaries (Askaris) placed under German leadership.
Accordingly, only reserve officers and NCOs of reserve would be conscripted. Volunteers could be
incorporated, but a survey in German East Africa has shown that the majority of the settlers were only willing
to defend their plot. A large number of military forces would run out of equipment and supplies within a short
period of time anyway. Thus, according to official defence plans, resistance should be put up only in the
backward interior in order to keep a part of the territory under German control until the end of the war and
keep intact the colonial infrastructure for the post-war order.
Against this background, it is very surprising that the Germans in East Africa waged a protracted campaign
which developed to a considerable side show of the Great War. About 180`000 soldiers and more than a
million military porters were deployed on these battlefields. This was mainly caused by the strategic change by
the Commander of the colonial troops, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. He intended to relentlessly exploiting the
colonial economic and human resources in order to relieve the Germans on the main theatre of war in Europe.
A vast majority of the male Africans was forced to serve as military porters and almost all Germans, regardless
of their fitness for service, became part of the troops.
The underlying paper approaches the East African campaign from the German perspective. It analyses how the
military command imposed its strategy on the civil authorities and examines the transformation of war
economy as well as the mass mobilisation of the inhabitants of the territory. Special attention will be given to
the treatment of the white settlers, in particular non-German populations like the Boers.
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Peter Charlton
"England Expects...the action of the "Guendolen" versus the "Hermann von Wissmann"
Control of Lake Nyasa was seen to be vital to winning the war as it provided the quickest and most efficient
means of moving men the length of the Nyasaland Protectorate. If it were not for using the Lake as a highway,
men and goods could only be moved by a number of rudimentary roads (or tracks) with bearers carrying all
freight as head loads. Though the British controlled 8 of the 9 largest lake steamers, the Germans could
threaten them with their solitary armed vessel. As soon as war broke out therefore the British gunboat
“Guendolen” with a complement of soldiers sailed to attack the “Hermann von Wissmann”. There were of
course a few problems, one of which was finding ammunition for the Guen’s single gun and another being the
absence of trained gun layers. Nevertheless, the enemy vessel was located, attacked and disabled. My
proposed paper describes the attack in some detail and goes on to mention some lesser actions involving the
German naval base at Spinxhaven, also the British fixation regarding rumours that the “von Wissmann” was
being refloated and fitted with heavy guns salvaged from the “Koenigsberg”.
Peter Charlton
The Defence of Karonga and the Battle of Kasoa
As soon as control of the Lake had been gained, the British moved forces up to Karonga near their northern
border which was threatened by German East Africa. At about the same time, the Germans (egged on by their
Commander, Col. von Lettow Vorbeck) raised forces to invade the Protectorate. The Germans were the first to
take the offensive, invading and capturing the village of Kaporo just north of Karonga. The British forces under
Captain Barton left a small garrison of a dozen Europeans and about 70 African policemen and soldiers to
defend Karonga. The remaining British units then split into three columns to attack Kaporo and marched north
straight between the two invading German columns. In the meantime the Germans attacked Karonga but were
driven off in disarray. Barton’s men meanwhile hurried back south and met the retreating German forces at
the Kasoa River where they were lucky enough to inflict a severe drubbing on the already demoralised German
forces. My proposed paper gives accounts of both these actions which effectively secured the Protectorate
from further attack and provided a secure southern base for Northey’s future invasion of GEA.
Harry Fecitt
Citations for military awards and the wealth of information that they can contain
Infantry tactics and fighting dominated the Great War East African Campaign, as opposed to elsewhere where
artillery action could dominate proceedings. Learning about the realities of infantry fighting in the bush during
the Campaign is not easy as few personal accounts go into graphic detail. Unit War Diaries by their very nature
are short precise accounts of unit activities during a certain time period. Citations for military awards that
appeared in the London Gazette were often truncated because of shortage of Gazette space. However if the
original citations can be located in War Diaries or in East Africa General Routine Orders (EAGROs) then often
much more detail is displayed and pictures of particular battlefields emerge. Also descriptions of individual
acts of courage and gallantry suddenly come into context and allow the researcher to enrich his or her
narrative with interesting detail. Some citations found in Unit War Diaries can expose details of
maladministration or command failure that would later be censored out of official citations published in
EAGROs or in the London Gazette. A few citations will be offered and commented on by the speaker and
hopefully this will lead to those present offering more citations that interest them; these can be placed into
context through general discussion for the benefit of all attending.
Andrew Kerr
I can never say enough about the men
The book tells the story of the Kashmir Rifles and their part in the campaign during 1914 -17. There are
wonderful photographs, many from family sources and other previously un published materials which are all
used to illustrate a tragic story culminating in only 20 fit men left standing. The author a former soldier is full of
admiration for the endurance of the ordinary soldier but critical of high commands lack of attention to supply.
A unique aspect of the story is that the Kashmir Rifles were the private army of the Maharajah and the few
British officers were on attachment – an extraordinary dual command system operated to great effect and the
achievements of the regiment have not really been given their just recognition.
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Mahon Murphy
Global links: German PoWs from the East Africa campaign
Much work has been done recently on bringing the extra-European theatre of the First World War out from
the over bearing shadow of the war in Europe and in particular that fought on the Western Front. It has now
become part of the course for any survey study or text book on the First World War to include a chapter on
the conflict in Asia and Africa. This paper will seek to highlight some links between the East African conflict and
the wider global arena of the war through the transnational movements of prisoners and their treatment in a
colonial context. The war in East Africa was linked to the war as a whole in many ways. Firstly, treatment of
prisoners of war in an African context was connected to how perceptions of prisoners should be treated under
a universal law. Standards which were applicable in Europe could not always work in Africa due to various local
factors as Daniel Steinbach has expertly shown. Prisoner treatment was also, as through a case study
highlighted below, a means to bring out contrasts in how each belligerent looked after its captives. Prisoner
treatment in Ahmednagar India could not compare with prisoner treatment in Germany, at least at the
beginning of the war. Secondly, the terms of surrender in Dar es Salaam which were initially dictated from the
Colonial Office caused logistical problems and were out of step with how the Admiralty and War Office had
enforced surrender on the other German colonies, leaving an enemy civilian population at large in the city.
Thirdly, repatriation of prisoners of war to Germany was initially seen as a viable option where in many
opinions, Germans could cause less problems for the British Empire as a whole at home in Germany than they
could through loitering around the Dominions and colonies. The blockade changed all this. Finally and related
to the first point, the British too were very concerned with maintaining racial hierarchies in post-war East
Africa, this will be highlighted through the treatment of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and other German Officers
upon their surrender. Most of the primary source material used in this paper was collected from the Foreign,
Colonial, and War Offices at the National Archives.
Myles Osborne
“Martial Race” and the First World War in East Africa
One of the major concerns of British administrators as they undertook the “Scramble for Africa” during the late
nineteenth century was to find auxiliaries for fighting local wars. As a result of experiences in India following
the Mutiny of 1857, recruitment was carried out based on the “martial races imperative.” Sudanese, Swahili,
or other Muslims were considered ideal for service, with East Africa’s Bantu-speaking peoples – the majority –
deemed “unfit” for war. But during the First World War – due to the sheer amount of manpower required – it
was impossible to recruit sufficient numbers from established martial races. Officials therefore turned to
peoples like the Nandi, Maasai, and Kamba to bolster their forces.
This paper rethinks the concept of martial races. Rather than viewing the category as an imperial designation,
it instead argues that African peoples took on the label, and then utilized it to procure advantages from the
colonial administration. The argument of this paper is based on extensive archival research on three
continents, and oral interviews with over 160 Kamba, a Kenyan ethnic group that by the 1940s was considered
East Africa’s premier martial race. For Kamba, the First World War provided an opportunity to gain honor and
respect in the same way as warriors and hunters had in the nineteenth century. With hunting restricted after
the British entered Kenya, and “raiding” impossible, Kamba youth turned to soldiering to express these social
values. The war became a central part of group memory, and Kamba created stories about how they singlehandedly defeated the Germans. By the 1940s, Kamba soldiers were using their reputation to warn the
colonial administration of dire consequences if their demands for education and development funding were
not met.
Maria Fernanda Rollo & Ana Paula Pires
War and Empire: Portuguese East Africa and economic warfare (1914-1919)
The African continent remains nowadays – like during the First World War – a worldwide issue of central
nature, as evidenced by the recent EU/Africa summit held during the Portuguese presidency of the European
Union.
Regarding Africa throughout the 20th century thus equals considering a stage in permanent mutation, where
different elements arising from internal dynamics – yet influenced by realities foreign to the continent –
interact and connect with each other. The observation tends toward greater accuracy and thoroughness once
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we manage to channel it in order to focus on more specific realities, such as the situation resulting from the
outburst of World War I in the summer of 1914.
Portuguese East Africa, stands out as an agent in the globalization process; both as (i) an element of direct
action, particularly through the exploitation of its natural resources in the widest sense possible, but also
through the unique features of its political situation as regards international relations, as well as (ii) by the role
it played as a crossroads and connection and passage platform for various material and immaterial flows at a
worldwide scale, one should bear in mind the influence of British territories, in particular South Africa.
It is worth mentioning that during the “Belle Époque” the network of transactions of goods and people had
spread bringing closer to the centre of the world-economy remote and peripheral places, like the African
territories. It was then that Mozambique gained a global dimension, and began, considering its geo-strategic
importance in East Africa and the relevance of its natural resources, to be disputed by both Britain and
Germany.
This paper aims at exploring in a critical and integrated view the main policies and measures (or on the lack
thereof) carried out during the Portuguese First Republic in the field of production development, as well as in
the search for the instruments necessary to boost the recovery of East African colonial markets, in an attempt
– with varied degrees of success – to minimize the effects of external dependency, particularly as regards basic
necessities.
From a strategic point of view we will also consider, questioning their role and importance, the new means of
transport and communications: railways, steamboats, and particularly, the telegraph and wireless
communications, bearing in mind their impact in Mozambique, namely their importance as tools of defense
and safeguard of the empire.
The economy is thus the starting point for highlighting the international and multiracial nature of the Great
War, with impacts and consequences falling vastly beyond the territories covered by European remembrance,
rather spanning across the collective global memory.
William Spencer
Resources and sources at The National Archives, Kew
A discussion of the resources and sources available here at Kew to research the war in East Africa. Rather than
just show how the catalogue works, I will discuss both the obvious and less obvious sources and how even in
the last 10 years, more sources which can be used for research, have become available and more easily
identifiable.
Daniel Steinbach
The Internment of ‘Enemy Aliens’ in German East Africa during the First World War
The First World War is in German East Africa was – and to some extent still is – predominantly remembered as
a ‘gentlemen’s war’ in which the opponents conducted the war according to rules which upheld the power and
prestige of the ‘white man’. This paper aims to challenge this view by examining the treatment of prisoners of
war and civilian internees by the authorities in German East Africa.
This paper will firstly examine the situation in the first months of the war. At this time, both British and
German colonial governments started to arrest “enemy aliens”, mainly businessmen, planters and
missionaries. These actions targeted Europeans, who, in some cases, had been living in the colony for decades
and who held important positions in the colonial hierarchy. Their arrest and following internment undermined
the paradigm of white supremacy, which was overshadowed by nationalistic war patriotism.
Secondly, the conditions of internment will be addressed as this represented the end of an unified European
solidarity in Africa. Unlike the British, who were able to deport German prisoners to camps outside the war
zone, the Germans had to deal with their prisoners on the spot. While African combatants, who were held in
worse conditions in separate camps, were often released after a short time if they joined their former enemy’s
troops, European prisoners were held up to three years. Different to the practise in Europe, in Africa civilian
and military detainees of all nationalities were held together. This changed the dynamic of the ‘camp culture’
significantly, as the construction of a supportive community within the camps proved to be difficult.
Punishment in the camps was often based on forcing prisoners to overstep symbolic racial boundaries, which
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were central to colonial thinking and practice. Detention in ‘native huts’, manual labour, and parades on the
camp ground were merely intended to humiliate the white prisoners.
German and British newspapers published during the war, and memoirs of former internees published
afterwards, were preoccupied with the idea that ‘white prestige’ had suffered irreversibly through internment
of Europeans. However, this notion could be effectively countered by promoting the fair conduct of all parties
on the African battlefield, (i.e., the ‘gentleman’s war’), a narrative that ultimately took hold.
Jan Van der Fraenen
Let the collection tell its history! The East African campaign in the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of
Military History, Belgium
The Royal Military Museum is presently preparing the centennial of the Great War. One of its projects is the
renewal of its permanent First World War exhibition. A theme that will be presented to the public is the war in
Africa. Largely unknown to the general public today, Belgian colonial troops actively assisted the British troops
in the conquest of German East Africa in 1916-1917. In this paper I will focus on our collection pieces, their
history and the wealth of information these pieces contain. How can we properly present the events in Africa
to our public today?
By looking at several museum collection pieces and their history, we can give the future visitor of the museum
an interesting overview of the Belgian campaigns in Africa, how this war was fought and how it was so much
different from the war in Europe.
Timothy Wright
The British South Africa Police and the Northern Rhodesia Police at the Front
The police were the first line of defence in both Southern (Zimbabwe) & Northern (Zambia) Rhodesia, but their
responsibility for the maintenance of law and order internally continued throughout. Northern Rhodesia had
borders with both German South West Africa (Namibia) and German East Africa. Provision for the defence of
both fronts had to be made until the surrender of German South West Africa in July 1915. Only then could the
two forces deploy a battalion sized force, Murray's Column, against German East Africa.
Tim Wright, author of The History of the Northern Rhodesia Police, will describe the role of the police as first
line infantry; In the Defence of Northern Rhodesia through to the invasion of German East
 From the return from the pursuit of Wintgens in July 1917 to the return from Mozambique in
September 1918
 The end-game in October and November 1918.
Edumund Yorke
War of the Tenga Tenga: A crisis of colonial control in Northern Rhodesia, 1916-1918
This paper examines the political, economic and social impact of the Great War upon Northern Rhodesia. The
impact of what was effectively constituted 'total war', of mass war labour levies upon Northern Rhodesia's
already highly vulnerable and deeply underdeveloped political economy, culminating in a full-blown crisis of
colonial control by 1918, is closely analysed. It will be shown that the unprecedented level of unrelenting food
and labour demands following the 1916 Northey offensive caused not only a chronic failure of indigenous
agricultural systems on the north-east plateau and elsewhere but rising political protest which eventually
forced the imperial authorities to impose a territorial -wide ban on compulsory war carrier recruitment after
September 1918. Statistical evidence will be presented in the form of mass desertions, tax crises and rising
crime levels, which alongside the deleterious impact of Spanish influenza and the unexpected German
invasion, culminated in the rapid rise of the virulently anti-colonial WatchTower and Butwa African protest
movements. It will also be argued that only widespread colonial repression both before and after the Armistice
, notably the 1916 Native Proclamation Act and the 1919 Kasama mass trials of WatchTower adherents,
prevented a complete breakdown of colonial authority and a spread of disorder which might have exceeded
that of the earlier 1915 Chilembwe Rising in neighbouring Nyasaland. The war will be portrayed as an early but
significant catalyst to the development of African nationalism in Northern Rhodesia.
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