ARTICLE: Africans in Africa in the First World War

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In case you haven’t noticed by now, I do like to pull people’s brains in new directions, and I frequently look at the historical underdog; whether it’s feisty Bedouin housewives or indigenous peoples in the Americas punted off their land. Today, it’s all about Africa, and the almost silent role of hundreds of thousands of African men and women who participated in the First World War.

More people are paying much more attention to logistics these days, and rightly so, because without railways, chains of supply and all of the grunt work going on in the background, no battles would get fought. Fighting troops would have nothing to eat, and nothing to shoot at each other with. Today I suppose I wanted to bring the experiences of those working in these roles in Africa to the forefront, and perhaps challenge you to look past the white faces in the photographs, and even the captions that we’ve been given. For example, this photo is of a lovely pontoon bridge. Fine. But it’s more than that, if you look more closely it’s also a photograph of a chain of African porters on the move in the employ of Belgium…