FW: New Publication: How The Great War Razed East Africa

 

"The Great War in East Africa was above all a war against nature and a humanitarian disaster without parallel in the colonial era."    Tweet   Forward   Share   Share   +1 How The Great War Razed East Africa The first British shot of the Great War was fired in Africa, on 7 August 1914, by Regimental Sergeant-Major Alhaji Grunshi of the Gold Coast Regiment.  The final surrender of German troops in Africa did not take place until two weeks after the Armistice in Europe. In the intervening years, the scale and impact of the East Africa campaign, in particular, were gargantuan. The fighting in East Africa – as mobile as the trench warfare in Europe was static – engulfed 750,000 square miles, an area three times that of the German Reich. The financial cost to the Allies was comparable to that of the Boer War, itself Britain's most expensive conflict since the Napoleonic Wars. The official British death toll exceeded 105,000 soldiers and military carriers – far higher than that inflicted on the Indian, Australian or Canadian troops during the Great War whose contribution is so much more prominent in the popular imagination.  As the fighting criss-crossed East Africa, civilian populations suffered privation on a scale unimaginable in all but a few pockets of Europe. By the end of 1915 not a single community in the region was left untouched by the war. As the centenary of the outbreak of the "war to end all wars" is commemorated the troops, carriers and millions of civilians caught up in the fighting in East Africa must not be forgotten. Click here to read Edward Paice's Counterpoint on the destruction caused by the Great War in East Africa   Copyright © 2014 Africa Research Institute, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 55 Tufton St, London, SW1P 3QL