The Black African and his comrades as "Martial Races" in the Wars of Respect 1914
Instead of simping, when colonials fight for empire, they expect to be remembered and rewarded.
When war broke out in 1914 the British Expeditionary Force was rushed into the field. It was a highly professional force, but the nature of the war and new technology broke the pre-war assumptions. The BEF had suffered casualties approaching 70% by October 1914, only two months into the war. Despite the foolish German detour into Belgium which brought the British into the war, Germany had a chance to overwhelm the British—just barely—and force a minor Western defeat that potentially knocked France and the UK out of the conflict. But Germany was not at war with only Britain and France alone, it was fighting the strongest colonial empires in history. Germans have been called the tigers of the world, but they have no tigritude for tigers do not come from Germany.
As the British faltered at the First Battle of Ypres, 45,000 tigers leapt onto the battlefield. The Indian Expeditionary Force tore into the Germans and held the line. The Germans would not get out of the Western Front so easy. There would come a day when the sun would set on the empire, but it was not yet.
Mahatma Gandhi stood with the Empire and supported the war effort, but he also expected India to get something out of it.
This was the era of racist anthropology and eugenics, which ranked humanity based on inherent traits. This framework combined with real cultural differences to promote the idea that certain peoples were natural warriors. Now we can separate cultural analysis from the eugenics to focus on the practices within societies that made choosing military careers more likely and martial courage more frequent. Both the French and British empires were racial hierarchies: European supremacy over non-European peoples. And both empires assessed and categorized the qualities they found desirable in subjects. To the British, groups such as the Sikhs and Punjabis were called the "martial races" because they were deemed inherently better at fighting and therefore potentially best included as part of the imperial defense structure. Likewise, the French looked at the strongly built men of Senegal in West Africa and wanted them speaking French and in uniform as the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. Eventually men from all over French West African were enrolled in the ranks.
And, both London and Paris meant for the martial races to get into the German killing business which was booming in 1914. Being a “martial race” could win you privileges and opportunities in the pre-war era. But when the war started your “racial inferiority” could determine your odds for survival. The French considered the Tirailleurs Sénégalais as good for charges and less for the trenches, which predictably got a lot West Africans killed. As the war went on more men from the British and French colonial empires were brought to France to aid the war effort. With loses and increasing need, the British turned to Indians not of “martial race” background and extended the outreach to often overlooked minorities such as the 71st Punjabis aka the Punjab Christian Battalion. For the French side nearly 100,000 soldiers and workers came from French Indochina which impacted French and Vietnamese relations. And other colonial troops joined them.
As they died, more and more men in the trenches and folks back home advocated for political inclusion within the empires and not necessarily independence. Many wanted home rule, more equality and more opportunity. The empires were large markets, and there were incentives for activists and colonial patriots to not want to leave the British and French domains; rather they wanted to benefit from the system so that they were fighting for something for themselves not just to make European elites wealthy and secure.
But the imperial soldiers also got a better sense of who they actually were. India is amazingly diverse, and one way to overcome diversity is to get a bunch men from all over the country and throw them into a battle far from home where they have to fight together to survive. Soldiers of the IEF came back with a sense of Indianness they never had before. Likewise for the French colonials in Africa and Southeast Asia. And there was the leveling effect of the ladies.
It gets cold in northern France you see, and the military command was not always unfeeling, so they came up with hivernage, the idea of moving troops from tropical Africa to the south of France, the Mediterranean climate and the ladies of the Côte d'Azur did their part to keep them warm. That last part was not planned by the French authorities.
Men in uniform…so goes the saying, and from 1914-1918 France was more and more full of exotic looking men in uniform, who also spoke French. Let’s just say that French women did not always uphold the official policies of discrimination, and the authorities struggled with what to do about this as the women liked the soldiers and the soldiers were there to fight and die for France. These encounters demystified Europe, in fact just being in Europe demystified Europe. When colonials saw that poor Europeans were not living that much better than peasants back home, the idea of white supremacy was exposed as a fraud. Killing Germans also had that effect, as they won victories over the Kaiser’s men it was made clear that Europeans were not invincible—they dropped from bullets just like other men. All this combined to create the idea of a Blood Debt. The empire owed the colonials for their contribution. Failure to pay would have consequences.
The socialist and anti-colonial activist Nguyễn Sinh Cung was a Vietnamese patriot who showed up in 1919 to the Paris Peace conference to ask that liberal rights and self-determination be extended to his people. What happened instead was a deal between elites—local feudal aristocrats and colonial administrators—to work together to exploit the rest of the population. The French did not engage and try to steer Nguyễn Sinh Cung or his compatriots toward a non-socialist position or to bring about a political association between France and Indochina that would share the benefits of democracy and capitalism, as had been promised by the French Governor-general of Indochina, Albert Sarraut. Many people hated their local elites and now blamed France for ignoring their sacrifices during the war and siding with the homegrown exploiters. Nguyễn Sinh Cung could have be outmaneuvered or perhaps accommodated by an inclusive policy. Instead, we now know him as Ho Chi Mihn.
After 1.5 million men from India volunteered for the British Empire during the Great War, both Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah who would become the father of Pakistan thought that India would get autonomy within the Empire.
They got nothing for their efforts.
The black West Africans were both marginalized in official memory and used as props to humiliate the defeated Germans during the occupation of the Rhineland which the Germans—who felt just as superior as the French—called their Schwarze Schmach, Black Shame, because how dare the dark skinned soldiers who defeated us be used to occupy the vanquished. And like the rest, West Africa was kept under thumb and not given equality within the empire.
What would you do?
The 1776 Option
Well probably what Americans already did in 1776. So, we know the answer to that question.
Respect goes a long way when people fight beside you—like the Europeans did after 9/11. If you treat them with disrespect, be prepared to accept the consequences of that disrespect.
The American colonists had fought for the king against France and Spain in a series of intercolonial wars from 1690-1763, the last being the French and Indian War. For their pains, colonial legislator and soldier Colonel George Washington of Virginia and his colleagues were shut out of the Ohio country and told that the century-and-half old Virginia General Assembly could not police itself and had to pay taxes to a parliament in which they had no representation and did not want representation.
Then the rewards of the Ohio were opened to the Quebecois whom the Americans had helped defeat. And more taxes arrived from across the sea. And then Boston was militarily occupied for the crimes of a few dozen men. The Americans were disrespected; the Americans had bled for king and country, and the mother country showed ingratitude.
And, in retaliation they would be rid of that king and make his redcoats bleed.
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