ABSTRACT
This article offers an overview of the extent of the Empire’s participation in the First World War and an assessment of the only major published work on the topic, Sir Charles Lucas’s The Empire at War. The breadth of the imperial war experience was vast. Not only were there heavy casualties among troops from Australasia, the Americas, and Asia in European and Mediterranean theatres, but military operations extended across much of Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific, affecting place as diverse as Aden, Cameroon, Darfur, Fanning Island, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Sinai Peninsula, Tanzania and Tsingtao. The war histories of the imperial ‘big five’—Australia, Canada (including Newfound-
land), India, New Zealand and South Africa-are well documented. India sent 938,000 men overseas, Canada 458,000, Australia 332,000, New Zealand 112,000 and South Africa 136,000 (excluding non-whites). But the large range of obscure formations recruited in the Empire’s other territories were significant too. Many colonies provided forces for local defence, thereby releasing British and other imperial troops for service in the war theatres. But most colonies also sent men on active service overseas. These formations included the 900-strong Chinese Labour Corps recruited in Amoy and Singapore and sent to Basra for service in the Mesopotamia campaign. A much larger Chinese Labour Corps of 140,000 men was recruited by the British for service in France.1
Malaya and Singapore also provided skilled Chinese artisans for work in East Africa and Mesopotamia, and the Malay Ford Van Motor Company saw service in both Mesopotamia and Persia. The Hong Kong and Singapore Mountain Battery, meanwhile, served in Egypt, Palestine and Sinai, and Ceylon sent water transport units to
Mesopotamia as well as the Ceylon Sanitary Company.2 Fourteen Fijians were killed at Ypres fighting with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and the 100 men of the Fiji Labour Detachment performed transport duties in Calais, Marseilles and Italy. Of the 788 Fijians who joined the forces, 131 died. These colonial subjects also served at sea or perished at sea, such as the 607 Basotho of the South African Native Labour Contingent who went down with the SS Mendi off the Isle of Wight in 1917, remembered in Lesotho but not remembered in Britain. The war experience of these men is as important as that of the digger, sepoy, or tommy on the Western Front. Beyond military activities and the recruitment of soldiers, imperial territories experi-
enced numerous war-related effects on the home front. Colonial labour for military tasks was in great demand across the Empire. Some colonies suffered the predations of battle, some performed important strategic roles as bases for warships or soldiers and as training, hospital and prisoner of war centres. In some colonies, social and political issues, such as conscription, the demand for constitutional reform and nationalist protest, led to friction. All colonial societies were shaped by the economic side effects of a global war. Demand for certain products reached unprecedented heights; markets opened or were constricted by enemy activity at sea; inflation and the cost of living rose; and food scarcity threatened. For many people on the colonial and semi-colonial peripheries, flu and famine were war’s main bequests. In Calcutta, Cairo, London and the Dominion capitals politicians and proconsuls pursued imperial ambitions in order to shore up British world power. When the war ended, the British Empire expanded significantly through the incorporation of conquered territories just as Wilsonian self-determination was fostering a new, anti-imperial climate, and soldier settlement schemes tempted British ex-servicemen to begin new lives in select colonies.3
