3 - Recruitment, Resistance and Memories of the First World War among the Terik of Kenya

Abstract

While the First World War was, from the Terik point of view, an unpopular and painful event, it inaugurated a deeper interaction between the British colonial government and the Terik. Terik memories of the war are complicated and ambivalent. Informants recall the war not only as a contest between the British and the Germans, but also as a time of widespread famine and forced recruitment. Driven by British anti-German propaganda, political anxieties and forced recruitment, Terik carriers and askari endured disease, suffering and death in the battlefields of East Africa between 1914 and 1918. These tragedies are deeply seared into Terik memories, but so are those of their bravery, heroism and being part of the victorious side. While they brought some economic and social benefits to the veterans, they also deepened British colonial cooptation of the Gapjepkoi ruling elite as well as its unpopularity among the Terik.