Battling on a different front: World War One and the rhetoric of citizenship for service

Abstract

ABSTRACTWorld War One brought large numbers of people of color into contact in the relatively short period of four years. During this time communities of colonial subjects and of African Americans were drawn into the war. They actively observed the war, its impact on their own communities, and its impact on other people of color. Throughout the world the war intensified the growing scrutiny of racial oppression in the nascent anti-colonial and pan-African movement. Confronted with a global war, leaders of the African American community, along with leaders of various colonial peoples, persuaded men and women in their communities to support the Allied war effort. They encountered opposition in doing so but also support. And they encountered each other’s struggles. In each of their own national contexts they employed a rhetoric of citizenship for service. Exploring their rhetoric illustrates the global and entangled nature of the histories of people of color during the war. It shows how the war forged new connections between them and laid the foundations for the vibrant pan-African and anti-colonial movements after the war. The following article traces the speech and writing of leaders and of the pro-war press from India, New Zealand, America and French West Africa. During the war colonized and racially oppressed people around the globe acted upon the reasoned and reasonable hope that their contributions to the war effort in the war would win them political rights. Each group was engaged in a war against racial oppression alongside their battles in global World War One fronts. Their struggles were entangled but not one and the same. That had been true before the war but the experience of recruitment and the deferred promises of citizenship for service intensified both the forces of solidarity and of local struggle and identification. That tension was to continue long after the war.