Table Of ContentColonial Encounters in a Time
of Global Conflict, 1914–1918
This volume gathers an international cast of scholars to examine the
unprecedented range of colonial encounters during the First World War.
More than four million men of colour, and an even greater number of white
Europeans and Americans, crisscrossed the globe. Others, in occupied areas,
behind the warzone or in neutral countries, were nonetheless swept into
the maelstrom. From local encounters in New Zealand, Britain and East
Africa to army camps and hospitals in France and Mesopotamia, from cafes
and clubs in Salonika and London, to anti-colonial networks in Germany,
the USA and the Dutch East Indies, this volume examines the actions and
experiences of a varied company of soldiers, medics, writers, photographers
and revolutionaries to reconceptualise this conflict as a turning point in
the history of global encounters. How did people interact across uneven
intersections of nationality, race, gender, class, religion and language?
How did encounters – direct and mediated, forced and unforced – shape
issues from cross-racial intimacy and identity formation to anti-colonial
networks, civil rights movements and visions of a post-war future? The 12
chapters delve into spaces and processes of encounter to explore how the
conjoined realities of war, race and empire were experienced, recorded and
instrumentalised.
Santanu Das is Professor of English and Senior Research Fellow at All Souls
College, Oxford.
Anna Maguire is a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen
Mary, University of London.
Daniel Steinbach is a historian of European colonial history and teaches at
the University of Copenhagen.
Routledge Studies in First World War History
Series Editor
John Bourne
The University of Birmingham, UK
The First World War is a subject of perennial interest to historians and is often
regarded as a watershed event, marking the end of the nineteenth century
and the beginning of the ‘modern’ industrial world. The sheer scale of the
conflict and massive loss of life means that it is constantly being assessed and
reassessed to examine its lasting military, political, sociological, industrial,
cultural and economic impact. Reflecting the latest international scholarly
research, the Routledge Studies in First World War History series provides
a unique platform for the publication of monographs on all aspects of the
Great War. Whilst the main thrust of the series is on the military aspects of
the conflict, other related areas (including cultural, visual, literary, political
and social) are also addressed. Books published are aimed primarily at a
post-graduate academic audience, furthering exciting recent interpretations
of the war, whilst still being accessible enough to appeal to a wider audience
of educated lay readers.
Spain and Argentina in the First World War
Transnational Neutralities
Maximiliano Fuentes Codera
The Global First World War
African, East Asian, Latin American and Iberian Mediators
Edited by Ana Paula Pires, Jan Schmidt, and María Inés Tato
After the Armistice
Empire, Endgame and Aftermath
Edited by Michael J.K. Walsh and Andrekos Varnava
Colonial Encounters in a Time of Global Conflict, 1914–1918
Edited by Santanu Das, Anna Maguire and Daniel Steinbach
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
history/series/WWI
Colonial Encounters in a Time
of Global Conflict, 1914–1918
Edited by Santanu Das, Anna Maguire
and Daniel Steinbach
First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Santanu Das, Anna Maguire
and Daniel Steinbach; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Santanu Das, Anna Maguire and Daniel Steinbach to be
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-08210-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-07210-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-11267-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315112671
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Contents
List of figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
Colonial encounters in a time of global conflict:
an introduction 1
SANTANU DAS, ANNA MAGUIRE AND DANIEL STEINBACH
PART I
Spaces: camp, city, colony 35
1 ‘A pageant of empire?’: untangling colonial encounters
in military camps 37
ANNA MAGUIRE
2 Urban spaces of cultural encounters: the Greek city
of Salonika in the First World War 57
NICOLE IMMIG
3 The British military occupation of Jerusalem, 1917–1920:
soldiers as tourists and pilgrims 79
MAHON MURPHY
4 Between intimacy and violence: imperial encounters in East
Africa during the First World War 98
DANIEL STEINBACH
vi Contents
PART II
Process: experience, commonalities and politicisation 123
5 Precarious encounters: South Asia, the war and
anti-colonial cosmopolitanism 125
SANTANU DAS
6 Songs of war and dissent: Maori anti-war activism and
its cultural legacy 149
RACHEL GILLETT
7 Blues in the trenches: John Jacob Niles’ Singing Soldiers 170
MICHAEL HAMMOND
8 The YMCA and West Indian pan-African encounters
during the First World War: the Drury Lane Club for
‘Coloured Sailors and Soldiers’ 190
RICHARD SMITH
PART III
Instrumentality: propaganda, resistance and the
post-war world 215
9 African American soldiers in a black world: the politics
of cultural interactions 217
JENNIFER D. KEENE
10 Influencing the Muslim world: the British propaganda
newspaper Al-Haqīqah 238
SADIA McEVOY
11 ‘Neutral colonials’ and the global war: the role of the
neutral Dutch East Indies and Indonesian intellectuals
in the German ‘Programme for Revolution’ 262
TESSA LOBBES
12 Germany’s Global East: worldmaking in The New Orient 287
JENNIFER JENKINS
List of contributors 310
Index 314
Figures
0.1 Two soldiers of the South African Native Labour Corps
seen during a ‘war dance’ and sports day. © Imperial War
Museum (Q 2382). 2
0.2 A page from the Gallipoli diary of Private Charles Stinson,
where an Indian had signed his name in English, Urdu and
Gurmukhi. Australian War Memorial, Canberra, PR 84/066. 7
0.3 A Maori lumber worker talking to a Frenchwoman. Forest
de Nieppe, March 1917. © Imperial War Museum (Q 4740). 8
0.4 Official photograph of the Dardanelles Expedition: French
Senegalese soldier giving a drink to a wounded French
soldier. No 2728, 1915. HAMILTON 7/12/168. King’s
College London Archives. 9
2.1 French colonial cavalry from Morocco on parade in
Salonika. © Imperial War Museum (Q 32800). 62
2.2 Allied and Greek officers entering a decorated hut for a
concert given by a French colonial regiment at their camp
near Salonika in March 1916. © Imperial War Museum
(Q 31856). 63
2.3 Framework of the Zeppelin LZ 85 set-up for public
exhibition near the White Tower, Salonika, May 1916.
© Imperial War Museum (Q 32031). 66
4.1 A cosmopolitan group: England, India, Africa, China.
© Imperial War Museum, A.F. Bowden, Documents.10049. 99
4.2 Anonymous photograph, Kigoma. Special Collections &
Galleries, Leeds University Library, AFE 02. 113
6.1 Te Puea. © Emily Johns, with thanks to Peace News. 150
8.1 The YMCA hut at Seaford. By permission of YMCA
England and Wales/Cadbury Research Library, University
of Birmingham, YMCA/K/1/21/125. 198
8.2 Two white women YMCA workers pose with black
soldiers and sailors outside the Coloured Men’s Club,
London. Australian War Memorial, H01356. 203
viii Figures
8.3 American and British soldiers and sailors outside the
YMCA Coloured Men’s Club buying badges from black
women volunteer workers, London 1919. Australian War
Memorial, H01350. 204
10.1 ‘This cannon throws its great shells in an arch trajectory
over mountains and forests hitting enemy installations,’
Al-Haqīqah. © British Library Board, Or.Mic.10535.
(Digitized as B20192–26). 244
10.2 ‘Indian askari guarding some wells in Palestine so they are
not damaged by Ottoman spies,’ Al-Haqīqah. © British
Library Board, Or.Mic.10535. (Digitized as B20192–27). 245
10.3 ‘Indian soldiers fighting with the English army in
Arab Iraq,’ Al-Haqīqah. © British Library Board,
Or.Mic.10535. (Digitized as B20192–28). 246
10.4 Feisal and Ronald Storrs (top), The Hashemite flag
designed by Mark Sykes and carried by Arab soldiers
(bottom), Al-Haqīqah. © British Library Board,
Or.Mic.10535. (Digitized as B20192–29). 248
10.5 Distribution of Satya Vani and Jangi Akbar from a
houseboat at the Hindu Mela Festival in India, 1918.
© British Library Board, IOR L/PS/10/581/567.
(Image taken by author). 254
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank, above all, the contributors for their patience, enthu-
siasm, good humour and commitment to this volume. We would also like to
thank Routledge and particularly Max Novick and Rob Langham for their
warm support and encouragement.
This volume is one of the outcomes of a three-year, collaborative research
project Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict: Colonials, Neutrals
and Belligerents During the First World War (CEGC) that ran from
2013 until 2016 and was funded by HERA (Humanities in the European
Research Area). Throughout the three years of the CEGC project’s duration,
we were fortunate to work alongside our wonderful co-investigators at
Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań), Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient
(Berlin) and Utrecht University. It was a very intense but thrilling period.
Our special gratitude goes to Natasha Awais-Dean, our project manager,
whose tremendous work with us at King’s College London, overseeing all
the project’s strands, was vital to its success. We thank Jan Brauburger,
Geert Buelens, Tessa Lobbes, Martyna Kliks, Heike Liebau, Larissa Schmid,
Natalia Stachura, Hubert van den Berg and Jennifer Wellington. We thank
the project’s associate partner organisations and collaborators, especially
Suzanne Bardgett (Imperial War Museum), Dominiek Dendooven (In
Flanders Fields Museum) and Elisabeth Tietmeyer (Museum of European
Cultures) for their invaluable help. We are grateful to all of the contributors
to the project’s digital sourcebook (http://sourcebook.cegcproject.eu): this
book mobilises ideas and content which first found a home there.
The book originated at a conference held at King’s College London in
January 2016 in conjunction with the German Historical Institute. We
would particularly like to thank Andreas Gestrich, then director of the GHI,
for his support facilitating the conference and the generous funding. It was
a memorable conference and we warmly remember all those who took part
and gave papers for their intellectual curiosity and generosity, which stimu-
lated many of our ideas for this volume.
Thank you to the Australian War Memorial, the British Library, the C adbury
Research Library, the Special Collections at the University of Birmingham,
the Imperial War Museum, the King’s College London Archives and the Leeds
University Library for granting permission to reproduce images in this book.
All efforts have been made to contact the copyright holders.
