The Forgotten Front

The Forgotten Front PDF Author: Ross Anderson
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750958731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Get Book

Book Description
The First World War began in East Africa in August 1914 and did not end until 13 November 1918. In its scale and impact, it was the largest conflict yet to take place on African soil. Four empires and their subject peoples were engaged in a conflict that ranged from modern Kenya in the north to Mozambique in the south. The campaign combined heroic human endeavour and terrible suffering, set in some of the most difficult terrain in the world. The troops had to cope with extremes that ranged from arid deserts to tropical jungles to formidable mountains and almost always on inadequate rations.Yet the East African campaign has languished in undeserved obscurity over the years with many people only vaguely aware of its course of events. Indeed, Humphrey Bogart’s famous film, The African Queen, inspired by an episode of the campaign, often provides its only lasting image.The Forgotten Front is the first full-scale history of this neglected campaign. Ross Anderson details both the fighting and the strategic and political background to the war and the differing viewpoints of the principal protagonists

The Forgotten Front

The Forgotten Front PDF Author: Ross Anderson
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750958731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Get Book

Book Description
The First World War began in East Africa in August 1914 and did not end until 13 November 1918. In its scale and impact, it was the largest conflict yet to take place on African soil. Four empires and their subject peoples were engaged in a conflict that ranged from modern Kenya in the north to Mozambique in the south. The campaign combined heroic human endeavour and terrible suffering, set in some of the most difficult terrain in the world. The troops had to cope with extremes that ranged from arid deserts to tropical jungles to formidable mountains and almost always on inadequate rations.Yet the East African campaign has languished in undeserved obscurity over the years with many people only vaguely aware of its course of events. Indeed, Humphrey Bogart’s famous film, The African Queen, inspired by an episode of the campaign, often provides its only lasting image.The Forgotten Front is the first full-scale history of this neglected campaign. Ross Anderson details both the fighting and the strategic and political background to the war and the differing viewpoints of the principal protagonists

The First Victory

The First Victory PDF Author: Andrew Stewart
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300222203
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book

Book Description
“Exciting . . . a comprehensive account of an overlooked campaign in which an outnumbered imperial army destroyed Mussolini’s dream of a new Roman Empire.” —Ashley Jackson, author of Churchill Surprisingly neglected in accounts of Allied wartime triumphs, this is the story of the British and Commonwealth forces who, against all odds, completed a stunning and important victory in East Africa against an overwhelmingly superior Italian opponent in 1941. A hastily formed British-led force, never larger than 70,000 strong, advanced along two fronts to defeat nearly 300,000 Italian and colonial troops. This compelling book draws on an array of previously unseen documents to provide both a detailed campaign history and a fresh appreciation of the first significant Allied success of the war. Andrew Stewart investigates such topics as Britain’s African wartime strategy; how the fighting forces were assembled (most from British colonies, none from the U.S.); General Archibald Wavell’s command abilities and his difficult relationship with Winston Churchill; the resolute Italian defense at Keren, one of the most bitterly fought battles of the entire war; the legacy of the campaign in East Africa; and much more. “The First Victory is that rarity of military history: groundbreaking research combined with first-rate narrative skills.” —Open Letters Includes maps and photographs

My Reminiscences of East Africa

My Reminiscences of East Africa PDF Author: Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck (20 March 1870 – 9 March 1964) was a general in the Imperial German Army and the commander of its forces in the German East Africa campaign. For four years, with a force that never exceeded about 14,000 (3,000 Germans and 11,000 Africans), he held in check a much larger force of 300,000 British, Belgian, and Portuguese troops. Essentially undefeated in the field, von Lettow-Vorbeck was the only German commander to successfully invade imperial British soil during World War I. His exploits in the campaign have come down "as the greatest single guerrilla operation in history, and the most successful." [Source: Wikipedia]

Guerillas of Tsavo

Guerillas of Tsavo PDF Author: James G. Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789966757135
Category : Africa, East
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description


The Battle of Adwa

The Battle of Adwa PDF Author: Raymond Jonas
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674062795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book

Book Description
In March 1896 a well-disciplined and massive Ethiopian army did the unthinkable-it routed an invading Italian force and brought Italy's war of conquest in Africa to an end. In an age of relentless European expansion, Ethiopia had successfully defended its independence and cast doubt upon an unshakable certainty of the age-that sooner or later all Africans would fall under the rule of Europeans. This event opened a breach that would lead, in the aftermath of world war fifty years later, to the continent's painful struggle for freedom from colonial rule. Raymond Jonas offers the first comprehensive account of this singular episode in modern world history. The narrative is peopled by the ambitious and vain, the creative and the coarse, across Africa, Europe, and the Americas-personalities like Menelik, a biblically inspired provincial monarch who consolidated Ethiopia's throne; Taytu, his quick-witted and aggressive wife; and the Swiss engineer Alfred Ilg, the emperor's close advisor. The Ethiopians' brilliant gamesmanship and savvy public relations campaign helped roll back the Europeanization of Africa. Figures throughout the African diaspora immediately grasped the significance of Adwa, Menelik, and an independent Ethiopia. Writing deftly from a transnational perspective, Jonas puts Adwa in the context of manifest destiny and Jim Crow, signaling a challenge to the very concept of white dominance. By reopening seemingly settled questions of race and empire, the Battle of Adwa was thus a harbinger of the global, unsettled century about to unfold.

The Gold Coast Regiment in the East African Campaign

The Gold Coast Regiment in the East African Campaign PDF Author: Sir Hugh Charles Clifford
Publisher: London : J. Murray
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book

Book Description


Violent Intermediaries

Violent Intermediaries PDF Author: Michelle R. Moyd
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821444875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Get Book

Book Description
The askari, African soldiers recruited in the 1890s to fill the ranks of the German East African colonial army, occupy a unique space at the intersection of East African history, German colonial history, and military history. Lauded by Germans for their loyalty during the East Africa campaign of World War I, but reviled by Tanzanians for the violence they committed during the making of the colonial state between 1890 and 1918, the askari have been poorly understood as historical agents. Violent Intermediaries situates them in their everyday household, community, military, and constabulary roles, as men who helped make colonialism in German East Africa. By linking microhistories with wider nineteenth-century African historical processes, Michelle Moyd shows how as soldiers and colonial intermediaries, the askari built the colonial state while simultaneously carving out paths to respectability, becoming men of influence within their local contexts. Through its focus on the making of empire from the ground up, Violent Intermediaries offers a fresh perspective on African colonial troops as state-making agents and critiques the mythologies surrounding the askari by focusing on the nature of colonial violence.

Race, Empire and First World War Writing

Race, Empire and First World War Writing PDF Author: Santanu Das
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052150984X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Get Book

Book Description
Drawing upon fresh archival material this book recovers the experience of different ethnic groups during the First World War conflict.

Britain, South Africa and the East Africa Campaign 1914-1918: The Union Comes of Age

Britain, South Africa and the East Africa Campaign 1914-1918: The Union Comes of Age PDF Author: Anne Samson
Publisher: Tsl Publications/Gwaa
ISBN: 9781913294342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book

Book Description
Contains original material on an under-researched period in British and South African history. An unusual approach - writing colonial history from the perspective of all the countries involved, this work sheds new light on greater historical processes of British and German rivalry in Africa and the development of an independent South Africa. The East African campaign has held little place in national memory - for Britain, it has been a 'romantic' side-show whilst for South Africa, a reminder of its failure to unite the two dominant white races and acquire the port of Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa. Using new material gained from original research, Anne Samson reassesses the importance of the campaign to the young South African dominion in attempting to prove its coming of age and pursue its imperial desires. "Britain, South Africa and the East African Campaign" is a comprehensive study from multiple perspectives of the key players that will illuminate this under-researched period in colonial history.

The East African Campaign of World War I

The East African Campaign of World War I PDF Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781974503254
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Get Book

Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the campaign *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood." - German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck World War I, also known in its time as the "Great War" or the "War to End all Wars," was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite. Tens of millions of artillery shells and untold hundreds of millions of rifle and machine gun bullets were fired in a conflict that demonstrated man's capacity to kill each other on a heretofore unprecedented scale, and as always, such a war brought about technological innovation at a rate that made the boom of the Industrial Revolution seem stagnant. World War I was the first truly industrial war, and it created a paradigm which reached its zenith with World War II and towards which virtually all equipment, innovation and training were dedicated throughout the Cold War and the remainder of the 20th century. To this day, modern warfare remains synonymous with tanks and mass infantry battles, although a confrontation of this nature has not occurred (except briefly during Operation Desert Storm) since World War II. The enduring image of World War I is of men stuck in muddy trenches, and of vast armies deadlocked in a fight neither could win. It was a war of barbed wire, poison gas, and horrific losses as officers led their troops on mass charges across No Man's Land and into a hail of bullets. While these impressions are all too true, they hide the fact that trench warfare was dynamic and constantly evolving throughout the war as all armies struggled to find a way to break through the opposing lines. Most books and documentaries about the war focus on the carnage of the trenches, depicting the ceaseless bombardment and sniping, and the assaults and counterattacks that took millions of lives. This was the experience of most frontline soldiers during that great conflict, but it was not the only experience, even as people immediately think of the Western Front when World War I springs to mind. As it turned out, the East African Campaign would be the longest campaign of the war, lasting from its outbreak in mid-1914 to the Armistice in late 1918. The campaign was fought in three phases. The first took the form of an under-strength British colonial force defending the infrastructural assets of Kenya, Uganda, and Nyasaland against attacks from an aggressive German garrison operating from within German East Africa. This encompassed the period from the outbreak of war until early 1916, during which time neither the British Imperial Government nor South Africa was in a position to effectively intervene. The second phase began upon the arrival of a substantial imperial force in the wake of the Allied victory in South West Africa, which allowed the allies to claim the initiative and put the Germans on the run. The third phase, beginning in early 1917, saw a lapse into guerrilla tactics by a remnant German colonial force, operating under no particular illusion of victory and with no higher purpose than to tie up large deployments of Allied manpower. The East African Campaign of World War I: The History and Legacy of the Allied Victory over Germany in East Africa examines one of the most unique campaigns of the Great War. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about World War I's East African Campaign like never before.