bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1987) — Fall 1987 // Automne 1987, pp. 59–60
The Great War in Africa by Byron Farwell,
W.W. Norton & Company, New York and
London, 1986, 382 pp.
Early in this fine book, Farwell takes his readers to a London courtroom. “A witness spoke of a message [received from] Togoland. The judge comfortably enquired, Where is Togoland?’ ’It is one of those places we have recently acquired my lord, ’Cheap?’ asked the judge.”
Most Canadians would be similarly baffled unless Togoland, now Benin, has suffered war, drought and famine. Yet, more than any other area of the world, it is the sufferings of sub-saharan Africa which capture the hearts of Canadians and mobilize their generosity or, in the case of South Africa, their outrage. Except by inheritance, we have no imperial laurels and no imperial guilt and it would be ignoble to look for motives other than the national wish to do good internationally where there is good to be done.
The Europeans by contrast have much to answer for in Africa, some good and some bad. By 1914, the Europeans had reached the apogee of imperial acquisition imposing and changing national borders to settle their rivalries and suit their convenience. The Europeans brought modern administration, health, education and modest economic development to their colonies. In 1914, they brought their war. By the end, the Germans were chased out of Africa and their holdings parcelled out among the British, French, Belgians and South Africans.
The Great War in Africa is less a history than a stirring tale of adventurers, heroes, eccentrics, knaves, and fools. Unlike the war in Europe which rapidly descended into the bestiality of immobilized trench warfare, the African campaigns were fought on land and sea, on great lakes and mighty rivers, in vast deserts and steaming swamps and jungles. The distances and the terrain were of astonishing variety, much of it unmapped Disease, hunger, swarms of bees and charging rhinoceri were as much a danger to the combatants as the deadly business of war.
When the war began, the Germans invoked the 1885 “Treaty of the Conventional Basin of the Congo,” providing that in the event of war between the Great Powers, neutrality would be observed in Africa. The British and French promptly declared that this provision was facultative rather than obligatory, a fine if convenient distinction. Having summarily dealt with the German legal position, they proceeded to vanquish the small German forces in short and relatively bloodless campaigns in Togoland, the Cameroons and Southwest Africa.
The campaign in German East Africa, modern day Tanzania and Rwanda-Burundi was different. The undoubted hero of this tale is the German commander, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, a Prussian officer, the best of the old German army, erect with short cropped graying hair, correct, distant, efficient and adored by his troops, Germans and Africans alike. He came to Africa in 1913 on the same ship as Karen Dinesen of Out of Africa fame. When war came, Lettow- Vorbeck quickly organized his small army and defeated the British, invading from Kenya, in a series of bloody engagements before preparing and executing a successful guerilla war. Although he faced forces ten times his size, and was totally isolated from his homeland without hope of reinforcement or resupply, he led the British on a four year chase through the colony, into Mozambique and Northern Rhodesia. Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered only when the European war ended.
On the British side, the hero was the South African, Jan Smuts who had fought with the Boers 14 years before. In 1916, he took command of a tattered, rag-tag, demoralized force of British regulars, Indian Army contingents, West African troops and armed settlers and welded them into the army that chased Lettow-Vorbeck. Smuts left East Africa in 1917 and became a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and a trusted advisor of Lloyd George.
It was the East African campaign that witnessed major sea and lake battles. The German light cruiser, Konigsberg sought shelter from the Royal Navy in the swamps and delta of the Rufiji river south of Dar es Salaam. Two monitors, shallow draught gun platforms were towed from Britain and sent up the delta to do battle. Although the Konigsberg was wrecked, there were few casualties and the crew and the eleven big guns of the ship joined Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces.
There were several battles fought on Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria, one of which inspired C.S. Forester to write, and subsequently Bogart and Hepburn to make, The African Queen. To confront armed German steamers on Lake Tanganyika, the British brought two modified heavy lifeboats from Capetown by road and rail to the lake-head. By miraculous teats of endurance and improvisation and with healthy infusions of good luck, the boats armed with small cannon survived the journey and sank the German ships. The British commander of this fantastic expedition was Commander Spicer- Simpson, a passed over officer with a well-earned reputation for bungling. Rescued from the obscurity of the Navy Pay office, he redeemed himself in this campaign.
This is a fine book on Africa and the Great War. Farwell is the master of his subject and his style is lucid and entertaining. Two small complaints.
First, like so many other military historians, he has been betrayed by his mapmakers. There are too few maps and they are badly placed. There is some compensation in the good selection of photographs. Second, what happened to von Lettow-Vorbeck? He left Africa with his honour intact and his military reputation enhanced. Farwell tells us that he became mixed up with right wing army politics and abortive putsches of the 1920s. Did he then fade into total obscurity and play no role in the great events of the 30’s and the Second World War?
Churchill observed that on the Western Front, there were too many men and not enough land for them to fight on. He could have said the opposite of the African campaigns. The great enemy of both sides was disease. Farwell treats his readers to a stomach-turning chapter on the enormous variety of tropical diseases, their effect on the body and mind and the general absence of efficient remedy. The casualties suffered from disease outnumbered by 30 to 40 to one those inflicted by guns or cannons. Farwell observes that, “When all the surviving combatants had returned to their homes, the bugs and bacteria remained in possession of the field. Unconquered. The true victors of the East African Campaign.”
The African campaigns were a sideshow of the Great War. Only the continued occupation of Namibia by South Africa acquired under League of Nations trusteeship is an enduring legacy. In one small respect, however, the African war made its mark on the larger events. In 1916, the Liberal- Conservative coalition of Asquith-Bonar Law was nearly defeated by a Conservative revolt against a bill providing for the sale of confiscated German and Austrian property in the British colonies. This seemingly trivial affair was regarded as a vote of censure on the Coalition’s conduct of the war. Asquith, last of the great Edwardian Prime Ministers, literate, romantic, civilized, cultured, the best embodiment of a gilded age, fell from power and in his place raced the scheming, unscrupulous, unprincipled, rabble rousing, demagogue, mercurial Welsh magician, Lloyd George. Such a nice man, Asquith and what a scoundrel, Lloyd George!
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1987) — Fall 1987 // Automne 1987, pp. 59–60. Read the rest of this issue →
