Great War in Africa, 1914-1918 Essay

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The stench of heat and death was almost unbearable: "We lay there in the mud and retched from the stench of dead animals and watched the rats crawl over us" (Farwell 279). Farwell thus shows profound empathy for ordinary soldiers, forced to fight in a land far away from home under brutal conditions, amongst people they barely understood. Yet despite his willingness to acknowledge the role of Africans fighting the war, he does not seem to extend them the same emotional sympathy. Some of Farwell's more controversial assertions are his idea that in some areas, such as in German-controlled East Africa, colonial domination proved a boon to the natives. "German rule provided African people with new alternatives and a wider range of choices," he questionable asserts, because of the roads, mines, rail roads, new crops, and modern amenities bought to the nation (Farwell 117). He also shows British sympathies at times, such as when he calls the Kaiser's army "bellicose" but admits it was the British who caused the conflict to spill over into Africa, beginning with Togoland (Farwell 24-25). Yet Farwell's hero is the German leader Lettow-Vorbeck, whose extraordinary efforts and his ability to take advantage of "British inefficiency and sheet stupidity" won him an advantage time and time again, against all odds and allowed him to remain undefeated in the field, even after the British captured most of the territory containing valuable railroads and ports to the sea (Farwell 167). Farwell calls him a great general in the service of a bad empire and a bad monarch.

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The book contains many engaging incidents, like one British general in the South African campaign who employed his servant as an official 'water tester,' the test being if the boy dies, it must be poisoned (Farwell 92). The German regiments used a different tactic -- they did not drink water, but only drank bottled beer (Farwell 93). There is also an amusing story of how the Germans ordered their African servants to defecate and urinate over all of the property they had to abandon when in flight. Yet while as a work of narrative history, and a wonderful chronicle of some military eccentrics on both sides, the book is strong it raises more questions about the deeper effects of colonization on Africa (Farwell 70). Also, why did not more Africans refuse to serve the British and the Germans, given the way they were treated?

Farwell's book is more narrative than analytical. However, this does not make it without value. It provokes the reader to want to learn more, and provides a survey over the geography and cultures of Africa, before Africa became the nation-states of today. While by no means complete, it is a valuable introduction, and an entertaining series of tales that are effective in painting a picture of what military life was life during the Great War, before modern technology and new rules of warfare were….....

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