War memory and the construction of hierarchy: representations of African and Caribbean colonial service personnel in the aftermath of the First World War

Siblon, John Basil (2024) War memory and the construction of hierarchy: representations of African and Caribbean colonial service personnel in the aftermath of the First World War. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

Before the First World War, one of the ways officials in British and colonies in Africa and the Caribbean buttressed their regimes was through the racialization of individuals who were conceptually arranged in a phenotypic hierarchy of power. ‘whites’ were at the apex, followed by those of mixed heritage in the Caribbean or Asians in Africa, and ‘Black’ subjects at the bottom. During the war, Britain and other imperial powers needed the ‘manpower’ of its colonies to secure defeat of their enemies. ‘Black’ South Africans and Caribbeans were permitted to volunteer in Europe. However, their service was racially codified depending on the theatre of war they were assigned to. On the Western Front, they were only allowed to serve as non-combatants which signified lesser status in a codified military hierarchy. In Africa, however, east and west African troops were combatants against askaris (colonial soldiers) under German command. At the end of the war, colonial officials deemed it politically imperative to return to the default racial hierarchical structure of white supremacy. This was partly achieved through cultural agency. Military, colonial, and governmental officials played their part in ensuring that, in the memory of the war, Black African and Caribbean servicemen were commemorated, appropriate to their status, in a constructed imperial hierarchy. I contend that most of the commemorative practices were constructed by remembering select groups, deliberately forgetting others. This sustained a false notion that the First World War was a victorious ‘white man’s war’ assisted by ‘loyal Aliens’ and auxiliaries. I maintain that a conceptual intersectional hierarchy framed through visual cues shaped the memory of the conflict.

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