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WAR OF EMPIRES

What was the role of empire in World War I

Coming as it did at the height of European imperialism; the Great War quickly became a war of empires, with far-reaching repercussions. As the demands warfare rose, Europe's colonies provided soldiers material support. Britain, in particular, benefited from its vast network of colonial dominions and dependencies, bringing in soldiers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa. These colonial troops fought with the Allies on the Western Front, as well as in Mesopotamia and Persia against the Turks and in East Africa against Germany. They suffered eight hundred thousand casualties, with one-fourth fatalities—losses double those of the United States. Colonial recruits were also employed in industry. In France, where even some French conscripts were put to work in factories, the international labor force numbered over two hundred fifty thousand – including workers from China, Vietnam, Egypt, India, the West Indies, and South Africa.

With the stalemate in Europe, colonial areas also became strategically important theaters for armed engagement. Although the campaign against Turkey began poorly for Britain with the debacle at Gallipoli, beginning in 1916 Allied forces won a series of battles, pushing the Turks out of Egypt and eventually captured Baghdad, Jerusalem, Beirut, and other cities through the Middle East. The British commander in Egypt and Palestine was Edmund Allenby (1919-1925), who multinational army against the well-drilled Turks. Allenby was a shrewd general and an excellent manager men and supplies in desert conditions, but in his campaigns the support of different Arab peoples seeking independence form the Turks proved crucial. Allenby allied himself to the successful Bedouin revolts that split the Ottoman empire; British officer Ň. Ĺ. Lawrence (1914-1918) popularized the Arab's guerrilla actions. When one of the senior Bedouin aristocrats, the emir Abdullah, captured the strategic port of Aqaba in July 1917, Lawrence took credit and entered popular mythology as "Lawrence of Arabia."

Britain encouraged Arab nationalism for its own strategic purposes, offering a qualified acknowledgment of Arab political aspirations. At the same time, for similar but conflicting strategic reasons, the British declared their support of "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Britain's foreign secretary Arthur Balfour made the pledge. European Zionists, seeking a Jewish homeland, took the Balfour Declaration very seriously. The conflicting pledges to Bedouin leaders and Zionists sowed the seeds of future Arab-Israeli conflict. The war drew Europe more deeply into the Middle East, where conflicting dependencies and commitments created numerous postwar problems.

German Poster, 1917. "Through Work to Victory! Through Victory to Peace!" A soldier from the front shakes hands with a munitions worker – an image calling for solidarity between the army and the "home front." Following a series of strikes in 1917, the German government responded to labor's rising discontent with posters such as this.


Date: 2015-04-20; view: 1061


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