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British Visions, African Voices: The “Imperial” and the “Colonial” in World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2020

Myles Osborne
Myles Osborne*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
*
Email: myles.osborne@colorado.edu
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Abstract

This article is focused on a magazine called Jambo, which was published by the British East Africa Command for troops in its employ between 1942 and 1945. Jambo was an agglomeration of political articles, general interest stories, propaganda, cartoons, crosswords, and more, with many of its contributions authored (or drawn) by men serving in the Allied forces. Here, I use Jambo to consider notions of the “colonial” and “imperial” during the Second World War, exploring how the realities of racial segregation in the colonies fit awkwardly with imperial service. Jambo also permits us a window into the views of some hundreds of British servicemen, who wrote extensively about the Africans with whom they served, revealing the complexities and shifts in British perceptions of African peoples during the conflict. Jambo is unique in another respect: it also provided a forum for African troops. In few other publications—and even fewer with such wide circulation—could educated (but nonelite) African peoples reach thousands of British readers. Though their published letters and articles were few compared to those written by Jambo's British authors, African writers used the venue to critique the conditions of their military service, argue about the sort of social ordering they desired in their home communities, and create an alternate narrative of the war. Like most colonial publications, Jambo had intended audiences, but also voracious, additional, alternate publics that mediated the articles which appeared in its pages. All this suggests that we might think of the colonial public sphere as both local and global, inward and outward looking, personal and communal, and situated along a continuum between colonial and imperial contexts.

Keywords

colonialJamboKenyaimperialpress
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 44 , Special Issue 2: Colonial Public Spheres and the Worlds of Print , August 2020 , pp. 287 - 315
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University

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Footnotes

•

Myles Osborne is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder.

References

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Morris, Kate. British Techniques of Public Relations and Propaganda for Mobilizing East and Central Africa during World War II. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.Google Scholar
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Mumford, Philip. An Introduction to Pacifism. London: Cassell and Company, 1937.Google Scholar
Mutongi, Kenda. Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, Stephanie. Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana: How to Play the “Game of Life.” Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Osborne, Myles. “Controlling Development: ‘Martial Race’ and Empire in Kenya, 1945–1959.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42 (2014): 464–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborne, Myles. Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya: Loyalty and Martial Race among the Kamba, c. 1800 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, Timothy. The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King's African Rifles, 1902–1964. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1999.Google Scholar
Peterson, Bhekizizwe. “The Bantu World and the World of the Book: Reading, Writing, and ‘Enlightenment.’” In Africa's Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, edited by Barber, Karin, 236–57. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Peterson, Derek. Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek. Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek, Hunter, Emma, and Newell, Stephanie, eds. African Print Cultures: Newspapers and Their Publics in the Twentieth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Platt, William. “Studies in War-Time Organisation: (6) East African Command.” African Affairs 45 (1946): 27–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rempel, Richard. “The Dilemmas of British Pacifists during World War II.” Journal of Modern History 50 (On Demand Supplement, 1978): D1213–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Anthony. Drum: The Newspaper That Won the Heart of Africa. Boston, Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin, 1957.Google Scholar
Sherwood, Marika. World War II: Colonies and Colonials. Oare, U.K.: Savanna Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Switzer, Les. “Bantu World and the Origins of a Captive African Commercial Press in South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (1988): 351–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wainaina, Binyavanga. “How to Write about Africa.” Granta 92 (2005): 1–4.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 49–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westcott, Nicholas. “The Impact of the Second World War on Tanganyika, 1939–1949.” PhD. diss., University of Cambridge, 1982.Google Scholar
Wilson, Kathleen, ed. A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
New York Public Library, New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Jambo (1942–1945).Google Scholar
The Kenya National Archives (KNA)Google Scholar
Ministry of Defence (AH/4),Google Scholar
District Commissioner, Machakos (DC/MKS/1/1).Google Scholar
Weston Library, University of Oxford, UK (WLO)Google Scholar
Papers of the King's African Rifles/Geoffrey B. Whitworth (Mss. Afr. s. 1715 (295)).Google Scholar
Blundell, Michael. A Love Affair with the Sun: A Memoir of Seventy Years in Kenya. Nairobi: Kenway Publications, 1994.Google Scholar
Itote, Waruhiu. “Mau Mau” General. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967.Google Scholar
Killingray, David, ed. A Stroke of Unbelievable Luck by Isaac Fadoyebo. Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1999.Google Scholar
Barrera, Giulia. “Wrestling with Race on the Eve of Human Rights: The British Management of the Color Line in Post-Fascist Eritrea.” In Africa and World War II, edited by Byfield, Judith, Brown, Carolyn, Parsons, Timothy, and Sikainga, Ahmed, 259–75. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, James. Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Bromber, Katrin. “Correcting Their Perspective: Out-of-Area Deployment and the Swahili Military Press in World War II.” In The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia, edited by Liebau, Heike et al. , 277–97. Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2010.Google Scholar
Bromber, Katrin. Imperiale Propaganda. Die Ostafrikanische Militärpresse im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byfield, Judith, Carolyn Brown, Timothy Parsons, and Sikainga, Ahmed, eds. Africa and World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carotenuto, Matthew. “Repatriation in Colonial Kenya: African Institutions and Gendered Violence.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 45 (2012): 9–28.Google Scholar
Clarke, Peter B. West Africans at War, 1914–18, 1939–45: Colonial Propaganda and Its Cultural Aftermath. London: Ethnographica, 1986.Google Scholar
Coates, Oliver. “’The War, Like the Wicked Wand of a Wizard, Strikes Me and Carry Away All That I Have Loved’: Soldiers’ Family Lives and Petition Writing in Ijebu, Southwestern Nigeria, 1943–1945.” History in Africa 45 (2018): 71–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frederiksen, Bodil Folke. “‘The Present Battle Is the Brain Battle’: Writing and Publishing a Kikuyu Newspaper in the Pre-Mau Mau Period in Kenya.” In Africa's Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, edited by Barber, Karin, 278–313. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Furedi, Frank. “The Demobilized African Soldier and the Blow to White Prestige.” In Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers, c. 1700–1964, edited by Killingray, David and Omissi, David, 179–97. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Gadsden, Fay. “The African Press in Kenya, 1945–1952.” Journal of African History 21 (1980): 515–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gadsden, Fay. “Wartime Propaganda in Kenya: The Kenya Information Office, 1939–1945.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 19 (1986): 401–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glassman, Jonathon. “Sorting Out the Tribes: The Creation of Racial Identities in Colonial Zanzibar's Newspaper Wars.” Journal of African History 41 (2000): 395–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, Bryna. “Semi-Colonialism, Transnational Networks and News Flows in Early Republican Shanghai.” China Review 14 (2004): 55–88.Google Scholar
Holbrook, Wendell. “British Propaganda and the Mobilization of the Gold Coast War Effort, 1939–1945.” Journal of African History 26 (1985): 347–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holman, Brett. “World Police for World Peace: British Internationalism and the Threat of a Knock-out Blow from the Air, 1919–1945.” War in History 17 (2010): 313–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, Allen. “Freetown and World War II: Strategic Militarization, Accommodation, and Resistance.” In Africa and World War II, edited by Byfield, Judith, Brown, Carolyn, Parsons, Timothy, and Sikainga, Ahmed, 183–99. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibhawoh, Bonny. “Second World War Propaganda, Imperial Idealism and Anti-Colonial Nationalism in British West Africa.” Nordic Journal of African Studies 16 (2007): 221–43.Google Scholar
Iliffe, John. Honour in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Jackson, Ashley. Botswana, 1939–1945: An African Country at War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Ashley. War and Empire in Mauritius and the Indian Ocean. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Leslie. George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Leslie. “Transatlantic Passages: Black Identity Construction in West African and West Indian Newspapers, 1935–1950.” In African Print Cultures: Newspapers and Their Publics in the Twentieth Century, edited by Peterson, Derek, Hunter, Emma, and Newell, Stephanie, 49–74. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Jones, Rebecca. “The Sociability of Print: 1920s and 1930s Lagos Newspaper Travel Writing.” In African Print Cultures: Newspapers and Their Publics in the Twentieth Century, edited by Peterson, Derek, Hunter, Emma, and Newell, Stephanie, 102–24. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Killingray, David. “British Racial Attitudes towards Black People during the Two World Wars.” In Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914–1945, edited by Storm, Eric and Tuma, Ali Al, 97–118. New York: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Killingray, David. Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War. Woodbridge, U.K.: James Currey, 2010.Google Scholar
King's African Rifles & East African Forces Association. “News.” February 2013. http://www.kingsafricanriflesassociation.co.uk/news.Google Scholar
Kipling, Rudyard. “Gunga Din.” 1892. In Modern British Poetry, edited by Untermeyer, Louis. New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1920. http://www.bartelby.com/103/48.html.Google Scholar
Morris, Kate. British Techniques of Public Relations and Propaganda for Mobilizing East and Central Africa during World War II. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Mithi. India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History, 1774–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010.Google Scholar
Mumford, Philip. An Introduction to Pacifism. London: Cassell and Company, 1937.Google Scholar
Mutongi, Kenda. Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, Stephanie. Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana: How to Play the “Game of Life.” Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Osborne, Myles. “Controlling Development: ‘Martial Race’ and Empire in Kenya, 1945–1959.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42 (2014): 464–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborne, Myles. Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya: Loyalty and Martial Race among the Kamba, c. 1800 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, Timothy. The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King's African Rifles, 1902–1964. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1999.Google Scholar
Peterson, Bhekizizwe. “The Bantu World and the World of the Book: Reading, Writing, and ‘Enlightenment.’” In Africa's Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, edited by Barber, Karin, 236–57. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Peterson, Derek. Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek. Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek, Hunter, Emma, and Newell, Stephanie, eds. African Print Cultures: Newspapers and Their Publics in the Twentieth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Platt, William. “Studies in War-Time Organisation: (6) East African Command.” African Affairs 45 (1946): 27–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rempel, Richard. “The Dilemmas of British Pacifists during World War II.” Journal of Modern History 50 (On Demand Supplement, 1978): D1213–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Anthony. Drum: The Newspaper That Won the Heart of Africa. Boston, Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin, 1957.Google Scholar
Sherwood, Marika. World War II: Colonies and Colonials. Oare, U.K.: Savanna Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Switzer, Les. “Bantu World and the Origins of a Captive African Commercial Press in South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (1988): 351–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wainaina, Binyavanga. “How to Write about Africa.” Granta 92 (2005): 1–4.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 49–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westcott, Nicholas. “The Impact of the Second World War on Tanganyika, 1939–1949.” PhD. diss., University of Cambridge, 1982.Google Scholar
Wilson, Kathleen, ed. A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar