As Imperial Germany came into being in 1871, it entered into the consciousness of people who already belonged to an emigrant nation.It contained people who lived far outside that nation-state’s borders, and it included many who considered themselves German plus other things. It was tied together by dynamic forms of communications: ever-more-efficient methods of correspondence, a growing German-language press, not to mention the pedagogical networks that thickened during the last decades of the nineteenth century and ever-more-powerful networks of trade, transport, and travel. The global consciousness that had grown over the previous century now included a consciousness of German communities around the globe and an ever-greater comfort with mobility. That not only extended older forms of labor mobility beyond Europe’s borders but also witnessed an increase in families extending their membership into an ever-greater variety of transcultural places. There were, in fact, millions of Germans living transnational lives in transcultural communities by the end of the century—some in Europe and some far from it.

World War I dramatically transformed Germans’ subject position regardless of whether or not they participated in the war or supported Imperial Germany. In addition to exposing Imperial Germany’s dependence on commodities from abroad for its industry and its residents’ well-being, it witnessed a kind of economic warfare that was just as unprecedented as the military conflict that took place in Europe.Around the globe, the Allied powers targetedGermans—citizens of Imperial German as well as ethnic Germans who were not that.That led to internments and confiscations; but the Allies applied pressure outside their territories as well. Latin America, in particular, became a site of extreme pressure as first the British and then the United States used the war to increase their economic and political power in the region at the expense of the German networks that had long competed against them.Facing a shared set of challenges actually served to bind many of these disparate German communities in the Americas together even as they radically reduced the size of many German communities in other European states and the colonial territories.

The main focus of this chapter is the role of propaganda in influencing participation and opinions during the war. It analyzes how the British extensively used wartime propaganda to draw the support of the Nigerian people and explores the critical role propaganda played in Nigeria’s appropriation of the war and the enthusiastic support different sections of the population provided Britain during its hour of greatest need. It illustrates that the propaganda intended for African audiences reiterated the idea of the “interdependency” of the empire by stressing the unity of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The call on Africans to produce goods and conserve resources during the war was seen by the colonial government as an extension of its patriotism toward the empire. By creating space for the participation of the local population to consume a particular form of propaganda, the empire made Nigerians active participants in the creation of propaganda. Their intellectual contribution to this mission was largely based upon their appropriation of a new status and identity as “citizens of the empire.” Propaganda provided an effective avenue for expressions of imperial unity and acceptance of Britain’s self-image as a “virtuous imperial power,” in the words of Sonya Rose.