No Stake in Victory: North A frican Soldiers of the Great War

• Published in: Studies in ethnicity and nationalism Vol. 14; no. 2; pp. 322 - 333
• Main Author: Rogan, Eugene
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.10.2014
• ISSN: 1473-8481; 1754-9469
• DOI: 10.1111/sena.12099

The men of North A frica had no stake in the E uropean war that erupted in August 1914. Over three hundred thousand B erber and A rab men from A lgeria, M orocco, and T unisia fought in B elgium and F rance. Many were wounded in some of the bloodiest engagements on the Western Front. Thousands were taken prisoner. As many as forty‐five thousand never returned home, dying for a colonial power that had reduced them to second‐class citizens in their own homelands. One particular aspect this article will focus on addresses the M uslim soldiers taken prisoner by the G ermans who were interned in a special camp where they were recruited to the O ttoman army. Thousands joined the O ttoman J ihad effort that G erman war planners hoped might provoke uprisings among colonial Muslims in the B ritish, F rench, and R ussian Empires to undermine the Entente war effort. Redeployed in M esopotamia and the H ijaz, these North A frican soldiers were as ill‐served by the O ttoman Empire as they had been by the F rench. North A frican survivors of World War I resumed their lives as colonial subjects in their home countries under the intensified imperial rule of the interwar years.