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No Stake in Victory: North A frican Soldiers of the Great War
Author(s) -
Rogan Eugene
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
studies in ethnicity and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.204
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1754-9469
pISSN - 1473-8481
DOI - 10.1111/sena.12099
Subject(s) - colonialism , victory , power (physics) , empire , spanish civil war , battle , front (military) , ancient history , economic history , history , political science , law , geography , politics , physics , quantum mechanics , meteorology
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.