No Insignificant Part: The Rhodesia Native Regiment and the East Africa Campaign of the First World War (review)

Authored by a respected historian of Africa, this well written and accessible book will be rewarding reading for anybody with an interest in World War One. In less than two hundred pages Stapleton successfully restores to history the forgotten (if not consciously ignored) record of African soldiers who served in the Rhodesia Native Regiment (RNR) in East Africa between 1916 and 1918.

The history of World War One in Africa, let alone the role of Africans in this war, remains an under-researched topic. Apart from being seen as marginal to events in Europe, the war in Africa is often obscured by rather romantic representations of the war as a "gentleman's war" fought between European soldiers in the "heart of darkness". In contrast to this, Stapleton shows the war for what it was; deadly and one in which "every military operation described by white commanders in the official records depended on the participation of numerous and often anonymous black soldiers" (p. 8).

In the course of ten chapters, Stapleton succinctly describes and discusses the context and history of the establishment, deployment, and eventual demobilization of the RNR in the East African Campaign. At the outbreak of war European settlers in Rhodesia, present-day Zimbabwe, had volunteered en masse. By early 1916 "tropical disease and lack of replacement manpower" (p. 19) had decimated the all-white Rhodesia Regiment (RR), and the two battalions deployed were demobilized before the East Africa Campaign had come to an end. Desperate for manpower, the go-ahead was given for the establishment of a unit drawn from amongst Rhodesia's African population. Chapter two discusses the socio-political context from which these African soldiers were drawn, as well as the impact of the war on colonial society as a whole. Chapter three deals with the background of the soldiers, the majority of which had been involved in wage labour before enlisting. The training of the new recruits and their deployment is dealt with in chapter four, whilst the following chapters deal with the RNR at war. Of all the chapters in the book, military buffs will be most satisfied with chapters five to nine with their blow by blow accounts of the RNR in action. Tragically, after two years of extensive combat, it was not enemy action but the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed "more askari … than pretty well … the whole campaign" (p. 133). Throughout, Stapleton shows that during the whole campaign the issue of race, in which race as opposed to merit influenced authority, was disproved by the actions of the African soldiers. However, with the idea of European superiority being so central to colonial society, attitudes changed slowly within the military and not at all in settler society.

Driven by genuine interest and concern, Stapleton has written an excellent jargon-free monograph. He has done the memory of the soldiers of the RNR an immeasurable service and it is to be hoped that his work will serve as an incentive to others.