Book description
In the aftermath of the Great War the East Africa campaign was destined
to be dismissed by many in Britain as a remote 'sideshow' in which only
a handful of names and episodes - the Königsberg, von Lettow-Vorbeck,
the 'Naval Expedition to Lake Tanganyika' - achieved any lasting
notoriety. But to the other combatant powers - Germany, South Africa,
India, Belgium and Portugal - it was, and would remain, a campaign of
huge importance.
A 'small war', consisting of a few 'local affairs', was all that was
expected in August 1914 as Britain moved to eliminate the threat to the
high seas of German naval bases in Africa. But two weeks after the
Armistice was signed in Europe British and German troops were still
fighting in Africa after four years of what one campaign historian
described as 'a war of extermination and attrition without parallel in
modern times'.
The expense of the campaign to the British Empire was immense, the
Allied and German 'butchers bills' even greater. But the most tragic
consequence of the two sides' deadly game of 'tip and run' was the
devastation of an area five times the size of Germany, and civilian
suffering on a scale unimaginable in Europe. Such was the cost of 'The
White Man's Palaver', the final phase of the European conquest of
Africa.
