Whose Remembrance? A scoping study of the available research on ex-colonial communities and the experience of two world wars

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During the First World War, tens of thousands of East Africans were drafted into a non-combatant Carrier Corps to support the British campaign against the Germans in Africa; by October 1917, almost 29,000 of them had died of 'disease or accident'. A Chinese Labour Corps of some 100,000 men drawn largely from the British colony of Weihai and an Egyptian Labour Corps, with over 55,000, were at the same time providing essential support to British forces on the Western Front and in the Middle East respectively. A South African Native Labour Corps provided some 70,000 personnel for service in both Africa and Europe, 616 of whom died when their ship, the Mendi, sank following a collision in the Channel on 21 February 1917. Many tens of thousands of Africans and hundreds of thousands of people from India served with the British forces in North Africa, Italy and Burma in the Second World War, when vast quantities of raw materials were also sent from West Africa to the UK. These facts are little known in Britain today.Historians have traced continuities between the perception of the two World Wars by the peoples of the colonies of the British Empire (including the lived experiences of those who volunteered or were conscripted for service), the development of independence movements in those future nations and patterns of migration from them to the United Kingdom. Further work has also been done in the UK to explore the role played by awareness of this earlier history in dealing with notions of 'Britishness' and other issues both among the communities deriving from such migration and in the 'host' community. Continuing widespread lack of understanding of the colonies' participation in those conflicts nonetheless shows that there remains room for very much more work in this area. Such work will provide a better framework of historical perspective for the representation of these communities to others, and strengthen the communities' own perception of their heritage and identity.The Imperial War Museum covers all aspects of conflicts in which Britain and the Empire/Commonwealth have been involved since 1914, and its collections include extensive holdings of personal reminiscences, artefacts and works of art, film and photography - a very considerable proportion of which documents the experience of colonial troops and the impacts that the war made on the 'home fronts' of former colonies. Several curators at the Museum have developed expertise in this field and have engaged externally in opening it up to new audiences. The Museum - where BME audiences are currently under-represented in its visitor profile - is determined to continue the work it has already begun so that this lesser- known aspect of the two world wars is given greater prominence. The review will be undertaken by the Museum in consultation with an advisory panel of academic and community historians who will provide guidance to the investigators. They will undertake a survey of literature and other media productions (television and radio documentaries, websites etc) to identify areas where work has already been done and, more particularly, where work remains to be done to draw out the history of 'colonial' participation in the two World Wars and to develop present-day communities' understanding of that history. Topics identified for future work will not be restricted to those relating to dealings between people originating in one-time colonies and the inhabitants of a former Imperial power, but to the history of intra- and inter-community relations as well. For example, relationships between the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim components of the 'Indian' community, or between the Caribbean and African communities, will be explored. It will also be instructive to cover communities now in Britain that originate from parts of the colonised world such as Vietnam and the Philippines that were never under British rule but which were still affected by the World Wars.