Racism in the British Empire During World War I: A White Man's Burden

The British Hellenistic scholar, Edwyn Bevan, once commented that with the coming of the Great War, Europeans had lost the ability to "awe" the non-European with their superior culture.[1] While Bevan saw this as a potential good for both Europeans and non-Europeans, many of his contemporaries did not. Though it was expected that France and Britain would enlist the aid of colonial troops to fight, this presumption did not stop Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary from accusing Britain and France of "catalyzing the degeneration of pure Aryanism."[2] British conservatives also feared that this was would lead to "racial mixing," which would contaminate the superiority of European culture[3]. Though worries about racial purity were common throughout Europe before and during World War I, it is most evident in British politics both before and during the war. This paper will examine the attitudes and prejudices that, though they may not have extended the war for Europe, they certainly did increase the casualties and "racial" tensions between Europeans and non-Europeans. First, I will examine how the British attitude towards Turkey, both as a power in Europe and later as an adversary, was tinted by an British sense of racial superiority which led to at first alienation, and then to outright hostility in the Mediterranean. Second, though the British counted upon the loyalty of colonial Indian troops, it often did not reward their loyalty, and often devalued their lives and contributions before and during the war both in India and in Europe. Finally, I will examine how British attitudes led to the devaluation of non-British subject, particularly Australians and New Zealanders at the campaign of Gallipoli.

The Sick Old Man

Once the bane of Europe, with power both on land and at sea to enforce its will, the Ottoman Empire had been reduced to a footnote in European thinking, with its most important role as that of a playground for merchants. Beginning with British-demanded capitulations in 1838, more and more European merchants found themselves not only receiving favorable tax breaks for trading in the Ottoman Empire, but were increasingly immune to the local laws and regulations.[4] At the same time, the Ottoman Empire was forced to borrow more and more money, primarily from British bankers, to the point that by 1875 the Ottoman Empire had borrowed over ₤1 Billion at a very high rate of interest.[5] By the end of the 19^th century, the Ottoman Empire, which had been feared throughout Europe and had almost take Vienna twice, was now derisively referred to as "The Sick Old Man" of Europe.

When it was obvious that Europe was gearing up for a truly massive conflict, the Ottoman emissaries to London offered to assist in the up-coming war on the side of the Entente.[6] In return for their help, the Ottoman Empire wanted to negotiate relief from the crushing weight of concessions that had crippled the Empire over the past seventy-six years. Not only were the Ottoman emissaries rebuffed, but shortly thereafter two modern warships that the Ottoman Empire had paid for with the borrowed money were seized by Britain "for the war effort."[7] Britain further insulted the Ottomans by refusing to refund the money paid for the ships. At the same time, Britain courted Italian allegiance by backing away from earlier condemnation of Italian invasion of Ottoman territory in the Dodecanese.

As part of their reconciliation, Britain signed a treaty with Italy to develop railways in Ottoman territory under the aegis of British concessions, all without Ottoman input or approval.[8] Indignant Ottoman officials found a sympathetic ear in Germany. Having already established a rapport through training of the new modern army in the Ottoman Empire, Germany was not hampered by the history of exploitation that France and Britain had developed in the region. In addition, Germany emissaries to the Sublime Porte offered two German warships and a large sum of gold to purchase new weapons from Germany.[9] Allegedly taken by surprise by the Ottoman move, the British government quickly condemned the infusion of German weapons and money into the Ottoman Empire as a move by the Germans to manipulate Ottoman loyalties.[10] To the British way of thinking, it was not only completely improbable that the Ottoman Empire resented the relationship it had had with Britain for the past 80 years, but that it was absolutely impossible that the Ottomans could make decisions on their own without European influence. Time and again in contemporary news stories and other propaganda, the British government consistently returned to the idea that only Germany's lies, deceptions, and artful manipulation of the impressionable Turks as being the sole motivating factor behind the Ottoman decision to enter the war on the Central Powers' side.[11] The British propaganda quickly went on the offensive against the Ottoman Empire in the arena of public opinion, particularly in America whose position on the war was as yet unknown.

The British purport to be entering the war to "put an end to the rule of the Turk in Europe ... (which) during those five centuries has done nothing but oppress,"[12] and paints the Turks as "savages" and "an alien power" which needs to be removed from Europe[13]. Even while the war was being waged, and thousands of lives were being lost on both sides in Anatolia, British scholars such as Leonard Woolf were already determining how Britain would ensure that there would no longer be a "menace to the interests and independence of the Germanic races"[14] by controlling the city he referred to as Constantinople, but that the Ottomans had renamed Istanbul over 500 years prior. With their plans in place and secure in the superiority of the European culture, race and technology, Britain severely underestimated the ability and determination of the Ottoman Empire to defend itself.

Determined to take Turkey out of the war quickly, and to do so "on the cheap," British generals in charge of colonial Australian, Indian, and New Zealand troops decided upon a disastrous landing at Gallipoli and were unflinchingly stingy with necessary ammunition and heavy weaponry.[15] When the attack at first stalled, then bogged down into a protracted conflict, the British were so worried that they would be embarrassed "before the whole Muslim world," that they remained entrenched at Gallipoli far longer than they should have, even though it was evident that an offensive there was never going to succeed.[16] By the time the British had withdrawn from Gallipoli in January 1916, Entente forces had suffered over 205,000 casualties, the majority of which were colonial troops.[17]

Forward India

It was a source of pride for the British press that when Britain was besieged, it could count upon the help of all its colonies, especially "the Jewel in the Crown" that was India. Though many apparently welcomed the infusion of about 750,000 Indian troops into the European and Mediterranean theaters during the Great War, few saw them as other than grunts.[18] For while Britain espoused to be fighting for the "freedom"[19] of all people from tyranny, there was a "color bar"[20] which had to be maintained in order to ensure the purity of the European races and cultures.[21] Though it came as no surprise that Britain would use non-white soldiers to augment its fighting force, it likewise came as no surprise that the British government was attacked for it. The German government began to accuse British of endangering the "purity" of the Aryan race with the infusion of such troops into what it perceived as a purely European war, but these objections were considered par for the course by most in the British government.

What surprised some was the reaction of the British people, both common and elite, to this infusion of non-European peoples into the new war. Bevan, who addressed these concerns in his private letter to the Foreign Office, probed what he sees as the two main arguments such racist sentiment is based upon. The first, which he terms "the color bar" which is that each race occupy a certain strata in society and the world with white men at the top, he dismisses out of hand as something primal and primitive and thus not worthy of a response. The second, and infinitely more reasonable in his opinion, was the dilution of Christianity with non-Christian peoples and religions. Though he saw this war as garnering an opportunity for Christian Europe to fulfill its Christian destiny by embracing these new allies with open arms in an idealized Christian fashion, few heeded his advice.

After the war, when the veteran colonial troops had returned to India, Britain wished to resume its relationship with a subservient India. Despite promises made by the British government during the war that after the conflict was over and the threat in Europe was ended, India would experience greater autonomy and freedom many of the temporary laws enacted during the war to limit certain personal freedoms became permanent. One such example was the Rowlatt's Act, which was initially intended to keep the very real threat of German agitation in India at bay. But instead of repealing the law as promised, British authorities kept it in place and used it to enforce their rule. Originally intended to root out foreign agents, the Rowletts Act - which many Indian detractors came to call the "Black Acts" - was used to break up so-called revolutionary meetings.

When indignation and passive protests led by such luminary personalities as Muhandes Ghandi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Nehru mounted, the British government in India became increasingly harsh in their dealings with protestors. This policy of satyagraha (Sanskrit for "truth and firmness") culminated in 1919 with the massacre of 400 men, women and children in Amritsar, and the wounding of thousands of other peaceful protestors who were locked in a courtyard and could not escape.[22] Despite world-wide condemnation and outrage, the British government quietly retired the colonel responsible for the massacre and pensioned him - upon returning home, he received a hero's welcome.[23] For many of his supporters, he no doubt represented a champion of European, or more precisely British, superiority over non-Europeans. But this superiority did not stop with complexion, no matter what Mr. Bevans would have liked to believe, for white non-Europeans were equally devalued, though definitely not to the same degree.

ANZAC "on the cheap"

When Britain called upon its colonial subjects to supplement its forces during the First World War, Australia and New Zealand responded with over 300,000 volunteer troops, most of which were directed toward Turkey. Though a certain amount of pride at the amount of volunteers was expressed by the British government, they did not hesitate to use the lives of these colonists to do some of the dirtiest work of the whole war. The first objective for the ANZAC troops was to take Gallipoli, a mountainous and heavily-defended portion of the Dardanelles, located on the Anatolian mainland. Though ill-equipped, the Ottoman soldiers were tough and driven by a determined commander - Mustafa Kemal (Attaturk). As entrenched defenders, they were able to put up stiff resistance to the landing, causing the push to bog down on the beach.

Part of the reason for the loss of momentum, aside from the terrain and tenacious defenders, was that the General in charge of the Gallipoli campaign was told by the British War Office to "Do the attack on the cheap,"[24] which subsequently meant that British would not be supplying any additional troops nor heavy guns outside of what was already stationed at Gallipoli. Soon, the superior attitude and stinginess of the British commanders began to grate on the nerves of the Australian and New Zealander troops, to the point where patriotism and colonial pride was replaced with resentment. Cyril Lawrence, an Anzac trooper wrote home stating that he was tired of the "British Idiots" with their incessant "British Bullying" of colonial troops.[25] Repeatedly, ANZAC troops plead with the British officers to forgo taking Gallipoli and withdraw the troops, but to no avail.[26]

British commanders held the belief that the ANZAC and Indian troops at Gallipoli were not trying hard enough to take the positions held by the Ottoman forces, and often chided them to redouble their efforts.[27] It took a personal inspection of the site by War Secretary Kitchener, who declared the Gallipoli campaign "a wastage of officers and men," before Anzac troops were ordered to withdraw from the beach in December of 1915.[28] Later efforts by the British in the Levant (Palestine) and the Hajj (Saudi Arabia) as well as pressure from Russian troops across the Caucasus Mountains bore more fruit as Ottoman forces lost engagement after engagement, eventually being driven back onto the Anatolian heartland. Anzac troops were used elsewhere in the European and Mediterranean theaters, but it remained British opinion that, had the Anzac troops made it onto the beaches like they were supposed to, the war would have been over in 1916, tragically the Anzac efforts were never fully acknowledged as contributing to the downfall of the Ottomans.[29] Ironically that honor went to India instead and may have been intended to mollify Indian nationalist veterans after the war. Despite the British mostly overlooking their contributions, Australians to this day are proud of the efforts of their soldiers in the Great War, and still commemorate the day the Anzac troops landed at Gallipoli on April 25^th, 1915.

"No Better Relation Substituted..."

Many things changed in European and British society during the war years, and the same is true for after the war. Nationalist movements in India took root and spread, fueled by pride in having aided the mighty British in their victory over the Central Powers. But what Britain wanted was a return to the pre-war status quo. British propaganda had encouraged volunteers with the idea that they were helping their British "comrades,"[30] but after the war, they sent completely different messages. In her arrogance, Britain had rebuffed a potential ally or at least a "benevolent neutral"[31] and had wasted thousands, if not millions of lives on Ottoman soil. Even when Turkey entered the war, though on the Central Powers' side, the British preferred to believe that someone else had put them up to it rather than acknowledging that another non-European country could defy European dominion in the world.[32] The volunteers from India, full with the hope of a free and autonomous homeland, believing that they had really fought for a free world. Upon returning home, they encountered an British government that was not in any mood to negotiate such freedoms for India.[33]

And while over 200,000 Australians and New Zealanders lost their lives on the shores of Gallipoli, the British maintained that they "defeat(ed) Turkey almost single-handedly,"[34] almost stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the Anzac contribution to the war effort. In the end, Britain lost much of its credibility in the world, for it was seen as a nation that would sacrifice anything, even its good name, in order to win by any means necessary.[35] It had systematically belittled, ignored, deceived, and underestimated both its non-European allies and enemies. And though Britain was comfortable with non-white, non-European troops acting in a subservient or supporting role, it caused national panic and hysteria when they were treated on equal terms, as with the Japanese alliance in the Pacific or Black American soldiers in their home town for example.[36] In the end, doing the war "on the cheap" through wasting colonial lives, rapport and opportunity for the sake of a "color bar" and a culture bar wound up costing Britain much, much more than treasure.

[1] Coetzee, Marilyn Shevin-, F. Coetzee World War I & European Society (Lexington Mass D.C. Heath and Company, 1995) Pg. 133

[2] Coetzee, Pg.100

[3] Coetzee, pp. 100-102, 129-135

[4] Fischer, Sydney N., William O. Ochsenwald The Middle East: A History Volume II (5^th Edition, New York, McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1997) Pg. 299

[5] Fischer, Pg. 309

[6] Fischer, Pg. 377

[7] Fischer, Pg. 377, See also "Islam Condemns Britain" New York Times (10 Sep. 1914) Pg. 3

[8] "New Anglo-Italian Pact" New York Times (21 Jun 1914) Pg. C3

[9] Fischer Pg. 377, See also "Turkey Casts off Yoke of Powers" New York Times (11Sep. 1914) Pg.1,

[10] "Turkey Casts off Yoke..." Pg. 1

[11] "Turk to Attack Two of Allies" New York Times (3 Sep. 1914) P. 1, See also "Says Porte Will Keep Out" New York Times (1 Sep. 1914) Pg. 4, "Claims Turkey as Ally" New York Times (31 Aug 1914) P.5, "Turkey Casts off Yoke..." Pg. 1

[12] Toynbee, Arnold J. the Murderous Tyranny of the Turks Preface by Viscount Bryce London (Hodder & Stoughton, 1917) Pg. 4,

[13] Woolf, Leonard S. The Future of Constantinople (New York, McMillan Company, 1917) Pg. 13

[14] Woolf Pg. 14

[15]The Great War, Episodes 3 & 4 Public Broadcasting Station Quoting a memorandum from the British War Office to General Hamilton at Gallipoli

[16]The Great War... quoting Trevor Wilson, University of Adelaide

[17]Encarta Encyclopedia Online "Gallipoli Campaign" Accessed 7 Jun 2004.

[18] Ramusack, Barbara "20^th Century India" Lecture in Course given at University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Spring 2003.

[19]The Great War... quoting recruitment propaganda used in India and sub-Saharan Africa.

[20] Coetzee, Pg. 132

[21] Coetzee, Pp. 100, 132

[22] Ramusack, lectures, See also Ghandi Columbia - Tristar Pictures, 1982

[23] Ramusack, Lectures

[24]The Great War...

[25]The Great War... quoting Cyril Lawrence, ANZAC, See also Gallipoli Columbia - Tristar Pictures, 1981

[26]The Great War...

[27]The Great War..., Gallipoli

[28]The Great War...

[29] "Turkey Defeat Credited to India" New York Times 6 Nov. 1918

[30]The Great War...

[31] "Turkey's Defeat..."

[32] "Turk To Attack...", see also, "Turkey's Defeat...", Turkey Casts off...", "Claims Turkey...", "Says Porte..." New York Times

[33] Ramusack, Lectures, See also "Ghandi"

[34] "Turkey Defeat..."

[35] "Islam condemns..."

[36] Coetzee, Pp 100 - 101