If anyone is able to attend this event on Thursday, please send in a summary – I (Anne) am unable to attend, as I’m sure many others are. The speakers are highly recommended. Thanks, Anne.
Workshop and Annual Lecture of the Centre for War Studies, TCD, Thursday, 28th November 2013
Workshop: ‘Africa and the Great War: the Feedback Effects.’ Trinity Long Room Hub, Hoey Theatre: 14h00-17h50
Historians are increasingly adopting transnational perspectives in order to re-write the history of the Great War – a global history for a world war. This entails deconstructing the Euro-centric visions of the conflict that have prevailed for too long. After Europe, perhaps no continent was so much affected by the war as Africa, which sent soldiers, workers, and supplies on a large scale to theatres of war in Europe and the Middle East, but which also saw fighting in Africa itself. If a good deal of attention has been paid to the role of African soldiers overseas, rather less has been devoted to the ‘feedback’ effects of the war on the different parts of Africa. The aim of this workshop is to explore by means of brief papers and extended discussion the impact of the war on the experience of ordinary Africans, and on economic, social, cultural and political developments on the continent during, and as a result of, the Great War. Two papers will focus on North Africa, two on sub-Saharan Africa.
• James Kitchen (Sandhurst): Egypt
• John Horne (Trinity College Dublin): Algeria
• Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (NUI Maynooth): Portuguese Africa
• David Killingray (emeritus, Goldsmiths College, London): East Africa
• Bill Nasson (Stellenbosch University): concluding remarks.
The workshop will be followed by the Annual ‘War in History’ lecture of the Centre for War Studies, Arts Building, Emmet Theatre, 19:30:
Professor Bill Nasson, Stellenbosch University, South Africa:
Dominion with a Difference? South Africa in the Great War.
Professor Bill Nasson is one of the leading historians of twentieth century South Africa and of Africa as a whole during the Great War, on both of which he has published widely. Educated at the universities of Hull, York and Cambridge, he taught for many years at the University of Cape Town, before moving to Stellenbosch University. Among his books on South Africa and war are Springboks on the Somme: South Africa and the Great War 1914-1918 (Johannesburg, Penguin, 2007) and The War for South Africa: The Anglo-Boer War,1899-1902 (Cape Town, Tafelberg 2010).