Talk:Southern Rhodesia in World War I

Article is very focussed on the white population and perspective
Hi all - this is a well written and valuable article, but the voice of the black population at the time is largely lost to history here.

90% of the article is about 10% of the population, and even the population figures are often given as white only.

We need to fill in the story, or change the title to White Southern Rhodesia in World War 1. Thanks Billyshiverstick (talk) 14:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Billy, thanks for the feedback. I understand what you're saying but I don't think the change you suggest is necessary. I also think that to say that the "voice of the black population at the time is largely lost to history" in this article is unfair. As the main author I made a great conscious effort to put as much as I could in about Rhodesia's black troops and the war's impact on the black population. However, even putting to one side the issue that the sources available for this period dominate their attention on the white community far more than this article does, the facts are that in many of this subject's sub-topics there simply isn't much to say from the black perspective. This is the reason for the apparent imbalance in the article.


 * The main reason for the apparent imbalance is that while whites were indeed a minority in terms of the total population, in terms of people in the country directly relevant to World War I they made up a clear majority. The war was of enormous importance to the whites but the overwhelming majority of the black population saw it as irrelevant to them and basically ignored it, going on with their lives. In actual terms there were over twice as many white military personnel from Southern Rhodesia as there were black soldiers—and in proportional terms the difference is even greater, with over 40% of the white males and less than 1% of the black males going to war. The war's non-military impact was also far more relevant to the whites of the time than to the blacks, as the article explains. That is not to say that there were no black Rhodesians to whom it was relevant—there were many and this article discusses them.


 * In any case I disagree with the assertion that "90% of the article" is about whites—in the public opinion section, for example, the passage discussing black public opinion is longer than that about white public opinion. The article's section on the Rhodesia Native Regiment, comprising black troops, is not much shorter than all the sections on white troops combined, though there were far more white soldiers. Black people are not mentioned much in the "Home service and conscription debate" section, for example, because for black people there was no such debate and no home service (they only served abroad). Under "Women", a minuscule fraction of the female black population were affected by the war—so not much is recorded in the sources, and there is not much to put here.


 * If we were to change the article's name to "White Southern Rhodesia in World War I", surely that would mean taking everything relevant to the black population out, wouldn't it? That would in my view be a sure-fire way to remove the voice of the black population at the time from history. —Cliftonian (talk) 16:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Not sure about the claimed proportional manpower figures
"Southern Rhodesia contributed more manpower to the British war effort than any other Imperial territory, including Britain itself. White troops numbered 5,716, about 40% of white men in the colony"

There is no linked reference for this and the Isle of Man Official records show that 8,261 men enlisted in the armed forces, which was 82.3% of the Isle of Man’s male population of military age. (link) How does this to compare to "about 40% of white men"? Bopalula (talk) 09:56, 6 August 2014 (UTC)


 * A linked reference is given for this claim lower down in the body of the article—it is taken an article by Paul Moorcraft for History Today in 1990 (see here). The verbatim quote is: "per head of (white) population Rhodesia had contributed more in both world wars than any other part of the empire, including the United Kingdom".


 * Clearly the Isle of Man figures show this to be wrong. Since the source refers to "part[s] of the empire" I would speculate that Moorcraft arrived at his conclusion after comparing Rhodesia's proportional contribution with first the other dominions and colonies, then the UK itself—he probably either overlooked the Isle of Man, incorrectly included it as part of the UK or didn't consider it an "imperial" territory.


 * I will amend the article to say Southern Rhodesia "contributed more manpower to the British war effort than any other dominion or colony, and more than Britain itself". I hope this is better. Thanks for your help in bringing this to light. —Cliftonian (talk) 15:47, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Commemoration of World War dead in Zimbabwe
The article's concluding paragraph seems rather sweeping, implying a total lack of memorials to World War dead in present day Zimbabwe. While a good many colonially erected memorials may have been removed or dismantled, there are exceptions in the form of memorials and war graves maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission within Zimbabwe eg the Harare Memorial, listing 66 WWI casualties, in the capital's Pioneer Cemetery which contains 28 Commonwealth war graves of WWI. I am sure the CWGC have statistics on war graves and no-known-grave commemorations within Zimbabwe (which could include service personnel from other parts of the Commonwealth who died within Zimbabwe). I have not heard of the CWGC reporting damage and difficulties in caring for their war graves and memorials in that country. The CWGC has recently been seeking to redress the lack of headstones and the lack of commemorative naming of native black African service personnel of WWI.Cloptonson (talk) 21:29, 2 July 2022 (UTC)