Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

However in 1915 Andrew Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote a secret memorandum in which he concluded that the recruitment of Africans would pose too great a threat to British rule in Africa after the war – particularly in South Africa as there ‘a large body of trained and disciplined black men would create obvious difficulties, and might seriously menace the supremacy of the white.’13 Like many others Bonar Law was also convinced that ‘no South African native could stand a European winter’. This refrain – that was to be constantly repeated by British politicians and colonial administrators right up until the 1940s – grew harder to sustain over time as the black soldiers of France, the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, proved themselves as capable as any other troops of weathering the most terrible winters of the war – albeit with appalling casualties.