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The struggle for independence

“Vade Retro domum” - “Nolo Relinquere”

after the war were largely inspired by a desire to shake off the recently imposed British
protectorate, which, in its short wartime life of four years, had proved itself excessively

obnoxious to nationalists and fallähtn alike. In Madagascar, 500 Malagasy, mainly
intellectuals, were arrested at the end of 1915 and accused of 'forming a well-organised
secret society with the aim of expelling the French and restoring a Malagasy

government'.

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Perhaps the most important cause of revolt was the forced recruitment of men for
service as soldiers and carriers. Such was the hatred of forced recruitment that it was a
major inspiration for nearly all the revolts that took place in French Black Africa, and

evoked some resistance in the otherwise peaceful Gold Coast colony.

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Economic hardship caused by the war certainly underlay and even provoked resistance
against the colonial authorities.

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In many cases, and notably Nigeria, wartime revolts were not directly attributable to
specific wartime measures. Rather, they were directed against obnoxious features of

colonial rule such as taxation, which was introduced into Yorubaland for the firstt ime in
1916 and together with the increased powers given to traditional rulers under the policy
of 'indirect rule', provoked the Iseyin riots. In French West Africa the impositions of the

indigénat (a discriminatory judicial code), the reorganization of administrative
boundaries, the suppression of chiefs or the exactions of chiefs without traditional

authority were all major causes of the revolts that broke out in every colony of the
federation.

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There is no doubt that the war opened up new windows for many Africans, particularly
the educated elite groups. Margery Perham has written that it is 'difficult to overestimate

the effect upon Africans, who had been largely enclosed within a bilateral relationship
with their European rulers, of looking outside this enclosure and seeing themselves as
part of a continent and of a world'.64 In many parts of Africa, the war gave a boost, if not

always to nationalist activity, at least to the development of a more critical approach by
the educated elites towards their colonial masters. Bethwell Ogot has suggested that the

shared wartime experience of African and European soldiers had a similar effect for the
less-educated: