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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The post-war careers of ex-servicemen in Ghana and Uganda |
Author: | Schleh, E.P.A. |
Year: | 1968 |
Periodical: | Journal of Modern African Studies |
Volume: | 6 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 203-220 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Ghana Uganda |
Subjects: | veterans political parties |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/159467 |
Abstract: | Building on a base provided by the Royal West African Frontier Force and the King's African Rifles of East and Central Africa, Britain recruited approximately 470,000 Africans during World War II, including over 65,000 from the Gold Coast and 77,000 from Uganda; about 80 per cent of these were serving when the war ended. With relatively few individual exceptions, the primary effect of the large-scale recruitment of Africans into British forces during World War II was not the radical transformation of the serving men into modernised, politically active citizens with a national outlook. Instead, the service provided a concentrated exposure for 470,000 men to basically the same modernising influences which were already felt in their home territories. This exposure increased the potential for popular interest and participation in politics; but, as the diverse post-war record shows, involvement in a specialised form of the modernisation process did not mean a change in established values and beliefs or in the direction of ex-servicemen's political support. Notes. |