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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'A Swift Agent of Government': Air Power in British Colonial Africa, 1916-1939
Author:Killingray, DavidISNI
Year:1984
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:25
Issue:4
Pages:429-444
Language:English
Geographic terms:Africa
Great Britain
colonial territories
Subjects:air force
History and Exploration
colonialism
Military, Defense and Arms
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/181225
Abstract:In the inter-war years one major role for the Royal Air Force was imperial defence. The Air Staff further argued that air power, used in substitution for the Army, would provide a more economical and effective means of policing and subjugating unrest in the remoter and more inaccessible areas of the colonial empire in Asia and Africa. The first successful major operation by the RAF in Somaliland in 1920 encouraged the extension of air policing to the troublesome Middle East. The RAF saw the Sudan as an integral part of its Middle East operations and throughout the late 1920s and 1930s military aircraft stationed in Khartoum were used to deal with revolt in the Southern Sudan. Continued Army opposition to substitution led the RAF to seek a role in the sub-Saharan colonies. The need for defence economies as a result of the Depression, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and unrest on the Copperbelt persuaded the authorities in both London and the colonies of the need for an Air Force presence in East and Central Africa. Fig., notes.
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