The Structure of British Colonial Forces

The British Empire was defended by a complex patchwork of military and police forces, in which the British Army, the British Indian Army, and the Royal Navy were supplemented by a range of colonial and dominion forces. The colonial forces — sometimes called “native” or “local” forces — played a substantial role in both conquest and counter-insurgency, and they provided the basis for the armed forces of the post-independence states. The structure of the colonial forces varied enormously from one colony to another, reflecting the very different sizes of the white settler populations, the political relationships between colony and metropole, and the security needs of each territory.

The colonial forces were, in the judgment of the historian David Killingray in Imperial Defence (1999), “the indispensable but unsung part of the British military system.” They were cheaper than the British Army, they could be deployed in conditions that would have provoked scandal in Britain, and they provided the manpower that the British Army could not, on its own, supply. The 2.5 million Indian Army of 1945 and the 1.5 million-strong West African divisions of the Second World War were, in the long run, the foundation of the British victory.

The West African Frontier Force

The West African Frontier Force (WAFF) was the principal military force of British West Africa. It was established in 1900 from a confederation of the local police and military forces of the four West African colonies — Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Gambia. The WAFF fought with distinction in the East African campaign of the First World War and was reorganised in 1928 as the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF).

The King’s African Rifles

The King’s African Rifles (KAR) was the principal military force of British East Africa. Raised in 1902 from existing colonial units in Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Nyasaland, and Northern Rhodesia, the KAR fought in a long series of colonial campaigns, most importantly the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. During the Second World War, the KAR expanded dramatically, fighting against the Italians in Ethiopia and the Japanese in Burma.

The Royal West African Frontier Force in the World Wars

The RWAFF made major contributions to both world wars. In 1914–18, the Force fought in the conquest of German Kamerun and German East Africa. In 1939–45, RWAFF units fought in East Africa, in the Western Desert, and most importantly in Burma, where the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions fought in some of the most difficult terrain of the war. The contribution of West African troops was, in its way, as substantial as that of the Indian Army in the same theatres.

The South African Forces

The South African military tradition was complex. The South African Infantry fought on the British side in the First and Second World Wars, and South African units were an important part of the British expeditionary force in the Western Desert and East Africa. The South African Native Labour Corps and the Native Military Corps provided non-combat and combat support in both world wars.

The Australian and New Zealand Forces

The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), formed in 1914 for the invasion of Gallipoli, is the most famous of all dominion formations. ANZAC troops fought at Gallipoli, on the Western Front, in the Middle East, and in the Pacific. The ANZAC tradition, with its emphasis on the Australian and New Zealand soldier as a particular type, became a foundation of national identity in both countries. The Gallipoli landings of 25 April 1915 are still commemorated as ANZAC Day, the principal national day of both countries.

The Canadian Forces

The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) was raised in 1914 and grew to over 600,000 men by the end of the First World War. The CEF fought on the Western Front from 1915 onwards, with the Canadian Corps becoming one of the most respected formations of the British Expeditionary Force. The Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 is the most famous Canadian engagement of the war. In the Second World War, Canadian forces fought in Hong Kong, the Dieppe raid, the Italian campaign, and the Normandy landings.

The Colonial Police Forces

The colonial police forces were an essential component of imperial control, and the largest of them were substantial organisations. The Indian Police, with hundreds of thousands of personnel by the early twentieth century, was the biggest. The Kenya Police, the Royal Nigeria Police, and the various police forces of the West Indies, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific were all part of the imperial system of control. The police forces were often the first responders to unrest, and in many cases were deeply implicated in the controversies of decolonisation.

The Legacy of the Colonial Forces

The colonial forces left a complex legacy. In some cases, the colonial armies became the national armies of the post-independence states. In others, the colonial forces left behind deeply unequal structures of command, race, and pay that were difficult to dismantle. The role of African, Asian, and Caribbean soldiers in both world wars has been a major theme of post-colonial scholarship.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the colonial forces was, for a long time, dominated by the regimental histories and the work of the British official historians. The post-Cold War revisionist literature, led by David Killingray’s Imperial Defence (1999) and the more recent work of the contributors to The British Empire and the Second World War (2019), has produced a more critical picture, in which the colonial forces are treated as serious military actors rather than as auxiliaries. The current debate, exemplified in the writing of Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (2006), is over how far the colonial forces should be read as a school of postcolonial nationalism and how far they should be treated as instruments of imperial control.

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