Carrier Corps Recruitment in the British East Africa Protectorate 1914–1918

The outbreak of the First World War made unprecedented demands on the manpower resources of the British East Africa Protectorate (Kenya). To meet military requirements for labour, the colonial government followed a policy of recruitment of Africans, in which there was initially some confusion over method and the degree to which compulsion could be utilized. Criticism of the policy by European settlers and the press, part of a larger agitation for more settler influence in the war effort and for greater control over the labour potentiality of the African population, led to a clarification of policy in the Native Followers' Recruitment Ordinance of 1915, which finally established the conscription of African males for the carrier corps. African reluctance to serve was heightened by complaints about conditions, and there frequent attempts to evade conscription. The campaigns of 1917 made particularly heavy demands for military labour, and the government attempted to recruit as many able-bodied male Africans as possible, under the ‘Grand Levy’ organized by John Ainsworth. The settler community, aroused by the consequent labour shortage, renewed its campaign for measures to ensure a flow of labour from the reserves and for a greater degree of government control over the African population, setting the scene for post-war squabbles about labour. For the carriers, conditions at the front were very bad in 1917–18, and the problems of carriers returning home in poor health, only partly relieved by the welfare organization set up by Ainsworth, were complicated by famine and an influenza epidemic. The events left a lasting impression in the minds of the Africans of Kenya.