Africans and the Two Great Wars: A General Overview

Historically, the World Wars represented different realities for the different countries, nay nations and peoples that participated in them. Just recently, in their online daily weekday newsletter, The Morning, of September 10, 2021 a New York Times writer, David Leonhardt, observed, inter alia, that for America, “World War II helped spark the creation of the modern middle class and cemented the so-called American Century.”1 Leonhardt’s assertion are in the positive realm. For Africans, who were still subject peoples to the European powers that colonized them when both World Wars were waged, the story of the realities that they represented is most complicated, especially if it is viewed critically. Even then, any critical assessment of the two wars vis-a-vis Africa and its peoples will reveal that such a complicated story is a part of the extensive trajectory of the exploitation of the continent, its vast resources, and peoples by the former. This article and the Special Issue of the Journal of Asian and African Studies where it’s published, crack open a dedicated discourse on Africans and the World Wars by a select list of scholars who contributed articles to the Special Issue.