East African Campaign of World War I

The East African Campaign of World War I began when fighting spread into Germany’s East African colony in 1914. British, Indian, South African, Belgian, Portuguese and African troops fought across an immense region in which distance, disease, transport and supply frequently mattered as much as battlefield strength.

German forces under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck avoided decisive defeat through mobile warfare, while Allied operations moved through present-day Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda and Burundi. African porters and civilians bore much of the campaign’s human and economic cost.

This context is appropriate for fiction about wartime German East Africa, colonial troops, irregular operations, the Rufiji Delta or the movement of the First World War beyond Europe.