This is a project about belonging: to a family, to a nation, and to a generation shaped by war. Over 1.2 million African soldiers fought for Britain and France during the Second World War (WWII) while their families survived the instabilities of colonial rule. War temporarily expanded the boundaries of national belonging, as Britain and France depended on and celebrated colonial soldiers. Wartime violence and trauma continued into peacetime, as African soldiers were returned to family life under racial hierarchies. It is unsurprising that questions of citizenship and national belonging surfaced in 1945 and remain vitally important today.

Examining how African soldiers experienced their integration home after WWII enables us to understand the connection between government treatment of veterans, celebration and commemoration of conflict, and feelings of national belonging among marginalised and racialised communities. This project will, for the first time, examine the comparative ways men, women and their families from Zambia, Senegal, South Africa and Congo-Brazzaville rebuilt their lives and created new independent nations after the trauma of WWII. Its timespan of 1945-60 shows how boundaries of post conflict trauma move between family circles and larger societal arenas, impacting on national and transnational issues. By concentrating on ex-servicemen as political agents, colonial rulers (and some scholars) have assumed that political engagement was male-dominated, an assertion this project challenges. By focusing on home-coming, this project draws women and families into the frame of analysis, asking how global and domestic contexts affected the reintegration of ex-servicemen into their civilian lives; and interrogating how gender shaped the connections between war and independence movements that flourished between 1945-60.

This historical approach is vitally important to understanding processes of decolonisation and how legacies, continuities and reiterations of inequalities in post-colonial Africa and Europe impacted feelings of national belonging. With support from the Imperial War Museums and non-academic partners we will: create opportunities for international collaboration; diversify our our understandings of WWII creating stronger feelings of national belonging; improve understanding of the mental health needs of Black veterans and their families; use this research to influence policy; engage with local Black and African artists; create resources for schools; and draw new audiences to heritage collections.

At a time when British and French nationalism are contentious and divisive issues, this project seeks to present an alternate way for people to connect with their heritage and nationality, reflecting truly global and multicultural nations. Better understanding of war trauma will lead to better mental health provision for current veterans and their families, often from or serving in former colonial territories. This Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) will transform the academic landscape on veteran and war studies, gender and imperial history, and medical humanities while achieving the long-term goal of ‘decolonising’ popular histories of WWII; engaging critically in debates on race, integration, Black Lives Matter, systemic racism and islamophobia currently taking place in France and Britain; and thus contributing to the process of becoming genuinely postcolonial nations.

The DHI will support: digital capture of colonial documents and oral history recordings; data modelling; coding and analysis; database setup; visualisations and mapping; and nominal record linkage.

Project Team

• Dr. Sarah Frank – UKRI Fellow (University of Sheffield)
• Michael Pidd – Researcher Co-lead (University of Sheffield)
• Professor Kate Ferris – Researcher Co-lead (University of St Andrews)
• Dr. Alfred Tembo – Specialist (University of Zambia)
• Dr. Mutale Mazimba-Kaunda – Research and Innovation Associate (University of Zambia)
• Jamie McLaughlin – Senior Research Software Engineer, Digital Humanities Institute (University of Sheffield)