Put simply, this intelligent volume examines “the racial and colonial aspects of the war of 1914–18” (1). Santanu Das’s edited volume of fifteen chapters plus afterword offers us, through a series of individual case studies, a compelling, scholarly, and highly nuanced portrayal of “the combatants and non-combatants from the former colonies and dominions, as well as of particular ethnic and racial groups from outside the colonial empires,” namely, Chinese and African American (3). The volume simultaneously explores “the different discourses … surrounding their participation, moments of interracial contact, processes of post-war memory and literary representations,” bringing to light different types of war experience (3). Highlighting the scale of participation by non-Europeans in what has until very recently been considered a predominantly European war, Das concludes that “even by conservative estimates, the total number of non-white men, combatants and non-combatants … comes to well over four million” (4). In fact, nearly every chapter begins with an assertion of the numbers involved of a particular group. In three sections, each of five chapters, entitled “Voices and Experiences,” “Perceptions and Proximities,” and “Nationalism, Memory and Literature,” an international range of scholars examines the impact and experience of the conflict for a wide range of groups, including askari in German East Africa, Vietnamese soldiers and laborers, colonial prisoners of war in Germany, and Jamaican civilians. Quoting from the German sociologist Max Weber who complained of “an army of niggers, Ghurkhas and all the barbarians of the world,” Das neatly notes, “this volume is about them, as well as their brethren from Ireland and the dominions” (5).

Although this collection of essays is driven by both “recuperative and analytical” impulses and is “methodologically heterogeneous,” Das rightly underlines the merits of its “collaborative, cross-disciplinary scholarship” (3, 5). The essays collectively provide comparisons of different groups, and so “the volume collectively explores patterns of similarity and difference across them” (7). Das’s insightful introduction expresses the exemplary degree of nuance evident in the volume’s composition. The terms of “race” and “colour,” usefully qualified in the introduction, are explored “in conjunction with issues such as gender, class, cultural identity, nationality, religion, and military rank” (8). Das emphasizes that “such experiences need to be contextualised,” noting “some pan-European affinities but also distinct differences” (8). The painstaking level of scholarship and analysis will not surprise readers familiar with Das’s groundbreaking and highly influential monograph, Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature (Cambridge, 2005).

The chapters, by a cast of noted experts, are thoroughly researched yet accessible, laying the foundations of this new field within First World War studies. It is only possible here to note a few highlights. “Voices and Experiences,” which focuses on the historical recovery of nonwhite war experience in Europe, Mesopotamia, and East Africa (5–6), opens with Paul J. Bailey’s stimulating discussion of Chinese indentured labor in France. At times, this is a history of innocence: quoting the evidence from the few oral testimonies available, Bailey notes that Chinese workers present at the Battle of Ypres were often killed when they came out of their dugouts to marvel at the planes overhead. Others exercised considerable initiative, such as the seven hundred Chinese workers in Toulouse who organized spare-time classes for themselves, as well as those who established self-governing associations or conducted strikes. Das’s chapter on Indians at home, Mesopotamia, and France, includes a striking discussion of what may well be the only existing Indian captivity memoir from Mesopotamia. Part 2, “Perceptions and Proximities,” is concerned to “document and analyse the different sites and contexts of interracial proximity and contact” (6), including the battlefield, prisoner-of-war camp, hospital, and a provincial Belgian town (18). Dominiek Dendooven’s fascinating chapter examines the mixture of racist prejudice and simultaneous sympathy and (sometimes erotic) fascination of the Belgian people with the nonwhite troops and workers in Flanders. A Belgian clergyman in his extensive diary records having found a letter from the mother of one of the West Indian soldiers: “What sincere, Christian and motherly feelings! None of our mothers could write better” (149). Alison S. Fell’s interesting contribution on the representation of colonial troops in British and French nursing memoirs similarly uncovers a mixed attraction to colonial soldiers and their habits, which could lead to a questioning of imperialist assumptions. The final section, “Nationalism, Memory and Literature,” concerns the “processes of remembrance and literary representation, and their relation to national, racial or cultural identity” in the predominantly English-speaking former colonies (6). Mark Whalan’s highly convincing chapter on the First World War in African American literature offers a new dimension to the discussion, arguing that the war “gave a conceptual vocabulary to racial conflict” (284) in the era of the New Negro, which had long-lasting effects on the question of race relations. Michèle Barrett’s provocative afterword, “Death and the Afterlife: Britain’s Colonies and Dominions,” examines the inequality in how the dead were commemorated in different parts of the empire, reminding the reader, for example, that German enemy soldiers were routinely treated better in death than native African soldiers. The range of reference to historical, literary, and visual sources (including eight illustrations in the volume) evident throughout begins to illuminate the innumerable forgotten, neglected, or willfully repressed histories of the war.

Despite the density of the volume’s 320 pages and the generous acknowledgment of recent events, exhibitions, and publications, it is clear that there is much that remains unexplored in “what are often considered sideshows in the grand European narrative of the war” (5). Das acknowledges the project’s enormous potential scope, suggesting that “this volume neither is nor pretends to be comprehensive in any way,” and points to the problems of researching these experiences, particularly the lack of written records: “that the [European] war poets have written more words about the conflict than all the non-white troops put together” (9, 7). Nevertheless, the collection uses a considerable amount of newly unearthed and translated material, featuring a rich diversity of juxtaposed sources, including literature, official archives, songs, interviews, memorials, and cinema, as seen in Christopher Pugsley’s very interesting examination of the representation and eroticization of Maoris on film. In going beyond the official archives and investigating intimate and unofficial histories and the experience of local communities, the subject matter is at its most poignant. For instance, through the depiction of grieving mothers in Punjab in Das’s chapter, we see war trauma spilling “into the furthest reaches of the empire” (75). Highly scholarly—including a fourteen-page index—the volume is also intensely moving in its depiction of the interracial encounters and intimacies that we are only just beginning to comprehend and critically discuss.