Introduction

This book aims to suggest an analysis of the conflict that focuses on three crucial points. The first is related to space. It is now evident that the framework of the nation-state is too circumscribed and does not capture the complexity of the relations that came into being at local, national and international levels. In this regard, we find particularly penalising the conventional approach that tends to investigate WWI in Africa and the Middle East as two separate settings, a view that unfortunately is still prevalent. Also, WWI studies have tended to examine the conflict within the geographical contours created by the area studies paradigm. Adopted in the 1950s, the area studies model has been under scrutiny since the mid-1990s.73 The artificial disjuncture between Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East reveals all its inadequacies when we deal with the Horn of Africa, an area strongly connected to the neighboring regions. Our choice to focus on a territory which stretches from Libya to Ethiopia and encompasses the Yemen and Middle East is an attempt to overcome this hiatus. Erasing the artificial lines that divide the Horn of Africa from the wider Red Sea region allows approaches that offer a greater understanding of the dynamics at work during WWI. Ours is only a partial attempt to address this methodological limit. But we are aware that Shar\u12bf Husayn\u2019s break with the Ottomans and the volatile situation in Yemen and along the Red Sea deserves more attention from scholars of African history

Askaris and the Great War. Colonial Troops Recruited in Libya for the War but Never Sent to the Austrian Front

Between January and February 1915 an Ottoman army of 25,000 men tried in vain to invade Egypt. Subsequently the Ottoman Empire gave a hand to any Senussi military activity in neighbouring Cyrenaica (in particular the oases inland of the Libyan-Egyptian border and along the Mediterranean coast). Italy had been at arms with the Senussi resistance since as early as 1914 and had actually been dragged into the world war in Libya way earlier than the official date of 24 May 1915. In light of this, the recruitment policy of Italy and its political and military decisions in the face of war become extremely interesting. This article explores a few key issues: the increased number of soldiers from the Horn of Africa sent to Libya; the Libyan troops sent to Sicily between summer 1915 and spring 1916; and the debate over the use of African troops on the Italo-Austrian front