East
African Goans in the World War I
As
the world marks the centenary of the end of World War I, we turn our thoughts
to Goans who fought in it. My thanks to Cliff Pereira for this extensive piece
of research, which will soon be updated, and is a fitting piece of history for
the occasion. Source acknowledgements have been deleted due to a glitch however I have a PDF with the info.
By Clifford J Pereira FRGS
By Clifford J Pereira FRGS
Independent
Historical Researcher, Curator, Museum Consultant and lecturer.
Pereira
holds a BA(Hons) in Geography with Asian Studies. As fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society (with IBG) he turned to research in 2001 on a variety of
themes leading to an exhibition on the Bombay Africans (2007). Pereira was
Visiting Research Assistant to Dalian Maritime University, China (2011-2015). He
was Researcher-Curator on the Bait-Jelmood Museum, Qatar (2013-2016) and for the
National Museum of Qatar (2016-2018). Pereira was awarded Honorary Research
Associate of the University of Hong Kong in July 2018. Pereira describes
himself as a historical geographer. He has numerous papers and chapters in
publications around the world.
Goa is a small Indian state on the West
coast of India,
dissected by many rivers and creeks
and backed by the Western
Ghats. The Konkani-speaking people of this area have a rich maritime heritage and were long
part of the Indian Ocean
trading networks. Since
1510 Goa had been
under Portuguese rule,
but from the
seventeenth century Portuguese imperial influence shifted from
Asia to Brazil.
In the same
period the Dutch,
British and French stepped their economic presence
through trading companies and eventually by the eighteenth century
the Western coast
of India was under the sway of the British
through the East India Company.
The Bombay Presidency drew heavily on both uneducated and educated Goans
and in the late nineteenth century Bombay was the point of economic
development of British colonial rule in East Africa. Indentured South Asian
immigration had greatly benefited British rule
in the Caribbean, Fiji, Malaysia, South Africa and East Africa
where they built
the first railway line
connecting Lake Victoria
with the coast.
Free immigration of people mainly from the Punjab, Gujarat
followed. Christian Goans
as Portuguese subjects
were encouraged to work in the African colonies
as they were,
educated in the Latin script,
where Christians and since
they were not British subjects, they was no pressure for the British
to care for their needs.
At the onset of the First
World War East
Africa was a mosaic of European colonies
and Protectorates. To the north
were French Somaliland, the British Protectorate of Somaliland, and
Italian Somaliland. British East Africa, the Coast Protectorate and the British
Protectorate of Uganda
were at the
centre and to the South
were German East Africa
(Tanganyika) and Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). Two states remained as
independent entities, Abyssinia and the Sultanate of Zanzibar.
Archival sources
and oral history
suggests that there
were Goans in all of these diverse territories. The German and British railways, inland shipping, postal; telegraph, banking and government administrative developments brought hundreds of Goan men to East
Africa where by 1911,
their wives and
families had begun
to join them
in the cities of the coast,
notably in Zanzibar, Mombasa, Tanga and
Dar-es-Salaam, and all along the railway lines from the coast to the Great
Lakes, where new cities such as Kampala,
Entebbe, Kisumu, Nakuru,
Nairobi, Arusha and Moshi were developing. In Uganda G. Lyall thought the employment of Goans
was too expensive and favoured the use of Africans. His views were taken up by Governor Jackson who appointed a committee in 1913 to look at replacing the Goans with Africans, but the government in London and the outbreak of war prevented any action. At the same time
dissatisfaction with British
rule was beginning to be felt
in many parts of the “empire
on which the
sun never sets”
including Ireland which
had been one
of the traditional sources
of soldiers to police the
empire. On the
other side of the world,
at Astoria, Oregon, USA another
movement was taking
shape. On the 30th May 1913 the local
paper, the Astoria
Budget printed a notice that
the Hindu Association of Astoria, under
the Secretary Munshi Ram would be inviting the
Stanford professor and
Indian revolutionary Har Dyal (1884-1939), to deliver a lecture at the Astoria
Finnish Socialist Hall. This speech marked the founding of the Ghadar
Party, and is considered one of the most important steps towards ending
British rule in South Asia.
Har Dyal found
an attentive and
sympathetic audience among the mainly Punjabi
farm and mill workers. By the end of the year South Asian labourers from Oregon to British Columbia, Canada had become
politically aware and were led by Sohan
Singh Bhakna from
Portland. The movement spread quickly to San
Francisco,
Singapore, Hong Kong
and East Africa.
But the base
of the movement remained with the Punjabis, and specifically with Sikhs.
Goans had initially come
to East Africa
through agents Bombay,
which held political and economic sway as manifested by the use of the Rupee over
Arabia and the entire coast
of East Africa. The same process
also led to the volunteer of Goans for service in the Royal Navy as attested by the 1911
British Census return
that featured six Goans on board the HMS Alert, a British training vessel.These men were
enrolled on the “Principle Conditions of Non-Continuous Service”. Goans
who were destined
to be stewards and cooks
were often engaged as
boys or young men and had to be “trained at depot ships before serving commissions afloat”
under the enrolment terms. They also had to “agree to serve for five
years from the date of entry”, though
this could allow
for a break and would
often allow for a change of vessels5.
Name
|
Occupation
|
Age
|
Marital
Status
|
Nationality/origin
|
Victoriano
Caridade De Souza
|
Officers Steward
|
46
|
Married
|
Bardes. Goa.
|
Pascal John Rodrigues
|
Officers Steward
|
32
|
Married
|
Bardes. Goa.
|
Sebastian Caridade Lobo
|
Officers Steward
|
22
|
Single
|
Bardes. Goa.
|
Vincent Rosario De Souza
|
Officers Steward
|
41
|
Married
|
Bardes. Goa.
|
John
Victoriano De Souza
|
Officers
Cook
|
27
|
Married
|
Bardes. Goa.
|
Deogo Antonio Pereira
|
Officers Cook
|
35
|
Married
|
Bardes. Goa.
|
Goans on the HMS Alert 1911.
Source: UK 1911 Census. The National Archives.
The impending war was chronicled in East African
newspapers and the British Royal
Navy and German Navy
were poised for possible conflict. As Portuguese citizens Goans may have initially considered themselves safe, since
Portugal was neutral
at the start
of hostilities.
However, Goans
were far too involved in the running
of these colonial
possessions to declare them as mere observers and in any case the war was
to bring irreversible change in attitudes against
Europeans and Asians
from Africans.
In April 1913
in anticipation of war the British Royal
Navy vessel HMS Astraea was ordered from South
Africa to East
Africa to watch
the German cruiser
SMS Konigsberg. At the beginning of hostilities in Europe on
the 28 July 1914, both vessels were at Zanzibar Harbour. Up to this
point the war was limited
to the Balkans,
but on the 31st July
1914, amid a monsoon
squall the SMS
Konisgberg cleared Zanzibar harbour
in pursuit by the slower HMS Astraea, HMS Hyacinth
and HMS Pegasus. Family
history among the Goan community has identified Goan cooks
on British vessels
such as such
as Deogo Antonio
Pereira from Tivim who was the officers cook on the HMS Astraea.
Deogo Antonio
Pereira.
Source: Authors Collection.
On the 5th August 1914, Britain, France and Russia
declared war on Germany and on the 8th
August the HMS Astraea bombarded the German wireless
station at Dar-es-Salaam, making this the first
naval engagement by the allies
in the war. Taking matters
into their own hands
the Captain of the Astraea signed a truce with
the German governor
at Dar-es-Salaam. The HMS Astraea then sailed off to attack the Germans at Duala in German West
Africa (Kameroons). Ironically there were Goans
such as Mr.
Mendes from Candolim working at the wireless
station which was actually run by the Eastern Telegraph Company.
For Goans
up-country in Kenya
and Uganda the railway was
a lifeline to the outside
world and connections to Goa. More
importantly, for many
Goans such as railway clerk
J.F Fernandes at Voi was the German
Commander General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck who ran
a campaign from
Tanganyika attacking the Uganda Railway
line at nearby
Taveta on the 15th August
1914. From a base at Mbuyuni, the Germans ran a campaign against the railway for over a year,
by derailing trains
and blowing-up bridges.
Clement J Charwood, a Second Officer
of the SS Pentakota
of the British
Steam Navigation Company (BISNC)
sailed into Mombasa’s Kilindini Harbour and was surprised to witness a flotilla of dhows flying
American flags. This
was the flotilla bringing Belgian, British
and French refugees from
German East Africa. There
are references to the evacuation of European women and children from British East Africa, but
few references to Asian evacuations. However, family history studies
suggests that some
Goans who were coming to the end of their
government contracts in Uganda did return to Goa around
this time and did
not come back to East
Africa during the war years,
choosing instead to construct their
large houses in Goa with the remittances from East Africa.
Before the War there were an estimated 600
to 700 Goans in German
Tanganyika, There was a Goan
community in Dar-es- Salaam and in Tanga.
Very little is known about
the Goans who were in German East Africa
during the war.
We know that
one Clement DeSouza
held a farm
at the sight of the present
day Tanga Airport, and was an honorary
member of the German Club in Tanga.
Hundreds of Goans worked
on board ships
of the British
Merchant Navy and
on the 22nd August the first
troop convoy left Bombay for Alexandria composed
of six British ships of the
BISNC. In fact
during the war ships of the BISNC
and the P&O
made up 90% of the
British convoys. Their Goan crew
(as stewards and
cooks) therefore provided a crucial role
during the war. But evidence from Canada and the USA
suggests that there was open discrimination
against Goan merchant seamen, whose Portuguese nationality did little
to protect them against anti-Asian discriminatory laws. There
is evidence of Goans arriving
at Vancouver, Canada on the SS Carnarvonshire (III), a Royal
Mail Steam Packet
of the Shire Line from Antwerp via China and Japan. The Asian crew
was not allowed
on shore and the
ship sailed on to Seattle. “The Alien Crew
List” completed in Seattle states
that the vessel arrived from
“Vancouver BC” and that the SS Carnarvonshire (III)
carried 62 “British
Indians”, 11 “Portuguese” and 22 Britons. The British Indians
included a fireman
and coal trimmer taken on at Singapore. The “Portuguese” were
in fact “pantry men”, cooks and saloon
boys from Goa. Similar
anti-Asian laws were
in place in the USA
and in the most successful colonies of the British
Empire including Australia and South Africa.
The South
Asians of Kenya
(usually termed Indians
as they hailed
from British India)
were perceived by many British
colonists as being
unsupportive of the war effort.
Ewart Grogan, sometimes
called the “Kenya’s Churchill” was one of the leading opponents to Asian
immigration. At a rally attended
by 1500 people
held at Nairobi’s Theatre Royal on 7th
September 1914, Grogan
praised the forces
and colonists from
Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa,
but did not acknowledge those
from India, or the various
African regiments. When the meeting was open to the audience
Mr. Narayandass expressed the support of the local Indian
community. He was followed by Mr. J.M. Campos on behalf of the
Goan community who received a greater cheer
from the mainly
settler crowd14. It is not clear if Ewart Grogan
knew about the Ghadar movement, but he would
certainly have known about
the Komagata Maru incident at Vancouver in May 1914.
The Germans in Tanganyika went
attacked the town
of Kisii in Western Kenya
on the 10th September 1914
and were expelled
from Kisii by a force
of Kings African
Rifles that landed at Kendu Bay on the shore
of Lake Victoria and marched on the town
forcing the Germans out and taking their
four machine guns and ammunition. In the confusion of war several Jaluo and Abagusii men found an opportunity to attack the shop of Mrs Mascarenhas at Raina which was completely emptied.
The SMS Konisgberg
meanwhile was attacking Allied shipping in the Indian
Ocean and returned to Zanzibar to launch an attack on the HMS
Pegasus and another ship on 19th September 1914. Both
ships were sunk,
but the guns
of the HMS Pegasus were
salvaged and reused
during the war. Twenty-four British seamen and one African were killed in the
attack. Thirty-two wounded
were transferred to South Africa
on board the
SS Gascon.
On the 16th
October 1914 a convoy of forty-five ships left Bombay harbour, including fourteen troop transports carrying 8000 troops. Many
of these ships
such as the P&O ship SS
Karmala had Goan crewmen.
The Indian troops
were poorly trained
and many from
the Punjab and Sind
had never been
on a ship before. The food on board the ships from
India was unfamiliar and most
suffered from sea-sickness. Secrecy was unknown
and the news of
the flotilla was covered in East African
and British papers.
On Zanzibar Island
a British Anglican deacon was riding the 5miles of railway into
Zanzibar Town as the only
passenger on this railway. He struck up a conversation with the “Goanese guard”, whereby the guard
told the deacon that the British had landed at Dar-es-Salaam and would
be blown up by the many mines there.
Where the guard
had heard the story is unclear, but the deacon
rushed to the bishop
of Zanzibar and the British
authorities, who denied
the story and summoned
the Goan guard who was arrested and taken to court. As a Portuguese subject he was defended by the Portuguese Consul. The outcome
was that the guard was found guilty
and fined; though in a curious
twist the deacon
paid the fine.
A Volunteer Carrier
Corps was established in Zanzibar
by Bishop Frank,
and they often
paraded on the
waterfront headed by a Goan band as a morale boast .
On the 31st October
the troops arrived
in Mombasa19. Less
than a week later British
and Indian troops set off from
Mombasa to attack
the well informed
and trained Germans resulting in the defeat
of the British at the Battle of Tanga 3-5th November 1914. British casualties were
795, including 141 British Officers there was fear of a German
attack on Mombasa itself
which prompted the
evacuation of European women and children.
At the port
of Kisumu on Lake Victoria
a young Caetano
João Pedro Rodrigues who arrived from Betalbatim, Salcete in 1915 was working
for the Menezes
store. He went
to work on the lake
steamer the SS William
Mackinnon which was hurriedly armed
with a rather
useless saluting gun for use against
the Germans who had controlled the lake with their well-armed
Muansa. The German
ship was scuttled
by the British ships SS Winifred
and SS Kavirondo
in 1915. One of the
salvaged guns from the HMS Pegasus that sunk
in Zanzibar was railed
from Mombasa to Kisumu and mounted on the SS Winifred
of the Uganda
Railway Marine and this
was a decisive factor in retaking Lake
Victoria from the
Germans.
With a World War in full
force the British
government began to see the
Ghadar movement as a major threat
to the war effort, its aspirations for a free
India, could be supported by Germany and
Turkey, and a major rebellion in India at this time
would have spelled
disaster for the allies. British and Indian troops in India had been
sent to Flanders, leaving a minimum of British
officers and their
Indian troops to maintain British
military power in India. The Ghadar movement
was already established in Kenya by Gopal Singh
and was under the leadership of Sitaram Acharia.
To make matters
worse, the British
colony of Kenya and the Uganda Protectorate were on the frontline of attacks from
German Tanganyika and there were voices of dissension among
many African groups.
The defence of the Uganda Railway and
the settler farms
and plantations of the Kenya
Highlands was based
on African and Indian
troops. Sitaram Acharia
was arrested and deported to the Punjab
in 1915. In December 1915 three Ghadar
activists were sentenced to death in Mombasa. In the trial
in Lahore the tribunal sentenced 24 men to death, although
only six had been convicted
of capital offences. The viceroy commuted the sentences of eighteen26.
The HMS Astraea returned to East Africa
and was one
of the ships involved in the scuttling of the SMS Konigsberg in
the Rufiji Delta
July 1915. She then supported the introduction of Indian troops to fight
the Germans in Tanganyika. By this time
Deogo Pereira joined
other Goans including C.R. D’Souza
on board the HMS Hyacinth which was also involved
in the campaign against
the SMS Konigsberg27. In fact the Germans scavenged the guns from
the SMS Konigsberg and mounted
them on wheels
made from the ships’ funnels
and used them in their overland campaign.
The lack
of manpower for the war effort led to the some forced
conscription especially
among the Girama tribe in Kenya, who were already
in revolt over enforced expulsion from their lands.
The recently qualified Dr. Antonines Caetano
Lactancio De Sousa
from Bombay was sent
to serve near Malindi in the Giriama
area in 191628. Another
Goan, Mr. P.A. Rozario
was attached to the 5th Kings African Rifles
as a clerk based at Kismayo (then
part of the Jubaland Province).
Name
|
Position
|
Vessel
|
Date of death.
|
Place of death.
|
Correa
|
General Servant
|
SS Clan
Macfarlane
|
6th Jan 1915
|
Off Crete.
|
Xavier Costa
|
Scullion
|
SS Plassey
|
5th Sep 1915
|
North Sea. Off
Scotland.
|
Pedro
Almeida Triphonas Alvares Padrinho Colaco
Joaqim
Freitas
|
Steward Not Known Steward
Steward
|
SS Persia
|
30th Dec 1915
|
Off
Cape Martello, Crete.
|
Nazaro Francisco
Braganza
|
Boy
|
SS Maloja
|
27th Feb 1916
|
Off Dover, English
Channel
|
I.N.
Lobo
|
Topass
|
SS City of Athens
|
10th Aug 1917
|
Off Table Bay,
South Africa.
|
Diego
Lobo
|
Topass
|
SS Malda (II)
|
25th Aug 1917
|
Off the Isles of
Scilly.
|
A.N. Lobo
|
General Servant
|
SS Aparima
|
19th
Nov 1917
|
English
Channel.
|
Camilo Fonseca
|
General Servant
|
SS Nyanza
|
7th
Dec 1917
|
English
Channel.
|
Francis Coelho
|
Not Known
|
SS Nyanza
|
9th Dec 1917
|
English
Channel.
|
Some Goan fatalities in British Merchant
Shipping WWI. Source: Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
German raiders attacked shipping and laid
mines across the globe and
many Goans working in the British Merchant
Navy were recorded
among the casualties.
The Inland Water
Transport Corps, who were part of the
Royal Engineers, were
essential in the war in East
Africa as the many lakes
and rivers were
often the best
corridors away from the railway
lines to move troops. Detachments were established at Kilindini (Mombasa), and Port Amelia in Mozambique. As the war
came to an end in East Africa
and the British
took the ports of Lindi and Dar-es-Salaam. The Corps established themselves at these
former German ports. Tally
Clerk J. Rodrigues was a Goan
with the Inland
Water Transport and was
recorded as dying
on the 27th October 1918. He was buried
at Dar-es-Salaam War Cemetery. At the Nairobi
South Cemetery is the grave
of J.A. Ribeyro
a conductor and member of the East African Transport Corps who died
on 22nd April
191831.
Out of an adult
male Indian population of just over 12,000 in the Kenya
colony, only 227 Indians had volunteered to fight and
only 45 were briefly conscripted into the East
Africa Mechanical Corps.
Goans at this time were considered as a separate
“non-British Indian” community,
and though we don’t have precise statistics, the evidence from fatalities
suggests that Goans played a role far
out of proportion to their total
numbers which were probably not more than
2000 in the Kenya colony
during the war. By the end of the First
World War over a hundred
and fifty Goans
had been granted
medals by the Royal Navy33 and the Goans certainly achieved the admiration of East African
anti-Asian colonists such as
Ewart Grogon34.
Most Goans
who were Portuguese subjects in the Royal Navy
had actually signed
on well before the start of hostilities, their
involvement in the
war could be regarded as Portuguese
action, even though it occurred prior to March
1916 when Portugal joined the Entente Powers. Analysis of British records
suggests that the bulk of the Goans
in the Royal Navy were employed as cooks and stewards, however
there were also
bandsmen, one group
of which received their
General Service medals
in 1915 at Port Said
in Egypt on board the HMS
Swiftsure. This
battleship was the
flagship of the East Indies
station, and employed
more Goans than any other British vessel. Originally the ship escorted troop
convoys from Australia, New Zealand
and India to Aden. After
defending the Suez
Canal from Turkish attack in 1915 the HMS Swiftsure went on to the famous Gallipoli Campaign. Goans were employed mainly in the East Indies
Fleet during the
First World War
and the granting of medals in 1915 at Port
Said, marked the transfer of the ship
to the Atlantic Fleet36, and therefore the Goans were transferred at Port Said
from the HMS
Swiftsure onto other
vessels. In many ways this procedure epitomises the position of Goans within
the British Empire at the time.
They were considered important, if not
crucial to the smooth running
of the
empire, but as Asians they were excluded
from certain spheres. This could be the waters of the North Atlantic, or ownership of lands in the Kenya
Highlands, or in fact in certain
areas of cities
such as Nairobi, and definitely in certain Imperial bastions such as the Norfolk Hotel where
the only non-white faces were the Goan barmen.
In Uganda
before the war
had ended the Africans had started to lobby for equality with Asians in the civil
service37. In 1913 the last
of the Sikh soldiers had been replaced
by Nubians and other Africans38. Even
in 1917, the number of South Asians
in Uganda was only
3548 of which
80% were men. In Nairobi
the war years
were marked by a new political
awakening among the Goan community with the appointment of Dr. Ribeiro
as Portuguese Vice Consul
between 1914 and 1922. Goan
resentment at their
treatment within the
civil service led to the founding
of the Non-European Subordinate Civil
Service Association in 1919. This
organisation would evolve
into the Kenya
Asian Civil Service
Association in 1921 and become a formidable voice in Kenya
politics. The First
World War had
exposed the inability of Europeans to hold on to empire
and the vulnerability of European empires
in the face of numerical strength
of subject peoples
throughout the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.
Like other
servicemen, Goans had experienced the atrocities on Africans and Asians
committed
in a war caused essentially by European powers.
They had also
been made more aware of the limitations placed on them
in terms of wages and other advantages, including the right to opportunities. At the same time new
opportunities to better their lives by further
emigration from Goa
to East Africa
opened, especially with
the creation of the
Tanganyika
mandated territory. The seeds to ending the
age of empire
had been sown
and British schemes to settle ex-servicemen in the Kenya
Highlands, would only
increase African and
Asian dissatisfaction.
Acknowledgements
Bexley Family and Local History Centre. London. England.
UK. British Library. Euston. London. England. UK.
Clatsop
County Historical Society. Astoria, Oregon, USA. Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Maidenhead. England. UK. Imperial
War Museum. London. England. UK.
Marconi Museum. Cornwall. England. UK. Ministry of Defence. London. England. UK. National Maritime Museum.
London. England. UK.
Royal Geographical Society
(with IBG). London.
England. UK. SOAS Library. University of London. London.
England. UK. The National Archives. Kew. London.
England. UK.
The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H Chung Collection at the University of British Columbia. Vancouver, British Columbia. Canada.
Vancouver
Maritime Museum. Vancouver. British Columbia. Canada.
Mr. Anthony De Souza. Canberra. Australia. 2007. Dr. John
De Souza. Nairobi.
Kenya. 1999.
Mr. Mervyn Maciel.
London. UK. 2003. Mr. Ivan
Pereira. Ottawa. Canada.
2010.
Mr.
Ferdinand Rodrigues. London. UK. 2012.
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Kenya Census 1911.
Kenya Census 1921.
Supplement to the Official Gazette
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