Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
“Moving Men: Labor Mobilizations to and from Africa during World War I” with speaker Dr. Michelle Moyd
February 12, 2020 at 7:00 PM
| Location: | Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre, 355 Cooper Street, Ottawa, ON K2P 0G8 |
| Cost: | Free |
| Audience: | Anyone |
| Key Contact: | Audra Diptee |
| Contact Email: | audra.diptee@carleton.ca |
| Contact Phone: | 613-520-2600 ext 4203 |
Please join the Institute of African Studies and the History Department for a lecture by Dr. Michelle Moyd entitled “Moving Men: Labor Mobilizations to and from Africa during World War I.” (Click here to register.)
This event follows a film screening of the movie “Hero” taking place in the same room at 4:30pm. We would love it if you could join us for both events.
About the lecture
During World War I, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and laborers from Africa traveled across great distances to join the war effort. These included men recruited to fight in various European colonial armies, and labor contingents that worked at European ports and other sites. This presentation offers a bird’s eye view of these vast oceanic and pedestrian labor migrations and their consequences. It also reflects on individual experiences of wartime travel, which could be harrowing, disorienting, and deadly. Both of these perspectives are necessary for understanding the massive scale and effects of this unprecedented mobilization for war, and its heavy reliance on various forms of African labor.
About Michelle Moyd
Dr. Moyd is a historian of eastern Africa, with special interests in the region’s history of soldiering and warfare. Her last book was entitled Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa. It explores the social and cultural history of African soldiers (askari) in the colonial army of German East Africa, today’s Tanzania.