Deaths and Statistics. Discovering the Dead of the East Africa Campaign of the First World War

Abstract

This article reassesses mortality in the First World War East Africa Campaign by foregrounding newly recovered cause of death evidence for African soldiers and labourers, many of whom were historically omitted from named commemoration. It situates these findings within the commemorative and administrative frameworks of the Imperial/Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the recent CWGC Non-Commemoration Programme. Drawing on dispersed death lists, theatre casualty returns, and — most significantly — service records and casualty cards of the King's African Rifles (KAR), the study outlines how digitisation, transcription, and the collation of data enable systematic analysis of wartime mortality. The resulting datasets confirm that disease overwhelmingly outweighed combat as a cause of death and identify leading killers including pneumonia, smallpox, dysentery, malaria, and cerebro spinal meningitis, with temporally concentrated peaks linked to operational movement and epidemic dynamics (including late 1918 influenza). Beyond correcting the historical record through improved commemoration, the article argues that these sources offer rare demographic and public health insights for colonial East Africa, opening new avenues for military, epidemiological, and social historical research.