Telling the Stories of Colonial Veterans
Key to COLVET’s mission is the use of individual stories to shine a light on the often-overlooked experience of colonial veterans from across the interwar world.
This blog will share posts from team members, collaborators, and other interested parties that highlight how the subjects of empire sought to rebuild their lives and grapple with the impact of conflict across colonial contexts in the period. It will also critically reflect on the sources we can use to access the experiences of colonial veterans and their families, exploring what might constitute a potential archive for the history of colonial veterans, Finally, it will ask what impact sharing their stories might have on broader understandings of veterancy as a global phenomenon.
Have something to contribute?
We welcome pieces on the lives of colonial veterans from members of the public.
Dr Nicola Camilleri, ‘Former Eritrean Soldiers in the Italian Colonial Army: Fragments of Life and Documentation’.
Chiflè Seghid was born in Zagher, a village in the Hamasien region of colonial Eritrea, not far from Asmara, the capital city of Italian colony Eritrea. His date of birth is unknown, but we know that he enlisted on 18 September 1912. This date marked the beginning of...
Dónal Hassett, ‘No Right to Return or Remain: French Colonial Soldiers and Discriminatory Demobilization (Hosted by The Returning Soldier)
You can access this piece here: https://returningsoldier.co.uk/2025/09/18/no-right-to-return-or-remain-french-colonial-soldiers-and-discriminatory-demobilization/
Prof David Murphy, ‘Lamine Senghor: From Servant of Empire to Anti-Colonial Radical’.
On the evening of 11 February 1927, the tall, gaunt figure of Lamine Senghor strode to the podium at the inaugural meeting of the League against Imperialism (LAI). The LAI was one of the interwar communist movement’s most significant attempts to forge an anti-colonial...
Tracing the Global Greater War in the Records of West African Veterans of the French Army
In 2022, the film Tirailleurs premiered to rave reviews in France. Starring the highly regarded actor Omar Sy, the film follows a father and son from the Senegalese interior who are forcibly enrolled in the French Army in 1917 and sent to fight on the Western Front....
Nourredine Abdellah Bendjelloul: A Veteran’s Quest for Political Equality in Colonial Algeria
Cultural representations and political evocations of veterans in former colonies often reproduce visions of ex-serviceman as the stooges of empire or the vanguard of anticolonial agitation. Colonial historians have long contested this binary, pointing to the variety,...