It is a little known fact that the uranium used in the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 was extracted from the Shinkolobwe mine in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, then under Belgian rule. The local population employed, including children, was subjected to forced labour, in addition to exposure to high levels of radiation, leaving multiple sequelae that, as in Japan, persist in the territory. This fact allows us to trace a link between colonialism and war that transcends the temporal limits of World War II.
European imperial expansion, which began in the second half of the 19th century and was characterized by the establishment of colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, represents an essential element for understanding the globalization of warfare in the 20th century. However, beyond considering colonies solely as theatres of military operations, it is essential to recognize that the colonized population, with a special focus on women and children, has been systematically excluded from the narratives addressing these conflicts. Their bodies and experiences were used to fuel imperial propaganda and perpetuate the stereotypes that sustained it, rendering their agencies and experiences invisible in the records of the period.
At the end of the war, some 750 million people, equivalent to one-third of the world’s population, resided in colonized territories. The British Empire had a quarter of the global population under its sovereignty and, in the words of historian Chima J. Korieh, “Britain was not at war, but its empire was”. Their participation in the conflict was diverse both in the rear and at the front, although always much more invisibilized. For example, it is estimated that around 450,000 African combatants were mobilized by the French army during the war. These soldiers faced discrimination throughout the war, culminating in de Gaulle’s controversial decision to “whiten” the forces marching towards Paris in August 1944.
Warfare in imperial settings exacerbated practices of violence that had endured throughout the colonial period. These included rigid racial hierarchies, coercive labour for the exploitation of natural and agricultural resources, the diversion of local supplies for the benefit of exports to imperial centres, as well as the mobilization of combatants. The population of these territories was marginalized from humanitarian aid, but coalesced into strong local support networks, led mainly by women, although these networks have been insufficiently documented due to Eurocentric bias. The conclusion of the war in 1945 did not mark the end of the challenges for this population, which in many cases continued to fight, this time against metropolises that still today do not recognize their role in the conflict.
The slogan “these are the sinews of war” accompanied a British propaganda campaign aimed at highlighting the role of the colonies in the WWII war effort. The growing demand for rubber, tin, cotton for textiles, sugar, hides, rice and many other resources led to a significant increase in the mobilization of local labour, especially women, and also children, who were subjected to extremely difficult working conditions and coercive recruitment practices.
As a result, food crises were triggered in these territories, where production systems had been transformed during the colonial period to serve the interests of the metropolis rather than local needs. A notable example of this problem was the devastating famine that struck the Bengal region (India) in 1943. The export of food to the battlefronts, together with the increase in troops stationed in the region and the invasion of Burma, caused a humanitarian crisis that claimed the lives of between two and three million people, with a particularly devastating impact on the child population. This crisis generated internal migration and family breakdown, with significant rates of child abandonment and orphanhood, which in turn led to high rates of labour and sexual exploitation of these vulnerable segments.
Child exploitation was not an exception in times of crisis, but a constant feature of imperial systems. Despite propaganda depicting schools and hospitals, intended in reality for a minority, the colonial administration employed the entire population in plantations, mines and industries. However, there is a limited photographic record of this reality due to biased portrayals of the supposed “civilizing” work in these territories and the growing protection of children’s rights in Europe. This concealed the racialized conception of childhood in the colonies, which was deprived of the rights of children in the metropolis because of their colonized status.
Regimes of child servitude in British Hong Kong and French Indochina, involving the coercive adoption, primarily of girls, have been documented since the 19th century and persisted until the end of the war. In the context of colonization in Africa, child labour was also widely prevalent until decolonization, the practice being justified through racial archetypes and alleged local custom. In short, war resources relied on the exploitation of men, women and children, at a high human and social cost.
For colonized populations, World War II came after violent processes of occupation and colonization. At the end of the conflict, a part of the society that had been instrumentalized in the war, disenfranchised for decades and impoverished, started decolonization processes that sometimes triggered new military conflicts and generalized revolts in the region. The war did not abandon their people; rather, it inspired them to take the lead in the struggle for their emancipation, which represented the culmination of a long genealogy of resistance against occupation. While peace was being built in Europe, the colonial powers responded to these aspirations in the East, India, Indochina, Indonesia and Africa with violence and war crimes.
The story of the Amerasian children, also known as “Dust Children” or “Bụi đời” (in English and Vietnamese respectively), is one of the most well-documented of the conflict. These are approximately 100,000 children born to Vietnamese mothers and American fathers, the results of sexual abuse or stable relationships, who were rejected by both societies and grew up on the streets or in orphanages. In 1988, the United States finally recognized them and allowed the creation of visas, which led to more than 20,000 of them moving to the United States.
The Indochina/Vietnam war is one of the various war experiences that emerged in the colonies after World War II, coinciding with the creation of a new world order and the emergence of the “Third World” as a space to be occupied. The Algerian war (1954-1962), the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya (1952-1960), the Angolan war (1961-1975-2002), the partition of Pakistan and India after independence (1945-1947), as well as that of Palestine (1947-1948), the Indonesian revolution against the Netherlands (1945-1949) and a long etcetera, exemplify the violent realities that marked the path of the colonies towards emancipation and the management of the post-colonial political-social reality. Millions of lives lost, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, and civil conflicts, along with structural impoverishment, represent the high human cost of colonialism and its end. The scars and legacies of these experiences persist in the Global South, pending reparative policies and recognition of spoliation, crimes, ecological disasters and inequality.
