Africa had already suffered greatly at the hands of European colonists. In German South West Africa, for example, a genocidal campaign (featuring the use of concentration camps) had been waged against the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples between 1904 and 1908, in which as many as 100,000 people died.
The First World War brought more misery. While it is fair to say that the majority of Africans were largely unaffected by the conflict, it had a devastating impact in the areas where there were military
