Crumbling Foundations of the Colonial Edifice: Chiefs and Headmen at War

Abstract

The advent of war in August 1918 greatly magnified the politico-economic role of chiefs and headmen within Northern Rhodesia’s colonial framework. Traditional elites were seen as cheap and convenient intermediaries for the extraction of military food and manpower supplies. It was a role accentuated by the serious wartime shortage of white district staff. Furthermore, from the early wartime perspective of many remaining district officials, chiefs, and especially headmen, were intrinsically well-suited to such onerous tasks in view of their intimate local knowledge. As one Kasama official put it:

It has been the practice so far as possible to leave the recruiting of labour in the hands of chiefs and headmen […] the actual recruiting itself being left to the Heads of villages as they naturally know who are the ‘shirkers’ and who are not better than either the officials or the messengers.¹