Almost written out of the history books.

In a solemn and poignant programme on BBC Two last night there was a very moving film about the soldiers that served the Empire from across the globe in the Great War of 1914-1918. I new little of their sacrifice for the Empire that had treated them with such disdain and disregard. Their commitment for us was outstanding and was and has not been sufficiently recognized even today. They have been collectively 'airbrushed out of the history books'. Today they hardly appear in any text books on the war that savaged so many in blood and iron. How has it come to this 100 years on? Racism is the answer. They were treated as commodities, beast of burden that had - no human rights despite the very fact that they were involved in a global war about - so called human rights. In the Marxian term they had been 'rarefied made into objects'.
In made the blood boil to see such disregard for other human beings that had the same human needs that we all have. Men that were treated literally as 'cannon fodder' made to toil in the midday sun in some parts of Africa.
The story was interesting historically as the German high command wanted to recruit the Ottoman Empire as a 'stalking horse' to fight the British and French Empires across the African continent - starting is east Africa. They didn't succeed but it was not for want of trying. In another extraordinary story the Germans dispatched a group to go all the way to Afghanistan to seek the support of those Muslims there but the canny  British were not to be caught with their pants down, and offered more 'gold' to secure their support. All this in an excellent programme introduced by the  British reporter David Olusoga in The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire.