With recruits from across its empire, Britain’s troops in the Second World War were a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic force. Among those involved were more than a quarter of a million soldiers from East Africa and 2.5 million from South Asia, whose contributions to the Allied forces were absolutely essential to the outcome of the war.
In this episode of On the Record, host Chloe Lee speaks with Iqbal Singh and Liz Haines, specialists at The National Archives, and writer Sharmila Chauhan about a collection of records relating to the recruitment of soldiers from across Britain’s colonies. Focusing on the languages mobilised in these documents, they discuss records that range from the speeches of British commanders in (romanised) Hindustani, to recruitment posters featuring Swahili and Nyanja.
Download the full episode transcript here.
You can find the full-length audio dramas on Soundcloud: Until my Last Breath by Sharmila Chauhan and Motherland by Ery Nzaramba.
Documents from The National Archives used in this episode: WO 169/7529, INF 2/12, WO 203/2045, INF 2/9.
For more information about the records covered in this episode, look at our research guides to Second World War – an overview, Indian Army personnel, Soldiers in African forces under British control. Read our blog series, ‘Perfectly suited to time travel: Audio drama at The National Archives’, ‘Second World War records in Swahili and Hindustani – in audio drama’, ‘Language and empire: Encountering records to write audio drama’ For help navigating our catalogue, you can watch our top-level tips on using Discovery.
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