The “Great War” is often depicted as an unexpected catastrophe, in particular for Europeans. But for millions living under imperialist European rule, terror and degradation were nothing new.

Faced with manpower shortages, British imperialists had recruited up to . million Indian soldiers. France enlisted nearly , troops from its colonies in Africa and Indochina. Nearly , African Americans were also inducted into US forces. The first world war’s truly unknown soldiers are these non-white combatants.

Ho Chi Minh, who spent much of the war in Europe, denounced what he saw as the press-ganging of subordinate peoples. Before the start of the Great War, Ho wrote, they were seen as “nothing but dirty Negroes…good for no more than pulling rickshaws”. But when Europe’s slaughter machines needed “human fodder”, they were called into service.

Other anti-imperialists, such as Mohandas Gandhi and WEB Du Bois, vigorously supported the war aims of their white overlords, hoping to secure dignity for their compatriots in the aftermath. But they did not realise what Weber’s remarks revealed: that Europeans had quickly come to fear and hate physical proximity to their non-white subjects—their “new-caught sullen peoples”, as Kipling called colonised Asians and Africans in his utterly racist poem, The White Man’s Burden.