European politics were exported to Africa in a particularly oppressive form during the First World War. In military terms, the East African campaign was a sideshow, a distraction from the titanic struggle being conducted on the Western Front in France. Yet for millions of Africans (and many thousands of Malawians) the war marked the high point of colonial violence: a period in which the compromises of the colonial state fell away to reveal a naked demand for manpower, both as soldiers and even more as porters, and for supplies of grain and cattle. Nyasaland was largely spared the horror inflicted on German East Africa – its use as a battlefield – but, in other respects, the impact of the war on the territory was exceptionally disruptive. No other British dependency in Africa suffered the loss to the military of such a high proportion of its manpower and this in turn had profound consequences both for the health and well-being of many Malawians and for popular attitudes in the Protectorate. The war, moreover, was paradoxical in its effects in that it demonstrated not only the extent of European power but also its ultimate fragility. Imperial supplies on an unprecedented scale poured into Nyasaland. Yet, from 1917, the conduct of the campaign was dependent almost entirely on the endeavours of African soldiers and porters.