Abstract
Meeting the logistical requirements of large-scale industrial warfare in Sinai, Palestine and Mesopotamia required the mass mobilisation of peasant labour. An uneasy symbiosis developed between the tools of ‘modern’ industrial conflict and the ‘traditional’ reserves of man- and animal-power that serviced them. This was particularly pronounced in the campaigns undertaken by the Egyptian and Mesopotamian Expeditionary Forces, where the absence of existing roads and railways and alternative means of supply or transportation magnified the demands on local manpower resources. In a fluid situation in which all items of consumption initially needed to be transported into the battle-zone, the resulting measures taken to raise local labour units constituted one of the greatest logistical achievements of the First World War. The units successfully maintained the forces and made possible the lengthy campaigns and ultimate victories of 1917–18.
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Notes
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© 2011 Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
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Ulrichsen, K.C. (2011). Mobilisation of Labour for Logistical Units. In: The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914–22. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297609_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297609_6
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