WITH the official British centenary commemorations in full swing, The World Is My Country is a brilliant alternative history of the first world war that celebrates the people and movements opposed to that conflict.

Inspired by To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild’s 2011 tour de force about the British anti-war movement, the booklet’s 100 pages are made up of Gabriel Carlyle’s exceptionally well researched accounts of those who resisted the war and 10 original posters painted by Emily Johns.

With the important contribution of conscientious objectors already well known, the authors focus on campaigners who were not conscripted to fight: “What we were immediately struck by was these people’s creativity and mischievousness, their strategic planning and effective mass organising.” Male anti-war activists were often in prison so women played a leading role in the movement, from clandestinely publishing Tribunal, the newspaper for the no-conscription fellowship, to setting up the Women’s Peace Crusade, a countrywide socialist movement that pushed for peace negotiations.

The booklet has a strong thread of internationalism. “The very term ‘the first world war’ is highly ideological,” the authors note. “Viewed from the Global South there was already a ‘world war’ in progress on 27 July 1914: namely, a war by the European (and American) empires against much of the rest of the world.” The genocide of “plucky little Belgium” in the Congo led to the deaths of some 10 million people and such an inconvenient truth about European colonialism is, of course, usually ignored by the deeply brainwashed intellectuals who set the boundaries of acceptable debate on the topic.

Britain recruited over one million African “carriers,” with around 95,000 dying from malnutrition, disease and overwork — nearly twice the number of Australian or Canadian troops who died during the war.

More positively, many in the Global South resisted empire’s call to participate in the bloodbath. The non-violent Maori campaign against recruitment in New Zealand was one of the most successful resistance campaigns against the war.

“These are my people. My voice is their voice. I will not agree to my children going to shed blood,” proclaimed Maori Princess Te Puea when the Crown came knocking for cannon fodder.

A hugely important contribution to the ongoing national debate on WWI, The World Is My Country is absolutely essential reading for peace activists or anyone else interested in looking beyond the official narrative of the conflict.

Ian Sinclair