empire; during the war, the Entente powers, posed as crusaders for liberalism and enlightenment but little evidence exists that they were seen as such by Africans. Many African soldiers fought on both sides, loyal to military professionalism, rather than nationalism and porters had mainly been attracted by pay or had been coerced. The war had been the final period of the Scramble for Africa; control and annexation of territory had been the principal war aim of the Europeans and the main achievement of Lettow-Vorbeck, had been to thwart some of the ambitions of the South African colonialists. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany's colonies were divided between Britain, Belgium, Portugal and South Africa. The former German colonies had gained independence by the 1960s except for South West Africa (Namibia) which gained independence from South Africa in 1990. Casualties The British official historian of the "History of the Great War" campaigns in "Togo and the Cameroons", F. J. Moberly, recorded casualties, casualties, the invaliding of Europeans and soldiers. Civilian porters were brought from Allied colonies and of killed or died of disease and invalided as they could be "more easily replaced than soldiers". Of recruited civilians, no records were kept. Franco-Belgian troops under the command of General Joseph Aymerich suffered and died of disease. In 2001 Strachan recorded British losses in the East African campaign as in action, of disease and deaths among African porters. In South West Africa, Strachan recorded Africans killed in action and of disease or accidents. German casualties were whom killed and taken prisoner. In 2007 Paice recorded casualties in the East African campaign, of whom of the in the campaign. By 1917 the conscription of as carriers, had depopulated many districts and had died, among them of the British Carrier Corps in East Africa. A Colonial Office bureaucrat wrote that the East African campaign had not become a scandal only "....because the people who suffered most were the carriers - and after all, who cares about native carriers?" In the German colonies, no records of the number of people conscripted or casualties were kept but in the German Official History, the writer referred to Paice referred to a 1989 estimate of and a death rate Carriers impressed by the Germans were rarely paid and food and cattle were stolen from civilians; a famine caused by the consequent food shortage and poor rains in 1917, led to