The Empire Goes to War, 1914-1918
Three million soldiers and labourers from across the empire fight alongside Britain in the First World War
Quick facts
- Empire and Commonwealth troops
- Over 3 million
- Indian troops on the Western Front
- About 140,000
- West Indian recruits
- About 15,000, including 10,000 from Jamaica
What happened
When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, its declaration bound the entire empire, not just the British Isles. Over the following four years more than 3 million soldiers and labourers from across the empire and Commonwealth served alongside the British Army, from a starting force that had been small and designed chiefly to police colonial territories. Roughly 140,000 Indian troops reached the Western Front by the war's end, alongside soldiers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and around 15,000 recruits from the West Indies, including 10,000 from Jamaica, who served largely as labourers in ammunition dumps and gun emplacements under frequent enemy fire. Campaigns such as Gallipoli in 1915 inflicted especially heavy losses on Australian and New Zealand troops.
Why it matters
The war demonstrated the empire's enormous reserves of manpower, but the scale of dominion and colonial sacrifice, especially at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, stirred a distinct national pride in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and India that fed a growing postwar demand for self-government rather than subordination to London.
How we know
The National Army Museum's dedicated First World War resources document troop numbers and deployments across the empire's constituent forces using British military records of the period.
Sources
- National Army Museum. The Commonwealth and the First World War · Reputable sourcenam.ac.uk · The domain "nam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Imperial War Museums. The vital role of India in the First World War · Reputable sourceiwm.org.uk · The domain "iwm.org.uk" is on our Reputable source registry.
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Related timelines
- World War I → · The full war that drew the entire empire into a single global conflict