On Sept. 15, 1914, barely six weeks after war broke out in Europe and was quickly exported to the eastern and western shores of Africa, something unexpected happened as it reached the southern tip of the continent. While troops from the South African dominion of the British Empire prepared to invade neighboring German South West Africa (now Namibia), Christiaan Frederick Beyers, the highest-ranking member and commandant of South Africa’s army, resigned.

“It is said that the war is being waged against the ‘barbarism’ of the Germans,” Beyers reportedly wrote to explain his decision. “We have forgiven but not forgotten all the barbarities committed in our own country during the South African War.” He was referring to the Second Anglo-Boer War, a brutal annexation campaign that the British launched and won against Afrikaners 12 years earlier.

His resignation marked the beginning of the Maritz rebellion, named after the general who allied with the Germans to boost its chances of success. Over the next five months, Beyers and a number of other military officers gathered 12,000 Afrikaner troops, proclaimed an independent South African republic and battled an army of 32,000 men — among them 20,000 Afrikaners loyal to the British crown — in hopes of toppling the acting South African government.

Though unsuccessful, the Maritz rebellion is a revealing episode of World War I in Africa. Far from an isolated incident, it is a symbol of the two wars that European empires fought in Africa during the first worldwide conflict in history. As the world reflects on the legacy of Europe’s Great War over the next four years of centenary commemorations, we should question why only one side of Africa’s involvement is publicly acknowledged.

Across the Mediterranean, European powers fought one another to defend their prized possessions and grab new ones when opportunities arose. But there was another, lesser-known side of the war, with colonial powers — with their extraordinary demands in men, money and resources — in opposition to the African populations that resisted colonial rule. The better-known side is an episode of European military history fought across imperial boundaries; the other represents important moments of African sociopolitical histories played out within the limits of future national borders. Only the first registers in public discourse, if briefly, whereas the second remains forgotten.

European powers often claimed the African soldiers fighting for them were nothing but loyal and aspired to serve in their respective armies. Yet colonial administrators spent much of the war coping with local resistance and rebellion, particularly in French West Africa. From individuals feigning illnesses to entire villages fleeing, Africans routinely evaded conscription, something to which only France resorted. Where the French were considered especially vulnerable, locals seized the opportunity to revolt, in northern Dahomey (now Benin), north of Bamako (now in Mali) and in the southern desert of French Sudan (now in Niger).