East and West Africa Medal

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

East and West Africa Medal

The East and West Africa Medal was created in 1892 to recognize campaign service in East and West Africa from 1887 to 1900. It was awarded for minor campaigns, often punitive expeditions against local tribes in response to attacks on Europeans or to help suppress slavery. A total of 21 clasps were issued for different campaigns, and the medal could be awarded with multiple clasps.

Who got it
- Recipients mostly came from the Royal Navy, the West India Regiment, and locally recruited forces led by the British. No British Army units were involved, though some officers served with local units. In the Benin 1897 campaign, three nursing sisters received the clasp.

Design and naming
- Obverse: left-facing portrait of Queen Victoria with the inscription VICTORIA REGINA.
- Reverse: soldiers fighting Africans in dense jungle. The designer was Sir Edward Poynter; this reverse was also used on the Ashantee Medal and the Central Africa Medal.
- The recipient’s name, rank, and unit were engraved on the rim in various styles.

Appearance and material
- Struck in silver for officers and British-led forces; bronze was sometimes issued to native porters.
- Ribbon: yellow with black edges and two central black stripes; 31.7 mm wide.

Clasps and how they were worn
- 21 different clasps correspond to specific campaigns (examples include Witu, Juba River, Lake Nyassa, Gambia, Benin River, Niger, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Mwele 1895–96).
- If a person earned a second or later clasp, only the new clasp was added to their existing medal.
- If someone had already the Ashantee Medal and later qualified for the East and West Africa Medal, they received only the new clasp on their Ashantee Medal.
- The Mwele campaign (1895–96) did not have a clasp; the word MWELE and the year were engraved on the rim.
- Clasps marked 1896–97 and 1896–99 were authorized but never issued.

In short, the East and West Africa Medal honored a range of smaller, often punitive, campaigns across East and West Africa, with a distinctive Victoria-era design and a system of clasps to record multiple campaigns.