The Great War of 1914-18 began and ended as a global conflict that imperial powers waged in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, Africa and East Asia. Great Britain and France, with overseas colonies and control of the seas, relied on their possessions for men and materials to fight the war in Europe. European and native soldiers of the empires had fought in Europe and around the globe. As the war eroded the traditional prohibition against using coloured troops from the colonies to fight against Europeans, it heightened the fear of white people towards peoples of colour. The participation of African and Asian troops in the slaughter of white men, their access to white women in ways theretofore unimaginable and, the French use of Senegalese soldiers in the post-war occupation of western Germany, all threatened the traditional imperial order of racial supremacy.