Africa's Sons Under Arms: Race, Military Bodies and the British West India Regiment in the Atlantic world, 1795-1914

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This ambitious collaborative research project uses the British West India Regiment (WIR) as a case study to explore the evolving nature of racial thought in the Atlantic world from late 18th to early 20th centuries. The WIR was formed in 1795 from remnants of the Carolina Corps of black soldiers recruited by the British during the southern campaign (1778-82). Defeat in the Revolutionary War led the evacuation of c.5000 enslaved and formerly enslaved people, including black troops. The WIR became vital for the defence of the British Caribbean colonies and also served in West Africa. The military history of the regiment has been studied and we do not propose to re-examine this. The soldiers of the WIR were objects of scrutiny by doctors, slaveholders, travellers, photographers and others, who depicted and interpreted their bodies in complex, often contradictory ways. The project's components will utilize these viewpoints while not forgetting the agency of the soldiers themselves who were able to shape racialised ideas through their behaviour, dress, abilities and actions (in battle, on parade and while playing sport). These interactions took place against a backdrop of debates about racial capacity and the civilising mission, and the end of slavery in the British Caribbean. The militarisation of the black subject is comparatively under-studied, yet is crucial to our perception of the plastic nature of race as a concept. Whites who feared armed black men were willing, when circumstances dictated, to place them under arms. This project aims to explore such ambivalence, explain how whites 'rediscovered' the black body in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and how evolving white understanding of the black body from passive slave to armed combatant was crucial to changing ideas about race in the Victorian period. The overall scope of the project is ambitious but manageable. The time-frame of 1795-1914 encompasses the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and War of 1812; the abolition of the British slave trade and slavery; British involvement in West Africa; the Crimean and US Civil Wars; and the later 'Scramble for Africa'. This period saw the WIR involved in intra-imperial conflicts in the Caribbean, suppressing slave revolts (Barbados, 1816) and post-slavery rebellions (Jamaica, 1865), as well as fighting colonial wars in Africa. The project's broader historical context is provided by the Haitian Revolution; public debates about slavery and race in Britain and the USA; the growing importance of science to the medical profession; and emerging ideals of Victorian heroic masculinity. Deliberately, the project does not encompass the First World War. Instead, at a time when the 'Commonwealth' (sic) contribution to that War is being assessed, it is timely to consider the extensive and more varied history of black soldiers in the British Army. The geographical scope of the project is focused on the Atlantic world, including the Caribbean, West Africa and Britain, but also the USA and French Empire. Under the umbrella of a long and wide history of the WIR, this project comprises three distinct but interconnected components. Two major components examine 1) the production of medical discourse about the WIR soldiers by army surgeons and physicians, and its influence on proslavery writers in the US South (Lockley) and 2) the changing image of the WIR soldier in Britain as a barometer of popular ideas and anxieties about race, masculinity, warfare and empire (Lambert). Associated with each is a PhD project: one considers white responses to the arming of men of African-descent, while the other focuses on photographic imagery of the WIR and its relation to the contemporary discourses, including tourism. A third, more focused component considers the place of the WIR within the life of Caribbean societies, particularly focusing on soldiers' participation in popular sport and the garrison as a public space (Hatfield).