Colonial science and military service: The West India Regiments and circum-Atlantic networks of knowledge, c.1815- c.1900

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This PhD focuses on the role of the West India Regiments (WIR) in projects of circum-Atlantic colonial science, particularlyexploration, botany and ethnology, in the nineteenth-century British Empire. Sitting at the interface of histories of science,empire and the military, it also seeks to contribute to the 'decolonisation' of scholarly collections and academic knowledge. This is because the WIRs occupy a unique place in the history of British Empire in that they were almost entirely comprisedof men of African descent.Britain first established the WIRs during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815). They served across theCaribbean, including in the continental enclaves of British Honduras (Belize) and British Guiana (Guyana). From the1820s, they were also deployed at Sierra Leone, the Gambia, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Lagos and elsewhere in WestAfrica. Numbering twelve at their peak, only a single WIR comprising two battalions remained after 1888. A third battalionbased in the South Atlantic island of St Helena briefly existed from 1897 to 1902. The final regiment was disbanded in1927.Initially, the WIRs' rank-and-file largely comprised of African men purchased from slave traders. When Britain ended itsformal involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, 'recruits' came from foreign vessels captured by the Royal Navy as partof its suppression activities. After slavery was formally ended in the British West Indies in the 1830s, the regimentsbecame increasingly African-Caribbean as local volunteers enlisted, although there were still enrolments from West Africa.Despite their ethnic make-up, the WIRs were a regular part of the British army, armed, paid, rationed and uniformed (until1858) like other foot regiments. They had white, mainly British, officers, although prior to the reform of the commissionsystem, it was cheaper to join the WIRs, which meant they attracted officers of lower socio-economic status, often seekingpersonal advancement through a military career - and through participation in projects of colonial science.