Full Description
The West India Regiments were an anomalous presence in the British Army. Raised in the late eighteenth-century Caribbean in an act of military desperation, their rank-and-file were overwhelmingly men of African descent, initially enslaved. As such, the regiments held a unique but ambiguous place in the British Army and British Empire until their disbandment in 1927. Soldiers of Uncertain Rank brings together the approaches of cultural, imperial and military history in new and illuminating ways to show how the image of these regiments really mattered. This image shaped perceptions in the Caribbean societies in which they were raised and impacted on how they were deployed there and in Africa. By examining the visual and textual representation of these soldiers, this book uncovers a complex, under-explored and illuminating figure that sat at the intersection of nineteenth-century debates about slavery and freedom; racial difference; Britishness; savagery and civilisation; military service and heroism.
Contents
List of Figures; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; 1. Race, Military Spectacle and the West India Regiments; 2. The Spectre of a Black Soldiery; 3. Establishing the Steady Black Soldier; 4. The Reorientation of the West India Regiments; 5. Displaying Valour: Samuel Hodge, VC; 6. Neither Soldiers nor Warriors; 7. Bringing the Troops Home; 8. Remembering the West India Regiments; Bibliography; Index.
