Soldiers of Uncertain Rank
The West India Regiments in British Imperial Culture

A cultural, military and imperial history of the Black soldiers of Britain's West India Regiments.

David Lambert (Author)

9781009464413, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 October 2024

262 pages, 15 b/w illus. 24 colour illus.
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

'An impressive achievement by a leading Caribbean Studies scholar. Lambert's examination of the visual and textual imagery of the West India Regiments is attentive to the nuances and particularities of representation and print culture. An important contribution to an under-explored area of British visual culture which acknowledges and interrogates the power of imagery within the imperial imaginary.' Sarah Thomas, Birkbeck, University of London

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.

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.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]