These regiments were present during the Chesapeake campaign of 1814 and the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 but, more importantly, the idea of the West India Regiments loomed large in the American imagination. Concerns that black soldiers might entice wholesale desertion by enslaved people directed US military policy and even though the military contribution of the West India Regiments turned out to be small, Americans continued to be deeply concerned by the example they set long after the war was over.

Speaker: Professor Tim Lockley

Tim Lockley is a Professor of North American History at the University of Warwick. His most recent book is Military Medicine and Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments 1795-1874 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).