Description
Demonstrates how Britain's black soldiers helped shape the very idea of race in the nineteenth century Atlantic world.
About the Author
Tim Lockley is Professor of North American History at the University of Warwick and the author of Lines in the Sand: Race and Class in Lowcountry Georgia, 1750-1860 (2001), Welfare and Charity in the Antebellum South (2007) and Maroon Communities in South Carolina (2009).
Reviews
`In this brilliant, perceptive and deeply researched meditation, Tim Lockley shows how the famous West Indian regiments in the Age of Revolution and beyond were crucial in reshaping European attitudes to the racial and medical capacities of black men. His thought-provoking and compelling thesis argues that racial thinking evolved as much through contemplating black soldiers as through the lens of enslavement. Ever stimulating, Military Medicine and the Making of Race encourages us to question what we thought we knew about race thinking.' Trevor Burnard, University of Hull
'This important study sheds new light on the West India Regiments, demonstrating how racial and medical debates underpinned their creation and informed the selection, treatment and the daily lives of the African troops who served. By telling this story, Lockley demonstrates the medical and other hardships experienced by African soldiers, and provides a fresh perspective on how and why the British relied on these regiments to extend their imperial power.' Deborah Neill, University of York
'In clear and accessible prose, Lockley offers cogent analysis of the role the WIR [West India Regiments] and, importantly, the physicians who administered to their men, played in the making of race. Lockley ably mines the rich records generated by the WIR's officers and medical practitioners to chart the evolution of assumptions and attitudes regarding blackness that developed as a result of their comparison of white and black bodies - and the influence these shifting racial ideologies had beyond the bounds of the WIR.' Maria Alessandra Bollettino, Framingham State University, Massachusetts
'... a detailed examination of ... notions of race.' R. T. Ingoglia, Choice
Book Information
ISBN 9781108495622
Author Tim Lockley
Format Hardback
Page Count 220
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 440g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 160mm * 16mm