The BN Village - View Single Post - West India Regiment and its role in Africa

Breadfruit · (#5 (**permalink**))

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bredder Tukoma

Anyone have more information on story 3. Did these negroes in the West India Regiment really see service in West Africa as " exacting bloody revenge".

Will black men be used in Africa fighting Africans in the future. What's changed in 100 years. The role of African Carribean regiments in European wars of conquest in Africa was not as benign as some would have you beleive.

Any more info appreciated.

Hail up Tukoma!!!

Man, there's still soo much of our recent history still to uncover eh?

I've not known much about that colonial force to this point. I did know they were active in Sierra Leone.

On recent reading, it seems pretty clear that fighting for the european, raised for Africans, the similar contradictions as killing for them today does. Many of those Africans were "bought" by the British and then enlisted. Many Africans then probably fought for Europe, rather than be slaves on plantation. As today we have Africans who fight for what they see as a better life in the west or back in their homelands. (History repeats).

But, many Africans tried to escape, once they saw an opportunity. This was deemed mutiny by the british of course!

Many of our African ancestors left West Africa, centuries ago, in a time of great, civil War. (These battles continued in the Caribbean, just as the Spanish and british carried conflict from Europe to the Americas). This fighting allowed Europeans to procure Africans for plantations in the Americas thru them siding with one group over the other. Flooding Africa with guns and creating even greater division and distress in the process. The losers, often seeing Africa for the last time for the hell of America.

I can well believe then that some Africans would, if given the chance return to Africa and seek to continue conflict with particular ethnic groups. I know Akan groups in Jamaica, after slavery still wanted to wield power over other ethnic groups, so such sense and pride in a particular African worldview (tribalism), was in sharp contradiction to the later Pan Africanism that acted inclusively, and saw its birth in the Americas.

The greater contradiction was with the European (we have always culturally blamed Europe for the mass kidnapping and enslavement), as we later saw demonstrated by europe's full scale economic invasion into Africa (Berlin Conference).

Africans always knew who the gretaer enemy was, so to say that masses of African soldiers in those regiments were returning to seek revenge as their primary motive - I can't see that. African – Americans (in the Americas) use Anansy or Brer Rabbit as a source of ancient African wisdom. Many were not going fighting without great rewards for themselves.

Markedly, Africans, after Slavery had made home in the Caribbean and did not seem to want to return to Africa in a hurry; especially when they had fought for freedom on the bloody lands they now lived on and Africa was been manipulated by a sadistic, murderous Europe on the rise, and the short term results were uncertain. The Caribbean had become Africa. Still is.

Peace