How you can use this image

This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).

Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.

The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.

Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.

Notes

Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.

In the early to mid-nineteenth-century British army, a Caribbean posting was to be feared. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars over 90 per cent of the 45,000 white officers and men who died there were killed by disease rather than enemy action.

The high mortality rate led the Army to raise regiments of black soldiers for service in the region, in the hope that they might be better suited to the climate. Although some free men were recruited, the Army mainly relied on the slave trade to provide recruits for these units. Between 1798 and 1806 the Army was the single biggest purchaser of slaves. It bought 6,376 slaves, an estimated 7 per cent of all slaves sold in the British West Indies during this period. With the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and emancipation of slaves in 1834, the Army recruited free black men into the ranks.