Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture hosted by me, alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture. I am Alexandra Miller, you know, joining you all, as always, and really excited, especially for today's episode, because we get to continue a conversation I started a few episodes ago, you know, as we started talking about Caribbean military histories, you know, the impact of the British Empire and all of those things which we'll definitely still get into today. As we talked about a few episodes ago the West India Regiments, we briefly mentioned the War of 1812, really pointing to some of the similarities in the recruitment of Black soldiers. And well, today, you know, I'm really excited to have our guests join us today because Matthew Taylor, as you will get to hear from in a moment, was a listener who had tuned into that episode and was, like you know, wow, like I do, the War of 1812. You know, I could definitely contribute to this conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:16

So, matthew, I'm really really grateful to have you and you know certainly share your expertise with us on the subject. And so, with that, I'll start right off, you know, introducing Matthew Taylor to the show. Matthew is a historian and the author of Black Redcoats, the Corpse of the Colonial Marines 1814 to 1816. And so you know, as always, matthew, as I said, it's really great to have you and, of course, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and what brought you really to this amazing and really in-depth study of the colonial Marines?

Speaker 3: 1:50

Oh, it's a genuinely kind of peculiar story. I'm not a historian by trade. I have a life and a job and all this kind of stuff. History is merely an interest of mine. The reason I wrote Black Redcoats is I discovered one day, purely by accident, a short note on like a website about an interesting military engagement between escaped African-American slaves and the American military, and it turned out there was a British angle to this story which genuinely shocked and interested me.

Speaker 3: 2:21

I think of myself as a bit of a guy who knows his British military history and I went digging and these days I feel we live in quite a good information age. Now If you want to know very granular historical information, you can half the time just find the book and grab it. And there you are. And I was genuinely shocked to discover that there was no book about this. So I kept reading up and digging in archives and articles and eventually there was just quite a magical day where two things struck me. The first was that I felt I discovered a surprisingly big element to a largely forgotten war which revolved around the emancipation of enslaved people, turning my kind of British military history that I was looking into into simultaneously also a part of the african diaspora history and the history of emancipation, which made the kind of the kind of hobbyist part of me hit me who was just doing this, because I like knowing about a niche military subject, um get filled with this desire to go. Actually, this is an important part of several narratives african-american, afro-caribbean, afro-canadian as well as linking back into the relationship between britain and african and african derived people and the history of the british imperialism and british slavery, as well as american slavery, and we're fired up by that awareness.

Speaker 3: 3:40

I I genuinely did feel I was writing something quite out of out of the blue. It just fully took me and the various bits and bobs I'd put together over a couple of years I smashed together into a book in remarkably quick time. I did it the hard way around. I wrote the book and I had to go back finding all the references knocking over parts of paper in my house. I knew I read that somewhere, kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 4:02

But when it was all put together I had, I believe, a remarkably interesting bit of military history but also an incredible bit of history of the African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere, linking together what are now a multitude of disparate Afro-Caribbean, afro-canadian African-American communities who actually all have an incredible shared history, because it all happened kind of in a war that is not so well known, basically anywhere outside of Canada. It was all kind of hidden under that cloak. You wouldn't go looking for a black emancipatory history in the War of 1812 in the way these things tend to be indexed and recorded. So my quest at present, now that my book is out purely self-promotional, of course is to get this story out there and say, actually, everyone, there is an incredible Black liberation story inside this war story and I really want people to know more about it because it changes how you read the war, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 2: 4:57

Certainly, and I think even for us on the other side well, I'm on the other side of the pond over here, right, what you said about you know this awareness of the War of 1812 is certainly true. You know, it was mentioned very briefly in my, like high school, US history education, but it was certainly more dominated by the history of the American Revolution, right? So the War of 1812 kind of serves as this little blimp following the American Revolution from 1775 to 1783. And there were a few factors certainly influencing the War of 1812. There were certainly some political issues that existed between the two, from things like you know, British imposed trade restrictions, America opposed British trade with Native Americans there are a multitude of factors that really led to the War of 1812 and America's declaration of war. And so could you underscore for us what some of these things looked like? You know this sort of relationship between the US and the UK at the time and what really ignited the War of 1812.

Speaker 3: 6:03

Yeah, certainly, as you say, the narrative of the War of 1812 yeah, certainly, as you say, like the narrative of the war of 1812 is interesting all over. I mean here in the united kingdom, the war of 1812 is basically unknown, apart from when we occasionally remember we built the white house. Wow, I like that. The wider yes, the wider context of that is more or less completely alien, if you know what I mean. Um, the war of 1812 is crucial for the story of canada, canada, so the awareness of it in canada is is much bigger, largely focused on their border where they were defending themselves from the united states. And in the united states history generally speaking and you've got lots of very intriguing kind of mythologizing about it, right, yeah, as kind of a second war of independence, or I mean, I think the part that's most interesting to me as, like a foreign observer, is where the war of 1812 is often talked about. In american history. It's often presented as a war that was fighting an existential threat, despite the fact it was a war started by the united states. There's normally you don't start a war to fight an existential threat. The essential threat turns up first. If you see what I mean and that, as we'll go into that. Actually, it actually hides a little bit of what I think about this war in terms of how it started. Actually, you're right to say there was the united kingdom. The british empire was involved in the huge napoleonic wars against france, a truly global war against napoleon. But um, within that, the united states was suffering from both french and british trade restrictions because we're two massive power blocks that are at war, or the united united states just wants to make money and is being restricted by both sides. Um, in american history there's a lot of focus put on the impressment of sailors, because the united states was still a, a revolutionary state, really still kind of normalizing its relationships with the empire. It had left all kinds of like, really kind of like you know, tetchy technical arguments about what is an American citizen versus a British subject, can a British subject surrender that, surrender that status in favor of American citizenship? All these kinds of like very boring, legalistic arguments which really just hide the fact that the royal navy, as a global military force, was in constant need of new sailors. Anyone, anyone with any skill at sailing is a valuable resource in the world, and american sailors are at least sailors who claim to be american, speak english. They're an obvious good grab resource and normally I said normally that kind of impressment, as it was called is is normally talked about as the real starting gun of this war. But to be completely fair, this was a time of truly terrible in British. We'd been doing that for years and the United States had just got over it.

Speaker 3: 8:35

The primary reason I believe the War of 1812 began is one you intimated. There In the northwest west, around the Great Lakes, we saw the rise of Tecumseh and his brother and Tenskawatoa, who were two Native American leaders who managed to put together a pretty solid Native American confederacy, and that Native American revivalist movement had indirect British support. It certainly wasn't an arm of British policymaking but it had British support because they're trading back and forth with our Canadian authorities and when American forces fought that group, when they captured equipment that was British and so on, the threat of Native Americans armed by Britain became even though it's a very questionable point, it became in American political life oh God, the Brits are arming the savages against us and there was lots of classic racist preconceptions about this means we're all going to die and in American political life that got allied to, they're trying to strangle us with trade restrictions, they're stealing our sailors and now, finally, they're arming horrible, monstrous people on our border. And now, finally, they're arming horrible, monstrous people on our border. We've got to go to war. We've got to go to war to see them off. The time it happened 1812, is, I think, a bit of a giveaway about the real aims here.

Speaker 3: 9:56

1812, napoleon is just about to invade Russia with half a million men. It looks like Napoleon is at the maximum extent of his power. He, half a million men, it looks like Napoleon is at the maximum extent of his power. He's our big enemy. The entire British empire is stretched, holding back this peer competitor. So this is the perfect time for a small, scrappy and revolutionary state to get some concessions out of us.

Speaker 3: 10:16

And I believe that the American political establishment at the time, which wasn't uniform, it was largely factional, but faction in charge of america at the time thought ah, if we, if we launch ourselves into canada, we can remove the source of aid to native americans by just kicking british influence out of north america, the continent entirely, there'll be no more direct connectivity. And then maybe we could, you know, maybe we could use that land as a negotiating tactic to get better terms, maybe even give it back back. Maybe not, but I think the idea germinated that the Brits are really busy fighting a much bigger war. If we pull off some lightning victories in the early stages, we'll be at the negotiating table in a really strong position. Luckily, from my British perspective, it didn't play out that way. The Canadians, for various reasons, put up a significantly better resistance than was anticipated. But that's not to understate the fact that the british empire wasn't a very weak position. There was virtually no regular british military in canada because we didn't see a threat and we were still heavily stretched.

Speaker 3: 11:17

So, as we go into the story we're going to talk about, the british empire decides to retaliate to the American invasion of Canada with what in many ways, was the only thing we could do. We used our significant naval advantage. We were going to send a fleet into the Chesapeake Bay, which of course is looked on by Virginia and Maryland, the real heartland of the United States. At this point, virginia is very much the ideological underpinner of the entire America project and the idea is we send a fleet into there and no bones about it, we're going to launch a terror campaign. We're not going in to capture land or retake America. We're going in to interdict trade, attack towns, set fire to things and bring a war to the center of American political and social life in the hope it will induce political change, in the hope that people will turn against the president and Congress and say we need to get out of this war.

Speaker 2: 12:10

You know. First off, thank you for underscoring, you know, this wider history of the War of 1812 and how those who we will talk about in terms of the colonial Marines really get involved. I think, at least for me, what you're saying has brought us to a point of understanding that the enslaved people who were in the US at this time, britain had certainly for those who listened to our West India Regiment episode learned that Britain had a track record of sort of saying you know, if you come I don't know if work is necessarily the right word but if you come and serve as part of our British troops, right, we will give you freedom in a sense, right, and this is definitely similar and was also the case for the War of 1812. And so can you talk a little bit about how and why, beyond just, you know, of course, freedom, but sort of cementing this legacy that the UK established of, you know, granting those who are not necessarily within their actual colonies freedom for their service?

Speaker 3: 13:18

Yes, certainly During the War of Independence, particularly as the military situation turned against us, we began this process. Lord Dunmore and Clinton and people like that, offered freedom to American slaves if they would escape from their masters and join British forces to fight initially, and then later it just became a blanket offer of freedom. If you flee American territory, we will find freedom for you. There is an interesting tension there where on the british side there is a definitive this is entirely a military military need you know anything that undermines the opponent? And slavery is an obvious weakness in a society. Society that creates is an automatic third party who have not interested in being loyal. But you know I mean. So you exploit that obvious. But there was also, also in British culture at that time, an emerging political and social movement which would eventually become full-scale British abolitionism, aided by the fact that, by pure accident, slavery never really got established here in Britain on the home island. It was entirely an offshore thing. You know, out of sight and out of mind, if you see what I mean, which makes it much easier to be very moral about slavery when you don't have to deal with it day to day, if you see what I mean. But that freedom giving in the War of Independence and it's one of those things where reconstructing it as a historian today is difficult because we're working in the histories of people whose lives were unrecorded. But that freedom giving in the War of Independence definitely appears to have entered African-American, enslaved African-American kind of oral history and the culture, the culture that is only communicated in plantation slave cabins when people are at rest. That something is different about the Brits. It's interesting because there was no doubt whatsoever that enslaved african-americans were very aware that in the caribbean british slavery was still going strong because there was lots of movement of people between those in the years up until the end of the international slave trade. So you know, various people in virginia or whatever might have began their lives as enslaved people in jamaica or somewhere like that before being sold in the American market. So it's not like they were blind to the wider context. But I think this idea that these two slightly different groups of white people, britons and Americans, have a tension between them which gives us the opportunity to find freedom for ourselves, was always was there, if you see what I mean. So a good example of like how this is kind of it's underneath the wider history, which is largely speaking the white directed history, is when British forces came into the Chesapeake in 1813. So far I have found zero reference to enslaved people in any of the planning.

Speaker 3: 16:04

The mission is to attack America, to damage it economically, to set fire to towns, to cause terror, to bring on political change, and enslaved people just don't appear at all. They don't, you know, they're invisible to the. You know the largely white aristocratic leaders of British policy, as they are to white aristocratic American leaders, but instantly. This is why, whenever I'm telling this story, I always push back against the idea. This isn't a benevolent Brits coming along and freeing people story.

Speaker 3: 16:32

So British military arrives in the Chesapeake Bay for a pure military objective which is hurting the United States, and enslaved African-Americans come to British forces and offer services in exchange for freedom instantaneously. So British forces arrived in February 1813, and literally in I think it was the 11th of March 1813,. So within about two and a bit weeks, nine African-American men stole a boat, sailed out to one of our warships, hms Victorious, signed up, became part of the crew and they served for seven or so months and then HMS Victorious went back to Halifax in Canada and they were released from service as free people. That was then followed by when British forces went on land to raid and loot and so on, african aborigines would just come to them and just ask to be taken away. Within this um, we see the the length and breadth of the talent, skill and utility of of all these people. And the hms borias and hms mohawk both benefited from a black pilot. So he was an enslaved black man who had been part of a fishing fleet. He escaped, used his knowledge of the local rivers and the depths and so on to guide British warships to areas we had no idea we could go, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 3: 17:52

And this changes the paradigm. So our initial attacks on the American coast, this area, they're all American War of Independence, redux. We have a little bit of success on the american coast, this area, they're all american war of independence, redux. We have a little bit of success on the coast. You get further inland, you get ambushed by militia. You know the local farmers, they know it all better. They're sniping from behind trees, all the classics.

Speaker 3: 18:08

But when african americans come to us in great numbers, that is instantly flipped because there is a secretive, underground world of movement and information sharing amongst african-americans um, which is partially part of resistance to slavery, and now british forces have access to that. So you get some really intriguing ones, where american commanders who are previously quite boisterous about fighting the brits, uh, they now say oh, it's happening to us, we're being ambushed by british forces and there's no bones about it. They point straight at african-americans. They say it's happening to us, we're being ambushed by British forces, and there's no bones about it. They point straight at African-Americans. They say it's the knowledge and intelligence of African-Americans that pulls British forces up levels against us, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 2: 18:53

A war in itself.

Speaker 2: 18:56

You know, of course there were, as you pointed to, certain successes and achievements on either side, but ultimately, again, right, it's not as lofty in memory compared to, like the Revolutionary War, in a sense, right, but these colonial Marines, as you discussed for us, really were integral in the ways that the British were able to succeed.

Speaker 2: 19:20

But I think, you know, in a sense, there is this really interesting moment, and this is primarily where the Caribbean starts to become central to this story, right, there's this really interesting moment when Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane so this is, you know, almost at the end of the war now he issues a proclamation that really went against British orders, giving the Marines the freedom to choose between enlisting or, you know, resettling in somewhere else in the, you know, some other British colonies.

Speaker 2: 19:51

And I found that, you know, again, there's an interesting distinction between the colony Marines and the West India regiments, because they did give them an option to join the West India regiments and, to an extent, a lot of people declined. They chose freedom, they chose to resettle, right, and so this proclamation not only really impacted and was received poorly by the British military, but also impacted the US military who tried to sort of falsely promise the same thing in some regards. But could you really help us understand this moment? You know that Cochrane establishes and then how this eventually then leads to the resettlement of colonial Marines and their families in the Caribbean.

Speaker 3: 20:37

Certainly Well, cochrane's proclamation is remarkably interesting. So the whole time from 1813 into 1814, as British forces are raiding and fighting the Chesapeake as well as bringing in largely young men who are becoming colonial Marines, and we form those a unit and we later integrate that unit into the Royal Marines as well. So it's an interesting note in that it might be the first British military unit to be formally racially integrated integrated there's a bit of an argument there because it was. It was never as hard segregated as you might, as you might imagine, but it's an interesting point. But while the whole time these young men are coming to us and becoming the black red coats of my book and having this remarkable kind of psychological effect on the united states, because you know they're both escaped, enslaved people. So it's the image of the nightmare slave revolt, but also the uniform of the foreign king we've recently got rid of. So it's a real duality of nightmares there.

Speaker 3: 21:29

The whole time, civilians, african-american, enslaved women, children, very old people and those who simply don't want to serve in a military crisis they're fleeing the British forces as well and I think this is a pure historical happenstance. The combination of officers present in the chesapeake were inclined to humanity to these people who are fleeing, fleeing that flame. They were playing um, largely, I think, think, because cochrane and his, his subordinate corburn, were both so focused on damaging the united states that they rightly said every single person who leaves the United States is a win for us, as a propaganda measure, as an economic damage. So they turned happily to bringing in as many people as were happy to come in. Tangier Island, which is in Virginia but is in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, basically got turned into a refugee reception center for African Americans fleeing slavery in Maryland and Virginia. And that means that Cochrane's proclamation goes against stated British policy which is, generally speaking, not to encourage widespread slave uprisings, partially because we've got our own slave colonies, you know. And there's also a kind of a European angle on if Britain encourages a savage uprising of enslaved people, that'll damage us, because we're fighting Napoleon in order to fight for civilization and humanity. If you see what I mean. He's a hideous dictator, so we can't undermine that by kicking off savage wars elsewhere. But the proclamation is in many ways it's just a recognition of what's already happening. By this time we've already got at least a few thousand people out of the united states. Covenant proclamation is literally just formalizing a situation that already existed.

Speaker 3: 23:08

And, um, indeed, as you point out from london, the order, the orders were actually quite charmingly bureaucratic. The orders were anybody who wants to come and fight for us, stick them in the west indies regiments, because we've already got those. That's where black people serve, so they should go into there. And also there's a great line about also don't liberate too many people, because liberated people we have a responsibility to look after and that means that's a cost of money and we don't want to spend too much money. But ironically, by saying we have a responsibility to them, you kind of already set a contractual standard there, if you see what I mean. They're not just entirely at your mercy, you're indicating a responsibility towards them.

Speaker 3: 23:47

The West Indies regiments, for reasons discussed in your previous episode, was not an appealing prospect to many. A small number of African-Americans did join. From looking at the stuff I've got, I think mainly young men who just fancied a military life. You know there's always someone that appeals to and off they went. But the open-endedness of West Indies service, the idea you could be in the regiment your entire life and also your legal status, is still a bit questionable in terms of where you are in the hierarchy of British imperial power. That just didn't seem to appeal to the colonial marines and the wider black refugees as they became known in British reports, kind of maintain a coherent we're Americans, not necessarily identifying as Americans in support of the United States, but we're a different group here. And the way this order was created, as it was just a recognition of the reality by this time British officers in the Chesapeake they're writing what looked to me like back coveringcovering letters like well, you know, I raided this town and I left with 60 enslaved Americans. Ten of them are going to be soldiers, all the rest are their families. But there was no way they were going to come if we didn't bring their family. They're kind of cleaning their hands of it and saying it isn't my fault, if you see what I mean that. If you see what I mean, that aspect of the British military operation ironically becomes more and more important by the very end of the war.

Speaker 3: 25:06

There's a really fantastic incident, which technically took place after the war ended, where British forces liberated some enslaved people in Maryland. The slave owner came out to the British fleet and said the war's over, give me them back, because that's war loot and we're not at war anymore. And not the officers as such, but the crew of the ship. It was HMS Havana. The crew of the ship said to the officers of the ship we will put our hands in our pockets and give this guy all the cash on the ship to go away, rather than give these people back. And the captain of that ship wrote that in a report to his commander saying well, what can I do? So we, you know, we sent him off. Um, there is quite a charming coda to that. In the two of the enslaved people in that raid uh were, I think, george and george and lucy hall, and they are the parents of william hall, who was the first black recipient of victoria cross, which is britain's highest award for gallantry. He, um, he was born in canada.

Speaker 3: 25:58

Um, this disconnect between kind of wider british imperial policy and cochrane's proclamation, it doesn't appear to have had a massive like ripple effect in british life.

Speaker 3: 26:10

In the context of the hundreds of thousands of people trapped in slavery, we're talking mere mere thousands, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 3: 26:18

So it was a small pocket Like Cochrane didn't take any stick for going too far or anything like that either. He was able the whole time to say this is a brilliant military opportunity where we have here, by denuding the United States of a core part of its economy, and sure it leads us with a long-term issue of what do we do with these people, in the context of them being black people, and we've got a very clear slave. Um, so they've society in our own colonies in this region, but didn't seem to ruffle too many feathers, thankfully. But I said, I think that was primarily because it was a recognition of what was already happening. Lots and lots of people were already in our hands and what you know, what can you do? You can't give them back to your enemy, because that would obviously undermine our honour militarily as well as our trust of an ally. But similarly, we can't then just say drop them into the British slave system, because that would be a betrayal that would equally undermine Britain's position.

Speaker 2: 27:14

This really brings us to what I really find interesting about this history and the position of the colonial Marines, because they go on to create these vast communities in places you know, like Trinidad, tobago, you know Nova Scotia, as you mentioned, sierra Leone and all these other places that we've talked to briefly in different aspects throughout the show in terms of Caribbean migrations to other parts of the world.

Speaker 2: 27:44

But this is a particular instance where you see not just the soldiers but, of course, as you mentioned, their families also coming with them. For instance, almost 900 people go to Southern Trinidad as part of this resettlement from the Americas to Trinidad and Tobago due to British colonialism. Right, similar things happen, as I mentioned, in Nova Scotia and other places. So could you talk to us a bit about you know, these actual communities that are born in, you know parts of the Caribbean as a result of you know the british really having this almost ironic lenient sense, as you mentioned, right, because, again, um, slavery is still existing in these colonies and what this then um creates in terms of, again, these new free peoples, free communities, while also, um, there are almost 20 more years of of enslavement still happening in the region.

Speaker 3: 28:41

Indeed, as I say, this wave of refugees, the black refugees of the war of 1812, the line I always like to hammer is that the African-American people who self-emancipated because again they came to British forces and by their presence negotiated the terms if you see what I mean, benevolent Brits didn't just offer this All the people escaped in the War of 1812 from slavery. That is the largest successful emancipation of enslaved people in American history between the War of Independence and the end of the American Civil War, in kind of Western hemisphere history. The largest between the Haitian Revolution and the end of British slavery. So there's like a 20, 30 year gap between Haiti and the end of British slavery. Right in the middle of it you've got this emancipation, which is big and forgotten about because it happened in a war, that wave of refugees, as you say. It creates a great arc around the periphery of the United States, from Nova Scotia across to Sierra Leone, down to the Bahamas and down to Trinidad. The Trinidadian connection is the most directly connected to the unit because black refugees in the War of 1812 were dispersed continuously throughout the war and that included colonial marines who signed off and said I'm done and they went to Canada or wherever, but a core number of the unit. Several hundred people remained in British service and were moved to Bermuda at the end of the war, where they were on the. They were held at the royal navy dockyard there it looks primarily so. They were ready in case war kicked off of america again, like if all the treaties still fell apart. And what happened? We could rock right back in and start all the same trouble all over again with this unit. But as the situation cooled down, what to do with them as a group came up and it was decided to set to settle them in Trinidad.

Speaker 3: 30:21

Because Trinidad was a relatively relatively new British gain, captured from in recent years. In large parts it was still undeveloped and that we can perhaps point a little bit to the fact because it was a recent British gain. It was essentially a military dictatorship and the British governor of Trinidad was completely in charge. There was no like representative council which in every other there was no representative council which in every other island that had a representative council possibly a representative of the largely white landowning, slave-owning class, so represented their views. There was nothing like that in Trinidad. There was just the British military governor and he was in charge. So he said well, I've got a large internal area area of the island in the south, near Moruga, needs development so we can put these people there. And the slave owners of train dad did actually complain and did say hang on, this is dangerous, you're bringing all these free black people with military training. He, um, he waved them off in a way which I think is emblematic of this kind of sometimes to modern eye seems very peculiar british ambivalence about slavery. He waved off all the slave owners by saying well, these people, these people, they're going to be free farmers, they're going to be landowners in themselves. They'll have as much to lose in a slave uprising as anyone else their property rights and so on. Those are the kind of things that get threatened in revolutions, if you see what I mean. So they'll be on the establishment side if that should ever happen. But in any way you can't tell me what to do because I'm entirely in charge. They pushed them aside While some black refugees, largely from Florida, had already been settled in the area around Port of Spain.

Speaker 3: 31:46

The colonial Marines were all put in this one particular area of Trinidad, organized by the military company they arrived in, which is why you've got the company villages like 3rd Company and 4th Company, where the towns are literally called after that. Everyone was given little plots of land which they could develop. There's an interesting comparison here because black refugees who arrived in Nova Scotia they generally speaking had a harder time. They suffered what you can only describe as a mixture of indifference and neglect from British colonial authorities. We've got lots of written records from former officers of the colonial marines, sergeants and corporals you know, saying I served, I served ably and I was offered support to get my life up and running. And I'm not getting it. Give me it. There's also an interesting element, that one point london literally wrote to the governor of nova scotia and reminded the governor of nova scotia that we had a contractual obligation to help these people get their lives set up.

Speaker 3: 32:38

But they were, they were kind of left at kind of a precarious life on the edges of the white society even over scotia, which are still very proud of their freedom, though that kept them going quite hard, hardy, and feel that a lot in trade. They got full support from the, from the colonial authorities with their regular, regular rations until they'd become self-sustaining. Lots of tool and equipment providing a single white man was kind of given like a supervisory role, but he was. He was largely just an intermediary between the colonial governor and what appears to have been a kind of council of former officers. The former sergeants and corporals of the cloyam raids became like the constables of their new communities and because they were kind of in the interior of the island they managed to maintain a quite insular community away from the coast, which was largely slave plantation, and that community became the Americans, as they're now called, a recognized ethnic group in Trinidad and Tobago.

Speaker 3: 33:34

All kinds of like charming little hints of their history. They're very clearly to my Anglican eyes they're very clearly Virginia Baptists, while the rest of the island is Anglican or Catholic. There's lots of rice dishes, including rice dishes made with a type of rice that's from Georgia in the United States and was weirdly for a long time considered extinct until it was rediscovered still being used by the Americans. There's lots of interesting connections there where modern Georgian African-Americans digging back into their own culture had to go to Trinidad to find the more direct connection.

Speaker 3: 34:08

If you see about the intercessionary period of American history and their arrival on Trinidad was a central moment in the development of Trinidad as a British colony and creates this interesting tension where you've got a nominally slave culture with a free black militarized group.

Speaker 3: 34:29

There's definitely indications that the military ethos retained itself in that community for quite a while afterwards and their insular nature eventually hides of, hides them, so that you know they're a minority within trinidadian to being culture culture, so they kind of disappear for a long time. They're just, they're just in there in the hills, um. And in the modern era, because the, because we now live in a much more neglected world, the community is dispersing, dispersing and there's there's a genuine fear that certain aspects of the unique nature of the American history might be lost as the culture disappears from its insular geographic home. I mean to give you a good example of that, matt. I think I've been contacted more by African-Americans who are the children of Trinidadian immigrants to America in the 20th century, who have this heritage because they're trying to find where they stand in the world, if you see what I mean by tracking this history back.

Speaker 2: 35:47

I think that is part of one of the you know sort of of these other places. But here we have a moment where African Americans left the US self-emancipated I want to, you know, especially emphasize that point resettled in places like, as we mentioned, trinidad, the Bahamas and, you know, due to again this continuing migration appeal, have maybe moved back to the US and are now trying to connect these histories. So I think that's just, you know, one element of the ways that we can definitely see the Caribbean as really being central to this new world paradigm that is sort of always in conversation or talked about and I don't know to what extent we've really underscored the ways that you know the Caribbean has played not just a factor in, you know, our own communities but in other communities across the African diaspora. You know, to that point, because I'm always looking for ways to put our listeners on into understanding these histories in different sort of ways what are some of your favorite examples of how this history shows up of the colonial Marines in popular culture more recently today?

Speaker 3: 37:11

It means, ah, to my intense, intense annoyance bizarrely unknown. I say that with genuine meaning. I do find it strange that right now we're still in a period where history in general, we're really on a quest to make history much more multifaceted, to pull away from the dominant, central, national narrative set by usually, usually, establishment force to this is what happened, this is the story, if you see what I mean I mean. Instead, look at everyone's experience of history, of history, and you know, empathize, put ourselves in their shoes and imagine how we would have acted in these, in these contexts, and, you know, build our histories back and not just be told what the history is. Um, the colonial marines, for me, um I, their lack of popular culture resonance, I think, is evidence that we still got. We still. We need to work hard on that. Because I mean to give you a core, exact, a core example.

Speaker 3: 38:05

When, when we talk about the history of western hemisphere, slavery in general, most of it is a hideous blot on humanity. It's a, it was an end, it was a seemingly set, you know, endless crime against humanity, over and over again. But within that, we celebrate, quite rightly, rightly, people who resist, who resisted, and resistance to slavery, when talked about is nearly always presented as like this tragic tale. You know, resistance. Resistance is always met by reaction. The reaction is always hideous and hideous and intense. If you see what I mean, you know, with a few honorable exceptions, the Colonial Marines story is a story of complete success for enslaved people. It is about enslaved people seeing a conflict between their owners, their masters, and a force that is not that different from them and saying with our own agency, we can find ways to find freedom amidst this, and they do it successfully. And one of the other like kind of like really cool, kind of micro things I always point out is that the colonial marines and all the black refugees of war being told they didn't just run away, they didn't just flee and eventually find freedom. They fled in very, very large numbers. They became soldiers and they went back and they got out more people. It isn't just an individual escaping in the night, it's an individual escaping in the night and he comes back and he's no longer an enslaved boy, you know, in the racist language of the time. He's now a foreign soldier. He kicks in the door, holds the slave owners and the enslavers up, gets his kids, his wife, his parents, wider family, out of there.

Speaker 3: 39:41

Part of the joy of doing the history is the sheer number of incredible time, incredible stories that froze up. I mean, I'll throw some names, just for. There's a guy called William Kilgore. William Kilgore personally holds up his former slave owner while rescuing his wife and family in tents. There's William Deer, who eventually goes on to run a pub in Canada. He requests and is given leave from the British attack on Washington DC to go and get his wife, nancy, from a farm. It shows the level of agency they had within the british military.

Speaker 3: 40:12

This point point. You know we're literally about to launch a very crucial military operation. But yeah, we can let you go and do that, mate, if you see what I mean. Um, that again leads to a crucial popular history point which is um, I would argue, and we'll argue this forever, that the destruction of washington dc only happened because of the cloning of Marines. It only happened because of the strategic weakness slavery presented in the American ability to defend itself, so which a foreign force, the empire of which I am a descendant, exploited. And I think that needs to be kind of brought in a little bit more.

Speaker 3: 40:47

I would argue also, that's why the war of 1812 ended in such kind of a abrupt way is partially because again to link it back to the West Indies regiments when the War of 1812 ended, a large number of colonial reigns had been based on the island of Cumberland Island, which is off the coast of Georgia, and West Indies regiments had been brought over as well. And we were going to attack Savannah, the capital of Georgia, the capital of georgia. And when you look at the numbers, the british army, the british army that was going to invade georgia, which is at this time 45 enslaved african-american, the british army that was going to invade was majority black, it was mainly african-americans and mainly west indies regiments through the trajectory of north american history would have been incredibly different if a black army had invaded georgia, if you see what I mean. And the Americans were not unaware of that and they were terrified of the prospect. And when the war ended, ended the celebrations. I believe, and the reason in American history the war of Aang Toa was regarded as this existential threat is because at the time Americans in Virginia and Georgia, those places, were sat at home, thinking at any minute we could have simultaneous foreign invasion and slave uprising. It's the nightmare scenario. You know that would. It would wipe away the country.

Speaker 3: 41:58

That part of the narrative has been very, very carefully tamped down, if you see what I mean. Um, and then I was like just to pull me back to the point. This is the problem with this subject. It's so cool, it's? You can just ramble about it forever. Um, I think there is one thing about the history of the colonial marines in the modern world which retains its magnificent power, which is on Trinidad and Tobago. You have African Emancipation Day, which celebrates the end of British slavery. The American community takes part in those celebrations and they proudly have banners and flags that show that they became free in 1816 when they arrived in Trinidad, so they were free two decades early. But they nearly always have a series of the community's children dress up in little red coat uniforms as little colonial Marines, because these were people who fought for their freedom and independence and they gained it, and that's an incredible legacy in the world.

Speaker 2: 42:54

I agree, I think so, and I thank you tremendously for sharing this story with us in this history. I think you know you've certainly, in that, answered my last question in a roundabout way, just in terms of the need for greater awareness of the colonial Marines. But with that, before we close, what are your thoughts just on how we re-understand Caribbean identity, for that matter, right when they're, you know, particularly in this case, like we can see with the American community in Trinidad and Tobago, their origins start in the? U, eventually grow out, and now you know many of who still exist today, interned at Tobago, of course, and so how do you then think that some of you know those complications and those movements and migrations lead us to understand who we are as?

Speaker 3: 43:47

a people. I would argue that in the Afro-Caribbean community, which I would include everybody whose legacy includes attachments to the Caribbean, it's a reminder, that kind of what you were saying before. The Caribbean, it's the crossroads of the new world with the old. The Caribbean in general is an interconnected lattice of histories, is an interconnected lattice of histories. You've got modern nationalities and your right to be proud in, say, jamaican or Barbadian or Bermudian nationality. The lattice-like interconnections between all these island nations are too great to simply discount at any time. And the further connection to the United States and the States, central America and South America, and then much further afield back to Britain, to West Africa and so on. You're not getting pulled away from the Caribbean if you connect yourself to Britain or Sierra Leone or Liberia.

Speaker 3: 44:43

The Caribbean is a crossroads of history, a crossroads of civilizations. History is built largely by crossroads of civilizations. You're not a periphery, you're central, because everybody has to transit through you, if you see what I mean. I think people like um what's his name? Uh barrow, the first, the first pm of uh barbados, I think was a was a big believer in the believer in this idea. It's to not fall for the trap of we're all small, little islands, which means we are small in the world, if you see what I mean I certainly agree with that point, um, one that has always stuck with me.

Speaker 2: 45:21

In terms of strictly facts, it's not just about, uh, bringing ourselves together as a region, but also connecting the greater diaspora, um, because, of course, as we talked about today, there are certainly parts of our people who have moved there, and even beyond that right, all of these things, these stories and these histories of self-emancipation, of liberation, of people fighting for their freedom very intentionally, is something that really draws us all together and so, for all of our listeners, if you want to learn more about the Colonial Marines, I think again is a tremendous story that too often goes overlooked and one that of course, intersects with the Caribbean, be sure to grab Matthew Taylor's book Black Redcoats the Corpse of the Colonial Marines 1814 to 1816.

Speaker 2: 46:09

I will link it in our show notes, as well as several other articles and things where you all can learn more. Again, matthew, I appreciate you so much joining our show to talk really about this passion and investigative and really intense but captivated so beautifully, I think, in your book, especially having read it myself. So I appreciate you for joining us and for our listeners. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Till next time, look for more.

Speaker 1: 46:39

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