SlavesinWar:TheHistoricalRecord
39
Recruitmentseemstohavebeen
arbitrary,
9
buttheslavesre-
mainedintheruler’s
entourage.
In
Oyo,
theseslavesmade
up
a
large
part
ofthe
cavalry,
and
they
seem tohave
undergone
training.They
formedthe
onlycavalry
in
the
region
andstood
on
year-roundduty.
y
Theseslavesoldierswere
perhapscompa-
rabletoMuslim
military
slaves,buttheinformationaboutthem
istoo
scanty
to
judge.
Also,theiruse
may
wellhavebeen
adapted
fromthenumerousIslamicate
military
slave
systemsofthearea.
TheBritishWestIndies.
By
farthemostdramaticandbest-studied
caseofslavesoldiersoutsideIslamdomcomesfromtheCarib-
beanIslandsinthetimeofthe
Napoleonic
Wars,1795-1815.
Analysis
ofthisslave
corps
clarifies
many
ofthe
differencesbe-
tween
militaryslavery
andotherslavesandwarfare.
TheBritish
government
createdtheWestIndia
Regiments
in
1795
bypurchasing
a
miscellanyofslavesand
outfitting
themas
a
military
unit.ThelocalsettlersofBritishdescentrefusedtosell
the
army
theirownslaves,
forcing
the
imperialgovernment
to
bring
slavesfrom
Africaforthe
Regiments.
It
brought
abouta
thousandslaveseach
year
untiltheabolitionofthe
slavetradein
1808.When,for
legalreasons,
itwas
advantageous
tofreethese
slaves,some10,000ofthemweremanumittedinonefell
swoop
in 1807. Asunitsofthe
imperial
British
army,
these
troops
proved
themselves an
unqualified
success
When the wars
ended,
they
were
disbanded
and the
West India
Regiments
disappeared.
1
These soldiers shared some
noteworthy
characteristics in
common withmilitary slaves in Islamdom, amongthem the
following:
69.E.A.
Orage,
"TheInstitutionof
SlaveryinYorubaland,withParticular
ReferencetotheNineteenth
Century,"(Ph.D.diss.,Universityof
Birmingham,
1971),
p.
20.
- Ibid.,
p.
66.Forothernon-MuslimAfricanuseofslavesin
warfare,seethe
curious
applicationsbytheDuala(inR.A.Austen,
"Slaveryamong
CoastalMid-
dlemen:TheDualaof
Cameroon,"
Slavery
in
Africa,
ed.S.MiersandI.
Kopytoff
(Madison,Wis.,
1977),p.315),
andin
eighteenth-centuryKongo
(J.
Vansina,
Kingdoms
of
theSavannah[Madison,Wis.,1966],
pp.193-98).
71.
Buckley,chap.
3;
pp.
55,79,138-39,134-38.