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Military Officers, Tropical Medicine, and Racial Thought in the Formation of the West India Regiments, 1793–1802

The article examines the establishment and growth between 1793 and 1802 of the West India Regiments, British army corps manned by slaves of African descent and commanded by European officers. Focusing on the medical history of British military operations in the West Indies, the article demonstrates that the rationale behind the regiments was medical, but that the impetus for them came from senior military commanders rather than from the medical practitioners whose writings are usually privileged in the historiography. The senior officers who commanded the West Indian expeditions in the French Revolutionary Wars mobilized their own particular brand of medical theory, based explicitly on their experience of the region’s epidemiological environment, in support of the policy. This willingness to adopt and adapt medical ideas heavily influenced both military policy regarding the regiments, and commanders’ relationships with their medical men.