Black soldiers from across empires discovered shared oppression in London clubs

Evidence

The nineteenth-century armies of imperialist Europe continued the tradition of relying on substantial recruitment among ethnic minorities, “riff-raff,” outcasts, aliens and the peasantry: to the million serfs of the Russian army were added the Asiatic Bashkirs and Kalmucks, Ingush and Ossietin; the Corsicans and Bretons of the French army were augmented by the Legion founded on Kabyle swordsmen, Swiss and other European mercenaries, but by mid-century the army itself had come to be dominated by West Africans; in the Philippines, the Spanish army was native, as was the Dutch army of the East Indies. In India, the East India Company and the Bengal army (1842) employed between them upward of 70,000 natives in their sepoy regiments. In Britain itself, in 1832, the Irish accounted for 42 percent of the army. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: World War I barracks forged cross-colonial Black political exchange.; Colonial powers use colored troops to suppress other colonized people’s revolts; Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520 (+1 more)

Related

• Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples (similarity 0.88)
• The War of the South recruited soldiers across racial lines on both sides (similarity 0.86)
• The French Empire treated colonized peoples as disposable military manpower for the nation (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial soldiers’ war contact created a shared consciousness of mutual oppression (similarity 0.79)
• Europeans first encountered Africans chiefly as Muslim soldiers, fusing racial and religious identity (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• World War I barracks forged cross-colonial Black political exchange. #expands (0.70)
• Black anti-imperialist intellectuals centered their struggle in the British metropole #exemplifies (0.60)
• Colonial powers use colored troops to suppress other colonized people’s revolts #exemplifies (0.40)
• Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples #exemplifies (0.40) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520