Jamaican rebels modeled the Black Regiment on British West India Regiments.

Evidence

Still others relied on the older tradition among them, the one that had sustained rebellion and marronage. … In the interior of western Jamaica, inspired by Sharpe’s initiative, facilitated by the agitation and networks drawn by Sharpe and his colleagues, Johnson operating from the Retrieve estate, Gardner from the Greenwich, Dehany and Tharp organized an armed revolt. They chose to forego passive resistance and banded together to form the Black Regiment. Their model it would appear was drawn from the British West India Regiments organized between 1808 and 1815 but by now largely disbanded. Though most of the Blacks recruited for the nine regiments had come from Sierra Leone, a few had come from the West Indies, some had even been rebels held in the slave jail in Kingston. The West India Regiments had fought against the Napoleonic armies in the West Indies (in some instances Blacks had commanded white troops) and Black troops were still present in the Jamaican garrison at the time of the rebellion. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 811

Categorization

• XREF: The Black Regiment drawing on British military models shows the borrowed-and-transformed quality of Black radical military traditions—resistential strategies are syncretic, not purely African or purely European.