The Italo-Ethiopian War inflamed racial antagonism across the West Indies

Evidence

Some colonial authorities would trace the disturbances of the late 1930s in the West Indies to the Italo-Ethiopian War. In 1938, Sir Selsyn Grier would inform his audience at an Oxford University seminar on colonial administration: “Repercussions of the Italo-Abyssinian War were profound and widespread. The people of the West Indies saw in it an unprovoked attack by the European upon the African, and this gave rise to a feeling of racial animosity.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2417

Categorization

• XREF: Shows how a distant colonial war fueled Black radical consciousness — a causal driver of the tradition’s rise in the Caribbean.