In the ancient world, Black Africans constituted a significant element within the Egyptian population and played an important part in the pharaohs' armies. Later, Blacks played a vital military role in states in or bordering on Africa, including Yemen, the Maghrib states, Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. With the rise of Islam in the eighth-century Arab world, Blacks served as slave soldiers—ironically, servile yet also honorable. Visibly different from their masters, Blacks were unlikely to succeed in intrigue against the state, a factor that made them attractive as slaves. Still, Black slave generals sometimes commanded armies and might become rulers. African states south of the Sahara also maintained powerful armies, the most notable in Ethiopia and the many states of West Africa.
European conquest of the Americas led to the importing of Blacks as servile labor; administrators thus feared their use as soldiers, but expediency and Blacks' greater immunity to tropical diseases led to their use as soldiers in New Spain as early as the sixteenth century. They later served in segregated militia units and, in Brazil, sometimes under Black officers.
Severe manpower problems in the New World led to the wider military use of Blacks (for example, a Black militia was founded in the Danish West Indies [U.S. Virgin Islands] in the 1720s, with a Black captain). They also played a most significant role in the development of martial music—Blacks were still thought to be exotic in eighteenth-century Europe, and they served as percussionists in military marching bands, dressed in elaborate, sumptuous "Oriental" costumes that mixed Turkish and European martial styles.
During the
American Revolution, Blacks served on both sides in segregated corps under white officers; whereas the rebel Blacks' status was not improved by this service, those fighting for England were ensured free status and passage to West Africa (helping establish the Sierra Leone colony). In the 1790s, high disease rates among whites led Great Britain to raise twelve Black West India regiments; slave dealers supplied early "recruits," but after 1808, captured illegal slave-trade ships provided manpower. The West India regiments fought with distinction in the Caribbean and West Africa until 1926. Blacks constituted a significant element as British Royal Navy sailors. During the Napoleonic Wars (see
Napoleon), Britain raised the ancestor unit of the Ceylon (Sri Lanka) regiment partly from slaves purchased from Portuguese Mozambique; in Egypt, French general Jean-Baptiste Kléber in 1799 bought slaves from Ethiopian slave dealers to form new battalions.
In the
American Civil War, Blacks helped to tip the balance in favor of the Union, serving in segregated units in which the first Black officers were commissioned. They struggled against Northern racist attitudes opposed to their service and proved themselves determined and able in battle. Ironically, the Confederacy, shortly before its defeat, out of desperation was forced to accept Black soldiers as well. Black units remained in service after 1865; the military constituted a source of employment for the Black poor.
The dramatic African colonial expansion of European powers after 1880 resulted in the creation of a number of Black units. Regiments of the British Gold Coast (Ghana), Nigeria, and Sierra Leone—together with the Gambia Company—united to form the West African Field Force in 1899; in East Africa, the King's African Rifles likewise amalgamated other local units in 1902, and southern African colonies also raised Black corps. Recruits came only from "warlike" ethnic groups; such regiments served with distinction in
World War I.
France utilized African soldiers in Louisiana from 1736 (to repress an Indian uprising) and in Senegal from 1765; in the early twentieth century, French colonial Black soldiers, the "Tirailleurs sénégalais," were renowned as assault troops on the Western Front during World War I. The United States also sent Black units to Europe.
In
World War II, Blacks served in all the U.S. military forces—but still in segregated units that were subject to institutionalized discrimination—and in European forces from those states possessing African and Caribbean colonies. This wider military service by Blacks tended to broaden veterans' horizons and encourage later demands for better treatment, contributing to political movements for equality in America and to African demands for independence from colonialism.
The
Korean War was especially important for American Black soldiers; General
Matthew Ridgway got permission in 1950 to integrate all his Far East command's units; later, a special army report stated that integration had benefited the army. All units were integrated in 1952, putting this traditionally Southern-dominated, conservative institution in the forefront of American racial integration. Until then, Black units suffered discrimination by commanders and received inferior equipment and conditions.
The
Vietnam War saw the widespread drafting of American Blacks into the military, whereas wealthier whites often evaded the draft through college deferments. But on a positive note, increased numbers of Black officers served in Vietnam. In the
1992 Persian Gulf operation, for the first time the highest-ranking American officer, the commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, was himself Black; he held more power than any Black soldier in U.S. history.
Scott Hughes Myerly
Roger Norman Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795-1815 (1979); Bernard C. Nalty, Strength for the Fight (1987); Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (1953).
