It was against the backdrop of the European powers’ imperial aspirations and large movements of men over vast geographical areas that Black Tommy would take his place in the broad panorama of the First World War in a variety of roles, ranging like comrades of other races from heroes, victims, liberators and officers, to the ordinary foot-sloggers and survivors that typify the majority of those who took part.

GOVERNMENTAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS BLACK COLONIAL TROOPS

In order to understand the experience of Black British soldiers in the regular army, those born or domiciled in the United Kingdom, it is necessary to know something of British attitudes of the time towards black troops in the colonies. It was by no means taken for granted that black soldiers were, in fact, wanted in the forthcoming struggle, despite the Allies’ mounting need for manpower as the war progressed. The term ‘The White Man's War’ was first used at the beginning of the Boer War, when the question of whether to use armed African allies brought complaints from the Boers about the British use of African forces to support their own cause. At the beginning of the First World War, there was a good deal of trepidation about the use of colonial troops to fight against white troops, especially on European soil, due in part to the prevalent belief in a racial hierarchy, with white Europeans at the top and black Africans at the bottom, and any encouragement of ‘lesser breeds’ to fight Europeans was difficult to countenance. It was felt that colonial troops gaining experience in a modern war, killing Europeans, could lead to rebellion against their colonial masters, not only in Europe, but on the North American continent, where there was reluctance in both the United States and Canada to use black troops in a combat capacity. In areas outside Europe, such as Africa and the Middle East, black troops were certainly used by the European colonial powers from the beginning of the war, but the question of whether troops of African descent would be allowed to bear arms or serve in labour corps on the Western Front would be a point of debate throughout the war.