A “Generally Insubordinate Spirit Prevailed”: Intra-imperial Networks and the Battle for Equal Pay and Status in the British West Indies Regiment

In December 1918, British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) soldiers mutinied in Taranto, Italy, sparking the most serious breach of discipline in the regiment’s history. During the six-day upheaval, soldiers attacked their commanding officers, refused to work, and threw a bomb into the tent of a regimental quartermaster-sergeant. In response, British military officials quickly disarmed the eight BWIR battalions stationed at Taranto and issued an urgent call for white troops to suppress the uprising. In the wake of the mutiny, dozens of suspected mutineers were arrested, court-martialed, and sentenced to penal servitude with hard labor.  

This paper examines the fiery mutiny at Taranto as part of BWIR soldiers’ transnational campaign against discrimination in the British armed forces between 1918 and 1919. Rather than viewing the mutiny as the defining act in this period of heightened mobilization, I argue that it was an exceptional moment of violence in a campaign characterized by petitioning, letter-writing, and other non-violent forms of dissent. Through the fevered exchange of corresponence, BWIR soldiers simultaneously articulated and substantiated their membership in Britain’s imperial forces, insisting that West Indians constituted a privileged class within the Empire. Soldiers’ petitions were frequently forwarded along with enthusiastic endorsements to the Colonial Office or directly to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, validating soldiers’ claims that discrimination against the BWIR was an “insult to the whole of the West Indies.” Soldiers’ protest strategies reflected their evolving understanding of military rules, regulations, and hierarchies as well as their precarious status as subjects in a highly bureaucratic, global empire. When confronted with the intransience of the War Office and their limited right of appeal in the military, BWIR soldiers redirected their efforts towards colonial officials in Britain and the West Indies, deftly entangling civil authorities in a military dispute over pay, honor, and status.