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Reena Goldthree, "Democracy’s Foot Soldiers: World War I and the Politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean" (Princeton UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:07]
B
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Reena Gold3 about her book titled Democracy's Foot Soldiers, World War I and the Politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean. Published by Princeton University Press in 2025. This book takes us into, well, as the subtitle suggests, a particular place in time. Looking at World War I and the politics of the Greater Caribbean, thinking about questions of empire, which is intriguing because often I think we talk about these questions more in relation to World War II. So this takes us back further in time. And Democracy's Foot Soldiers is a really intriguing combination of words here that really gives a sense of the kind of immediate local level politics we're going to be discussing, like actually what happens to individual men and what that experience is like on the ground, as well as how this relates very directly, it turns out, to some pretty big picture questions around democracy, around colonialism, around kind of who has a duty to what, when. Because these questions might seem far removed from the front lines of World War I, but they're really not. So we have a lot to discuss. Riina, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [02:27]
C
Thank you so much, Miranda, for the Invitation. I'm really excited about our conversation today.
- [02:34]
B
I am as well. But before we let our excitement run away with us and get into the details, can you please introduce yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
- [02:45]
C
Of course. So I'm an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, and my research explores the history of social movements and migration in Latin America and the Caribbean. I'm particularly interested in the history of black social movements and engagement with empire in the Caribbean during the 19th and 20th centuries. And this is my first book. So we'll get a chance, hopefully, through our conversation, to kind of think about the ways in which World War I helps us to learn new things, both about global histories of democracy and how those resonated in the Caribbean, but also how the war connects to larger histories of migration. In terms of what led me to write this book, I have a longstanding interest in the politics of the 1920s and 30s in Latin America and the Caribbean. It was what's now kind of known as the interwar years. The period between World War I and World War II were a remarkably vibrant period for black organizing, particularly in the Caribbean. And so I initially was interested in kind of thinking about the kinds of social movements that emerge through things like labor unions, new political parties, and political groups more broadly, and then also organizations like the Universal Negro Improvement association, more commonly known as the Garvey Movement. And as I began to kind of look for the topic of my kind of first large scale research project through those more familiar routes to studying politics and democratization in the 20s and 30s, I kept encountering writing about the impact of World War I. So political activists would write about the kind of betrayals of World War I, the role of Caribbean soldiers in the war, and the ways in which their sacrifices hadn't been acknowledged. And at that time, I knew very little about what happened in the Caribbean during World War I. Other theaters are much more studied. And so I ended up moving backward in time, deciding I needed to understand the political ferment that happened during World War I. And I'm glad that I did. I think it's such an important political moment across the Caribbean that also connects to broader conversations about what's happening in the African Diaspora and beyond. And in terms of how colonial soldiers are thinking about what was a war for democracy, something that they had been denied.
- [05:43]
B
Okay, this is a great foundation because you've given us a whole bunch of threads here to pull, and I think very clearly made the case that this is a History in some senses about specifically soldiers in the Caribbean fighting in the war. But that that's not kind of off by itself in a vacuum. Right. It's linked to all of these other pieces too. So if we're thinking about those questions, then of kind of like, hang on, why should I sign up to fight for a thing that I don't even have to some extent, maybe we can sum that up with the term imperial patriotism, or at least that's maybe an answer or part of an answer to it. So can you take us through this term and how you approach analyzing it?
- [06:21]
C
Yes. And you're absolutely right that these questions of imperial patriotism are central so broadly. Imperial patriotism was an ideology that affirmed the shared historical, cultural and political bond, colony and metropole. And here in my focus, it's between metropolitan Britain and Britain's colonies in the Caribbean, which were among the very oldest and most long standing colonies in the entire British Empire. And so when we think about imperial patriotism, we can think about the ways in which colonial subjects affirmed their belonging and status. And in the British Empire, that happened through things like official patriotic celebrations. So celebrations of things like Empire Day through patriotic songs like God Save the King and Rule Britannia through fundraising events, particularly during World War I. But also military service was presented as this opportunity for men to demonstrate their pride and status as imperial subjects. And so in Democracy's Foot Soldiers, I explore both everyday articulations of imperial patriotism, the ways in which ordinary men, women and children in the British Caribbean understood their connection to the larger empire and to metropolitan Britain, and the ways in which debates about imperial patriotism were central to the larger campaign around mobilizing soldiers for World War I. So I analyze imperial patriotism by looking at the ways in which colonial subjects in the region referenced their ties to Britain. What did they say about how they saw themselves? Did they describe themselves as Britons? And in what context did they embrace that identity? Did they argue that it was their responsibility to join a war that was largely fought on the other side of the world? Why or why not? Did they kind of see themselves see Britain's war as their war too? And then how did they, through letters, petitions and protests, also use imperial patriotism and as a way to critique the inequalities in the empire? How did they use their claims of belonging? Not just as a way to say that their labor should be given to the empire, but also to say that the empire owed them things, rights and other forms of compensation because they were British subjects too?
- [09:26]
B
I think these Things are going to keep coming up in our conversation as we sort of think about kind of how these ideas play out once they're sort of put to the question, Right? Like, actually, it's not just a theoretical question of what the relationship is, but like, actually, no, please sign up now. Right, absolutely.
- [09:42]
C
It was a very practical question, right, about who would sign up for military service, but also where would kind of donations go for the war effort, who would send their sons off to fight or claim that they should not have to send their sons off to fight. So it was much more than rhetoric. It was also a series of everyday decisions about. About sacrifice and belonging.
- [10:08]
B
Well, let's talk then about one of the aspects of this everyday decision, because specifically, the thing that men are being asked to sign up for is the British West Indies Regiment. So what is this? And what were the arguments sort of for and against that went into its creation?
- [10:25]
C
So the British West Indies Regiment is really at the center of the story that I tell in Democracy's Foot Soldiers. It was a military, to be specific, infantry regiment within the British army. And it was created in 1915 by the British War Office specifically to enlist men from Britain's Caribbean colonies. And it was the subject of intense debate. So, of course, World War I begins in the summer of 1940, and almost immediately there are debates in the British Caribbean and at the British War Office in London about mass mobilization in the colonies. Basically, should men from the British Caribbean be mobilized in mass as a part of the British Army? And initially, the answer was no. There was already an older colonial unit, the West Indies Regiment, the West India Regiment. And the. Initially, the War Office was perfectly content to just mobilize men who already were soldiers in the West India Regiment, but immediately in the colonies, there were men, often from elite backgrounds, who argued that there should be a greater mobilization beyond what was a very small military unit, the older West India Regiment. And so there was actually a kind of grassroots campaign through letter writing and petitioning, calling for the creation of a new military regiment, what would become the British West Indies Regiment. And that actually the groundswell was for nearly a year, and it came from the colonies, not from top down from Britain, to create this regiment. In fact, there was an initial pushback both at the Colonial Office and the War Office, about mobilizing large numbers of West Indian soldiers, precisely because the vast majority of men were of African descent. And there were real concerns about mobilizing black soldiers, particularly if they were going to be deployed in Europe. So in terms of the arguments kind of for and against the creation of the British West Indies Regiment. There were certainly concerns about mobilizing large numbers of black men from the colonial Caribbean to fight in the war. There were also concerns about the cost of doing that, financially mobilizing men and then transporting them across the Atlantic and training them. There were also concerns about the political impact of mass military mobilization. This was a region, again, where. Where there were very limited political rights for most subjects of African descent. Most of the colonies were under crown colony rule, which meant that less than 5% of the population generally had the right to vote. And so what would it mean if there was mass mobilization to have men who were denied the right to vote at home serving in a war for democracy? So there was a realization very early on that military service could lead to new forms of political claims making. Those who were arguing for the creation of the British West Indies Regiment argued that it would be an important opportunity for men in the colonies of all races to demonstrate their pride in the empire, their masculine heroism, and to gain valuable experience abroad. And that it would help to, as one writer said, strengthen the bonds of empire by having men from the British Caribbean colonies soldier side by side with the sons of the motherland.
- [14:39]
B
Okay. And clearly those arguments win out.
- [14:42]
C
Right.
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B
It is actually created. It obviously only exists really on paper, though, until people sign up to be in it. So how did they go about recruiting men to join? What. What it sounds like was kind of considered, even when it was started, sort of a unique, to some extent, experiment, really, in kind of getting different kinds of soldiers to serve than they had had in the past.
- [15:03]
C
Absolutely. So it was a really unique regiment in important ways. As I said, it's officially established in 1915, and the British West Indies Regiment was open to men across all of Britain's colonies in the Caribbean. So it brought together men from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, the Leeward Islands, the Windward Islands, as well as men who were from those islands but had migrated to Panama. Right. As well as those. A small number of men who were already in England. Right. So it's bringing together men across the Caribbean islands as well as the mainland territories of Belize, Guyana, also beyond the borders of the British Empire in Panama. So it's bringing together men from kind of a range of spaces across the circum Caribbean. And importantly, it was an all volunteer military unit. Of course, conscription is enacted in Britain and in other parts of the British Empire. But importantly, the British West Indies Regiment was an all volunteer force. So all of the men who served in the regiment actually volunteered to join. That was another thing that made it unique. And initially, all of the men had to pass a literacy test. And that requirement was ultimately removed in late 1916. But what it meant was that the majority of men who served, and ultimately around 15,600 men, served in the British West Indies Regiment. Many of them were literate, and so that gave them an opportunity or enhanced ability to do things like write letters and petitions to protest their treatment once they were in the military. I argue in the larger book project that literacy was one of the most important tools that the men used to claim their rights as British subjects and soldiers. So the British West Indies Regiment had these kind of very unique factors that led to it bringing together men from across the region as well as Panama. And then ultimately, it was also unique because the men were paid on the exact same daily pay scale of white British soldiers. So they were not paid at the lower colonial rate, which, at least financially, provided some grounds of equality, even though, as we'll talk about, I imagine later on as a part of our conversation, their kind of financial equality was quickly eroded as pay increases were given to British soldiers that ultimately were not given to them.
- [18:18]
B
Yeah, let's get into what the kind of actual practice and the experience of being in this regiment was like. Obviously, that's around kind of the realities of the financial aspect, but of course, they are soldiers in a war. So what was it kind of like once they had signed up and, you know, gotten the uniforms and all that sort of stuff, then what?
- [18:36]
C
Yes. So the British West Indies Regiment, as I said, included around 15,600 soldiers who were dispersed across 12 battalions and served in many different theaters during World War I. So when I'm, you know, think about their experience, it was shaped by several factors. First, the soldiers race. Right. Their military ranks, where they were deployed, and the kind of everyday tasks they were involved in. And then their experience with their commanding officers. The British West Indies Regiment was deployed. The initial units trained in England, and then soldiers ultimately served in France, Italy, Egypt, Palestine and East Africa. Right. And so soldiers served across, you know, the kind of broad geographic range. Some soldiers moved between multiple theaters. And those experiences all shaped how they. In their experiences as soldiers during World War I. A few important things united their experience. First, the kind of racial hierarchies that existed within the British Army. The vast majority of soldiers in the British West Indies Regiment were soldiers of African descent, whether they identified as black or colored. And so they were not permitted to become officers. There was a policy within the larger British army excluding men who were not of European Descent from entering the officer class. So even though they were recruited using this rhetoric of equality and racial inclusion, they immediately faced a hard color barrier within the British army in terms of their rank and possibility to lead. The men also experienced a near uniform exclusion from combat roles, even though they enlisted as infantry troops and trained as such. Ultimately, the British War Office and military leaders did not want to mobilize or deploy black troops in combat roles in Europe. And so only all of the soldiers who ended up being deployed in places like France and Italy served in auxiliary non combatant roles. So they were doing things like hauling munitions, working on supply lines, building roads and fortifications and trenches, unloading ships, doing all of the kind of manual, often backbreaking manual labor to support combat troops, but denied a combat experience themselves. The only soldiers in the regiment who did actually participate in armed combat were soldiers at the kind of very final months of the war in Palestine. Participated in a few battles in Palestine, but for most soldiers, they spent their war in these non combatant roles and did not directly engage in combat.
- [22:08]
B
That is very helpful to understand the experience in war, especially in terms of what they were allowed to do and not allowed to do. And really also the range of geographic experiences. I'm glad you emphasized that because that really is quite striking when you listen to off all the different places they were deployed, especially the people who kind of went from one to another. How did they feel about it though, Right? It's obviously one thing for you to research it and for you to tell me about it now, but do we have a sense of how these soldiers felt about their experiences and kind of what they were motivated to do in reaction to them?
- [22:40]
C
That's such a great question. And one of the things that's really at the heart of this project and one of the reasons I'm so thankful that there was a literacy requirement, because soldiers, the soldiers I write about and their families wrote so movingly and frequently about their experiences being abroad. I think there were a range of experiences. Perhaps not surprisingly, soldiers initial letters were often filled with excitement and deep interest in the new places they were seeing. So you can imagine, for the vast majority of men, even though many of them were very well traveled within the circum Caribbean, most had never been to England. And so for the initial recruits, the experience of sailing across the Atlantic and arriving at ports in England, traveling by train across the southern coast of England to their base at Seaford, they wrote about just being amazed, right? Their experience finally visiting a place that they had learned about all of their lives in school and being greeted by, you know, English civilians who were offering them free gifts of cigarettes and candies and sometimes women would come up and kiss them. And so these were kind of moments where they wrote about their kind of pride in being soldiers, their excitement for exploring new places. So there's those kinds of initial reactions of describing encountering civilians all over the world, hearing, especially in the Middle east, hearing new languages, trying new foods, experiencing climates very different from the Caribbean. But soldiers then also wrote about their experiences, the kind of shock of military life, the regimented nature of being a soldier in the midst of a war, seeing their fellow soldiers suffer from things like frostbite or crush injuries and amputations, so that the kind of despair of being surrounded by death and injury. Soldiers also wrote quite a bit about the inequalities they experienced and the hostility they often experienced from their white commanding officers. And this was something that was widely documented and a kind of sort of source of both deep anger and indignation. Right. That these men had all volunteered. They had left, you know, their homes in the Caribbean, sailed across an ocean, sometimes kind of multiple trips around the world to enlist in the British army because they saw themselves as a part of a kind of global struggle for democracy and self determination. They had been promised that they would be treated on the basis of equality. And then they face the reality of a color bar in the British army, being excluded from combat, often being housed in inferior housing, at times being sent to inferior hospitals for so called native troops and other forms of overt racism. And so soldiers are navigating all of these things. They're navigating kind of everyday life in the midst of a war as a soldier and all of the kinds of obligations and regulations that come with that. Their own curiosity about the new places and people they're meeting, not only local civilians, but troops from across the British Empire as well as, you know, kind of regular emotions like homesickness.
- [26:47]
B
Right.
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C
Confusion about their kind of decisions. And so I hope, hope that in the book that I capture this mix of emotions. They're moments of levity as well as lots of moments of deep disappointment and introspection.
- [27:04]
B
Yeah. As you said, it makes sense that there would be a range of reactions. So thank you for giving us a sense of what that would be. They also do some things with these emotions. So can you tell us about the organizing that they get up to?
- [27:15]
C
Sure. So soldiers, soldiers, nearly immediately when they are confronting the stark inequalities within the British Empire, organize and protest through multiple kinds of dissent. Right. So within the first few months of being in England for their initial training, soldiers launch what I like to think about as a small strike when they have gone several weeks without pay and write in chalk, no pay, no work. So a kind of initial form of resistance. Soldiers also organize more collective forms of resistance. So in the book I talk about the ways in which soldiers use things like petitions. So kind of organizing around a common grievance, whether that's, that's the regulation preventing non white men from advancing to the officer rank or forms of pay inequality. Right. So soldiers would write petitions, have fellow soldiers to sign them, and sometimes even send copies of their petitions to kind of local colonial officials in the Caribbean, to black newspapers in the Caribbean, hoping to gain publicity and support. And so I'm really interested in the ways in which they use literacy as a strategic tool to document specific forms of abuse and then to dispatch petitions all across the British Empire searching for redress. Soldiers also also form many different organizations during and after the war. So perhaps the best known organization was a secret organization called the Caribbean League that was established in 1918 from among a group of soldiers who were stationed in Taranto, Italy. And they formed this kind of secret league of soldiers to protest the discrimination that they experienced during the war and to look ahead to demobilization. Right. To think about ways to continue to call for equal rights and equal compensation even after they have returned to the Caribbean. And in the post war period, veterans also, the soldiers established multiple veterans organizations. They established veterans organizations in multiple different British Caribbean colonies as well as in the, in the diaspora, there was also British Caribbean, British West Indies Regiment veterans also start a veterans association in the United States in Harlem, in New York. And so they're using multiple kinds of, of organizing strategies, everything from strikes and mutinies to petitioning to creating autonomous veterans organizations to call for equal rights and compensation.
- [30:35]
B
Literacy coming up multiple times there. Right. Obviously, as book readers, we love to hear that literacy is relevant in history. And I am. It's really interesting kind of how strategically, as you said, it's coming up here. But did it, it work? What were the sorts of reactions to these kinds of organizing, especially from imperial authorities?
- [30:56]
C
Yes, so this was something that surprised me. I assumed that there would be a uniformly hostile response to these efforts. And I would say that there was often a hostile response. Right. But not always. Right. So. So to give you an example of this, there was a large campaign organized by British West Indies regiment soldiers in response to an army order, army order number one of 1918. Basically, it gave a Substantial pay increase to soldiers in the British Army. And initially, West Indian soldiers were excluded from that. And this was a source of tremendous outrage and organizing ferment. And so men, the soldiers create a kind of series of petitions, and they initially get the support of some of their commanding officers who also write to the War Office and say, you know, it seems like our men actually deserve this pay increase. Can you explain why they are denied? So sometimes soldiers are able to garner support from their commanding officers around these questions of equality and important moments. There is also, during that kind of same campaign for equality, overpay, some colonial officials in the Caribbean also write and say, hey, when, you know, as a part of the recruitment campaign, we promised that there would be payoff equality. This can cause political unrest, right, if this is not granted. So there were these kind of key moments where military commanders and colonial officials supported these kind of calls for equality. Unfortunately, this was, you know, kind of few and far in between. However, right? Many times, soldiers letters about abusive commanding officers, poor food, poor accommodations, acts of racial hostility were either suppressed, suppressed and ignored, or there were efforts to actually punish those who were attempting to expose the inequality within the British Empire. There was widespread press censorship. So when soldiers would send home letters detailing the kind of inequalities they were facing, newspaper editors were prevented often from publishing those letters. And in one account that I write about, and Democracy's Foot Soldiers, there was actually a transatlantic military investigation trying to identify a soldier who sent an anonymous letter from Palestine home to Trinidad and Tobago, exposing all of the abuse that soldiers were experiencing there. And his single letter, which wasn't even published, was deemed so threatening that it sparked a transatlantic investigation. And so often imperial authorities sought to maintain control in the status quo, which was racial inequality. They, you know, often dismissed complaints, right, as kind of individual gripes rather than the systemic issues that they were. And in the cases where soldiers kind of engaged in collective protest, whether it was the strike I mentioned earlier or the mutiny of BWR soldiers in Toronto, Italy in 1918, you know, that those were heavily suppressed, right? That soldiers were arrested and court martialed and at times imprisoned for their forms of dissent.
- [35:01]
B
Again, quite a range there, which is always very intriguing and really kind of keeps having these questions around what the expectations were versus the realities. And that now I think we can continue that moving through the chronology, right, because that's been the case before. We even have this regiment in the process of being recruited into it, in the experience of being in it, and also I think the experience of leaving it. So what did that matchup look like of expectations versus realities of, of demobilization?
- [35:32]
C
Well, I think you've really pointed out a key theme, right, that this, the kind of clear disjuncture between what soldiers hoped for and expected and what colonial authorities understood and sought to enforce at all stages of the kind of process of military mobilization and demobilization was no different. So as, as World War I ended, there were, as I said, at the very. In late 1918, there was this mutiny and the creation of an organization called the Caribbean League in Taranto, Italy. And that sparked widespread fears among military authorities and colonial officials about demobilization in the Caribbean. They were worried about thousands of men returning en masse to the colonies, having gained infantry training, even though they rarely had the chance to use that training during the war, and returning with grievances about their treatment. And so even before the soldiers returned, there were a series of kind of secret telegrams about how to prevent unrest and these warnings that soldiers were going to come back, back, as one official said, imbued with, quote, Russianized unrest, right? So this claim that they would also be inspired by the Russian Revolution and bring back these kind of forms of radicalism with them. So there was real anxiety among colonial officials about their return, meanwhile, for soldiers, right? One, they were eager to, to get home, right? They wanted to get back home as quickly as possible and to return to civilian life. And they wanted to make sure that they would get the same financial compensation at demobilization that soldiers in the Metropole received. And that created another series of protest and disappointment, right? Because it was very clear, despite the really elaborate celebrations that often took place publicly as soldiers returned home, that colonial officials were not willing to give them the same demobilization pay and long term financial support given to Britain, given to white soldiers in England. And so the kind of. The veterans organizations that I mentioned earlier were established to advocate for things like equal pay for veterans, robust care for men who returned disabled. As I mentioned earlier, there were hundreds of men who during the war experienced injuries that required amputation. So therefore they required long term care. There were also men who returned dealing with other kind of physical or mental health crises that would require long term support as well. And so these veterans organizations were saying, hey, even though now that we've been demobilized, we need, need, and are calling for long term support. And that is what really animated many of the protests that I write about in the book in 1919 were around again, these demands for equal compensation in the war's aftermath.
- [39:22]
B
So interesting to see these continuities over time. Right. Like, it's actually very straightforward, as much as these problems might seem really unrelated, like, oh, that mutiny came out of nowhere. It's like, no, no, this has been seen throughout. Right. The soldiers are going, you promised me this. What has happened?
- [39:39]
C
Right.
- [39:40]
B
And so what then are the sort of immediate. The impacts? Obviously there's immediate impacts, right. You've outlined those a little bit for us. But this sort of thing, as you mentioned right at the beginning, in terms of going, you realize you need to go backwards in time to make sense of things that were coming up in the 20s and 30s. So what are the kind of longer term impacts of how this war ended in these kind of, you know, 1918, 1919 processes? Like it doesn't just magically stop in 1920.
- [40:12]
C
Right, absolutely. So, you know, one of the things that's a kind of thread throughout the book is the question of democracy. All right, and what did that mean for colonial soldiers during and after the war? So veterans return from the war claiming not only just financial compensation, which they generally defined as compensation equal to that given to soldiers in Britain, but also many of them called for new forms of democratic participation, including things like the right to vote, the opportunity to create their own autonomous veterans organizations, and to have a larger overall kind of presence in colonial life. Right. So one of the things I was fascinated by was how this kind of culture of letter writing and petitioning continues even after the war. And that, that for decades after the war, when veterans of the British West Indies Regiment write to colonial officials, they always emphasize their status as veterans, include information about where they served during the war, their military rank, and often even write their military number. Right. Their regimental number. And this is even as they're writing for things that, you know, years later that have effectively nothing directly to do with military service. Right. So men who are writing because they need a job, they need employment, or because they are. Have fallen on hard times and are writing for to, you know, get financial support from the government or those who are writing because they've gone on to become union leaders and are writing broadly about the rights of workers, they always emphasize their status as veterans. Right. And use this as a tool for claims making, saying, I performed this kind of service voluntarily for the empire, right. I served king and country by putting my life on the line. And I was promised that that service would mean something not only for me, but for my family, for my broader community. And so that this is a way in which I argue in the book that they were foot soldiers for democracy. That they argued for a kind of democratic society that rooted in ideas of equal pay and compensation, but also in popular participation. They challenged the legitimacy of Crown Colony rule and argued that their service meant that they were qualified to participate in decision making in colonial society.
- [43:22]
B
And that right goes nicely back to the title then, of the book, Democracy's Foot Soldiers. So I think probably a good place to wrap up our conversation about your findings in the book. But I do have one more question I'd love to ask on it, which is what surprised you in putting all of this together? Was there any kind of particular factoid or moment that you remember as being like a. Oh, okay. Wasn't expecting that sort of moment.
- [43:48]
C
Yeah, I mean, there were so many things. I mean, one was just the sheer volume of letters and petitions that not only soldiers wrote during and for decades, literally decades after the war, but also letters by their female partners, mothers of soldiers, women who participated in the effort to recruit soldiers as speakers and fundraisers. I was amazed that there was. That there were so many documents and letters that I could access to write this story. I went into it thinking that the kind of voices of colonial subjects would be relatively hard to find. And yet in archives across the Caribbean, there are folders and folders and folders full of these letters. And that there was a real culture of using writing as a way to make claims by both men and women in regard to their wartime sacrifices. So that was something that was surprising. There were also lots of heartbreaking moments. Letters from men who were permanently disabled, who, you know, by the 1920s and 30s were really living on the borders of starvation, often men who would write in saying that their artificial limbs were broken, that they had no way to support their family, that they were facing eviction, that their children at their. And spouse were going hungry. And the ways in which colonial officials often would just dismiss these letters, you know, finding ways to somehow blame these men for the unbearable circumstances in which they were living. And so those are the things that. That were most surprising to me. This. The kind of volume and real. The volume and dedication right of men and women to pursue their rights, particularly, and to document their pursuit through letters. And then at times, the ways in which, as the memory of the war faded. Right. Colonial officials were so determined to say that. That they had no obligation anymore. By the 1920s, and certainly by the 1930s, they would often just send back a really curt response saying, the records of the war have, you know, the accounts of the war have been closed. There's nothing more that we can do. For you.
- [46:43]
B
Really interesting to think about kind of what gets saved and what gets archived. So thank you for telling us a bit about that aspect of it, given the vastness, it sounds like then, of that archive. Is this the kind of thing you're still working on or have you moved on to anything else? Is there anything you currently have on your desk you'd like to give us a sneak preview of?
- [47:02]
C
Yeah, so I'm currently there are always things that parts of the kind of larger story that don't make it into the book. And so I'm currently really kind of writing more about the plight of disabled soldiers, particularly in the decades after the war, and the ways in which the return of hundreds of disabled men sparked larger conversations about care for the disabled in the colonies and the state's obligation not only to disabled soldiers, but to disabled people more broadly. And so kind of digging into that, telling the story that goes decades beyond the war and to fight over the care of the disabled. I'm also working on an article that takes up women's war work. I kind of discuss it in parts of the book, but I'm very interested now in all the ways in which women themselves are also making claims during and after the war based on their contributions, not of course as soldiers, but as recruiters, as fundraisers and what that meant, particularly for working class black women. And then embarking on a new book length project about larger debates beginning in the 19th century about empire and belonging in the Caribbean that will kind of take me deeper into the realm of intellectual history. So I'm still completely fascinated with this, this era and the kind of questions that I explore in Democracy's Foot Soldiers.
- [48:58]
B
Well, for any listeners who want to learn more about what's going on at this moment with these sorts of questions, they can of course read the book titled, as you said, Democracy's Foot Soldiers where World War I and the politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean, published by Princeton University Press in 2025. Riina, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [49:17]
C
Thank you so much for the terrific questions. It was truly a pleasure to get to talk to you about the book and all of the issues that it ra.