Slave and soldier

"We shall examine how the Negro traveled from servant to full-time professional soldier. It is the last role that will interest us most. The British West India Regiments, composed of black soldiers, became the ideal of such forces in the nineteenth century. More than any other units, they were a microcosm of the factors surrounding armed blacks in the Americas. Their impact on the individual slave as soldier was greater, probably, than for any other military role he played. Their impact on the colonies and on slavery, and the issues that resulted, exemplified almost all the themes raised in this work ... They were significant to the military success of the British Empire, and that itself is worth studying as a chapter in the history of the Negro. But they were also important to the blacks in the Americas, to the institution of slavery, to the British colonies they garrisoned and the foreign countries they occupied, to race relations in the New World, and indeed to our common history"--Page 8-9.