The other group able to cross the colour line to service in the regular army were men from Britain’s pre-war black population, many of whom had been born in Britain. The number of black people in Britain before the First World War was very small, probably just a few thousand, and a fraction of the size of the eighteenth-century black population that had been constantly refreshed by the ceaseless arrival of enslaved African servants.
Where did they go? Sirrra Leone?
