A Source of Black Nationalism in the Caribbean: The Revolt of the British West Indies Regiment at Taranto, Italy

In its division of ranks between black enlisted men and white officers, the British West Indies Regiment duplicated the antagonistic relationship of colonial society between black labor and white capital. In protest of the racist restrictions which had been foisted upon them by the War Office, black soldiers in this regiment, while stationed at Taranto, Italy, in December of 1918, revolted. The uprising prefigured insurrections that took place the following year in British Honduras and Trinidad and stimulated the development of black nationalism in the British Caribbean.