Nineteenth-Century British West Indies Soldiers Were Not Intrinsically Resistant to Disease Mortality in West Africa

Expatriate soldiers often died at high rates because of infectious diseases when deployed into the tropics during the nineteenth century. A British regiment of Black soldiers from the West Indies was specifically raised to provide soldiers less likely to die of malaria and yellow fever than their White European counterparts. Black soldiers were initially recruited from recovered slaves born in West Africa, but recruitment was from free men born in the West Indies by the middle of the century. All-cause (ranging from 1% to 6%/year) and disease-specific annual mortality rates were collected from British West Indies soldiers while stationed in the West Indies (Jamaica and the Windward Islands) and West Africa (Sierra Leone and Ghana). British West Indies Regiment soldiers died at lower rates initially in West Africa where they had been born. However, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, soldiers originating in the West Indies died at higher rates when stationed in West Africa than in the West Indies because of diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrheal and respiratory diseases. This difference in mortality rates between the West Indies and West Africa equalized by the early twentieth century, suggesting that resistance to disease mortality depended on early life experience with infections rather than genetic factors inherited from earlier generations from West Africa.