Britannia's Beefy Blacks

I'm somewhat disappointed by Gerald Horne's "Negro Comrades of the Crown". The subject-matter is interesting, but unfortunately the book is badly written and the detailed arguments often hard to follow. The notes are super-dense and could have needed a better editor. The author, a professor, frequently employs a rather strange language. On the one hand, Horne uses rare words not even I have seen before (and I had a straight A in English). On the other hand, he often cracks expressions which sound as if taken from a hard-boiled Hollywood flick. Thus, he refers to an execution as a "well-attended necktie party". Killing somebody is imaginatively called "sending him south of purgatory". He also informs us that African-American soldiers guarding Euro-American POW's in Jamaica were "beefy". Another problem is the confusing terminology. While an A-level student of U.S. history might understand the difference between "republicans" and "Republicans", the general reader might not. And what does it mean that the crew of a certain British vessel off Bermuda consisted of "Africans"? Where they recent arrivals from Africa, Black Americans, Jamaicans, or what?

I consider these deficiencies unfortunate, since the subject matter is intrinsically interesting (I wouldn't have bought the book otherwise). Horne argues that the British Empire was a better ally of oppressed and enslaved Blacks in the Western hemisphere (and beyond) than the United States. Armed Blacks in redcoats fought the American "revolution" in 1776, and again supported Britain in 1812. Both Mexico and Canada abolished slavery and made Blacks equal before the law long before the United States. The expansion of the United States was mostly an expansion of the slave system. This expansionism was opposed by an alliance of the British, Blacks and "indigenes" (American Indians).

Blacks who reached Canada and liberty naturally supported it against filibusters from the "republic". Abolitionists opposed colonization schemes that would send free Blacks to far-away Liberia, but *supported* similar schemes to resettle American Blacks in nearby British possessions such as Guyana, Trinidad or Belize. The White slave-owners, naturally, took the opposite position!

The author is apparently a Marxist, perhaps even a CPUSA member or fellow traveler. This makes his book pretty piquant, since Marxists traditionally support the American War of Liberation. In 1848, Marx expressed support for the U.S. in its war against "the lazy Mexicans who didn't know what to do with California". Yet, if we are to believe Comrade Horne, Africans (beefy or not) were better advised joining the Royal Army! Of course, Horne doesn't believe that humanitarian philanthropy was the guiding principle of British politics, but rather a combination of great power politicking (abolition hit the United States where it hurt the most) and pragmatic adaptation to the ever-increasing slave rebellions in the British dominions themselves. Still, the redcoats rather than the "patriots" emerge as the better side.

As I said, interesting. For that reason, and for that reason only, I give this work three stars. Otherwise, I think it only deserves two.