During the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) the Caribbean region became the setting for major naval and military operations in which Britain engaged its imperial rivals, France and Spain. To assist military forces that were sent out to the Caribbean in operations against French and Spanish targets, Britain endorsed the recruitment of slaves from its sugar colonies of Barbados, Jamaica, and the Leeward Islands.
This book focuses primarily on the context of British recruitment of slaves in its Caribbean colonies and illustrates the significant contribution that these colonies made, beyond supplying slave labor, to the conquests of Guadeloupe and Martinique and of Havana in Cuba in an important theatre of the conflict – a war that helped turned secure Britain’s imperial hegemony for the best part of two further centuries.