Books

This book highlights the pivotal role of the Caribbean in the Second World War. Without the contribution of Caribbean territories to the Allied war effort in the form of raw materials and personnel, the fate of Britain’s struggle to avoid German invasion would have been uncertain, and an Allied victory significantly delayed. In turn, the conditions created by the Second World War facilitated the Caribbean’s struggle for independence from its colonial rulers, and set in motion a new flow of migration to postwar Britain that has shaped Black British history since.

West Indian Women at War documents the hitherto unrecorded contribution made by West Indian women in the British forces during the Second World War. Based on original research and interviews, the book charts the obstacles placed in the way of the recruitment of black women by a very reluctant war office. The documentary evidence of British racism uncovered by the authors makes compelling reading. But the women interviewed in this book are inspirational; they emerge as doughty fighters, as capable of taking on the war office as they were of joining the battle against Hitler.