The concluding Chapter 8 examines the commemorative afterlives of the West India Regiments in Britain and the Caribbean. Placing this within the wider context of the centenary of the First World War, including the ’culture wars’ that have occurred around how the British Empire is remembered, the chapter considers the acquisition, creation and display of the regiments’ material culture.

Across Frederick Chessons career, the emergence of cheap newspapers, the prevalence of postal networks, and development of a global telegraphic system revolutionised how information was distributed. As Secretary for the Aborigines Protection Society for over three decades, Chesson was a nodal point for communication about human trafficking, effects of imperial conflicts on Indigenous peoples, the brutal retaliation for the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, and other outrages. Long before Lemkin coined the term genocide, Chessons journalism and activism described and decried such atrocities on several continents. Liberal activists work represents multiscalar thinking about abuses, to which Chesson contributed a repertoire demonstrating his innovative tactical and organisational forms championing racial justice.

The United States Civil War, and the resulting end of slavery on the North American continent, reverberated throughout the Caribbean and in its political writing. This essay first examines how how both pro- and and anti-slavery activists interpreted the Civil War in the Spanish Empire and used its example to defend or attack slavery. Next, it describes how the war led to widespread protest of the conditions of post-emancipation Jamaica and, eventually, led to the Morant Bay rebellion.