Isaac Crichlow

Isaac is a PhD student researching Caribbean history at UCL. He is primarily interested in the transference of African culture to the Caribbean through transatlantic enslavement, and it’s use by the enslaved in new contexts as a tool for resistance and survival.

His research, funded through a studentship with the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (CSLBS) focuses on the West India Regiments, units of formerly enslaved African soldiers. It examines the core function of the regiments by re-assessing the historical context surrounding their creation. It analyses the treatment of the soldiers by the British Army, comparing the charges and sentences given by the military justice system to WIR soldiers to those given to European soldiers serving in the Caribbean. Finally, it looks at how the soldiers reacted to their treatment by military, investigating mutinies by WIRs in Jamaica 1808 and in Trinidad 1837. Through this approach he creates a different interpretation of the provenance of the WIRs, their role in Caribbean slave society and their relationship with the British Army.

In addition to working on his thesis he is also involved with the work of the CSLBS. He has completed a research placement at the cultural heritage organisation the Fulham Palace Trust, exploring connections between the Bishop’s of London and Transatlantic enslavement, which culminated in the temporary exhibition- The Bishops of London, colonialism and transatlantic slavery: resistance.

PhD

Supervisors: Prof. Matthew Smith (primary) and Prof. Benedetta Rossi (secondary).

Working Title: Black Troops and Resistance: Movement Control and Freedom in the Revolutionary Caribbean, 1795-1840

Expected Completion Date: 2024

Scholarships and Prizes

Legacies of British Slavery Studentship, 2021-2024

Conference Papers and Seminars

“Time & a change of Men & Circumstances can alone remedy the evil of such a neighbourhood;” Jamaica, Slavery and the Black Republic, 1803-1808, SOAS: Republicanism in the Age of Imperialism

The First West India Regiments and the Demerara Uprising (1823), Guyana Institute of Historical Research conference, 23 June 2023

The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on the British Army (1793-1798), Institute of Historical Research History Lab Conference, 19 July 2022