Empire’s Other Captives: Colonial Prisoners of War, British Diplomacy, and the Laws of War 1872-1977

British colonial troops—Indian sepoys, African askaris, Caribbean volunteers—fought for the empire but were treated differently when captured, and this project tracks how their status shaped the modern laws of war. The research addresses a gap in legal and imperial history. The Geneva Conventions and other prisoner-of-war rules were drafted largely by European diplomats, but the British empire’s military forces were multiracial. The project asks how colonial troops’ presence—and their treatment by enemy powers—influenced those negotiations. It draws on archives at The National Archives and the University of Roehampton to trace the race category’s operation across two centuries. If successful, this work will change how historians and legal scholars understand the origins of international humanitarian law. It may also inform contemporary debates about how laws of war apply to non-European combatants. The project is primarily fundamental historical research—it does not aim to produce a new policy or technology. But similar archival work has reshaped legal interpretation and treaty implementation, and a clearer picture of how race operated in past war-law negotiations could inform future diplomatic discussions on prisoner treatment.