Soldiers, military settlements, and ideas of progress in the British empire, c. 1750–1840

Abstract The idea of the military being central to British imperial expansion is nothing new. British armies were both conquerors of colonial territories and institutions through which imperial rule was managed and sustained. In analysing the settlement of demobilised soldiers across Scotland, Trinidad, Sierra Leone, and North India, this article draws attention to the additional significance of the army in colonial concepts of civilisation and human progress. Recruited from among subject populations, the soldiers in these settlements were seen as a means by which British conceits about progress could be evidenced and were tools through which the British state and its proxies hoped to strengthen imperial rule. The article draws attention to the eighteenth-century origins of the interventionist colonial state and examines the broader significance of colonial manpower in British concepts of civilisation and commercial progress.