Extension of Volunteers To Overseas Territories
The War Office was eager to extend the Volunteer movement to Bermuda (and other territories) to allow the Regular Army garrison to be reduced. However, although volunteer units sprang up in other territories, in Bermuda there was considerable resistance from the Colonial Government.
The Bermudian government had two concerns: Firstly, it feared being saddled with the total cost of maintaining the entire garrison (since allowing its Militia, once the only military force protecting the Colony, to lapse after the American War of 1812, the Bermuda Gorvernment had contributed nothing, materially or financially, to the defences. Other than during a brief period of profiting from the American Civil War, Bermuda's economy had been ailing since its shipbuilding and maritime trade had begun to recede under the assault of steam and steel. Defence infrastructure had, in fact, been the primary crutch upon which Bermuda had limped through the middle of the Century); Secondly, the social discontent that would be stoked by raising either racially integrated or segregated units.
The Bermuda Government dealt with its concerns by ignoring the pleas of the War Office until the 1890s, when the Secretary of State for Defence held ransom their plans to develop the emerging tourism industry with American investment into a new hotel (The Princess). Foreign ownership of land had been banned lest an enemy state (by inference, the USA) use a threat to its nationals' interests as a pretext for invasion. There were also plans to improve the shipping channel into St. George's Harbour, intended to prevent St. George's being left behind by the Age of Steam, but which also would have eased the task of a naval force landing troops. The Secretary insisted that he could not approve of either project while Bermuda contributed nothing towards its own defence. The result was that the Secretary got his Bermudian volunteer units, and Bermuda got its hotel and its shipping channel.
Read more about this topic: Bermuda Volunteer/Territorial Army Units 1895-1965
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