Colonial Troops - Advantages of Colonial Troops

Advantages of Colonial Troops

The advantages of locally recruited troops in colonial warfare were several. They had familiarity with local terrain, language and culture. They were likely to be immune from disease in areas such as the West Indies and West Africa which were notoriously unhealthy for European troops until the beginning of the 20th century. "Native" troops were usually recruited from tribal or other groups that had long established martial traditions. It was not uncommon for colonial armies to favour the races that had shown fiercest opposition to the initial conquest of a given territory (examples being the Sikhs of India and the Rif tribesmen of Morocco). Colonial units could be employed in campaigns or conditions where the use of conscripts from metropolitan regiments would be politically unpopular. At the same time the use of local troops often made the actual colonisation more palatable for the locals.

Colonial troops could be used to garrison or subdue other territories than those where they were recruited, thereby avoiding problems of conflicting loyalties. As an example Italy used Eritrean askaris in Libya and during the two wars with Ethiopia (1898 and 1936). Indian regiments garrisoned Aden, Singapore and Hong Kong at various times in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the 1950s the Portuguese used African troops from Mozambique to garrison Goa and the Dutch had employed West Africans (Zwarte Hollanders) for service in the East Indies during much of the nineteenth century.