'From Over the Seven Seas the Empire's Sons Came': Addresing Historical Oblivion in Andrea Levy's

Abstract

The work of Andrea Levy has recurrently explored the historical connections between Britain and the Caribbean, and has contributed to the mapping of black British identities. Six Stories and an Essay (2014) continues this theme. In “Uriah’s War”, the final short story of the collection, Levy pursues her concern with the gaps in historical memory by revisiting the Great War at the significant historical time of the centennial anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict, in order to foreground the involvement of Caribbean colonial troops in the war effort. This article argues that “Uriah’s War” forces readers to question the collective memory of the Great War as a white man’s conflict, thus highlighting the fraught negotiations of memory and setting the historical record straight. It examines the ways in which “Uriah’s War” addresses three major historical episodes of the Great War involving the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), mostly unacknowledged or devalued in western historiography of the conflict. “Uriah’s War” contributes to the rescue of Caribbean soldiers from historical oblivion and inscribes their voices in order to demonstrate their patriotic affiliation and denounce the racial discrimination suffered by soldiers of the BWIR during the Great War.