‘Allowed to Defend the Flag?’: Racial policy and Black wartime service in Canada’s First World War
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Date
2025-04
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the nature of anti-Black racism within Canada’s First World War military institutions. The project employs Critical Race Theory to illuminate how anti-Black racism was embedded in the recruitment policies designed by the Department of Militia and Defence (the Department) during Canada’s First World War. In practice the Department in Canada, and the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) overseas both operated as structurally racist organizations. Superficially, recruitment policies consistently allowed the enrolment and employment of Black soldiers. However, at several key moments senior officials with the Department and commanders with the CEF manipulated policies to protect what they saw as “military efficiency” and to maintain an archetype of soldiering that reflected a predominately white society.
This study weighs policy documents, correspondence, and military personnel records to demonstrate how policy manipulations occurred, and how they affected Black men in uniform. It begins by establishing policies regarding the acceptance of non-white volunteers for the CEF as it formed and grew in the first two years of war. Senior leaders deliberately recused themselves from making clear decisions regarding the enlistment of Black men, instead ceding authority to commanding officers to decide if they wished to accept their service. The Department therefore maintained that no colour line existed in the CEF while enforcing structures of white supremacy that protected whites who did not want to serve alongside Black men.
The 1916 creation of the segregated Black No. 2 Construction Battalion represents a continuation of the policy of protecting white interests at the expense of Black men’s wishes to serve. Even after conscription was introduced in late 1917, senior leaders sought to isolate Black conscripts by further limiting access to infantry units. This study also examines the structures that oversaw promotions, commendations, and military discipline in the CEF. In total, the anti-Black racism within recruitment policy plagued Black men serving overseas in France and the United Kingdom. This dissertation is the first to apply critical methodologies to the service of Black men in the CEF and lays the groundwork for further research on the history of race and racism in Canadian military institutions.