Military Training and Decolonisation in the British Empire

Abstract

Previous research has shown that military training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst was used by the UK in the post-World War II period as a soft foreign policy tool in anticipation of decolonisation. This article builds on this work by first detailing how early attempts to introduce military training for foreign cadets replicated racial hierarchies. Second, it describes how, as the programme was re-conceived to embrace the colonial territories, race and British belonging continued to be a source of both diplomatic and domestic friction. Third, it illustrates how the programme was a contested and occasionally conflictual process within the metropole.