Commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, Cornwallis Cloth ends ‘archival silence’ around invaluable West Indian contribution to war effort
It’s a significant chapter of wartime history that has until now been largely confined to memory, private archive and songs by 1940s Trinidadian calypsonian Lord Invader.
Now, the hidden story of how Caribbean workers helped win the second world war has finally been revealed by researchers commissioned to make a film by Imperial War Museums (IWM).
Labourers from across the British West Indies were recruited to build bases in the western Atlantic and Caribbean for the US, on what was then British territory.
It was a deal which changed history. It marked the emergence of the US as an interventionist global superpower, cemented the UK-US “special relationship” and prevented countries close to the US falling under Hitler’s control, securing victory in the Atlantic and freeing up forces and resources to defend Europe. It fired up independence movements in the Caribbean, while influencing West Indian music and fashion.
