History
Kyle Prochnow
Assistant Professor of History
Kyle Prochnow specializes in the history of the African diaspora and the Atlantic world with particular interest in colonial war and policing, slavery and abolition, and disease and ‘tropical medicine.’
His current book project, Britain’s Black Battalions: African Soldiers, War, and Empire in the Atlantic Tropics, explores the history of the West India Regiments – an imperial corps of African infantry who served Britain in the Caribbean and Africa in the nineteenth century. The book reconstructs the day-to-day lives and experiences of the African rank and file and analyzes their complex interactions with British colonialism. It shows that while the troops were generally reliable enforcers of imperial power, they were also impactful protagonists in affecting and challenging the British empire on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Department
Degrees
B.A., Saint Mary’s College of California
M.A., Boston College
Ph.D., York University
Teaching
African history
World history
Colonialism and decolonization
History of disease and medicine
Research Interests
Colonialism, race, and structures of power
Slavery and abolition
Colonial wars, policing, and violence
Disease and ‘tropical medicine’
British empire
Recent Work
Articles and book chapters
“‘Saving an extraordinary expense to the nation’: African recruitment for the West India Regiments in the British Atlantic world,” Atlantic Studies 18, no. 2 (2021): 149-171.
“‘Perpetual expatriation’: forced migration and Liberated African apprenticeship in the Gambia,” in Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, ed. Richard Anderson and Henry Lovejoy (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2020), 347-364.
Book reviews
Review of Tim Lockley, Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52, no. 4 (2022): 613-615.
Review of Mary Wills, Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign against the Slave Trade in West Africa. Slavery & Abolition 42, no. 2 (2021): 406-407.