‘Salt meat […] is prejudicial to the health of the troops’: the battles between doctors and the British Empire over army diet in the nineteenth-century Caribbean

Abstract

Nineteenth-century British and Caribbean sources show that European colonists were constantly struggling to maintain their health in a little-understood tropical climate; they engaged in frequent discussion and the exchange of advice on the preservation of their health. This article reveals that the maintenance of a specific group of temporary migrants, those in the armed forces, was a significant concern for the British authorities. It analyses medical reports and information in the contemporary press, which illustrate how heightened concerns about preservation of the army’s health led to an alternation between two different diets, one based on preserved food imported from the British homeland and the other on fresh local food.