I came across this piece earlier today, and it stopped me. We talk about the Napoleonic Wars like they were fought by one kind of soldier in one kind of uniform, but history is rarely that clean. This post digs into the lives of Black soldiers who served in that era — men like George Rose and Thomas James — whose stories sit in the margins instead of the main text.
I’m reblogging it because it reminds us how easily entire lives can disappear from the record, not by accident, but by habit. And sometimes the most important thing we can do is shine a light where the page went quiet.
Memoirs of Madness 
Educational article. None of it surprises me. It feels like the history (even the word history has a gender bias!) we are taught in school is nothing but a hard slick shell, with no access to reality. We are indoctrinated time and again with an illusion.
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thanks, Lisa
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You’re welcome, Mangus.
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It’s a conveniently self-congratulatory British narrative, leaving out the contributions of figures like Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. The French Revolution abolished slavery in 1793 (Napoleon restored it for reasons still debated), but the British didn’t emancipate slaves until the 1830s, and even then the government had to pay former owners for “lost property.”
Look up what Horatio Nelson did to Malta. Or what rather he didn’t do.
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thank you
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I quoted Horatio Nelson’s letter defending slavery here https://durocsdeskdrawer.ink/2025/06/12/from-r-ao3-whats-a-problematic-character-beloved-by-most-fans-and-whats-a-problematic-character-people-in-your-fandom-absolutely-hate/
Furthermore, slavery had been banned in the borders of France since the 14th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_France
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thank you
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