A cultural, military and imperial history of the Black soldiers of Britain's West India Regiments.

This report describes an approach to high-level decision support for a Joint Forces Air Component Commander in combat operations or a Chief of Staff in defense planning. Its central theme is the fundamental importance of dealing effectively with uncertainty, whether in effects-based operations, building the Air Force's Commander's Predictive Environment, or planning future forces with the methods of capabilities-based planning. Because many features of the future cannot be predicted with reasonable confidence, it is better to proceed with the expectation of surprise developments and to have skill in recognizing adaptations and making them than it is to treat uncertainty merely as an annoyance. This report sketches the framework of a high-level decision-support environment that is top-down, expresses concepts in simple and intuitive language, deals explicitly with risk and uncertainty, and provides the capability for decisionmakers to readily discover and question the bases for key assumptions and assessments. It can accommodate both "rational-analytic" and "naturalistic" decisionmakers, allowing them to produce strategies that are flexible, adaptive, and robust (FAR). Two explicit methods and their related tools are described. The first involves portfolio-style thinking and analysis, a good mechanism for balancing risks and other considerations in choosing a course of action. The second is a novel modification of foresight exercises that addresses the need to include humans effectively in dealing with uncertainty. A more extensive discussion of available methods and enabling technologies is also presented, along with some recommendations about investment priorities.

The Truth About Empire comes from expert historians who believe that the truth, as far as we can pinpoint it, matters; that our decades of painstaking research make us worth listening to; and that our authority as leading professionals should count for something in today's polarised debates over Britain's imperial past. In the culture wars, the public's understanding of colonial history is continually distorted by wilful caricatures. With their fight to highlight Empire's horrors, communities whose voices once went unheard have alienated many who would prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has produced a concerted denial of British imperial racism and violence--a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change. From Australia and China to India and South Africa, this essay collection is an accessible guide to the British Empire, and a shield against the assault on historical truth. The disturbing stories told in these pages, of Empire's culture, politics and economics, show why professional research matters, when deciding what can and cannot be known about Britain's colonial past.