Historical Records of the Royal African Corps

RARE HISTORY OF AN COLONIAL ARMY CORPS
first edition small 8vo. viii, 136, [2 (bibliography & advt.)]pp., maroon cloth lettered and with a design in black on upper cover, fine bright copy, essentially as new. Rare, especially so in this condition.
Library Hub (formerly COPAC) locates only in Cambridge, T.C.D., Aberdeen, London Library & Instit. Historical Research. OCLC adds only a copy in France.
The Royal African Corps (1800-1821), an infantry unit in the British Army, grew out of Fraser's Corps of Infantry which had been raised in 1800 for the defence of the Island of Goree off the Senegal coast. It was renamed the African Corps and then in 1804 the Royal African Corps. It was composed primarily of deserters and prisoners with some additional indigenous African soldiers being attached to make up numbers and it was used for colonial garrison duty, often of penal establishments. In 1806 the Corps was split with a section sent to the West Indies as the Royal West India Rangers. The remainder, sometimes called the Royal York Rangers, continued to perform garrison duties in various African colonies until 1819, when the four companies serving in Sierra Leone and Gambia, were disbanded. Another section which had been sent to Cape Colony in South Africa and which included foreigners as well as British Army deserters and convicts, was disbanded in 1821.
Crooks (Queen's County, now Laois, 1842 - 1928), Irish soldier, colonial administrator and writer, was educated at the Royal Hibernian Military School, Dublin where he stayed until 1857 when he enlisted in the British Army. He served in west Africa during the third Anglo-Ashanti War in an Army Service corps, probably in the Royal Artillery, from 1873 to 1874. He was promoted from Staff sergeant to assistant commissary on probation on 8th September 1873 and later became a Deputy Commissary with the rank of Major. He was for a time colonial secretary or administrator of Sierra Leone. On retirement and return to Dublin he published a series of books on military and colonial history. There is a full account Crooks services in the Dec. 1898 issue of Hibernia. Quarterly Magazine of the Royal Hibernian Military School but we have not been able to examine a copy (only recorded copy in B.L.). He apparently had a great interest in that magazine and was a frequent contributor. This copy was until recently in Crooks family ownership.