Recruitment in the British Army from families with a military tradition. (This contrasted with the Navy, whose officers were more often from a middle-class background.) The second son of King George III, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, did much to improve the standard of officer recruitment from his position as Commander in Chief of the Army (from 1795 to 1809, then from 1811 to 1827). The sale of commissions, finally abolished in the Cardwell reforms in 1868–1874, and the further Childers Reforms. In spite of its abolition, the status of an officer being from a privileged background and that of another rank being
Recruitment in the British Army soldiers were usually recruited into indigenous regiments, such as the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, to garrison their own land, thus ensuring that the Army did not have to allocate its own units to garrison the territories. One of the oldest regiments raised from the empire was the West India Regiment, which was raised in 1795, and was formed as an integral part of the regular British Army. The recruits of the West India Regiment were originally raised from freed slaves from North America and by the purchase of slaves in the West Indies; the regiment was disbanded in 1927.