Bermuda Militia (1612–1815)

The roles of the militias included defence of the colony in complement with the activities of the British Army and Royal Navy.

The military defences would remain wholly the responsibility of the Colonial Government until an independent company of army soldiers was garrisoned in Bermuda from 1701.

This resulted in a parallel build-up of the British Army's Bermuda Garrison, intended to protect the naval base.

The British Government made repeated pleas for Militia to be maintained, but, other than short-lived militias raised by the Governor, or the Royal Navy, without an Act, or the funding, of the Colonial Parliament, no part-time Bermudian units would be raised until the formation of Volunteer Army units in 1895.

Bermudians also raised militias from the seasonal population on the Turks Islands, which Bermuda had effective control of from about 1681 until the British government assigned them to the Bahamas at the end of the Eighteenth Century.