Colonial troops in the context of "Schutztruppe"

Auxiliaries are support personnel that assist the military or police but are organised differently from regular forces. Auxiliary may be military volunteers undertaking support functions or performing certain duties such as garrison troops, usually on a part-time basis. Unlike a military reserve force, an auxiliary force does not necessarily have the same degree of training or ranking structure as regular soldiers, and it may or may not be integrated into a fighting force. Some auxiliaries, however, are militias composed of former active duty military personnel and have better training and combat experience than their regular counterparts.

The designation "auxiliary" has also been given to foreign or allied troops in the service of a nation at war. The term originated with the Latin eponymous Auxilia relating to non-citizen infantry and cavalry serving as regular units of the Roman Empire. In the context of colonial troops, locally recruited irregulars were often described as auxiliaries.

The Royal Corps of Colonial Troops (Italian: Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali or RCTC) was a corps of the Royal Italian Army, in which all the Italian colonial troops were grouped until the end of World War II in North Africa campaign.

The Troupes coloniales (French pronunciation: [tʁup kɔlɔnjal], "Colonial Troops") or Armée coloniale ([aʁme kɔlɔnjal],"Colonial Army"), commonly called La Coloniale, were the colonial troops of the French colonial empire from 1900 until 1961. From 1822 to 1900, these troops were designated as Troupes de marine ("Marine Troops" or just "Marines"), and in 1961 they readopted this name. They were recruited from mainland France and from the French settler as well as indigenous populations of the empire. This force played a substantial role in the conquest of the empire, in World War I, World War II, the First Indochina War, and the Algerian War.

A military armored (also spelled armoured) car is a wheeled armoured fighting vehicle, historically employed for reconnaissance, internal security, armed escort, and other subordinate battlefield tasks. With the gradual decline of mounted cavalry, armored cars were developed for carrying out duties formerly assigned to light cavalry. Following the invention of the tank, the armoured car remained popular due to its faster speed, comparatively simple maintenance and low production cost. It also found favor with several colonial armies as a cheaper weapon for use in underdeveloped regions. During World War II, most armoured cars were engineered for reconnaissance and passive observation, while others were devoted to communications tasks. Some equipped with heavier armament could even substitute for tracked combat vehicles in favorable conditions—such as pursuit or flanking maneuvers during the North African campaign.

Since World War II the traditional functions of the armored car have been occasionally combined with that of the armoured personnel carrier, resulting in such multipurpose designs as the BTR-40 or the Cadillac Gage Commando. Postwar advances in recoil control technology have also made it possible for a few armoured cars, including the B1 Centauro, the Panhard AML, the AMX-10 RC and EE-9 Cascavel, to carry a large cannon capable of threatening many tanks.