ROGUE NATION
– 1001 FORGOTTEN ANNIVERSARIES THAT SHAME BRITAIN
[ Click on text next to date for more details ]
1544
10.04 – ‘Burn Edinburgh… putting man, woman and child to fire and sword.’
1563
12.03 – Sale of Africans initiates Britain’s infamous triangular slave trade
1567
30.11 – Hawkins’ sailors sack Cacheu, torturing, killing and seizing slaves
1575
26.07 – Hundreds of women and children slaughtered on Rathlin Island
1578
05.12 – Drake’s men plunder the port of Valparaiso
1596
11.07 – Queen Elizabeth – ‘too many blackmoors’
1619
31.08 – First known purchase of African slaves by a British colony
1649
11.09 – Cromwell orders massacre of thousands of soldiers and civilians at Drogheda
11.10 – His troops slaughter all but ‘a very few’ of Wexford’s inhabitants
1699
03.10 – The first Liverpool slave ship sets sale
1731
14.09 – London’s Lord Mayor bans employment of black apprentices
1736
11.10 – Slaves face death ‘with amazing obstinacy’ following aborted revolt
1737
14.03 – As slave ship docks at St. Kitts, 33 slaves leap to their deaths
1743
04.10 – City of London auction – rum, brandy and ‘one Negro boy’
1744
11.12 – ‘Little Negro Boy’ to be ‘dispos’d of’ – Apply at “the Dolphin Tavern’
1746
16.04 – ‘Perfidious’ highlanders ‘must perish by sword or famine’
1750
16.07 – 300 lashes ‘for his many crimes and negligences”
02.10 – Hung and his body left to rot for drawing a knife on a white man
1752
09.02 – Slave hung and his head impaled on a pole for running away
11.12 – The author of ‘Amazing Grace‘ on his use of the thumbscrew on slave boys
1753
27.12 – Widespread celebrations follow repeal of the ‘Jew Bill’
1756
28.01 – Plantation overseer invents revolting punishment for a slave
26.05 – Slave overseer’s diary notes on a summer of depraved torture
1757
12.01 – British officers keep brief notes on town and village burning in Bengal
23.06 – Battle of Plassey is followed by the looting of Bengal
1759
04.10 – British troops massacre the Abenaki people and burn their homes
1760
18.06 – Report from Jamaica – gibbeted slaves ‘live from four to eight days.’
04.08 – The New Eagle of Liverpool ‘arrived at Barbados… Buried half her slaves.’
1762
28.10 – Ship’s crew saved ‘but not even any of our clothes or one slave.’
1763
07.07 – General authorises use of smallpox to kill Native Americans
1768
02.07 – Slave roasted alive – his wife hung – just another day in colonial Jamaica
1769
06.06 – ‘A Negro boy to be disposed of’
1770
05.03 – Redcoats shoot dead five Bostonians who had been hurling snowballs
1771
28.01 – News breaks of a famine in Bengal and ‘calamities’ for British investors.
01.09 – East India Company racketeers profit from Bengal’s famine
1772
01.09. – Deaths from Britain’s slave trade estimated at 30,000 a year
1774
10.03 – Slave rebellion evokes brutal executions in Tobago
1775
17.10 – The Royal Navy punishes the American town of Falmouth
1777
02.04 – British newspaper – American women raped by our troops are ‘fortunate’
26.06 – Redcoats ransack the town of Westfield, New Jersey
1778
28.09 – Redcoats slaughter American troops after they surrender
1781
13.07 – General’s plan to use African Americans to spread smallpox
10.08 – Our morning’s salutation – ‘Rebels ! Turn out your dead !’
06.09 – New London burned and the garrison slaughtered
14.10 – Lord Cornwallis expels his black troops from Yorktown
29.11 – British ship throws 132 slaves overboard to claim on its insurance
1783
22.05 – Lord Mansfield – throwing slaves overboard cannot be murder
1788
19.01 – The first convicts arrive at Botany Bay, Australia
1791
19.04 – Church bells rung in Bristol to celebrate the defeat of first anti-slavery bill
1793
31.08 – Scottish reformer Thomas Muir sentenced to transportation for 14 years
1796
15.03 – MPs love of the opera means slavery abolition bill fails
27.07 – Genocide on St. Vincent – ‘The savages will be starved into compliance’
09.10 – Drowned black slaves dumped in a mass grave in North Devon
1798
10.01 – General John Moore admits the futility of ‘acts of great violence’ in Ireland
27.05 – Moore – ‘My wish was to excite terror.’
15.06 – Moore condones ‘promiscuous and severe punishments’
1801
25.12 – Rebel slave plotters seized, hung and their heads impaled on poles
1802
27.04 – Following massacre of black mutineers – eleven surivors executed
1803
29.08. – Ceylonese boats and villages burned by British troops
13.09 – 1,100 houses torched – unknown number burned alive in Ceylonese town
1804
03.05 – British Redcoats shoot dead up to fifty Aboriginal Tasmanians
09.11 – Preparations made to burn Irish convicts alive
1805
08.07 – Australian aborigines not legally entitled to the right of a fair trial
1812
07.04 – Thousands slaughtered as British troops sack the Spanish city of Badajoz
1813
31.08 – British sack San Sebastian, killing over a thousand and raping the women
1814
24.08 – British troops sack Washington DC.
1816
14.04 – British militia massacre hundreds of Barbadian slaves
1818
07.06 – British troops burn homes and destroy rice stores in Ceylonese villages
1821
17.11 – Priest – slaves surviving on raw plantains – perpetually flogged
1823
12.10 – Newspaper dismisses dangers of treadmill, blaming idle, sulky slaves
18.12 – ‘Heads (of blacks) fixed on poles in various parts’ of Demerara
1831
27.12 – Slaves in Jamaica refuse to work for their British masters
1832
23.05 – Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe hung for leading Jamaican slave strike
1833
03.06. – Gladstone – slaves are no more than the property of their owners
01.08 – Abolition Act – Biggest pay-out in British history for slave owners
26.11 – Lord Napier – ‘The empire of China is my own.’
1839
19.01 – British naval ships reduce Aden to rubble
10.03 – Britain’s first war to impose regime change on Afghanistan
03.06 – Chinese destroy British opium leading to the First Opium War
01.10 – Cabinet backs war with China after opium traders are held hostage
1840
06.02 – Britain signs a treaty with the Maoris only to renege on it
09.04 – Lord Palmerston justifies military protection for Britain’s opium traders
1842
19.06 – Priceless antique books in Shanghai used as cooking fuel and toilet paper
28.08 – Chaplain shocked by the barbarity of the British army in Afghanistan
13.09 – British troops execute all Afghan males over 14 years old
29.09 – British army’s indiscriminate mass slaughter of Afghans at Istalif
10.10 – Kabul sacked in an orgy of fire, looting and ‘wholesale butchery’
1843
11.06 – Sarawak villages plundered and burned to the ground
1845
13.10 – PM – Irish famine fears exaggerated – delay in acting desirable
1846
10.02 – British troops refuse quarter to thousands of surrounded Sikh soldiers
23.02 – British government reacts to famine in Ireland with martial law bill
13.03 – British infantry evict Irish peasants from village as famine threatens
23.03 – Earl Grey describes Ireland as ‘our disgrace’
17.07 – British Treasury orders halt in relief to famine struck Irish peasants
22.09 – The Times argues that Ireland’s potato famine is a ‘blessing’
28.09 – Royal Dragoons shoot dead two as starving Irish crowd demands food
10.10 – Troops dispatched to prevent starving Irish from halting corn exports
02.12 – British official on the ‘moral evil’ of the ‘selfish, turbulent’ Irish
07.12 – Relief works for famine struck Irish villagers suspended as a punishment
1847
31.03 – Sultan asked to reduce donation to Irish famine victims
08.06 – Britain – We won’t pay for Irish famine victims
12.06 – Workhouse forced to turn away 260 starving Irish famine victims
21.06 – The Irish famine victims removal Act becomes law
22.11 – Minister’s advice to go ‘a little beyond the law’
15.12 – British troops enforce mass eviction from Irish village of Mullaroghe
25.12 – A bleak famine Christmas under British rule in Ireland
1848
26.07 – The Times – Lazy and perfidious Irish famine victims abuse our charity
29.07 – Martial law declared in Ceylon – 200 shot dead or hung
30.08 – The Times warns famine struck Ireland to expect less relief
1849
02.01 – Redcoats massacre hundreds of civilians in Multan
13.02 – P.M. insists that Irish treachery means that they must starve
21.02 – British officer – “I never saw such butchery and murder.”
1851
26.12 – Royal Navy destroys Lagos – ‘An immense number of natives being killed’
1852
26.01 – Starvation used as a weapon of war against the Xhosa
1854
26.09 – British troops ransack the Crimean port of Balaklava
1855
24.05 – British and Allied troops sack the Crimean city of Kerch
1857
24.04 – Indian troops refuse orders to use cartridges greased with pig and cow fat
10.05 – Indian Mutiny incites press demands for ‘bloody vengeance’
22.05 – British preempt a mutiny at Peshawar with mass executions
04.06 – Reign of terror, including indiscriminate hangings, at Benares
10.06 – Forty Indian mutineers blown from guns
11.06 – British army at Allahabad slaughters ‘every native that appeared in sight’
17.06 – Indian mutineers blown apart – wounding civilian spectators
26.06 – “We stand no nonsense here !” – British officer explains mass executions
29.06 – “Slaughter all the men” – bloody retribution against an Indian village
12.07 – After defeating Indian rebels, British troops take no prisoners
21.08 – Lord Elgin’s diary notes on ‘living among inferior races’
05.09 – British officer in India – ‘Every native is shot down like a dog.’
08.09. – 18 executions ‘inspired the natives with a wholesome dread’
10.09 – Major in the Indian Raj recounts with pride his extra-judicial hangings
13.09 – Murderous Redcoats ransack Delhi
20.09 – Worst day of week long orgy of retribution, looting and murder in Delhi
28.12 – British bombard Canton to protect their opium trade
1858
04.01 – Indian man flogged, stuffed with pork and then hung
25.02 – Women slaughtered while clinging to their husbands
03.04 – No quarter given as Redcoats sack the Indian city of Jhansi
1859
18.01 – Officer recalls hunting down Indian mutineers “like vermin”
If you have any questions please email alisdare@gmail.com
© 2019 Alisdare Hickson All rights reserved