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”

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