16 NOVEMBER

THE MORNING HERALD ON THE TREACHERY, CRUELTY AND INGRATITUDE OF JAMAICANS

[ 16 November 1865 ]

On this day in November 1865, following two days of popular protests and rioting by black Jamaicans the previous month, the Morning Herald warned that ‘we must never cease to mount guard over a stranger race which experience demonstrates is capable of any treachery, any cruelty, any ingratitude. Our tenure in Jamaica is liable, any hour of the day or night, to be challenged by a horde of wretches who hate the white man for his superiority.’¹ Such racism was typical of British press coverage and followed days of unrest and violence on the island colony provoked by the imprisonment of a poor black farmer for trespassing on a long abandoned plantation and the subsequent shooting dead of seven demonstrators. The island’s governor, Edward Eyre, then initiated a bloody orgy of retribution and punishment, ordering the execution of hundreds and the forced eviction of thousands more, who’s homes were destroyed.

MAORI REBEL HAMIORA PERE EXECUTED FOR TREASON

[ 16 November 1869 ]

At half past eight in the morning of 16 November 1869, a young Maori warrior, Hamiora Pere, who had participated in a rebellion against colonial forces who were seizing Maori land, was hung at the Terrace Gaol at Wellington, the administrative capital of the British colony of New Zealand.

AFRICAN VILLAGES SHELLED, MACHINE GUNNED AND BURNED TO THE GROUND

[ 16 November 1882 ]

Shortly after dawn on this day in 1882,  the gunboat HMS Flint shelled, rocketed and opened up with its Gatling gun on the village of Abari on the Forcados river, a navigable channel of the Niger Delta. 

FOOTNOTE

1. The Morning Herald cited in The Evening Standard, 16 November 1865, p. 4 accessed online in the British Newspaper Archive on 18 November 2018.

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