17 JUNE
INDIAN MUTINEERS BLOWN APART, WOUNDING CIVILIAN SPECTATORS
[ 17 June 1857 ]
Today in 1857, British troops, having disarmed Indian mutineers at Lahore the previous month, executed twelve of them.
BRITAIN BUYS A CONTROLLING INTEREST IN ANGLO-PERSIAN OIL
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
[ 17 June 1914 ]
On 17 June 1914, the British government bought over half of the shares in the Anglo-Persian oil company and a secret contract gave the Royal Navy the right to purchase Persian oil for twenty years on favourable terms. No one in the British government even considered informing, let alone consulting, the Persians as to the new arrangement.1
TEN KENYANS WRONGLY MISTAKEN FOR REBELS BEATEN AND SUMMARILY EXECUTED BY BRITISH LED TROOPS
[ 17 June 1953 ]
During the afternoon of 17 June 1953, a patrol by the British led Kings African Rifles came across twelve members of the Kenyan Home Guard sheltering in a farm house. They were wrongly mistaken for rebels, ordered to lay face down and brutally beaten. Two were lucky to escape when they were sent to fetch food. The others were marched a short distance through the forest to the soldiers’ encampment, where they were summarily executed at sunset.2
FOOTNOTES
- Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia, Vintage Books, London, 2013, p. 45.
- David Anderson, “A Very British Massacre,” History Today – https://historyslc.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/a-very-british-massacre.pdf
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