21 MARCH

BRITISH BLOW UP THE GREAT BAZAR OF KABUL – “AN INEXCUSABLE ACT OF VANDALISM” [ 10 October 1842 ] On this day in 1842 British troops under the command of Major-General Sir George Pollock, following the instructions of India’s Governor General, Lord Ellenborough, to leave “some lasting mark of the just retribution of an outraged…

‘PERFIDIOUS’ HIGHLANDERS ‘MUST PERISH BY SWORD OR FAMINE’ [ 16 April 1746 ] During the autumn of 1745, Jacobite rebels, led by ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ and desiring to replace the Hanoverian king George II with the prince’s catholic father, James Stuart, had marched on London, reaching as far south as Derby before they retreated to…

BRITISH CAPTAIN TORTURES AND EXECUTES MAU MAU SUSPECTS 14 June 1953 – On 13 June, Captain Gerald S.L. Griffiths had led a company of British soldiers into the Chuka region of Kenya to flush out Kenyan Mau Mau rebels hiding in the forests.  Two Mau Mau suspects, Njeru Ndwega and Kvenji Njoka, were handed over…

BRITISH CHAPLAIN SHOCKED BY THE BARBARITY OF HIS OWN ARMY [ 28 August 1842 ] On this day in 1842, during the advance of a British punitive expedition led by Major General Sir William Nott, the Reverend Isaac Allen recalled the indiscriminate slaughter of men in a fortified Afghan village, deemed to have been responsible…

BAPTIST DEACON SAMUEL SHARPE HUNG FOR LEADING JAMAICAN SLAVE STRIKE 23 May 1832 – The Jamaican Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe was hung by the British for leading a slave strike. He was the last of 326 slaves to be executed for the dangerous precedent of refusing to follow orders by not returning to work after…

BRITISH TROOPS COMMENCE THE LOOTING AND DESTRUCTION OF BEIJING’S SUMMER PALACE [ 7 Ocobter 1860 ] On this day in 1860, British officers joined French troops in looting Peking’s legendary Summer Palace.  The complex might however have been more accurately described as palaces, as there were over two hundred summer houses and pavilions within eighty…