3 MARCH

BRITISH TROOPS KILL 10,000 INDONESIANS IN BATTLE TO REASSERT DUTCH COLONIAL RULE. 10 November 1945 – The British begin a large scale assault on the Indonesian city of Surabaya, where nationalist forces equipped with weapons they had seized from Japanese troops continued to defy orders to disarm.  Several days earlier a British brigadier, A.W.S. Mallaby,…

BRITAIN RECOGNIZES IDI AMIN FOLLOWING COUP IN UGANDA On 5th February 1971, on the day of Major General Idi Amin’s swearing in as president, following a military coup twelve days earlier, Britain was one of the first countries in the world to formally recognize his new government. Please feel welcome to post comments below.  If…

BRITISH ATTEMPT TO BUY HEGEMONY OVER PERSIA FAILS [ 9 August 1919 ] On 9 August 1919, after six months of secret negotiations between Sir Percy Cox, the acting British Minister in Tehran, and three leading Persian politicians, Prime Minister Vusuq ul-Dawleh, Foreign Minister Prince Farooz and Finance Minister, Sarem ul-Dawleh, the Anglo-Persian Agreement was…

IRISH REBEL POET JOSEPH PLUNKETT SHOT BY THE BRITISH ON HIS WEDDING DAY. Joseph Plunkett, a poet, playwright and rebel who left a hospital bed to participate in the 1916 Easter Uprising in Dublin, was executed by a British firing squad at Kilmainham jail at dawn on Thursday 4 May, less than two hours after…

A ‘PUNITIVE COLUMN’ RAVAGES THE ANCIENT IRAQI TOWN OF TEL AFAR [ 9 June 1920 ] Following an attack by insurgents in the Iraqi town of Tel Afar on 3 and 4 June 1920, in which the town’s British political officer, Major J. E. Barlow, along with fifteen other officers and soldiers were overpowered and…

BRITISH WITNESS GIVES HARROWING ACCOUNT OF THE EXECUTION OF INDIAN MUTINEERS AT AHMEDABAD 26 October 1857 – A British witness gave a graphic account of the bloody aftermath of the execution, by being blown apart by cannon, of Indian mutineers at Ahmedabad. It was subsequently published in several British newspapers. “I walked straight to the…