27 July 1796 On 27 July 1796, Major General Hunter, commanding 3000 British troops on the island of St. Vincent, launched the final phase of a campaign to expel the Black Caribs, a population originating from both the indigenous Indian population and escaped slaves, from their land. As the Scots Magazine explained to its readers, the general…
30 November 1567 Cacheu was a Portuguese trading and administrative town at the mouth of what was then called the Santo-Domingo River on the West African coast. It was situated a short distance south of Cape Roxo in what is today Guinea-Bissau. On the evening of 29 November 1567, three heavily armed British ships sailed…
14 December 1873 On 14 December 1873, John Colenso, the Bishop of Natal, wrote a letter to Frederick Chesson, the secretary of the London Aborigines Protection Society. He informed him that colonial troops had killed ‘hundreds of (Hlubi) men’ and that ‘hundreds of women and children’ had been taken prisoner, adding that a proclamation had…
15 September 1897 On 15 September 1897, Lieutenant Winston S. Churchill, who was temporarily freelancing as a war correspondent, joined a punitive British military expedition, under Major General Sir Bindon Blood, as it began to move against the Mamunds of the Watelai Valley on India’s North West Frontier. The provocation had been an attack the…
23 August 1900 On 23 August 1900, a Press Association report sent from the Gold Coast (now Ghana) reported that ‘two punitive columns’ of British troops were ‘destroying the enemy’s villages as they advance’ and living off the ‘rich country near Lake Busumskwi (Bosumtwi) which affords (them) plenty of food.’2 They were engaged in a near year…
20 August 1920 On 20 August 1920, Major General George A.J. Leslie, commanding the 17th Indian Division in Iraq, wrote to his wife Edith in India, informing her that Brigadier General H.A. Walker’s column, comprising two British and six Indian battalions was ‘slowly working its way back here ravaging the country on its way,’ while…
24 June 1917 On 24 June 1917, a punitive military expedition began burning the villages and crops of the Mahsud people in the Khaisara Valley on the North West Frontier. The British Army considered it a necessary collective punishment to deter raids into British held territory in India, explaining that it was ‘an act of…
16 June 1900 In October 1899, Boer settlers in the Transvaal and Orange Free, faced with a tightening circle of British troops advancing from Cape Colony and Natal, had declared a war against Britain. It was a desperate act of rebellion. The British were confident it could be crushed within a few days, but they…
9 June 1920 Following an attack by insurgents in the Iraqi town of Tel Afar on 3 and 4 June 1920, in which the local British political officer, twenty six year old Major J. E. Barlow, along with fifteen other officers and soldiers were overpowered and killed, a punitive column had been dispatched from Mosul…
26 February 1900 On 26 February 1900, the Irish nationalist MP, John Dillon, read out a letter in parliament that he had received from a British officer who was engaged in a campaign of virtual genocide against the Boer population of South Africa. ‘The orders in this district from Lord Kitchener ( commanding British forces…
