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…
[ 7 June 1818 ] On 7 June 1818, a short newspaper article in the Windsor and Eton Gazette carried an opinion piece on the latest reports from the British colony of Ceylon. It denounced the brutality of the British authorities, including their use of extreme methods of collective punishment against areas believed sympathetic to the rebels…
[ 30 December 1903 ] On 30 December 1903, a Liverpool Reuters correspondent telegraphed the news, arrived by ship from Nigeria, that ‘about fifteen towns and villages’ had been ‘destroyed’ during a two month long British punitive expedition in the south eastern Niger Delta region. The pretext had been the alleged ‘interference with peaceful trade by certain…
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, marched on London, reaching as far south as Derby before they retreated to Scotland. The rebellion was motivated by a range of complex issues,…
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…
12 December 1948 On 12 December 1948, British troops executed 24 unarmed labourers, after separating them from the women and children at a Malayan rubber plantation at Sungai Rimoh, near the small town of Batang Kali. The men were subjected to mock executions before being herded into a hut where they were shot down with automatic…
16 November 1882 Shortly after dawn on 16 November 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. A report carried in at least two British newspapers noted that the bombardment was maintained ‘for…
2 November 1948 On 2 November 1948, British troops and colonial police burned down the village of Kachau in the Malayan state of Selangor. The four hundred inhabitants were given two hours to collect their belongings. Arthur Creech Jones, the secretary of state for the colonies, questioned about the incident in the House of Commons,…
4 October 1759 In the early hours of 4 October 1759, 142 British troops, under the command of Major Robert Rogers, approached a large Native American settlement at Odanak on the Saint Francois river, some seventy miles south west of Quebec. Noticing that the Abenaki villagers were busily engaged in celebrations, the Redcoats waited until…
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…
