[ 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…
[ 29 November 1902 ] On 29 November 1902, a Reuters correspondent at Peshawar on India’s North West Frontier reported on ‘a punitive expedition’ against the Kabul Khels, a Waziri ethnic group, for previous raids into British held territory. He boasted that as a result of a four pronged invasion of the area by four columns of…
[ 26 May 1902 ] On 26 May 1902, Reuters filed a report at Banjul on a British punitive expedition in the Gambia against the Jola, who were described as ‘a wild people in the neighbourhood of the French frontier’ (today marked by the country’s border with Senegal.) It appeared in British newspapers in mid-June under various…
18 December 1922 On 18 December 1922, the RAF’s Deputy Director of Operations and Intelligence, submitted a report to the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Hugh Trenchard, suggesting possible ‘systems of attack against uncivilised tribes’. Britain was facing insurgencies across the Empire, and was particularly worried about the threat to continued British rule along…
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 September 1921 On Monday 12 September 1921, at 0530 hours the first pair of RAF biplane bombers, of Number 55 Squadron, took off from Mosul to take part in a surprise day long assault by mounted troops and aircraft on four Kurdish villages in the Harir Valley, some thirty miles north east of Erbil…
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…
3 May 1920 On 3 May 1920, two RAF DH9A bombers, each equipped with eight 20 lb bombs as well as Vickers and Lewis machine guns, made the first of several air strikes on herds of cattle, belonging to the nomadic Nuer of southern Sudan. The Nuer had been failing to respect the ‘tribal’ boundaries…
2 April 1952 On 2 April 1952, the Collective Punishments Ordinance was passed by Kenya’s British run colonial government. It allowed the governor to authorize fines as well as the requisition of cattle, crops and property on already impoverished populations, ‘where a tribe or group has been (deemed to be) openly hostile to the authorities.’1…
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…
