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…
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…
26 January 1852 On 26 January 1852, seven columns of British colonial troops were advancing into the Amatola mountains on the eastern fringes of Cape Colony in what is today South Africa, systematically burning all the crops and settlements belonging to the Xhosa people, and seizing their goats, cattle and horses. Colonial newspapers covered the…
14 January 1951 On 14 January 1951, military commanders and Colonial Office staff held a meeting in London to discuss a request from General Sir Gerald Templer, the High Commissioner in Malaya, who wished to drench extensive areas of jungle with chemical defoliants as part of a strategy to crush a communist insurgency by depriving…
BRITISH ARMY’S INDISCRIMINATE MASS MURDER OF AFGHANS AT ISTALIF [29 September 1842 ] On 29 September 1842, a punitive expedition, under the command of Major General John McCaskill, entered the Afghan town of Istalif, forty miles north of Kabul. It had been one of the first towns to participate in an anti-British insurgency, which had…
GENOCIDE ON ST VINCENT – ‘THE SAVAGES WILL BE STARVED INTO COMPLIANCE’ [ 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…
