History is nothing if not biased. It’s a well-known fact that accounts of wars are generally written from the victor’s point of view, and some of the nastier bits get overlooked. And one of the great victors – and great overlookers – of history has to be England. Its history is tainted with imperialistic arrogance, genocide and cruelty. Yet, it tends to get skimmed over when anyone’s talking about the golden days of the British Empire. But it doesn’t take much digging to find the grimmer bits. So, here are the Top 10 Pieces of History That the English Try to Forget.
(For accuracy’s sake, I should point out that some of these events were perpetrated by the British as a whole, some by the English against other bits of Britain and the U.K….but the English tend to feature in them all. As Hollywood knows, villains always have a British accent)
10. The Mau Mau Uprising
Also known as “The Kenya Emergency”, this conflict took place between 1952 and 1960 and there were numerous atrocities on both sides. Kenya was under British rule at the time and the Mau Mau were a group of anti-colonial rebels, who expressed their hatred of the regime in the most vicious way possible, attacking Africans as well as British forces. The rebels may have been vicious, but they were matched by the actions of the British, who killed around 20,000 of them in combat and dispensed capital punishment to a further 1,090 Mau Mau suspects. When the Mau Mau killed 74 men, women and children at Lari the British retaliated by killing 150 of their people. Even more disturbing was theChuka massacre, where British-led troops killed 20 African citizens, and the subsequent torture of suspected rebels. A blood-stained and shameful chapter of British history.
9. The Irish Oppression
English imperialism didn’t just happen miles away from Britain’s shore. It also happened closer to home, with the actions of Elizabeth I’s army in Ireland. Known as one of the greatest monarchs of all time for the cultural leaps that occurred during her reign, Elizabeth was feared and hated in Ireland, or “that rude and barbarous nation”, as she referred to it. Fearful of the Irish making a pact with her enemies, and giving them a base close to England, she sent troops in to quell the more rebellious elements, scorch the earth and kill anyone who tried to resist them. Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, was particularly known for his ruthlessness, putting down the Desmond rebellions with brutal force and lining the path to his tent with the heads of his enemies. Ireland has never forgiven England for these actions, and there is still tension today.
8. The Concentration Camps
It’s often said that the British invented the concentration camp. It’s not true, but they were pioneers of them. The first use of the term was by the Spanish, as they used “reconcentrados” in Cuba during the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878) and the British didn’t use them until the Second Boer War, which started in 1899. But it’s an undeniable fact that the British had their enemies in detention camps long before the Nazis did, with 45 camps built for Boer prisoners and 64 for Black African prisoners. And that included women and children, 26,000 of whom died in the camps thanks to the poor hygiene, lack of food and prevalence of infectious diseases. They didn’t invent them, but they certainly weren’t afraid to use them.
7. The Baralong Incident
The British pride themselves on a sense of fair play and this applies even in times of war – if you capture an enemy, you imprison rather than kill them. So it was shocking news when the German submarine U-27 was sunk by HMS Baralong and all the survivors were shot without mercy. The incident happened on August 19th 1915, in the middle of the First World War, 100 miles south of Ireland. The German U-Boats had sunk a passenger ship earlier that same day and so tempers were already raised. There are varying accounts of what happened, but some say that U-27’s commander Bernard Wegener was shot while he had his hands up in surrender. Definitely not the British way, is it?
6. The Massacre of Amritsar
There were many British atrocities committed while India was under their rule, but most notorious was the Massacre of Amritsar. On April 13th, 1919 Indians had gathered to protest peacefully against the Rowlatt Acts, laws which allowed the British to detain prisoners indefinitely and to sentence them without trial. Around 10,000 protesters were gathered in a park called Jallianwalla Bagh, which only had one way of getting in or out. Unarmed and with nowhere to go, the protestors were helpless as the British opened fire on them, killing 379 and injuring around 1,200. This sparked Mahatma Gandhi’s political movement, which continued the peaceful method of protest against British imperialism in India.
5. The Expulsion of the Jews
After the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed, the Allied nations were quick to condemn what Nazi Germany had done. But what no-one talked about is how anti-semitism ran deep in many of their countries as well – it just hadn’t surfaced in modern times like it had in Germany. But in the Middle Ages in England, it was more widespread and overt. England was the first country to make the Jews wear a special marker, preceding the Nazis by over 700 years. And in 1290, the Jews were banished from England entirely – not through any fault of their own, just as a popularity-winning measure by King Edward I (pictured above). The 2,000 Jews were apparently exiled peacefully, although accounts vary, and weren’t officially allowed to return till 1655.
4. The Malayan Emergency
Another colony, another rebellion – this one took place in Malaya between 1948 and 1960. The rebels called it the “Anti-British National Liberation War”, but the wealthy rubber plantations pushed for it to be referred to as an emergency, for insurance purposes. At the time, the Federation of Malaya was a protectorate of the United Kingdom (it became fully independant in 1957) and the Commonwealth forces stepped in to protect the Malayan people for the MNLA, the communist forces. It’s held up as a model of warfare, with the Commonwealth emerging victorious, unlike the American forces in Vietnam a few years later. However, allegations have emerged about British atrocities in the “emergency”, mostly in a book written by MNLA leader Chin Peng. One of these is an alleged massacre in the village of Batang Kali in 1948. Scots Guards entered the village and separated the men from the women and children. The next morning, all 24 men were dead. No-one knows exactly what happened, and the Batang Kali families are still pursuing the truth but it seems likely that there is another chapter of British shame hidden in Malaya.
3. The Glencoe Tragedy
Now, this is a difficult one to classify. Technically, it was Scots that murdered Scots at Glencoe, and the whole thing was done in the name of a King who was actually Dutch, but it was part of Scotland’s continued resistance to English rule, and so England is ultimately responsible. There had been a history of English oppression of the Scots, as far back as the Middle Ages, when Edward I (yes him again) defeated the renowned warrior William Wallace in what he called “the Scottish Problem”. The two nations had briefly been united under the Stuart Kings, who were Scottish in blood but sat on the English throne. However, when the last Stuart King was driven into exile (James II) and replaced by the Dutch William III, he needed to bring the Scottish Chiefs into line. So his “man in Scotland”, John Dalrymple, Master of Stair was despatched to make the clan Chiefs swear an oath to William. Chief McDonald was late to swear the oath, having been sent to the wrong place, and in revenge Dalrymple instructed another clan – the Campbells – and their allies to murder the whole McDonald clan. And they did – 38 of them, including women and children. What’s worse is the cowardice of the attack – at 5 in the morning, when the Campbells had been staying with the McDonalds for two weeks, feasting and partying. A shocking story of Scottish violence against one another, but motivated and orchestrated by the English government.
2. The English Slave Trade
Another rarely-mentioned historical fact is Britain’s complicity in the slave trade. Whenever a film about slavery comes out (“Django Unchained”, “The Butler”) it focusses on the American plantations and the conditions that were suffered there. However, without Britain there would have been no plantations. It was Britain that supplied the goods that were sent to Africa to be traded for slaves. These slaves then crossed the Atlantic to America, which then sent back goods from the plantations. It was known as “the triangular trade”. Britain abolished the slave trade, with the Slave Trade Act of 1807, and after that became a campaigner for emancipation in America. But the uncomfortable truth is that without Britain’s help, no-one would have needed to be emancipated.
1. The Settlement of Australia
Everything on this list is horrendous, but none of it quite compares to the British actions in Australia against the aboriginal peoples. It was the sustained campaign of genocide that made this chapter more horrific than any other. The British arrived on this “uninhabited land” and proceeded to treat it like their own, disrespecting the sacred aboriginal relationship with the land and killing the unarmed native people in massacres like the one at Myall Creek, where 28 men, women and children were rounded up and shot. And then there were the diseases the settlers brought with them, to which the Aboriginals had no immunity. Lastly, the settlers (by this time Australians) removed thousands of aboriginal children from their families to stop the growth of the race. An altogether disgraceful way to treat a group of people which is still now being atoned for.
