The Dynamics of British Colonial Violence

Abstract

This chapter explores the dynamics of British colonial warfare in consideration of three cases of violence in the British Empire: the Perak War in Malaya (1875–1876); the ‘Hut Tax’ War in Sierra Leone (1898) and the anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan (1896–1899). Focusing on the role of colonial administrators in outbreaks of colonial violence, as well as the willingness of British troops to take part in extreme levels of violence against recalcitrant ‘natives’, this chapter explores the extent to which racial prejudices and the dichotomisation of the ‘civilised’ versus the ‘barbaric’ informed the actions of British colonists and contributed to the ‘logic’ of the British Empire, which was inherently violent and antagonistic towards the Indigenous peoples they sought to colonise.