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This edited collection examines the British ‘way’ in counter-insurgency. It brings together and consolidates new scholarship on the counter-insurgency associated with the end of empire, foregrounding a dark and violent history of British imperial rule, one that stretched back to the nineteenth century and continued until the final collapse of the British Empire in the 1960s. The essays gathered in the collection cover the period from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s; they are both empirical and conceptual in tone. This edited collection pivots on the theme of the nature of the force used by Britain against colonial insurgents. It argues that the violence employed by British secur...
Exploring violent confrontation between the state and the population in colonial and postcolonial India, this book is both a study of the ways in which governments in India used collective coercion and state violence against the population, and a cultural history of how acts of state violence were interpreted by the population.
A thrilling account of the rescue of RAF crewmen after their aircraft crashes in Afghanistan in 1919. This is the story of an unknown incident during the little-known Third Afghan War. An aircraft from the No. 20 Squadron RAF was lost while investigating gathering tribesman. The crew were rescued, and most of the aircraft was recovered by the Kurram Militia and the 22nd Battery Motor Machine Gun Service. It was an all-arms action—the lives of two airmen were saved at the cost of an Indian Militiaman and an unknown number of Afghan tribesmen. It also illustrates the experience of a virtually unknown group of soldiers, the 22nd Battery of the Motor Machine Gun Service. They had volunteered t...
At its peak, the British Empire spanned the world and linked diverse populations in a vast network of exchange that spread people, wealth, commodities, cultures, and ideas around the globe. By the turn of the twentieth century, this empire, which made Britain one of the premier global superpowers, appeared invincible and eternal. This compelling book reveals, however, that it was actually remarkably fragile. Reconciling the humanitarian ideals of liberal British democracy with the inherent authoritarianism of imperial rule required the men and women who ran the empire to portray their non-Western subjects as backward and in need of the civilizing benefits of British rule. However, their lack of administrative manpower and financial resources meant that they had to recruit cooperative local allies to actually govern their colonies. Timothy H. Parsons provides vivid detail of the experiences of subject peoples to explain how this became increasingly difficult and finally impossible after World War II as Afr