‘Black-and-Tan Tendencies’: Policing Insurgency in the Palestine Mandate, 1922–48

Abstract

In April 1922 more than 700 disbanded members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and its Auxiliary Division were transferred by the Colonial Office to the British Palestine Mandate. Focusing on the British sections of the Palestine Gendarmerie and the Palestine Police, Gannon examines the policing of insurgency in the Palestine Mandate, critiquing the commonplace view that the brutality that at times defined police counterinsurgency in the territory was the result of poor-quality recruitment, or the importation of a ‘Black and Tan’ ethos from Ireland. Drawing parallels with the Royal Irish Constabulary’s counterinsurgency during the Irish Revolution, Gannon argues instead that the ‘Black and Tannery’ which became a feature of the British police response to the Arab Revolt of 1936–39, and the subsequent Zionist insurgency, was a function of their inability to meet the challenges of the ‘small wars’ into which they were thrust, providing evidence for the primacy of situational factors in shaping cultures of colonial police violence.