BOOK REVIEW: Ian Hernon.THE SAVAGE EMPIRE: FORGOTTEN WARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Phoenix Mill and New York: Sutton, 2000.

Abstract

Titles are curious things. On the one hand, they are meant to tell us a good deal about a book before we read it. On the other, they are often designed precisely to entice us to begin that reading. Take "Savage Empire." Does this mean that the empire is savage--that is, made up of savages who must be governed by the discipline of British organization? Or does it mean that the empire keepers are savage in their treatment of the governed? And then, "Forgotten Wars." Forgotten by whom? Titles might not, it seems, be so clear about the nature of the book before us. To me the title of this book clearly declares itself as destined for a popular rather than a scholarly audience. Any reader with a strong interest in nineteenth-century Britain is unlikely to have forgotten the Burma campaign of 1824 to 1826, the "war" against aborigines in Tasmania, the hostilities between Britain and China from 1839 to 1842 and again from 1856 to 1860, and very likely the Persian War of 1856 to 1857. These are the conflicts to which the greatest attention is given in The Savage Empire. The other conflicts treated more justly rate as forgotten by even the well-informed reader. They are the Buenos Aires campaign of 1806 to 1807, the bombarding of Zanzibar in 1896, the Benin expedition in the Niger region of Africa in 1897, and the Afghanistan campaign of 1897 to 1898.