British Soldiers Research Articles

Repatriation of ancient Benin bronzes to Nigeria: reflection on copyright and related issues

The 1897 invasion of Benin traditional empire by British soldiers led to the looting of ancient Benin bronzes. These have been at the centre of conversation around the repatriation of stolen African cultural heritage from Europe and America for a long time.1 There have been efforts in the past by the Nigerian government and the Benin Royal Palace to get stolen artefacts back from the UK.2 Recent global calls on colonial overloads for the return of looted artefacts from their previous colonial territories and for the atonement of colonial atrocities, which included the stealing of indigenous art,3 goaded the Nigerian government to reopen talks with foreign governments for repatriation of the looted bronzes. The awakened international consultations for the return of the looted ancient Benin bronzes forming part of the holdings of museums in Germany and the UK stirred schism among the governments of Edo State (sub-national), the Nigerian Federation and the Benin Royal Palace led by the Oba of Benin (the Oba Palace is located at the centre of Benin City, Edo State [Province], Nigeria). The schism was about who would control the ancient Benin bronzes upon their return. While the schism has been settled, as discussed in Section 3, the local ‘warring’ parties did not avert their minds to questions around who owns, would manage and benefit from the copyright relating to the ancient Benin bronzes. Nonetheless, the copyright and related issues have been identified as issues to be negotiated at the international consultation for the repatriation of the bronzes. Discussion of the copyright and related issues is important when viewed against the backdrop of the large-scale digitization project of the ancient Benin bronzes embarked upon by museums in Germany, for instance, in preparation for the repatriation of the bronzes. Viewed broadly, the discussion would serve to give useful insights into the copyright-related issues concerning other large-scale digitizations of cultural heritage, such as the Timbuktu Manuscripts recently digitized by Google Arts and Culture.4

Making Friends, Making Families: Post-World War II Marriages between Austrian Women and British Soldiers, 1945–1955

Between 1945 and 1955, Austria, like Germany, was divided into four zones under the control of the Soviet Union, the United States of America, Britain, and France. This article discusses marriages between British “occupiers” and Austrian “occupied” between 1945 and 1955, examining the policies for contact from the enactment of the non-fraternisation order until the lifting of the marriage ban. It shows how marriages were concluded despite bureaucratic and legal obstacles and discusses the experiences of Austrian “war brides” upon their arrival and settlement in Britain. The analysis draws upon a wide range of documents to survey the response of the British government and military authorities to British–Austrian relationships and marriage applications. Case studies of an Austrian war bride and children of married British–Austrian couples represent the links between state and military intervention and individual experiences set off by the presence of Allied soldiers in Austria during the first decade after the end of World War II.

“A Man's Lot”: Marriage, Military Service, and the First World War

The study of personal experiences of British and Australian soldiers during the First World War can be further developed through a discrete analysis of married men's interactions with wartime masculine ideals. This article seeks to provide a preliminary insight into such interactions through the case‐study of two officers serving on the Western Front in 1916 and the correspondence they wrote to their wives throughout their military service. British Lieutenant Max Shaw and Australian Lieutenant Cecil Mills both voluntarily enlisted and served in France in 1916. Once they departed their homes to commence training, they immediately began corresponding with their wives, which can be seen as attempts to mediate a clashing sense of domestic and military loyalties. As these men transitioned from a civilian to a military lifestyle, their lingering domestic identities and the importance of their marriage within their sense of manhood continued to influence their adoption of a military identity.

The Dubai Incident - 1910 "Historical Study in Light of British Documents"

The present study aims at investigating the incident of Dubai which took place on 24/10/1910. This incident was caused by British officers and soldiers who searched two houses owned by Thani bin Khalifah and Ahmed bin Dalmuk. The search revealed some weapons and ammunition which were located beneath the one house. An armed struggle between the two parties occurred; four Britons and thirty-seven local citizens were killed. Accordingly, the British Government in the Persian Gulf region held Shaikh Butti bin Suheil responsible for the incident and sent him an ultimatum including several demands to be fulfilled within 48 hours; the most important of which was erecting a tide pole in the Dubai port, a fine payment of 50 thousand Rupees, handing over 400 rifles, establishing a post office and a telegraph station, and finally accepting the appointment of a British Political Agent in Dubai. The study concludes that the British officials utilized the incident to give privilege to the British Government to take control over the Emirate of Dubai and the adjacent Emirate of the Coastline despite the fact that Shaikh Butti bin Suheil had already accepted the conditions of the ultimatum and started implementing most of it.

Moman's Secret Agenda

Moman's Secret Agenda

Are British soldiers adequately prepared to make safe sexual health decisions when deployed to areas with high HIV prevalence?

IntroductionSoldiers deployed to British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) are at increased risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, compared with when in the firm base, due to the increased...

“It's the news, stupid”

“It's the news, stupid”

Speculative fiction as “decolonial option”: Towards a “vulnerable reading” of Ali Mirdrekvandi’s No Heaven for Gunga Din (1965)

ABSTRACT Ali Mirdrekvandi’s No Heaven for Gunga Din (1965) is an Iranian novel in English, a speculative fiction written during the Allied occupation of Iran in World War II. In it, Mirdrekvandi, a migrant labourer who served a platoon of British and American soldiers stationed in Tehran, depicts the aftermath of World War III in the year 2084, when a regiment of Anglo American soldiers, followed by their servant Gunga Din, searches for Heaven across the Milky Way. Mirdrekvandi’s speculative vision, and deconstructive mode of anglophone writing, envision an alternative to the coloniality of being. Following Mignolo’s conception of the “decolonial option”, and Singh’s method of “vulnerable reading”, this article argues that Mirdrekvandi’s title-character assumes a self-reflective position of precarity – ultimately, in Hell – as a marginal vantage point through which to unlearn the language of post/colonial mastery in the imagined, as well as the real, world of the narrative.

Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution

Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution

Loss of Black Identity in Cyprus

“Wake up Ali, wake up!” repeats the folk song. “Arap Ali” (Black Ali) was a folk hero and my paternal grandfather, who was murdered by British colonial soldiers. The song motivated the production of the first-ever Turkish Cypriot opera in 2019. The art form presented actual Black people as white. Connecting personal memories to the symbols of staged whitewashing, this study seeks to understand hidden colorist cultural practices in Cyprus. I discuss the ways in which global racism and colonialism are strongly entangled with local racist and colorist practices. This autoethnography is a call to wake up and take a stand against silencing and oppression.

Tahrir Square: A Geopolitical Paradigm of the People's Revolution

Tahrir Square:A Geopolitical Paradigm of the People's Revolution Farah Ali (bio) Introduction Geopolitics analyzes the relations between the interests of international political actors and interest within an area, a space, or a geopolitical element. In the geopolitical context, a place is not merely an area with no definition. A place is defined by its multifaceted political milestones.1 An example that occurred in Egypt is the revolution of January 25, which ended the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Ever since, the revolution's location, Tahrir Square, became a symbol of liberation (which is the meaning of its name) and insurgency. It became so much so that the revolution of June 30, which occurred only two years later and intended to overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood's regime, also took place in Tahrir Square. This article will focus on the events leading up to the 2011 revolution, and how the geopolitical definition of Tahrir Square was formed in terms of its symbolic meaning to the people and the vitality of public space to political reform or transformation. Origins of Tahrir Square Tahrir Square's original name was Ismailiyah Square, as it was initiated by Khedive Ismail as part of modernizing Cairo. Years later, an incident caused an uproar in Ismailiyah Square; British soldiers opened fire at Egyptian rebels who were protesting the United Kingdom's presence in Egypt. This [End Page 110] occurrence resulted in the death of 24 Egyptians on February 11, 1946. This day is incidentally the same one on which President Mubarak was overthrown, only 64 years later. After the Free Officers Movement changed Egypt from a kingdom to a republic, President Gamal Abdul Nasser declared that Ismailiyah Square's name would officially be changed to one that fits its liberating essence, Tahrir Square.2 January 25th: A Revolution Thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo's urban hub, Tahrir Square, to rebel against the Mubarak regime. The revolution's spark was triggered by the repercussions of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit-seller, setting himself on fire as a form of protest against the Tunisian government on December 17, 2010. Approximately three weeks later, the Egyptians chose to gather in Cairo's biggest square, shouting slogans that demanded Mubarak to step down.3 The Egyptian people were triggered by the Tunisian revolt but had their own resentments toward their government. Factors such as unemployment, high levels of corruption, poverty, and police brutality accumulated over the years of Mubarak's rule. One of the most striking examples of police brutality that caused national unrest was the case of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old businessman who was beaten to death inside an internet café by members of the police force. The police claimed that Said's death occurred because of him swallowing a pouch of marijuana.4 However, a gruesome photo of Said's battered body in the morgue proved that the police's claims were false. The truth was revealed when a video posted by Said on his Facebook profile showed footage of police officers distributing seized drugs and money between themselves.5 With that, a viral uproar sparked on social media leading up to hundreds of thousands of Egyptians voicing their support for Khaled Said and others that suffered from the dictatorial regime. A particular Facebook page created by Wael Ghoneim, a then-Google Market Executive, was quickly "liked" by a huge number of Egyptian users. The page's name, "We Are All Khaled Said," along with its revolution-inducing posts caused people's anger at the [End Page 111] regime to increase. The buildup eventually resulted in an outrage that was initiated on January 25. According to Egyptian tradition, January 25 is the official national holiday that honors their police forces. However, the people viewed the date as an opportunity to mobilize against the police and the authoritarian state. Global media, specifically Western media, emphasized the role that social media played in initiating the revolution rather than emphasizing that an actual revolution was taking place in the streets of Egypt.6 The true essence of the revolution was situated in Tahrir Square, where colloquial slogans demanding "bread, freedom, social equality" and an "[…] overthrow...

The Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, or What Does It Mean to Need a “Brute” in the Twenty-First Century?

The Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, or What Does It Mean to Need a “Brute” in the Twenty-First Century?

Redefining colonial identities in contemporary transnational westerns: Tracker (2010) and Black ’47 (2018)

In this article, I discuss two contemporary films that exemplify the use of the western genre for historical reassessments in varied national contexts: Tracker (2010, dir. Ian Sharp, New Zealand/UK) and Black ’47 (2018, dir. Lance Daly, Ireland). The two films employ similar plot structures, based on the motif of pursuit. In Tracker, set in the aftermath of the Boer wars, a former Boer fighter, now in New Zealand, searches for an assimilated Māori sailor who has been accused of killing a British soldier. In Black ’47, set in Ireland at the time of the Great Famine, an Irishman who served in the British colonial army in the Middle East strives to take revenge on the landowner responsible for the death of his relatives. A mission is organized to prevent him, led by an alienated veteran of the colonial wars. Tracker and Black ’47 show that as a result of colonization various directions of mobility emerged that triggered reinventions of predefined identities within the colonizer/colonized binary. In the two films under discussion, the use of the western helps to address the problem of identity construction by exploring the experience of liminality as a factor behind the dissolution of colonial cultural hierarchies. The protagonists of Tracker and Black ’47 embody the kind of mobility that signifies lasting displacement, seen as a larger syndrome of the era of colonial empires.

‘In a State of War’: Governor James Stirling, Extrajudicial Violence and the Conquest of Western Australia’s Avon Valley, 1830–1840

Between 1830 and 1840 British settlers and soldiers forcibly took possession of the fertile valley of the Avon river (Gogulgar Bilya) 60 miles to the east of Perth. The Ballardong Noongar resistance to this incursion was so fierce that in mid 1837 prominent colonists warned that ‘the district of York may be considered, at present, in a state of war’. This article focuses on both the wide extent of settler violence and the tenacious resistance mounted by Ballardong Noongar communities in defence of their country. It argues that the conquest of the Avon valley was actively facilitated by governor James Stirling, who ordered and encouraged British army officers, civil officials and the settler population at large to employ extreme measures to ‘tranquilize’ the York district. In carrying out these instructions, soldiers and colonists frequently employed illegal extrajudicial violence, including murder; however, they were never held to account for their actions.

Nursing: a voice to lead in the 2020s.

Nursing: a voice to lead in the 2020s.

Soldiers as Citizens: Popular Politics and the Nineteenth Century British Military

Soldiers as Citizens: Popular Politics and the Nineteenth Century British Military

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction

Redcoats to Tommies: The Experience of the British Soldier from the Eighteenth Century, ed. Kevin Linch and Matthew Lord

The editors of this fine new collection of essays, Kevin Linch and Matthew Lord, claim that ‘interest in “Tommy” has never been higher’ (p. 2). Over the last decade, the centenary of the First World War and—to a lesser extent—the bicentenary of Waterloo focused popular attention on the history of the common soldier as never before. Exhibitions, re-enactments, performances and commemorations encourage Britons today to empathise with those who experienced these wars, and genealogy companies such as Ancestry encourage us to find out about our own soldier ancestors. This overlaps with the activities of military charities such as the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes, which support former soldiers and their families. If sometimes the tone of these efforts can cause controversy—witness the annual debates about the rights and wrongs of poppy-wearing, particularly for those in the public eye—then that only highlights how fraught and complex the relationship between the armed forces and society can be, an issue that runs throughout the chapters assembled in this book.

The Adivasi and the undead: From (post)colonial carnage to Necrocene apocalypse in Betaal (2020)

ABSTRACT In conversation with work by Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy and Jason W. Moore, this article shows how the 2020 Indian Netflix zombie miniseries Betaal aligns British colonial-capitalist oppression with the neocolonial-capitalist violence performed by Indian soldiers on India’s indigenous Adivasi community. Merging the (post)colonial with the post-apocalyptic in spectacular and violent ways, Betaal tells the story of elimination of an Adivasi community that resists capitalist exploitation of their lands, accidentally releasing a pandemic in the form of undead British soldiers once in the employ of the East India Company. The extractive violence that these two entities perform destroys not only people and traditions, it exhausts the land itself and can thus be considered an element of what Justin McBrien calls “the Necrocene”. The zombie pandemic that erupts in Betaal is an attempt to render the apocalyptic violence and death that unregulated capitalism performs on ecology and precarious communities.

Bloody Sunday at Fifty

Bloody Sunday at Fifty Sarah Jaffe (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution On January 30, 2022, marchers pass a mural of the victims of Bloody Sunday. (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) [End Page 136] The first thing you notice about Derry, a city of 110,000 or so in the north of Ireland close to the much-contested border of partition, is that it’s beautiful. It’s hilly and green and the River Foyle winds through it and the ancient walls that enclose the old city are gorgeous—if you forget for a moment that they were built to keep the Irish out of the colonial settlement. Like so many other places that have become household names because of the violence inflicted on their people, the loveliness of this particular part of Ireland often gets forgotten. Derry was beautiful on Sunday, January 30, as a cold drizzle fell on the thousands of marchers winding their way from the neighborhood of Creggan down the hill to the Bogside to commemorate the 1972 killings of fourteen unarmed people by British soldiers. The families of the dead and their neighbors, friends, and allies march every year; this, the fiftieth anniversary, was even more painfully significant, more of an aching reminder that, as the famous Free Derry wall was repainted this winter to say, “There is no British justice.” What is known as Bloody Sunday was an inflection point in the conflict euphemistically known as the Troubles, itself a point on the centuries-long curve of the Irish freedom struggle. Between the building of the stone walls and the peace walls, between colonization and partition and the Good Friday agreement, the Irish fought by various means to reclaim their land. In the 1960s, a civil rights movement inspired by the Black freedom movement in the United States grew in the North to demand representation and rights for the Catholic Irish, who were still closed out of politics and decent jobs by various means legal and extralegal. The British military’s crackdown only made the various factions of the Irish rebellion more determined, and the violence left them with so much grief—grief aggravated by the continued attempts to blame them for their own brutalization. That Sunday in 1972, nearly 15,000 people defied a ban on marches to call for the release of hundreds of activists and militants who were being held without trial. Anger over their internment in military camps (complete [End Page 137] with violent interrogations and what we’d now very clearly call torture) had swelled the ranks of the protesters as well as the armed militants of the Irish Republican Army—the two organizations with that name, which had recently split into the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. It also kicked off a massive civil resistance campaign that included rent and bill strikes, allowing people who might not come out to the streets and certainly would not pick up guns to withdraw their consent from the partitioned government. In response, the Parachute Regiment of the British Army was sent in with an armored vehicle and opened fire. And so this year too marchers made their way down the hill, accompanied by Republican marching bands and bearing flags from local and national organizations, including dissident nationalist groups, the socialists of People Before Profit, pro-choice marchers (abortion is still not readily available in the North), and the Palestine solidarity campaign. When they reached the Free Derry corner, the marching bands halted, and “We Shall Overcome,” borrowed, like other tactics, from Black American activists, poured through the loudspeaker. The conversations and even laughter occasionally heard on the march quieted, and Bernadette McAliskey, known at the time of Bloody Sunday as Bernadette Devlin MP (elected to the British Parliament aged just twenty-one), took the microphone. McAliskey spoke softly, intimately even, to the thousands huddled in the rain. She remembered calling the hospital to find out what had happened to the people who’d been shot, and recalled her realization that as a member of parliament she could make demands that would otherwise be ignored and the chilling feeling that set in as the list of the dead grew. The...