The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (54 page)

5
Ziegler, op. cit., p. 328. Mountbatten had supported Aung San.

6
What is astonishing is that the slaughter caught Labour and Indian politicians by surprise. British imperial die-hards, who accurately predicted what would happen, had been dismissed as reactionaries.

7
Martin Gilbert,
Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965
(Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), p. 354.

8
The agreement on India's and Pakistan's Commonwealth status helped Churchill give his reluctant consent to their independence.

1
G. A. Henty,
The March to Coomassie
(Tinsley Brothers, London, 1874), p. 385.

2
Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley,
The Story of a Soldier's Life
(Archibald Constable, & Company, 1903), vol. II, p. 370.

3
Thomas Pakenham,
The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912
(Random House, 1991), p. 459.

4
Ibid., p. 669.

5
James Morris,
Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress
(The Folio Society, 1992), p. 443.

6
James Morris,
Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat
(The Folio Society, 1992), pp. 323–24.

7
This is the estimate of Donald R. Morris in his classic study of the Zulu,
The Washing of the Spears: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation
(Touchstone, 1965), p. 26: “When Van Reibeck landed at the Cape in 1652, the nearest Bantu were 500 miles to the north and 1,000 miles to the west. . . .”

8
Morris,
Heaven's Command
, pp. 361–62.

9
Alistair Horne,
Macmillan, 1957–1986
, Volume II of the Official Biography (Macmillan, 1989), pp. 195–96.

1
Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley,
The American Civil War: An English View, The Writings of Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley
, introduced and ed. James A. Rawley (Stackpole Books, 2002), p. 69.

2
In this, the witty Strachey, a homosexualist (and sado-masochistic) subversive, did what all liberals do: make virtue look like hypocrisy in order to make one's own vices appear morally acceptable. Interestingly, Strachey's father, a general, embodied to some degree the ideal Strachey pilloried. Strachey's mother was a leader of the women's suffrage movement, which is perhaps where the rot set in.

3
Gordon's family had been devoted Bible readers but he had not been noticeably devout until some epiphany struck him in Pembroke.

4
John Pollock,
Gordon of Khartoum: An Extraordinary Soldier
(Christian Focus, 2005; originally published as
Gordon: The Man Behind the Legend
, Constable & Company, 1993), p. 51.

5
Ibid., p. 79. Roy MacGregor-Hastie notes in
Never to Be Taken Alive: A Biography of General Gordon
(Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985), p. 63, that though “Lytton Strachey is bitter about ‘the destruction of the Summer Palace at Peking—the act by which Lord Elgin, in the name of European civilization,
took vengeance on the barbarism of the East,' everything that could be saved had been saved. Elgin had given orders to this effect and what was eventually blown up was the seat of government, as a warning to the Emperor not to misbehave again.... The lesson was salutary.”

6
Charles Chenevix Trench,
The Road to Khartoum: A Life of General Charles Gordon
(Dorset Press, 1987), p. 28.

7
Pollock, op. cit., p. 139.

8
Gordon was remarkably ecumenical (and idiosyncratic) in his views. He was a friend equally to evangelicals and Catholics; the former claimed him, and Frank Power,
The Times
correspondent in Khartoum, and a Catholic, thought Gordon was a near-Catholic.

9
Robert Wilkinson-Latham,
The Sudan Campaigns, 1881–1898
(Osprey, 1996), p. 24. It is striking that the Sudanese Muslims respected Gordon for his Christian piety.

10
British troops were in the Sudan at Suakin, but their task was to keep Mahdist forces from threatening the Red Sea coast. After defeating the dervishes at the Battle of Tamai on 13 March 1884, the British troops were withdrawn.

11
Lytton Strachey,
Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon
(A Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Book, no date), p. 344.

12
Such was his faith in the power of redcoats.

13
Trench, op. cit., p. 282.

14
Strachey, op. cit., p. 347. As Strachey notes, this is one of several versions of Gordon's death.

15
Byron Farwell,
Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory
(W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), p. 146.

1
Byron Farwell,
Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory
(W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), p. 347.

2
His given name was Horatio Herbert Kitchener. His father was Henry Horatio Kitchener. Both Horatios were respectful nods in the direction of Lord Nelson.

3
Philip Warner,
Kitchener: The Man Behind the Legend
(Atheneum, 1986), p. 20.

4
Gordon sometimes had a high opinion of Kitchener, seeing him as his eventual successor as governor-general of the Sudan, and Kitchener venerated Gordon; during the siege of Khartoum, however, Gordon criticized Kitchener in his diary.

5
Valentine Baker (1827–87) had been a general in Ottoman service before accepting an appointment to the Egyptian police, where Baker's role was as much military as constabulary as he fought in the dervish wars. He had been cashiered from the British army, in which he reached the rank of colonel, after allegedly assaulting a woman in a railway carriage. As a soldier, he was immensely talented and brave, and Kitchener, a man of strong, Christian moral views, seems to have had no qualms about his character. Baker's brother was the celebrated explorer Samuel Baker.

6
Warner, op. cit
.
, p. 89.

7
Much is sometimes made of the fact that Kitchener insisted on single men as his staff officers and personally interviewed and selected only single men for the Egyptian campaign. Kitchener justified such discrimination on the grounds that it saved the taxpayers money, because such officers were not entitled (obviously) to marriage allowances, and that single men could give themselves fully to the job at hand. But if the implication is that Kitchener was assembling a collection of toy boys, it should be noted that all but one of his staff officers eventually married and that there was never a recorded instance of scandal between Kitchener and his “cubs” (as his young staff officers were known).

8
Lord Cromer averred that Kitchener lost interest in the college, and his opinion has generally been taken as accurate, but one of Kitchener's most thorough biographers, John Pollock, says Kitchener remained deeply interested in the college's development and success; see John Pollock,
Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace
(Carroll & Graf, 2001), p. 165.

9
Pollock, op. cit., p. 209.

10
There were several variations on this theme.

11
David Fromkin,
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
(Avon Books, 1989), p. 126.

1
Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock,
‘Rhodesians Never Die': The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia, c. 1970–1980
(Baobab Books, 1999; originally published by Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 67.

2
Smith included in this list cultural facilities, and for all the stereotype of the white Rhodesian being a boozy, outdoorsy philistine, Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock estimate that “probably no other transplanted English-speakers had done more—with similar resources—to reproduce and practise the parent culture.” See Godwin and Hancock's excellent, comprehensive study, op. cit., p. 38.

3
Robert Edgerton quotes this line and says that “surely Smith knew better”—but it makes more sense of Smith's character and actions that he did not. See Robert B. Edgerton,
Africa's Armies: From Honor to Infamy, A History from 1791 to the Present
(Basic Books, 2004), p. 91.

4
The British were, however, indirect abettors of violence. For instance, the British government subsidized Radio Zambia, which in its propaganda broadcasts urged black Rhodesians to join the terrorist campaign against white rule.

5
Peter Godwin,
Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
(Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996), p. 358.

1
James Morris,
Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat
(The Folio Society, 1992), p. 201.

2
For readers interested in this aspect there is, among other books, James C. Simmons,
Passionate Pilgrims: English Travelers to the World of the Desert Arabs
(William Morrow and Company, 1987).

3
Byron Farwell,
Queen Victoria's Little Wars
(W. W. Norton & Company, 1985), p. 254.

4
The 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty.

5
William J. Durch, ed.,
The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping: Case Studies and Comparative Analysis
(St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 108.

6
Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac,
Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
(W. W. Norton & Company, 2009), p. 312.

7
Ibid., p. 338.

8
Perhaps the most famously heinous attack was the Irgun's bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946, which killed ninety-one people.

9
The British mandate over Palestine was acquired in 1920 and relinquished on 15 May 1948.

10
This was the phrase Mitchell used to describe his methods; it is quoted in
The Daily Record
(of Scotland), 23 August 2008.

11
Mitchell's obituary in
The Daily Telegraph
, 24 July 1996.

1
Fawn Brodie,
The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Francis Burton
(W. W. Norton, 1984), p. 15.

2
Ibid.

3
Byron Farwell,
Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton
(Penguin Books, 1990), p. 32.

4
Ibid., p. 113.

5
Ibid., p. 178.

6
Edward Rice,
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: The Secret Agent Who Made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Discovered the
Kama Sutra,
and Brought the
Arabian Nights
to the West
(Scribners, 1990), p. 280.

7
Brodie, op. cit., p. 225.

8
Rice, op. cit., p. 350.

9
This was a moniker of the British East India Company.

10
Rice, op. cit., p. 357.

11
Ibid., p. 392.

1
Harold Orlans,
T. E. Lawrence: Biography of a Broken Hero
(McFarland & Company, 2002), p. 29.

2
Though Lawrence quickly lost his faith, he was well-read in the Bible.

3
Some have tried to claim that Lawrence was homosexual, in part because of his tolerance for the practice among the Arabs. He publicized this tolerance in his memoir of the war,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, which made his own sexuality a subject of public rumor, innuendo, and conjecture, especially as he asserts that he was homosexually raped by a Turk. But the weight of the evidence is that Lawrence—who had earlier in his life suddenly proposed marriage to a girl and been embarrassingly rejected—regarded all sexuality as unclean, and forcibly repressed it in himself. Probably the best and most thorough discussion of this matter, for those who wish to pursue it, is to be found in John E. Mack's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography,
A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence
(Little, Brown and Company, 1976). Mack, who died in 2004, was a psychiatrist and a professor at the Harvard Medical School.

4
Apart from occasional breaks in England, Egypt (archaeological work), and Palestine (survey work).

5
T. E. Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
(Penguin Modern Classics, 1983), p. 24.

6
Isaiah Friedman,
Palestine, A Twice-Promised Land?: The British, the Arabs & Zionism, 1915–1920
(Transaction, 2000), vol. I, p. 29.

7
Lawrence, op. cit., p. 92.

8
Letter from T. E. Lawrence to Colonel C. E. Wilson, quoted in Michael Yardley,
T. E. Lawrence: A Biography
(Stein & Day, 1987), p. 92.

9
That biographer is Lawrence James in
The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia
(Abacus/Little Brown, 1995); see, for instance, p. 394.

10
From the dedication to Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, op. cit.

11
Yardley, op. cit., p. 140.

12
Though fluent in French, Lawrence was a dedicated Francophobe.

13
“Declaration to the Seven,” 16 June 1918.

14
Yardley, op. cit., p. 163.

15
Mack, op. cit., p. 314.

16
B. H. Liddell Hart,
Lawrence of Arabia
(Da Capo, 1989), pp. 336–67.

17
Mack, op. cit., p. 314.

18
Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac,
Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
(W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), p. 197.

19
Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, op. cit., p. 92.