Abstract
The 1845 Dahra Massacre, in which French troops killed hundreds of Algerians by ‘smoking out’ their cave refuges, instantly became (and remains) an emblematic case of colonial violence. In Britain, this atrocity came to stand for everything British colonialism supposedly was not, and thus buttressed the claim to British exceptionalism as having a supposedly ‘better’, less violent colonialism. And yet, such attacks on caves had featured regularly in nineteenth-century British warfare in southern Africa, smoke being supplemented by dynamite from the 1870s onwards, cumulating in the little-known but extensive cave dynamitings in MaShonaland 1896-1897. This article reconstructs that long history, describing not only how practitioners accepted the dynamitings largely unquestioned, but also asking how at the time the British claim to exceptionalism was sustained despite the more than apparent resemblances to foreign cases. Apologists of empire did not cover up the violence but rather defended it; what they chose to remain silent on were the foreign analogies – concealed comparability was key to successfully sustaining British exceptionalism. Given the continued influence of exceptionalist arguments in public debate and historiography, this article finally makes a case to more forcefully place histories of British colonial violence next to those of other empires in an explicitly transimperial framework.
Item Type: | Journal article |
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EU Funded Grant Agreement Number: | 713600 |
EU Projects: | Horizon 2020 > Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions > Marie Skłodowska-Curie: Other programs |
Form of publication: | Postprint |
Keywords: | British Empire, colonial war, colonial violence, transimperial, Rhodesia, Mashonaland, French Algeria, Transvaal, caves, dynamite |
Faculties: | History and Art History > Department of History > Neuere und Neueste Geschichte |
Subjects: | 900 History and geography > 900 Geschichte 900 History and geography > 940 History of Europe 900 History and geography > 960 History of Africa |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-108410-1 |
ISSN: | 0308-6534 |
Language: | English |
Item ID: | 108410 |
Date Deposited: | 18. Dec 2023, 08:45 |
Last Modified: | 19. Dec 2023, 06:00 |
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