Extreme Violence and the 'British Way': Colonial warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone, and Sudan by Michelle Gordon (review)

Abstract

Michelle Gordon’s Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’ examines three cases of colonial violence that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Perak War in Malaya (1875–76), the Hutt Tax War in Sierra Leone (1898–99), and the AngloEgyptian War of Reconquest in Sudan (1896–99). The book pays close attention to these “small wars,” which are “often forgotten or ignored” (3). By relying on various “colonial” sources such as British parliamentary papers, the personal accounts of the soldiers who fought in these wars, and newspaper articles, Gordon argues that “violence or the threat thereof were at the core of the British Empire” (1–2). In this respect, Gordon’s major argument does not seem to offer something substantially new or different to an apparently well-worn historical subject. Numerous historians including Taylor Sherman, Mark Condos, Amanda Nettelbeck, Philip Dwyer, Elizabeth Kolsky and others have already highlighted the ubiquity of British violence in various colonial settings.