Kim A. Wagner

To “pacify” a group of Muslims in the southern Philippines during the US occupation at the beginning of the 20th century, the US military stormed a mountain hideout (and may well have done so during a wedding), killing roughly a thousand people. A photographer took a picture of soldiers standing by corpses, including those of women and children; this photo circulated fairly widely but the outrage it sparked was brief. Wagner retells the story as an example of how the violence of show more colonialism is made to become obscure—she mostly has to rely on colonial sources. show less

At the turn of the 20th century, like so many otherwise clever men of his class, the English explorer Arnold Henry Savage Landor succumbed to the siren of race science. Fancying himself as something of a craniometrist, he pronounced the Muslim Moros of the Philippines morons, with their ‘flattened skulls’ and ‘stumpy, repulsive-looking hands, typical of criminals’. It was a perspective his American colleagues shared. Still, after colonising the Philippines in 1898, they had to show more tolerate the Moro chiefs of the south, if only on sufferance. The Spaniards had never succeeded in displacing the Moros, accepting a power-sharing arrangement. The Americans inherited this relationship.

This was the first time Americans were having to deal with Muslims on something resembling an equal footing, and it came with its attendant challenges. The racists had to swallow their pride, but so did the liberals: the Moros practised slavery. The Americans appealed to the Sultan of Sulu’s better instincts, but to no avail. ‘Slaves are a part of our property’, came the reply. All the same, the Philippines’ American governors made a serious attempt at ending the sale and murder of slaves in the early 1900s, much to the consternation of the Moro chiefs, one of whom asked: ‘If a Moro chief cannot kill a slave, what can he do? Can he drink water? Can he breathe air? Has he any rights at all?’

Then there were the rights the Americans had given themselves but didn’t want to extend to the Moros. Like the former, the latter were overfond of weapons, in their case swords and blades. But the benighted natives, the colonisers felt, weren’t enlightened enough for a Second Amendment of their own.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/massacre-clouds-kim-wagner-review
Pratinav Anil teaches at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. show less

The book starts with an interesting discovery: a skull with a note stuck into the eye socket of the skull.

That is the genesis of the book.

The subtitle – the life and death of a rebel – is misleading, because there is almost nothing about Alum Bheg in the book. This is not surprising, as the odds of finding any information about an obscure military person in the 19th century, are remote.

He pronounces Alum Bheg as innocent of murder, and assumes that the man was caught up in the event show more of the times, before being blown up by a cannon.

Much of the ground has been covered, yet it is interesting to read what Kim Wagner has written. I like that he calls it The Great Uprising, and not The Great Mutiny. The Great Uprising is better, as it does represent, to some extent, the Indian perspective.

He does cast the actions of the British in a darker light, and this is how it should be.

Sialkot has not been covered by writers of The Great Uprising and this is a good addition to the literature on the events of 1857-58. show less

סיפור ותחקיר של הטבח המפורסם בפנג'ב שהפך לנקודת מפנה במאבקה של הודו לעצמאות מהבריטים. נקודת המבט של המחבר היא "שמאלנית" או הומניסטית באופן גלוי אך התחקיר נראה עובדתית מדויק וקפדני. הויכוח היחידי שיכול להיות הוא עם הפרשנות של האירועים. הספר מעניין מאוד בזכות עצמו וגם מעניין show more מנקודת המבט של הפוליטיקה הישראלית והיחס שלה לפלשתינאים ובמיוחד בנקודה שבה אנחנו נמצאים היום. . לי אישית אירוע כדוגמת אמריצר נראה לחלוטין לא בלתי אפשרי. show less