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The ‘Rod of Empire’: The Debate Over Corporal Punishment in the British African Colonial Forces, 1888–1946*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David Killingray
David Killingray
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths' College, University of London
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Extract

Throughout the twentieth century the British Colonial Office sought to limit the severity of corporal punishment and to regulate more closely its use in the colonies. This article has looked at one aspect of that policy involving the African Colonial Forces. Most military officers argued that corporal punishment was essential to maintain discipline, especially in times of war or active service. The Colonial Office sought to limit severely the circumstances in which corporal punishment could be administered but accepted that its use should be retained or revived during the two World Wars.

In the Second World War the arguments for retaining corporal punishment for African soldiers were increasingly denounced by officials and various humanitarian lobbies. African Colonial Forces had come under direct War Office control in September 1939 and during the war many African soldiers served overseas alongside British and other units; they also constituted part of an imperial order which, so propaganda increasingly proclaimed after the fall of Singapore, was opposed to racial discrimination. Corporal punishment based on racial terms was out of kilter in the war and was maintained only at the insistence of senior military men. Once the war was over the Colonial Office ordered that this ‘relic of discrimination’ should be ended.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , July 1994 , pp. 201 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Public Record Office, Kew [PRO], CO96/197/3064, 31 Dec. 1888; and CO96/197/3080, Griffith to Knutsford, conf., 31 Nov. 1888.

2 E.g. see Cairns, H. A. C., Prelude to Imperialism: British Reactions to Central African Society 1840–1890 (London, 1965), 41ff.Google Scholar

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5 As corporal punishment was so widely used in colonial Africa it is surprising that so little has been written on such a distasteful subject; see Anderson, David, ‘Corporal punishment and the “raw native”: social attitudes and legal action in colonial Kenya, 1895–1932’ (paper given to the African History Seminar, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 20 02 1991)Google Scholar; Peté, Steve, ‘Punishment and race: the emergence of racially defined punishment in colonial Natal’, Law and Society Review (Natal), I (1986), 102–6Google Scholar; Dembour, Marie-Benedicte, ‘La chicote comme symbole du colonialisme beige?’, Can. J. Afr. Studies, xxvi (1992), 205–23.Google Scholar

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12 See Milner, Alan, Nigerian Penal System (London, 1972), ch. 11.Google Scholar

13 The Colonial Office had control over the major African Colonial Forces. The West African Frontier Force (Royal was added in 1928) was established in 1898 and developed as a quasi-federal force in the four British West African colonies; the King's African Rifles, formed in 1902, operated in the East African territories, Nyasaland and to some extent in Somaliland. The War Office controlled the West African Regiment (1898–1928), and the Foreign Office had jurisdiction over the Sudan Defence Force, formed in 1925.

14 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth, Penguin, ed., 1977), 136, 168.Google Scholar I have benefited greatly from reading the sustained criticism of Foucault's work by Garland, David, Punishment, and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (Oxford, 1990), chs. 6, 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18 PRO, CO96/570/47495, Clifford to Bonar Law, conf., 18 Sept. 1916.

19 Rhodes House Library, Oxford [RHL], Ms. Afr. s. 1715, Box XI, Col. J. G. Mileham. And further, Clayton, Anthony and Killingray, David, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial Africa (Athens, OH, 1989), 181ff, 238ff.Google Scholar

20 Jeal, Tim, Baden Powell (London, 1989), 164Google Scholar, and the illustration in ‘second photo section’. See also Graphic, supplement, 29 Feb. 1896, drawing by Sidney P.Hall, ‘Summary punishment of a man belonging to the Native Levy for pillage’.

21 RHL, Ms. Afr. s. 1715, Box XVII, Lt. Col. Sir Peile Thompson.

22 PRO, CO96/33/14770, Northcott to Col. Sec, 12 March 1899, encl. 2 in Low to Chamberlain, 8 May 1899.

23 Lugard to Flora Shaw, 7 April 1906, quoted in Perham, Margery, Lugard, II: The Years of Authority 1898–1945 (London, 1969), 199.Google Scholar Lugard strongly advocated the use of corporal punishment in colonies, and he introduced the cat to Hong Kong; see Nicolson, I. F., The Administration of Nigeria: Men, Methods, and Myths (Oxford, 1969), 112.Google Scholar

24 PRO, CO96/312/6600, Hodgson to Chamberlain, 21 Feb. 1898, encls. 2 and 3; CO96/339/12668, Low to Chamberlain, 1 May 1899, encl. 1; NAG (Accra), ADM56/1/2, Morris to Nathan, conf., 3 Aug. 1903.

25 PRO, WO32/4349. See further Killingray, David, ‘The mutiny of the West African Regiment in the Gold Coast, 1901’, Int. J. Afr. Hist. Studies, xvi (1983), 441–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The voice of the African victim of corporal punishment is rarely recorded in the documentary evidence; for the military forces occasional, but all too rare, snippets emerge in the records of the few surviving courts martial.

26 PRO, CO446/52/9129, minute by Ommaney on Lugard to Elgin, 10 Feb. 1906.

27 Minute by Churchill on Lugard to Elgin, 10 Mar. 1906, quoted by Dunsgate, Richard H., The Conquest of Northern Nigeria (London, 1985), 241.Google Scholar

28 Dunsgate, , Conquest of Northern Nigeria, 240–1.Google Scholar

29 PRO, CO445/22/13673, minute by Antrobus, 21 April 1906.

30 PRO, CO445/24/19407, Morland to Col. Sec, 30 April 1907, encl. in Rodger to Elgin, 15 May 1907.

31 PRO, CO445/39/1833, Lt Col H.B.Potter to Col. Sec, 14 Dec. 1917, encl. in Clifford to Long, 15 Dec. 1917. Some dissent was expressed by officers in the field, e.g. Lt Col G. T. Mair, commanding No. 2 Column, Ikom, during the early stages of the Cameroon campaign, reported ‘several cases of cowardice, men running away and discarding their rifles.… Men of that stamp prefer discharge or imprisonment; flogging is ineffective’; PRO, WO157/1184, Intelligence Summary (secret), Cameroon, 16 Sept. 1914.

32 PRO, CO445/39/31551, minute by Beattie, 2 July 1917. Corporal punishment for African soldiers and labourers in the South African forces during the First World War was often indiscriminate and severe; it continued despite being officially restricted to ‘grave offences’ in Feb. 1915; see Grundlingh, Albert, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War (Johannesburg, 1987), 90–2.Google Scholar

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34 See Anderson, ‘Corporal punishment and the “raw native”’.

35 PRO, CO96/712/1837, minute by Secretary of State; Gold Coast Spectator, 29 July 1933, and 19 Aug. 1933.

36 Imperial War Museum, London, J. E. Heyes, Acc. No. 004299/04: 28.

37 PRO, CO820/10/13592, minute of 4 June 1931.

38 PRO, CO820/37/34197, Despatch no. 1026, ‘Corporal Punishment’, 22 Nov. 1937; PRO, CO820/52/34197/1945–6. ‘Floggings’.

39 T. C. Watkins, Alfriston, Sussex, private diary, entry 22 June 1940. See also the case of caning by a sergeant-major during the Burma campaign referred to in Haywood, A. and Clarke, F. A. S., The History of the Royal West African Frontier Force (Aldershot, 1964), Appendix XIII, 511.Google Scholar Predictably the official histories of colonial military forces rarely refer to corporal punishment.

40 West African Review, 04 1947, 429.Google Scholar

41 PRO, CO820/41/34197, tel. from Conference of East African Governors to CO, 30Aug. 1940.

42 Ibid., minute of 4 Sept. 1940.

43 PRO, CO820/41/34197, minute by A. J. Dawe, 20 Nov. 1940.

44 Ibid., minute of 26 Nov. 1940.

45 Ibid., memorandum of 26 Nov. 1940.

46 PRO, CO820/46/34197, WO to Under Secr, of State, CO, 24 Jan. 1941, and Assistant Adjutant General East Africa, conf. circular, June 1941.

47 There are many accounts of corporal punishment in the Second World War, in the papers of army officers in the Oxford Development Records Project, Rhodes House Library, Oxford. See Mss. Afr. s. 1715 and 1734; Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, provides an initial guide.

48 Harold Moody and Harold Macmillan, exchange of letters, July 1942, printed in The League of Coloured Peoples News Letter, No. 36, Sept. 1942, 149–50.

49 House of Commons [HC] Parl. Debs., Fifth Series, Vol. 383, 1941–2, col. 62, 8 Sept. 1942; PRO, CO820/46/34197, Sorensen to Macmillan, 9 and 11 Sept. 1942, on illegal floggings in West Africa, to which Macmillan replied that enquiries had revealed the complaints to be unfounded. House of Lords Record Office, London, Reginald Sorensen papers, SOR/65/A, ‘Corporal punishment of West African troops’, contains correspondence from African informants. HC Part. Debs., Fifth series, Vol. 398, 1943–4, cols. 1998–9, 5 April 1944. PRO, CO820/52/34197, Sorensen to Oliver Stanley, 31 March 1944 and 13 April 1944. The League of Coloured Peoples, Annual Report (1944–1945), 7.Google Scholar

50 See Daily Echo, 12–17 June 1944, and Gold Coast Independent, 17 June 1944.

51 East Africa = 008 per cent or 1 in 1250 per annum; West Africa = 005 per cent or 1 in 2000 per annum. HC Parl. Debs., Fifth series, Vol. 404, 1943–1944, cols. 39–40, 24 10 1944.Google Scholar

52 The Union Defence Force did not officially permit corporal punishment for nonEuropean troops during the Second World War; see Grundlingh, L. W. F., ‘The participation of South African Blacks in the Second World War’ (D.Litt. thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, Pretoria, 1986), 280.Google Scholar

53 PRO, CO820/52/34197, Gen. Nosworthy to War Office, 22 April 1944.

54 PRO, CO820/52/34197, Resmin. to Sec. of State at CO, 7 July 1944, and CO meeting 12 July 1944.

55 PRO, CO820/52/34197/1943–4, Swinton, Resident Minister in West Africa, to Secretary of State, CO, 7 July 1944.

56 PRO, CO820/52/34197/1943–4, Minutes of CO meeting, 12 July 1944.

57 For the Gold Coast see NAG (Cape Coast), ADM23/1/568, Omanhene of Asebu State to Sec. of Native Affairs, 11 Jan. 1945. Daily Echo, 25 Dec. 1944, 6 Jan. 1945; Ashanti Pioneer, 4 Jan. 1945; and West African Review, 09 1945, 17Google Scholar, and Nov. 1945, 13.

58 HC Parl. Debs., Fifth series, Vol. 411, 1944–1945, cols. 161 Iff, 12 06 1945.Google Scholar

59 PRO, CO/820/52/34197, ‘Memo on Corporal Punishment for West African troops’, by Lt. Gen. M. Brocas Burrows, secret, 11 Jan. 1946, and letter to War Office, 12 Feb. 1946.

60 PRO, CO820/52/34197/1945–6, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Anderson (G.O.C.-in-C, East Africa) to Under Sec. War Office, conf., nd. c. Oct. 1945.

61 PRO, CO820/52/34197, minute by Creech Jones, 25 April 1946; CO to East African Governors Conference and West African Governors Conference, 25 May 1946. HC Parl. Debs., Fifth series, 1945–1946, Vol. 423, col. 89, 22 05 1946.Google Scholar

62 ‘The biggest grievance of the white farmer is that he is not allowed to strike his natives, and that if he does, they may - but seldom do - complain to the police’, wrote Doris Lessing in her novel set in wartime Southern Rhodesia, The Grass is Singing (1950; Paladin edn, 1989), 120.Google Scholar