by Kim Wagner
19.Thompson, Evidence, DIC, VI, in Datta, New Light, I, p. 78.
20.Kaul, Reporting the Raj, pp. 210–11.
21.Sayer, ‘British Reactions’, p. 151.
22.‘The Second Report’, NAI, Home Political, A, Feb. 1920, nos 347–58, p. 2.
23.Amritsar, 11 Oct. 1919, Parliamentary Papers, Command 534 (Disturbances in the Punjab): District Reports on the Punjab Disturbances April 1919 (1920), p. 6.
24.McPherson to Maffey, 22 Dec. 1919, NAI, Home Political, A, Feb. 1920, nos. 347–58, p. 3.
25.Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, p. 236.
26.Wedgwood, Hansard, HC, Deb. 22 Dec. 1919, vol. 123, col. 1232.
27.https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=LSE6183&pos=1 (accessed 22 Aug. 2019). See also cartoon reproduced in ‘Pictorial Politics’, The Tatler, 31 Dec. 1919.
28.See David Low, Low’s Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), pp. 96–8.
29.Simplicissimus, 21 Jan. 1920, p. 615.
30.See John Gallagher, ‘Nationalisms and the Crisis of Empire, 1919–1922’, Modern Asian Studies, XV, 3 (1981), pp. 355–68; Jon Lawrence, ‘Forging a Peaceable Kingdom: War, Violence, and Fear of Brutalization in Post-First World War Britain’, Journal of Modern History, 75, 3 (September 2003), pp. 557–89; and Kent, Aftershocks.
31.C.E. Callwell, Field-Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, 2 vols (London: Cassell and Company, 1927), II, pp. 240–1.
32.‘Tributes to General Dyer’, Morning Post, 10 July 1920.
33.See for instance ‘Irish Amritsar Recalled’, Derry Journal, 21 Nov. 1921. See also Katherine E. Davies, ‘British Reactions to Amritsar and Croke Park: Connections and Comparisons’ (unpublished MA thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2017); and Shereen Ilahi, Imperial Violence and the Path to Independence: India, Ireland, and the Crisis of Empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016).
34.Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, pp. 236–7.
35.Ibid., p. 237; and M.R. Jayakar, The Story of My Life, 2 vols (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1958), I, pp. 323–5.
36.Report, CPI, I, pp. 158–9.
37.C.H. Setalvad, Reflections and Recollections: An Autobiography (Bombay: Padma Publications, 1946), p. 311.
38.Report, DIC, p. 31.
39.See also Sayer, ‘British Reactions’, pp. 147–8; and Purnima Bose, Organizing Empire: Individualism, Collective Agency, and India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 29–73.
40.Report, DIC, p. 115.
41.Robb, The Government of India and Reform, p. 206.
42.Ibid.
43.Datta, Jallianwala Bagh, p. 131
44.Colvin, Life of General Dyer, pp. 250–1.
45.Datta, Jallianwala Bagh, pp. 135–6.
46.Swinson, Five Minutes to Sunset, pp. 202–3.
47.Colvin, Life of General Dyer, pp. 255–6.
48.Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 353.
49.Ibid., p. 321.
50.Testimonial in the possession of the Dyer family.
13 Aftershocks
1.‘General Dyer’, Daily Mail, 5 May 1920.
2.See Davies, ‘British Reactions to Amritsar and Croke Park’, pp. 87–100.
3.Montagu to Chelmsford, 26 May 1920, Parliamentary Papers, Correspondence between the Government of India and the Secretary of State for India on the Report of Lord Hunter’s Committee (London, 1920), p. 25.
4.Montagu, Hansard, HC, Deb. 8 July 1920, vol. 131, col. 1708.
5.Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 381.
6.Carson, Hansard, HC, Deb. 8 July 1920, vol. 131, col. 1713.
7.Joynson-Hicks, ibid., col. 1757.
8.Churchill, ibid., col. 1728.
9.Colvin, Life of General Dyer, pp. 303–4.
10.Creedy to Dyer, 14 July 1920, TNA, WO 32/21403. Thanks to Iqbal Husain for his help in getting this letter.
11.Finlay, Hansard, HL, Deb. 19 July 1920, vol. 41, col. 222.
12.Salisbury, ibid., cols 374–5.
13.‘For Gen. Dyer’, Morning Post, 8 July 1919.
14.See Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, pp. 364–6, 386–92 and 405–6.
15.Ibid., p. 387.
16.‘General Dyer Fund’, Morning Post, 17 July 1920.
17.Ibid., 6 Dec 1920.
18.Tagore to Andrews 22 July 1920, in Rabindranath Tagore, Letters to a Friend (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926), p. 87.
19.Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power, pp. 244–52.
20.Gandhi, 14 July 1920, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 18, pp. 45–6. See also Candler, Abdication, pp. 143–4.
21.Robb, The Government of India and Reform, p. 282.
22.Wathen, ‘Law Report, 26 May 1924: High Court of Justice’, The Times, 27 May 1924.
23.MWD, p. 192.
24.Orwell, ‘Shooting an Elephant’, p. 236.
25.Orwell, Burmese Days, p. 30.
26.MWD, p. 195.
27.O’Dwyer, India as I Knew It, pp. 330–68.
28.C.S. Nair, Gandhi and Anarchy (Madras: Tagore & Co., 1922), p. 54.
29.Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 416.
30.‘Amritsar’, The Times, 6 June 1924.
31.See also Antony Lentin, Mr Justice McCardie (1869–1933): Rebel, Reformer, and Rogue Judge (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), pp. 54–73.
32.‘Sir M. O’Dwyer Wins’, Nottingham Journal, 6 June 1924; and ‘Dyer Justified’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6 June 1924.
33.Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 424.
34.Ibid., p. 433.
35.Draper, Amritsar: The Massacre That Ended the Raj, p. 265.
36.‘After Amritsar: Censured Officials’, Edinburgh Evening News, 18 Sept. 1920. See also Robb, The Government of India and Reform, pp. 211–12.
37.Roger Perkins, The Amritsar Legacy: Golden Temple to Caxton Hall, the Story of a Killing (Chippenham: Picton, 1989), p. 187.
38.McCallum, CSAS, p. 5.
39.Girdhari Lal, CPI, II, no. 1, p. 10.
40.Perkins, The Amritsar Legacy, p. 185.
41.Louis E. Fenech, ‘Contested Nationalisms, Negotiated Terrains: The Way Sikhs Remember Udham Singh “Shahid” (1899–1940)’, Modern Asian Studies, 36, 4 (Oct. 2002), pp. 827–70.
42.‘India Office List’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 2 Jan. 1922.
43.Wathen, ‘To the Editor of the Times’, The Times, 25 March 1940.
44.Ibid.
45.Mary Lago, Linda K. Hughes and Elizabeth MacLeod Walls (eds), The BBC Talks of E.M. Forster, 1929–1960: A Selected Edition (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008), p. 191.
46.‘Missionary Meeting’, Staffordshire Advertiser, 13 Nov. 1948.
47.‘£56,000 Will of Amritsar Missionary’, Birmingham Daily Post, 22 Aug. 1966.
48.Howgego: To editor of Sunday Express, 25 May 1978, BL, AAS, Mss Eur C340/8.
49.Ibid.
50.Ibid.
51.Interview with Alfred Griffin, 1986, IWM, sound archive 9101, reel 12.
52.Ibid.
Conclusion: An Empire of Fear
1.Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory, p. 10.
2.‘David Cameron Makes No Apology for Amritsar Massacre’, Independent, 20 Feb. 2013.
3.Churchill, Hansard, HC, Deb. 8 July 1920, vol. 131, col. 1725.
4.Ibid., col. 1729.
5.See Richard Toye, Churchill’s Empire: The World That Made Him and the World That He Made (London: Macmillan, 2015); and Charles Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland 1919–1921: The Development of Political and Military Policies (London: Oxford University Press, 1975).
6.Lawrence James ‘Nailing the Lie of the Evil Empire’, Sunday Times, 18 June 2006.
7.Niall Ferguson, ‘Home Truths about Famine, War and Genocide’, Independent, 14 June 2006.
8.John Darwin, ‘A Roundtable on John Darwin’s The Empire Project: Reply’, Journal of British Studies, 54, 4 (Oct. 2015), pp. 993–7, p. 994.
9.Guy Adams, ‘How CAN Cambridge Let This Hate-filled Don Pour Out Her R
acist Bile?’, Daily Mail, 12 April 2018.
10.Wedgwood, Hansard, HC, Deb. 8 July 1920, vol. 131, col. 1788.
11.Cooper, The Crisis in Punjab, pp. 151–2.
12.Spoor, Hansard, HC, Deb. 8 July 1920, vol. 131, col. 1739.
13.Surtees, ibid., col. 1777.
14.Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, pp. 390–1.
15.Mohan, An Imaginary Rebellion, II, p. 795.
16.Drake-Brockman, Evidence, DIC, I, p. 172.
17.Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar, p. 285.
18.Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 10 and 19.
19.Bailkin, ‘The Boot and the Spleen’.
20.Sherman, State Violence, pp. 1–37.
21.Elisabeth Kolsky, ‘“Fanaticism” and State Violence in British India’, American Historical Review, 120, 4 (Oct. 2015), pp. 1218–46; and Condos, ‘“Fanaticism” and the Politics of Resistance along the North-West Frontier of British India’.
22.See also Michelle Gordon, ‘British Colonial Violence in Perak, Sierra Leone and the Sudan’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, 2017).
23.See Wagner, ‘Savage Warfare’; and Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All the Brutes (London: Granta, 2002).
24.Wagner, ‘Calculated to Strike Terror’.
25.See Huw Bennett, ‘The Other Side of the COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Counterinsurgency in Kenya’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 18, 4 (2007), 638–64; and David French, ‘Nasty Not Nice: British Counter-insurgency Doctrine and Practice, 1945–1967’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 23, 4–5 (2012), pp. 744–61.
26.Priya Satia, ‘The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control in Iraq and the British Idea of Arabia’, American Historical Review, 111 (Feb. 2006), pp. 16–51; and Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2001).
27.See John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); David French, The British Way in Counterinsurgency, 1945–1967 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Huw Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-insurgency in the Kenya Emergency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Brian Drohan, Brutality in an Age of Human Rights: Activism and Counterinsurgency at the End of the British Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017).
28.Major-General Sir Charles W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing (London: Macmillan, 1934). See also Martin Thomas, Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
29.Churchill, Hansard, HC, Deb. 8 July 1920, vol. 131, col. 1728.
30.E.J. Thompson, Other Side of the Medal, p. 97.
31.O’Dwyer, Evidence, DIC, VI, in Datta, New Light, I, p. 140. See also Irving, Evidence, DIC, III, p. 21.
32.I have further developed this argument in Wagner, ‘Calculated to Strike Terror’, but see also Vann ‘Fear and Loathing in French Hanoi’.
33.‘Final Orders of General Governor in Council’, Bayley to Griffin, 30 April 1872, KO, p. 55.
34.Report, DIC, p. 30–1.
35.Wedgwood, Hansard, HC, Deb. 22 Dec. 1919, vol. 123, cols 1231–2.
36.‘India Deserves Apology for Atrocities under Britain’s Colonial Rule, Senior Indian MP says’, The Telegraph, 7 Nov. 2016.
Epilogue: Jallianwala Bagh
1.Adapted by author, with thanks to Adrian Plau. See also Hari Singh, ‘The Jallianwala Bagh Tragedy: Its Prelude and Aftermath’, in Datta and Settar (eds), Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, p. 86.
2.See Madanjit Kaur, ‘Jallianwala Bagh Tragedy: Its Impact and Emergence as National Historical Monument’, in Gursharan Singh (ed.), Jallianwala Bagh Commemoration Volume; and Amritsar and Our Duty to India (Patiala: Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, 1994), pp. 163–9.
3.Gandhi, ‘Jallianwala Bagh’, Young India, 18 Feb. 1920, p. 3.
4.Saadat Hasan Manto, ‘For Freedom’s Sake’, in My Name is Radha, p. 181.
5.Tarini Prasad Sinha, ‘Pussyfoot’ Johnson and His Campaign in Hindustan (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1922), p. 243.
6.Thompson to Marris, 8 Nov. 1919, NAI, Home Political, Deposit, Dec. 1919, no. 22.
7.Gwynne, 13 Nov. 1919, ibid.
8.Marris, 14 Nov. 1919, ibid. The payment of what was openly referred to as ‘blood money’ later became common, if not official, practice during the brutal wars of decolonisation in Cyprus, Kenya and Malaya (personal communication with David Anderson).
9.Langley to Montmorency, 22 Dec. 1921, BL, AAS, IOR/L/PJ/6/1650.
10.‘Viceroy of India – Amritsar Visited – Payments to Victims’, Argus, 19 April 1921; and H. Montgomery Hyde, Lord Reading (London: Heinemann, 1967), pp. 343–4.
11.Malaviya, Open Rebellion, pp. 62–3.
12.Madan Mohan was listed as no. 65 on Statement 1, ‘List of persons killed belonging to Amritsar city’, p. 7, in Langley to Montmorency, 22 Dec. 1921, BL, AAS, IOR/L/PJ/6/1650.
13.Rup Lal Puri, D.W. 104, O’Dwyer v. Nair, TNA, J17/634, p. 341.
14.Kaur, ‘Jallianwala Bagh Tragedy’, p. 168.
15.Ward, Our Bones are Scattered, p. 439.
16.There is a similar painting in the Sikh Museum in the Golden Temple, showing British troops firing a Lewis machine gun into the crowd.
17.See Fenech, ‘Contested Nationalisms’; and Anita Anand, The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj (London: Simon & Schuster, 2019).
18.The names of the 379 known victims are, however, inscribed around the base of a white marble sculpture erected in 2016 in the street outside the memorial.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbreviations
AAS
Asian and African Studies, British Library
BL
British Library
CSAS
Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge
IWM
Imperial War Museum
IOR
India Office Records
NAI
National Archives of India, Delhi
PSA
Punjab State Archives, Chandigarh
TNA
The National Archives of the UK, Kew
Key sources
ACC
Amritsar Conspiracy Case, NAI, Acc. No. 1829 (Microfilm)
CPI
Congress Punjab Inquiry 1919–1920, vol. I: Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Sub-committee of the Indian National Congress; vol. II: Evidence (Lahore: K. Santanam, 1920).
Evidence, DIC
Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–20: Evidence, vols I–VII (Calcutta: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1920).
KO
Copy of Correspondence, or Extracts from Correspondence, relating to the Kooka Outbreak (1 Aug. 1872), House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.
MWD
Diary of Melicent Wathen, ‘India, 1914–1920’, in possession of Roderick Wathen.
Report, DIC
Report of the Committee appointed by the Government of India to investigate the disturbances in the Punjab, etc. (Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–20) (Calcutta: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1920).
SCR
Sedition Committee Report (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1918).
Newspapers and periodicals
Argus
Birmingham Daily Post
Bombay Chronicle
Civil and Military Gazette
Daily Express
Daily News
Edinburgh Evening News
The Englishman
The Examiner
Independent
The Nation and the Athenaeum
New York Times
Pall Mall Gazette
Pioneer
Preston Chronicle
Punjab Gazette
Staffordshire Advertiser
Sunday Times
The Telegraph
The Times
Young India
Parliamentary papers
Command 534 (Disturbances in the Punjab): District Reports on the Punjab Disturbances April 1919 (London, 1920).
Command 771 (Disturbances in the Punjab): Statement by Brig.-General R.E. Dyer, C.B. (London, 1920).
Copy of Correspondence, or Extracts from Correspondence, relating to the Kooka Outbreak (1 Aug. 1872), House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (KO).
Correspondence between the Government of India and the Secretary of State for India on the Report of Lord Hunter’s Committee (London, 1920).
Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–20, Evidence, vols I–VII (Calcutta: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1920) [Evidence, DIC].
Hansard House of Commons/House of Lords Debates
HC, Deb. 14 March 1859, cols 146–60 (Destruction of the 26th Native Infantry).
HC, Deb. 22 Dec. 1919, cols 1230–3 (Amritsar Disturbances).
HC, Deb. 8 July 1920, vol. 131, cols 1705–818 (Army Council and General Dyer).
HL, Deb. 19 July 1920, vol. 41, cols 222–307 (Punjab Disturbances: The Case of General Dyer).
HL, Deb. 20 July 1920, vol. 41, cols 311–77 (Punjab Disturbances: The Case of General Dyer).
Report of the Committee appointed by the Government of India to investigate the disturbances in the Punjab, etc. (Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–20) (Calcutta: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1920) [Evidence, CID].
Sedition Committee Report (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1918).
Archival material
The National Archives of the UK, Kew
O’Dwyer v. Nair, Supreme Court of Judicature, Depositions – Exhibits Taken off the File, 16 January 1924, J17/634.
British Library, Asian and African Studies Collections
Howgego papers, Mss Eur C340/8-10.
IOR/L/PJ/6/1650 (Amritsar Riots Compensation).
IOR/L/R/5/200 (Punjab Newspaper Reports 1918).
J.P. Thompson Diary, Mss Eur F/137.
Photo 39 (44-104): Views of Scenes Connected with the Unrest and Massacre at Amritsar.
Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge
‘Amritsar – April 1919’, Papers of Brigadier F.M. McCallum, CSAS.
Imperial War Museum