- Sep 2018
- 37
- America
Remember that Mel Gibson movie, "The Patrion," when the evil British officer herds an entire town into a church, and then burns it down? This event was remarkable, in that it never happened. It actually got me thinking, "Why didn`t this happen?" As in, why did the British show as much restraint as they did to the American colonists? Counterinsurgencies have historically been grisly affairs, so why were the British show so much restraint? I know that there are a few instances of of prisoners being shot, or attempts to surrender not being honored, but there was no concerted attempt to terrorize the civilian population into submission. And it`s not like the British had historically been squeemish about crushing any opposition to the British Empire. The Irish tended to get uppity once a generation or so, and the typical British response was to scorch the earth and stack skulls.
Maybe it was the American Revolution that convinced the British that the Black Flag was the way to go, because every subsequent rebellion in a British Dominion was met with fire and steel, and it seemed to work pretty well. The Boer War, the Mau-Mau uprising, and the Malayan Emergency were some of the most successful counterinsurgencies ever waged.
Maybe it was the American Revolution that convinced the British that the Black Flag was the way to go, because every subsequent rebellion in a British Dominion was met with fire and steel, and it seemed to work pretty well. The Boer War, the Mau-Mau uprising, and the Malayan Emergency were some of the most successful counterinsurgencies ever waged.