Need a way to start talking about white police officers killing black men? Try British military history and ask if such white anger is directed at the wrong target. The British Army used such “barbarous punishment…at a time of evangelical revival, the spread of humanitarian ideas, and efforts to reform slavery.” Many white sailors and soldiers had more scars than black slaves did. Displaced, multi-generational resentment?
In the British military, white British male soldiers were punished for being late, sleeping on post, being drunk, or insolence toward an officer with punishments like:
- 500-1000 lashes
- riding a wooden horse (astride a sawhorse, weights tied to legs to increase pain.)
- strappado (intended to dislocate both shoulders)
- mutilations
- “bloody backs” civilian nickname to soldiers after floggings
Arthur Gilbert, “The Regimental Courts Martial in the Eighteenth Century British Army,” Albion Journal, 1976 link
Roger Norman Buckley, The British Army in the West Indies (1998) p 206.
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