Charles Allen's Soldier Sahibs gives an account of the military system employed by the British to dominate the territory known as the North West Frontier - roughly the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan - during the period of the 1840s and 1850s, in the course of which major campaigns in Afghanistan, two Sikh Wars and the Indian Revolt of 1857 occurred.
British tactics were the creation of Henry Lawrence of Derry, who learned how an army may relate to a colonised population during the trigonometric survey in Donegal, the subject of Brian Friel's classic play Translations. The result was a group of British soldiers who could "go native" by employing Indian clothes, language, customs and adapting the fighting methods of the tribes to their own purposes. They were still recognisably a unit of the British army, although each operated as an individual. They were part of Henry Lawrence's war-band, which became what the popular press calls "the stuff of legend". John Nicholson and Bannu, James Abbott and Hazara, Harry Lumsden and Peshawar. The idea of the war-band may be traced from early European times - the Sacred Band of Thebes, the Fianna of Ireland, the Comitatus of the Anglo-Saxons - down to the present day and the SAS. The war-band first creates its own mythology of heroism. After that it kills whomsoever it pleases, without sanction. The philosophy is well articulated in the inscription written for the Nicholson Memorial in Lisburn by Herbert Edwardes, friend and fellow warrior:
. . . His form seemed made for an army to behold; his heart, to meet the crisis of an empire; yet was he gentle most exceedingly, most loving, most kind. In all he thought and did, unselfish, earnest, plain, and true; indeed, a most noble man. In public affairs he was the pupil of the great and good Sir Henry Lawrence, and worthy of his master. Few took a greater share in either the conquest or the government of the Punjab, perhaps none so great in both. Soldier and civilian he was a tower of strength; the type of the conquering race . . .
In reality, Nicholson was an imperialist psychotic who personally supervised the blasting from the guns of 107 mutineers in Peshawar in 1857. But an inscription in an Irish church in the year 2000 can subsume his crimes into a blasphemous gospel of colonialism.
Charles Allen offers a readable account of these personalities and actions, and captures the colour of them very well. He writes from within the tradition of British military literature, as one would expect from someone whose family served the Raj for six generations. But it's not good enough. The select bibliography lists not one anti-colonialist writer from the last 50 years. No Edward Said. No Ashish Nandy. No Franz Fanon. No Chinua Achebe. Reading Allen, one gets the impression that the Home Counties tribe has learned nothing about itself in the last 150 years: nor has it any wish to do so.
Ronan Sheehan is a lawyer and writer. His novel Foley's Asia was published last year