The Boer War and Malayan Emergency: Examples of British Counterinsurgency pre- and post-“Minimum Force”

The Boer War and Malayan Emergency: Examples of British Counterinsurgency pre- and post-“Minimum Force”

Matthew R. Doherty

The Second Anglo-Boer War provides the transition for the British Army from one of its last colonial warfighting experiences to its first modern counterinsurgency. The true genesis of British COIN tradition originates in this period.

Beginning in 1899 as a conventional struggle, after early Boer successes, the British, under Roberts, were able to defeat the Boers in the field. The latter half of the war, mainly commanded by Kitchener, devolved into a counterinsurgency.

The Malayan Emergency erupted in 1948 as part of an uprising orchestrated by the MCP (Malayan Communist Party) against British colonial rule and lasted until 1960. It remained a counterinsurgency for the full twelve years, never evolving into conventional warfare.

Despite differing in levels of brutality, both campaigns represent a remarkable thread of continuity in how British COIN was conducted, even though they occurred fifty years and five-thousand miles apart.

Both operations were based on three key tenets of control: population control, food control and spatial control. Population control involved exerting enough force over the target population so that they would (or could) not provide support to active insurgent forces. Food control specifically targeted cattle and crops to deprive the enemy of resources and destroy fighting will and capability. Spatial control involved reducing the enemy’s operational space, preventing them from escape and evasion, and finally hunting the remnants down by exerting constant pressure through armed sweeps.

From a doctrinal point of view the main text for dealing with an insurgency during the Boer War was Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice by Colonel C. E. Callwell, originally published in 1896. Small Wars provided a guideline for dealing with colonial uprisings in a punitive and brutal fashion, highlighting a “butcher and bolt” approach present in British Army campaigns of the 19^th century. It was not an appropriate rulebook for the modern, civilian focused insurgency Kitchener was fighting.

Callwell called dealing with insurgency a “thankless” and “invertebrate” war. He highlighted that punishment was often necessary, not just against the armed enemy forces, but also the civilian population. “Committing havoc” through “cattle lifting and village burning” would achieve a “moral effect” which would cow the enemy into submission. This was necessary to destroy a rebellion, even if it produced examples of barbarity which might “shock the humanitarian.”[i]

As Simon Anglim has written, Callwell “reflected prevailing opinion as much as influenced it.”[ii] This is backed up in the preface to the third edition of 1906, in which N. G. Lyttelton, Chief of the General Staff, commented that the book “is recommended to officers as a valuable contribution on the subject of the conduct of small wars.”[iii] Referred to by some modern day historians as “the Clausewitz of colonial warfare,”[iv] it can therefore be taken as highly likely that Callwell had an effect on shaping the strategies of the British commanders who were to fight the Boer insurgency, such as Kitchener.

The genesis of the minimum force concept has been dated to the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. General Dyer, the man in charge at the moment, described his philosophy on giving the order to fire on protesting civilians:

“I fired and continued to fire till the crowd dispersed, and I considered that this is the least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect it was my duty to produce if I was to justify my action. If more troops had been at hand the casualties would have been greater in proportion. It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view, not only on those who were present, but more specially throughout the Punjab. There could be no question of undue severity.”[v]

Producing a “moral effect” was, to Dyer, of the highest importance. Lethal force against civilians was acceptable in this context, just as Callwell had prescribed.

Amritsar caused a rethink in the British army’s engagement doctrine. Increasingly after Amritsar, “minimum force” and “hearts and minds” would become watchwords in dealing with insurgencies.

The Hunter Commission was set up to investigate the massacre and concluded that “British forces must use only the minimum force necessary to quell a disturbance.”[vi] This was not done so much from a humanitarian viewpoint as a practical one because the report also concluded that “the employment of excessive measures is as likely as not to produce the opposite result to that desired.”[vii]

By the 1930’s, “minimum force” had become part of doctrine. Major-General Sir Charles W. Gwynn in the second edition of Imperial Policing of 1939 laid down that “the amount of force applied must be the minimum the situation demands.”[viii] Echoing the practical nature of the Hunter Report, he also stated that “drastic punitive measures… may awaken sympathy with the revolutionaries.”[ix]

By the time of the Malayan Emergency, generals and political figures had come to note the importance of the concept and of human-centric measures to counter insurgency. Oliver Lyttelton, UK Colonial Secretary, referring to the Malayan Emergency said in 1951, “You cannot win the war without the help of the population.”[x]

Robert Thompson, who was an important staff officer during the Emergency, laid down his “Five Principles” for defeating insurgency in 1966 (citing the Emergency as where his ideas developed).  One of them was that “the government must function in accordance with law.”[xi]

Frank Kitson, another important contemporary who had served in Malaya and elsewhere said in his works that, “persuasion is more important than armed offensive action.”[xii] And that counterinsurgency practitioner’s “must constantly bear in mind the effects which their plans, actions and words are likely to have on public opinion.”[xiii] He also built on Thompsons ideas of functioning within the law: “No country which relies on the law of the land to regulate the lives of its citizens can afford to see that law flouted by its own government, even in an insurgency situation, so everything done by a government and its agents must be legal.”[xiv]

Both conflicts represent change and continuity in how the British conducted COIN operations. Population, food and spatial control would all be used in both cases, yet the practical application would involve different levels of force.

Population Control

South Africa

Population control in the Boer War involved an array of harsh and indiscriminate measures designed to sap the will of insurgent forces. Deportation, destruction of homes and forced resettlement were the order of the day. All this was justified in the writings of Callwell, for whom the main solution to the problems of protracted guerrilla warfare was to “deal not with a hostile army but with a hostile population” and that this entailed attacking the population itself.[xv]

Kitchener saw the Boers as “uncivilized Africanda savages with only a thin white veneer.”[xvi] He went on to say:

“The people who have lived all their lives with them have only seen the veneer, hence they have no idea what bringing up in this wild country has produced, savages – the Boer woman in the refugee camp who slaps her protruding belly at you, and shouts ‘when all our men are gone, these little khakis will fight you’ is a type of the savage produced by generations of wild lonely life – back in their farms and their life on the veldt, they will be just as uncivilized as ever, and a constant danger.”[xvii]

In using terms such as “savage” and “uncivilised” Kitchener was using colonial terminology, normally reserved for warfare against tribal enemies.

Kitchener wrote in a similar mind-set about the Boer leader, saying that in general he “is an excellent actor and would take almost anyone in but below the surface he has the mind of an unscrupulous pettifogging attorney.”[xviii] By evoking an image of the average Boer leader as low, cunning and untrustworthy, Kitchener further justified his assault on Boer insurgency, as laid down in Callwell.

The Boer War takes on an even darker tone when viewed not as a war between the Boer States and British government, but in the form of an insurrection against what the British saw as legitimate colonial rule. Callwell prescribed a particular recommendation for this type of warfare: “When, however, the campaign is in the form of quelling an insurrection, the object is not only to prove to the opposing force unmistakably which is the stronger, but also to inflict punishment on those who have taken up arms.”[xix] Callwell goes on to explain that a “moral effect” should be achieved and the best way to do this was by “committing havoc.”[xx] Echoing General Dyer's defence after Amritsar, Callwell lays down a precedent, based on decades of British colonial campaigning, for extreme and indiscriminate measures against a civilian population during rebellion.

Added to this was the issue of time. Throughout his book, Callwell notes “how essential it is to prevent [guerrilla war] from degenerating into desultory warfare.”[xxi] Kitchener was of the same mind, writing from Pretoria on the 9th of May 1901 that he was “rather afraid of the whole thing degenerating into uncontrolled brigandage which it may take years to suppress.”[xxii]

Harshness and indiscriminate use of force against the population was therefore necessary for three reasons: to crush the insurrection, punish the people for supporting it, and do it all in as short a time as possible.

At home, the Secretary of State for War, St John Broderick, was also supportive of harsh measures. In a letter to Roberts (who commanded before Kitchener) he wrote: “you will be supported if you insist on thorough going measures for disarming the suspect part of the population and if you inflict stern retribution where unfair advantage has been taken of your clemency.”[xxiii]

On the ground the policy of punishment transferred into the conducts and attitudes of the ordinary soldier. Jack Wynn recalled: “If I am sent to a farm to see what is in it and to get the women out, I never hesitate to burn the place before I leave, and only give the people five minutes to pack up and get into the wagon. I have no pity on them no matter how they weep.”[xxiv]

Hatred for the enemy was not entirely confined to military personnel, but also to civilians. Crossman, a British officer, was particularly disgusted with the Boer women, “who swear and smell like badgers. They shoot out of the farms at you and then when you get up they are oily tongued Psalm singing sows. I’m all for exterminating the whole race.”[xxv]

Unlike in normal continental warfare against other European powers, the nature of the Boer conflict lent itself to the execution of prisoners. A soldier in the Field Artillery commented that, “I would shoot every [Boer soldier] on first sight… for I saw 12 Boers put the rag up by Devil’s Knuckles to the Australian [Mounted Infantry] and they coolly walked up and bayoneted all the lot - no prisoners with them. They are a fine lot of chaps…”[xxvi]

Harry Vernon Woon, a British officer, personally despised the Boers, and believed that prisoners taken by his unit “deserved the usual treatment meted out to other uncivilised men during war-time.”[xxvii]

If murder was often quietly accepted then so was thievery from the Boer civilians. Lisle March Phillips, an officer, spoke about the average British soldier when he said: “Looting is one of his perpetual joys. Not merely looking for profit, though I have seen Tommies take possession of the most ridiculous things - perambulators and sewing machines, with a vague idea of carrying them home somehow - but looting for the sheer fun of destruction…”[xxviii]

Even so, many men believed they were “too lenient” toward their Boer adversaries.[xxix] For Callwell, leniency, which could be shown to a civilised enemy, was out of place “among fanatics and savages, who must be thoroughly brought to book and cowed or they will rise again.”^[xxx]

Deportation was a further method in Kitchener's counterinsurgency campaign. He wrote from Pretoria in 1901 in a letter to the Secretary of State for War marked “very secret” that:

“There seems to me to be only two safe course to pursue – settle on some island or country where we can safely establish the Boers, Fiji for instance, or get some foreign provider to take them such as France to populate Madagascar – send all the prisoners of war there and let their families join them, have no more voluntary surrenders and ship all as they are caught to the new settlement – we should then only have the surrendered burghers left, and the country would be safe and available for White colonists”^[xxxi]

It is interesting to note that Kitchener’s use of the term “white” did not extend to the Boers. Deportation would be used as a strategy in the Malayan conflict as well.

A drive to separate the population from the insurgents led to the building of concentration and detention camps (known as refugee camps to British authorities). Poor sanitation, overcrowding and lack of food meant in excess of 26,000 Boer women and children perished in these camps during the war.[xxxii]    

Attempts to reform the camps were made by British social campaigners, the most famous of these being Emily Hobhouse. Dr. Kay, a British doctor working on the ground in the camps was hard-hearted enough to dismiss these reformers as “a few hysterical unsexed women…”[xxxiii] Even so, British society was repelled at the treatment of civilians in the camps and reforms were put in place. By February 1902, the documented death rate was less than that of contemporary Glasgow.[xxxiv]

The brutal resettlement policy nevertheless achieved its objective of cutting the Boer commandos off from their population base. By the end of the conflict they were forced into dangerous and desperate actions, such as raiding British units, merely to gain the basic necessities for continuation of the war.[xxxv]

The Boer War saw many in the army act with extreme force towards the enemy population, though others were sickened by what they were ordered to do. In adopting these methods, the campaign followed doctrines broadly laid down in Callwell’s work. Population-centric strategies would be at the heart of the Malayan counterinsurgency as well, though with a far more enlightened attitude. The outright brutality of the South African war would morph into a subtler, coercive policy in Malaya. Deportation would still be used, though indiscriminate destruction would not. Concentration camps would give way to “New Villages,” with the overall outcome being the same (separating the insurgents from civilian support), but with a reduced cost in lives.

Malaya

During the Malayan Emergency the main population control method used was forced resettlement, or the “New Village” programme.

Malaya’s population was close to 5 million in 1947 and 6 million by 1960. Malaya had a 49% Malay majority, 38% Chinese, 11% Indians and less than 2% others.[xxxvi] Many of the disaffected and oppressed Chinese population, from which most of the MCP were made up, lived as “squatters” on illegally held land. Though they were improving this land through cultivation, they were still derided by the Malay majority. As these Chinese were the primary supporters of the insurgency, it was decided by British authorities to uproot them from their homes and settle them in “New Villages.” By the end of 1951, 350,000 squatters were in “New Villages.” By the end of the conflict this number would reach half a million, with over that number regrouped into labour divisions.[xxxvii] Though this tactic was reminiscent of the resettling of Boer civilians into concentration camps during the Boer War, it was in this case less of a deadly measure.

Robert Thompson was adamant in his belief that it was vital, “to create the condition where the population has the security without which it cannot exercise the choice between supporting guerrilla forces, or supporting the forces of the government.”[xxxviii] A novel written at the time by Chin Kee Onn, a famous indigenous author, titled The Grand Illusion had its Malayan hero say, “the government still had a long way to go to win the hearts of the squatters. Squatters were essentially people of open spaces. They wanted to farm land. They would never be happy cooped up in fenced-in villages, no matter how well managed.”[xxxix]

The “New Village” policy clearly worked for the British effort. Settlers that had previously had the potential to support the insurgency were prevented from doing so. Though these villages achieved the same effect as Kitchener’s concentration camps (separating the population from the insurgents), they were infinitely better managed, with reasonable sanitation and facilities. Also important was the fact that each settler was given title to the land he farmed, something he had not previously held while squatting.[xl] By 1955 around 25% of the villages had become responsible for their own defence via “Home Guard” units, taking pressure off the conventional security forces.[xli] This shows the evolution in doctrine that had occurred. Fifty years previously, the army, still locked firmly in a colonial mind-set, had administered concentration camps with little initial regard for the civilians interred there. Now, getting the people on side, even though they were being forcibly resettled, was of paramount importance.

This success is backed up by the figures. Emergency incidents (referring to security contacts) peaked at 6,000 in 1951, but by 1953 had dropped to 1,250. Security force casualties again peaked at 1,200 in 1951 but dropped to 200 in 1953.[xlii]

Before China fell to communism, deportation of Chinese living in Malaya was used as a tactic. In all over 12,000 Chinese were deported.^[xliii] This policy would have probably continued after 1949 had Mao not won the civil war and is another indication of the doctrinal similarities between the Boer War and Malayan Emergency.

Overall the British counterinsurgency was far less brutal to the Malayan population than Kitchener’s campaign had been against the Boers. There is nevertheless a degree of continuity in the coercive nature of the British effort. For example Sir Henry Gurney, the Commissioner for Malaya, admitted privately in 1949 that, “the police and army are breaking the law every day.”[xliv] This is backed up by John D. Leary, who had served in the Malayan Scouts (later 22 Special Air Service Regiment) from 1950 to 1955, who asserted: “British behaviour during the Emergency was disgraceful . . . They treated their prisoners as common criminals, and tried and hung thousands of them after very farcical trials.”[xlv]

Unlike in the Boer war the army usually went for the option of destruction, rather than outright lethality. According to Mockaitis, 2012, it was often a case of “officially sanctioned brutality in the form of collective punishments and reprisals directed primarily at property not people.”[xlvi]

One example of lethal brutality used is in the killing of 24 civilian “suspects” in the custody of a patrol from the 2nd Scots Guards at the village of Batang Kali in Malaya. If official sources were to be believed, they were all shot while trying to escape in a truly remarkable show of marksmanship.[xlvii] Though this was almost certainly a war crime, it was considered an unusual event.

Colonel J.P. Cross, a veteran of Southeast Asian campaigning, was a junior officer in the Malayan Emergency. He attacked guerrillas at a small village. During the brisk fire fight, some Malayan civilians were killed. He stated that: “As I was in command… I was told that, as the laws of the land stood, I would have to stand trial for murder,” but later went on to say that, “the charges were quietly dropped.”[xlviii] Murder charges were also dropped against a Ghurkha Corporal who captured an enemy guerrilla and cut off his head and hands with a kukri knife for identification purposes. Arriving at the house of Mr Carbinell, the Chief of the Malayan CID (Criminal Investigation Department), the Ghurkha deposited the head (“by now not at its freshest”) with him. Carbinell rushed off to get the local photographer and placed the body parts in the fridge for safekeeping.[xlix]

But isolated incidents of extreme violence never translated into the officially sanctioned barbarism of the Boer conflict. As Templer famously said, the objective was to win “hearts and minds.” This was done in part through intimidation, but also through restraint, in a human-centric campaign. For Kitchener Boer civilians were an obstacle to overcome, a statistic to be dealt with. For British commanders in Malaya, the civilians (especially Chinese) were to be won over in a “carrot and stick” approach. The dual nature of this policy is summed up by the fact that at the same time as propaganda leaflets displayed lifeless and crumpled Chinese insurgents and warned against joining the MCP, who would be “exterminated like vermin,”^[l] cash rewards were also established for informing on insurgents in an effort to appeal to the “natural cupidity” of the population.^[li]

Food Control

South Africa

Food denial was a key operational tenet of both conflicts, used to grind down the fighting will of insurgents.

In the wide-ranging total war situation of the Boer counterinsurgency, large scale farm burning and seizure of livestock was the norm. Callwell referred to this tactic as “cattle lifting and village burning.”[lii]  The result of this creed was that on the ground the war certainly did assume an aspect which would “shock the humanitarian.”[liii] As the Boer leader Jan Smuts commented, there were “dams everywhere full of rotting animals; water undrinkable. Veld covered with slaughtered herds of sheep and goats, cattle and horses. The horror passes description…”[liv]

The control of animals as food source was of critical importance, primarily to deplete the Boers of sustenance, but also to provision the army. One soldier of a militia regiment was regularly assigned to watch sheep on something he dismissively referred to as “grazing guard.”[lv] When it was impracticable to impound and retain livestock, killing them en masse was, according to British doctrine, necessary to deprive the Boers of this resource. Captain H. B. Burnaby’s regiment was ordered to seize and slaughter 30,000 sheep. He wrote in June 1901 with a good deal of remorse that that this was the "most disgusting thing [I had] to do… what brutes the Boers must think us.[lvi]”

Writing in a later edition of Small Wars, Callwell discussed the Boer War. He said of the British Empire units which swept the country in food control operations that, “these slow-moving columns did most excellent work. They cleared the country of livestock and of supplies with a thoroughness which the more mobile forces of a later date could not have attempted.”[lvii]

The large-scale food denial ops of the Boer War represented a level of barbarity that would not have been acceptable in Malaya, fifty years later.

Malaya

In Malaya food control was practiced on a smaller scale, with greater regard to intelligence and relying less on indiscriminate raiding and sweeping.

As Colonel Cross stated: the Communist’s “method of obtaining food was to take it from others, without payment and often by the use of threats of severe punishments for non-compliance. This effectively made the [insurgent] supply system one from front to rear rather than the rear to front movement of orthodox armies”[lviii] It was therefore imperative not only to isolate them from the population, but also to control their food supply.

Briggs recognised this, and in 1950 called for “isolating the bandits from their food…supply organisation in the populated areas.”[lix] Just one year later, the Annual Report on the Federation of Malaya said, “measures to control food seriously disrupted the terrorist food supply system. These measures, coupled with the Security Forces success in finding a large number of reserve food dumps, caused no little concern to the Malayan Communist Party leaders.”[lx]

On the ground, every effort, no matter how minor, was made to deny food to the insurgents. One Ghurkha unit even found some rice tins “which they slashed with their kukris so that the rice would become uneatable.”[lxi]

In the end though, it was “physically impossible to deny food over large areas. This could be done only in small tightly controlled communities and even then seepage of small to even large amounts of foodstuffs did occur.” [lxii] Added to this, captured insurgent combat reports contained references to numerous successful attacks on British food convoys.[lxiii]

In summary, food control ops were present in both conflicts. The Boer War saw indiscriminate slaughter of animals and destruction of crops. Malaya saw a carefully considered and specifically targeted approach. Here we see the evolution of COIN doctrine. In the Boer War food denial was a successful tool due to the intensity of how it was implemented. Concern for civilian collateral damage due to starvation was limited. In Malaya, “minimum force” meant large scale destruction of foodstuffs was never implemented, and so food denial here did not achieve its objectives as well as it may have done.

Spatial Control

South Africa

Congruent with population and food control was the need to reduce the space where the insurgent could operate. This would eventually lead to an increased chance of contacts and opportunities to kill or capture them.

Boer numbers never totalled more than 25,000 men, yet they had around 150,000 square miles to operate in.[lxiv] The major towns were already in British hands, as were the railways (though these were often subject to attack). A strategy for control of the veldt was needed. This eventually came in the construction over 8,000 blockhouses, connected by 3,700 miles of barbed wire.[lxv] Kitchener wrote on 4^th July 1901 that he was “kraaling the Boers”[lxvi] into a manageable area where flying columns would then continuously sweep for them.

Over time, the insurgents were ground down by this constant pressure, so that on the 30th December 1901, Kitchener reported:

“The block house line now going out from Standerton to Ermelo is very strong, a Boer prisoner coming in along the line was asked what he thought of it, he said ‘Well if the wind blew my hat over the line, I can quite see I should have to go round by Ermelo to pick it up’. I rode out about 10 miles along the line and was much pleased with the work done, no escorts are required and the country around is now entirely left by the Boers.”[lxvii]

Callwell, writing after the war, called the blockhouse lines “heroic remedies” and recommended them wholeheartedly as “the most remarkable feature of that long drawn out campaign.”[lxviii]

Malaya

In Malaya, the Briggs Plan of 1950 (the plan on which the critical part of the war was fought) called for the clearing of Communist insurgents from the country “step by step, from South to North…”[lxix]

This was done with introduction of “white areas” from 1953 onwards. Emergency restrictions were removed and “Good Citizens Committees” set up, consisting of people who were publically anti-communist.  Areas remaining with insurgents were termed “black.”[lxx] Cross elaborates:

“As the menace of CRW (Communist Revolutionary Warfare) receded from any one area, it was declared white. That meant all restrictions were lifted and people were free to live normal lives. This had the added advantage of allowing troops to go to black areas where more pressure against the remaining guerrillas could be exerted.”[lxxi]

The success of this policy is proven by the fact that many other areas were quickly declared white and by the following year barely 3,500 insurgents were active in jungle areas. This represented a substantial fall from previous years.[lxxii]

The Boer War and Malaya both saw the removing of active insurgents on an area by area basis. Kitchener chose a clinical, industrial approach in the building of blockhouses and the throwing up of barbed wire to carve the country up into what would now be called “free-fire zones,” where large scale sweeps would eliminate insurgents. This is in line with Callwell’s doctrine, focusing on punitive military solutions to countering insurgency.

British commanders in Malaya used a human-centric approach, relying on the compliance of civilians to inform on insurgents and not provide them succour. In doing so they would find the Emergency restrictions on their everyday lives lifted. This could be termed a “carrot and stick” policy. Even though Malaya, blanketed with jungle, could never be the scene of Boer War style “kraaling”, this method is more reminiscent of modern, “hearts and minds” COIN, and shows the evolution in doctrine that had come about.

Conclusion

The Boer War and Malayan Emergency represent a case of two counterinsurgency campaigns fought with doctrinal similarity yet differing in practical implementation of those doctrines. Population control was applied harshly in South Africa. Farm burning, deportation and resettlement of civilians into concentration camps became the norm. In Malaya, property was destroyed in reprisals, deportation was used up to 1949 and civilians were settled into “New Villages” (in essence more sanitary and better managed concentration camps). Food control was practised in both conflicts, with South Africa again seeing brutal measures causing widespread starvation among the civilian population. In Malaya food control was done on a smaller and more refined scale, with greater regard to intelligence and individual unit action, rather than relying on indiscriminately destructive grand sweeps. Spatial control in South Africa was characterised by large scale defences being constructed, with no regard for the civilian population. This purely military approach is typical of the campaign. Spatial control in Malaya was done with regard to the population, rather than in spite of it, with “white” areas being set up in a “carrot and stick” approach.

The evolution in British use of force during COIN operations is evident when both conflicts are compared, yet it is important to note both saw the same doctrines of control used in order to achieve success.

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End Notes