In India, the Sepoy rebellion of 1857 was crushed by the British and the soldiers executed in front of their colleagues in a particularly gruesome way. Akg-images

Empire – the white man's burden

The history of torture and arbitrary state violence has been closely related to the history of European imperialism. By the end of the 19th century, much of the southern hemisphere had been carved up among the nations of Western Europe. Rudyard Kipling famously described the responsibilities of British imperial rule as 'the white man's burden'. The implication was that European nations had a duty to educate and civilise the non-white peoples of the world.

This racist worldview often took less 'benevolent' forms. In British-ruled Jamaica, the brutality of Governor Eyre's reprisals after the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865 led to his dismissal. Repeated attempts to put Eyre on trial failed as the Victorian cultural establishment rallied to his defence – Dickens and Tennyson included.

The brief history of the Congo Free State caused a scandal on an international scale. Between 1884 and 1908, the present-day Congo – an area the size of Western Europe – was run as a personal fiefdom by the Belgian King Leopold II. The area was called a 'free state' because European companies were free to trade in its resources of ivory and rubber. But in practice, Leopold managed the trade to his own advantage. For the Congolese, Leopold's rule meant forced labour, brutal punishments (amputations were common) and arbitrary execution. This treatment was often meted out by representatives of private companies, operating with Leopold's authority.

In Southern Africa, British and German colonialism had horrific consequences. In 1904, the Herero rebelled against German rule in south-west Africa (present-day Namibia). Orders were given to kill all the men and drive the women and children into the desert. By the time the order was repealed, tens of thousands were dead. The survivors were herded into camps and used as slave labour.

The first use of the term 'concentration camp' dates from this time. In South Africa during the Second Boer War in 1901, the British Army adopted a 'scorched earth' policy, destroying thousands of farms owned by the Boer settlers. Camps were set up where the inhabitants were gathered together or 'concentrated'. Similar tactics were used more than 50 years later, when British forces clamped down on the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. Thousands of Kenyans were interned in detention camps and subjected to forced labour. Suspected Mau Mau activists were interrogated with great brutality and summarily executed.

More recently, a 1971 report by Amnesty International found that there was 'a prima facie case of torture and brutality' against the British Army in Northern Ireland. Many people arrested in a sweep of IRA suspects recorded being beaten, menaced with dogs and forced to run over broken glass. A smaller number of detainees had suffered a more elaborate treatment. According to several statements, suspected IRA members were hooded, stripped naked, dressed in overalls and made to stand in a 'search' position, leaning forward with legs spread and fingertips against a wall. Between interrogations, suspects were made to maintain this position for hours at a time, while 'white noise' played incessantly. The detainees took their case to the European Court of Human Rights. In 1978, the Court ruled that their treatment had been 'cruel and inhuman', but had not reached the level of torture.

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