LETTERS Unreflecting racism
Sir: In his review of Frank Emery's Mar- ching over Africa (Books, 28 June) William Boyd accuses Queen Victoria's soldiers of `brutal and unreflecting racism' on the grounds that they used to kill off the enemy wounded after a battle. Their opponents, Zulus, Mandists etc, did exactly the same thing, often on a larger scale, so presum- ably the cap fits them as well?
In fact there was a variety of motives for killing enemy wounded. In the Sudan for example the British and Sudanese regulars believed, often with justification, that a wounded Mandist was as dangerous as a whole one. For their part the Mandists considered all their enemies to be infidels or heretics deserving death. The Zulus did it because it was the traditional procedure. None of these motives, however nasty, had much to do with racism. Besides, to stick late-20th-century labels on 19th-century men is quite incongruous.
H. G. Keown-Boyd
Old Rectory, Thornbury, Bromyard, Herefordshire
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