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‘Blown from a gun’: situating the British practice of execution by cannon in the context of southern and western Asia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2024
Abstract
In parts of southern and western Asia, as elsewhere, the cannon once served as one of the most dramatic tools in the inventories of state executioners. The practice of ‘blowing from a gun’, by which the condemned was bound to the front of a cannon and quite literally blown to pieces, was most infamously employed in British India and the Princely States, and the vast majority of English-language scholarship focuses on these regions. However, blowing from guns was commonplace in several other contemporary states, and the British use of the practice has rarely been situated in this context. The tactic was considered especially useful in Persia and Afghanistan, where weak governance, rebellion, and rampant banditry all threatened the legitimacy of the nascent state in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article presents a history of the practice of execution by cannon in southern and western Asia, positioning it within the existing literature on public executions in the context of military and civilian justice. In doing so, the article seeks to situate the British use of the tactic within a broader regional practice, arguing that, whilst the British—following the Mughal tradition—used execution by cannon primarily in maintaining military discipline, states such as Persia and Afghanistan instead employed the practice largely in the civilian context. This article also provides a brief technical review of the practice, drawing upon numerous primary sources to examine execution by cannon within the Mughal empire, British India, Persia, and Afghanistan.
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References
1 In some cases, cannon were used to execute prisoners by way of projectiles fired from the gun (typically grapeshot). In 1857, for example, 237 of 282 mutinous sepoys of the 26th Native Infantry were executed by cannon fire (Malik, S., ‘1857 Gogira Rebellion in southeastern Panjab: a forgotten chapter of Muslim response to British rule in India’, Islamic Studies 16.2 (1977), pp. 65–95Google Scholar). They were buried ‘into one common pit, by the hands of village sweepers’ (Cooper, F. H., Crisis in the Punjab: From the 10th of May Until the Fall of Delhi (London, 1858), p. 162Google Scholar).
2 Other common variations include ‘being blown away from a gun’ and ‘being blown from the mouth of a gun’.
3 Wagner, K. A., ‘‘Calculated to strike terror’: the Amritsar massacre and the spectacle of colonial violence’, Past and Present 223.1 (2016), p. 200Google Scholar. Wagner cites The Daily News, 5 November 1857.
4 Baylen, J. O. and Weyant, J. G., ‘Vasili Vereshchagin in the United States’, The Russian Review 30.3 (1971), pp. 250–259CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Wagner, ‘Calculated to strike terror’. Also see Wagner, K. A., Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre (New Haven, 2019), p. 4Google Scholar.
6 Malik writes, for example, that ‘It should be added here that the novel but rather barbaric punishment of cannon-blowing the rebels was initiated in the Panjab by the administration of Sir John Lawrence’ (S. Malik, ‘1857 Gogira Rebellion’, p. 67).
7 See Condos, M., ‘License to kill: the murderous outrages act and the rule of law in colonial India, 1867–1925’, Modern Asian Studies 50.2 (2016), p. 506CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ashraf, S., Finding the Enemy Within: Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan (Canberra, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mangamma, J., ‘Mutiny at Arni and Arcot in the Madras presidency 1784’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 60 (1999)Google Scholar; Matin, A. M., ‘‘The Hun is at the gate!’: historicizing Kipling's militaristic rhetoric, from the imperial periphery to the national center. Part One: The Russian threat to British India’, Studies in the Novel 31.3 (1999)Google Scholar. A lack of regional context is often the by-product of the scholarly focus of these works, which is usually British India and concerns itself only peripherally with the history of methods of execution.
8 As far as the authors are aware, no work exists that comprehensively examines the Mughal use of the practice.
9 See David, S., The Indian Mutiny (London, 2002), chapter 10Google Scholar; Anderson, C., ‘Execution and its aftermath in nineteenth-century British empire’, in A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse, (ed.) R. Ward (London, 2015)Google Scholar; James, L., Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (London, 1997)Google Scholar, Part 2, chapter 4; Wagner, ‘Calculated to strike terror’; Wagner, Amritsar 1919, p. 4. Even some works in the latter category, which provide some necessary historical context, can fall into inaccuracies; for example, Anderson writes that the first instance of the British blowing sepoys from guns occurred in 1825 (Anderson, ‘Execution’, p. 175), when in fact there were British Indian executions by cannon in the 1760s.
10 Despite this important heuristic, much of the existing literature on military justice is focused on the American and British militaries. See, for example, Oram, G., Military Executions during World War I (London, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bernard, K. S., ‘Structures of American military justice’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 125.2 (1976), pp. 307–336CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 C. E. Brand, Roman Military Law (Austin, 1968), p. vii. Such offences include, among others, ‘desertion, misbehavior of a sentinel, insubordination’ and ‘cowardice’.
12 Ibid.; E. J. Gannon, ‘Military justice’, Current History 61.360 (1971), p. 76. Military crimes may also overlap with political crimes, such as in cases of treason or espionage.
13 Brand, Roman Military Law, pp. 101–105. Of course, it is likely that the practice of executions within armed forces dates to the dawn of such organisations.
14 See, for example, J. R. Lilly, ‘Military executions’, in Handbook of Death & Dying, vol. 1, (ed.) C. D. Bryant (Thousand Oaks, 2003), pp. 378–385, for an overview of the US practice of military executions into the twentieth century.
15 It should be noted that a great many of these accounts were recorded by British colonists or travellers who passed through India, Persia, or Afghanistan. As such, many of the extant descriptions of the practice are presented through a specific Western European lens and do not provide as much geographic or cultural diversity as a researcher might like. For more on the symbolism and rationale motivating execution by cannon in the context of British colonialism, see Wagner, ‘Calculated to strike terror’, pp. 185–225.
16 A. Rahman Khan, The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, vol. 1 (London, 1900), p. 34; F. M. Kātib Hazārah, The History of Afghanistan (Sirāj al-tawārīkh), vol. 1 (Boston, 2013), p. 54; J. Atkinson, The Expedition into Afghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country (London, 1842), p. 188.
17 C. Doveton, ‘The Bangalore conspiracy in 1832’, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany 2 (1844), pp. 620–624; J. Forbes, Oriental Memoirs: Selected and Abridged from a Series of Familiar Letters Written During Seventeen Years Residence in India, vol. 4 (London, 1813), p. 123.
18 C. J. Wills, In the Land of the Lion and Sun, or Modern Persia (London, 1883), p. 203; M. D. D. Newitt, Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi: Exploration, Land Tenure and Colonial Rule in East Africa (New York, 1973), p. 41; Hazārah, History, vol. 1, p. 111.
19 F. Martin, Under the Absolute Amir (London, 1907), p. 168.
20 Doveton, ‘Bangalore’, p. 624. One late report of the practice in Persia claims that ‘scraps of metal’ were loaded into the cannon (H. F. Weston, ‘Persian caravan sketches: the land of the lion and the Sun seen on a summer caravan trip’, National Geographic XXXIX.4 (1921), pp. 417–468). Such a modification to the method would have been unnecessary and, as described elsewhere in this article, greatly increased the risk of unintended harms.
21 G. C. Stent, Scraps from My Sabretasche (London, 1882), p. 170.
22 See, for example, Atkinson, Expedition, p. 189; Doveton, ‘Bangalore’, p. 624.
23 Stent, Scraps, p. 172.
24 T. Blakiston, Twelve Years’ Military Adventure in Three Quarters of the Globe, vol. 1 (London, 1829), p. 309.
25 J. P. Ferrier, Caravan Journeys and Wanderings in Persia, Afghanistan, Turkistan, and Beloochistan, (trans.) W. Jesse (London, 1856), p. 189.
26 Rahman Khan, The Life, p. 34.
27 I. Munro, A Narrative of the Military Operations of the Coromandel Coast (London, 1789), p. 358.
28 The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser, ‘India—blowing from a gun’, 7 November 1857, p. 2, link.gale.com/apps/doc/Y3207448411/ (accessed 10 June 2021).
29 C. Ball, The History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. 1 (London, 1858), p. 411.
30 Ibid.
31 There were exceptions to this general rule and, in general, the practice was employed by British military courts after 1760 whenever capital punishment was deemed necessary (J. Long, Selections from Unpublished Records of Government for the Years 1748 to 1767 Inclusive Relating Mainly to the Social Condition of Bengal, vol. 1 (London, 1869), p. li).
32 J. Adolphus, The History of England, from the Accession to the Decease of King George the Third, vol. 1 (London, 1840), pp. 267–268.
33 Ibid; The Parliamentary Register; or History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, vol. XXIX (London, 1791), p. 637.
34 R. C. Butalia, The Evolution of The Artillery in India: From the Battle of Plassey (1757) to the Revolt of 1857 (New Delhi, 1998), p. 273.
35 G. Oram, ‘“The administration of discipline by the English is very rigid”: British military law and the death penalty (1868–1918)’, Crime, History & Societies 5.1 (2001), p. 95.
36 Ibid.
37 Wills, In the Land, p. 203; Ferrier, Caravan Journeys, p. 189.
38 Wagner, ‘Calculated to strike terror’, p. 200.
39 The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser, ‘India—blowing from a gun’.
40 David, The Indian Mutiny, chapter 10. This is not corroborated by other works known to the authors.
41 G. T. Paget, Camp and Cantonment: A Journal of Life in India in 1857–1859 (London, 1865), pp. 194–197; K. N. Chitnis, Glimpses of Maratha Socio-economic History (New Delhi, 1994), pp. 27–28.
42 Hanging was said to occasion a loss of caste (Paget, Camp, p. 210) and indeed the native population Nargund apparently declared that a ‘rope was not made that could hang a Brahmin’ (ibid., p. 204).
43 Ibid., p. 210. Nonetheless, many British officials considered hanging an ineffective deterrent for Indian colonial subjects (Anderson, ‘Execution’, p. 182).
44 Wagner, ‘Calculated to strike terror’, p. 197.
45 Oram, ‘The administration’, p. 99.
46 Lilly, ‘Military executions’, p. 378.
47 See, for example, A. Marsham, ‘Public execution in the Umayyad period: early Islamic punitive practice and its late antique context’, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011), p. 104.
48 C. Lange, ‘Torture and public executions in the Islamic middle period (eleventh–fifteenth centuries)’, in The Cambridge World History of Violence, vol. II: 500–1500 C.E., (eds.) M. S. Gordon, R. W. Kaeuper, and H. Zurndorfer (Cambridge, 2020), pp. 172–173.
49 Ibid., p. 166.
50 Ibid., p. 165.
51 M. H. Kamali, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: A Fresh Interpretation (Oxford, 2019), pp. 111–118. The Arabic term used for ‘banditry’ and ‘terrorism’ is the same, hirabah, and the Qu'ran prescribed ‘a fourfold punishment that culminates in death and crucifixion’, after which ‘the executed body … is placed on public display for a period of three days’ (ibid., p. 178). As discussed, banditry (sometimes described as ‘highway robbery’ or ‘brigandage’) is a crime for which a significant number of people were blown from a gun—almost entirely in native-ruled Islamic states.
52 Literally ‘penalty of the sack’—a death penalty believed to originate in Roman law (for those found guilty of patricide) that entailed sewing the condemned into a leather or rawhide sack (sometimes along with a variety of animals) and throwing the sack into a body of water (R. A. Bauman, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome (London, 1996), pp. 30–31).
53 Despite the ‘largely negative tone of the [Islamic] legal literature’, immolation has been used as a method of execution by several Islamic states at different points in history (A. Marsham, ‘Attitudes to the use of fire in executions in Late Antiquity and early Islam: the burning of heretics and rebels in late Umayyad Iraq’, in Violence in Islamic Thought: From the Qurʾān to the Mongols, (eds.) R. Gleave and I. T. Kristó-Nagy (Edinburgh, 2015), pp. 106–127).
54 A method of public execution also practised by the Taliban in the late twentieth century, and one that they have indicated may be reintroduced (Associated Press, ‘Man crushed by brick wall survives’, 16 January 1999, https://apnews.com/article/bcd7eec37ef191ac200d253f32d28ff5 (accessed 12 May 2021); P. Ronzheimer, ‘Dieser Taliban-Richter lässt steinigen, hängen, Hände abhacken’, BILD, 12 July 2021, https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/nach-bundeswehr-einsatz-taliban-wollen-wieder-frauen-und-schwule-steinigen-77052966.bild.html (accessed 19 January 2022)).
55 R. Binning, A Journal of Two Years’ Travel in Persia, Ceylon Etc., vol. I (London, 1857a), pp. 274, 340; Marsham, ‘Public execution’; Marsham, ‘Attitudes’; Lange, ‘Torture and public executions’; J. N. Bell, Love Theory in Later Hanbalite Islam (New York, 1979), pp. 30–31; A. Gallonio, Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs, (trans.) A. R. Allinson (Paris, 1903), pp. 17–20); J. J. Reid, Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse, 1839–1878 (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 440–442.
56 J. E. Tennent, Christianity in Ceylon (London, 1850), p. 395.
57 D. Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond: 1540–1750 (Stanford, 1996), pp. 54–55; R. Southey, History of Brazil, vol. I, 2nd edn (London, 1822), p. 469; H. Salt, A Voyage to Abyssinia, and Travels into the Interior of that Country: Executed under the Orders of the British Government, in the Years 1809 and 1810 (London, 1814), pp. 38–40.
58 See, for example, T. A. Heathcote, The Military in British India: The Development of British Land Forces in South Asia, 1600–1947 (Manchester, 1995), p. 105; G. Fremont-Barnes, The Indian Mutiny 1857–58 (Oxford, 2007), p. 79.
59 I. A. Khan, Gunpowder & Firearms Warfare in Medieval India (Oxford, 2004), p. 148.
60 S. A. Afsos, The Araish-i-mahfil, or the Ornament of the Assembly, 1st English edn, (trans.) Major Henry Court (Allahabad, 1871), p. 64.
61 Hazārah, History, vol. 1, p. 54.
62 M. Kittoe, ‘On the temples and ruins of Oomga’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 14.2 (1847), pp. 656–661.
63 W. Irvine, Later Mughals, vol. 1: 1707–1720 (Calcutta, 1922), pp. 286–287.
64 Also Samoothry, Samoothiri, etc. (Malayalam: Sāmūtiri).
65 L. B. Bowring, Haidar Alí and Tipú Sultán: And the Struggle with the Musalmán Powers of the South (Oxford, 1899), p. 45.
66 J. Duncan, ‘Historical remarks on the coast of Malabar’, Asiatic Researches V (1799), p. 31.
67 J. G. Duff, History of the Mahrattas, vol. III (London, 1826), p. 190; B. Lal, Memoirs of the Puthan Soldier of Fortune (Calcutta, 1832), p. 127.
68 W. Campbell, British India in Its Relation to the Decline of Hindooism and the Progress of Christianity (London, 1839), p. 421; Duff, History, p. 190.
69 Ghatge is said by Duff to have had a ‘disposition to violence’ that he ‘fully gratified in acts of wanton and barbarous cruelty’ (Duff, History, p. 201).
70 Campbell, British India, p. 421. Indeed, the Kingdom of Mysore pioneered the effective military use of metal-cased rockets. For more on this fascinating topic, see N. Olikara, ‘Tipu's Mysore rockets’, presentation to the Arms and Armour Society, London, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nx62o6YRa0 (accessed 2 February 2022); N. Olikara, ‘An 18th century sword-bladed metal cased Maratha war rocket and the evolution of the use of the war rocket in India’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society XXIV (2022).
71 J. H. Gense and D. R. Banaji (eds.), The Gaikwads of Baroda: English Documents, vol. V: Anandrao Gaikwad (1802–1803) (Bombay, 1803), p. 279.
72 This is due in no small part, of course, to the nature of the extant source material available to English-language researchers today, much of which comprises contemporary British accounts.
73 Long, Selections, p. li.
74 Oram, ‘The administration’, p. 104.
75 S. Den Otter, ‘Law, authority, and colonial rule’, in India and the British Empire,
(eds.) D. M. Peers and N. Gooptu (Oxford, 2012), pp. 186–187.
76 Anderson, ‘Execution’, p. 182.
77 The term ‘sepoy’, originally derived from Persian, was used in British India and elsewhere to describe native soldiers.
78 Long, Selections, p. 224.
79 One European mutineer, referred to only as ‘Foster’, was executed by cannon in 1798; see C. Grey, European Adventurers of Northern India, 1785-1849 (New Delhi, 1993), pp. 273–274.
80 Adolphus, History, p. 268; Butalia, Evolution, p. 273. Thus, Wagner's assertion that the first mass execution of Sepoys by cannon was in 1857 is not correct.
81 R. Mukherjee, ‘The Kanpur massacres in India in the revolt of 1857: reply’, Past & Present 142 (1994), p. 184, citing India Office Library Records, 30 April 1780, Extract of the General Letters from Bombay, Home Miscellaneous Series 149.5, pp. 111–112.
82 Mangamma, ‘Mutiny at Arni and Arcot’, pp. 495–500.
83 Munro, Narrative, pp. 357–358; see also Mangamma, ‘Mutiny at Arni and Arcot’, p. 497.
84 Five others were killed by musket fire and eight were hanged. Two further sepoys were acquitted and others were held for transportation (Colonel G. Harcourt to Adjutant-General P.A. Agnew (in litt.), 8 April 1872, in W. J. Wilson, History of the Madras Army, vol. 3 (London, 1883)).
85 The events of the Vellore Mutiny are today overshadowed by the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, but the impact in Britain was profound at the time. Both the governor of Madras, Lord William Bentinck, and the commander-in-chief of the Madras Army, Lieutenant-General Sir John Cradock, were recalled in disgrace following the latter's introduction of dress regulations that offended native troops’ sensibilities. See Martin, Absolute Amir, p. 17; P. Carson, The East India Company and Religion, 1698–1858 (Woodbridge, 2012), p. 71).
86 Harcourt to Agnew (in litt.).
87 Mukherjee, ‘Kanpur massacres’, p. 184; Ball, History, p. 413.
88 S. Parlby, The British Indian Military Repository (Calcutta, 1822), vol. I, pp. 187–188; Heathcote, The Military, p. 105.
89 Jackson's Oxford Journal, 6 March 1858, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3200102982/ (accessed 5 June 2021); Lloyd's Illustrated Newspaper, ‘The Bombay mail’, 13 February 1859, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BC3206204813/ (accessed 31 May 2021).
90 The Era, ‘The Indian rebellion’, 1 November 1857, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3202424723/ (accessed 31 May 2021).
91 Malik, ‘1857 Gogira Rebellion’.
92 See, for example, A. Broome, History of the Rise and Progress of the Bengal Army, vol. 1 (London, 1850); W. Thomson, Memoirs of the Late War in Asia, vol. 1 (London, 1788); Forbes, Oriental Memoirs; The Editor of the Royal Military Calendar (ed.), The East India Military Calendar; Containing the Services of General and Field Officers of the Indian Army, vol. II (London, 1824), pp. 496–497; J. Deerrett, The Remembrancer; or, Impartial Repository of Public Events for the Year 1783 Part 2, vol. 16 (London, 1783), p. 83. According to James (Raj, Part 4, chapter 2), some sepoy ‘counter-intelligence service’ members were also executed in this manner, perhaps emphasising how serious their transgressions were considered to be.
93 Forsyth to Griffin (in litt.), 8 April 1872, in Extracts from Correspondence Relating to the Kooka Outbreak (London, 1872).
94 Wagner, ‘Calculated to strike terror’, pp. 206–207.
95 A. Misra, War of Civilisations: India AD 1857 (New Delhi, 2007); R. Ramesh, ‘India's secret history: “A holocaust, one where millions disappeared…”’, The Guardian, 24 August 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/24/india.randeepramesh (accessed 29 October 2023).
96 See R. C. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and Revolt of 1857 (Calcutta, 1957), Book II, chapter IV; T. M. Hashmi, Z. H. Wattoo, and S. Ishaq, ‘Colonial demolition of Bahadur Shah Zafar's government: some bitter facts and literary reactions’, Palarch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology 19.2 (2022), p. 800; R. Mukherjee, ‘“Satan let loose upon Earth”: the Kanpur massacres in India in the revolt of 1857’, Past & Present 128 (August 1990), p. 94.
97 M. Hashmi, Z. H. Wattoo, and S. Ishaq, ‘Colonial demolition of Bahadur Shah Zafar's government: some bitter facts and literary reactions', PalArch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology 19.2 (2022), pp. 794–801, at p. 800. While no number is given for how many Indians were blown from a gun following the recapture of Delhi, the authors claim that ‘[h]undreds were hanged’ and ‘[t]housands of people were shot’.
98 Majumdar, Sepoy Mutiny, p. 108.
99 Giving an example of one such instance, David writes: ‘At first, as a warning to others, all one hundred and twenty sepoys captured by Nicholson were sentenced to be blown away from guns. But petitions for partial clemency were submitted by both Nicholson and Sir John Lawrence. “The officers [of the 55th] all concur in stating that the Sikhs were on their side to the last,’ wrote Nicholson to Edwardes. ‘I would, therefore, temper stern justice with mercy, and spare the Sikhs and young recruits. Blow away all the rest by all means, but spare boys scarcely out of their childhood, and men who were really loyal and respectful up to the moment when they allowed themselves to be carried away in a panic by the mass”’ (David, The Indian Mutiny, chapter 10).
100 Caledonian Mercury, ‘Foreign intelligence’, British Library Newspapers, 2 March 1858, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BB3205491225/ (accessed 30 May 2021).
101 B. W. Noel, England and India: An Essay on the Duty of Englishmen Towards the Hindoos (London, 1859), pp. 461–462). W. H. Russell (My Diary in India, in the Year 1858–9, vol. II (London, 1860)) documents a very similar event in his diary. Also see Morning Chronicle, ‘Latest from India, 5 July 1858’, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BC3207395531/ (accessed 30 May 2021) for a contemporary news source documenting the execution by cannon of a British collaborator by an Indian rebel leader.
102 Pall Mall Gazette, ‘A romance of the Indian Mutiny’, 29 August 1872, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BA3207697669/ (accessed 2 June 2021).
103 Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, 31 & 32 Vict. c. 24; see R. McGowen, ‘Civilizing punishment: the end of the public execution in England’, The Journal of British Studies 33.3 (1994), pp. 257–282 for further details.
104 Anderson, ‘Execution’, pp. 189–190.
105 Binning, A Journal, p. 274. The author reluctantly admits that it ‘has sometimes been resorted to in British India, in serious cases of mutiny and conspiracy’.
106 Wills, In the Land, pp. 202–205.
107 Binning, A Journal, p. 274.
108 See, for example, ibid.; Weston, National Geographic, XXXIX, pp. 417–468; Wills, In the Land, p. 203.
109 Weston (National Geographic, XXXIX, pp. 417–468) writes of the execution of a ‘Jalil Khan’, The Daily News (‘General Foreign News: Turkey and Persia’, 6 June 1881, p. 6, link.gale.com/apps/doc/Y3203113998/ (accessed 1 June 2021)) reports on a ‘Jellil Agha Mukri’, and B. H. Révoil (‘Une Exécution a Téhéran’, Journal des Voyages et des Aventures de Terre et de Mer, 225 (30 October 1881), pp. 225, 228–229) describes the death of a ‘Djahl Agha’. The three sources may be describing the same incident, although Révoil describes the execution as taking place in Tehran whilst the other sources say Tabriz was the site of the punishment.
110 S. G. Wilson, Persian Life and Customs (New York, 1895), p. 119; The Daily News, ‘General Foreign News’, p. 6.
111 Révoil, ‘Une Exécution’, pp. 225, 228–229.
112 Wills, In the Land, pp. 202–203. Wills also describes a man ‘blown into the air from a mortar’ in the square at Shiraz.
113 The Star (Guernsey), ‘Judicial punishment in Persia’, 11 August 1885, link.gale.com/apps/doc/R3210880252/ (accessed 4 June 2022); Wilson, Persian Life, pp. 185–186. Many other arcane and brutal punishments were in use in Persia during this time, including mutilation, dismemberment (including the shekkeh method of bisection), and boiling the condemned alive in a huge cauldron (Binning, A Journal, pp. 274, 340).
114 Le Petit Journal, ‘Comment on Exécute les Condamnés Politiques en Afghanistan', Supplément Illustré, 23 November 1913, ‘Comment’, p. 374.
115 Kamali, Crime and Punishment, pp. 111, 178.
116 Binning, A Journal, pp. 273–275.
117 Wilson, Persian Life, p. 185.
118 Weston, National Geographic, XXXIX, p. 447. The boy allegedly replied: ‘I kill others every way. Watch them die fast, slow. Myself not yet killed. Like best to be blown from cannon. See quick what comes after.’
119 Ibid., p. 435.
120 C. Noelle, State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan the Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826–1863) (London, 1997), p. 211.
121 F. M. Kātib Hazārah, The History of Afghanistan (Sirāj al-tawārīkh), vol. 2 (Boston, 2013), p. 111; G. P. Tate, The Kingdom of Afghanistan: A Historical Sketch (Bombay, 1911), p. 121.
122 A term referring to those who tend camels.
123 Atkinson, Expedition, p. 188.
124 M. E. Yapp, ‘Disturbances in western Afghanistan, 1839–41’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 26.2 (1963), pp. 306–307.
125 Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, p. 58.
126 Evening Standard, ‘Multiple News Items: From the Delhi Gazette of Aug. 25’, British Library Newspapers, 5 November 1841, link.gale.com/apps/doc/R3212170365/ (accessed 31 May 2021).
127 Ferrier, Caravan Journeys, p. 189.
128 Hazārah, History, vol. 1, p. 208.
129 Ferrier, Caravan Journeys, p. 189; Hazārah, History, vol. 2, p. 106.
130 J. L. Lee, The ‘Ancient Supremacy’: Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731–1901 (Leiden, 1996), pp. 543–562. Other methods employed under the emir included hanging, crucifixion, sawing, strangulation, bayoneting, and being dragged by horses.
131 D. Edwards, Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier (Berkeley, 1996), p. 111.
132 Ibid.
133 Hazārah, History, vol. 2, pp. 322–486.
134 Ibid.
135 Those sentenced to death by sword were dressed in red and those sentenced to be hanged were dressed in yellow or green (Pall Mall Gazette, ‘A hundred days’ vengeance’, 11 September 1889, p. 7, gale.com/apps/doc/Y3200419237/ (accessed 3 June 2021)).
136 Lee, ‘Ancient Supremacy’, pp. 530–531.
137 Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, ‘The rising in Afghanistan’, British Library Newspapers, 1 November 1887, link.gale.com/apps/doc/R3212958556/ (accessed 1 June 2021); Hazārah, History, vol. 1, pp. 424–428.
138 The Ipswich Journal, ‘Foreign intelligence—Afghanistan’, 5 October 1880, p. 4, link.gale.com/apps/doc/Y3202582082/ (accessed 2 June 2021).
139 Martin, Absolute Amir, pp. 168–169. Again, the use of the term ‘highway robbery’ here is notable, as such a crime was punishable by death according to Islamic law (Kamali, Crime and Punishment, p. 111).
140 The Hampshire Advertiser, ‘An Afghan crime and its punishment’, 15 November 1890, p. 2, gale.com/apps/doc/R3208889781/ (accessed 3 June 2021).
141 W. Maley, ‘Human rights in Afghanistan’, in Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives Across the Ummah, (eds.) S. Akbarzadeh and B. MacQueen (London, 2008), p. 93; Edwards, Heroes, p. 111.
142 Rahman Khan, The Life, p. 230.
143 F. M. Kātib Hazārah, The History of Afghanistan (Sirāj al-tawārīkh), vol. 4 (Boston, 2016), pp. 2165–2166.
144 Ibid., p. 2269.
145 Le Petit Journal, ‘Comment’, p. 374.
146 The New York Times, ‘Eleven Afghans blown from guns’, 5 April 1930.
147 J. Park and J. Pearson, ‘North Korea executes defence chief with an anti-aircraft gun: South Korea agency’, Reuters, 12 May 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-purge/north-korea-executes-defence-chief-with-an-anti-aircraft-gun-south-korea-agency-idUSKBN0NY01J20150513 (accessed 20 January 2022); Armament Research Services (ARES), Conflict Materiel (CONMAT) Database (confidential, Perth, n.d.). While similar to blowing from a gun, this is a distinct practice. Rather than being tied to the front of an artillery piece to be killed by the escaping pressure and gas, prisoners are shot by projectiles from medium-calibre cannon (typically 23 millimetres). This would likely have a no less dramatic terminal effect.
148 Srivastava, A. R. N., Tribal Freedom Fighters of India (New Delhi, 2017)Google Scholar.
149 The current whereabouts of this painting are unknown.
150 In fact, the ‘Blowing from a Gun’ beer was directly influenced by Vereshchagin's painting. Nightmare Brewing Company has depicted various different forms of execution on the labels of its other brews, including crucifixion, scaphism, and drawing and quartering. The brewery's stated goal is to ‘[bring] together ingredients, death metal, and our horrific history into a cohesive liquid experience’; see Nightmare Brewing Company, n.d., ‘Blowing from a gun’, https://www.nightmarebrewingco.com/ (accessed 12 January 2022).
151 Boyar, E. and Fleet, K., A Social History of Ottoman Istanbul (Cambridge, 2010), p. 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
152 A. Martin, ‘Un voyage de rédemption dans la Régence d'Alger’, in Autour de la géographie Orientale, et au-delà: en l'honneur de J. Thiry, Lettres Orientales 11, (eds.) L. Denooz and X. Luffin (Leuven, 2006), p. 150. Le Vacher was killed using the cannon called ‘Baba Merzoug’, which had been cast in 1542 by a Venetian engineer. ‘Baba Merzoug’ was supposed to be used to kill another French consul, Andre Piollé, in 1688 but the unfortunate Frenchman was beaten to death before his appointed hour of execution. Several other prisoners were killed by the Venetian gun instead (Préaux, ‘La Consulaire’, in France Maritime: Fondée et Dirigée, vol. 2, (ed.) A. Gréhan (Paris, 1855), pp. 92–93).
153 Newitt, Portuguese Settlement, pp. 40–41.
154 Ibid., p. 190; Thoman, M., Jesuitens und Missionärs in Asien und Afrika: Reise- und Lebensbeschreibung (Lindau, 1869), p. 111Google Scholar.
155 Salt, A Voyage, pp. 39–40.
156 Southey, History of Brazil, p. 469.
157 A detailed examination of the Portuguese use of the practice, expanding beyond the English-language literature (e.g. Alden, Making of an Enterprise; Southey, History of Brazil; Salt, A Voyage, etc.) would be valuable, for example.