The Story Of The Malakand Field Force – Winston Churchill, 1898 ★★★

Making His Mark in the British Raj

For many great literary figures, a first book is like a declaration of principles, a bugle call with resonances that echo for posterity yet can be scarcely audible at the time of publication.

That was my main takeaway from reading this, the earliest book by one of the most famous figures of his century, published even before that century had begun.

Winston Spencer Churchill was many things in a lifetime so packed with incident he was very nearly of retirement age before he got around to doing the stuff people best remember him for.

The son of a pioneer of British conservatism and an American socialite, young Winston was a poor student who struggled with both an embarrassing speech impediment (sometimes reported to have been a stutter, though in fact just a bad lisp) and, later on, his father’s sudden fall from power. Something of a rebel all his life, Winston would continually clash with the powers that be, even while seeking glory in traditional ways.

In 1897, this meant military service, preferably somewhere where shooting was involved.

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result,” the 23-year-old Churchill would note in this, his first-ever book published the following year, recounting a military expedition he joined in media res. The Story Of The Malakand Field Force is an account of an uprising, written from the perspective of one assigned to the force that put it down.

The British Raj, or as it was also known, the Jewel of the Crown, incorporated no less than four future nations (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar) and was at the time of this book Great Britain’s most important territorial possession other than the Home Islands themselves. Churchill’s account is a fascinating glimpse into the author’s divided character.

On one hand, Churchill writes convincingly, and in great detail, about the heroism and correctness of the British and Indian soldiers who made up the title unit, and in particular of its commander, the aptly-named Sir Bindon Blood. On the other hand, Churchill lets fly at the government which put them in the field, questioning both their colonial overreach as well as a pusillanimous attitude about enforcing its will upon a restive population.

“Dynamite in the hands of a small child is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out,” is Churchill’s acerbic conclusion here. “The reproach which may be justly laid upon the rulers of India, whether at home or abroad, is that while they recognize the facts, they shrink from the legitimate conclusions.”

Exactly what those conclusions are aren’t exactly spelled out in The Malakand Field Force. At times, Churchill comes off quite the happy imperialist, discoursing on what by then was popularly termed the “white man’s burden” in some detail. Other times, he is more questioning of motive, and inclined to offer at best stinted praise for the winning side.

“The enemy drew off, carrying their dead with them for the most part, but numerous bodies lying outside the shelter trench attested the valour and vigour of their attack,” he writes of the aftermath of one mass assault, at Nawagai. “One man was found the next morning, whose head had been half blown off by a discharge of case shot from one of the mountain guns. He lay within a yard of the muzzle, the muzzle he had believed would be stopped, a victim to that blind credulity and fanaticism now happily passing away from the earth, under the combined influences of Rationalism and machine guns.”

As a Churchill admirer, I found this first book of his more gripping for this sort of left-field assessment regarding conquest and its aftermath than I did for the Gunga-Din-esque battle story, which kind of moves in fits and starts. In short, The Story Of The Malakand Field Force reads more like a book of parts than a cohesive whole.

The book begins with the rebellion already in progress, culminating in a sudden assault against a British military instillation in Malakand, a province then part of Great Britain’s northernmost Indian holdings and today part of Pakistan. The attackers were Muslim Pashtuns, an alliance of many tribes but most notably the Mohmands, all of whom lived under the loose rule of British India’s North-West Frontier Province.

As to whether the Pashtuns were justified in this rebellion is something Churchill is shy about discussing. Noting what came to be called “the Breach of Faith” as British leaders sought a clear road of access all the way to the Afghan border, he writes of the Pashtuns: “They do not regard the road as a ‘breach of faith.’ What they do regard it as is a menace to their independence, and a prelude to annexation. Nor are they wrong…It needs no education to appreciate its significance. Nor can any sophistry obscure it.”

Putting down this rebellion would prove no easy task; the fighting was at times fierce as luridly described by Churchill, who includes full casualty tallies. Night battles involve hand-to-hand combat, and the possibility of complete obliteration until the quality of training and firepower prove too much for the rebels. The war then becomes an offensive one of raiding and burning villages, which is where the Malakand Field Force comes in.

The troops that fought for the British Raj during the Malakand battles were an equal mixture of white Europeans and Indians as seen assembled here. Churchill's account gives precedence to the former, without trying to hide the often-critical contribution of the latter. Image from wikipedia.org.

Churchill was not part of this force initially; he had to pull some strings to get attached as a war correspondent. This book does much to obscure Churchill’s direct experience in the conflict; it’s a surprise to look at other accounts and learn, for example, that Churchill himself came under direct enemy fire on no less than ten occasions and once witnessed another soldier who had fallen be set upon by sword-wielding Pashtuns.

The battles Churchill describes are more orderly affairs. Perhaps influenced by his owing his position to General Blood, he downplays any anarchy and describes a series of set-piece skirmishes in which the enemy is defeated in detail and eventually sues for peace.

“It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic,” he declaims.

About his own part in the conflict, Churchill consciously avoids giving away too much, saying that any attempt to relate personal experiences risks the fallacy of bestowing upon them more consequence than they deserve. It is a noble point, if one that makes for a less riveting read than it could have been.

Churchill is most on point as a critic, however much he suggests otherwise: “Is it fitting that Great Britain should play off one brutal khan against his neighbours, or balance one barbarous tribe against another? It is as much below our Imperial dignity as it would be for a millionaire to count the lumps in the sugar-basin.”

Elsewhere, Churchill questions the way British rule deals with its loyal subjects, the Sikhs and Pathans who make up the bulk of the Raj’s military might.

“A proposal has recently been made to give the Victoria Cross to native soldiers who shall deserve it,” Churchill observes in a footnote regarding the heroics of one such native, Prem Singh. “It would seem that the value of such a decoration must be enhanced by making it open to all British subjects. The keener the competition, the greater the honour of success. In sport, in courage, and in the sight of heaven, all men meet on equal terms.”

As much as Churchill’s first book rests on his observations on the proper use of the lance, the necessity of comfort in designing combat uniforms, and the quality of fortifications along the frontier, it is in moments like this that the Churchill who stands so tall in modern eyes emerges most clear. His motives may sometimes be fuzzy, but his considerable character seems well on its way to its apotheosis.