Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Arracan Expedition and the Andaman Islands" video.
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My understanding of the history of Andaman Islands is that Arab slave traders used the islands for fresh water and wood supplies as they plied the trade routes from Somalia to India and even on to China. The trade may have been going on since the tenth century, and certainly from the twelve century. Slave traders apparently took what they could from the islands, including the native peoples for slave trade. The Arabs looked upon them as black Africans that had somehow escaped to the islands. This went on for at least five centuries before there were any shipwrecked sailors from Europe on the Islands. The treatment of the various tribes by these slave traders seems to have predisposed the Andaman peoples to judge all outsiders as dangerous and needing to be killed before they could kill them. The British added their own layer of hostility to the mix while building convict colonies in the Andamans.
One last colonial irony affected one of the VC winners from Arracan. William Griffiths was still a private in the British army in 1879, itself quite a feat for a solder 13 years after getting the VC. I haven't found much about him except for the fact he was apparently an alcoholic, and it was only the VC that stopped him from being drummed out of the Army. He was still with the 24th Regiment of Foot on January 12, 1879 at Battle of Isandlwana, the first major battle between an organized army of Africans, now know as the Zulus, and the British army. Griffiths, along with the rest of the 2nd/24th Regiment of Foot battalion, fought to the literal last bullet, and they ran out of bullets before the Zulus ran out of men. Everyone in the battalion was killed that day as their position was overrun by Zulus.
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