The British beat Trump to dipping bullets in pig parts
And it worked out really, really badly for all involved
Donald Trump told supporters that one way to deal with Muslim terrorist suspects would be to execute them with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. He backed up the claim with a very untrue story from the American occupation of the Philippines, during which US troops did all sorts of awful stuff besides soak bullets in pig’s blood.
Trump’s story actually dates back to a British practice in South India. Except the British Empire acted out of stupidity, not cruelty (the cruelty came later).
In 1857, the British East India Company upgraded their Indian troops (called sepoys by the English) with a new Enfield rifle. The gun was more accurate and more reliable, but in order to load it a soldier had to bite through a greased cartridge and pour the gunpowder and bullet down the barrel. And the cartridge in question was greased in English factories with tallow — made from cow and pig fat.
Unsurprisingly, thousands of Muslim and Hindu soldiers found the idea of breaking religious taboo in the service of a Christian empire wildly offensive. And in the tense atmosphere of the 1850s — the British had recently decided that Indians were communicating in secret via snack food — the new rifle was enough. Rather than take up the new gun, the Indian soldiers started a mutiny.
For the next year, India was locked in a vicious civil war where British soldiers killed about 100,000 mutineers in what many Indians call their first war of independence. Hundreds were executed by being strapped to the muzzle of a cannon, a practice the British borrowed from Mughal emperors.
Many historians point to the 1857 rebellion as “a defining point in British imperial history,” after which the only question remaining was when the empire would collapse, not if.
And it all began with a stupid idea to dip bullets in pig parts.
