FOUR

Big Implications from Small

Wars: The Imperial Vision of Heroism,

1860–1911

L

arge-scale operations of the Crimean and Indian variety were not the
normal employment of the British military in the nineteenth century.
The Army, and to a lesser extent, the Royal Navy were employed more
often in small-scale operations designed to project power in an imperial
context. In most cases they encountered a numerically superior but tech-
nologically inferior foe, and in so doing further questions as to the nature
and limits of the new institutional heroism were raised and resolved. The
duties of policing a globe-spanning empire presented a new environment
for heroism; facing bodies of disciplined Russians supported by artillery was
not the same as facing Maori rebels, cannibalistic Andaman Islanders, or
assegai-wielding Zulus. The standard doctrine for mid-nineteenth century
colonial warfare placed a premium on implacable aggressiveness as a way of
establishing psychological superiority over the enemy.^1 This was reflected in
a rash of ‘first in’ Crosses and recommendations in the 1860s, designed to
reward the aggressive bravery of those first to breach an enemy stronghold.
The first of these ‘first ins’ went to William Odgers, Leading Seaman of HMS
Nigerfor being the first man in the rebelpah, a wood and earth palisade, and for
hauling down the rebel colors on 28 March 1860, during the first Maori War:
Three flags bearing Maori war-devices were seen waving above the smoke-
hazed palisades. ‘Ten pounds to the man who pulls down those flags!’
shouted [Captain Peter] Cracroft [RN]. Yelling, shooting, slashing, the
Navy lads were over the stockade in a few moments ‘like a pack of
schoolboys’, in the phrase of a survivor of Waireka. The first man in was
William Odgers, the Captain’s coxswain. He charged to the flagstaff and
hauled down the Maori ensigns.^2
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