The battle of Omdurman killed ten thousand with only forty-eight colonial casualties

Evidence

Bell might well have added that the desire to take out one’s enemies from a safe distance was never better satisfied than in the “glorious” episodes of colonial wars, in which natives were felled en masse while the armies of the whites were hardly scratched. On the evening following the “battle” of Omdurman, in Sudan, on September 2, 1898, there were forty-eight dead on the side of the Anglo-Egyptian forces under Kitchener’s command, as against the nearly ten thousand dervishes cut down by the bursts of bullets from Maxim machine guns. Many other examples could be given. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 338 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

According to their ways of war, when relations between groups broke down and conflict came, warfare was highly ritualized, with quests for individual glory, resulting in few deaths. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 149 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The 1898 battle of Omdurman killed roughly ten thousand dervishes against forty-eight Anglo-Egyptian troops; Colonial machine-gun wars killed en masse while inflicting near-zero white casualties — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 338; Indigenous warfare was ritualized and produced few deaths — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 149

Related

• Colonial machine-gun wars killed en masse while inflicting near-zero white casualties (similarity 0.91)
• Indigenous warfare was ritualized and produced few deaths (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The 1898 battle of Omdurman killed roughly ten thousand dervishes against forty-eight Anglo-Egyptian troops #corroborates (1.00)
• Colonial machine-gun wars killed en masse while inflicting near-zero white casualties #exemplifies (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 338
• Indigenous warfare was ritualized and produced few deaths #complicates (0.60) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 149