bashi-bazoukery

alternative Bashi-Bazoukery

1. uncountableExtreme physical violence; brutality; cruelty.

   Bashi-bazoukery was rampant in the area of Urfa and Ulysses was bastinadoed mercilessly.

   1960, Blackwood's Magazine, volume 287, page 544

   2 more examples

   […] I knew well the self-important back-patting, the servile admiration, the ambiguous analyses, the petty praise, and the pettier intellectual bashi-bazoukery --'

   1942, Northern California Writers' Program Work Projects Administration, chapter IV, in An Anthology of Music Criticism, page 372

   Late though the hour, there were quite enough people about to exaggerate the incident into fifty different versions and turn it into as bloodthirsty a piece of bashi-bazoukery as had ever thrilled Sirene.

   1951, Compton Mackenzie, Vestal Fire, Chatto & Windus, page 168

1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of bashi-bazoukery.

   Yet in truth there is scarcely any contemporary Bashi-Bazoukery on Bulgarian soil.

   1979 October 20, Tim Garton Ash, “The Bulgarian horrors”, in The Spectator, page 10

   4 more examples

   His government was a system of Bashi-Bazoukery plus slave-raiding, with this difference, that in Sarawak, unlike the Soudan, the slave-raids were undertaken by the orders and under the direction of the Sultans or Rajahs of Brunei. […] Sarawak became independent, the Bashi-Bazoukery from Brunei ceased to trouble the tribes, and the homes of the villagers were no longer laid desolate in order to supply victims for the Sultan's pleasure.

   1884, James Macaulay, True Tales of Travel and Adventure, Valour and Virtue, Hodder and Stoughton, published 1884, page 76

   Its only redeeming feature was that it prevented internecine wars; and when occasionally a good governor-general was appointed, the Bashi-Bazoukery was reduced to a minimum, and the force of the Egyptian Government was exerted for the repression of the slave-trade, which is the staple industry of the Soudan.

   1884 July, “Chinese Gordon”, in The Contributor, page 398

   What a change for them, from the régime of Bashi-Bazoukery, of the pachas, of the stick, the lash, the prison; from the grinding taxation and the denial of even a form of justice!

   1885, Archibald Forbes, Chinese Gordon: A Succinct Record of His Life, Funk & Wagnalls, published 1885, page 169

   He would not hurt a fly, and though he has shown himself very bellicose of late, and has with outstretched hand fiercely denounced Turkey and all its works, it is probable that if a Bashi-Bazouk were to stray within the paddock of Massey Hall, Peter would take him in and feed him, provide him with a short pipe, and do nothing worse to him than explain how he saved fourteen-pence on the Civil Service Estimates, and hint that if the Bashi-Bazoukery ever wants a financial regenerator, à la Goschen in Egypt, a letter addressed to Massey Hall, Cheshire, would reach the proper hands.

   1885, Henry W. Lucy, A Tale of Two Parliaments: The Disraeli Parliament, 1874-1880, Cassell & Company, Limited, page 428