British Armed Forces from the Glorious Revolution to Present

Introduction
There has always been a sense in which the British experience of armed forces has been regarded as an exception. That exceptionalism has derived from Britain’s island status and its absence of vulnerable land frontiers. The Royal Navy’s “wooden walls” protected the British Isles from invasion in the modern era even after steam power had been thought to have “bridged the Channel” in the 1840s. The advent of air power in the 20th century provided a new challenge. But, even in the summer of 1940, whatever the heroics of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy still represented a formidable obstacle to an actual invasion attempt. Command of the sea likewise enabled the army not only to garrison a far-flung empire but also to be a “projectile” fired by the navy. In reality, Britain could not afford to neglect land participation in major continental wars, and always required continental allies in order to prevail, but there was at all times a tendency to view the army as essentially a small imperial constabulary out of sight and out of mind. Certainly, there was no belief in the need for continental-style conscription and the armed forces were mostly enlisted on a purely voluntary basis other than in the 20th century. The relationship between the armed forces and British state and society has also reflected the steady evolution of a constitutional monarchy and representative democracy. While army and navy both emerged as truly organized national forces under the Tudors, it is not unreasonable to take the constitutional settlement of 1689—particularly as related to the enhanced capacity of the state to raise revenue for army and navy—as a convenient starting point for the study of the British armed forces.
General Overviews
Inevitably, perhaps, there have been numerous popular histories of both the army and the navy, but such publications have rarely drawn upon the latest academic research and have tended to concentrate upon battles and campaigns rather than upon such aspects as administration and civil-military relations. Although well illustrated, the two Oxford edited compilations, Chandler and Beckett 1994 and Hill and Ranft 1995, are intended to introduce general readers to the most recent research, and they retain their usefulness as introductions to the broader developments. Rodger 2004 is the second entry in what will undoubtedly become a definitive multivolume history of the Royal Navy. Grove 2005 conveniently covers the period not yet assessed by Rodger. Spiers 1980 is a good example of the then relatively new and now commonplace “war and society” approach to military history, published significantly in a series on British social history. Strachan 1997 investigates the traditional view of an apolitical army in relation to politics and society, while French 2005 equally explores that other supposed foundation of the British army’s approach to war, its traditional regimental system. Academic interest in the history of air power as opposed to that of the Royal Air Force (RAF) per se has meant that there is no adequate general history of the RAF.
Chandler, David, and Ian Beckett, eds. The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Updated in a second paperback edition in 2003, twenty chapters take the story of the army from the medieval period to the present. There is an uneven quality to some of the 20th-century chapters that were contributed by soldier-historians rather than the academic historians responsible for the remainder.
Find this resource:
French, David. Military Identities: the Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People, c. 1870–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A justifiably award-winning examination of the regimental system, emphasizing its constant reinvention and the entirely false traditional image of localized county recruitment, but also rejecting criticism of the supposedly resulting parochial military culture unsuited to major war fighting.
Find this resource:
Grove, Eric. The Royal Navy since 1815. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though based entirely on secondary sources, Grove’s survey following the story of the navy from the coming of sea power to the aftermath of the Falklands War is a useful introduction.
Find this resource:
Hill, J. R., and Bryan Ranft, eds. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The naval equivalent to Chandler and Beckett 1994, this was also updated in a revised paperback edition in 2002 but retained its illustrations. Those chapters written by former naval officers among the fourteen essays included in the volume are not as convincing as those authored by academic historians.
Find this resource:
Rodger, N. A. M. The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815. London: Allen Lane, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Rodger’s second volume combines administrative, social, and operational history, showing the significance of management, money, and victualling to the securing and maintenance of command of the sea. He also maintains that the integration of the navy into national life was essentially a product of the domestic fear of Catholicism.
Find this resource:
Spiers, Edward. The Army and Society, 1815–1914. London: Longman, 1980.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In something of a pioneering study at the time, Spiers combines chronological and thematic approaches to such aspects as the officer corps, the rank and file, and military reform though the work would have benefited from conventional introductory and concluding sections.
Find this resource:
Strachan, Hew. The Politics of the British Army. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The Lees Knowles Lectures for 1995 demonstrate that, far from being apolitical and politically subordinate as usually portrayed, the army and its high command adeptly played politics institutionally as well as personally both to its detriment and, occasionally, to the national benefit.
Find this resource:
Journals and Societies
Alongside the standard academic journals dealing with military and naval history generally such as Journal of Military History, War and Society, and War in History, there are some specialized journals devoted to the British armed forces. These are primarily the well-established Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (SAHR), and Mariner’s Mirror. In addition, however, there are three societies that publish scholarly editions of historical documents, namely the Army Records Society, the Navy Records Society, and the RAF Historical Society.
Army Records Society.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Founded in 1985, the Society publishes an annual volume of historical documents.
Find this resource:
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Founded in 1921, the journal of the SAHR has become increasingly more academic since the late 1990s, with fewer of the once prevalent articles on uniforms, badges, and buttons.
Find this resource:
Mariner’s Mirror.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Founded in 1911, the journal of the Society for Nautical Research has tended to feature rather shorter articles than would be found in other academic journals, but its range is impressive.
Find this resource:
Navy Records Society.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Founded in 1893, the Society publishes an annual volume of historical documents.
Find this resource:
RAF Historical Society.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Founded in 1986, the Society’s occasional journal is made available online through the RAF Museum.
Find this resource:
Themes
There are certain continuities across periods that have attracted scholarly interest. The British Way in Warfare reflects a continuing debate over the strategic options available to policymakers since the 18th century. Similarly, the Celtic Factor illustrates the contrasting military cultures of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales within the British military tradition as a whole, while Auxiliary Forces explores scholarly interest in an “amateur military tradition.” Women and the Armed Forces and Cultural Images both demonstrate how new scholarly imperatives have entered the historiography.
The British Way in Warfare
In the 1930s the military theorist Basil Liddell Hart revived the concept, first advocated by Sir Julian Corbett before the Great War, that British maritime power had enabled Britain to avoid manpower-costly continental entanglements, bankrolling continental allies to undertake the main fighting on land, while seizing enemy colonies to augment her own resources. This idea of a “British Way in Warfare” became embedded in the historiography but, in reality, it had only ever applied to a brief period in the early 18th century when Britain had not been able to escape a continental commitment. Howard 1972 was more of a statement of the realities than a direct critique of the concept, while––in what at the time of publication, was a pioneering re-evaluation of the seemingly forgotten significance of sea power—Kennedy 1976 offered a different “mixed paradigm” of a combination of army, a strong navy, and continental allies over the longer period, contrasting the exclusively sea power-based concepts of the American theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan in the 1890s with the more “continentalist” approach of the strategic geographer Sir Halford Mackinder immediately prior to the Great War. Building on other work by Howard, Strachan 1983 entirely rejected the concept of the British “way in warfare.” In a full-length study of British defense since 1688, French 1990 suggested British policymakers never consistently preferred isolation to continental engagement, nor consistently adopted a “British way in warfare” or the mixed paradigm.
French, David. The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000. London: Allen & Unwin, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Taking the story from 1688 to the Nott defense review of the early 1980s and the subsequent Falklands War, the strength of French’s study is the careful analysis of the patterns and distribution of defense spending.
Find this resource:
Howard, Michael. The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of Two World Wars. London: Temple Smith, 1972.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a short but lucid study, Howard points out the continuing struggle between imperial and European commitments that bedeviled the formulation of a coherent defense policy between 1900 and 1942 culminating in the fall of Singapore.
Find this resource:
Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. London: Allen Lane, 1976.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Contrasting the theories of Mahan and Mackinder, Kennedy offers a geopolitical explanation for the rise and fall of British sea power. As well as a critique of the Mahanian interpretation of sea power, Kennedy contributes obliquely to the debate on the British way in warfare.
Find this resource:
Strachan, Hew. “The British Way in Warfare Revisited.” Historical Journal 26 (1983): 447–461.
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00024183Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Strachan rejects Liddell Hart’s explanation of British naval and military history, drawing attention to its historical selectivity, but acknowledging its potency as a theory.
Find this resource:
The Celtic Factor
Generally, what might be termed the Celtic factor has become an increasing area for academic exploration. If the Glorious Revolution began the process of establishing a British national identity, something to which the wars of the 18th century then substantially contributed, there remained a sense in which army, if not navy, was the amalgam of differing military traditions. The army was highly dependent upon Irish recruitment until the mid-19th century, while the image of the Scottish highland warrior was one that continued to appeal to the British public (and, it should also be said, Hollywood) well into the 20th century. For Scots after 1745, and for the Irish generally, military service provided not only significant employment opportunities but also advancement, albeit in the imperial cause, that enhanced a national sense of consciousness separate from that of England. In the case of Ireland, however, there was always the potential for dissent and a challenge to British authority. The edited compilation of Bartlett and Jeffery 1996 is a consistently excellent study of the Irish military tradition from the medieval to the present. Strachan 2006 provides thoughts on the Scottish military tradition, while Allan and Carswell 2004 presents a thematic study of the Scottish experience. McKillop 2001 traces the origins of recruitment in the Highlands as a feature of the development of the empire and the fiscal-military state. Based upon contemporary soldiers’ letters reproduced in the provincial press, Spiers 2006 sees the soldier as the embodiment of Scottish national identity. Though the emphasis is upon morale and discipline, Bowman 2003 is an example of the increasing attention being devoted to Irish recruitment in the Great War. Muenger 1991 highlights an alternative aspect of the relationship between army and society in Ireland, namely its use in aid of the civil power.
Allan, Stuart, and Allan Carswell. The Thin Red Line: War, Empire and Visions of Scotland. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based upon an exhibition at Edinburgh’s National War Museum, Allan and Carswell provide a well-illustrated thematic survey of how military service has shaped the image of the Scottish soldier and how soldiers have seen themselves, with an emphasis upon the need for Scots to exploit employment opportunities.
Find this resource:
Bartlett, Thomas, and Keith Jeffery, eds. A Military History of Ireland. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive and up-to-date history of what is identified as a distinctive Irish military tradition with considerable emphasis upon issues of identity and memory, integrating the military narrative within the wider context of Irish history. Consciously, there is limited reference to the separate paramilitary tradition.
Find this resource:
Bowman, Timothy. Irish Regiments in the Great War: Discipline and Morale. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A contribution to the debate on the nature of military discipline and morale, as well as a study of the potential difficulties arising from recruiting elements in 1914 from the Ulster Volunteer Force and the rival nationalist Irish Volunteers. Bowman shows that there was little support for Sinn Fein.
Find this resource:
McKillop, Andrew. More Fruitful Than the Soil: Army, Empire and the Scottish Highlands, 1715–1815. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
McKillop sees the increasing recruitment of Highlanders as a new form of commercial activity involving government, landlords, and tenantry, which had a dramatic socioeconomic impact on tenurial structures.
Find this resource:
Muenger, Elizabeth. The British Military Dilemma in Ireland: Occupation Politics, 1886–1914. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though not convincing in her coverage of the Curragh Incident of 1914, Muenger does break new ground in her study of the abortive proposal for an Irish National Reserve in 1910 and has some useful detail on relations between army and police.
Find this resource:
Spiers, Edward. The Scottish Soldier and Empire, 1854–1902. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Spiers is interested in the contrast between how the Scottish soldier was presented in popular culture and how the soldiers themselves viewed the implications of military service. He finds that imperialism had a broad appeal in Scotland.
Find this resource:
Strachan, Hew. “Scotland’s Military Identity.” Scottish Historical Review 85, no. 220 (2006): 311–332.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A relatively brief but important overview of how the warrior image of the Highlander preserved Scottish military identity after 1707, as evinced by the popular campaigns to preserve Scottish regiments amid 20th-century amalgamations.
Find this resource:
Auxiliary Forces
Given the small size of the standing army in peacetime, and its comparative invisibility through overseas service, it is arguable that the real link between army and society in Britain lies in the auxiliary military forces raised as a defense against both foreign invasion and domestic disorder. Organized on a systematic basis since the mid-16th century, and actually predating the existence of the standing army, the auxiliaries often bore the brunt of popular anti-militarism. At the same time, however, there was a certain interdependence between auxiliaries and society, not least in terms of the relationship between the auxiliary and his employer, these being citizen soldiers only temporarily in uniform. The militia as an institution of the state, and one raised by compulsory ballot between 1757 and 1831, however, was subtly different from the purely volunteer forces such as the mounted yeomanry. Militia, Yeomanry, Volunteers, Territorials, and wartime creations such as the Home Guard have attracted growing academic interest. Beckett 1991 is a general overview, while Western 1965 is the work of one of the first professional historians to examine the militia as an institution. McCormack 2007 is an example of a new general historical interest in concepts of gender and masculinity, in this case applied to the militia. Cookson 1997 and Gee 2003 both focus on the first great flowering of the volunteer movement during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Dennis 1987 and Mitchinson 2008 examine the transformation of the auxiliary forces into the Territorial Force (later the Territorial Army). Mackenzie 1995 seeks to relate the Home Guard of the Second World War to earlier creations, and to revise its “Dad’s Army” image as epitomized by the popular BBC television comedy series of the same name from the 1960s and 1970s.
Beckett, Ian F. W. The Amateur Military Tradition, 1558–1945. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Beckett attempts to establish the idea of “an amateur military tradition” as a distinct feature of British military history, providing a thematic framework for the continuities detected in terms of the purposes served by auxiliary forces and of the relationship between auxiliary forces and county and local communities.
Find this resource:
Cookson, J. E. The British Armed Nation, 1793–1815. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Cookson emphasizes the degree of self-mobilization and self-organization upon which the British state depended, but also highlights wide regional variations in response to the invasion threat. Patriotism is characterized as opportunistic, interested and conditional, especially among the working class and the emerging urban middle-class elite.
Find this resource:
Dennis, Peter. The Territorial Army, 1906–1940. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer for Royal Historical Society, 1987.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Dennis focuses on the continuing suspicion and doubt concerning the amateur soldier’s military effectiveness voiced by regulars. The weakness is the failure to deal adequately with the Great War experience that then colored the interwar relationship.
Find this resource:
Gee, Austin. The British Volunteer Movement, 1794–1814. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examining yeomanry as well as volunteers, Gee builds on Cookson by finding the auxiliaries firmly rooted in local communities, and further stimulating localism and constitutionalism, while affording new political opportunities for respectable elements of the urban population.
Find this resource:
Mackenzie, S. P. The Home Guard: A Military and Political History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In emphasizing military and political aspects, Mackenzie demonstrates that the Home Guard’s influential representatives wielded greater political muscle than previous auxiliaries. More attention to social context would have added to his discussion of the political left’s vision of the force as a people’s militia and instrument of democratic reconstruction.
Find this resource:
McCormack, Matthew. “The New Militia: War, Politics and Gender in 1750s Britain.” Gender and History 19, no. 3 (2007): 483–500.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a strikingly different approach derived from growing attention to issues of masculinity and gender, McCormack argues that the debate on militia reform was fundamentally gendered as part of a wider cultural crisis stimulating a desire for national regeneration after the early setbacks of the Seven Years’ War.
Find this resource:
Mitchinson, K. W. England’s Last Hope: The Territorial Force, 1908–14. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Mitchinson’s detailed study of the work of County Territorial Associations fills a gap in the understanding of their difficulties and heavy administrative workload in areas such as recruitment, training, equipment, finance, and mobilization amid the general indifference of the War Office.
Find this resource:
Western, J. R. The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue, 1660–1802. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Western is still essential to the comprehension of the general development and administrative complexities of the militia though, inevitably, this work is in need of updating in the light of more recent research.
Find this resource:
Cultural Images
Cultural approaches to military and naval history have become increasingly important. This is despite the fact that culturally specific understanding of the impact of war upon states, societies, institutions, and individuals may be problematic with respect to the more distant historical periods. The cultural approach can be equally diverse, ranging from the employment of cultural explanations for military conduct––the concept of strategic culture as, for example, in the idea of the “British Way in Warfare”––to the organizational culture of the military, and to attitudes to war and its manifestations as epitomized in popular culture. The latter aspect is also central to the application of such an approach to issues of identity and memory. Harrington 1993, McNairn 1997, and Hoock 2010 all use artistic representation as the basis for examining attitudes towards war, empire, and the armed forces in Britain; McNairn 1997 and Hoock 2010 concentrate on that period of the mid-18th to the early 19th century identified with the growth of a British national identity. Yarrington 1988 views public monuments to military and naval heroes as a means of expressing emerging national and civic pride, while Jenks 2006 examines the projection of the popular image of the Royal Navy in a wide range of cultural artifacts. Mackenzie 2001 and Francis 2008 demonstrate how the cinema equally provided a new means by which martial images penetrated the popular consciousness.
Francis, Martin. The Flyer: British Culture and the RAF, 1939–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
From a number of recent works on the wartime image of the RAF, Francis stands out as a sophisticated analysis of the evolution of a national myth in literary and cinematic form, but one that also has particular resonance for the historical debate on masculinity.
Find this resource:
Harrington, Peter. British Artists and War: The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints, 1700–1914. London: Greenhill, 1993.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A beautifully illustrated volume primarily intended as a reference work to British war art, but with penetrating analysis of the changing face of war from the projection of the military commander as hero to the emergence of the ordinary soldier as the heroic focus in the later Victorian period.
Find this resource:
Hoock, Holger. Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War and the Arts in the British World, 1750–1850. London: Profile, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Ranging widely over the visual arts from the Seven Years’ War to the Great Exhibition, Hoock explores the symbolism of such varied means of establishing imperial identity as the development of St. Paul’s Cathedral as a national pantheon and the collection of war trophies.
Find this resource:
Jenks, Timothy. Naval Engagements: Patriotism, Cultural Politics and the Royal Navy, 1793–1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Jenks suggests naval symbolism as central to wartime Georgian political culture, heroic admirals and their victories being invested with political capital and patriotic meaning. Jenks, however, has a tendency to view the Georgian navy from an entirely modern perspective that leads him into errors.
Find this resource:
Mackenzie, S. P. British War Films, 1939–45: The Cinema and the Services. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a crowded field of wartime cinema studies, Mackenzie focuses not only on officially produced propaganda films but also, pace the title, postwar film. He shows how the services came to terms with the needs of filmmakers, and how filmmakers circumvented official disapproval to present the reality of service life.
Find this resource:
McNairn, Alan. Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The archetypical military hero of the mid-18th century, Wolfe became in death the embodiment of martial and personal virtues he had conspicuously lacked in life. McNairn covers literary and visual work from high art to sculpture, ceramics, and exceedingly bad poetry.
Find this resource:
Yarrington, Alison. The Commemoration of the Hero, 1800–1864. New York: Garland, 1988.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A reproduction of a postdoctoral thesis, with all the visual disadvantages of typescript that that implies, Yarrington is still worth reading as an exploration of the interaction of national and local patronage in monuments to such leading figures as the Duke of York, Nelson, and Wellington.
Find this resource:
Women and the Armed Forces
Women’s history has had an increasing impact on the study of war, and while much of the attention has been on women’s contribution to a wider war effort and the resulting impact on their status, the participation of women within the armed forces has also been investigated, albeit that the practice of violence itself has been largely viewed as gendered. The more traditional women’s role as “camp followers” is one examined in the context of the army and of the navy respectively by Trustram 1984 and Lincoln 2007. Developing from the multitude of tasks performed by camp followers, nursing, too, has been a traditional role since at least the 18th century, its more formalized organization from the mid-19th century being the subject of Summers 1988. Noakes 2006, however, provides an overview of the greater overtly military role played by women in the world wars. Grayzel 1997 explores aspects of women’s involvement in the Great War, while De Groot 1997 examines the role of women in mixed wartime military units. Summerfield and Peniston-Bird 2007 raises the generally “hidden” contribution of women to the Home Guard.
De Groot, Gerard. “I Love the Scent of Cordite in Your Hair: Gender Dynamics in Mixed Anti-Aircraft Batteries during the Second World War.” History 82 (1997): 73–92.
DOI: 10.1111/1468-229X.00028Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
De Groot generally offers a conservative interpretation of social history and concludes that women’s deployment to anti-aircraft units was not liberating in impact. To avoid blurring distinctions between combatant and noncombatant roles, women were not allowed to load or fire the guns, but could plot and aim at targets.
Find this resource:
Grayzel, Susan. “The Outward and Visible Sign of Her Patriotism: Women, Uniform, and National Service during the First World War.” Twentieth Century British History 8 (1997): 145–164.
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/8.2.145Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Women’s exemption from military service was one argument used by those opposing the prewar extension of the suffrage. Grayzel suggests that, paradoxically, while women’s wartime donning of uniform was seen as a positive patriotic role, it still could not guarantee postwar equality.
Find this resource:
Lincoln, Margarette. Naval Wives and Mistresses. London: National Maritime Museum, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In examining the role of the women left behind when husbands and lovers were at sea, Lincoln suggests that women of all classes were exceeding social expectations and shouldering burdens in maintaining family life more normally the preserve of male heads of household.
Find this resource:
Noakes, Lucy. Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907–48. London: Routledge, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Writing from the feminist perspective, Noakes sees the employment of women as constantly problematic for the military authorities, challenging and destabilizing traditional notions of gender roles, and forcing them to reconcile military necessity with the preservation of male identity.
Find this resource:
Summerfield, Penny, and Corinna Peniston-Bird. Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Ostensibly intended to reveal the gendered nature of the cultural memory and legacy of the Home Guard, Summerfield and Peniston-Bird also usefully discuss the question of the contrast between official rhetoric and contemporary left-wing opinion as to the social and political purpose of the “people’s militia.”
Find this resource:
Summers, Anne. Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, 1854–1914. London: Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1988.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Looks at the evolution of military nursing from the ladylike concept of the Crimean War to the more practical attitude by the end of the 19th century, albeit that the former never quite disappeared. She points to mutual incomprehension between voluntary nursing organizations and women attracted to the suffrage movement.
Find this resource:
Trustram, Myna. Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Looking at ordinary soldiers rather than officers, Trustram explores the lives of women who existed on the fringes of the regimental community as family, prostitutes, or workers. The controversies of the Contagious Diseases Act intended to control military prostitution are a particular focus.
Find this resource:
Chronological Periods
Having examined some wider themes, it is appropriate to turn to work on specific periods. The relative weight accorded to them reflects the historiography. Thus, there has been relatively little scholarly interest on the period between 1689 and 1702 compared to the major interest generated by the First World War. Even the Second World War has been eclipsed thus far by the Great War in terms of scholarly as opposed to popular accounts. Inevitably, since the RAF is a 20th-century development, the historiography is also skewed generally toward the army and the Royal Navy.
Armed Forces and the Early Modern State, 1689–1702
In the early modern period, the debate on the nature of the “military revolution” has been a particularly lively one. It was initially suggested that the introduction of effective musketry around 1560 paved the way for a century of change, stimulating the growth of armed forces and the administrative machinery required to maintain them. The time frame was then pushed back to 1450 by reference to the development of artillery fortifications, while it was argued subsequently that the growth of armed forces took place only after 1660 and was driven not by technological change but sociopolitical developments linked to the emergence of royal absolutism. Medievalists then suggested that far from a revolution, military and naval changes represented a series of points of accelerated change building upon much earlier developments. The debate, however, has widened well beyond tactical, technological, and organizational issues into one of growing sophistication concerning the complexity of the relationship between warfare, the rise and formation of the state, and the instruments of state power. This has been applied not only to the concept of an emerging “fiscal-military state” underpinning Britain’s development as a great power in the 18th and early 19th centuries, but also to the fashioning thereby of a new British national identity. Thus, while Childs 1980, Childs 1987 and Ehrman 1953, are more conventional histories of the early development of standing armed forces, Braddick 2000 and Wheeler 1999 are more fully focused on the evolving debate and are critical of Brewer 1990. Both Braddick and Wheeler, therefore, need to be read in the context of Brewer’s work, which first established the concept of a British fiscal-military state, by which war-driven policies had a profound and lasting impact on the business and activities of the state. Manning 2006 draws together the threads in relating the growth of military professionalism to the military and financial revolutions.
Braddick, Michael. State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511612527Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Braddick finds some evidence of a military revolution in England prior to 1689, tracing some political and financial changes back to the 1640s and 1650s, but is cautious with regard to direct continuities.
Find this resource:
Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Brewer contends that England was not a participant in a military revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, significant changes leading toward a fiscal-military state being an unintended consequence of involvement in continental warfare after 1689.
Find this resource:
Childs, John. The Army, James II and the Glorious Revolution. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1980.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Following on from his earlier study of the Restoration Army, Childs assesses James II’s attempt to refashion the army, suggesting an emphasis upon loyalty and professionalism would have rendered it a pliable instrument of absolutism but for the rebellion of a few key military conspirators in 1688.
Find this resource:
Childs, John. The British Army of William III, 1689–1702. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Childs demonstrates the civil-military tensions arising from participation in continental warfare, William III’s international ambitions confronting English politicians, and a public unprepared for the demands of a large standing army, and anxious to establish effective constitutional control over a potentially dangerous institution.
Find this resource:
Ehrman, John. The Navy in the War of William III, 1689–97: Its State and Direction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1953.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While dated in some respects, Ehrman’s study is characterized by a thorough understanding of the limitations of contemporary nautical technology in the age of sail, dependent upon the vagaries of wind, tide, and weather, and the difficulties of maintaining a fleet at sea.
Find this resource:
Manning, Roger. An Apprenticeship in Arms: the Origins of the British Army, 1585–1702. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199261499.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Manning sees the exposure of British soldiers to evolving continental military practice as crucial to the development of a standing army in the late 17th century and to a new relationship between crown and landed aristocracy, the army’s officer corps becoming in the process British rather than purely English.
Find this resource:
Wheeler, James Scott. The Making of a World Power: War and the Military Revolution in Seventeenth Century England. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Wheeler suggests that crucial military, administrative, and financial changes were evident in the English military and naval conduct of the Anglo-Dutch conflicts prior to 1689.
Find this resource:
Army, State, and Society, 1702–1793
The army was as much a partner as the navy in the expansion of British global influence, but it was slow to adapt to overseas campaigning and politicians, and the public displayed scant interest in the conditions of service life. Indeed, the pattern of wartime expansion and immediate postwar reduction reflected continuing antipathy toward the standing army, something also particularly experienced by soldiers in their frequent domestic role in aid of the civil power. Yet, ultimately, the army’s role in securing victories in the Seven Years’ War rescued its public esteem to the extent that it was able to survive the shock of defeat in North America between 1775 and 1783. Hayter 1978 and Houlding 1981 both stress that, to its detriment, the army was seen as much as a guardian of civil order as an instrument of foreign policy. Scouller 1960 and Guy 1984 examine differing aspects of military administration. While Savory 1966 presents a traditional view of campaigning in the Seven Years’ War, Conway 2006 provides an altogether modern study of issues of centrality and locality in the conduct of war between 1739 and 1763.
Conway, Stephen. War, State and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253753.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Conway suggests that the partnership of government and private interests was fundamental to British success in the Seven Years’ War, a conflict in which he sees evidence of an emerging “Britishness,” albeit one different from that detected by historians for the period of the late 18th century.
Find this resource:
Guy, Alan. Economy and Discipline: Officership and Administration in the British Army, 1714–63. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Guy is an indispensable guide to the system by which many infantry and cavalry commissions were purchased, and in which military and especially regimental service took on a proprietary aspect, leading to frequent misappropriation of public funds and an often-poisonous relationship among officers.
Find this resource:
Hayter, Tony. The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England. London: Macmillan, 1978.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Using the army to keep domestic order in an unruly society raised legal, constitutional, and administrative problems, as well as practical difficulties given the often-dispersed nature of the army in a state as yet lacking in communications infrastructure. Hayter concludes the army performed remarkably well in the circumstances.
Find this resource:
Houlding, John. Fit for Service: The Training of the British Army, 1715–1795. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a pioneering study, Houlding suggests that dispersal in peacetime garrisons, manpower shortages, and aid to the civil power deprived the army of time and opportunity to undertake serious military training. Under the exigencies of war, training improved but peacetime inadequacies were costly in terms of blood and treasure.
Find this resource:
Savory, Sir Reginald. His Britannic Majesty’s Army in Germany during the Seven Years’ War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A very substantial study of the British troops sent to campaign in Europe under the successive command of the Duke of Cumberland and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, but a somewhat old-fashioned operational narrative.
Find this resource:
Scouller, R. E. The Armies of Queen Anne. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A straightforward and conventional but still useful and detailed study of army administration, which also covers recruitment, including the relatively short-lived use of impressments.
Find this resource:
Navy, State and Society, 1702–1793
The Georgian navy was the largest single organization in the western world, its dockyards ostensibly at the forefront of emerging industrial processes. In reality, British ship design was problematic, and naval administration often left much to be desired. Though better appreciated and financed than the army, the navy still encountered chronic manning problems. Compared to its continental rivals, however, the Royal Navy was able to keep more ships at sea for far longer, the constant sea service of officers and crews honing superior fighting skills and seamanship. Baugh 1965 and Morriss 2004 complement each other in addressing administrative problems. Buchet 1999 reveals that, in certain areas, there could be a highly sophisticated understanding of economic issues while Wilkinson 2004 draws attention to the crucial issue of timber decay. Rodger 1986 does not see the seaman apart from British society as a whole, while Land 2009 seeks to further integrate the seaman into contemporary recognition of an emerging British national identity, at the same time taking an opposing view of conditions ashore and afloat.
Baugh, D. British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides a detailed study of naval administration in the 18th century though the emphasis is upon the years 1739–1748 rather than the Walpole years. Unlike the army, the navy was not neglected and functioned well, despite corruption in the dockyards and the perennial manning problems exacerbated by hostility to impressment.
Find this resource:
Buchet, Christian. Marine, economie et société : un exemple d’interaction: l’avitaillement de la Royal Navy durant la guerre de sept ans. Paris: Champion, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Buchet’s groundbreaking study of the Victualling Board shows that its tendering procedures were intended to reconcile a highly competitive market, in which wholesale prices could be driven down to a minimum, with large firms able to supply the large quantities required at high quality, and on credit.
Find this resource:
Land, Isaac. War, Nationalism and the British Sailor, 1750–1850. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
DOI: 10.1057/9780230101067Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In exploring the development of the public image of the sailor, Land eschews Rodger’s manuscript archives for more literary and visual sources, and memoirs. He suggests seamen played a role in fashioning a new more positive image for themselves, but this did not result in better conditions.
Find this resource:
Morriss, Roger. Naval Power and British Culture, 1760–1850: Public Trust and Government Ideology. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Morriss is concerned with institutional culture within the navy’s administrative structure, focusing on such individuals as clerks in the Navy Office and the Victualling Office as a means of establishing contemporary perceptions of bureaucratic efficiency.
Find this resource:
Rodger, N. A. M. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. London: Collins, 1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A now classic revisionist social study of the navy, with special emphasis on the period of the Seven Years’ War that recast the traditional image of a brutalized life afloat, suggesting instead that the Georgian seaman was not far different from the society from which he was recruited.
Find this resource:
Wilkinson, Clive. The British Navy and the State in the Eighteenth Century. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Wilkinson emphasizes the interaction of what he terms the “cycles” of timber decay inherent in naval construction with sudden and unexpected demands for operational readiness. Applied to the period between 1763 and 1778, this work demonstrates that the Earl of Sandwich was unfairly criticized for naval unpreparedness in 1775.
Find this resource:
The Americas, 1689–1815
India tends to be regarded as the “jewel” in the imperial crown but, of course, the Americas, and especially the sugar islands of the Caribbean, were the “hub” of empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. Indeed, the sugar islands retained their economic significance even after the loss of the North American colonies, sugar being one of the principal engines of rapid British economic development. Campaigning in the New World, however, at a distance of some four thousand miles from the British Isles presented both army and navy with severe challenges in terms of supply as well as adaptation to terrain and climate: diseases such as yellow fever and malaria were to cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of seamen and soldiers. The American War of Independence was also to be the only great power conflict that Britain lost. Anderson 2000 provides an overview of the significant victories of the Seven Years’ War, which Brumwell 2002 shows to be a result of the army’s ability to adapt to local conditions. The difficulties of those local conditions for the navy and for amphibious operations in the Caribbean are covered by Crewe 1993 and Harding 1991. The unexpected political consequences of victory are traced by Shy 1965, leading to a conflict that Conway 2000 shows to have had a significant impact on Britain. That the war for the colonies was lost, however, was not due solely to the failings of the army, which, as Spring 2008 demonstrates, continued to adapt. As Duffy 1987 reveals, familiar problems of disease in the Caribbean came back to haunt army and navy operations in the 1790s.
Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of the Empire in British North America, 1754–66. London: Faber & Faber, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A substantial and comprehensive overview of the culminating conflict in the long struggle with France for control of North America, which led in turn to increased demands from the home authorities that American colonists should bear more of the cost of their own defense.
Find this resource:
Brumwell, Stephen. Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755–1763. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A major revisionist account of the transformation of the army in America into a highly flexible and innovative fighting force. Brumwell, indeed, suggests that an unintended ironic consequence of successful adaptation was to provide a blueprint for the Continental Army that ultimately triumphed over the British.
Find this resource:
Conway, Stephen. The British Isles and the War of American Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Conway argues that wartime military and naval mobilization was greater than usually supposed and, though a divisive conflict, invasion fears strengthened the sense of “Britishness.” Yet mobilization also strengthened localism in Britain so that it actually negated national power to some extent.
Find this resource:
Crewe, Duncan. Yellow Jack and the Worm: British Naval Administration in the West Indies, 1739–1748. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The publishers have done Crewe a disservice in choosing a typescript rather than a proper typeface. This is a pity in that it detracts from a consistently interesting study of the navy’s efforts to combat yellow fever among its crews, and the teredo navalis worm in its ships’ hulls.
Find this resource:
Duffy, Michael. Soldiers, Sugar, and Seapower: The British Expeditions to the West Indies and the War against Revolutionary France. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Rejecting previous criticism of Britain’s Caribbean strategy as an unnecessary sideshow, Duffy maintains that the wastage of some ninety-seven thousand seamen and soldiers from death, disease, and discharge in the 1790s was merited by the gains in terms of trade and sea power.
Find this resource:
Harding, Richard. Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies, 1740–1742. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Harding suggests that the failed attempt to seize Cartagena was a better-planned expedition than traditionally supposed, but doomed by limited resources. He also lays more blame at the feet of Admiral Vernon than the usual culprit, Major General Thomas Wentworth.
Find this resource:
Shy, John. Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While outdated in some respects, Shy remains a classic account of a garrison army caught between growing colonial aspirations on the one hand and a vacillating military policy directed from London on the other.
Find this resource:
Spring, Matthew. With Zeal and with Bayonets Only: The British Army on Campaign in North America, 1775–1783. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An important revisionist study of British operational and, especially, battlefield tactical methods demonstrating the increasingly effective reliance upon looser formations suited to the terrain, and to shock action.
Find this resource:
Armed Forces and the Nation, 1793–1815
The great struggle with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France cemented British supremacy at sea and global preeminence. This did not appear likely after initial setbacks, particularly in terms of operations in Flanders, and the collapse of successive allied coalitions. Naval power, however, ensured British survival in the face of invasion threats. Much needed military reforms also ultimately enabled the army, supported by the navy, to fight an effective campaign in the Spanish peninsula. Emsley 1979 is a useful guide to the overall war effort and its impact, while Hall 1991 and Muir 1996 discuss the fashioning of an effective strategy. Glover 1963 and Gates 1987 discuss the military reforms that, as shown by Mackesy 1995, first bore fruit in Egypt. Hall 2004 illuminates a lesser-known aspect of sea power, while Lambert 2004 is an up-to-date guide to the outstanding naval hero of the wars.
Emsley, Clive. British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the key texts in the then new approach to military history, Emsley helped establish the parameters for the study of the impact of war upon society, and how conflict shaped the political and socioeconomic response to unprecedented challenges.
Find this resource:
Gates, David. The British Light Infantry Arm, c. 1790–1815: Its Creation, Training and Operational Role. London: Batsford, 1987.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Light infantry and, particularly, riflemen have a particular place in the British cultural memory of the Peninsular War. Gates sets British developments in their wider European context, as well as discussing their battlefield impact.
Find this resource:
Glover, Richard. Peninsular Preparation: The Reform of the British Army, 1795–1809. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
From the early disasters of the early campaign in Flanders came significant reforms, largely inspired by the Duke of York, the very man whose leadership there had come under sustained criticism. Glover, however, is also useful on home defense measures.
Find this resource:
Hall, Christopher. British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 1803–15. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Soundly based on careful analysis of the financial, manpower, and other resources available, Hall’s study evaluates the efforts of successive ministries to develop a coherent response to Napoleonic domination of the continent in the light of often-limited strategic options.
Find this resource:
Hall, Christopher. Wellington’s Navy: Sea Power and the Peninsular War, 1807–1814. London: Chatham, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Hall demonstrates that Wellington’s campaigns could not have succeeded without the navy’s ability to supply the British army in the field, to contribute the heavy guns required for siege warfare, and to divert French resources by attacking coastal targets.
Find this resource:
Lambert, Andrew. Nelson: Britannia’s God of War. London: Faber & Faber, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Books on Nelson represent almost a publishing industry in its own right, and the approach to the bicentenary of Trafalgar produced yet more titles. A distinguished naval historian, Lambert defends Nelson’s reputation, both past and present, with relish.
Find this resource:
Mackesy, Piers. British Victory in Egypt, 1801: The End of Napoleon’s Conquest. London: Routledge, 1995.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203201770Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Mackesy has produced a number of important studies of British strategy but here shows that the foundations of military reform had progressed sufficiently to revive the army’s reputation though trained light infantry was still lacking.
Find this resource:
Muir, Rory. Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807–15. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While not neglecting the wider context, not least economic subsidies to allies, Muir puts Wellington’s campaigns center stage, arguing that his victories shattered the myth of French battlefield invincibility irrespective of whether the war in the Spanish peninsula truly diverted French troops from the invasion of Russia.
Find this resource:
Technological Challenges, 1815–1880
Following British victory in 1815, it could be argued that British supremacy went effectively unchallenged for a century, to the extent that it was only the advent of the First World War that persuaded Britons that “The Great War” no longer meant the great struggle against Napoleon. In the whole period between 1815 and 1914, indeed, Britain was engaged in only one European war, namely that against Russia between 1854 and 1856. Even that relatively limited challenge, however, proved a severe shock, for the armed forces had been comparatively slow to come to terms with the relentless pace of technological change. As Strachan 1984 and Strachan 1985 show, there had been some military reforms but, not for the first time in its history, the army was caught at a moment of transition in 1854 and the Crimea was not the limited colonial conflict for which the supporting services were prepared. Partridge 1989 demonstrates that rail and steam technology could both assist as well as hamper home defense in the face of renewed fears of French invasion. Hamilton 1993 provides the wider context of the French naval threat, while Lambert 1984 suggests that the navy was generally able to adapt to technological change. Indeed, in a war in which new naval as well as military technologies were displayed, Lambert 1991 maintains that naval rather than military power was decisive in the war against Russia. Fuller 2008 suggests that US ironclad development was motivated partly by fear of the Royal Navy, while Allen 2008 shows that technology posed significant problems for command and control.
Allen, Matthew. “The Deployment of Untried Technology: British Naval Tactics in the Ironclad Era.” War in History 15 (2008): 269–293.
DOI: 10.1177/0968344508091324Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While not minimizing the difficulties, as suggested by the death of Admiral Sir Gorge Tryon in a particularly well-known collision, Allen challenges the prevailing idea of scholars such as Andrew Gordon that the rigidity of command and control systems in the Royal Navy could not be adapted to technological developments.
Find this resource:
Fuller, Howard J. Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power. New York: Praeger, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While primarily interested in the US Navy, Fuller shows that the Union’s development of ironclad technology in the American Civil War had as much to do with the perceived future threat from the Royal Navy on the high seas, as the immediate need to defeat the Southern Confederacy.
Find this resource:
Hamilton, C. I. Anglo-French Naval Rivalry, 1840–1870. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though allies in the Crimea, the British and French were otherwise rivals, not least at sea. Hamilton is a comparative study of the two navies covering such issues as manning, administration, dockyards and ship construction, and operational and tactical methods.
Find this resource:
Lambert, Andrew. Battleships in Transition: The Creation of the Steam Battlefleet, 1815–1860. London: Conway Maritime, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A well-illustrated study of the world’s most powerful sailing fleet, on the cusp of change from sail to steam and screw, and from wooden to iron hulls. Lambert suggests that wooden hulls were not doomed by the advent of explosive shells, but from the molten iron shells.
Find this resource:
Lambert, Andrew. The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia, 1853–56. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though popularly known as the Crimean War, the conflict with Russia continued even after Sebastopol fell to the allies in September 1855, and Lambert makes a strong case for regarding British and French naval operations in the Baltic as decisive in forcing the tsar to the negotiating table.
Find this resource:
Partridge, Michael. Military Planning for the Defense of the United Kingdom, 1814–1870. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Given the challenge apparently presented to British naval supremacy by the advent of steam power that could “bridge the Channel,” and the reluctance to expand the army, Partridge shows that most reliance was placed upon an equally costly program of fortifications around key coastal ports and installations.
Find this resource:
Strachan, Hew. Wellington’s Legacy: The Reform of the British Army, 1830–54. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Rejecting the traditional image of an army that had simply stagnated from the moment of its victory at Waterloo, Strachan traces the growing reform movement among younger officers despite limited resources amid financial reductions and general public indifference.
Find this resource:
Strachan, Hew. From Waterloo to Balaclava: Tactics, Technology, and the British Army, 1815–1854. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a further challenge to traditional images of the pre-Crimean army, Strachan demonstrates that the wide range of challenges, both from technology and from colonial warfare, generated a lively professional debate on all aspects of military doctrine.
Find this resource:
Army and Empire, 1856–1902
Once a period that attracted little academic attention, the age of high Victorian empire has seen an extraordinary renaissance in interest, stimulated in good part by what amounts almost to a popular British obsession with the Zulu War of 1879. Concentration on the Zulu continues seemingly unabated so far as the popular publishing market is concerned, but the advantage has been to draw academic scholars back to the Victorian army. The pioneering aspect of Bond 1967 has become more apparent over time, while Skelley 1977 was equally groundbreaking in examining the army in Britain. Belich 1986 showed the possibilities of interrogating the sources in new ways, and Gooch 2000 demonstrates the range of enquiry now routinely expected of such studies. Spiers 1992 is an overview of the issues of the period as a whole. Badsey 2008 suggests that the British cavalry learned much from its colonial experiences, while Leeson 2008 challenges revisionist assumptions as to the army’s improvement by the eve of the South African War.
Badsey, Stephen. Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry, 1880–1918. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In an updated revision of his 1982 doctoral thesis, Badsey overturns the conservative image of the British cavalryman, arguing both that the cavalry learned and applied lessons from colonial conflicts, and that its resulting tactical flexibility enabled it to play a greater role on the western front than popularly supposed.
Find this resource:
Belich, James. The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict. Auckland, NZ: Auckland University Press, 1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Belich has been rightly criticized for his poorly supported claims that the Maori “invented” trench warfare, and there are now “post-revisionist” refutations of his revisionist interpretation of the conflict in New Zealand between the 1840s and the 1870s. Nonetheless, it remains a stimulating read.
Find this resource:
Bond, Brian, ed. Victorian Military Campaigns. London: Hutchinson, 1967.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A pioneering collection of essays at a time when there was little academic interest in Victorian colonial warfare. Most of the eight campaigns considered have since been the subject of monographs, but this is still a useful summary.
Find this resource:
Gooch, John, ed. The Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image. Papers presented at the Centennial Conference on the South African War, University of Leeds, 1–3 October 1999. London: Frank Cass, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Coinciding with the war’s centenary, this collection of essays ranges widely over the course and impact of the South African War. It is particularly notable for its emphasis upon the war experience of a variety of different groups including Africans, Afrikaners, and Irish and Scottish soldiers.
Find this resource:
Leeson, D. M. “Playing at War: The British Military Maneuvers of 1898.” War in History 15 (2008): 432–461.
DOI: 10.1177/0968344508095448Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Despite revisionist interpretations of British tactical development, Leeson contends that the annual maneuvers of 1898––the last before the outbreak of war in South Africa––shows continued shortcomings, not least in the performance of Sir Redvers Buller, who would repeat the errors in South Africa.
Find this resource:
Skelley, A. R. The Victorian Army at Home: The Recruitment and Terms and Conditions of the Britsh Regular, 1859–1899. London: Croom Helm, 1977.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
For the Victorian rank and file, Skelley’s book remains an indispensable source for such issues as recruitment and retention, pay and rewards, discipline and crime, health, and educational provision. Its strength lies in the detailed scrutiny of official papers and publications.
Find this resource:
Spiers, Edward. The Late Victorian Army, 1868–1902. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Beginning with the Cardwell reforms, Spiers provides a comprehensive survey of administration, officers, and other ranks, civil-military relations, the army’s role at home and abroad, its public image, and its operational and tactical methods. He concludes with an assessment of its performance in South Africa.
Find this resource:
Edwardian Reforms, 1902–1914
The early defeats of the South African War, coupled with a growing perception that German continental ambitions rather than French and Russian colonial ambitions would be the mostly likely future challenge proved the catalyst for reform though reform, in both army and navy, were intended to ready them for their continuing global role. The greatest change has been characterized as a “managerial revolution” in higher defense organization, with the emergence of the Committee of Imperial Defence while, in the case of the army, it saw the creation of a General Staff as well as the organizational and other reforms effected by R. B. Haldane as Secretary of State for War. The Royal Navy was no less changed, as demonstrated by the introduction of the revolutionary Dreadnought, combining the big gun with oil-burning turbine engines, and at least the contemplation of other technological innovations such as the submarine. Air power, too, made its tentative appearance, Louis Blériot’s flight across the English Channel in 1909 suggesting yet a further future threat to security. Gooch 1974 and French and Holden Reid 2002 are concerned with the establishment of the General Staff. Marder 1961–1978, Lambert 1999, and Sumida 1989 represent an ongoing debate on the nature of the naval changes and legacies associated with Admiral of the Fleet Sir (later Lord) John Fisher as First Sea Lord between 1904 and 1910. Paris 1992 considers the perceived threat from the advent of airpower, while Ash 1999 looks at differing perceptions of how it might be employed in war. Whitmarsh 2007 suggests that the army had acquired a realistic perception of the uses of aviation by 1914.
Ash, Eric. Sir Frederick Sykes and the Air Revolution, 1912–1918. London: Routledge, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Ash considers Sykes rather than Trenchard a more significant figure in the development of British air power, the dispute between the two essentially being over the relative importance of the strategic use of air power and air power deployed in a ground support role.
Find this resource:
French, David, and Brian Holden Reid, eds. The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, c. 1899–1939. London: Franck Cass, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A festschrift in honor of Brian Bond, French and Holden Reid’s edited compilation has more unity than usual in such productions in its twelve essays carrying the story of the General Staff from its intellectual origins to its formative period. There is some emphasis on its relations with the French staff.
Find this resource:
Gooch, John. The Plans of War: The General Staff and British Military Strategy, c. 1900–1916. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed study of the evolution of the General Staff from the deliberations of the Esher Committee to the Great War, with a number of case studies of the resulting strategic planning for war with different potential enemies.
Find this resource:
Lambert, Nicholas. Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Lambert argues that the German threat was not central to the Admiralty’s construction program, capability replacing a universal presence in Fisher’s priorities. Thus, Fisher is portrayed as seeing the development of the battle cruiser as the ultimate aim amid the prewar competition for financial resources within government.
Find this resource:
Marder, Arthur J. From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904–1919. 5 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1961–1978.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Though much challenged by the work of younger scholars such as Lambert and Sumida, Marder’s achievement remains an extraordinary one. Originally given privileged access to archives not then in the public domain, Marder’s work is characterized by the use of a vast amount of primary material.
Find this resource:
Paris, Michael. Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain, 1859–1917. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Paris traces the phenomenon of “air-mindedness” from Victorian science fiction writers to the realities of early aviation, highlighting the public pressure on government to utilize the new technology, and how War Office and Admiralty differently interpreted its uses.
Find this resource:
Sumida, Jon. In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889–1914. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A densely argued book on the fiscal and technological background and consequences of the “dreadnought revolution,” but with a particular emphasis on the competition between the “official” fire control system designed by F. C. Dreyer and that designed by the civilian businessman Arthur Pollen.
Find this resource:
Whitmarsh, Andrew. “British Army Manoeuvers and the Development of Military Aviation.” War in History 14 (2007): 325–346.
DOI: 10.1177/0968344507078378Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Whitmarsh argues that the evidence of the experimentation with aircraft at the annual maneuvers prior to 1914 demonstrates that military commanders had a shrewd understanding of the potential for aerial reconnaissance to supplement its traditional source in the cavalry, and were committed to the development of aviation in consequence.
Find this resource:
The Great War, 1914–1918
Study of the First World War has been one of the fastest growing areas of scholarly enquiry since the 1980s. Initially, arising from the concentration on “war and society,” the focus was on what might be termed the institutional aspects of the armed forces. Subsequently, study broadened to revisit the more traditional concerns of military and naval historians such as Strategy and operations.
Strategy
In terms of strategy, most often linked with the study of war aims, French 1982, French 1986, and French 1995 have been preeminent in examining the evolution of British strategic objectives. Philpott 1996 and Greenhalgh 2005 take subtly different views of the axis of the allied coalition in Anglo-French relations, while Woodward 1983 is concerned with civil-military dispute between British politicians and generals.
French, David. British Economic and Strategic Planning, 1905–1915. London: Allen & Unwin, 1982.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The first entry in French’s trilogy challenges the traditional views of military “westerners” opposed by political “easterners,” suggesting instead that the main players shared the same basic aims, and that the few politicians who advocated a strategy of limited liability had been eclipsed at an early stage.
Find this resource:
French, David. British Strategy and War Aims, 1914–1916. London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
French demonstrates that, in the words of the British Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, alliance politics dictated that the British had “to make war as we must, and not as we should like to.” Thus, the intention to allow the French and Russians to take the brunt of the war effort on land had to be abandoned.
Find this resource:
French, David. The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916–1918. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205593.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
French’s concluding volume sees the British becoming, albeit briefly, the major partner in the alliance but determined to prevent the political balance shifting entirely in America’s favor through husbanding sufficient resources to retain diplomatic leverage at the war’s close.
Find this resource:
Greenhalgh, Elizabeth. Victory Through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511497032Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While differing from Philpott 1996, for example, on the precise reasons for British participation in the Somme offensive in 1916, Greenhalgh is broadly in agreement on the centrality of the Anglo-French alliance to allied victory.
Find this resource:
Philpott, William J. Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–18. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It has been suggested that Philpott’s differing perspective to that of Greenhalgh 2005 on Anglo-French relations derives from his greater reliance on the British archives compared to Greenhalgh’s greater reliance on the French archives.
Find this resource:
Woodward, David. Lloyd George and the Generals. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While British soldiers and politicians might share basic aims, they differed markedly on the means to achieve them. Woodward is a sure guide to the frequently poisonous civil-military disputes over both subordinate operational theaters and the conduct of main offensives in the West such as the Somme and Passchendaele.
Find this resource:
The Nation in Arms
The institutional study of the army during the Great War has cast some revealing light on the social and psychological aspects of the soldier’s wartime experience, with significant consequences for the understanding of a nation at war. Not least, as casualties mounted, the challenge of war confronted government and people with the need for conscription, a major break with all prewar expectations with enormous social implications. Compared with a small peacetime army of 247,000 regulars and 506,000 assorted part-time reservists, a further 4.9 million men were enlisted by 1918, half of them after the introduction of conscription. Beckett and Simpson 1985 establish the parameters for the study of “the nation in arms,” which Simkins 1988 further illuminates with his study of the Kitchener “New Armies” of volunteers raised in 1914 and 1915. The impact of conscription on localities is covered by McDermott 2011. Differing aspects of how the morale of British citizen soldiers was sustained in the face of modern industrialized warfare when other armies collapsed are considered by Fuller 1991 and Sheffield 2000. The controversy over one newly heightened aspect of war, shell shock, is dealt with by Leese 2002, while Bond 1991 looks at the long shadows the war experience cast over British society.
Beckett, Ian F. W., and Keith Simpson, eds. A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1985.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Twice republished since 1985, Beckett and Simpson’s edited collection sets the benchmark for the study of the Great War army as institution. Regulars, Territorials, and the Kitchener New Army volunteers all receive full attention, but there is no separate essay on conscripts.
Find this resource:
Bond, Brian, ed. The First World War and British Military History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198222996.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An examination of how historical memory has shaped the prevailing popular image of a war of slaughter and futility, Bond’s edited collection traces the historiography of Britain’s war from the formative years of the 1920s to the present.
Find this resource:
Fuller, John. Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914–1918. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198201786.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Fuller uses contemporary trench newspapers to suggest that the effective recreation of British popular culture behind the lines played a significant role in maintaining the morale of a citizen army.
Find this resource:
Leese, Peter. Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldier of the First World War. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Leese’s is one of a number of studies of the wartime identification of “shell shock,” and of the controversies over its contemporary interpretations and treatments. Ultimately, it became a political issue in terms of the perceived miscarriage of justice in executing for cowardice those supposedly suffering from it.
Find this resource:
McDermott, James. British Military Service Tribunals, 1916–1918: “A Very Much Abused Body of Men”. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Drawing upon rare surviving archives, McDermott overthrows the traditional view of tribunals as passive instruments of the military authorities. Previous attention has been drawn disproportionately to the minority claiming service exemption on grounds of conscience when, as McDermott shows, it was occupation that most determined exemption.
Find this resource:
Sheffield, Gary. Leadership in the Trenches: Officer-Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of the First World War. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Sheffield shows that the paternalism expected of the British officer created a culture of dependency, but also mitigated harsher aspects of discipline. Less persuasive is his promotion of the idea of a “war generation,” which perpetuates the myth of a separation of front line and the home front.
Find this resource:
Simkins, Peter. Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–1916. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1988.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An outstanding study of the raising and training of the New Armies, including the “Pals Battalions” raised mostly from urban areas and factories, and of the impact of military service upon those enlisting and upon their families and communities.
Find this resource:
War at Sea and in the Air
New challenges to traditional ways of war were presented by such innovations as unrestricted submarine warfare and aerial bombardment, both carrying the implicit message that a civilian population supporting the war effort was just as legitimate a target for attack as those in the front line. At sea, it was the last war in which the battleship could be regarded as the main instrument of sea power. Beesley 1982 shows the importance of the Admiralty’s celebrated Room 40 in intelligence gathering. Unfortunately, the Admiralty did not make best use of this resource, with Goldrick 1984 revealing some of the resulting operational errors. British ship design was also an issue, not least in the navy’s apparent failures in the only full-scale naval encounter at Jutland in 1916, examined in differing ways by Gordon 1996 and Brooks 2005. Logistics was no less a problem at sea as on land, as Sumida 1993 demonstrates. The fast evolving battle for command of the skies is the subject of Cooper 1986.
Beesley, Patrick. Room 40: British Naval Intelligence, 1914–18. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Now dated, but still a useful survey of the breaking and deciphering of German naval codes. As Beesley shows, the Admiralty failed to pass on all the intelligence it received to its commanders for fear of compromising security.
Find this resource:
Brooks, John. Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland: The Question of Fire Control. London: Routledge, 2005.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203316207Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
British failures at Jutland were due to inadequately armored ships, defective shells, and problems with the Dreyer fire control system. Brooks, however, challenges Sumida’s earlier championing of the Pollen system in what has become a highly technical debate on patents, workmanship, ranges, and actual tactics.
Find this resource:
Cooper, Malcolm. The Birth of Independent Air Power: British Policy in the First World War. London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Cooper provides a solid account of the evolution of the prewar Royal Flying Corps as an adjunct of the army into the independent Royal Air Force in 1918, also dealing fully with the varied roles of air power from reconnaissance to air fighting, and to strategic bombing.
Find this resource:
Goldrick, James. The King’s Ships Were at Sea: War in the North Sea, August 1914–February 1915. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed study of early naval operations, including the action at the Dogger Bank, and the ways in which the submarine threat adversely affected naval deployments.
Find this resource:
Gordon, Andrew. The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command. London: Murray, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Gordon points to the tensions inherent between the new breed of technocrats thrown up by the need to accommodate new technology and lacking a sense of naval traditions, and those hypnotized by the past, initiative being subordinated to excessive centralization of authority and blind obedience to superiors.
Find this resource:
Sumida, Jon. “British Naval and Operational Logistics, 1914–1918.” Journal of Military History 57 (1993): 447–480.
DOI: 10.2307/2943988Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Sumida emphasizes the importance of strategic sealift capability, the Royal Navy transporting millions of men and animals and millions of tons of military supplies. Ironically, the navy itself was over-supplied with shells and suffered from fuel oil shortages.
Find this resource:
The Conduct of Land Operations
The popular British image of the war is mired in the mud of Passchendaele, and by the belief that men were condemned to walk slowly across No Man’s Land into a hail of machine gun fire, as at the Somme, by callous and reactionary generals. By contrast, the academic image is one of an army being rapidly transformed by late 1917 into a modern combined-arms force that had fully embraced modern technology. The academic debate on the so-called “learning curve” on the western front, however, remains a lively one, interpretations varying on how quickly and how evenly lessons were disseminated and applied, and whether the imperative to change was directed by General Headquarters (GHQ) from above, or was generated by initiatives at lower levels. The controversies surrounding the leadership of Sir Douglas Haig is central to the debate, Harris 2008 being the most recent, and most balanced, contribution. Travers 1992 and Prior and Wilson 1996 are among those critical of Haig and of the uniformity of the learning curve. Griffith 1994 and the essays in Sheffield and Todman 2004 are more supportive of the pace of change. Robbins 2005 and Connelly 2006 look at the “learning curve” at different levels of command. Anderson 2004 is a reminder that the army did not just fight in France and Flanders but also conducted campaigns globally.
Anderson, Ross. The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign, 1914–1918. Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Lest it be forgotten that the army did not serve exclusively on the western front, Anderson is a good example of new interest in the “side shows,” problems of disease and logistics being crucial to campaigning in Africa, much as they had been in the Victorian era.
Find this resource:
Connelly, Mark. Steady the Buffs: A Regiment, A Region and The Great War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Notwithstanding the title, Connelly is actually most concerned with the application of the learning curve at battalion level, using the experience of battalions of The Buffs on the western front as a means of testing the dissemination of ideas at the lowest tactical level.
Find this resource:
Griffith, Paddy. Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916–18. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Griffith makes the case for the marked improvement of British operational methods, laying particular emphasis on doctrinal manuals produced in 1916 and 1917, which he sees as equal to those produced by the Germans. It is then a matter of how far the manuals were followed in practice.
Find this resource:
Harris, J. Paul. Douglas Haig and the First World War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most up to date and by far the most balanced assessment of Haig, based on exhaustive archival research, and steering skillfully through the extremes of the existing historiography that ranges from outright condemnation to bizarre hagiography.
Find this resource:
Prior, Robin, and Trevor Wilson. Passchendaele: The Untold Story. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The third of a series of persuasive volumes from Prior and Wilson, this arguing that the perceived improvement detected by other historians in artillery techniques and in tactical methods generally was highly uneven in its application through the army as a whole.
Find this resource:
Sheffield, Gary, and Dan Todman, eds. Command and Control on the Western Front: The British Army’s Experience, 1914–1918. Staplehurst, UK: Spellmount, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The essays address various aspects of the issue of command and control, which is clearly important in terms of the perception of a learning curve. Generally, the contributors tend toward suggesting a fairly uniform progression to improved operational planning.
Find this resource:
Robbins, Simon. British Generalship on the Western Front, 1914–1918: Defeat into Victory. London: Routledge, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Concentration upon Haig, and the way in which the debate has moved down the command chain to consider corps and, especially, divisional level has neglected the role of army commanders, once staple targets as the ‘donkeys’ who led the ‘lions’ to disaster. Robbins puts them fully back into the frame.
Find this resource:
Travers, Tim. How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918. London: Routledge, 1992.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203417416Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The second of Travers’s contributions to the debate, again emphasizing inconsistencies in the way commanders veered between over-control and lack of guidance. He suggests subordinate commanders were capable of exercising more initiative in 1918 from the necessity of improvisation, and the sheer weight of allied material resources.
Find this resource:
The Interwar Years, 1919–1939
The interwar years saw near crippling reductions in the resources made available to the armed services, setting them against each other in the battle for institutional survival. The situation was exacerbated by widely different priorities, the army settling for a traditional role in the policing of a much expanded empire, not least against interference from Bolshevik Russia, the Royal Navy eyeing the new perceived threat from Japan, and the RAF more interested in the offensive potential of strategic bombers than the defensive requirements for fighter aircraft increasingly grasped by politicians confronted with the rise of Nazi Germany. Roskill 1968–1976, Bond 1980, and Smith 1984 provide the essential background for the strategic concerns and the problems faced respectively by navy, army, and air force. Jeffery 1984 emphasizes imperial concerns while Ferris 1989 highlights the financial limitations with which all three services had to cope. Harris 1995 and Holden Reid 1998 debate the popular perception of an army unwilling to embrace mechanization and to take on board the armored warfare theories of apparent prophets such as Basil Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller.
Bond, Brian. British Military Policy between the Two World Wars. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bond charts the army’s uncertain course from its imperial concerns to the attempt to learn appropriate lessons from the Great War, against the background of a deteriorating international climate, and the refusal by politicians and public to contemplate even a limited continental liability.
Find this resource:
Ferris, John. Men, Money, and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–26. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of a number of studies examining the immediate postwar world in the light of the financial limitations imposed on the services by the adoption of the notorious Ten Year Rule in 1919, which was not formally abandoned until 1934.
Find this resource:
Harris, J. Paul. Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Harris sees the army’s mainstream ideas as far less opposed to mechanization than usually claimed, arguing that the writings of Liddell Hart and Fuller have been taken too much at face value and lacked realism in face of the financial realities.
Find this resource:
Holden Reid, Brian. Studies in British Military Thought: Debates with Fuller and Liddell Hart. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Developed from previously published articles and lectures, Holden Reid’s essays look at various aspects of the relationship between army and military “intellectuals” and make a claim for the continued relevance of the ideas of, especially, Fuller for the operational level of war.
Find this resource:
Jeffery, Keith. The British Army and the Crisis of Empire, 1918–1922. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The British Empire was at its greatest height in 1918 following the absorption of former German colonies and the division of the Ottoman Empire between Britain and France. As Jeffery shows, however, nationalist disturbances stretched a demobilizing army to its limit.
Find this resource:
Roskill, Stephen. Naval Policy between the Wars. 2 vols. London: Collins, 1968–1976.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The classic study of the Royal Navy’s concerns with balancing resources in a world of naval limitation treaties against the threats posed by Japanese in the Pacific, the Italians in the Mediterranean, and, subsequently, by a revived German navy in the North Sea and Atlantic.
Find this resource:
Smith, Malcolm. British Air Strategy Between the Wars. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Smith guides the reader through the controversies of the interwar strategic debate, with the RAF’s own emphasis upon strategic bombing, including Trenchard’s pitch for institutional survival in offering “aerial policing” as a cheap substitute to military boots on the ground in imperial policing.
Find this resource:
The Second World War, 1939–1945
Perhaps surprisingly, academic study of the armed services in the Second World War has lagged well behind that of the Great War, the field being dominated by the more popular accounts intended for the general reader. This is changing, however, with a welcome new interest on the part of younger scholars. Fresh from his groundbreaking studies of the Great War, French 2000 sets the benchmark for the study of the army’s particular travails. Harrison-Place 2000, Buckley 2004, and Moreman 2005 all focus on the improved training and operational performance of the citizen army, whose composition and relationship to wider society is illuminated by Crang 2000. In Harrison 2004 an established scholar shows the importance of medical advances for victory. Best known for the author’s work on the German war economy, Overy 2000 provides an up-to-date summary of RAF Fighter Command’s most crucial achievements, while Goulter 1995 shows that RAF Coastal Command should not be overshadowed by the popular attention devoted to the controversies of the strategic bombing campaign against Germany. That campaign by Bomber Command is covered by Terraine 1985, one of a number of popular accounts.
Buckley, John. British Armour in Normandy. London: Routledge, 2004.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203494981Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
British handling of armor has been heavily criticized both in the North African desert and in Normandy, where there were heavy losses of tanks committed and unsupported in operations such as “Goodwood.” Buckley points to allied tanks as under-gunned but argues that British armor undertook a steep learning process.
Find this resource:
Crang, Jeremy. The British Army and the People’s War, 1939–1945. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Crang’s focus is on the efforts of a radically minded adjutant general, Sir Ronald Adam, to come to terms with a citizen army very different from that which its regular officers had previously experienced. The impact is shown in areas such as officer selection and maintenance of morale.
Find this resource:
French, David. Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany, 1919–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In an outstanding analysis, French shows that the problems to be overcome included poor understanding of combined-arms operations, and a preference for mobility over firepower conditioned by fears of casualties that also made British commanders averse to risk taking.
Find this resource:
Goulter, Christina. A Forgotten Offensive: RAF Coastal Command’s Anti-Shipping Campaign, 1940–1945. London: Routledge, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Despite the title, Goulter traces the development of aerial anti-shipping back to the experiments of the Royal Naval Air Service in the Great War. The role was neglected amid inter-service rivalry, and it was only in 1942 that Coastal Command received adequate aircraft for its purposes.
Find this resource:
Harrison, Mark. Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Harrison shows that penicillin and mepacrim were just as crucial to allied victory as men and guns. Disease prevention in theaters such as Italy and Burma and effective treatment of casualties were taken more seriously by the British than the Germans, with significant results in maintaining troop levels.
Find this resource:
Harrison-Place, Timothy. Military Training in the British Army, 1940–1944: From Dunkirk to D-Day. London: Cass, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Harrison-Place provides a solid study of the training that began to fit the army for the challenge of the battlefield, not least the development of realistic battle training under live firing conditions, which was felt to improve morale as well as skills.
Find this resource:
Moreman, Tim. The Jungle, the Japanese and the British Commonwealth Armies at War, 1941–1945: Fighting Methods, Doctrine, and Training for Jungle Warfare. London: Frank Cass, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The Japanese inflicted a series of painful and humiliating defeats on the British army in 1941–1942. Moreman is one of a number of recent studies looking at how the “forgotten” British Fourteenth Army in Burma was transformed into one confident of operating in the jungle.
Find this resource:
Overy, Richard. The Battle of Britain: Myth and Reality. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a short but incisive account intended to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the RAF’s victory over the Luftwaffe, Overy dissects the many myths but still argues persuasively that it was an absolutely necessary battle to preserve British independence.
Find this resource:
Terraine, John. The Right of the Line: The RAF in the European War, 1939–1945. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Terraine is best known for his defense of the reputation of Sir Douglas Haig, and he sees obvious parallels in the sacrifices of Bomber Command. It is, however, not much more than a digest of the Official History.
Find this resource:
The Post-Imperial Age, 1945–
Since 1945 a British serviceman has been killed on active service in every year except 1968. The fact that the conventional conflicts in this period have been so few––Korea (where only five British battalions were deployed at any one time), Suez, the Falklands, and the two Gulf Wars––and of limited duration demonstrates how far the services have been forced to confront the particular problems of low-intensity conflicts of one kind or another. The reality of active deployment has contrasted with wider defense priorities, not least during the years of the Cold War. Issues such as the maintenance of an independent nuclear deterrent amid frequent periods of reduced government expenditure on defense continue, therefore, to be matters of political debate. Grove 1987 surveys the Royal Navy’s changing strategic role, having replaced the RAF as the custodian of the nuclear deterrent, while Ball 1995 explores that debate. McInnes 1996 and the essays in Strachan 2006 address the often-conflicting military priorities of being prepared for conventional war at the same time as fighting insurgencies and terrorism. As in other areas, British conduct of counter-insurgency has been regarded as markedly different in terms of the adherence to the principle of “minimum force.” Mockaitis 1990 represents the widely accepted view of British restraint, and Charters 1989 and Jones 2005 demonstrate the apparent evolution of British methods in the face of considerable provocation. Newsinger 2002 and Bennett 2007, however, show the increasing academic questioning of British exceptionalism in this area.
Ball, S. J. The Bomber in British Strategy: Doctrine, Strategy and Britain’s World Role, 1945–1960. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Ball traces the RAF’s initial success in the inter-service rivalry to control Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent. He also demonstrates that the acquisition of nuclear-capable bombers was intended as much to influence US policy as to deter the new Cold War enemy.
Find this resource:
Bennett, Huw. “The Other Side of the COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Army Counterinsurgency in Kenya.” Small Wars and Insurgencies 18 (2007): 638–664.
DOI: 10.1080/09592310701778514Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bennett is one of the leading revisionists in questioning the British use of minimum force, the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya in the 1950s having become a particularly contentious example.
Find this resource:
Charters, David. The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945–47. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The terrorist campaign of Jewish groups in Palestine was a formative experience for the British in confronting the new politically motivated postwar insurgency. Charters shows the British faced with a choice between total repression and withdrawal. While choosing the latter, however, the British learned valuable lessons soon applied in Malaya.
Find this resource:
Grove, Eric. Vanguard to Trident: British Naval Policy since World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Drawing on recent archive releases, Grove covers the debate on the role of a navy with global ambitions confronted with postwar financial draw down. There is new material on such aspects as the Yangtze Incident during the Chinese Civil War, and the controversy over aircraft carriers in the 1970s.
Find this resource:
Jones, Tim. SAS: The First Secret Wars. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Building on wartime experience in special operations, and postwar assistance to the Greek National Government against communist guerrillas, the Special Air Service was revived in the Malayan Emergency to become an integral part of British postwar counter-insurgency methods.
Find this resource:
McInnes, Colin. Hot War, Cold War: The British Army’s Way in Warfare, 1945–95. London: Brassey’s, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful general survey of British military operations in the postwar world in the context of changing British defense policy priorities, including the end of national service in 1963 and the strategic choices at the close of the Cold War.
Find this resource:
Mockaitis, Thomas. British Counter-Insurgency, 1919–60. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In the first of two books, Mockaitis established the concept of British counter-insurgency resting squarely on the primacy of the civil power, complete cooperation between the civil and military authorities, and the use of minimum force.
Find this resource:
Newsinger, John. British Counter-Insurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A critique of Mockaitis’s acceptance of the accepted image of British restraint that has proved something of a precursor to a much wider questioning of British methods in insurgencies.
Find this resource:
Strachan, Hew, ed. Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Conduct of War in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Strachan’s edited collection, while embracing the two world wars, is valuable for those essays dealing with the post-1945 contrast between the conventional concerns of those serving in the British Army of the Rhine, and those confronting low-intensity conflict around the globe.