No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Influence of the Imperial Frontier on British Doctrines of Mechanized Warfare
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
One of the most vexatious questions of twentieth century military history concerns the manifest ascendancy of British theoretical development of mechanized warfare during the inter-war period. Why this should be so in a society which was by no means the most motorized in the contemporary world and which was already displaying a distinct penchant for technological stagnation poses a perplexing riddle. Facile attributions of such hegemony to either the inherent genius of the two progenitors of mechanized warfare, J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart, or a shallow acceptance of these theories as an obvious ramification of British experience in the First World War would seem to neglect other profound intellectual and military influences. Such a renowned historian as John Keegan has even written that it is “unrewarding” to speculate on the reasons for British preeminence in military thought during the inter-war years. The search for such explanations, however, constitutes the historian's task.
Although definitive resolutions to the conundrums posed by the emergence of intellectual trends can never be achieved, this essay will contend that Britain's leadership in the development of doctrines of mechanized warfare can be partially attributed to her heritage of mobile warfare along the frontiers of empire. The neglect of this imperial dimension is one of the factors which has thus far obscured our understanding of the genesis of innovative thought among British military intellectuals during the interwar years. Furthermore, the tendency to interpret Britain's military role almost solely in reference to the looming armored clashes on the European continent during World War Two has seduced some military historians into ignoring the long-term historical antecedents of an emphasis on celerity of movement bred by the imperial tradition of dynamic attack.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1983
References
1 Higham, Robin, ed., A Guide to the Sources of British Military History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), p. 461.Google Scholar
2 For the dilemma confronted by the U.S. Army in attempting to reconcile its conflicting heritages during the Second World War see, Weigley, Russell F., Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944-1945 (Bloomington, Ind., 1981), pp. 1–7.Google Scholar
3 A contemporary view may be found in Fuller, J.F.C., The Army In My Time (London, 1935), p. 39.Google Scholar Representative current interpretations are Higham, Robin, Military Intellectuals in Britain: 1918-1939 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1966), pp. 136–137Google Scholar; Tucker, Albert V., “Army and Society in England 1870-1900: A Reassessment of the Cardwell Reforms,” Journal of British Studies (May 1963): 110–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The persistence of class privilege and some of its abuses provides the theme for Kennedy, Thomas C., “Airing The Dirty Linen Of An Unreformed Army: The Kinlock Affair, 1902-1903,” Military Affairs 43, no. 2 (April 1979): 69–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ian Worthington, “Socialization, Militarization and Officer Recruiting,” ibid, pp. 90-95.
4 An attempt to place the late Victorian army's weakness in the appropriate context may be found in Barclay, Brigadier C.N., “The British Army Of The Nineteenth Century: How Good Was It?” Army Quarterly and Defence Journal 104, no. 1 (1973): 82–89.Google Scholar Standard works on the army in the era of transition are: Dunlop, Colonel John K., The Development Of The British Army, 1899-1914 (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Tyler, J.E., The British Army and the Continent, 1904-1914 (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Gooch, John, The Plans of War: The General Staff and British Military Strategy c. 1900-1916 (New York, 1974).Google Scholar
5 Bourne, Kenneth, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America 1815-1908, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967)Google Scholar; The Cambridge History Of The British Empire, vol. 3: The Empire-Commonwealth, 1870-1919 (Cambridge, 1959), p. 251Google Scholar; Dunlop, , Development Of The British Army, p. 29Google Scholar; Tyler, , British Army and the Continent, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar Also pertinent are: Gibbs, N.H., The Origins of Imperial Defence (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar; McDermott, W.J., “The Immediate Origins Of The Committee of Imperial Defence: A Reappraisal,” Canadian Journal of History 7, no. 3 (1971–1972): 253–272CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Franklyn, Defence by Committee: The British Committee of Imperial defence 1885-1959 (London, 1960).Google Scholar
6 The romantic appeal of colonial warfare may be pursued in a number of works, including the following sampling: Thornton, A.P., The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies: A Study in British Power (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Churchill, Winston, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (London, 1899)Google Scholar; Barnett, Correlli, Britain and Her Army, 1509-1970 (New York, 1970), p. 480Google Scholar; Fuller, , Army In My Time, pp. 40–41Google Scholar; Springhall, J.O., “The Boy Scouts, Class and Militarism In Relation To British Youth Movements, 1908-1930,” International Review of Social History 16, part 2 (1971): 130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A recent stimulating attempt to explain the allure of warfare in the English-speaking world as the result of revulsion against the insidious mercenary values of a commercial civilization is Adams, Michael, “Tennyson's Crimean War Poetry: A Cross-Cultural Approach,” Journal of The History of Ideas 40, no. 3 (July-Sept. 1979): 405–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Lieutenant-General SirMacMunn, George, Behind The Scenes In Many Wars (London, 1930), p. 4.Google Scholar
8 See Lehmann, Joseph, All Sir Garnet (London, 1964)Google Scholar; also consult the appropriate sections of Bond, Brian, ed., Victorian Military Campaigns (London, 1967).Google Scholar
9 The classic guide to imperial warfare is still Callwell, Colonel C.E., Small Wars, Their Principles and Practice (3rd edition; London, 1906).Google ScholarBond, Both, Victorian Military Campaigns, pp. 17–26Google Scholar and Falls, Cyril, A Hundred Years of War, 1850-1950 (New York, 1962), pp. 132–141Google Scholar, are heavily indebted to Callwell. Two other perceptive contemporary accounts are CaptainYounghusband, G.J., Indian Frontier Warfare (London, 1898)Google Scholar, and CaptainNevill, H.L., Campaigns On The North-West Frontier (Lahore, 1977, reprint edition).Google Scholar
10 Younghusband, , Indian Frontier Warfare, pp. 6–7.Google Scholar
11 A representative sampling of cogent commentary may be found in Luvaas, Jay, The Education of An Army: British Military Thought, 1815-1940 (Chicago, 1964), pp. 200 and 230Google Scholar; Callwell's, Small Wars, and Tirah, 1897 (London, 1911)Google Scholar; Henderson authored an interesting essay entitled “Red Indian Warfare,” R.U.S.I. Journal 35 (1891): 181–202Google Scholar, in which he expounded on some of the similarities between American and British frontier warfare and the lessons to be derived from the experience.
12 Henderson, , in “The War in South Africa,” Edinburgh Review 191 (1900): 251–52Google Scholar, and Callwell, , Small Wars, pp. 23–24Google Scholar, also recognized the need for flexibility surpassing continental methods. Despite this tradition, following the Russo-Japanese War the High Command in Britain evidenced a growing faith in the decisive offensive. On this point see the excellent article by Travers, T.H.E., “The Offensive and the Problem of Innovation in British Military Thought 1870-1915,” Journal of Contemporary History 13, no. 3 (July 1978): 531–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 The Times, December 17, 1904.
14 Luvaas, Jay, The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance (Chicago, 1959), particularly pp. 50, and 109–116Google Scholar on the evolution of mounted infantry tactics.
15 Henderson, G.F.R., Stonewall Jackson (New York, 1961).Google Scholar This is the one volume American edition. The original appeared in two-volume format in August 1898. The essence of Henderson's fulsome praise of Jackson may be elicited from pp. 321 and 703-704, in which he emphasized the baneful effects of surprise and speed on the morale of Union soldiers. B.H. Liddell Hart displayed the same fascination with movement to the exclusion of battle in Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (New York, 1958).Google Scholar
16 Barnett, , Britain and Her Army, p. 314Google Scholar; Hamer, W.S., The British Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1885-1905 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar
17 Bond, Brian, The Victorian Army and The Staff College, 1854-1914 (London, 1972), pp. 199–108Google Scholar; Major-GeneralElliott, J.G., The Frontier, 1839-1947: The Story of the North-West Frontier of India (London, 1968), p. 287.Google Scholar
18 See for example the perceptive comments in Dunlop, , Development of the British Army, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar
19 Kruger, Rayne, Good-Bye Dolly Gray (New York, 1960), p. 66.Google Scholar On the Boer War and its military problems consult also: Pakenham, Thomas, The Boer War (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Major-GeneralSixsmith, E.K.G., “Kitchener and The Guerrillas In The Boer War,” Army Quarterly and Defence Journal 104, no. 2 (1974): 203–214Google Scholar; Griess, Thomas E., “A Case Study in Counterinsurgency: Kitchener and the Boers,” Essays In Some Dimensions of Military History (Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, 1972), 1:165–186.Google Scholar
20 Fuller, J.F.C., Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier (London, 1936), pp. 10–12Google Scholar; also see Fuller's, The Last Of The Gentlemen's Wars: A Subaltern's Journal of the War in South Africa, 1899-1902 (London, 1937), pp. 149–263Google Scholar, and Trythall, A.J., “Boney” Fuller: The Intellectual General (London, 1977), pp. 13–18.Google Scholar
21 Fuller, , Army In My Time, p. 104.Google Scholar
22 Fuller, , Last of the Gentlemen's Wars, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar
23 CaptainFuller, J.F.C., “The Tactics of Penetration. A Counterblast to German Numerical Superiority,” JRUSI 59 (November 1914): 378–89.Google Scholar
24 Guides to this renovation are: Dunlop, Development of the British Army; Tyler, British Army and the Continent; SirMaurice, Frederick, Haldane, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn, 1970; originally published 1937)Google Scholar; Koss, Stephen, Lord Haldane: Scapegoat For Liberalism (New York and London, 1969)Google Scholar; Bond, Brian, “Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office, 1905-1912,” Army Quarterly and Defence Journal (1963): 33–43Google Scholar; Gooch, The Plans of War.
25 An original recent article is Travers, T.H.E., “Technology, Tactics, and Morale: Jean de Bloch, the Boer War, and British Military Theory, 1900-1914,” Journal of Modern History 51, no. 2 (June, 1979): 264–286CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fuller's succinct summary of the Boer War's tactical lessons may be found in The Army In My Time, p. 93; also Luvaas, , Education of an Army, pp. 238–239.Google Scholar
26 Howard, Michael, ed. The Theory and Practice of War (London, 1965), pp. 95–128Google Scholar; Barnett, , Britain and Her Army, p. 372.Google Scholar
27 Fuller, , Army In My Time, pp. 105 and 125.Google Scholar
28 Ian Hamilton MSS, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College, University of London, 7/3/14/4, Repington to Hamilton, November 1, 1910.
29 An early example was Hart, B.H. Liddell, The Real War, 1914-1918 (Boston, 1930).Google Scholar An admirable pioneering study of Liddell Hart is Bond, Brian, Liddell Hart: A Study of his Military Thought (New Brunswick, N.J., 1977).Google Scholar
30 This acute insight is offered in the otherwise acutely panegyrical biography by Terrain, John, Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier (London 1963), p. 15.Google Scholar
31 On Swinton see his two autobiographical accounts, Eyewitness (New York, 1933)Google ScholarPubMed and Over My Shoulder (Oxford, 1951).Google ScholarPubMed
32 The classic work on the evolution of the new weapon is Hart, B.H. Liddell, The Tanks, 2 vols. (New York, 1959).Google Scholar
33 The development of Plan of 1919 is presented in Fuller, , Memoirs of An Unconventional Soldier, pp. 318–341Google Scholar; also Trythall, , Fuller, pp. 60–74.Google Scholar
34 The best succinct account of this phenomenon is Howard, Michael, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of The Two World Wars (London, 1972).Google Scholar Also suggestive is Watt, D.C., “Imperial Defence Policy and Imperial Foreign Policy, 1911-1939: A Neglected Paradox?” Journal of Commonwealth Studies 1 (May 1963): 226–281.Google Scholar
35 Fuller, J.F.C., India In Revolt (London, 1931), p. 196.Google Scholar
36 Bond, Brian, British Military Policy Between The Two World Wars (Oxford, 1980), especially pp. 24–25 and 98–126.Google Scholar
37 Elliott, , The Frontier, p. 121.Google Scholar
38 Barnett, Correlli, The Desert Generals (New York, 1961), p. 176.Google Scholar
39 Ibid.
40 See Macksey, Kenneth, Armoured Crusader (London, 1967).Google Scholar
41 Ibid, p. 118, and MacMunn, , Behind the Scenes, pp. 325–326.Google Scholar Also, General Staff, India, The Waziristan Campaign, 1919-1920 (Calcutta, 1921)Google Scholar; de Watteville, H., Waziristan, 1919-1920 (London, 1925).Google Scholar
42 Hart, B.H. Liddell, The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart 2 vols. (London, 1965), 1:244Google Scholar; Hart, B.H. Liddell, The British Way In Warfare (New York 1933), pp. 181–182Google Scholar; General Staff, India, Official History of Operations on the Northern Most Frontier of India, 1920-1935 (New Delhi 1945).Google Scholar Other instructive works on imperial warfare include: Gwynn, C.W., Imperial Policing (London 1934)Google Scholar: ffrench-Blake, R.L.V., A History of the I7th/21st Lancers, 1922-1959 (London, 1962).Google Scholar
43 Hart, Liddell, Tanks, 1:209.Google Scholar Allenby's victory in Palestine in 1918 was a favorite example of those critics seeking vindication for their faith in mobility and surprise; consult Hart, Liddell, Real War, p. 448.Google Scholar
44 Hart, Liddell, Tanks, 1:208.Google Scholar See also: Hart, Liddell, British Way in Warfare, pp. 139–161Google Scholar; HIgham, Robin, Armed Forces In Peacetime: Britain 1918-1940, a case study (Hamden, Conn., 1962), pp. 63–66Google Scholar; Lieutenant-General SirHaldane, Aylmer, The Insurrection in Mesopotamia, 1920 (Edinburgh, 1922).Google Scholar
45 This was the testimony of Hart, Liddell in Memoirs, 1: 154–155.Google Scholar Also consult similar interpretations of Auchinleck and O'Connor in Barnett, , The Desert Generals, pp. 24 and 176.Google Scholar
46 Hart, Liddell, Memoirs, 1:87.Google Scholar
47 Fuller's works dealing exclusively with Imperial themes are: Imperial Defence, 1588-1914 (London, 1926)Google Scholar; Empire Unity and Defence (Bristol 1934)Google Scholar; and India In Revolt. An emphasis on frontier warfare is also evident in his other famous studies.
48 Fuller, , Empire Unity, p. 290.Google Scholar
49 Fuller, J.F.C., On Future Warfare (London 1928), p. 254.Google Scholar
50 Fuller, , Army In My Time, p. 191.Google Scholar
51 Fuller, , Memoirs, p. 432.Google Scholar
52 Fuller, , Empire Unity, p. 91.Google Scholar
53 Major-GeneralRowan-Robinson, H., Imperial Defence: A Problem in Four Dimensions (London, 1938).Google Scholar
54 See for example, Rowan-Robinson, Colonel, “The Relations of Mobility and Firepower,” JRUSI 55 (1920): 572–579.Google Scholar
55 Rowan-Robinson, , Imperial Defence, p. iii.Google Scholar
56 Ibid, p. 141.
57 Bond, , Staff College, p. 285.Google Scholar
58 Hart, Liddell, Memoirs, 2:82Google Scholar; Barnett, , Britain and Her Army, p. 419Google Scholar; Postan, M.M., Hay, D., Scott, J.D., Design and Development Of Weapons: Studies in Government and Industrial Organization (London, 1964), p. 309.Google Scholar This last is a volume in the History Of The Second World War: United Kingdom Civil Series, edited by Sir Keith Hancock. Furthermore, according to Brian Bond, the second Mobile Division created was stationed in Egypt because “Egypt had been the most promising area for the development of British armoured doctrine throughout the 1930's” (Bond, , British Military Policy, p. 182Google Scholar).
59 Ropp, Theodore, War In The Modern World (New York, 1962), p. 311.Google Scholar
60 A brief treatment of such penchants is Bidwell, Brigadier R.G.S., “The Five Fallacies: Some Thoughts On British Military Thinking,” R.U.S.I. Journal 112 (1967): 53–55.Google Scholar
61 Hart, Liddell, Tanks, 1:381.Google Scholar
62 Higham, , Military Intellectuals, p. 97.Google Scholar
63 See for example Hart, Liddell, Tanks, 1:3, 216–219, and 287.Google Scholar
64 Ibid, 2:451. A convincing synthesis of Liddell Hart's belief that wars should be limited in destructiveness through mobility and mechanization can be found in Larson, Robert H.. “B.H. Liddell Hart: Apostle of Limited War,” Military Affairs 44, no. 2 (April 1980): 70–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
65 Fuller, J.F.C., Armored Warfare (Harrisburg, P, 1943; reprint of Fullers' famed 1932 work “FSR III”), p. xiv.Google Scholar
66 Fuller, , Future Warfare, pp. 273–278.Google Scholar
67 Fuller, , Armored Warfare, p. 36.Google Scholar
68 Rowan-Robinson, , Imperial Defence, p. 91.Google Scholar
69 Fuller, , Armored Warfare, p. 5Google Scholar; Hart, Liddell: British Way in Warfare, pp. 174–175Google Scholar; Memoris, 1:90Google Scholar; Tanks, 2:457.Google Scholar
70 Higham, , Armed Forces, p. 238.Google Scholar
71 Ropp, , War in the Modern World, p. 312.Google Scholar
72 Hart, Liddell, Tanks, 1:237.Google Scholar See Lieutenant-General SirMartel, Giffard Le Q., An Outspoken Soldier (London, 1949).Google Scholar
73 Bond, , British Military Policy, p. 372.Google Scholar
74 On deficiency in British tank design consult: Postan, M.M., British War Production (London, 1952), pp. 183, 185, 188, and 190Google Scholar; Postan, , et. al, Design and Development, pp. 302–353Google Scholar; Barnett, , Desert Generals, pp. 199–205Google Scholar; Hart, Liddell, Tanks, 1:356–359, and 2:35 and 156.Google Scholar Not a single British tank type in production in 1939 was still being manufactured by 1945.