This chapter treats the early modern roots counterrevolutionary war, in Johann Ewald’s (1785) Treatise on Partisan War and (1790) Treatise on the Duties of Light Troops. A Hessian (German) mercenary officer, Ewald served in of one of the earliest and most consequential modern counter-insurrectionary conflicts: the American Revolutionary War. I locate Ewald’s ideas in the intellectual and political context of early modern, absolutist central Europe. He believed in military honor and duty, linked to premodern socio-political hierarchies. In America, he confronted modern ideological warfare, backed by a mobilized populace, for the first time. Gradually, he came to empathize with his opponents and distain the English officers he served. In his diaries, he advocated emulating insurgent tactics—transposing the tools of revolutionary warfare into the military-ideological project of counterrevolution. The two manuals he wrote on returning to Europe alloyed his European and American experiences. They resonated well into the nineteenth century, influencing Clausewitz and informing British conduct of the Peninsular War.

C. E. Callwell’s (1896; 1899; 1906) Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice was perhaps the most influential British Imperial irregular warfare manual of its time. Many existing accounts treat Callwell and other European colonial militarists as primitive—originals from which to explain later theorists’ descent and deviation. I show how he arrived at his account. Previous theorists, like Ewald, drew military lessons from early modern European irregular war, including targeted use of force by stealthy and mobile “light troops.” In contrast, Callwell advocated arbitrary and overwhelming violence, against combatants and civilians alike. I locate Callwell’s thinking at the end of the intellectual and political long nineteenth century. He exemplified a distinctively reactionary strand of British imperial thinking, imagining empire as permanent. His historical knowledge and field experience were encyclopedic. He linked a reactionary-utopian colonial nostalgia with systemic and racist high modernist violence. In the South African War (1899-1902), he helped deploy these practices against white Afrikaner colonists. His manual remained influential into the early twentieth century.

The previous chapter outlined the personal, institutional, and political dynamics that played a part in Alberico Gentili’s nineteenth-century revival, in particular the emergence of the academic discipline of international law and the crafting of a historical narrative about its past. What we have yet to uncover is the specific story that emerged about Gentili’s greatness in his nineteenth-century context. In Chapter 3, we saw that in the aftermath of his death, Gentili had been remembered primarily for his absolutist writings. Two and a half centuries later, what story did his revivers tell to justify celebrating him as a founder of international law? This chapter argues that nineteenth-century international lawyers painted Gentili as the man who had invented the modern definition of war. In doing so, they gave us a popular narrative about the history of the laws of war that has prevented us from appreciating the profound changes that occurred in the regulation of war in course of the nineteenth century.

The introduction will give a brief overview of the military history of the Victorian period and situate the significance of these conflicts in the larger context of British domestic history and British foreign policy/grand strategy. There will also be a discussion of the layout of the book and the individual chapters.

The conclusion will tie the chapters together and reinforce the notion of the Victorian period as a singular unit in British military history. It will address some of the overarching themes of the book such as the impact of British imperialism on domestic policy, the function of the army in the service of British political goals, and the evolution of military technology.

This chapter begins by discussing what Callwell meant by the term ‘small war’. It then provides a survey of his contribution to the literature, before explaining why it matters in the context of nineteenth-century British military thought. It then provides a detailed analysis of what Callwell had to say about small wars, and why it matters. Finally, it explores some of the responses to Callwell’s work, both at the time and subsequently.