Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century

200 Pages·2006·1.29 MB·English

by  Strachan (edt.)

Big Wars and Small Wars
This book sets out to show how in the twentieth century the British army
learnt lessons from one war in order to prepare for the next. The challenge
was particularly great, as it never had the luxury of going directly from one
major war to another, but always had to reckon with ongoing commitments
to a range of ‘small wars’. These included colonial campaigns between 1902
and 1914; counter-insurgency operations between 1945 and 1969; and peace
support operations after 1991. The army believed that by preparing for
major war it also enabled itself to prepare for lesser conflicts, and that is still
its current doctrine. This volume explores the historical dimension to this
debate, and offers analyses by the most prominent experts in the field,
including Hew Strachan, Edward Spiers, David French, Paul Cornish,
Daniel Marston, David Benest, Simon Ball and Colin McInnes.
This book will be of great interest to students of military history and
strategic studies in general, and of particular interest to students of the
British army and British military doctrine.
Hew Strachan is Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford,
Director of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character
of War, and a Fellow of All Souls College. His publications include European
Armies and the Conduct of War (1983), The Politics of the British Army
(1997), and the first volume of a trilogy on the First World War, To Arms
(2001).
CASS SERIES: MILITARY HISTORY AND POLICY
Series Editors: John Gooch and Brian Holden Reid
This series will publish studies on historical and contemporary aspects of land
power, spanning the period from the eighteenth century to the present day, and will
include national, international and comparative studies. From time to time, the series
will publish edited collections of essays and ‘classics’.
1. Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917–1919
Matthew Hughes
2. Alfred von Schlieffen’s Military Writings
Edited and translated by Robert Foley
3. The British Defence ofEgypt, 1935–1940
Conflict and Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean
Steven Morewood
4. The Japanese and the British Commonwealth Armies at War, 1941–1945
Tim Moreman
5. Training, Tactics and Leadership in the Confederate Army ofTennessee
Seeds of Failure
Andrew Haughton
6. Military Training in the British Army 1940–1944
From Dunkirk to D-Day
Tim Harrison Place
7. The Boer War
Direction, Experience and Image
Edited by John Gooch
8. Caporetto 1917
Victory or Defeat?
Mario Morselli
9. Postwar Counterinsurgency and the SAS 1945–1952
A Special Type of Warfare
Tim Jones
10. The British General Staff
Reform and Innovation 1890–1939
Edited by David French and Brian Holden Reid
11. Writing the Great War
Sir James Edmonds and the Official Histories, 1915–1948
Andrew Green
12. Command and Control in Military Crisis
Devious Decisions
Harald Hoiback
13. Lloyd George and the Generals
David Woodward
14. Malta and British Strategic Policy, 1925–1943
Douglas Austin
15. British Armour in the Normandy Campaign 1944
John Buckley
16. Gallipoli
Making History
Edited by Jenny Macleod
17. British and Japanese Military Leadership in the Far Eastern War 1941–1945
Edited by Brian Bond and Kyoichi Tachikawa
18. The Baghdad Pact
Anglo-American Defence Policies in the Middle East, 1950–59
Behcet Kemal Yesilbursa
19. Fanaticism and Conflict in the Modern Age
Edited by Matthew Hughes and Gaynor Johnson
20. The Evolution ofOperational Art, 1740–1813
From Frederick The Great to Napoleon
Claus Telp
21. British Generalship on the Western Front 1914–18
Defeat into Victory
Simon Robbins
22. The British Working Class and Enthusiasm for War 1914–1916
David Silbey

Big Wars and Small Wars
The British army and the lessons of war in
the twentieth century
Edited by Hew Strachan
First published 2006
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
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© 2006 Hew Strachan
All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN10: 0–415–36196–6 ISBN13: 978–0–415–36196–5
Contents
Notes on contributors viii
Preface and acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
HEW STRACHAN
1 Between the South African War and the First World War, 1902–14 21
EDWARD M. SPIERS
2 Big wars and small wars between the wars, 1919–39 36
DAVID FRENCH
3 Learning new lessons: the British Army and the strategic debate,
1945–50 54
PAUL CORNISH
4 Lost and found in the jungle: the Indian and British Army jungle
warfare doctrines for Burma, 1943–5, and the Malayan Emergency,
1948–60 84
DANIEL MARSTON
5 Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966–76 115
DAVID BENEST
6 The unchanging lessons ofbattle: the British Army and the Falklands
War, 1982 145
SIMON BALL
7 The Gulf War, 1990–1 162
COLIN MCINNES
Index 180
Contributors
Simon Ball is Reader in Modern History at the University of Glasgow. His
most recent book, The Guardsmen, was published by HarperCollins in
2004. He is currently writing an analytical history of British defence
policy since 1945 for Cambridge University Press’. Previous publications
are: Bomber Bases and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1945–1949
(1991), The Bomber in British Strategy: Doctrine, Strategy and Britain’s
World Role, 1945–1960 (1995), The Cold War: An International History,
1947–1991 (1997), and The Great Powers and the Division of Europe,
1943–1949(1997) (CD-ROM).
David Benesthas served with the British Army for the past thirty-three years.
He has accumulated nearly five years of operational deployments to
Northern Ireland, principally to West Belfast and South Armagh. He spent
a further six years in the Ministry of Defence in support of counter-
terrorist operations. His last appointment was as Director Defence Studies
(Army) and Director of the Strategic and Combat Studies Institute (SCSI).
He is currently serving within the Defence Academy of the United
Kingdom and is researching strategic leadership and counter-insurgency.
Paul Cornish holds the Peter Carrington Chair in International Security at
Chatham House, where he is head of the International Security
Programme. He has served in the British Army and the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, and has held appointments at Cambridge
University and King’s College London. His research and writing interests
include European security and defence, the ethics of the use of armed
force, and arms control. His thesis on British Military Planning for the
Defence of Germany, 1945–50 was published in 1996. Dr Cornish is the
authorised biographer of General Sir Miles Dempsey.
David French is Professor of History at University College London, where
he teaches and researches modern British military history. He is the author
of Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against
Germany, 1919–1945 (2000) and Military Identities: the British Army, the
British People and the Regimental System, c.1870–2000 (2005). He is
currently writing a history of British military policy from 1945 to c.1970.
Contributors ix
Daniel Marston is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military
Academy, Sandhurst. He completed both his B.A. and M.A. in History at
McGill University, Montreal, Canada and his D.Phil. in the History of
War at Balliol College, Oxford. Previous publications include Phoenix
from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign (2003) which
won the Templer Medal.
Colin McInnes holds a personal chair in the Department of International
Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He was formerly a
lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst,
Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s
College London and Special Adviser to the House of Commons Defence
Committee. His books include NATO’s Changing Strategic Agenda (1990),
Hot War, Cold War: The British Army’s Way in Warfare, 1945–95(1996),
andSpectator Sport War: The West and Contemporary Conflict(2002).
Edward M. Spiers is the Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of
Leeds. He has written extensively on military history, including Haldane:
An Army Reformer (1980), The Army and Society, 1815–1914 (1980),
Radical General: Sir George de Lacy Evans, 1787–1870 (1983), The Late
Victorian Army, 1868–1902 (1992) and The Victorian Soldier in Africa
(2004). He also edited Sudan: The Reconquest Reappraised(1998).
Hew Strachanis Chichele Professor of the History of War and Fellow of All
Souls College, at Oxford University, where he also directs the Leverhulme
Programme on the Changing Character of War. His recent books include
The Politics of the British Army (1997), The First World War: To Arms
(2001, the first volume of a planned trilogy), The First World War: A New
Illustrated History (2003), and, as editor, The British Army, Manpower
and Society into the 21st Century(2000).