Download or read book Big Wars and Small Wars written by Hew Strachan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fascinating new insight into the British army and its evolution through both large and small scale conflicts. To prepare for future wars, armies derive lessons from past wars. However, some armies are defeated because they learnt the wrong lessons, fighting new conflicts in ways appropriate to the last. For the British Army in the twentieth century, the challenge has been particularly great. It has never had the luxury of emerging from one major European war with the time to prepare itself for the next. The leading military historians show how ongoing commitments to a range of ‘small wars’ have always been part of the Army’s experience. After 1902 and after 1918 they included colonial campaigns, but they also developed into what we would now call counter-insurgency operations, and these became the norm between 1945 and 1969. During the height of the Cold War, in 1982, the Army was deployed to the Falklands. Since 1990 the dominant tasks of the Army have been peace support operations. This is an excellent resource for all students and scholars of military history, politics and international relations and British history.
Download or read book The British Army Manpower and Society Into the Twenty first Century written by Hew Strachan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2000 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume set the relationship between the Army and society in the context of the 20th century as a whole.
Download or read book British Army Cap Badges of the Twentieth Century written by Arthur Ward and published by Crowood Press UK. This book was released on 2008-05-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Items connected with the British military have always been extremely popular with collectors, and the intricate and beautiful badges made to denote a soldier's regiment have always been keenly collected, due to their small size, high quality and the fascinating stories of military derring-do that lie behind each one. The British army cap badge really came into being around the turn of the twentieth century, with large badges intended for the blue cloth helmets then in use. Later badges became smaller, and materials changed, as headgear became smaller, and new manufacturing techniques took away the laborious daily cleaning that was a part of every soldier's routine for most of the century. With every regiment having numerous variations of badge, this is a field of collecting that will yield rewards for the collector. With the aid of nearly 200 specially taken color photographs, Arthur Ward offers a complete introduction to this topic.
Download or read book Britain s Army in the Twentieth Century written by Field Marshal Lord Carver and published by Pan Books Limited. This book was released on 1999 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the British Army in our century, as told by one of Britain's most distinguished living soldiers, Field Marshal Lord Carver. His research is backed by first-person 'action accounts', provided by the Imperial War Museum.
Download or read book Fire Power written by Dominick Bidwell and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2004-10-01 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is, without doubt, the finest book about the crucial role that artillery played in the two World Wars of the Twentieth century. The authors, both former artillery officers who saw action in Word War Two, describe the development of their neglected, inadequate and class-ridden arm through the battles of the First World War and the eventual war-winning role that artillery played, to the culmination of professional military deployment in the Second World War.
Download or read book Learning to Fight written by Aimée Fox-Godden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first institutional examination of the British army's learning and innovation process during the First World War.
Download or read book The Changing of the Guard written by Simon Akam and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TLS and a Prospect Book of the Year A revelatory, explosive new analysis of the British military today. Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Britain has changed enormously. During this time, the British Army fought two campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at considerable financial and human cost. Yet neither war achieved its objectives. This book questions why, and provides challenging but necessary answers. Composed from assiduous documentary research, field reportage, and hundreds of interviews with many soldiers and officers who served, as well as the politicians who directed them, the allies who accompanied them, and the family members who loved and — on occasion — lost them, it is a strikingly rich, nuanced portrait of one of our pivotal national institutions in a time of great stress. Award-winning journalist Simon Akam, who spent a year in the army when he was 18, returned a decade later to see how the institution had changed. His book examines the relevance of the armed forces today — their social, economic, political, and cultural role. This is as much a book about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about the military.
Download or read book Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars written by Mark Frost and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first and only examination of how the British Empire and Commonwealth sustained its soldiers before, during, and after both world wars, a cast of leading military historians explores how the empire mobilized manpower to recruit workers, care for veterans, and transform factory workers and farmers into riflemen. Raising armies is more than counting people, putting them in uniform, and assigning them to formations. It demands efficient measures for recruitment, registration, and assignment. It requires processes for transforming common people into soldiers and then producing officers, staffs, and commanders to lead them. It necessitates balancing the needs of the armed services with industry and agriculture. And, often overlooked but illuminated incisively here, raising armies relies on medical services for mending wounded soldiers and programs and pensions to look after them when demobilized. Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars is a transnational look at how the empire did not always get these things right. But through trial, error, analysis, and introspection, it levied the large armies needed to prosecute both wars. Contributors Paul R. Bartrop, Charles Booth, Jean Bou, Daniel Byers, Kent Fedorowich, Jonathan Fennell, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Richard S. Grayson, Ian McGibbon, Jessica Meyer, Emma Newlands, Kaushik Roy, Roger Sarty, Gary Sheffield, Ian van der Waag
Download or read book The First British Army 1624 1628 written by Laurence Spring and published by Century of the Soldier. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "True, the concept of Britain dates back to Roman times, but it was James I that founded Britain in the modern sense. With his accession to the throne in 1603 for the first time Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland were united - with James bestowing on himself the title of 'King of Great Britain'. Before this time, Scots and Irishmen may have served in the English Army as mercenaries, but it was known as an English Army - but now the King's (or British) flag flew over the castles and forts throughout the land. The army raised by Charles I in 1625 for his war against Spain -and subsequently, with France - is most famous for its failure. However, it is one of the best-documented armies of the early 17th century. Using archival and archaeological evidence, the first half of the book covers the lives of the officers and men serving in the army at this time - as well as the women who accompanied them. The author discusses the origins of officers and why they decided to serve in the army - and how the men from England, Scotland and Ireland were recruited (as well as how they were clothed and what they ate; the medical care; and the tactics used by the army at this time). It also covers the hidden faction of tailors, armorers and merchants who helped to put the army into the field. The second half of the book covers not only the expeditions to Cadiz, the Isle de Rhe and the siege of La Rochelle, but also their effect on an England who feared a Spanish (and later a French) invasion. Also covered are the campaigns of Count Ernest von Mansfeldt's and Sir Charles Morgan's armies at this time, which fought at Breda, Dessau Bridge and against the forces of the Holy Roman Empire. The final chapter looks at what became of the soldiers and their widows once the army had been disbanded - therefore, the book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Early Modern History, including the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War." --Publisher description.
Download or read book Battle Tactics of the Western Front written by Paddy Griffith and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war.
Download or read book Bull Run to Boer War written by Michael Somerville and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Civil War is often said to have predicted the way in which later wars such as the Boer War and the First World War would be fought. As a result the British Army has been criticised for not heeding its lessons, a view that can be traced back to the 1930s.This book challenges that long-held view, and demonstrates that the responses to the lessons of the war in the British Army were more complex, better informed, and of higher quality, than normally depicted.Key to this new interpretation is that it takes a nineteenth century perspective rather than pre-supposing what the British should have seen based upon hindsight from the South African veldt or the Western Front trenches. It demonstrates that strategists and policy-makers reacted to the changes in the nature of warfare suggested by American experience, looks at how officers in the cavalry, infantry, artillery and engineers applied their observations in America to the technical and tactical issues of the day, and even examines the war's influence on the development of aeronautics.In studying how the Civil War changed the Late Victorian British Army, the book provides insight into its learning process, and concludes that although sometimes flawed, its study of the American Civil War meant that it was better prepared for the wars of the twentieth century than previously acknowledged.
Download or read book Faithful Fighters written by Kate Imy and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British Indian Army possessed an illusion of racial and religious inclusivity. The army recruited diverse soldiers, known as the "Martial Races," including British Christians, Hindustani Muslims, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, Pathans from northwestern India, and "Gurkhas" from Nepal. As anti-colonial activism intensified, military officials incorporated some soldiers' religious traditions into the army to keep them disciplined and loyal. They facilitated acts such as the fast of Ramadan for Muslim soldiers and allowed religious swords among Sikhs to recruit men from communities where anti-colonial sentiment grew stronger. Consequently, Indian nationalists and anti-colonial activists charged the army with fomenting racial and religious divisions. In Faithful Fighters, Kate Imy explores how military culture created unintended dialogues between soldiers and civilians, including Hindu nationalists, Sikh revivalists, and pan-Islamic activists. By the 1920s and '30s, the army constructed military schools and academies to isolate soldiers from anti-colonial activism. While this carefully managed military segregation crumbled under the pressure of the Second World War, Imy argues that the army militarized racial and religious difference, creating lasting legacies for the violent partition and independence of India, and the endemic warfare and violence of the post-colonial world.
Download or read book Soldier Sailor Beggarman Thief written by Clive Emsley and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first serious investigation of criminal offending by members of the British armed forces both during and immediately after the two world wars of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Toward Combined Arms Warfare written by Jonathan Mallory House and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Darkest Year written by Spencer Jones and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the latest volume of Spencer Jones's award-winning series which examines the British Army on the Western Front year-by-year.
Download or read book A British Profession of Arms written by Ian F. W. Beckett and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You offer yourself to be slain,” General Sir John Hackett once observed, remarking on the military profession. “This is the essence of being a soldier.” For this reason as much as any other, the British army has invariably been seen as standing apart from other professions—and sometimes from society as a whole. A British Profession of Arms effectively counters this view. In this definitive study of the late Victorian army, distinguished scholar Ian F. W. Beckett finds that the British soldier, like any other professional, was motivated by considerations of material reward and career advancement. Within the context of debates about both the evolution of Victorian professions and the nature of military professionalism, Beckett considers the late Victorian officer corps as a case study for weighing distinctions between the British soldier and his civilian counterparts. Beckett examines the role of personality, politics, and patronage in the selection and promotion of officers. He looks, too, at the internal and external influences that extended from the press and public opinion to the rivalry of the so-called rings of adherents of major figures such as Garnet Wolseley and Frederick Roberts. In particular, he considers these processes at play in high command in the Second Afghan War (1878–81), the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), and the South African War (1899–1902). Based on more than thirty years of research into surviving official, semiofficial, and private correspondence, Beckett’s work offers an intimate and occasionally amusing picture of what might affect an officer’s career: wealth, wives, and family status; promotion boards and strategic preferences; performance in the field and diplomatic outcomes. It is a remarkable depiction of the British profession of arms, unparalleled in breadth, depth, and detail.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the British Nation written by David Edgerton and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed and unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, a story of building a welfare state and coping with decline. But what if Britain's history was approached from a different angle? What if we wrote about it with as we might write the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union, as a story of power, and of transformation? David Edgerton's major new book breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to radical discontinuities. Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation. This was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers. From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways. Such a perspective produces new and refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nationgives us a grown-up, unsentimental history, one which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.
