Download or read book From Boer War to World War written by Spencer Jones and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British Expeditionary Force at the start of World War I was tiny by the standards of the other belligerent powers. Yet, when deployed to France in 1914, it prevailed against the German army because of its professionalism and tactical skill, strengths developed through hard lessons learned a dozen years earlier. In October 1899, the British went to war against the South African Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State, expecting little resistance. A string of early defeats in the Boer War shook the military’s confidence. Historian Spencer Jones focuses on this bitter combat experience in From Boer War to World War, showing how it crucially shaped the British Army’s tactical development in the years that followed. Before the British Army faced the Boer republics, an aura of complacency had settled over the military. The Victorian era had been marked by years of easy defeats of crudely armed foes. The Boer War, however, brought the British face to face with what would become modern warfare. The sweeping, open terrain and advent of smokeless powder meant soldiers were picked off before they knew where shots had been fired from. The infantry’s standard close-order formations spelled disaster against the well-armed, entrenched Boers. Although the British Army ultimately adapted its strategy and overcame the Boers in 1902, the duration and cost of the war led to public outcry and introspection within the military. Jones draws on previously underutilized sources as he explores the key tactical lessons derived from the war, such as maximizing firepower and using natural cover, and he shows how these new ideas were incorporated in training and used to effect a thorough overhaul of the British Army. The first book to address specific connections between the Boer War and the opening months of World War I, Jones’s fresh interpretation adds to the historiography of both wars by emphasizing the continuity between them.
Download or read book The Development of the British Army 1899 1914 written by John K. Dunlop and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-02-23 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1938, this book was the first to be written which dealt with the history of Army Development during the confused years which followed the South African War. The period 1899–1914 marked the change from Victorian scarlet and pipeclay to the service dress of the Expeditionary Force of 1914. Similarly, it saw the growth of the Volunteer Rifle Corps of the nineteenth century into the Territorial Force of the Haldane Scheme. The writer, sometime history scholar of St John’s College Cambridge, himself a Territorial of twenty-three years’ service, was at the time one of the T.A. officers recently appointed to newly created posts at the War Office.
Download or read book Building The Old Contemptibles British Military Transformation And Tactical Development From The Boer War To The Great War 1899 1914 written by Major Andrew J. Risio and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impressed with the tactical lessons of the Boer War, the British Army reformed its doctrine and training from 1899 to 1914, deploying a combat ready force, the “Old Contemptibles” of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in 1914. Because of these changes, the BEF played a crucial role in Belgium and France in 1914. The lessons of the Boer War guided the British Army and its interwar reforms. The doctrine and training developed from 1902-1914 was a significant improvement over the pre-Boer War British colonial warfare tactics. With Haldane’s organizational reforms and Robert’s new doctrine, the British Army built the Old Contemptibles of the BEF. The battles of 1914 showed the BEF was the equal of any European contemporary in quality of its tactics and doctrine. The comparison of the BEF to the other combatants in 1914 does not stand in stark contrast. The BEF performed well but no better or worse than comparable German or French units did. What does stand in stark contrast is the BEF in 1914 when compared with the expedition to South Africa in 1899. The years of reform between these two expeditions were truly a crucible that built the Old Contemptibles.
Download or read book The British Army and the First World War written by Ian Beckett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive new history of the shaping and performance of the British army during the First World War.
Download or read book Soldiers as Workers written by Nick Mansfield (Historian) and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book outlines how class is single most important factor in understanding the British army in the period of industrialisation. It challenges the 'ruffians officered by gentlemen' theory of most military histories and demonstrates how service in the ranks was not confined to 'the scum of the earth' but included a cross section of 'respectable' working class men. Common soldiers represent a huge unstudied occupational group. They worked as artisans, servants and dealers, displaying pre-enlistment working class attitudes and evidencing low level class conflict in numerous ways. Soldiers continued as members of the working class after discharge, with military service forming one phase of their careers and overall life experience. After training, most common soldiers had time on their hands and were allowed to work at a wide variety of jobs, analysed here for the first time. Many serving soldiers continued to work as regimental tradesmen, or skilled artificers. Others worked as officers' servants or were allowed to run small businesses, providing goods and services to their comrades. Some, especially the Non Commissioned Officers who actually ran the army, forged extraordinary careers which surpassed any opportunities in civilian life. All the soldiers studied retained much of their working class way of life. This was evidenced in a contract culture similar to that of the civilian trade unions. Within disciplined boundaries, army life resulted in all sorts of low level class conflict. The book explores these by covering drinking, desertion, feigned illness, self harm, strikes and go-slows. It further describes mutinies, back chat, looting, fraternisation, foreign service, suicide and even the shooting of unpopular officers.
Download or read book John Hunyadi and the Late Crusade written by Andrei Pogăciaș and published by Retinue to Regiment. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is about John Hunyadi, a Hungarian warlord of Wallachian origin, and his campaigns against the Ottomans.
Download or read book The Edwardian Army written by Timothy Bowman and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions the general assumption that the British army which set sail for France in August 1914 was the best prepared force ever despatched from the British isles. Reveals instead that the army was by no means as well prepared for European continental warfare as many have presumed.
Download or read book Communications and British Operations on the Western Front 1914 1918 written by Brian N. Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-07 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reveals the impact of communications on the military operations of the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War.
Download or read book Horse Mobilization written by War Office and published by Firestep. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprinted for the Army Review October 1913, this facsimile offers an insight into the general requirements of military horses at a time of war and how the British Army would go about getting the numbers of horses required for complete mobilisation.
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 American Military History Volume 1 written by Army Center of Military History and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-05 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.
Download or read book The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated written by Sir Edward Bruce Hamley and published by . This book was released on 1872 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Guide to the Sources of British Military History written by Robin HIgham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed to fill an overlooked gap, this book, originally published in 1972, provides a single unified introduction to bibliographical sources of British military history. Moreover it includes guidance in a number of fields in which no similar source is available at all, giving information on how to obtain acess to special collections and private archives, and links military history, especially during peacetime, with the development of science and technology.
Download or read book A History of the British Cavalry 1899 1913 Volume 4 written by The Marquess of Anglesey and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1993-09-14 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the seventh, and second last, volume in t his historical work, Lord Anglesey shows how superior the Br itish cavalry was compared to those of the French and German s. He concentrates on the first five months of the War. '
Download or read book British Regiments 1914 1918 written by Brigadier E. A. James and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most used and most useful works of reference on the Great War ever published. In this marvellous volume is listed every cavalry and Yeomanry regiment, every battalion of every infantry regiment, Regular, Territorial or other - that existed during the Great War. In every case the location of the unit on 4 August 1914 is given, or the date and place of its formation if raised after the outbreak of war. Its initial disposition, subsequent moves, changes in subordination and final disposal or location on 11 November 1918 are all recorded. Thus, in a masterly and concise form, we have the war service record of 31 regular and 17 reserve cavalry regiments, 57 Yeomanry regiments and their second and third line counterparts and nearly 1,750 infantry battalions. Several appendices contain a mine of information; a table of the infantry regiments showing the number of the different types of battalions each had, regular, reserve, extra reserve, territorial, New Army, garrison etc.; how the New Army battalions were raised; the Training Reserve; list of infantry divisions; summary of battle honours, casualties and VCs of each infantry regiment. Finally, there is a good index.
Download or read book Kitchener s Army written by Peter Simkins and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2007-08-30 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numbering over five million men, Britain's army in the First World War was the biggest in the country's history. Remarkably, nearly half those men who served in it were volunteers. 2,466,719 men enlisted between August 1914 and December 1915, many in response to the appeals of the Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener. How did Britain succeed in creating a mass army, almost from scratch, in the middle of a major war ? What compelled so many men to volunteer ' and what happened to them once they had taken the King's shilling ? Peter Simkins describes how Kitchener's New Armies were raised and reviews the main political, economic and social effects of the recruiting campaign. He examines the experiences and impressions of the officers and men who made up the New Armies. As well as analysing their motives for enlisting, he explores how they were fed, housed, equipped and trained before they set off for active service abroad. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, ranging from government papers to the diaries and letters of individual soldiers, he questions long-held assumptions about the 'rush to the colours' and the nature of patriotism in 1914. The book will be of interest not only to those studying social, political and economic history, but also to general readers who wish to know more about the story of Britain's citizen soldiers in the Great War.
Download or read book The Medical War written by Mark Harrison and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-10-28 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Medical War describes the role of medicine in the British Army during the First World War. It argues that medicine played a vital part in the war, helping to sustain the morale of troops and their families, and reducing the wastage of manpower.
