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Over the course of the following chapters, Spencer charts the inability of Britain to corral its Pacific dominions into a fully functioning empire-wide air defence program during the 1920s. For example, the introductory chapters of the Australian and New Zealand official histories of air power in World War II examined their military aviation history largely through nationalist lenses, with a view to explaining their respective nations' war preparedness. British Imperial Air Power: The Royal Air Forces and the Defense of Australia and New Zealand between the World Wars: By Alex M. Spencer. [Extracted from the article]

From the moment a man took ‘the king’s shilling’ and was sworn to serve as a soldier in the nineteenth-century British Army, his life proceeded as a file as well as a fighting man. Disorder and desertion drove the utilitarian purposes of discipline and tracking, while constant pressure to account for expenditure in lives and money added further impetus to the copious industry of military record-keeping. Individuals were enumerated, named, appraised and allocated pay. Such archives produce a disorderly silence where men are present but without voice. Carefully archived and always public, military files have a continuing currency through the post-army lives of soldiers into the twenty-first century for descendants and historians. Tracking the life of ‘files’ over time, the paper reflects on the shifting forms of knowledge produced. In particular, it notes the tensions between the densely written form of the files in a population of rank and file soldiers who were partially literate; the highly detailed individuation of the files within a heavily conformist institution, and the modernity of post-1850s record-keeping in an institution bound by tradition. It ends with a reflection on the limitations and opportunities presented by digital access to this substantial archive of imperial-colonial conflict. Abbreviations: AJCP: Australian Joint Copying Project TNA: The National Archives, London WO: War Office [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editorial team of the Israeli National Legislation Database endeavored to locate all the proclamations, ordinances, and 'Orders in Council' published from the beginning of the British military regime in Palestine to the last 'hidden laws' published in the waning days of the British Mandate. These documents complete the historical information on Israel state laws and shed light on the initial establishment of the legal and judicial system in Palestine, before the establishment of the State of Israel. In this paper, we describe the development of legislation under British regime, from 1917 to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. We introduce the three figures who played key roles in regulating the legislative system: Orme Bigland Clark, Norman Bentwich, and Sir Robert Harry Drayton, and describe the legislative process that was developed and the legislative procedures that prevailed at the time. The legal framework of this period, alongside the remaining Ottoman legislation, formed a solid basis for the legislative system and process for the Provisional State Council and subsequently, the Knesset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians and economists have shown renewed interest in mercantilism over the last couple of years. From this interest, a dispute has arisen about whether mercantilism should be seen as an incoherent economic thought or if it is possible to ‘reconstruct’ its basic principles. In line with this latter attempt, this paper is intended to provide a materialist explanation for varying degrees of belief in shared mercantilist assumptions. My hypothesis is that belief in mercantilist assumptions is significantly dependent upon how economic and security issues materially interact in a given time and space, with uncertainty and insecurity profoundly favouring mercantilist dispositions in economic thought. To analyse this hypothesis, the paper sets the first steps for relating the credibility of mercantilism with changes in British economic and military history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Section 3 presents ideas to further investigate this hypothesis. Section 4 concludes the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper probes the formation of local Levies among the indigenous hill people of the Indo-Burma frontier and their contributions to the British-led guerrilla operations during the Second World War. With the shift of the theatre of the Southeast Asian edition of the Second World War from the Lower Burma plains to the mountainous hilly terrain in the Indo-Burma frontier, the mode of warfare also changed. In the new terrain where conventional warfare was no longer suitable the British Indian Army resorted to guerrilla tactics largely with the support of the indigenous hill people who had the traditional expertise in guerrilla fighting. However, the valour and heroism of the indigenous hill people behind the enemy lines has not received adequate scholarly attention. This paper discusses the case of three ethnic communities in the Indo-Burma frontier – Kachin, Naga and Zo (Kuki-Chin) – who were considered by the British as 'loyal allies' at the risk of Japanese atrocities. Supervised by British civil and military officers the local Levies not only effectively bogged down the Japanese forces in the frontier but also supplied valuable intelligence to the Allied force in the reconquest of Burma. The paper argues that Kachin, Zo and Naga rallied behind their colonial masters with the hope that they would receive reward from the latter after the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear of the 'Fifth Column' was one of the most important aspects of the defeat suffered by the British army in France and Belgium during May and June 1940, but it has so far been largely overlooked in most accounts of the campaign. There was widespread paranoia throughout the British Expeditionary Force that its efforts were being undermined by spies, traitors and saboteurs, all working behind the lines to deliver a fatal 'stab in the back' to British forces. This paper suggests that this feature of the experience of retreat is a fundamental issue. It argues that many of the other notable facets of the retreat – the strained relationship with allies, the problems in dealing with civilians, the deterioration of morale – can be better understood within the context of the widespread fear of the 'Fifth Column'. Furthermore, it argues that there was a disintegration and brutalization of relationships with civilians, refugees and allies as a direct result of 'Fifth Column' paranoia. It concludes that although the actual influence of any Fifth Column was probably insignificant, the British army suffered far greater damage from the phantom menace of its imaginary 'Fifth Column'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Mountbatten, Cold War and Empire, 1945–79" by Adrian Smith is a book that explores the life and career of Lord Louis Mountbatten. The book delves into Mountbatten's royal connections, character flaws, and his violent death in 1979. It also examines his role in the Cold War, particularly his understanding of anti-colonial nationalism and his involvement in the partition of India. The book highlights Mountbatten's views on power and powerlessness, including his changing stance on nuclear weapons. Overall, the book offers a unique perspective on the challenges faced by the British state during this period. [Extracted from the article]

Military units can become to some extent self-governing in war-time battle. At times, they may take the discipline of their soldiers into their own hands and such discipline may be severe. This paper examines incidents in the British military, in both World Wars, where British soldiers were killed by their comrades because they would not fight in the heat of battle. The judicial execution by the military authorities of deserters in the First World War led to much controversy in Britain. It may be much less well-known that in both World Wars there was, on occasion, an extra-judicial practice within the British military of executing soldiers who would not fight in the heat of battle. In such situations ethical dilemmas become very difficult indeed and some of the relevant issues are examined here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Imperial War Museum North's attempts to disturb popular memories about British experiences of war through the mobilisation of space and materiality. However, it is argued that this does not succeed because of the spatial mediation and object placement employed throughout which allow the museum to reinforce bodily, spatial and historical experiences of the outside world. The second part of the paper analyses the neglected place of the museum shop in this, which contributes to making the IWM visit one of familiarity because of the quotidian consumption practices that are encouraged there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a thorough discussion of military museums - and in this particular instance, the National Army Museum - there must be a frank and realistic assessment of the limitations that factor into how military history can be depicted. This perspective paper considers two specific aspects of this process. First, it discusses the challenges confronting the National Army Museum when the history it covers cannot be fully depicted in the sterility of a museum setting. Second, it considers how the museum should deal with controversial histories. After all, the history of the British Army is to a large degree a history of war and imperialism, and an entire range of ethical and political perspectives are inevitably involved in the portrayal of that history. This paper examines these challenges - the limitations which can mute the museum's voice - and concludes that once these factors are acknowledged, the National Army Museum's strengths and successes can be clearly understood and better appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article stems from an informal inquiry into how military history was employed in British and North American centres for higher military education to prepare officers for deployment to Afghanistan. The discussions were conducted with professional military educators who were actively teaching in institutions tasked with educating middle and senior ranking officers. When questioned about course reading materials and texts, there was little commonality of approach between the three North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies. There was, however, a common working assumption that the only applicable military history lessons were those drawn from the three Anglo-Afghan Wars fought in 1839–1842, 1878–1880 and 1919 respectively.When asked about the linkages of Afghanistan to Pakistan and the wider South Asian region, there was a begrudging admission that the war in Afghanistan could not be fought in isolation and that any lasting peace had to be considered within a greater regional framework. Yet when it was posited that there may be benefit to a wider approach to the applicability of regional military history, those queried could see little to no benefit in considering any military history lessons but those derived from the three previously cited Anglo-Afghan Wars. This paper suggests that if military history has a useful role to play in contemporary conflict analysis and, more importantly, professional military education, then there is merit in considering a wider historic canvas and that the events of Hindustan's military past lend themselves to such an application. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After describing briefly the activities of information officers in the early decades of British security services MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, otherwise known as MI6), the work of these documentalists is thereafter explored in the wider context of the information manager in the knowledge organization. Early in the twentieth century, MI5 created its Registry to ensure the efficient use of the information it gathered on suspect aliens. Its equivalent in SIS, housed in Room 40 Admiralty Old Building, was concerned with signals intercepted first on cables and later transmitted by wireless. The Second World War saw similar operations, including those of the London Reception Centre (LRC) and of the Government Code & Cypher School (GCCS) in Bletchley Park. This paper describes briefly the means by which the intelligence could be put to efficient use to provide effective and efficient support to their customers, the "spycatchers," "the watch," and the researchers, or "back room." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a gendered perspective to British domination in India through the British Indian Army—which in many ways was central to their entire structure of economic and political domination in India. Locating its understanding drawn from the political economy of south-east Punjab, it argues that the designated martial castes and military recruitment structurally and ideologically identified with and privileged those trends of existing masculinities in this region which suited their power structure and empire building. It was a constellation of marital caste status, land ownership, dominant caste syndrome and good bodily physique or physical strength that ideologically came to connect and configure dominant masculinity in colonial Punjab. An Army profession fully supported it. During the two world wars it emerged as the militarized masculinity, amply supported by legal and administrative measures introduced or apparently adopted in deference to certain popular cultural practices. The associated economic and political privileges turned ‘loyalty’ into an inherent and special ingredient of ‘masculinity’ which the nationalists had to confront and deal with till such times that it came to be firmly linked with nationalism and patriotism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes a B-Dienst success in solving signals using a British code used by merchant ships (the Merchant Ships' Code (Mersigs II)) in late 1943, despite only having a depth of two; it also relates the history of the Mersigs II system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines English or British administrators’ use of indigenous military assistance in ‘counterinsurgency’ operations in the two contexts of 16th-century Gaelic Ireland and Native North America. When mobilized, indigenous peoples might merely provide numbers, but in counterinsurgency roles their real value lay in the provision of timely strategic information about ‘rebels’, logistical assistance in moving English forces, and the extension of strategic reach by acting as clients independent of direct English control. Mobilizing this kind of aid required a sophisticated understanding of local cultural systems of recruitment and careful co-option of indigenous leaders. Intercultural complexity meant that such mobilization frequently failed. Lacking indigenous help English military leaders developed alternative strategies – often in combination – of devastation, extension of communications infrastructure (primarily roads), and fortification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an assessment of the British perception of Italy's reality during the period of non-belligerence and of British political, diplomatic, and military responses from September 1939 to June 1940. It analyses the alternative options available to British political and military officials and evaluates the decisions they took during the period under consideration. It concludes that British political and military officials accurately understood Italy's situation and Mussolini's desire to join the war on Germany's side. However, they rightly reasoned that Italy's entry into the war depended on the outcome of the Western campaign. It was only if and when that campaign had been decided that Mussolini would make his move. Given this, the choice to concentrate British forces against Germany rather than dispersing them by opening new fronts or expanding the existing battlefield was reasonable. Had the Anglo-French allies managed to repel the offensive in the West, the threat of Italy's intervention would have been averted. It can therefore be argued that London's decision to refrain from engaging Rome militarily was not due to a lack of awareness regarding Italy's vulnerability, but rather to a strategic doctrine aimed at defeating Germany through a long war of attrition. This decision showcased a shrewd understanding of the prevailing situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a collection of references and citations from various sources about the role of German troops, known as Hessians, during the American Revolution. It provides information about the history, organization, and experiences of the Hessians, as well as specific individuals involved in their forces. The references serve as additional sources for further research on the topic. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews several articles published in the issue of the journal by Lara Kriegel, Jonathan Franklin, and Melissa Free on topics such as war in the Victorian era, Crimean War veterans, and imperialism.

Though the vast majority of Kipling's South African writing is single-minded and exhortatory, the best of it is informed by a precarious tension between loyalty to empire and loyalty to race. In it, he considers the implications of the Boer and--more disturbingly, in his view--British failure to treat the Second Anglo-Boer War as a "white man's war." Taking 1900's "A Burgher of the Free State" as an example, I argue that Kipling sought to explore the moral ambivalence that he felt but could not directly confront, as he tried, variously, to overlook, to justify, and ultimately to accept Britain's arming of people of color. This unforthcoming narrative's contradictory impulses to reveal and to occlude exactly mirror the contradictory impulses of its central character, and the narrative's hermeneutic indeterminacy materially replicates the moral uncertainty that torments him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on military studies topics which include a study of the history and historiography of the Malayan Emergency; a comparative study of imperial military actions by British and American military forces at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century with campaigns in the twenty-first century; and a study of the use of Indians in North American and Gaelic Irish in Ireland by British military forces as part of their counterinsurgency tactics between 1500 and 1800.

Explains the reasons behind the mismanaged status of British military records in the War Office archives. Reduction in the scope of the historical papers of the British Army; Destruction of a War Office document storage facility; Creation of a list of files to be preserved.

In the early nineteenth-century Admiralty there was little policy-making, policy-makers were few and the word 'policy' was scarcely ever used. At least in peacetime, economy was the default principle of action. Only by a century later had something approximating the modern pattern emerged. The growth from the 1880s of better internal Admiralty financial control was an important causal factor. It sponsored the development of a bureaucratic organization concerned with financial policy-making, anticipating here the similar development in the planning of naval strategy and construction. Moreover, it encouraged Admiralty civil servants to involve themselves in wider matters of policy. Also relevant are attempts made by the Treasury, principally between the two world wars, to enforce more external financial controls, though these were against the background of fundamental defence problems that themselves greatly aided the concentration of minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers views on the stance of Great Britain on a deployed missile defense. Preparation and planning process of British defense policy against missiles; Perception of the British Armed Forces on the threat of weapons of mass destruction; Overview of the 1998 Strategic Defense Review of Britain.

How military withdrawals are handled matters – they are no mere adjunct to military operations. Studies in such fields as history, strategy, conflict resolution, and policy-related analysis highlight the significant symbolic, political, and practical consequences of the mishandling of the withdrawal of military forces from a theatre of operations. The British military withdrawal from East Malaysia (Borneo) has never before been examined. But its significance as a case study extends beyond this. British military operations in East Malaysia were highly successful and so it might logically be supposed that the withdrawal of military forces at the cessation of the conflict would be a straightforward exercise worthy of little comment. This article demonstrates, however, that behind the scenes the withdrawal was for British decision-makers acutely problematic. In the end, Britain struggled to construct a withdrawal process that would reconcile often competing political and military imperatives. Borneo illustrates that military withdrawals therefore can also be extremely challenging even in the context of a successful military operation. As Borneo illustrates, military withdrawals are strategic acts, and even in apparently benign circumstances they are much more than just a postscript to a war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this piece, I think through some of the responses to the COVID-19 crisis in British popular culture, particularly the significance of the turn to one of the most prominent domesticity experts in mainstream British television: Kirstie Allsopp. 28 Philips D (2016) Making do and mending - Domestic television in the age of austerity: Kirstie Allsopp's Kirstie's homemade home. It is clear from my own analysis of over 54 hours of Kirstie's television programmes ([24]) that, as an austerity celebrity, she demonstrates a particular maternal femininity that has been identified during the current period of austerity ([2]; [22]) and presents a glamorous and aspirational lifestyle sometimes described as "emulation framing" ([25], in [22]; [21]). I consider what it is that the nation appears to find particularly comforting about Kirstie as a public figure who emerged in the context of, and formed her domestic goddess celebrity persona through, articulations with austerity culture. [Extracted from the article]

Andrew adjusted by researching and writing the best history of secret intelligence and the US presidency, I For the President's Eyes Only: secret intelligence and the American presidency from Washington to Bush i (1995). During the late 1980s Andrew collaborated with former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky to produce by far the most authoritative history of Soviet-era intelligence: I KGB: the inside story of its foreign operations from Lenin to Gorbachev i (1990). No one has done more for longer to establish the study of intelligence as a serious field of scholarly enquiry than Christopher Andrew. [Extracted from the article]

With the delimitation of airspace and outer space being a continuous issue, various arguments intend to analyze the viewpoint of the geopolitics of near-space being considered neither as part of Astropolitik, nor the geopolitics of airspace. Consequently, a comparative methodology in regards to the multidimensional objectives of geopolitics is followed: (1) evolving a theoretical military basis of spaceplane deployment; (2) examining the natural background of the geopolitics of near-space; (3) constructing the 'history-future' relation of the geopolitics of near-space; and (4) analyzing the increasing of America's national power through spaceplane deployment. Principle results obtained from the theoretical comparative methodology consequently determine the fundamental establishment of the geopolitics of near-space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combat experiences mainly from the last three decades have shown what unique capabilities air power possesses and how crucial their proper use is. Its employment has also become a substantially discussed topic since air power started being perceived as a weapon of first choice predominantly for Western political leaders. This article analyses the role of air power in British decision-making process based on its use in military operations. The main task is to discover reasons related to air power which led British decision-makers deploy or not deploy the RAF to military operations based on four cases from the period 2010–15. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the British 'soldier-hero' as a political and cultural icon after 1945 has been largely confined to literature concerned with the memory of historical figures. Rarely have scholars considered how post-war military deployments not only created contemporary soldier-heroes, but also transformed their place within politics and society as the moral interrogation of these wars threatened to encroach upon the prestige of these icons. This article examines how the soldier-hero interacted with one of Britain's most contentious deployments, Northern Ireland, and how politicians sought to control narratives surrounding this figure to avoid public relations controversy in unusual political conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically interrogates the nature of facial wounds themselves, their visceral, dehumanising quality, visibility, and social meaning. Little attention has been paid to the cultural ramifications and difficult questions concerning the futures of facially injured soldiers that Britain had to address in the post-war era. Focusing on photograph albums as socially salient objects, this article challenges medical photographic archives. Building on unexplored family archives, it revises understandings of the difficulties of veterans' homecoming, and how they achieved a level of emotional recovery as they tried to find a place in the post-war social fabric. The article argues that family photographic collections show the less obvious way that the war lived on for veterans and families, its damage and how it was passed on. These private collections offer new revelations on the success or failure of the surgical interventions in their aesthetic aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young Officer Alexandru loanițiu's fate was foreshadowed in exceptional conditions, as it was his entire career during the difficult years of the First World War. Active participant in the frontline, involved alongside his subunit and regiment in the battles in Dobruja, on the Neajlov and in Mărăşeşti, exceptionally promoted from the rank of lieutenant to that of major in only two years, promoted from battery commander directly to teacher at the School of Artillery and Engineering, and subsequently, within the Historical Service of the General Staff, Professor of Military History and Commander of the Superior War School, to become Chief of the General Staff, to name only some of the landmarks of a "splendid" military career prematurely and tragically ended. The current article attempts to outline, without the ideological shadow which marked the society back then, the profile of military thinker Alexandru loanițiu, his personality asserted through consistent pieces of work and studies in military history and strategy, gravitating around the theory of armed fighting, planning and command of operations within the campaign, reorganisation and equipment of the armed forces, in the context of the major conflict that was foreseen and also of his own experience on the battlefield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stanchev and Petrov offer a critical analysis of the organizational improvements in the structure of the Land Forces, of the combat training of the units and lastly of the Bulgarian capabilities for waging a prolonged war. The authors deal with a number of subtopics - the organizational and the functional changes of the Land Forces, their use for the occupation of Vardar Macedonia, Eastern Serbia and Western Thrace and for actions against the partisan movements on the Balkans, as well as the participation of the Land Forces in the war against Nazi Germany from September 1944 to May 1945. The last chapter draws the reader's attention to two important topics for every military historian - the combat training of the Land Forces and the development of the military art for conducting ground operations. An analysis of the main doctrinal documents of the Land Forces from the Cold War era is present as well. Addressing the IDF and the Armoured Corps in particular, the author describes a preparatory process that was consistent with the previous war, with the military authorities in charge failing to understand that the next war would be different. [Extracted from the article]

Using these definitions, we may judge that the Ottoman army waged thirty-two campaigns (fourteen offensive campaigns and eighteen defensive campaigns) during the First World War. An Overview of the Ottoman Campaigns 12 Of the fourteen offensive campaigns waged by the Ottoman army in the First World War, seven were deliberate campaigns and seven were campaigns of 8 Mesut Uyar and Edward Erickson, Military History of the Ottomans From Osman to Ataturk (Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger Security International, 2009), p. 264. The article also presents an appraisal of the various offensive and defensive campaigns that the Ottoman army conducted in the First World War as well as identifying a new vocabulary that distinguishes the army's deliberate campaigns from its campaigns of opportunity and expediency. VOLUME 20, ISSUE 2 ©Centre of Military and Strategic Studies, 2021 ISSN: 1488-559X Journal of Military and Strategic Studies Ottoman Campaigns in the First World War Ed Erickson Introduction Unlike the British or the Americans, the Turks do not officially designate or name military campaigns in their official histories. [Extracted from the article]

In 1894, two-fifths of the men who served in the Royal Naval Reserves (RNR) were drawn from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, despite the region containing only 0.5% of the total UK population. This was not an atypical spike in recruitment, however, but represents merely one moment in a relationship that lasted for nearly a century. Highlanders and Islanders had served in the RNR since its inception in 1859, and continued to do so in large numbers right up to the outbreak of war in 1939. This article explores the association between region and military institution that developed as a result, and the economic and social reasons that lay behind this. In doing so, it challenges the tendency for Scottish historians to focus overwhelmingly on questions of national identity when examining the British military. It also suggests that the historiography of the Highlands and Islands has focused too much on questions of land and land ownership, and not enough on the wider economic and social circumstances impacting on individual and community life across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With scant material interests at stake, and protection exacting a toll on military resources, Britain wanted out of Belize, its sole dependency in Central America. This desire became more pronounced by the 1970s as successive British governments sought to eliminate residual out-of-Europe political and military commitments. Exiting Belize, however, proved a three-decade challenge for Britain. Exploiting recently declassified British government documents, this article explains why leaving proved so intractable. The article explains how Guatemala’s territorial claim—and its threat to realise this claim by means of force—proved the main obstacle to Britain’s military exit. Repeated attempts in the 1970s towards a negotiated settlement with Guatemala failed. Instead the decade was marked by moments of acute tension. Unable to discount the possibility of a Guatemalan attack, Britain felt compelled to reinforce its military presence in the country at a time when it was trying to exit. Moreover, Britain had to offer continued protection as a necessary condition for Belize to proceed to independence in 1981. This post-independence defence guarantee was intended as a short-term measure, and Britain remained committed to ending its Belize commitment at the earliest opportunity. Yet British protection ended only in 1994. This article unpacks the political and military factors that best account for this protracted withdrawal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing literature on Operation Banner, the codename for the British military operation in Northern Ireland, has indicated that the conduct of soldiers deployed was not always in line with principles of minimum force. Adherence to these principles would seem to have been essential to the success of the operation given the initial deployment of the soldiers was in the role of military aid to the civil power. This article will examine the role of one of the British Army’s most aggressive units, the Parachute Regiment, and will show how the responses of the regiment to the demands of the operation in Northern Ireland were frequently in contravention of minimum force principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marcus Fielding summarises the Ottoman Empire's First World War campaign in the Sinai, Palestine and Syria, which included raids on the Suez Canal, the defence of the Gaza-Beersheba line and key battles at Katia, Romani, Magdhaba, Jerusalem and Megiddo. He critically examines the relationships between key German and Ottoman leaders and concludes that, although defeated by the Allies, the Turkish soldiers ended the war with their reputation as fighting men intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No other institution illustrates the tensions between competing normative ideals and discursive behaviours more than the army. At the turn of the eighteenth century the British military had a reputation for being particularly untrustworthy, licentious, immoral and drunk. Using autobiographical sources and focusing on subjective experience in relation to normative expectations, this article questions such stereotypes by looking at four men in the middle ranks of the army officer corps. The attempt of these four officers to understand, perform and negotiate competing norms illustrates the tension that often existed between the expectations of a variety of masculine discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the imaginations of many, war in British India had its focus on the North-West Frontier and was fought against the tribes of that region. However, British thinking about Indian defence involving Afghanistan underwent tremendous change over the period under consideration. British plans to meet a Russian invasion on the Kabul-Kandahar Line in 1904 resembled those of any other Nineteenth Century Imperial campaign, with numbers of infantry and cavalry still being thought of and referred to as bayonets and sabres. Twenty years later, heavily influenced by the experiences of the Great War in the region and the Third Afghan War and associated operations, the calculus was different with logistics changed by motor vehicles and the introduction of what today are referred to as force multipliers, such as aeroplanes and machine guns. It was over this period that warfare as fought and conceptualised by men like Napoleon gave way to modern practices familiar to us today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1898, the Philippines ceased to be a Spanish colony and were annexed by the United States, ignoring the Philippine expectation to gain national independence. Based on novel archival sources this article re-examines the experience of that imperial transition in the Philippines from British perspectives. As the British had strong interests in the Philippines, when the Spanish-American War broke out, the British government sent a naval squadron to Manila in order to protect the lives and properties of its subjects, but also to report on everything that was taking place in the islands. The officers in that squadron became privileged observers of the transfer of sovereignty from the Spanish to the Americans, a process that extended from 1898 to 1903, and which the British saw not as a war for the independence of the Philippines, but rather as the handoff between two colonial governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great War of 1914-18 not only transformed the map of the globe. It also changed conceptions of soldiers and practices of remembrance. The shell-shocked veteran came to the fore as the avatar of wartime experience, and trauma came to be understood as wartime's governing affect. Examining the cult of the Crimean War veteran, this essay complicates our understandings of war's legacies. At the fin de siècle, Crimean veterans occupied central roles in public spectacles and monarchical processions. Additionally, they were objects of pastoral care both in London and in the provinces. The cult of the Crimean veteran fused rescue and remembrance; it also married patriotism and philanthropy. As it uncovers the cult of the Crimean veteran, this essay unearths a Victorian genealogy and grammar of remembrance. In the process, it challenges the hegemonic role of the Great War in shaping understandings of martial heroes and wartime experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on theories of problems in warfare being ‘tame’ or ‘wicked’, this article explores continuity and changes in British and German doctrine through examination of wording, emphasis, and approach in field service manuals. This reveals significant continuities in German doctrine, especially the emphasis on initiative, but growing focus on rapid decision-making, coupled with forward command, to achieve surprise. British doctrine also displayed continuity, focused on controlling the battle and reluctance to allow subordinates to exercise initiative. A shift in British doctrine, from one similar to the German model towards a more restrictive approach, is identified between 1905 and 1909. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]