This article examines the official names listed in the 'Egypt and Palestine' section of the 1922 report by the British Army’s Battles Nomenclature Committee and compares them with descriptions of military engagements in the Official History to establish if they clearly identify the events. The Committee’s application of their own definitions and guidelines during the process of naming these conflicts is evaluated together with examples of more recent usages in selected secondary sources. The articles concludes that the Committee’s failure to accurately identify the events of this campaign have had a negative impacted on subsequent historiography.
This article examines the legal and moral framework concerning justice after war in Giovanni da Legnano’s De Bello, De Represaliis et De Duello and Honore Bouvet’s L’Arbre des Batailles. Throughout these works various principles can be identified which are similar to the modern term jus post bellum. The authors presented various objectives determining the correct time to end a conflict. They also established specific actions concerning the seizure of property, the treatment of prisoners, and the negotiation of treaties. These actions balanced justice and mercy allowing previously warring nations to be reconciled.
The capabilities of horse-drawn armies were recorded by contemporary observers and by later historians, nonetheless there has been a continuing debate regarding the capacity and workings of these forces, particularly once they were integrated with and then superseded by, newer forms of transport such as railways and motor vehicles. This paper argues that little attention has been paid to the wider economic environment in which these armies operated, and in turn the supply of these armies can be considered as an economic system in its own right.
The historiography investigating the fate of the 300,000 French and colonial soldiers who served in Macedonia during the First World War remains incomplete. This article offers an analysis focusing on the cultural discovery of the ‘Mediterranean East’ by the French soldiers who served in Macedonia. It utilises the literature produced by the French personnel to define the differences between their imagined representations of the East, and the reality they encountered once they landed in Salonica. It also highlights the Orientalist influence exerted over the minds of many Frenchmen who sailed to an East that remained profoundly unknown.
British prisoners of war captured during the Napoleonic Wars were preoccupied with dress. This is unsurprising given clothing’s relationship to physical and mental health and to identity. However, the discussion of clothing by prisoners during this period goes beyond the passive engagement with these concepts to a conscious manipulation of how dress could be used, and how it could be ‘read’ by others. This paper argues that British prisoners of war used their knowledge of dress, and the skills learned during their incarceration, and from their professions, to turn clothing into escape technologies, and a means to assert agency.
June 2019 saw the fiftieth anniversary of the first Royal Navy ‘Continuous at sea Deterrent’ patrol which was carried out by a nuclear-powered submarine equipped with the Polaris missile. This article looks at how the UK undertook the development and deployment of the nuclear propulsion plant for such submarines.
The late sixteenth-century religious wars prompted a Protestant movement within the Elizabethan regime that sought state-sanctioned military intervention in aid of the Dutch rebels. Printed military news also became a popular genre during this period. This article seeks to re-examine the journalistic legacy of soldier-poet Thomas Churchyard through a close reading of his 1580 account of the English pillaging of Mechelen by a group of English mercenaries. Churchyard’s text was the product of his connections to interventionist statesmen and the widespread vilification of Spaniards. His pamphlet utilised popular motifs that vindicated religious violence and exploited inchoate notions of journalistic credibility.
Reports about lacking operational readiness have haunted the German Armed Forces ever since the core mission reverted to collective defence. New research even suggests that deficits in conventional warfighting capability emerged long before this shift in strategic focus. The Bundeswehr’s operational history however has, unlike other topics, not yet been sufficiently addressed from this changed perspective. This research note therefore argues that more attention on issues pertaining to military capabilities is warranted and makes the case that scholars will find both academic and practical relevance in the pursuit of such research.
One of the most enduring and dramatic tropes of the First World War is the image of a young woman giving a white feather to a man who is not in uniform to shame him into enlisting. This article examines the ‘White Feather Campaign’ from a history of emotions perspective, focusing on the male shame experience. It analyses this as part of a dynamic interaction of the participants: the white feather giver, the receiver, and the witness(es). The narratives of the men involved illustrate the varied ways they regained their sense of manhood in the face of humiliation: through reframing and counter-shaming.
The Prussian Kriegsspiel was the very first professional wargame and was originally introduced in the Prussian army in 1824 but has so far seen very little systematic research. This research project has compiled a corpus from all the rulesets currently extant, which was then made subject to formal and linguistic analysis. This yielded results in three important areas: First, by comparing them with a collection of contemporary texts on military theory it was possible to identify Kriegsspiel rulesets as distinctive text types. Second, comparing the rulesets gave valuable insights into the developmental history of the Kriegsspiel. And finally, it was possible to distinguish three distinctive phases in the development of the Kriegsspiel.
The landings at Gallipoli’s Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915 will forever be enshrined in Australian and New Zealand history, but historians remain deeply divided over whether landing in such appallingly difficult terrain was in fact a mistake. While this issue remains unresolved to this day, research based on primary sources proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Royal Navy was in the wrong place before the landings began. Certain naval officers, however, quickly became aware of the error and did their utmost to correct it. Despite those efforts, the landing still took place more than a mile north of where intended. Corroboration of the eye-witness accounts of those naval officers explains why and how this happened.
By September 1940 the quality of pilots supplied to Fighter Command had become unacceptably low. Reducing earlier stages of training was meant to be replaced by increased Operational Training Unit instruction, but this merely provided conversion to operational type. To preserve the first-line fighter force Fighter Command adopted a ‘Stabilisation Scheme’, relegating a third of squadrons to a training role. Pilot demand remained high and the Stabilisation Scheme was retained until pilot numbers in first-line squadrons were finally satisfactory in June 1941, and the need for training squadrons disappeared, despite increases in flying accidents during 1941.
The Irish Military Establishment (IME) of the eighteenth century was established in 1699 to protect Ireland from invasion and to secure the Hiberno-Protestant interest from Catholic insurrection. Regiments were rotated to and from Ireland as required, and Ireland played a major part in British strategy as a barracks for its Empire. Despite this crucial role, the Establishment endures considerable historical criticism and is often described as an ill-disciplined rabble. This paper will reassess this negative perception through a case study of the Townshend Augmentation and material held in the returns of regiments in Ireland from 1767-1771.
