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1
Massie, A. W. "Great Britain and the defence of the Low Countries 1744-48." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.234606.
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Coventry, Fred R. "Acrid Smoke and Horses' Breath: The Adaptability of the British Cavalry." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1421276675.
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Starns, Penny. "Military influence on the British civilian nursing profession, 1939-1969." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/6896c1fe-ef88-4220-8514-b823f6d022d7.
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This thesis examines the impact of military influence on civilian nursing development from the outbreak of war in 1939 until the restructuring of nurse administration in 1969. It will be argued that a military imposition on civilian nursing was responsible for hindering professional progress and preventing reform. This argument challenges the orthodox view of nursing history which maintains that nurses adopted a variety of professionalization strategies in order to gain credibility and state recognition. This recognition was only achieved as a result of a thirty year battle, during which status became an over-riding concern. This thesis argues that the medical demands of the Second World War threatened the professional foundations of nursing organization, and nurses responded by adopting militarization strategies in an effort to raise and protect their status. These militarization strategies affected all aspects of nursing practice and organizational development, and held significant implications for the post-war reconstruction of health -care delivery. Traditional studies of nursing history in this period have concentrated on the civilian nursing records alone, and have therefore overlooked the military dimension of nursing development. This study uses civilian nursing records, including those of the General Nursing Council and the Royal College of Nursing, in conjunction with military nursing records, including those of the War Office, and the correspondence and diaries of military A comparative analysis of these records proves that the militarization of nursing was an important issue. The analysis explores the interchange of military and civilian nursing personnel during the Second World War, and examines four key relationships in the post-war era: betweengovernment and nursing policy, between nurse leadership and nursing practice, between nurses and other occupational groups, and between various nursing grades at ward level. This analysis exposes the various ways in which militarism has infiltrated these relationships, and has been allowed to dictate the direction and scope of nursing development
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Condos, Mark Nicholas. "British military ideology and practice in Punjab c. 1849-1920." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648446.
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Gee, Austin. "The British volunteer movement, 1793-1807." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7080ac7d-f829-42b4-a7bf-68b86e3ae495.
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This thesis deals with the political, military and social aspects of the volunteer movement in Great Britain during the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. It explores the nature and purpose of the volunteer infantry, yeomanry cavalry, and armed associations: their organisation, administration, membership, and political adherences. Several questions concerning the political nature of volunteering are addressed, and it is shown that both the volunteers' motivation and the government's reasons for raising a voluntary force were more closely related to military than to political considerations. The occupational structure and political allegiances of several corps are analysed, revealing a broad range of political allegiance. The conclusion is drawn that the volunteers were more a 'constitutional' force than a partisan one. This thesis also investigates the ways in which the volunteer movement posed a challenge to the established social and political order, particularly in its autonomy and 'democratic' organisation. The central government and local authorities were, however, well aware of the potential threat, and precautions were taken against its development. The workings of the volunteer 'system' are explored in order to judge the validity of contemporary criticism of volunteer autonomy, and it is concluded that fears of apparently democratic organisation were exaggerated. The question of volunteer loyalty is investigated by examining the means of selection, individuals' motives, and the response of corps to peace-keeping duties. Finally, an assessment of the position of the movement in contemporary society shows it to have been closely related to the ambivalent concept of the 'citizen-soldier'. Extensive use is made of manuscript sources, particularly the papers of the Home and War Offices held in the Public Record Office, and official and private correspondence in the British Library and several county record offices.
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Newell, Jonathan Quentin Calvin. "British military policy in Egypt and Palestine, August 1914 - June 1917." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 1990. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/british-military-policy-in-egypt-and-palestine--august-1914--june-1917(015506f2-2605-4c52-abef-8dfb31192965).html.
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Smith, Robert J. "John Bull’s proconsuls: military officers who administered the British Empire, 1815-1840." Diss., Kansas State University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/1046.
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Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of History
Michael A. Ramsay
At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain had acquired a vast empire that included territories in Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe that numbered more than a quarter of the earth's population. Britain also possessed the largest army that the state had ever fielded, employing nearly 250,000 troops on station throughout this empire and on fighting fronts in Spain, southern France, the Low Countries, and North America. However, the peace of 1815 and the end of nearly twenty-five years of war with France brought with it significant problems for Britain. Years of war had saddled the state with a massive debt of nearly £745,000; a threefold increase from its total debt in 1793, the year war with the French began. Furthermore, the rapid economic changes brought on by a the state that had transitioned from a wartime economy to one of peacetime caused widespread unemployment and financial dislocation among the British population including the thousands of officers and soldiers who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars and were now demobilized and back into the civilian sector. Lastly, the significant imperial growth had stretched the colonial administrative and bureaucratic infrastructure to the breaking point prompting the Colonial Office and the ruling elites to adopt short-term measures in running its empire. The solution adopted by the Colonial Office in the twenty-five years that followed the Napoleonic Wars was the employment of proconsular despotism. Proconsular despotism is the practice of governing distant territories and provinces by politically safe individuals, most often military men, who identified with and were sympathetic to the aims of the parent state and the ruling elites. The employment of this form of colonial governance helped to alleviate a number of problems that plagued the Crown and Parliament. First, the practice found suitable employment for deserving military officers during a period of army demobilization and sizeable reduction of armed forces. The appointment of military officers to high colonial administrative positions was viewed by Parliament as a reward for distinguished service to the state. Second, the practice enabled Colonial Office to employ officials who had both previous administrative and military experience and who were accustomed to make critical decisions that they believed coincided with British strategic and national interests. Third, the employment of knowledgeable and experienced army officers in colonial posts fulfilled the Parliamentary mandates of curtailing military spending while maintaining security for the colonies. Military officers of all ranks clamored for the opportunities of serving in the colonies. General and field grade officers viewed service in the colonies as a means of maintaining their status and financially supporting their lifestyles. Company grade officers, who primarily came from the emerging middle class, saw colonial service as a means of swift promotion in a peacetime army and of rising socially. Competition for overseas administrative positions was intense and officers frequently employed an intricate and complex pattern of patronage networking. The proconsular system of governing Britain's vast network of colonies flourished in the quarter century following the Battle of Waterloo. In the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars the British officer corps contributed men who became the principal source for trained colonial administrators enabling Britain to effectively manage its immense empire.
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Philpott, William J. "British military strategy on the western front : independence or alliance, 1904-1918." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.316985.
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Cornish, Paul. "A token commitment : British military planning for the defence of Germany, 1945-1950." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1993. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/272388.
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Maciver, Ruairidh Iain. "The Gaelic poet and the British military experience, 1756-1856." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30582/.
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This thesis examines Gaelic poetry and the military between 1756 and 1856. While previous studies have collated and analysed the poetry of two of the other major impacts on Gaelic society at this time, clearance and emigration, there has so far been no concerted attempt to examine and place in context the corpus of Gaelic military material of the period – despite this verse being widespread in the poetic record. This poetry has been largely neglected by scholars of Scottish history, and, though selected pieces have been examined by scholars of Celtic Studies, it has not received the fullness of attention that such a major concern in the poetic record deserves. This thesis therefore directly addresses this gap in previous scholarship. The study first considers the historical and literary context for this corpus of poetry, in order to establish the background to Gaelic military verse in the post-Culloden period. A chronological approach is taken to consider this poetry over the course of five chapters. The first period explored is that between the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War and the French Revolutionary War (1756-93). Two chapters cover the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), focussing respectively on verse by soldiers and non-combatants. The next chapter has as its focus the period between the British Victory at Waterloo and the end of the Crimean War (1815-56). The last chapter takes a different chronological approach to those which preceded it, examining women’s poetry and the military across the one-hundred year time period. Each of these chapters explore the background to, contemporary context for, and content of this corpus of Gaelic military verse from 1756 to 1856. A full database of the corpus of 178 poems is also included. There is a focus throughout the thesis on the manner in which poets drew from and utilised their poetic tradition to contextualise the British military and its influence. Another major strand of the research is its examination of loyalty as expressed or revealed in the poetic record. The thesis contends that this corpus of poetry deserves a central place in the military historiography of the Highlands and Gaelic literary criticism.
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Ingram, Daniel Patrick. "In the pale's shadow: Indians and British forts in eighteenth-century America." W&M ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623527.
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British forts in the colonial American backcountry have long been subjects of American heroic myth. Forts were romanticized as harbingers of European civilization, and the Indians who visited them as awestruck, childlike, or scheming. Two centuries of historiography did little to challenge the image of Indians as noble but peripheral figures who were swept aside by the juggernaut of European expansion. In the last few decades, historians have attacked the persistent notion that Indians were supporting participants and sought to reposition them as full agents in the early American story. But in their search for Indian agency, historians have given little attention to British forts as exceptional contact points in their own rights. This dissertation examines five such forts and their surrounding regions as places defined by cultural accommodation and confluence, rather than as outposts of European empire. Studying Indian-British interactions near such forts reveals the remarkable extent to which Indians defined the fort experience for both natives and newcomers. Indians visited forts as friends, enemies, and neutrals. They were nearly always present at or near backcountry forts. In many cases, Indians requested forts from their British allies for their own purposes. They used British forts as trading outposts, news centers, community hubs, diplomatic meeting places, and suppliers of gifts. But even with the advantages that could sometimes accrue from the presence of forts, many Indians still resented them. Forts could attract settlers, and often failed to regulate trade and traders sufficiently to please native consumers. Indians did not hesitate to press fort personnel for favors and advantages. In cases where British officers and soldiers failed to impress Indians, or angered them, the results were sometimes violent and extreme. This study makes a start at seeing forts as places that were at least as much a part of the Native American landscape as they were outposts of European aggression. at Forts Loudoun, Allen, Michilimackinac, Niagara, and Chartres, Indians used their abilities and influence to turn the objectives of the British fort system upside down. as centers of British-Indian cultural confluence, these forts evoke an early America marked by a surprising degree of Indian agency. at these contact points people lived for the moment. The America of the future, marked by Indian dispossession and British-American social dominance, was an outcome few could imagine.
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Kundu, Apurba. "Civil-military relations in British and independent India, 1918-1962, and coup prediction theory." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 1996. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1411/.
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This thesis explains why India did not experience a military coup d'etat from 1918 to 1962.This involves a detailed consideration of the competing, though often complementary, theories which attempt to analyse the specific conditions and motives that cause officers to intervene against their government. As no one "coup theory" is found definitive, each is deployed when relevant to crucial episodes in British and independent India's civil-military relations from 1918 to 1962, including the history and development of a professional officer corps, Indian nationalism, the Indian National Armies of World War II, the Transfer of Power, Ayub Khan's "Revolution", the rise of the Menon-Kaul nexus, and the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Throughout, the emphasis is on the views and actions of senior retired Indian military officers. The opinions of almost 20 such officers are taken from their respective published (auto-)biographies. The views of another 108 officers (as well as a number of Indian civilians with experience in, or expertise at the highest level of civil-military relations) come from one of two versions of a detailed questionnaire and/or comprehensive personal interviews. This thesis reveals that there was never any serious threat of a military coup in India. Some factors contributing to this phenomenon are inherent: the country is large, diverse, predominantly Hindu, and enjoyed a continuity of political leadership. Other factors are the result of deliberate choices by the civil-military leadership and include the country's stability, quality and tradition of democracy, relative administrative efficiency, institutionalization of diverse centres of power and, most importantly, the professionalism of the officer corps. While this examination suggests measures available to other countries seeking to ensure civil supremacy-of-rule, the particular mix of factors which contributed to India never having experienced military coup is unique.
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Zerbe, Britt Wyatt. "'That most useful body of men' : the operational doctrine and identity of the British Marine Corps, 1755-1802." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/117786.
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The Corps of Marines 1755-1802 (after 1802, Royal Marines) was the smallest of the three military services of the late eighteenth century British Armed Nation. Because of this, their history has largely been marginalised - or if dealt with, only in broad three hundred year studies. However, their importance has been largely underestimated. With the rise in the late eighteenth century of a more coherent ‘Blue-Water Strategy’, classified later by some historians as a uniquely ‘British Way in Warfare’, there was a need to have an operational organisation from which to implement Britain’s grand strategy. The two other contemporary military organizations (Army and Navy) were too large, had internal resistance to, or simply had one-dimensional geographic identification which prevented the full pure operational implementation of British amphibious power. With the dawn of the Seven Years War the government gave this operational priority to the Navy, which began in earnest with the formation of the British Marine Corps. The Navy, and Marines, were able to do this by constructing an operational doctrine and identity for its new Marine Corps. With the forty-seven year construction of its operational doctrine and identity, the Marines not only assisted in the implementation of British grand strategy, but also were pivotal in the protection of the empire. This dissertation is separated into two distinct parts. The first part outlines the skeleton of the Marines; their past formations, administration and manpower construct. The second part outlines the trials and tribulations of construction and institutionalisation of the Marine Corps within the British nation of the late-eighteenth century. This part reveals the non-combat usage, operational development and imperial rapid reaction force aspects of the Marines. Marines were to carry out many protection and security related duties on land and at sea. Because of this they were given direct access to weapons which in the unfortunate event of mutiny might be used against the men. Naval and amphibious combat were the main justifications for why the Marine Corps existed to begin with. Marines were to develop their own special ‘targeted’ suppression fire and a reliance on the bayonet for both of these operations. Importantly Empire; its maintenance, expansion, and protection was an essential element of the Marines existence. Marines were to become an imperial rapid reaction force that could be sent anywhere a naval ship was and used to suppress disorders. Identity was the tool of three powers (Public, Admiralty and Marine Corps) in their construction of this body of men. Marines’ identity allowed them to be relied upon for a multitude of duties, including the basic protection of order on ship. By understanding all of these areas not only will it expand historical scholarship on how the British state constructed and implemented its policy decisions, but also how an organisation creates and validates its own purpose of existence.
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Stoneman, Robert James. "The reformed British militia, c.1852-1908." Thesis, University of Kent, 2014. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/48735/.
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This thesis aims to provide a comprehensive investigation of the reformed British militia between its reconstitution in 1852 and its abolition (and replacement by the Special Reserve) in 1908, addressing one of the major remaining gaps in our understanding of the auxiliary forces of this period. The post-1852 militia has generally been overshadowed by its eighteenth and early nineteenth century predecessor, and of the few major works that do examine the force after its reform, most do so as part of broader studies examining it from the point of view of the regular army, or as an epilogue to a much broader study of the militia of the earlier period, or the wider amateur military tradition as a whole. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to provide the first dedicated study of the reformed British militia in recent years. It will move beyond the limited ‘top-down’ approach characteristic of many works examining the wider Victorian army and instead tap into a more recent methodological trend which utilises a range of national and local archival material to examine the nuances of what remained a locally organised force. It will examine not just the role of the militia and the way in which it was organised, but also study the nature and composition of its officer corps, its rank and file, and will investigate areas which have been hitherto largely ignored such as the way discipline was maintained in what remained an amateur force. It will conclude with an examination of the militia’s unprecedented service during the South African War before going onto examine the process by which the militia was ultimately abolished and replaced by the Special Reserve (and ask whether or not this represented a moment of continuity, or an outright break with the past.) This study rejects the idea that during this period the militia largely became ‘an anachronistic auxiliary’ to the regular army. There can be no doubt that it became increasingly centralised under the control of the War Office and that it also provided a vital role as a source of both officers and men for the regular army. Yet by looking at a mix of both national and local archival material, a more nuanced picture emerges. Several units managed to retain a degree of organisational independence and a social distinctiveness from the wider army. Furthermore, many of the reforms which altered the organisation of the force had important benefits. Compared to the 1850s and 1860s, during which the newly reconstituted force was forced to yield to the exigencies of the regular army, the militia of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s was arguably better trained, better equipped and quantitatively stronger than during the preceding decades.
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Last, Joseph Henry. "The Power of the Privy: Mediating Social Relations on a 19th Century British Military Site." W&M ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626033.
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Stone, M. S. "The Victorian army : health, hospitals and social conditions as encountered by British troops during the South African War, 1899-1902." Thesis, University of London, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.320071.
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Hartwell, Nicole M. "Perceptions of war, savagery and civilisation in Britain, 1801-1899." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fd3428c7-e340-4273-9e6a-b5120c9fa949.
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This dissertation traces the complex ways in which non-European military cultures - often designated as 'savage' - and the expeditions undertaken against them - regularly conceptualised as 'savage warfare' - were understood in the Victorian imagination. It addresses how these understandings shifted across time in relation to developments such as imperial expansion; cultural and intellectual shifts including the rise of evolutionary theory; and the practical issues that emerged in response to the undertaking of wars where such opponents were met on the field of battle. It is distinctive in working at the intersection of nineteenth-century intellectual, cultural, imperial and military history, and utilises a wide range of sources. The nineteenth century was a unique period during which this eclectic and differentiated debate - which both explored and contributed to the construction of ideas on 'savagery' - arose due to the proliferation of cross-cultural knowledge and the development of periodical culture. As members of the armed forces were on the front-line of cross-cultural interactions, the military context shines a light on the richness of this discourse and helps to frame a complex debate about the boundaries between 'civilisation' and 'savagery'. While understandings of 'savagery' that embodied assumptions of ruthlessness, bloodthirstiness, and a lack of moral understanding can be traced in British perceptions of 'savage' warriors during this period, this dissertation argues that the designation of a warrior culture as 'savage' was not uncontested, nor did it preclude the admission of 'civilised' characteristics, or criticisms with regard to British conduct in 'savage' wars. By uncovering the competing discourses on how 'savage' warriors were perceived during this period, this dissertation reinforces critiques of the 'cultural determinist' notion that military cultures are fixed; emphasises the lack of coherence with regard to British perceptions of 'savage' warriors, thus contributing to scholarship that has identified the inconsistent nature of 'orientalism'; and challenges conventional periodisation of the development of colonial racism and anti-humanitarianism during the nineteenth century.
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Hills, Adrian R. "An early history of British military television with special reference to John Logie Baird." Thesis, University of Strathclyde, 2002. http://oleg.lib.strath.ac.uk:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=21159.
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Since the Publication in 1986 of The Secret Life of John Logie Baird by Tom McArthur and Dr. Peter Waddell the subject of J.L. Baird and his company's involvement with British military technologies has been brought to public attention. There has previously been no comprehensive academic assesment using primary sources of the suggestions offered in these books. Here is recorded British military television investigations from 1926 to 1946, with special reference to J.L. Baird, using previously ignored Public Record Office files and other sources. The precise role of J.L.Baird in Baird Television Limited (BTL) after the mid-1930s is discussed but still remains a matter for debate. This situation is important to the understanding of who was responsible for the variety of military projects undertaken by the Baird organisation. The technology of aerial reconnaIssance usmg television had a strong influence on British military television investigations. Television for aerial reconnaissance was the first military application suggested for the technology and became practical after the fighting services contacted J.L.Baird in 1926. This investigation continued with BTL into the 1930s and later included Marconi-EMI. These activities have had little previous assessment and yet significantly influence British military television history. During World War Two J.L. Baird personally investigated a facsimile system whilst being funded by Cable and Wireless. The technology used by J.L. Baird was based on a rapid processing camera for facsimile transmission. This technology had previously been investigated by his company in collaboration with the Air Ministry and Admiralty from 1937 to 1940 for Television aerial reconnaissance. There can remain no doubt that militarily useful applications of television, particularly for aerial reconnaissance, were a significant part of the investigations of J.L. Baird and his companies.
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Graham, Aaron Benjamin. "Partisan politics and the British fiscal-military state, 1689-1713." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:071f355a-4ab0-4162-a221-1fdde5a3fb2d.
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The rapid expansion in the size and effectiveness of the British fiscal-military state between 1689 and 1713 has been analysed by historians such as John Brewer and Michael Braddick as the outcome of increasingly impartial, rational and professional bureaucratic administration. Yet recent work on state formation in Britain and Europe has emphasised that effectiveness often arose from practices usually dismissed as inefficient or corrupt. This thesis provides a new paradigm by comparing fiscal-military structures to contemporary commercial enterprises, which functioned by coordinating the efforts of suppliers and buyers. Coordination was achieved in turn through mutual trust, which overcame principal-agent problems and reduced transaction costs. This thesis suggests that by analogy, those polities that could encourage cooperation and mutual trust between autonomous officials, agencies and private contractors enjoyed the greatest success as fiscal-military states. In the mercantile or financial world trust was created through kinship and friendship, as well as common religious, ethnic or national identities, which contained inbuilt informal mechanisms for policing behaviour. This thesis examines the financing and supply of the British army in Ireland and Europe between 1689 and 1713 to conclude that these elements also served to create trust within state structures, and that even political partisanship – normally dismissed as a disruptive, even destructive, influence – generated a community of shared political interests that encouraged trust and improved coordination. It also demonstrates that officials, politicians and financiers constructed politicised networks that interlocked efficiently with each other, permitting the improved coordination of public and private credit, and even informal financial intermediation intended to maintain the liquidity of the army’s fiscal structures. It therefore concludes that the success of the British fiscal-military state during this period was the product of improved informal coordination rather than institutional change and bureaucratic reform, and that political partisanship was integral to this process.
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Fonseka, Prashant L. "The Railway and Telegraph in India: Monuments of British Rule or Symbols of Indian Nationhood?" Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/378.
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This paper examines how the development of the railway-telegraph technological complex impacted the tenuous relationship between the rulers and those they ruled; the British and the Indians. Through the experience of building and operating the railway, Indians came to understand the railway and telegraph as their own technologies well before the eventual handover of control over the networks from the British. The reasons behind the British desire to retain their grasp over the networks included profit, power, and orientalist notions of socially advancing Indians, all at the expense of Indian taxpayers. This arrangement was problematic and ultimately facilitated the Raj's undoing, while revealing certain realities of British imperial rule.
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Bartlett, Keith John. "The development of the British army during the wars with France, 1793-1815." Thesis, Durham University, 1998. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/699/.
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The British Army that fought the engagement at Waterloo in 1815, was outwardly little changed from that which was engaged in the initial campaigns of the Wars, twenty-two years previously. Line upon line of red-coated, musket-armed infantry, manoeuvred as chess pieces across open fields, deciding the issue by volley and bayonet, having spent a hungry night exposed to rain and cold. The cavalry were still beautifully and often impractically clad, and were always seeking the decisive charge, on their unfed and often sickly mounts. The Army's commander still viewed his troops as 'the scum of the earth', who were rarely paid, and predominantly enlisted for life. It would therefore appear that little had altered from 1793 to 1815, and that this will be a study of continuity rather than change. However, this thesis will show that despite outward appearances, the Army that took the field at Waterloo was intrinsically different from the one that entered the conflict in 1793, being modernised in line with other institutions of state, and other European armies. This thesis is first and foremost intended to be a contribution to the history of the British Army from the outbreak of war with Revolutionary France in 1793, to the reduction of the forces after the battle of Waterloo in 1815. It proceeds from an assumption that the understanding of not only that history, but the history of the developing British state, will be significantly advanced through a study of the operation of, and the changes which took place within, the Army during the Wars with France.
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Whittle, Eric Yvon. "British casualties on the Western Front 1914-1918 and their influence on the military conduct of the Second World War." Thesis, University of Leicester, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/4726.
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It is often asserted that British army casualties in the Great War were carelessly incurred and that this influenced the way Britain fought in the Second World War. Manpower was a prime resource in the mobilisation for total war but its scarcity only fully realised by end of 1917 when the army was cautioned about casualties. The government, however, had feared an early popular reaction against mounting casualties. It did not materialise: the incidence of casualties was diffused over time, and households had no mass media spreading intimate awareness of battlefield conditions. The army itself never mutinied over casualties or refused to fight. The country considered the casualties grievous but not inordinate or unnecessary. Between the wars unemployment and 'consumerism' mattered more to people than memories of the Great War., kept ritually alive by annual Armistice Day services. Welfare benefits increased, more children went to secondary school but social and political change was tardy. Many intellectuals turned pacifist but Nazi Germany made an anti-war-stance difficult. Air raids rather than memories of Great War casualties preoccupied the nation as it armed for war. In the Second World War army casualty lists were not regularly lengthy until the beginning of 1944 and did not have an adverse impact on civilian morale. The manpower shortage became acute earlier, in 1942, and army commanders were alerted to replacement problems. Politically, Churchill desired a strong, victorious British army but lack of men induced caution about casualties, particularly in relation to the invasion of Normandy, involving frontal amphibious attack on the German army. This caution communicated itself to the citizen armies in the field, which showed little natural bent for soldiering. These circumstances governed the way the army fought in the Second World War, not memories of Great War casualties - which were more numerous because of the extent over time and scale of the fighting.
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Bilal, Kolby. "Black Pilots, Patriots, and Pirates: African-American Participation in the Virginia State and British Navies during the Revolutionary War in Virginia." W&M ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626268.
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Golding, Christopher Thorn. "At Water's Edge: Britain, Napoleon, and the World, 1793-1815." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2017. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/430911.
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HistoryPh.D.
This dissertation explores the influence of late eighteenth-century British imperial and global paradigms of thought on the formation of British policy and strategy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It argues that British imperial interests exerted a consistent influence on British strategic decision making through the personal advocacy of political leaders, institutional memory within the British government, and in the form of a traditional strain of a widely-embraced British imperial-maritime ideology that became more vehement as the conflict progressed. The work can be broken into two basic sections. The first section focuses on the formation of strategy within the British government of William Pitt the Younger during the French Revolutionary Wars from the declaration of war in February 1793 until early 1801. During this phase of the Anglo-French conflict, British ministers struggled to come to terms with the nature of the threat posed by revolutionary ideology in France, and lacked strategic consistency due to acute cabinet-level debates over continental versus imperial strategies. The latter half of the work assesses Britain’s response to the challenges presented by Napoleonic France. Beginning with the debates surrounding Anglo-French peace negotiations in late 1801, the British increasingly came to define Napoleonic France as a regime harboring imperial aspirations that represented an explicit threat to British imperial interests. By defining the Napoleonic regime as an aspirational imperial power, British opponents of the Peace of Amiens provided the intellectual framework for the hegemonic struggle between land and sea powers that would define the Anglo-French struggle until its conclusion in June 1815. While Britain ultimately proved successful in defeating France in Europe, the expanse of the conflict also exposed the strengths and weaknesses of British force projection outside of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Temple University--Theses
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Broadwater, John D. "Yorktown Shipwreck 44YO88: Stores and Cargo from a British Naval Supply Vessel from the American War for Independence." W&M ScholarWorks, 1989. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625489.
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Hart, Russell Allan. "Learning lessons: Military adaptation and innovation in the American, British, Canadian, and German armies during the 1944 Normandy campaign /." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487944660932478.
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Patterson, Ryan John. ""So many applications of science" : novel technology in British Imperial culture during the Abyssinian and Ashanti Expeditions, 1868-1874." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/18911.
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This thesis will examine the portrayal and reception of ‘novel’ technology as constructed spectacle in the military and popular coverage of the Abyssinian (1868) and Ashanti (1873-4) expeditions. It will be argued that new and ‘novel’ military technologies, such as the machine gun, Hale rocket, cartridge rifle, breach-loading cannon, telegraph, railway, and steam tractor, were made to serve symbolic roles in a technophile discourse that cast African expansion as part of a conquest of the natural world. There was a growing confidence in mid-Victorian Britain of the Empire’s dominant position in the world, focused particularly on technological development and embodied in exhibition culture. During the 1860s and ‘70s, this confidence was increasingly extended to the prospect of expansion into Africa, which involved a substantial development of the ‘idea’ of Africa in the British imagination. The public engagement with these two campaigns provides a window into this developing culture of imperial confidence in Britain, as well as the shifting and contested ideas of race, climate, and martial prowess. The expeditions also prompted significant changes to understandings of ‘small wars’, a concept incorporating several important pillars of Victorian culture. It will be demonstrated that discourses of technological superiority and scientific violence were generated in response to anxieties of the perceived dangers posed by the African interior. Accounts of the expeditions demonstrated a strong hope, desire to claim, and tendency to interpret that novel European technology could tame and subjugate the African climate, as well as African populations. This study contributes to debates over the popularity of imperialism in Victorian society. It ties the popularity of empire to the social history of technology, and argues that the Abyssinian and Ashanti expeditions enhanced perceptions of military capability and technological superiority in the Victorian imagination. The efficacy of European technology is not dismissed, but approached as a proximate cause of a shift in culture, termed ‘the technologisation of imperial rhetoric’.
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Fitch-McCullough, Robin James. "Imperial Influence On The Postcolonial Indian Army, 1945-1973." ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/763.
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The British Indian Army, formed from the old presidency armies of the East India Company in 1895, was one of the pillars upon which Britain’s world empire rested. While much has been written on the colonial and global campaigns fought by the Indian Army as a tool of imperial power, comparatively little has been written about the transition of the army from British to Indian control after the end of the Second World War. While independence meant the transition of the force from imperial rule to that of civilian oversight by India’s new national leadership, the Dominion of India inherited thousands of former colonial soldiers, including two generations of British and Indian officers indoctrinated in military and cultural practices developed in the United Kingdom, in colonial India and across the British Empire.
The goal of this paper is to examine the legacy of the British Empire on the narrative, ethos, culture, tactics and strategies employed by the Indian Army after 1945, when the army began to transition from British to Indian rule, up to 1973 when the government of India reinstituted the imperial rank of Field Marshal. While other former imperial officers would continue to serve in the army up to the end of the 20th century, the first thirty years after independence were a formative period in the history of the Indian Army, that saw it fight four major wars and see the final departure of white British officers from its ranks. While it became during this time a truly national army, the years after independence were one in which its legacy as an arm of imperial power was debated, and eventually transformed into a key component of military identity in the post-colonial era.
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O'Keeffe, Eleanor Katherine. "Localities of memory, localities of mobilisation : British military communities and the Great War, 1919-1939." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2015. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/13035.
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This thesis examines the role of British localities in the production of military force during the 1920s and 1930s. I argue that, during an era so disenfranchising for the armed forces in national politics and culture, the 'Local' provided a haven for servicemen and military units. Rather than theorising mobilisation as a set of state centred economic or technocratic proscriptions, this research takes the social and cultural renewal of military units as a starting point. Drawing on a range of historical and anthropological methodologies, I have set out to uncover what were - to borrow Foucault's phrase - 'regimes of truth': multiple ideological currents and social contexts that legitimised service identities during this period. Local spaces are not only useful arenas for dissecting these operations; local people and identities were crucial formative elements in these processes. Two case studies have provided the ground for this investigation: Newcastle and Glasgow. The thesis dissects the body of the British military machine at these entry points, viewing the configuration of military and naval power at ground level and the emergence of manpower from the collision between state directives and local society. It also examines the communities (soldiers, veterans) that arose through this. Focus moves from military to urban spaces, revealing the characters (pressmen, politicians) and practices (sociability, ritual, performance) that legitimised these communities. Much of this cultural work evoked the memory of the Great War and here the thesis intervenes in academic debates surrounding Commemoration after 1918. The final chapter unites these perspectives in a chronological elaboration of the period 1935-1939, detailing the ground level effort for national and civil defence. As well as enlivening our understanding of 20th century mobilisation, this research explores the depths of British local and national identities and the intricate ways in which the armed forces were framed within both.
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Dighton, A. "Army officers, historians and journalists : the emergence, expansion and diversification of British military history, 1854-1914." Thesis, University of Salford, 2015. http://usir.salford.ac.uk/37875/.
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At the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, Britain had only one military academy which taught Military History, the subject was overlooked at universities, few historians wrote on the topic and the government had not yet sanctioned the writing of official history. Yet, by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the situation was radically different. Not only had Military History come to play an important role in army education, there were several universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, which taught the subject, while the Committee of Imperial Defence had created a ‘Historical Section’ dedicated to the writing of officially authorised histories. Despite this dramatic transformation, the development of British Military History during this period has hitherto not been considered by scholars as a subject worthy of serious investigation. The meagre research which has been conducted on the subject has been limited in terms of its scope and use of primary sources. This thesis will attempt to fill this gap in the historiography by analysing the emergence, expansion and diversification of British Military History between 1854 and 1914. It will examine the different factors which led to the expansion of Military History: the need for improved military education, the requirement to collate information on recent wars, commercial opportunism, the desire to influence public perceptions and the discovery of Military History as a subject worthy of historical research.
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Smallwood, Amy Lynn. "Shore Wives: The Lives of British Naval Officers’ Wives and Widows, 1750-1815." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1216915735.
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Nasca, Paul M. "Fostering Pride and Badges of Oppression: A Contextual Study of British Military Buttons from Paget Fort, Bermuda, 1778-1820." W&M ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626486.
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Sullivan, Aaron. "In But Not Of the Revolution: Loyalty, Liberty, and the British Occupation of Philadelphia." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2014. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/276077.
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HistoryPh.D.
A significant number of Pennsylvanians were not, in any meaningful sense, either revolutionaries or loyalists during the American War for Independence. Rather, they were disaffected from both sides in the imperial dispute, preferring, when possible, to avoid engagement with the Revolution altogether. The British Occupation of Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778 laid bare the extent of this popular disengagement and disinterest, as well as the dire lengths to which the Patriots would go to maintain the appearance of popular unity. Driven by a republican ideology that relied on popular consent in order to legitimate their new governments, American Patriots grew increasingly hostile, intolerant, and coercive toward those who refused to express their support for independence. By eliminating the revolutionaries' monopoly on military force in the region, the occupation triggered a crisis for the Patriots as they saw popular support evaporate. The result was a vicious cycle of increasing alienation as the revolutionaries embraced ever more brutal measures in attempts to secure the political acquiescence and material assistance of an increasingly disaffected population. The British withdrawal in 1778, by abandoning the region's few true loyalists and leaving many convinced that American Independence was now inevitable, shattered what little loyalism remained in the region and left the revolutionaries secure in their control of the state. In time, this allowed them to take a more lenient view of disaffection and move toward modern interpretations of silence as acquiescence and consent for the established government.
Temple University--Theses
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Geiger, Till. "Studies in the political economy and economic impact of British defence expenditure and American military aid to Britain, 1945-1955." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.302297.
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This dissertation examines political aspects and the economic impact of the British defence effort during the period of the first cold war (1945-1955). The study consists of nine case studies which are grouped under three headings - Studies in the Political Economy of British Defence Expenditure, Studies in the Economic Impact of British Defence Expenditure, and Studies in the Political Economy of American Military Aid to Britain. These case studies stress the historical contingent nature of the British defence effort reflecting the experience of the second world war. Aware of the country's military and economic vulnerability, policy-makers remained determined to maintain a global presence and a high level of military preparedness. However, policy-makers failed to assess critically whether this policy was appropriate for the nuclear age and the cold war. As a consequence, the governments' foreign and defence policy imposed considerable costs on the economy and society. For example, its defence procurement policy led to subsidising under-employed defence production capacity in order to preserve the military production base for another global war. During the Korean war the commitment to this defence procurement strategy induced an over-commitment to defence production which reduced British economic growth in this period. This over-commitment of resources to defence contributed to the relatively slower growth of the British economy from the early 1950s onwards. During the Korean war, the British government embarked on an arguably excessive defence programme, because ministers sought to insure a lasting American commitment to the defence of western Europe. As a consequence, Britain paid the price for its military and economic vulnerability in terms of slower economic growth.
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von, Bargen Max Anders. "A Misunderstood Partnership: British and American Grand Strategy and the “Special Relationship” as a Military Alliance, 1981-1991." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu158766455515096.
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Baker, William C. "Capital Ships, Commerce, and Coalition: British Strategy in the Mediterranean Theater, 1793." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2014. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc699881/.
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In 1793, Great Britain embarked on a war against Revolutionary France to reestablish a balance of power in Europe. Traditional assessments among historians consider British war planning at the ministerial level during the First Coalition to be incompetent and haphazard. This work reassesses decision making of the leading strategists in the British Cabinet in the development of a theater in the Mediterranean by examining political, diplomatic, and military influences. William Pitt the Younger and his controlling ministers pursued a conservative strategy in the Mediterranean, reliant on Allies in the region to contain French armies and ideas inside the Alps and the Pyrenees. Dependent on British naval power, the Cabinet sought to weaken the French war effort by targeting trade in the region. Throughout the first half of 1793, the British government remained fixed on this conservative, traditional approach to France. However, with the fall of Toulon in August of 1793, decisions made by Admiral Samuel Hood in command of forces in the Mediterranean radicalized British policy towards the Revolution while undermining the construct of the Coalition. The inconsistencies in strategic thought political decisions created stagnation, wasting the opportunities gained by the Counter-revolutionary movements in southern France. As a result, reinvigorated French forces defeated Allied forces in detail in the fall of 1793.
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Shapiro, Stephen Judah. "The British Army in Home Defense, 1844-1871: Militia and Volunteers in a Liberal Era." The Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1314979500.
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Iglesias, Rogers Graciela. "British liberators : the role of volunteers in the Spanish forces during the Peninsular War (1808-1814)... and far beyond." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669998.
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James, Richard 1949. "Public opinion and the British Legion in Spain, 1835-1838." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23848.
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This thesis examines public opinion towards the participation opinion of the British Auxiliary Legion in the Spanish Civil War. It is based on an analysis of British newspapers, periodicals and political discussion between 1835 and 1838. It suggests that, although there was some degree of support for the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston in sending the legion to aid liberalism in the Peninsula, yet that support declined rapidly. In spite of Palmerston's eventual claim that intervention in Spain had been worthwhile, public opinion was not to reflect the view that his policy had been a right one, or that the British Auxiliaries had been indispensable to the cause of Spanish constitutionalism.
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Reimers, Mia. "The glamour and the horror a social history of wartime, northwestern British Columbia, 1939-1945 /." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0029/MQ62493.pdf.
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O'Connell, Barry John. "British intelligence during the war against Napoleon, 1807-1815." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709285.
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Dauphinee, Andrew. "LORD CHARLES CORNWALLIS AND THE LOYALISTS: A STUDY IN BRITISH PACIFICATION DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1775-1781." Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2011. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/143462.
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HistoryM.A.
Many historians of the American Revolution fail to accurately assess the impact British supporters in the Thirteen Colonies had on the military dimension of the war. The Crown's American allies, commonly referred to as Loyalists, were instrumental in British operations throughout the conflict, especially in the southern colonies. Reports from the royal governors of the southern colonies numbered the Loyalists in the thousands. British officials in London developed a plan to Americanize the war by utilizing Loyalists more comprehensively, lessening the burden for more British troops. The first steps toward Americanizing the war occurred when General Sir Henry Clinton and Lieutenant General Charles, Second Earl, Cornwallis incorporated southern Loyalists with their British troops to reconquer the southern colonies in 1780. After the British conquest of Charleston, South Carolina in June 1780, Lieutenant General Cornwallis was awarded the independent command of the British forces in the South and was additionally charged with rallying and protecting the Loyalists in North and South Carolina. Cornwallis consistently tried to organize the Loyalists into militia corps to combat Rebel partisans operating in the Carolina backcountry, The constant failure of the Loyalist militia persuaded Cornwallis of their inability to sustain themselves. As a result, Cornwallis abandoned the southern colonies, as well as the Crown's loyal subjects, in favor of offensive operations in Virginia. His aim was to prevent the Rebel southern army from receiving supplies and recruits. Many slaves joined Cornwallis' army in Virginia and persuaded him to utilize them to replace the services provided by southern white Loyalists. These failed decisions contributed to Cornwallis' humiliating defeat at Yorktown in October 1781, effectively ending the military dimension of the American Revolution.
Temple University--Theses
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Farrell, Brian P. (Brian Padair) 1960. "War by consensus : power, perceptions and British grand strategy 1940-1943." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=39350.
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From 1940 through 1943, British grand strategy was shaped by a broad consensus, generally accepted and understood in the central direction of the war. This consensus was based on the assumption of relative weakness, and was expressed by what may be termed the "wear down" approach: "to knock out the props" from under Axis military power by a combination of blockade, bombing, raids, subversion and sabotage, and peripheral campaigns. An ultimate direct assault would only be launched after enemy power had visibly declined. The balance, emphasis, and specific thrust of this outline changed; its essence did not. Even as a powerful Grand Alliance emerged, the British remained convinced that the assumption of relative weakness must continue to guide its grand strategy. This assumption was finally rejected by the coalition as a whole, but it proved well founded for the British themselves. Ultimately, however, this formulation of grand strategy by consensus was, in general, a sober and responsible interpretation of the overall British situation.
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Pattee, Phillip G. "A Great and Urgent Imperial Service: British Strategy for Imperial Defense During the Great War, 1914-1918." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2010. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/79576.
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HistoryPh.D.
This dissertation investigates the reasons behind combined military and naval offensive expeditions that Great Britain conducted outside of Europe during the Great War. It argues that they were not unnecessary adjuncts to the war in Europe, but they fulfilled an important strategic purpose by protecting British trade where it was most vulnerable. Trade was not a luxury for the British; it was essential for maintaining the island nation's way of life, a vital interest and a matter of national survival. Great Britain required freedom of the seas in order to maintain its global trade. A general war in Europe threatened Great Britain's economic independence with the potential of losing its continental trading partners. The German High Seas Fleet constituted a serious threat that also placed the British coast at grave risk forcing the Royal Navy to concentrate in home waters. This dissertation argues that the several combined military and naval operations against overseas territories constituted parts of an overarching strategy designed to facilitate the Royal Navy's gaining command of the seas. Using documents from the Cabinet, the Foreign and Colonial Offices, the War Office, and the Admiralty, plus personal correspondence and papers of high-ranking government officials, this dissertation demonstrates that the Offensive Sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defense drafted the campaign plan. Subsequently, the plan received Cabinet approval, and then the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, and the Colonial Office coordinated with allies and colonies to execute the operations necessary to prosecute the campaign. In Mesopotamia, overseas expeditions directed against the Ottoman Empire protected communications with India and British oil concessions in Persia. The combined operations against German territories exterminated the logistics and intelligence hubs that supported Germany's commerce raiders thereby protecting Britain's world-wide trade and its overseas possessions.
Temple University--Theses
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Brown, Katie Lynn. "“The Bomber Will Always Get Through”: The Evolution of British Air Policy and Doctrine, 1914–1940." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1308260254.
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Flint, E. R. "The Development of British civil affairs and its employment in the British sector of allied military operations during the Battle of Normandy, June to August 1944." Thesis, Department of Applied Science, Security and Resilience, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1826/4017.
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Civil Affairs and its more robust sibling, Military Government, were military
organisations designed to ensure that basic civil order and welfare were
maintained in those allied and enemy states encountered on operations during
the Second World War. In so doing, they enabled formation commanders to
focus on defeating enemy forces without being distracted by possible civilian
problems. Using the battle of Normandy as a case study, this research assesses
the utility of Civil Affairs in supporting military needs during operations. This
contrasts with previous studies that concentrate on aspects of social and
diplomatic history.
If the need for Civil Affairs was generally axiomatic, there was much debate as to
the extent and method of delivery required. Civil Affairs quickly recognised that
in dealing with direct problems such as “disorganisation, disease and unrest” it
was necessary for seemingly indirect aspects of civilian life to be maintained.
Various forms of bureaucratic friction resulted and several Civil Affairs
approaches were used, before the model for the North West Europe campaign
was agreed. Nevertheless, the organisation employed in Normandy was
arguably the most extensive and best prepared of the war. However, it also had
to deal with many different civilian problems and in trying military
circumstances. Consequently, the battle is fertile ground for the examination of
the extent and nature of the organisation’s operational utility.
Using primary and secondary sources, this paper argues that Civil Affairs was
militarily both useful and necessary. Furthermore, it was able to provide wider
diplomatic and political benefits as well as serving core military needs. The
research concludes by acknowledging that whilst mistakes were made, the
various improvements made to Civil Affairs in preparation for, together with the
lessons learnt during, Normandy stood the organisation in good stead for the
significantly larger problems encountered later in the war.
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Winters, John D. P. "Prelude to Dreadnought: Battleship Development in the Royal Navy, 1889-1905." The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1290798878.
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Jarrett, Nathaniel W. "Collective Security and Coalition: British Grand Strategy, 1783-1797." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc984129/.
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On 1 February 1793, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, expanding the list of France's enemies in the War of the First Coalition. Although British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace one year earlier, the French declaration of war initiated nearly a quarter century of war between Britain and France with only a brief respite during the Peace of Amiens. Britain entered the war amid both a nadir in British diplomacy and internal political divisions over the direction of British foreign policy. After becoming prime minister in 1783 in the aftermath of the War of American Independence, Pitt pursued financial and naval reform to recover British strength and cautious interventionism to end Britain's diplomatic isolation in Europe. He hoped to create a collective security system based on the principles of the territorial status quo, trade agreements, neutral rights, and resolution of diplomatic disputes through mediation - armed mediation if necessary. While his domestic measures largely met with success, Pitt's foreign policy suffered from a paucity of like-minded allies, contradictions between traditional hostility to France and emergent opposition to Russian expansion, Britain's limited ability to project power on the continent, and the even more limited will of Parliament to support such interventionism. Nevertheless, Pitt's collective security goal continued to shape British strategy in the War of the First Coalition, and the same challenges continued to plague the British war effort. This led to failure in the war and left the British fighting on alone after the Treaty of Campo Formio secured peace between France and its last continental foe, Austria, on 18 October 1797.
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Grosvenor, Christopher. "Cinema on the Front Line : a history of military cinema exhibition and soldier spectatorship during the First World War." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/34733.
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This thesis – ‘Cinema on the Front Line: A History of Military Cinema Exhibition and Soldier Spectatorship during the First World War’ - provides an overview and examination of an element of British cinema history that remains largely undocumented within the disciplines of Film Studies and military history. Built upon highly original and extensive research, the thesis documents how the cinema intersected with the lives of British and dominion soldiers at practically every stage of their military career: from recruitment drives to the front line and, finally, in the convalescent hospitals and camps that attempted to rehabilitate an entire generation. By bringing this largely unknown history to light, the thesis dismantles many previously held assumptions regarding British cinema exhibition during the First World War, documenting how a significant percentage of the cinema-going public – British soldiers – still engaged with cinema entertainment outside of the commercial theatrical venue. As a study of historical exhibition, it documents the scale and orchestration of the British Expeditionary Force’s implementation of cinema entertainment on the Western front between 1914 and 1918. Significantly, it is also argued that, as a historically specific demographic, British soldiers represented an actively discerning and uniquely positioned body of wartime spectators, particularly in relation to the output of topical films and newsreels which purported to document the realities of the conflict. Accounting for this hidden history of wartime film spectatorship within extraordinary and unconventional sites of exhibition, the thesis challenges established ideas regarding the practices and concerns of film exhibitors, the behaviour and preferences of wartime audiences, and the significance and impact of the material conditions in which films were exhibited.
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Bines, Jeffrey. "The Polish country section of the Special Operations Executive 1940-1946 : a British perspective." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/929.
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This thesis is a history of the Polish Country Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British organisation whose purpose was to infiltrate agents behind enemy lines during World War II. The thesis covers the period 1940 – 1946, the entire period that SOE existed, and its close connection with the Polish special department, formally known as the Sixth Bureau of the Polish Government in Exile. Chapters contained herein each cover a full year of operations from 1941 -1943, followed by two chapters for 1944, and one chapter for 1945-1946. Covered are details of agent training, information on the first flight to Poland to drop agents and couriers and the problems encountered. The German invasion of the Soviet Union and SOE’s thoughts on the predicted outcome is covered, as are also Polish operations in France and indications of support for Polish operations in other parts of the world. Throughout, is evidence of the difficulties in obtaining sufficient air support for flights to Poland which, although inadequate for Polish requirements, were more abundant than many realised at the time. This is especially true with reference to supplies dropped to Warsaw during the rising of 1944. Brief accounts of the meetings between the ‘Big Three’, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, at Teheran and Yalta in as much as they affected SOE/Polish relations. The thesis finishes with appendices detailing agent/courier parachute drops, lists of personnel involved, a bibliography and glossary.