Britain and Her Army, 1509-1970: A Military, Political and Social Survey

 

This is the first general study to appear for many years of the historical development of British military institutions, and of the strategic, social and political influences that have shaped them. In a narrative both precise and exciting, Correlli Barnett has traced such topics as recruitment, higher administration, pay, the social origins of officers and men, supply and equipment. Throughout, he compares developments in Britain with those in Continental armies and demonstrates the reciprocal effects of war, military institutions and technological and social change. Correlli Barnett opens his narrative with the reign of Henry VIII, when England took a stride from the medieval era into the modern. He shows how by the end of the sixteenth century the immunity from invasion conferred by the English Channel had established a pattern of military amateurism and of peacetime military neglect followed by hasty wartime improvisation. It was also during this period that the myth of English sea-power was born. Mr Barnett is at pains to show how far this has led the English to underrate the role of their army. The key role of a standing army in the constitutional struggles between Crown and Parliament in the seventeenth century is analysed, as well as the strategic importance of land forces and European campaigns in the protracted wars against the French during the eighteenth century. Socially and militarily, the British army was shaped in the nineteenth century by its imperial role in India and Africa. All the major strategic and social themes of the book are recapitulated in brilliant surveys of the British army's role in the two world wars of this century. As an epilogue, the army's part in the post-1945 retreat from Empire is noted, and its new European role is placed in the broad context of British strategic history. The lavish illustration of this handsome volume matches the authority and the grace of Mr Barnett's prose. The result is a book that defines with near perfection one of England's most great institutions whose influence has, of course, been profound.

 

Correlli Barnett

Hardcover with d/w 530pp Allen Lane 1970 1st Ed

 

Vg/Vg (price-clipped)

Book Code:  SH1658