ABSTRACT

No aspect of British counter-insurgency has been more problematic and controversial than the doctrine of minimum force. This common law principle provided ambiguous guidance for soldiers and police quelling unrest within a global empire and has become the subject of intense scholarly debate in the post-imperial era. The argument divides academics into two broad camps. One group sees minimum force as a vital element of a largely successful, uniquely British approach to counter-insurgency. The other claims that the legal principle never really restrained British security forces and considers the British approach to counter-insurgency neither unique nor particularly successful. This debate appeared in an exchange of views between John Newsinger and the current author in a 1990 volume of Small Wars and Insurgencies and more recently in a similar but lengthier argument between Rod Thornton and Huw Bennett in the same journal between 2007 and 2010. 1 Such disagreements are of course endemic to academic discourse. This one, however, seems to be about more than history.