ABSTRACT

In an earlier chapter the historical route that led towards the inception of the British Army’s regular Mounted Infantry was discussed and contrasted with other nations’ approaches to determining battlefield mobile firepower. A number of novel alternative solutions were identified by European armies. This chapter continues a similar theme by considering how the wider British Empire faced and addressed the same military challenge. In some respects the issues encountered in the colonies were even more complex than encountered by the British Army. Although the British regular Mounted Infantry had evolved in response to expanding colonial commitments, the nature of these commitments changed during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, the withdrawal of British garrisons from the self-governing colonies meant that local defence reverted by default to their citizen populations and, as factors compelling the original inception of Mounted Infantry still remained, the responsibility for furnishing a mobile military force now resided with the newly formed governments. This replacement of British battalions and their Mounted Infantry capability by local provision ensured that any proposed solution would also be shaped by the culture and philosophy of the colonies’ populaces. Moreover, as these colonies evolved into the Dominions, local territorial defence stopped being the only requirement for their armed forces. Proposals for participation in the mutual defence of the Empire became a new imperative framing political debate and military planning. For the Mounted Infantry paradigm and its relevance to prevailing imperial perspectives on defence, a potential to influence colonial military development occurred by exporting doctrinal thinking from Britain, mainly through the employment of Mounted Infantry officers, most notably Edward Hutton, in senior command roles. Conversely, it is entirely possible that the employment of such officers also influenced the regular Mounted Infantry movement back in Britain through these experiences of colonial command, experiences tempered still further by the deployment of colonial troops during the South African War.