ABSTRACT
The British Army’s principal military experience is of irregular, not regular, warfare.1
Although the British Army had to be “capable of fighting a war of the first magnitude while simultaneously being ready to engage in wars of smaller dimensions,”2 it was from the small wars, which Charles Callwell defined as “operations of regular armies against irregular, or comparatively speaking irregular, forces,”3 that its experience and an extensive literature came.4 The Army’s small wars experience remains a powerful influence in shaping its character, identity, sense of history, doctrine, and its general approach to operations other than general war.5
