ABSTRACT
The chapter traces the operational and tactical evolution of the British Army as it was transformed from a small imperial constabulary—recruited by voluntary means and dwarfed by mass conscript Continental armies—in the Victorian period to a mass citizen army during the First World War. Financial, institutional and cultural constraints, as well as dispersal in overseas garrisons, militated against the development of an intellectual community within the army but it had unrivalled experience of small wars throughout the British Empire to set against Continental practice. Charles Callwell’s Small Wars (1896) epitomised the army’s distinctive contribution to military theory. Lessons were absorbed from the South African War (1899–1902) but it was a transitional conflict and, reflecting the imperial mindset, the army always had an aversion to formal doctrine. The small size of its regular officer corps proved highly problematic when the army faced the new managerial and technical challenges posed by mass industrialised warfare after 1914, especially once deadlock ensued on the Western Front. Its learning process was painful and uneven. For all its remaining structural weaknesses, however, the British Army was far more combat effective in 1918 than earlier.
