ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to clarify the lines of development. Foot-soldiers do not form the whole of an army, and their manner of fighting does not make up all of war. As well as the reforms of infantry tactics, the end of the ancien regime witnessed important developments in nearly every area of military affairs; none can be ignored in evaluating the influence colonial experience had on the transformation of war. The chapter analyses briefly the more significant non-tactical components of the reforms, and to ask how far— if at all— these were affected by events overseas. It focuses on the American rifleman and the French tirailleur. For European military reform at the end of the century, the real function of colonial wars lay not in any concrete lessons they might have offered, but simply in their foreign, exotic aspect.
