ABSTRACT
In discussing counter-insurgency generally, one factor needs to be borne in mind: regular soldiers believe that they exist primarily to fight large-scale conventional wars. In reality, this is usually not their actual experience of practical soldiering. Yet in the British case, and in the case of most other armies confronted by the new insurgency after 1945, there was a residue of experience to fall back on. Nonetheless, one would not generally describe the usual practices of armies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries faced with insurgency as modern-style counter-insurgency. The French also recognised the need for a concerted military and political response to insurgency, although, in practice, they tended to continue to stress the primacy of military action. In surveying the contribution of European colonial soldiers to the beginnings of counter-insurgency theory, it should be noted that Dutch soldiers often displayed considerable tactical initiative in their campaigns in the East Indies.
