The Victorians at War

by Beckett, Ian

• ISBN13: 9781852855109
• ISBN10: 185285510X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-22
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

The men of the Victorian army ruled a large part of the world. As the visible power behind the greatest empire there had ever been, they were involved in wars and policing wherever British interests demanded it, whether in Canada, the Crimea, Afghanistan or the Sudan. Very small by continental standards, the Victorian army combined a strong sense of tradition with growing professionalism. The variety of tasks it had to undertake gave its officers and men an extraordinary range of challenges and experiences: putting down the Indian Mutiny, fighting in the jungles of West Africa, facing a Zulu impi and Boer sharpshooters, or garrisoning the many outposts of the empire. In The Victorians at War Ian Beckett looks at the men and their leaders from a variety of angles, using particular incidents and battles to show how the army lived and fought. >

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	xiii
Part One: Reputations
1 An English Confederacy	3	(10)
2 Cleansing the East with Steel	13	(12)
3 The Hand on the Throttle	25	(8)
4 The Devil's Pass	33	(12)
5 The Race for the Peerage	45	(8)
6 Paths of Duty	53	(12)
7 Doing a Billy Hicks	65	(10)
8 The Excitement of Railway Carriages	75	(8)
9 War, Truth and History	83
Part Two: Generals and Politicians
10 Command in South Africa	95	(10)
11 Islands in the Sun	105	(8)
12 Cavagnari's Coup de Main	113	(8)
13 Chelmsford's Major-Generals	121	(8)
14 Stanhope's Storehouses	129	(12)
15 One and a Half Battalions	141	(10)
16 The Improbable Probability	151	(10)
Part Three: Ways of War
17 The First Modern War?	161	(18)
18 War, Technology and Change	179	(12)
19 'Troopin'	191	(12)
20 A Frenchman's Horse	203	(10)
21 A Question of Totality	213	(18)
22 No End of a Lesson	231	(12)
Notes	243	(14)
Bibliographical Note	257	(2)
Index	259