A Military History of Britain from 1775 to the Present (review)

Jeremy Black's volume in a new series of national military histories from Praeger Security International seeks to provide a new account of British military development, "military" being broadly interpreted to include naval and air force history as well. Notwithstanding the subtitle, Black actually begins with the Romans and it is a very brisk survey indeed: ten pages on the American War of Independence, nine on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, ten on the Great War, fifteen on the Second World War, and so on. As a contribution to an American series, Black also feels constrained to devote more attention to Anglo-American military relations than perhaps warranted. Lack of space, however, apparently prevents more than a brief revisiting of his undertaking (preface, and p. 49) to draw meaningful comparisons between the British and American military experience, notably between challenges faced by Britain between 1775 and 1815 and those faced by the United States in the twentieth century.

It has all the hallmarks of Black's usual style with an occasional apt quotation from sometimes obscure primary sources and citation of a wide range of secondary authorities to enliven a narrative that aims to challenge the reader with new perspectives. In this regard, however, it is not as successful as Black's recent more general histories and it is not just the brevity that presents difficulties. The overall division into Britain as imperial parent prior to 1775, as imperial rival from 1775 to 1904, and as imperial partner since 2004 is fair enough. But, in the last part, it is not at all obvious why the chapters should be broken down into 1904–33, 1933–68, and since 1968. Black suggests that it is important to link the influence of structural factors such as strategic environment to medium or short-term "conjunctions" in explaining military development. In practice, however, the volume is largely a narrative of conflict with only passing analysis of social-economic or cultural aspects. Moreover, Black sometimes fails to make the connections. Thus, he notes the way in which recent policies such as "Options for Change" were cost-driven yet fails to recognise that the same economic factors drove both the Cardwell and Haldane reforms. Indeed, there is no difference between Black's strictures regarding the tensions between "just sufficient" and "just-in-case" provision in 2003 and the conclusions of the Stephen Commission in the 1880s. Such a significant aspect of civil-military relations as billeting receives no mention at all and a brief mention of the War Cabinet in the Great War hardly illuminates the considerable civil-military friction that existed during the war. The treatment of industrialisation is also somewhat uneven with the use of steam power in the First Burma War noted, but not the impact of the telegraph on the Indian Mutiny.

Black rightly points out that there can be several "different narratives" of the British military experience and to attempt to cover all aspects of such a rich history in just 173 pages is bold and ambitious. The result is certainly a concise and crisply written history, but it does not challenge assumptions in the way Black suggests.