Afterglow or Adjustment? Domestic Institutions and Responses to Overstretch

Mark R. Brawley

Columbia University Press

1998

5. Britain’s Decline, Military Overcommitment, and the Committee of Imperial Defense

 

In contrast to the earlier discussion about Britain’s currency overhang, which suggested a pattern of responses that worsened problems (first doing nothing, then afterglow) before partial adjustment could begin, Britain employed a wider variety of responses to military overcommitment—in a much less obvious pattern. Yet I argue that the same factors are at work shaping the responses in both issue-areas, fueling internal battles over the proper policy to resolve the problem: the rise of systemic rivals making the overextension more perilous versus rising budgetary concerns. The variation in outcomes is caused by a different set of institutional relationships, and by the different source of the threat. In the monetary sphere, a rival currency and financial center emerged only after World War I broke out. In the military sphere, Britain was rivaled much earlier, first by a potential combination between France and Russia, and then later by Germany.

Important variation between this case and the earlier discussion also occurs during hegemonic ascendance. Given that Britain had just emerged victorious from the Napoleonic Wars, there was little reason to believe that military command or strategizing institutions needed to be altered to execute the leadership role more effectively. Britain did not create military staff institutions until it became clear these were needed as part of the assessment of the degree of overcommitment. Thus it is impossible to say that decisionmakers failed to recognize the nature of the problem, or lacked the tools to deal with it. They created the necessary tools—the Army General Staff, the Committee of Imperial Defence, and then later the Combined Chiefs of Staff—once the problem became serious. The policy responses selected still reflect the interplay of these institutions with the Treasury, and the rise and fall of systemic threats.

The degree of overcommitment that sparked institutional changes was severe. In providing security to the open international economic subsystem, Britain sought to defend allies, dependent states, trade on the high seas, and the British Empire itself. The military potentials and problems of the British Empire were staggering. As Michael Howard put it,

It was not of Imperial power that British statesmen were primarily conscious at the beginning of this century. They were far more conscious of Imperial weakness: of commitments all over the world to be defended, of well-armed and rapacious adversaries who threatened them, and of very slender resources to protect them with. ₁

As we shall see, Britain’s ability to defend its colonies and allies rested on the skillful management of reputation and prestige. In an assessment Jan Christian Smuts offered in 1898, the British dominated

great countries largely inhabited by antagonistic peoples, without any adequate military organization designed to keep the peace in case of disturbance or attack. The dominion that the British Empire exercises of the many tribes and peoples within its jurisdiction rests more upon prestige and moral intimidation than upon true military strength. ₂

In their efforts to rectify their military overcommitment, British authorities tried a variety of responses. To understand the pattern of those responses, we need to understand the nature of the military overcommitment, the institutional framework at the time, and other factors shaping the viability of various responses.

 

Military Command Institutions in Hegemonic Ascendance

When Britain led the coalition to defeat Napoleon in 1814 (which had to be resurrected again in 1815 to put an end to Napoleon’s aspirations), it was at the height of its military power. The Royal Navy commanded the seas, far outstripping any of its competitors in 1815. The Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) had settled the balance of naval power between Britain and France. The main French fleet (combined with the Spanish fleet to make a total strength of 33 ships of the line) was beset by Admiral Horatio Nelson’s fleet. The French and Spanish lost 18 ships, and Nelson sealed British command of the seas for the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars.

Britain’s land forces were relatively small, compared to the other great European powers of the day, but Britain was able to field armies in the Iberian Peninsula, India, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Britain used its economic and financial power to arm many of its allies. On top of this, Britain prosecuted the War of 1812 in North America. Yet Britain’s strength on land was only possible because British ground forces operated in conjunction with allied armies. For instance, in Wellington’s army in the Peninsular War, every second battalion was Portuguese. The Portuguese were attracted to service because the British pay was relatively high and consistent. While British land forces were not large in total number, they were comparatively well-equipped, well-financed, and highly mobile (thanks to the Royal Navy). They usually operated in coordination with large numbers of troops supplied by local allies. In short, British financial and economic capabilities gave the military (or land) forces their true power.

It is not surprising then that soon after the point of victory, British politicians were less worried about emerging security threats than they were about budgetary problems. The Napoleonic Wars had been financed through a number of temporary measures, including income taxes, and these were not terribly popular. Economic matters were considered of greater importance—the most pressing questions concerned setting the economy on the right bearing. In tune with those concerns, and also natural for a democracy which did not relish having a large-scale professional military in peacetime, Britain began demobilizing its military forces rather rapidly. Following Castlereagh’s desire to “combine security with economy,” as he expressed it in 1816, the Royal Navy immediately began decommissioning ships. From 78 ships of the line in 1815, the Royal Navy’s total dropped to 17 in 1827, and to a meager seven in 1844. To be sure, the Royal Navy maintained a large number of smaller craft (which were better suited to patrolling the sea-lanes and other activities associated with defending the far-flung empire), but the decline in naval power was steep and dramatic. ₃

The decrease in troops in the Army was no less dramatic. In 1816, the British Army had 130,000 troops; by 1822, the number had been reduced to 70,000. In the later 1830s the number crept back up to more than 90,000. Most of these were scattered at various garrisons in the empire. In the 1840s, when tensions with France began to build, the total was raised to 108,000. Troops stationed in Britain were then increased from 56,000 to 65,000, but the additional 9,000 men could be found only by reducing the number posted in the colonies. After the Crimean War, the Mutiny in India, and rising fears of the possibility of an invasion of Britain (thanks to the advent of steam power, as shall be discussed below), the British Army deployed 116,000 troops in the British Isles and Ireland, with another 112,000 in India, plus minor contingents in other imperial outposts. ₄

Thus in the initial time period in which Britain developed hegemonic aspirations, and began to change foreign policies toward this end, the armed forces were declining in strength. They would not rebound in numbers until after the middle of the century. This might not have been so important if significant institutional changes had occurred. As it was, Britain’s military decisionmaking institutions failed to provide a clear military strategy in support of hegemonic leadership. Nor could the military command execute accurate assessments of needs, let alone match resources to needs. Institutional innovation would have to wait until demands were placed on the military, underscoring such shortcomings. Thanks to these weaknesses, plus the aspirations hegemonic leadership entails, it is little wonder that military overstretch occurred.

 

Attempted Reforms of Military Administration: The Failure to Achieve Institutional Change

With the reduction in military forces, imperial defense and home defense could not be ignored indefinitely. However, in the absence of powerful external threats to Britain, or even to British interests, such concerns could be set aside for many years. Military victory did not produce an impetus for change in military institutions; whereas in the monetary realm, policy change was necessary to fulfill hegemonic duties, the same could not be said in the military sphere. Advocates for change did appear, though for completely different reasons. Important political and economic reforms were sweeping Britain as it moved to a position of leadership. While the best known of these are the Reform Act of 1832, and the repeal of the Corn Laws, these were but two of the many legal and institutional changes then occurring. The military too became the subject of reform efforts.

Ever since the battles of the seventeenth century between Parliament and the monarchy, Britain’s peacetime military had been kept small. The Royal Navy, often seen as Britain’s first line of defense and not considered a threat to the balance of domestic political forces, was treated differently. Allocating funds to the Royal Navy was less likely to upset the balance of power between Crown and Parliament, and had a clear strategic rationale. The Royal Navy relied on equipment whose acquisition required planning and capital outlays. Thus funding for the Royal Navy had historically been much more consistent, and would be so in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as well. The Army, on the other hand, was considered a potential arbiter of domestic political conflict, and thus became the target of both Parliamentary and monarchical control. The resolution of the institutional differences in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had placed the Army under joint control. This cumbersome system continued down to the Napoleonic Era.

Joint control as practiced in the early 1800s meant that the sovereign remained nominally the commander in chief, but in fact relied on a military professional to perform that role. The Crown therefore technically had direct control over troops. Parliamentary influence over the armed forces was exercised by the Secretary of War, who held all the relevant financial decisionmaking powers. Such shared decisionmaking could clearly lead to unfortunate consequences if there was ever a dispute. The Prime Minister was supposed to adjudicate any conflicts between the military commander in chief and the Secretary. ₅

As the party of reform, the Whigs pushed for changes in both services in the 1830s. Reform of the Royal Navy could be executed fairly easily. Its command structure had been split during the Napoleonic Wars, into the Navy Office, which was in charge of operations (though commanders at sea usually made their own decisions), and the Victualling Board, which was responsible for supply. The Royal Navy therefore had the same sort of split between the “head” and the “purse” as the Army. The Whigs shut down these separate offices, and consolidated their responsibilities in the Board of Admiralty in 1834. The Board was composed of six Lords, each with specific responsibilities. The First Lord was responsible for the general direction of policy, as well as overall supervision and control of the service. The First Sea Lord was charged with military efficiency, command appointments, the fitting out of warships, and protecting trade and fisheries. The duties of the Second Sea Lord were to see to the gunnery training ship, the courts-martial, and lower level appointments; the Third Sea Lord was responsible for the Royal Marines, ordinance, and pensions; the Fourth for hospitals and schools, and the Fifth for victualling, transport, and stores. ₆ In this way a command structure was created which could ensure that, at a minimum, discussion between authorities with different responsibilities took place.

Efforts to achieve similar reforms in the Army ran into much greater difficulties. These modifications, which had to be driven through Parliament, also threatened to alter the Army’s relationship with the Crown. In 1833, the first of a number of inquiries was called. This, the Richmond Commission, was only able to develop a draft of a report; dissension and disagreement prevented a final report from emerging. Another commission started work in February 1836 under the direction of Lord Howick. It issued its report a year later, noting in particular the “inconvenient separation of Departments.” It recommended that decisionmaking powers be centralized with the Secretary of War, if “the military [i.e., land] defence of the Empire is to be conducted upon a footing of economy as well as of efficiency.” The largest loser in its recommendations was a supply officer, the Master General of the Ordnance, who would have his independence curtailed. This report sparked quite a lot of opposition, including from the Duke of Wellington, while some of the Whigs thought the reforms asked for did not go far enough (they wanted the Army’s commanders to report to Parliament rather than the Crown). The reforms invoked strong opposition while simultaneously failing to gain adequate support, primarily because of these disputes over the wisdom of civilian oversight. ₇

With the defeat of this issue followed by the Whigs’ loss of power, another commission was not called on the subject until 1849. The Whigs, now returned to office, established the Select Committee on Army Ordnance and Expenditure. The Select Committee reported that the Army’s ordnance departments were run economically, but also suggested further savings could be had if civilians were in charge. Wellington, still a political force on these issues, again opposed reforms. ₈ As a result, no actual reforms were achieved, although in June 1854 the Colonial and War Secretaryships were divided.

In 1859 another select committee was established. By then the atmosphere had changed considerably in favor of some sort of reforms. The Duke of Wellington had died, removing one major obstacle, while the memories of the glories of victory in the Napoleonic Wars were undercut by the poor performance of the military in the Crimean War. This time around the select committee undertook an intensive investigation of the War Office. In its report issued in 1860, it too made recommendations for rationalizing the top decisionmaking processes and administration in the Army. Yet only a few practical changes were ever implemented. ₉

As Britain adopted leadership policies and hegemonic responsibilities in the 1840s and 1850s, it had not altered its key military decisionmaking institutions considerably. Victory in the Napoleonic Wars had confirmed past practices; centralization of the administration of the Royal Navy did take place, but similar reforms in the Army were frustrated. Moreover, there was little coordination between the two services, and no institutional mechanism for achieving it. As long as the Royal Navy could do its job well, however, there was little reason to call existing practices into question. The Army might perform poorly in far-off operations, but the British Isles remained well defended. Britain was already overcommitted militarily, but with few external threats and a balanced budget, nothing was done to close the gap between resources and commitments.

 

Technology Spawns a New Threat

The development of the steamship challenged this established pattern of British security. A technological advance sparked a shakeup in military planning and the military command institutions themselves. For centuries, defense of the British Isles had rested with the Royal Navy, which was able to anticipate the direction of any likely attacks. With ships powered by sail, any rapid attack from Europe would have to flow with the winds. (Hence the historical strategic emphasis Britain had given the Low Countries.) This had made the Royal Navy’s job manageable. Fast ships (frigates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) could be placed in the channel, which could then report the news of any oncoming invasion fleet. British warships could then be assembled to meet the threat. Moreover, decent intelligence of activities in the channel ports could also identify concentrations of ships or troops preparing for embarkation well beforehand.

With the advent of steam power, however, ships could now approach the British home islands without regard to the prevailing winds. As Lord Palmerston reported to the House of Commons in 1845, “Steam navigation has rendered what was before impassable by a military force nothing more than a river passable by a steam bridge,” a thought seconded by the Duke of Wellington in 1847, when he declared that “In the event of war, every part of our coast...is open to attack.” ₁₀ What is now often forgotten, and in fact took some time to realize then, was that the application of steam power on land also reduced the probability of the Royal Navy successfully intercepting an invasion fleet. Intelligence on activities in the ports could no longer identify the true nature of an invasion threat. Railroads could deliver troops in a matter of hours to ports for embarkation. The lead time intelligence could provide was therefore reduced considerably, though this fact did not hit home until the Germans used rail transport so effectively in the Franco-Prussian War.

This new technological threat engendered an interservice battle over appropriate responses. In 1859, a Royal Commission on the Defense of the United Kingdom was established to investigate the threat of a French invasion and the condition of fortifications in Britain. ₁₁ Since the Navy could no longer promise to intercept an invasion fleet, the Army made a strong case for the need for enhanced shore defenses. The Army’s position came to be known as the “bolt from the blue school,” in contrast with the Royal Navy’s “blue water school,” marking a split in military strategy that would persist until the end of the century. ₁₂

In earlier periods, shore defenses had been meager at best, since the threat of invasion had never seemed great (save one or two episodes in the Napoleonic Wars). The Army found ready support for its case among the industries that were likely to benefit from any large-scale expenditures on construction. Richard Cobden believed such special-interest pressures were the driving force behind the call for defensive fortifications. He went so far as to argue that he was “prepared to show that nine-tenths of all the clamor for more defences...had a professional origin.” ₁₃ Nonetheless, Britain had to recognize that its defensive posture was weakened.

 

Including the Empire in Defense Plans

Problems with home defense were only part of the overall strategic picture. Military strategists had to worry about defending the British Empire as well. In the decades after the Battle of Waterloo and the close of the War of 1812, the Empire experienced peace matching the relations of the great powers of Europe. Isolated secondary conflicts such as the 1837 rebellion in Canada, or the Kaffir Wars in South Africa were seen as just that: separate, remote incidents (which were of a minor nature to boot). This set of events allowed the British military and political decisionmakers to view imperial defense in a compartmentalized and unquestioned way. Problems were viewed as unrelated, and tended to be thought of in London primarily in financial terms. ₁₄

Several systemic changes prompted some reassessment of Britain’s imperial military posture at the same time that the advent of steam power was eroding Britain’s faith in the defensive capabilities of the Royal Navy. The ascent of Napoleon III to power in France engendered fears of a threat to Britain itself; then the mutiny in India in 1857&-;1858 underscored the need for land forces that could be quickly dispatched to far away conflicts; the Second Opium War with China between 1856 and 1860 illustrated the necessity of improving combined service operations; and tensions with the U.S. during the Civil War again raised concerns about the ability of the British military to meet emergencies. But since each of these situations merely formed a step in a sequence (instead of occurring all at once) and since each was handled without draining existing resources, Britain could still “muddle through” without any overall strategic planning. ₁₅ Overstretch was not recognized as such because obligations were not called upon simultaneously.

The obvious concerns after mid-century were with Britain’s ability to defend itself and its enormous empire. Hegemonic responsibilities, such as defense of trade routes, factored in to these discussions as well. With Britain’s reduced military expenditures in the 1830s and 1840s, overstretch was the only fair assessment one could give—though no systemic threat was very apparent. Nonetheless British military minds were beginning to recognize the potential problem of overcommitment. Whether or not there was an accurate assessment of the dilemma, or any consensus on the degree to which British forces were overextended, there was clearly recognition that a problem now existed: different proposals to resolve overcommitment began to surface in military circles. During the Crimean War, some officers had noted that when regular troops were pulled from overseas garrisons local militias sprung up in their place. It was suggested that the militias might be delegated defensive duties on a more permanent basis. In an assessment of necessary improvements to the fortification of naval bases in 1856, General Sir John Fox Burgoyne argued that Britain should maintain the defenses at Gibraltar, Malta, Corfu, Bermuda, and Mauritius; St. Helena, Ascension Island and the Falklands could continue to serve as fleet stations without extensive fortifications; and everywhere else, local militias could be called upon. ₁₆

India played an important role in military calculations. India was both a source of concern and a valuable military asset. Indian troops were used in other parts of the Empire, including in the Crimean War 1854–1856, Persia 1856–1857, China 1859, New Zealand 1860–1861, Abyssinia 1867, Malaya 1875, Malta 1878, Afghanistan 1878–1881, Egypt 1882, Sudan 1885, and then the Sudan again 1896–1899, to garrison Suakin up to 1895, and in Mombassa 1896. ₁₇ As a valuable economic asset, however, India had to be defended against internal and external threats. As Sir John Seeley noted in 1883, “It may be fairly questioned whether possession of India does or ever can increase our power and security, while there is no doubt that it vastly increases our dangers and responsibilities.” ₁₈ The internal threats could be met with Indian forces and only a token British presence; these forces could even deal with most of the external threats as well. The fear that would grow into a major concern, however, was Russian expansion in Asia. As the Russian Empire solidified its grip on central Asia, it drew near to Afghanistan, and thus closer to India. The advent of the railroad created the possibility of rapid troop movements from Russia to the Indian border, which Britain could meet only by sending troops by ship from Britain or having a large garrison in place. When one also considers that Britain was pledged to defend Canada, Australia, and then later Egypt and South Africa, as well as all the other parts of the Empire, Britain’s military forces were clearly overcommitted. (And this is ignoring implicit pledges to defend vulnerable allied states, such as the Ottoman Empire, also.) The potential responses to this situation were the topic of debate for many years, and fall under the heading of Imperial Defense.

 

The Many Meanings of Imperial Defense

Originally, the term Imperial Defense referred to not only the general problem of British overstretch, but also a specific set of preferred responses. Imperial Defense recognized the shortage of forces to meet defense needs, and envisaged four separate but potentially related solutions. These solutions are consistent with several of the possible responses to overstretch identified in chapter 1. First, Imperial Defense refers to the idea that land forces should be strategically withdrawn from scattered imperial garrisons and concentrated in Britain, as actually done under the Cardwell reforms of 1870–1871. This response is suggesting that Britain do nothing about the gap between resources and commitments, but hope for greater efficiency with existing resources via redeployment.

Second, Imperial Defense refers to plans to strengthen the Royal Navy as more than simply the first line of defense (a continuation of the old “blue water school”), but in fact as the only reliable protection for the Empire as a whole. What good would troop concentrations be if they could not be transported to the site of an emergency? Indeed, the Royal Navy would argue that any great-power threat to the Empire would be seaborne, and thus could be handled from the start by its fleets. The validity of this argument would be doubted soon enough (if it ever was true), with the threat to India posed by rail-borne Russian troops being the case in point. If the Royal Navy’s top officers had gotten their way, their suggestions might well have produced adjustment—expanding resources while maintaining commitments at a fixed level. Of course, Britain could have endured additional expenditures without much pain, because relative economic decline had not yet begun. After all, Britain was still economically ahead of its rivals in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Understanding the budget constraints the Treasury would impose, however, the Royal Navy’s position was that greater expenditures for the fleets could be paid for by cuts in the Army’s expenditures. In practical terms, then, overall resources would not be expanded but simply reallocated.

Third, the phrase Imperial Defense was also connected to efforts to reform and reorganize command and control of military forces, in order to achieve a more effective defense, again within the constraints of existing resources. This would ultimately be the source of institutional development in the military sphere. Fourth, Imperial Defense also refers to efforts to get the colonies to provide more to their own protection. The pressure would be greatest on the dominions of Canada and Australia. ₁₉ This was the closest anyone came to advocating an increase in overall resources as a solution to military overcommitment at this time. These four proposals also underline that one must be careful to investigate the context in which contemporaries used the term “Imperial Defense.” Yet the central theme we find in each of these solutions is an attempt to meet existing commitments without expanding British resources. Reorganization of forces and reallocation of assets were offered as the paramount solution. This is more than “doing nothing,” and also avoids actually closing the gap between resources and commitments. This is in line with the expectations formed in chapter 1, in a situation where there is no pressing budgetary issues or systemic rivals. The situation would change soon enough.

 

The Dominance of the Royal Navy

One prominent version of this argument, outlined above as the second interpretation of Imperial Defense, claimed that the Royal Navy, which would have to prevent an invasion force reaching the shores of Britain itself, was the first and only line of defense for Britain and the Empire. The Army’s supporters suggested that increased fortifications and a larger Army were now needed, since the Navy could no longer guarantee success in this mission. The Royal Navy, however, argued that while the Army might possibly be built up to deal with such a consequence, the result would not be enhanced security. If the Royal Navy was defeated, making invasion possible, an invasion would not in the end be required to defeat Britain; thanks to Britain’s reliance on food imports, the country could be strangled into submission. As one naval officer put it: “The command of the sea once being lost it would not require the landing of a single soldier upon her shores to bring her to an ignominious capitulation.” ₂₀

On the basis of this logic, the Royal Navy made the principal claim to defense expenditures. In the words of naval proponent Sir John Colomb, “The Navy is the shield to guard and the Army is the spear to strike.” ₂₁ While this seems to include a role for each service, in the debates of the time, when cost-cutting was on the top of the agenda, this was a sly way of saying the Royal Navy was essential while the Army was a luxury. As the Select Committee on Colonial Military Expenditures (also referred to as the Mills Committee) reported in 1860:

The tendency of modern warfare is to strike blows at the heart of a hostile power; and it is, therefore, desirable to concentrate the troops required for the defense of the United Kingdom as much as possible, and to trust mainly to naval supremacy for securing against foreign aggression the distant dependencies of the Empire. ₂₂

This position was taken, however, without a true assessment by the Committee of the defensive posture of the British Empire as a whole.

Indeed, some of the Royal Navy’s supporters would later claim that in the first half of the nineteenth century, the importance of the Royal Navy was remembered thanks to Trafalgar and the Battle of the Nile, but as these faded into memory, the contributions of the service were forgotten. Trafalgar illustrated the ability of the Royal Navy to defend the home islands, whereas the Battle of the Nile showed how threats to the colonies posed by other great powers could be severed and left to wither and die. The capabilities of the Royal Navy got pushed to the background in mid-century, when war in China, in the Crimea, and then the mutiny in India all thrust the Army into the spotlight. Naval proponents tried to reassert their case in the latter half of the nineteenth century by stressing that the Army could only play a role in these imperial conflicts because the Navy had command of the seas, and could transport Army forces to the zone of combat. In addition, Britain had been largely self-sufficient in foodstuffs in 1815. This was no longer true by the 1870s; by the 1890s, nearly four-fifths of Britain’s wheat came from overseas. Protection of trade was now a paramount feature of Britain’s defense. ₂₃

By taking such a position in the debates, the Royal Navy did not enhance the overall military position of the Empire. The Royal Navy’s argument precluded the need for the creation of a serious land force prior to the outbreak of war. The Royal Navy’s position also eliminated the need for the colonies (or even the self-governing dominions) to develop their own military forces as well. The Royal Navy’s strategic vision impeded contributions from the Empire to defense (even in terms of naval resources). ₂₄

The Royal Navy won the debates throughout much of the nineteenth century because of numerous political strengths it had when compared with the Army. Historically, the Royal Navy had not been feared by politicians—because it had been essentially apolitical for so long, and because it had no royal connections. The lack of royal connections also meant that naval officers commanded greater respect. Without royal privilege involved in commissions and promotion, the service experienced much less infighting than the Army, the officers were better trained than those in the Army, and officers served actively (which was not always the case with the Army). The Royal Navy also maintained strong ties with its suppliers, giving it a small, but strong base of support in Parliament. ₂₅ For these reasons, Parliament was much more attentive to the Royal Navy’s case in any interservice disputes.

 

Doing Something While “Doing Nothing”: Cardwell, Fiscal Restraints and Reform

In this climate of tight budgets, with the Royal Navy making such a strong strategic argument, the policymakers’ response was to choose to maintain Britain’s military commitments without devoting additional resources to defense. They did not actually fail to act, but rather sought to reorganize the armed forces to gain more effective use out of existing resources. Focusing expenditure on the Royal Navy promised to maintain or even increase the mobility of British forces. The Army was to be reorganized so that it could provide a minimal defense of the home islands, and also secure the Empire from local regional threats.

This response to overcommitment is best illustrated by the reforms instituted by Secretary of War Cardwell. In 1870–1873, Cardwell redeployed Britain’s ground forces and established new operational linkages between troops based in Britain and those in the field. As one step, Cardwell had the final sets of regular troops withdrawn from Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The dominions which had received self-government (Canada in 1848, New Zealand and most of Australia in 1860) were now expected to provide for their own local defense. Despite the British government’s intentions, defense of these outlying parts of the Empire would remain a problem since the dominions could not be forced to raise defense units. ₂₆

Another part of the reforms instituted during this time was the creation of the Department of Military Intelligence (1873). Though it had a very small budget to work with, it performed its tasks of gathering intelligence quite well. It was, however, also charged with certain aspects of planning. A mobilization section was set up in 1886, but it obviously failed to achieve much, given the confusion evident in the early stages of the Boer War. This should only have been expected given the slim financial resources and staff handed to the Intelligence Department. Few detailed preparations were ever made for mobilization until after the Boer War had ended. ₂₇

The top military command was finally placed under Parliamentary control as part of the Cardwell reforms. The commander in chief was made subordinate to the Secretary of War, and the commander in chief’s staff was relocated so that it resided with the War Office. Service tenures were also adjusted. Previously, recruits signed up for 12 years, with the possibility of extending their enlistment to 21 years and thereby earning a pension. To make service more attractive, Cardwell reduced the term to seven years in active service, to be followed by seven years in the reserves. Professionalization of the officer corps was also made possible by the abolition of the purchase of commissions. ₂₈

The best known aspect of the Cardwell reforms, however, involved the redeployment and reorganization of the Army. Each regiment was to be composed of two battalions. A regiment would then have one battalion stationed overseas with the other kept at home. This plan seemed to do more than meet the immediate needs to have troops both in the Empire and in Britain itself. The battalions at home would be a steady source of replacements to replenish the battalion in the field, but could also be called upon as an entire battalion in emergencies. While this system created a neat division in duties, and offered a linkage between home forces and those garrisoning the Empire, there was no thought given to the total number of regiments at the time—the system merely redistributed the Army units already in service in 1871. ₂₉

The Cardwell system worked well as long as the home battalions were merely required to send replacements to the overseas battalions. Once the system was actually called upon to provide full battalions for field service, serious shortcomings appeared. Battalions sent from Britain to the Empire to participate in the Afghan and Zulu campaigns of 1879–1880, or even to cover for garrisons which were taking part in these operations, proved somewhat ineffective due to inexperience. After episodes where these green troops performed poorly, many field commanders did not appreciate having them added to their forces. One such commander, Lord Roberts, noted that short-term enlistees (soldiers who signed up for seven years) had little stomach for Imperial operations, and argued that they should be left on home duty altogether. ₃₀

If the first flaw was that battalions sent from Britain failed to live up to expectations, the second was that Britain itself was then left short of defensive troops. Cardwell had intended that if the home battalions were sent overseas, they were to be replaced in the short-run by calling out the Militia. Forming the Militia required an act of Parliament however, a path requiring additional expenditures and thus certain not to interest a sitting government. A third problem emerged: any home battalions sent overseas could no longer supply replacements to its sister battalion. If a home battalion were shipped out, there were suddenly two battalions in the field lacking any stream of replacements. ₃₁

These problems were rapidly compounded as more battalions had to be sent abroad. The real flaw in the overall plan was that the total number of regiments was arbitrarily fixed at the level it had been in 1871. As problems arose and battalions had to be sent out, the deployment and replacement system became untenable. In 1881, six battalions were transferred from home service to South Africa. The occupation of Egypt meant the transfer of another nine. The Army commander in chief, the Duke of Cambridge, was forced to report to Queen Victoria (his mother) in September 1884 that:

Every available corps has been sent out to Egypt...our Army at home is not fit to give either further reinforcements, or indeed to meet any emergency which may arise; and yet we have anxieties enough on hand, whether we look to South Africa...or to China, where the garrison of Hong Kong is quite unequal to cope with any serious emergency, or to India, where we shall not be able by the usual drafts to fill up the normal establishments of Regiments up to full strength. ₃₂

All this was worsened by the knowledge that the Russians were pressuring the Afghan border in the Spring of 1885. By then there were some 15 battalions in the field that, according to the Cardwell set-up, should have been based in Britain. ₃₃ While Britain could rely on the Royal Navy to defend the home islands, there were serious doubts as to the Army’s ability to defend India, Egypt, and South Africa simultaneously.

Did the political and military decisionmakers recognize that they were in a situation of overstretch? The Duke of Cambridge’s comments seem to confirm that they had a good grasp of the true situation. Fears that Britain would be pulled into the war between Russia and Turkey had even sparked the first attempted assessments of the military needs of the Empire as a whole, in 1878–1879. Two separate measures were taken in those years: the Royal Commission for the Defense of British Possessions and Commerce Abroad (the Carnarvon Commission), and a temporary interdepartmental Committee, the Colonial Defence Committee (or CDC).

The CDC was composed of officials from the Admiralty, the War Office, the Colonial Office, and the Treasury. By having members from each service, the policymaking department, and the department which commanded the purse-strings, the CDC had all the components for assessing any gaps between obligations and resources. But the CDC was a limited affair, both in the sense that it was a temporary arrangement (originally lasting only a year), but also in that it exercised only a very narrow mandate. It was charged with considering “what steps could be taken at short notice to provide some measure of security for Colonial Ports.” ₃₄

The Carnarvon Commission, on the other hand, undertook a much broader and in-depth investigation of long-range planning for defense of the Empire. Its injunction was to consider plans for protecting all British possessions, including coaling stations and British commerce as well. Lord Carnarvon had served as the Colonial Secretary in Disraeli’s second administration (1874–1880), so he was personally familiar with many of the issues under the committee’s purview. The Carnarvon Commission sat for more than two years, and issued several reports, including the first to tackle long-term plans for Imperial Defense. The reports urged the establishment of more coaling stations in order to support the Navy’s role in colonial defense (though this naturally created more points to be defended). Fears of weakness in the face of unanticipated attacks were also expressed. In its third report, issued in 1882, it expressed frustration with the task of establishing any fixed proportions for contributions from other parts of the Empire, or between the military services. ₃₅ Little policy change could come from such conclusions.

Whereas systemic threats had appeared sequentially and had usually been minor before, the late 1870s and early 1880s brought a series of crises and outright military setbacks. The specific threats remained fairly minor in nature, but suddenly they arose in a flurry. The Berlin settlement of 1878 had resolved many of the issues in the Balkans, and there were military victories (such as Wolseley’s success at Tel-El-Kebir in September 1882), but South Africa and the Sudan provided constant examples of Britain’s military vulnerabilities. Not only had the Cardwell system unintentionally put a cap on the number of new units that could be put into the field while stemming the flow of replacements to the battalions already operating overseas, but also the forces engaged in conflicts were being defeated. In the short span of six years, British forces suffered defeats at Isandlhana (January 1879), the long bloody retreat from Kabul (September of that same year), losses at Laing’s Nek and Majuba Hill (1881), then the defeat of the British-sponsored Egyptian Army (1883) and the fall of Khartoum (January 1885). While all these wars were eventually settled satisfactorily, British troops were hard-pressed on a number of occasions. For this reason, the government was interested in exploring various forms of retrenchment, including more enhanced discussions with constituent parts of the Empire about their potential military contributions. ₃₆

Doubts about the Royal Navy’s ability to continue with its responsibilities also arose. Some of these came from officers within the Royal Navy itself, Admiral Sir John Fisher not least among them. In September 1884 the Pall Mall Gazette ran an article titled “What is the Truth about the Navy?” based on information provided by Fisher. At the same time, Australia and New Zealand expressed concerns about German naval activity nearby (in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands). Although the British government was interested in the Australians’ offer to pay for a naval squadron to be based in their waters, questions quickly arose over who would actually command the squadron. ₃₇ Such squabbling would frustrate the efforts to coordinate contributions to Imperial Defense.

 

Debating the Responses to Overcommitment: The CDC and the Colonial Conferences

Such concerns and ideas provided the impetus for both the revival of the Colonial Defence Committee in 1885, and for the initiation of the First Colonial Conference in 1887. The Salisbury government reacted to renewed fears of a conflict with Russia by having the interdepartmental CDC meet again, looking for help from parts of the Empire itself through the Colonial Conferences, and engaging in serious debates about the size, nature, and cost of Britain’s military. ₃₈

Invitations to the First Colonial Conference sent to the various member governments stated that “the time had now arrived when an attempt may fairly be made to attain a better understanding as to the system of defence which may be established throughout the Empire.” ₃₉ It was at a later such Colonial Conference, in 1902, that Joseph Chamberlain attempted to rouse colonial support by describing Britain as “a weary Titan staggering under the too vast orb of his own fate.” ₄₀ Questions of defense were top priority at the conference. Foreign policy was not up for discussion, however, as it was completely within the hands of the government in London. Thus one of the key stumbling blocks, which was never fully overcome, was the determination of the dominions to get a greater say in foreign policy as a quid pro quo to military contributions on their part.

The CDC was formed anew, in order to provide the government with the necessary background information for making presentations to the Colonial Conferences. The composition was altered slightly; the Permanent Under-Secretary for the Colonies headed the CDC, and its members included the Inspector-General of Fortifications, the head of the Army’s Intelligence Department, an artillery officer, the head of the War Office’s mobilization division, an official from the Treasury, and (after 1886) the head of the Admiralty’s Intelligence Department. The CDC did not execute any overall assessments of Britain’s strategic position, however. Instead, local authorities developed their own plans, which were then vetted by the individual departments. Once the departments had considered the plans, they were discussed by the CDC as a whole. While the CDC was a step in the right direction, it was not actually the strategizing body Britain badly needed.

The CDC was certainly busy, and could make a contribution. Between 1885 and 1892, it met 58 times, handled more than 450 separate agenda items, and reviewed 61 separate plans offered by colonial authorities. The CDC responded with more than 150 detailed recommendations concerning those plans. The CDC was able to communicate new tactical problems, the capabilities of developing technologies, and their intelligence on how possible enemies might employ their forces to help sharpen those plans. The experience gained from these reviews established planning procedures that would prove extremely helpful in the future (they were the prototypes for the later “War Book”). ₄₁

From the late 1870s on, the internal bickering changed as the government’s budget crept into deficit. The additional expenditures came primarily from the costs of defending and administering the growing empire. Since no party proved willing to raise taxes, loans became a feature of government finance between 1880 and 1884. Expenditures on the military were only allowed to rise again after government budgets returned to surplus in 1889, and the retirement of these debts began. ₄₂ According to my arguments, the most likely response to the military overcommitment between 1880 and 1889 would be worsening overstretch, as the budget pressures interacted with the rising fear of threats from the alliance of France and Russia. (I would qualify this as a period when Britain was underfulfilling leadership, because it could have raised taxes considerably and been able to meet its commitments.)

Consistent with this expectation, the Conservative government in power in 1886–1887 discussed various means of retrenchment and cost reduction. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, suggested reducing Britain’s commitments abroad. He did not advocate relinquishing any colonies, but rather he suggested a reduction in commitments to allied countries. Specifically, he argued Britain should drop its implicit support of the Ottoman Empire. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and a majority of the Cabinet were unpersuaded. A budget row between Churchill and the services erupted, which continued until Churchill resigned from the Treasury in December 1886. ₄₃

Churchill’s resignation thrust the issues of overstretch and adjustment into popular discussion. On January 8, 1887, the Saturday Review wrote that widespread disapproval of Lord Churchill’s action had shown “the hollowness of the cry of retrenchment pure and simple.” But quite quickly popular support swung to another position: Britain should build the military forces to meet the alleged threats coming from France and Russia. Later in 1887, Lieutenant General V. B. Pacha wrote in Blackwood’s Magazine that England was “awakening to the thought that there is a weak spot in her armour, and that she must put her house in order quickly, or risk the possibly fatal consequences.” ₄₄

One important spillover from Churchill’s resignation was the formation of a Select Committee of the House of Commons to investigate service estimates. Committee members were originally sympathetic to Churchill’s position, but soon discovered no evidence that the Army was acting in anything but the most frugal manner. Instead the investigation turned up compelling evidence that the military appropriations were quite small. (This is not to say the Committee wasn’t critical of the Army. Army accounting procedures were seriously questioned.) Other commentators pressed the issue for greater expenditure. In The Present Position of European Politics or Europe in 1887, foreign policy and military expert Sir Charles Dilke explicitly linked military reforms to foreign policy. He went so far as to assert that a major gap between obligations and resources already existed. He questioned whether Britain’s commitments to Belgium and Turkey held any meaning, since Britain lacked the available forces to come to the assistance of these countries in an emergency. ₄₅

While these debates were going on, the military still lacked an institution formulating its own position. A true process for assessing the military needs of the Empire by the military and the political decisionmakers, which would then be acted upon, would have to wait. Calls for a true general staff system were still viewed largely with suspicion. Instead, some minor adjustments took place. The War Office shifted the Topographical and Statistical Department to Intelligence in 1886; and the Royal Navy instituted its own Intelligence Division within a year. ₄₆ The various public discussions did cause some leaders to recognize that a single body, capable of executing a comprehensive assessment of the Empire’s strategic situation, was needed. For instance, in 1887 Lord Wolseley reported to the Royal Commission on Warlike Stores “There has never been any authoritative inquiry instituted as to what are the military requirements of the Empire; how many troops we require to have in England, how many we require in our colonies, how many in India...” ₄₇ Then in May 1888 Lord Wolseley presented his own assessment of the Army’s requirements for the overall defense of the British Empire to the House of Lords. Unsurprisingly, Lord Wolseley recommended a massive buildup of his own service: Britain’s land forces. Besides the established garrisons in India and the colonies, in his estimation Britain required three corps of regulars and six cavalry brigades for the home islands, plus two more corps for any embarkations. ₄₈

Meanwhile the high command of the Royal Navy was stating its own case. The Royal Navy set out the rationale for the now well-known “Two-Power Standard” as a counter to Lord Wolseley’s views. The standard was enunciated to Parliament by First Sea Lord George Hamilton on March 1, 1889. As Hamilton explained, “Our establishment should be on such a scale that it should at least be equal to the naval strength of any two other countries,” in terms of battleships. The Royal Navy argued that it needed as many warships as the next two largest navies combined if it was to command the seas, and thereby defend Britain and the Empire. Its spokesmen also argued that a long-term building program would be more efficient and economical, and could even deliver ships at a faster rate than past practices. Admiral Charles Beresford actually resigned from the Navy to devote his energies entirely to the political fight to have the Two-Power Standard implemented as the basis for policy. ₄₉

In fact, the Royal Navy’s planning called for a “Two-Power Plus Standard.” The simple formula used to calculate naval requirements was that Britain needed enough ships to handle the French and Russian fleets, plus enough cruisers to patrol the sealanes and protect merchant shipping. The Royal Navy sought a fleet large enough to ensure two goals: supremacy over a likely combination of battlefleets, plus the ability to protect global trading interests. ₅₀

The Royal Navy won this round of the debate. In the Naval Defense Act of 1889, Parliament approved a five-year purchase plan for the Royal Navy. It was the first long-term peacetime weapons procurement plan of its kind in Britain. In all, Parliament allocated £21,500,000 to the Royal Navy, but only £160,671 for the construction of permanent fortifications. Now that the budget was no longer in deficit and debts were being paid down, the Treasury accepted the need for additional spending on the military services—adjustment (fulfilling its leadership role). Each of the international crises of the later nineteenth century spurred increased defense spending in Britain. A glance at the budgets of 1885, 1889, 1894, and 1896 shows however that each time the additional money was directed to the Royal Navy, not the Army. ₅₁

At the same time, we must be careful to note that the greater expenditures did not completely close the gap between resources and commitments. Even these large building programs failed to meet the Navy’s desires. While battleships were being built, and redeployed so as to concentrate power in the North Sea, the total number of cruisers requested for protecting the sealanes fell dramatically short of assessed needs. The Royal Navy’s own projections for defending merchant shipping called for a total of 106 cruisers (including those cruisers which would serve with the battlefleets); this was some 40 cruisers below the actual number Britain was operating. ₅₂

 

Coordinating Military Decisionmaking

Another commission (the Hartington, formed in 1888) grew out of the Churchill resignation, though its direct origins are also tied to the constant questioning of Sir John Colomb—an avid proponent of the Royal Navy, who continually posed questions about military coordination. Ostensibly to inquire into the relations between the Naval, Military (i.e., Army) and Treasury Departments, the Hartington Commission afforded Parliamentarians a chance to search for methods of rationalizing administration of the military services, and perhaps achieve improved defense for the same expenditure. ₅₃ The Commission issued reports in 1889 and 1890.

The Hartington Commission’s recommendations were the first to place full attention on the need for an overall assessment of the British Empire’s foreign policy goals, military obligations, and defense assets. The Commission’s report gave an assessment of existing arrangements for coordination:

While in action they must be to a large extent dependent on each other, and while in some of the arrangements necessary as a preparation for war they are absolutely dependent on the assistance of each other, little or no attempt has ever been made to establish settled and regular inter-communication or relations between the two, or to secure that the establishment of one service should be determined with any reference to the requirements of the other. ₅₄

Based on these observations, and the recognition that there was not “sufficient provision for the consideration by either service of the wants of the other...and there is a want of such definite and established relations between the Admiralty and the War Office as would give opportunity to either Department of calling to the attention of the other to the condition of the establishment and preparations in which it was vitally interested,” it urged the creation of a defense committee. This Naval and Military Council, as it was referred to in the Committee’s report, could consider the requests of the two services simultaneously before submitting estimates to Cabinet. Such a committee would have representatives from both services and Cabinet to ensure all points of view were expressed. The Committee recommended that the Prime Minister preside over the Council. Since “no combined plan of operations for the Defence of the Empire in any given contingency has ever been worked out or decided upon by the two Departments,” it was hoped this type of committee would be able to produce a concerted plan for Imperial Defense. ₅₅ At the same time, there was no mention of any efforts to make sure that the military services communicated directly with the Foreign or Colonial Offices.

Second, and just as important, it recommended the rationalization of the upper level of administration within each of the services. It found the administrative apparatus of each service to be outmoded and inefficient, and suggested improvements. The Commission recommended the creation of a First Naval Lord, who would be an adviser to the First Lord of the Admiralty in all matters of strategy. This new post would have no administrative duties, so that the officer could devote all his energies to important questions of policy. At the same time, the Commission failed to realize the need for a support staff to aid an officer in this role.

Thirdly, it recommended the creation of a General Staff for the Army. The major European powers had developed general staffs for their armies after the crushing successes of the Prussians in the 1860s and 1870s. Britain had been slow to emulate this institutional innovation, out of fear that a general staff would become the secret harbor of militarism. Parliament’s long struggle to get greater oversight of the military had also discouraged the creation of such an institution. Now it was recognized that the problems confronting Britain were complex, and required the true planning and organizational skills that only a general staff afforded. The Commission therefore suggested that the post of commander in chief of the Army be abolished, and replaced by a Chief of General Staff. This Chief of General Staff would obviously head the General Staff, but also represent Army interests on the War Office Council, advise the Secretary of War, and sit on the proposed Naval and Military Council. As the Commission’s report noted, the Army needed a “thinking department.” The sitting commander in chief, the aged Duke of Cambridge, along with the Queen, opposed these suggestions, as did many of the other senior officers. An unfortunate compromise resulted: the commander in chief received the new duties (such as advising the Secretary of War), but no supporting general staff was created. Even after the Duke of Cambridge retired in 1895 (after serving 39 years in that post), the system was not altered. The compromise structure undoubtedly contributed to the poor performance of the Army in the opening stages of the Boer War (as explained below). ₅₆

There are more pieces of evidence that politicians and military commanders recognized that Britain was overcommitted militarily, and that decisionmaking procedures were at least partially to blame. In 1892, responding to a question before the Wantage Commission, the Army’s Adjutant-General Sir Redvers Buller commented that “The establishment is not fixed directly with regard to certain duties, it is only fixed incidentally.” When questioned before the Elgin Commission in 1903 whether Parliament had ever been informed of any Cabinet’s assessment of gaps between military needs and the Army’s resources, Sir Coleridge Grove testified “Not in the sense of being told the dangers to which the country is exposed and the power of the Army to meet them.” ₅₇

Although funds were being allocated to build up the Royal Navy, the Army was largely neglected. Debates over the proper size of the Army continued. Sir John Adye commented in 1896:

I think that no one can compare the two figures—that of the growth of the Empire, and that of the growth of the army—and say that the one has kept pace with the other, or that in the light of our recent experiences, 300,000 men is a sufficient British regular force for the defence of an Empire comprising one-fifth of the surface of the land portion of the globe and one-fourth of its estimated population. ₅₈

But the Royal Navy’s leaders made similarly impassioned pleas stating the need for even greater expenditures for their service. When Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Michael Hicks Beach had criticized the rapid rise in naval expenditures in October 1901, First Lord of the Admiralty Selborne responded by arguing:

To me it seems that the expenditure of this country on maintaining its Credit and its Navy stands on a different plane to any other expenditure. Its Credit and its Navy seem to be the two pillars on which the strength of this country rests, and each is essential to the other. Unless our financial position is strong, the Navy cannot be maintained. Unless the Navy is adequate for any call which may be made upon it, our national Credit must stand in jeopardy. ₅₉

He went on to state that he believed Britain had cut its “margin of naval strength to a finer point than prudence warrants” versus the possible combination of France and Russia.

These different Parliamentary inquiries all suggested that Britain needed a better institutional mechanism for linking the assessments of the military services to political decisionmaking, particularly in determining the level of resources necessary for defense, but also for allocating assets between the Army and the Navy. As a result, the CDC became a battleground for the three most important agencies involved in defense planning. As the fiscal question became serious with the reappearance of deficits, and with military threats on the rise, and commitments at a level where they might still be sustainable but rising, policies of adjustment gave way to continuing overstretch—and the concomitant intense bureaucratic struggles.

As noted earlier, the very first Colonial Defence Committee had been a temporary affair, set up in the late 1870s. After the Carnarvon Commission, the CDC was reinstigated (1885). Colonel George Sydenham Clarke (later Lord Sydenham of Combe) served as its secretary for many years. Clarke developed a system whereby colonial governments drew up plans for local defense and then referred these to the CDC. The CDC reviewed them, then returned them with refinements and recommendations. Between 1885 and 1892, the CDC authorized about 60 different sets of local plans; yet, it lacked the staff and the mandate to undertake any sort of comprehensive, coordinating strategic plans. ₆₀

Since it had failed to make its case very effectively in the past, the War Office remained highly suspicious of the Colonial Defense Committee. This was so even though the CDC had commenced with only the issues of organization and procedure—it hadn’t given strategy a serious examination yet. In December 1892, the War Office pressed so strongly that it even got the Committee dissolved, though that only lasted for a month. ₆₁ The Army’s attitude would change in time. Yet up to 1906, the CDC and its eventual successor, the Committee of Imperial Defense (or CID) consistently followed the Royal Navy’s line; participants in the CID’s decisions noted that when push came to shove the Navy nearly always won. After 1906, however, the CID began to move more in the Army’s direction, and thus won greater confidence from the Army but lost the Navy’s support. ₆₂

Nonetheless, it must be noted that the CDC’s decisionmaking powers remained limited. It took no part in managing Britain’s actual military affairs, such as during the Boer War; it achieved little in the way of coordinating the services. ₆₃ The issue of coordinating the services came to public attention at the 1902 Imperial Conference. The War Office and Admiralty presented contrasting plans for future defense, based on radically different strategic principles. The Royal Navy’s position reflected a highly offensive strategy. It saw destruction of an enemy’s fleet as its primary goal; Britain’s imperial possessions would have to fend for themselves while this mission was being accomplished. The Army, on the other hand, saw Britain taking a defensive posture upon the outbreak of hostilities with another great power.

The public disagreements over how forces should be positioned, and how future expenditures should be directed, suggested that the military was in disarray. Given the military’s poor performance in the first stages of the Boer War, this position was too vulnerable not to elicit a political reaction. In November 1902, Sir John Brodrick, the Secretary of War, and Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty, demanded that Prime Minister Arthur Balfour reorganize the CDC so that it could survey and assess the problems associated with the Empire’s defense, and force all the departments involved to cooperate. If Balfour failed to do so, each threatened to resign. The Committee of Imperial Defense (CID) was the result. ₆₄

 

The Committee of Imperial Defense

The Committee of Imperial Defense as it stood in 1904, was composed of the secretaries of state for War, for Foreign Affairs, for Colonies, for India, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Chiefs of Staff for each service, the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury (as head of the Civil Service), and the Chairman (either the Prime Minister, or more often a deputy he had appointed). As originally established, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not a member. This was intended to force the CID to make recommendations to the Cabinet, where the Treasury would then be free to take its position as it wished. The Finance Minister soon became a sitting member of the CID, however. There is little evidence of the Treasury interfering in any CID decisionmaking prior to World War I. Instead controversial expenditures were handled in Cabinet, even after Treasury officials were represented on CID subcommittees. The services were to prepare their budget estimates in exactly the same way as before, which meant the implementation of the CID only marginally affected the total put forth in the service estimates. The CID then established subcommittees to deal with such specific issues as manpower, supply, coordination and communications. ₆₅

Lord Esher wanted to establish the CID as a true joint services general staff—one that could command both services for the good of the Empire as a whole. In a memorandum to Prime Minister Arthur Balfour in October 1905, he noted: “Personally I think the sub-committee, which you have appointed, will fulfill the highest functions of a General Staff, the sort of General Staff really suited to our requirements, i.e. a joint Naval and Military [i.e. Army] Staff.” ₆₆ But he was concerned about how such efforts looked to the public. He disdained suggestions to copy the general staffs of other nations:

All reference to Germany, and the methods of Continental powers, are best avoided, as opening the door to the observation that the circumstances of our Empire are so different from any other, that all comparisons are misleading. This argument, and it is sometimes fallacious, invariably carries convictions. ₆₇

In fact, some Parliamentarians had opposed the creation of the CID on the grounds that it was a body beyond the control of Cabinet, and thus beyond the control of Parliament. ₆₈ But Balfour pushed ahead, placing the CID on permanent legal footing in March 1904. ₆₉

Prior to 1905, the primary focus of these new decisionmaking bodies remained on old problems. Defense of India continued to be of great concern. In their book Imperial Defence published in 1892, Sir Charles Dilke and Spenser Wilkinson devoted more than a quarter of its volume to the geographical and political aspects of India’s Northwest Frontier. The CID too was preoccupied with the strategic problems and possibilities posed by India. The CID met approximately 80 times between 1902 and 1905, and the defense of India was discussed at more than 50 of those meetings. ₇₀ So while there is evidence that the decisionmaking institutions were changing, the problems they confronted were not.

The Army continued to face its own special situation. At the turn of the century, Britain had the most expensive military in Europe if not the world, when considering expenditures per soldier. It was one of the only armies left with a purely volunteer force. It had to follow difficult, complex accounting procedures, and was under constant scrutiny from Parliament. ₇₁ Despite high expenditures, it was not very well prepared for war.

 

The Boer War: Overcommitment Hits Home

When the Boer War broke out in September 1899, the Army’s commanders came face-to-face with the problems caused by the troop deployment based on the Caldwell system, and the reliance on militia. To begin with, Britain had more infantry battalions overseas than at home. Some 75 infantry battalions were already seeing duty in the Empire, while only 73 remained in Britain, serving as garrison there, as strategic reserve, and as the pool for reinforcing the other battalions. These units could be shipped to South Africa only at the cost of upsetting the whole arrangement, and running the risk of leaving the British Isles stripped of defenses. Even among the cavalry units, the distribution showed how limited existing resources were: of the 28 cavalry regiments, only 16 were still in Britain.

The quickest way to boost the armed forces was to call out the Home Reserve. These part-time warriors were intended to cover the home islands while the regular troops were sent off on expeditions such as that planned against the Boers. Yet when the 100,000 plus reservists reported upon mobilization, some 40 percent were rejected as being unfit for duty. Engineering, artillery, and other specialized units were the worst hit, ending up far below intended force size.

As it turned out, even the regular troops were ill-prepared for action. Of the 73 infantry battalions in Britain, only 64 were ready to be shipped out in a timely fashion. Horses and equipment were in short supply, and the initial counterattacks by British troops in South Africa were hampered by the poor quality and small amounts of war material they had at their disposal. ₇₂ (And what they did have, they put to poor use, especially in the case of horses. These were purchased in huge numbers, with little check on their quality. They were then shipped to South Africa, and given little or no time to make the adjustment from winter’s cold to the heat of an African summer. Often the animals were then ridden into the ground, and fed local vegetation which made them ill. Huge numbers died.)

The experiences of the Boer War caused Britain’s top military and political leaders to engage in serious evaluations of their armed forces’ performance. Tactical developments came as commanders adjusted to the conditions in the field. But the greater lessons involved organization and strategic command. A small professional Army could not win even this war—in the end, Britain had deployed upward of 500,000 men in South Africa, and expended large sums of money. The chaos of the early deployments illustrated the utility of detailed, systematic planning before hostilities began. These became the issues the reformers would focus on in the coming years.

It is also worth noting that the Boer War caused serious havoc with the budgetary situation. With the naval expenditures already high and rising, the costs of conducting the war pushed the budget into deficit. It would take several years before it would recover. The early years of this century would reflect the intensification of the Treasury’s concerns about military expenditures.

 

The Aftermath of the Boer War and War Office Reorganization

Another committee was appointed in December 1900, this time to inquire into the organization of the War Office. It reported that the Army appeared top heavy, with the senior officers spending too much time on administration and not enough time on formulating general policy. It went on to suggest yet more reforms. ₇₃ Before much could be done, a flood of further suggestions came in. These flowed from the numerous inquiries into the management of the Boer War. Disappointment and dissatisfaction with the Army’s performance fueled several investigations, but the most important was the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa, which sat in 1902–1903. It limited its scope to administrative defects revealed by the war, and focused its efforts in four areas: planning, reserves and manpower, stores and supplies, and the organization of the War Office.

While the public and most of the committee members expected to find shortfalls in planning, it was discovered that the Intelligence Department had actually done a good job anticipating the situation prior to the Boer War. The true shortcoming was in the commander in chief’s failure to react to the information he was given. Despite the Intelligence Department’s warnings, no plans for a campaign in South Africa ever existed. It was therefore easy to pin the blame on Sir Garnet Wolseley, though a more thoughtful examination of the situation would have shown that he simply had too many responsibilities for a single man to undertake. The evidence should have reinforced the need for an Army general staff, as recommended more than a decade earlier by the Hartington Commission. Moreover, it was extremely unfair to place the entire responsibility for mistakes on Wolseley, since he had requested troop increases in South Africa prior to the outbreak of the war, but had had the request denied by the Cabinet. The Government had apparently wished not to provoke the Boers, but was also worried about the expense of sending more men into the field. ₇₄ The Commission also discovered that the Cabinet had not kept the War Office completely informed about the status of its talks with the Boer leaders. The Commission should have recognized this as a failure of communication between the military and the politicians. This entire episode underlined the need for a true Army general staff, as well as better discussion between the various executive agencies.

In a cover letter to its first report, issued in 1904, the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee also stated plainly its desire to see the CID developed into a General Staff on an Imperial scale. ₇₅ The 1902 Colonial Conference had recognized shortcomings with the prior arrangements. As its proceedings put it, “the Regular Army, as organized before the [Boer] War, was by itself inadequate in strength to the needs of the Empire.” ₇₆ The Cabinet Defence Committee was reinvigorated as well, because Balfour himself attended regularly, as did heads of each service and the intelligence divisions within each, who were invited to make presentations. Since the Prime Minister attended, Dominion statesmen could be brought in from time to time as well. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was excluded, for Balfour wanted to ensure that the most important decisions on defense matters rested in the Cabinet, rather than in this subcommittee. Those charged with duties on the Cabinet Defence Committee recognized that they did not have the abilities to address the British government’s real needs in this area. An evaluation was produced in a report probably written by Admiral Sir John Fisher and Lord Esher:

Valuable as is the work which this Committee has accomplished, the fact remains that there is no one charged with the duty of making a continuous study of the questions [of defense]; of exercising due foresight in regard to the changing conditions produced by external developments; and of drawing from the several departments of state, and arranging in convenient form for the use of the Cabinet such information as may at any time be required....The object should be to secure for the British Empire, with the least possible derangement of existing machinery, the immense advantage which the General Staff has conferred upon Germany. ₇₇

The report went on to suggest that the Committee of Imperial Defense (CID) could play such a role.

In 1904, the Army administration and command was reorganized according to the advice of the Committee to Reconstitute the War Office. Letters Patent were issued to create the Army Council, which superseded several older bodies. The Office of the Commmander in Chief, the War Office Council, and the Army Board were all abolished. The United Kingdom was divided into seven districts, and the Army forces in each one placed under a specific commander; each district commander was given an operations staff and an administrative staff. The reorganization was intended to concentrate decisionmaking in the Army Council, as well as free the new Council’s members from more mundane administrative duties so that they could focus their energies on policy and planning. ₇₈

In September 1906 a Special Army Order established the General Staff, which retained its duties up to the First World War. The Order outlined the General Staff’s duties in the following way:

... to advise on the strategical distribution of the Army, to supervise the education of officers, and the training and preparation of the Army for war, to study military schemes, offensive and defensive, to collect and collate military intelligence, to direct the general policy in Army matters, and to secure continuity of action in the execution of that policy. ₇₉

These new command arrangements were placed alongside existing institutions. At the most significant, the CID, the fundamental aspects of Imperial Defense had been settled well before 1904. According to the CID, Imperial Defense rested first and foremost on naval supremacy. The Army’s responsibilities were in defending India, garrisoning the other colonies (at reduced levels), and maintaining the internal security of South Africa. ₈₀ Nonetheless, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Austen Chamberlain, would report to Cabinet in April 1904 that “However reluctant we may be to face the fact, the time has come when we must frankly admit that the financial resources of the United Kingdom are inadequate to do all that we should desire in the matter of Imperial Defence.” ₈₁

The Army’s role in the defense of Imperial possessions compared to the Navy’s role was entirely consistent with the CID’s view of each service’s role in the defense of the home islands. The CID considered a large garrison to be relatively worthless if command of the sea could not be ensured. Basing large forces in Bermuda, Canada, Egypt, or elsewhere would be pointless if the Royal Navy could not ensure resupply and reinforcement. If the Royal Navy had command of the seas, then there was little threat of invasion to these outlying posts anyway, and thus no need for a large garrison in the first place. It was the all or nothing strategy once again. ₈₂

The Army continued to search for an enhanced role in Britain’s overall military strategy, either to claim more resources or to ensure that all its obligations were met with those in existence. Could the new General Staff find a better way of organizing Britain’s Army defenses, to make do with what they had? Lieutenant Colonel E. A. Altham of the War Office’s Intelligence Department had provided one possible plan for redeployment in 1901–1902 which worked within the existing troop totals. His plan placed 8,000 in Egypt, 102,000 in India, 72,000 based in British Isles available to reinforce India, 71,000 spread out among the remaining colonies, and 115,000 for any strategic offensives (or raiding). This left 350,000 men in Britain for home defense. The only hitch was these numbers included the troops of the Militia, which were not actually liable for service overseas. ₈₃

 

The CID and the “Continental Commitment”: Afterglow or Adjustment?

Just as the principles of Imperial Defense seem to have been settled, and policy based thereupon put into effect through new decisionmaking bodies such as the CID and a reorganized War Office, systemic factors forced a further reassessment of Britain’s strategic posture. Not only was the budget in deficit thanks to the naval expenditures and the Boer War, but also in 1905 a number of events altered any calculation of Britain’s potential friends and enemies. Initially, this implied that Britain’s commitments would be falling, even as resources were rising—what I term adjustment—though in the end it did not occur. First, there was the victory of Britain’s ally Japan over Russia. The poor showing of Russian forces, plus the severe losses they suffered, meant the Russian threat to India could be temporarily ignored. Soon negotiations began, and on August 31, 1907, Britain and Russia signed an agreement resolving certain issues concerning Tibet and Persia. The oldest and most consistent problem facing British strategic planners was suddenly removed. ₈₄ With this change in threats, Britain could take the time to try to reduce commitments.

At the turn of the century, Britain had been wary of almost all the continental powers, plus the U.S. and Japan. There was a tacit decision to leave the U.S. alone, which was publicly admitted through the dropping of the U.S. Navy in calculation of the “Two-Power Standard.” In 1902, Britain and Japan had signed a defensive pact, aimed primarily at Russia. In 1904, colonial disputes with France were largely settled. A firmer friendship was then pursued with that country, which was then followed by the entente with Russia in 1907. Within roughly eight years, British diplomats had moved to resolve minor disputes with Britain’s non-European rivals, and had allied with the two countries it had traditionally feared the most: France and Russia.

Second, the Moroccan Crisis that same year suggested that Germany now posed the greatest threat to Britain, and that Britain and France would likely be allies in a future conflict. The Royal Navy had already been concentrating on the German threat. In October 1902, Lord Selborne as First Lord of the Admiralty had explained to the Cabinet that the short operational range of Germany’s battlefleet made it useful for action in the North Sea only. Clearly the fleet was aimed to challenge Britain’s naval supremacy and nothing else. But the rise of German power also focused Russian interests, and helped bring them into talks with the British. ₈₅ From a strategic point of view, the new alliance pattern shaping up altered the picture tremendously. The possibility of an invasion, for instance, was now considered most unlikely. As Balfour reported to Parliament in May 1905, speaking as chairman of the CID, “invasion of these islands is not an eventuality which we need seriously consider.” ₈₆

Third, Balfour’s government fell, so the wholesale introduction of new officials allowed for a redefinition of policies and even institutional roles. The search for allies was continued, resulting in the initiation of staff talks with the French in 1906. (These talks were kept secret, however, even up to the highest levels. Even among the Cabinet members, only the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and Lord Haldane were fully briefed. The entire Cabinet was not informed of the complete staff interactions until 1912; the CID itself was not informed until 1911.) ₈₇ Taken together, the shifts in 1905 afforded the CID and other planning agencies the opportunity to consider a continental role for the British military. Troops once held in reserve in case of another emergency in India were now available for other contingencies. ₈₈

In past planning, a strong desire to keep a separate force of around 15,000 men on hand for raiding had always been expressed. A much larger contingent had always been kept on hand for relieving India; the 15,000 strong raiding force, on the other hand, was viewed as a purely offensive force. Since it was usually presumed that Britain’s most likely enemy would also be an imperial power (such as France), this force could hit at the enemy’s colonial possessions. Late in 1905, the idea of strengthening this force so that it could play a role in a future continental struggle arose. In fact in December 1905, an informal caucus of the CID under Lord Esher authorized the General Staff to conduct talks with the French General Staff in order to work out the arrangements for mobilizing and transporting to France an expeditionary force 120,000 strong. First Sea Lord Admiral Sir John Fisher protested this decision by removing naval representatives from discussions and generally ignoring the CID thereafter. In reality the Army did not have any extra troops for offensive operations in 1905. Whereas some authors consider the changes from 1900 to 1914 an example of retrenchment and adjustment, this period qualifies as a clear case of afterglow in my analysis, for even though the gap between commitments and resources were decreased outside Europe thanks to the alliances, they were certainly increased more substantially within Europe; commitments were now above the level of sustainability. Even though resources allocated for defense were increased, they did not keep pace with commitments, so overstretch worsened. ₈₉

When the French began to explore possible cooperation with Britain against Germany, they directed their attentions to the CID. Only later was the Army’s General Staff brought in. By then, the CID had already passed over the thought of assaulting the German coast, and had already begun thinking of issuing help directly across the Channel. Worried that the politicians were making deals with little regard for the consequences to the Army, the General Staff moved rapidly into direct talks with the French General Staff. ₉₀

The Army commanders were correct to worry about commitments on the part of the politicians, because the military entente with France was not based on any existing military strategies (neither those of the Royal Navy nor the Army), nor based upon an accurate assessment of the military’s capabilities, nor even upon reflection or deliberation among the various military planning agencies. The Continental Commitment reversed the bureaucratic battles fought out in the CID, as the two services flipflopped their positions. In the years prior to the Entente Cordiale, the Royal Navy had stressed the need to build up its own forces while cutting back on those of the Army; the Army could afford cutbacks by reducing overseas garrisons and concentrating the remaining forces in Britain. The forces thus concentrated could be used to relieve any distant part of the Empire after a threat had emerged. The Army had resisted such efforts, claiming instead that its main role should be in the overseas Empire. The Army had consistently lost the arguments in the CID and elsewhere.

Now, however, the possibility of Britain’s involvement in a war on the Continent caused the Army to accept the Navy’s arguments. Army commanders now agreed that the overseas garrisons should be reduced, and the troops concentrated in the home islands—not to be held in reserve for a mission in the Empire, but rather to assist a continental ally. The Admiralty saw the Army claiming the key offensive military mission for its own, and automatically resisted—thus having to claim that overseas stations now needed to be more heavily garrisoned. ₉₁

In 1905, the Army General Staff had staunchly opposed withdrawing troops from Gibraltar and Malta. Yet within a year (and hence after the talks with the French began) the CID and General Staff approved their withdrawal. This decision was justified by stating that the Royal Navy’s deployment of a flotilla of torpedo boats at Gibraltar had made that base more secure, coupled with the suggestion that the Royal Navy send torpedo boats to Malta as well. The key to the General Staff’s change in tune was the destination of those troops. Before, garrisons withdrawn might have been given the axe for fiscal measures; now they were being withdrawn and placed in the expanded expeditionary force aimed at the Continent. ₉₂

The General Staff told the Admiralty and the politicians that the best possible aid Britain could give to France would be direct assistance on the battlefield, independent of naval actions. The Army commanders feared that the Navy’s plans for an economic strangulation of Germany would move too slowly to support Britain’s allies. Help needed to be sent as soon as war broke out. In October 1908, a subcommittee of the CID reported its assessment of the needs of an expeditionary force to assist France. It concluded that one cavalry and four infantry divisions would be needed, and could operate almost immediately to reinforce the French left flank. The forces should be ready for action on the twentieth day after mobilization. ₉₃ The CID accepted this viewpoint, but was then unable to alter existing force structures or capabilities. Even as the Army called for building up its forces, the Royal Navy was demanding greater expenditures. The discovery of the potential of Germany’s naval program in 1909 led to the call for eight more battleships. “We want eight and we won’t wait,” was the slogan of the Admiralty’s supporters in Parliament. ₉₄ The position of the Royal Naval was spelled out by Admiral Fisher in some comments to a friend, in 1910. As he put it,

There’s only so much money for the Defensive services, and every penny given to the Army is two pence taken from the Navy. Comparatively, the Navy is vital and the Army a plaything! It is not invasion we have to fear; it’s starvation! The sense of proportion is being lost sight of by the Public. ₉₅

And in one sense he was quite right, because full mobilization of the Army to meet its goals would have required conscription and a considerable increase in expenditures.

Some of the problems caused by the budgetary situation were eased within a few years, which explains why the Treasury did not block additional expenditures on military assets. Lloyd George’s government was the first in many years to raise new taxes in significant amounts. The budget formulated in November 1909 raised the income tax, death duties, stamp duties, luxury taxes, and capital gains from the sale of real estate. The average amount of government revenues went up by some 16.2 million within two years—an increase of approximately 10 percent. The average continued to rise, so that the amount the government collected in 1913–1914 was some 30 percent above the total collected in 1908–1909. These higher rates of tax collections, plus the contributions from Australia and New Zealand toward ship construction, allowed the government to raise expenditures on defense without having to borrow. ₉₆

As noted above, the Royal Navy had withdrawn its support for the CID, and had refused to participate in or cooperate with its judgments. Confidence in the CID fell as its authority was undercut. Naval planning went on in isolation from the CID. In 1906–1907 such planning was largely conducted by a committee of officers at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. This committee’s recommendations were based on unlikely assumptions, which drove them to the conclusion that the Royal Navy could successfully blockade the German coast close-in, and conduct raiding operations. ₉₇ The weakness of naval planning, and the incipient problems of the Royal Navy commanders’ aloof attitude toward the CID, eventually came to a head. During the Agadir Crisis a special meeting of the CID was held (August 23, 1911), in which the thinking of the Army and Navy chiefs was compared and contrasted. The debate has been named “the Battle of the Two Wilsons” in honor of the chief participants from each service.

Presenting the Royal Navy’s plans and views was First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, while Director of Military Operations Henry Wilson gave the Army’s perspective on possible actions. Henry Wilson eloquently and concisely argued three logically connected points. First, he established that France would have a difficult time withstanding the initial attack by Germany. Second, he argued that a naval blockade of Germany, while potentially effective in the long-run, would be of no help in saving France. Third, he explained how an Army expeditionary force of six divisions could play a small but important role in the defense of France in the opening phase of a war against Germany.

Admiral Wilson, on the other hand, had merely a handful of schemes from the Royal Navy planners, such as imposing a close-in blockade, undertaking raids, and destroying the enemy’s fleet; these were largely unrelated to France’s strategic situation, the Army’s well-developed plans, or any calculation of allied interests. Army representatives pointed out the immense difficulties an amphibious operation would have against German troops deployed by rail. The Army’s arguments clearly won the day, and even Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, came away with the impression that the Royal Navy needed a general staff in order to formulate full-scale strategic plans. As a more immediate result, the Royal Navy was ordered to prepare plans for the transport of troops to France. The CID had finally forced the two services to undertake the beginning of an integrated strategy. ₉₈

This is not to say that the Royal Navy had failed to respond to the earlier assessments of changing systemic threats. Admiral Fisher began redistributing the fleet late in 1904, and these redeployments continued until they were completed by Churchill in 1912. The Pacific, South Atlantic, and North American squadrons had been completely withdrawn. The Australian, Chinese and East Indian squadrons had been unified into a single Eastern Fleet based in Singapore. With some of the ships made available, plus those constructed, two new fleets were brought into being: the Atlantic Fleet (stationed first in Gibraltar, where it could pivot to support fleets in the home islands or be sent into the Mediterranean), and the designation of a Home Fleet was resurrected in 1906 as a reinforcement of the Channel Fleet. Fisher made efforts to upgrade the quality of the equipment of the Royal Navy by rapidly adopting new technologies (as illustrated with HMS Dreadnought), and in reducing usage of older ships so that crews could be redistributed. In 1909 the Home and Channel Fleets were combined into a single Home Fleet 24 battleships strong, and the Atlantic Fleet was moved from Gibraltar to Dover. ₉₉

In 1912, the Mediterranean Fleet was even moved from Malta to Gibraltar, so that it too might be moved into home waters if necessary. This was a risky move, given the extent of British interests connected with the Mediterranean, but at that point Britain hoped it could rely on the French battlefleets there, and its own cruisers. All the same, we should note that Britain was not reducing its commitments; afterglow was the result of the greater expenditures, but with budgetary problems leaving the construction program less than required so that overstretch did not lessen. Redeployments continually generated fears among constituents and brought on numerous criticisms. Talks with the French naval commanders commenced in early 1912, and brought about an agreement to concentrate French fleets in the Mediterranean to counter those of Austria-Hungary and Italy. But as one previous First Lord of the Admiralty, McKenna, put it:

If it is accepted as an axiom of British naval strategy that our dispositions are to be made with a view to limiting our operations to the North Sea, while upon France is to fall the duty of building up against and holding in check the German allies elsewhere, our colonies and our trade will depend not on British power but on French goodwill. ₁₀₀

The CID even resolved that, “subject to maintaining a reasonable margin of superior strength ready and available in home waters,” there should be kept “available for Mediterranean purposes, and based on a Mediterranean port, a battlefleet equal to a one-power Mediterranean standard, excluding France.” The CID made this request even though its members knew the Navy could not meet this goal with existing resources. ₁₀₁

Because of the refusal of the Admiralty to cooperate within the CID, the CID’s authority eroded. Even after the “Battle of the Two Wilsons,” the Royal Navy only grudgingly complied with the CID’s requests. The CID would play less and less of a role in strategic planning, even as war approached. During the crisis of the late summer of 1914, the CID was ignored; the Government discovered to its dismay that despite all the institutional reforms, and with the threat of war apparent, there was no single set of military plans. ₁₀₂

 

Another Command Institution: The Imperial General Staff

The attempts to coordinate the Army and Navy plans had illustrated how the General Staff had brought improvements to Army strategizing and planning. Further institutional improvements were made in other areas. One goal of Britain’s military and political leadership was to elicit greater coordination of defense contributions from the Empire. The Imperial Conference of 1907 proclaimed:

... the need of developing for the service of the Empire a General Staff, selected from the forces of the Empire as a whole , which shall study military science in all its branches, shall collect and disseminate to the various governments military information and intelligence, shall undertake the preparation of schemes of defence on a common principle. ₁₀₃

By 1910, an Imperial General Staff had actually been established. By 1912, Canada and Australia had dispatched officers to serve with the dominion section of the General Staff in London.

At the very same Imperial Conference at which the Imperial General Staff was recommended, however, a row between the Admiralty and the Australian government ensued. This squabble was indicative of the problems associated with imperial contributions to defense. Australia was prepared to expend funds on a ship or ships to serve with the Royal Navy, but the Admiralty and the Australian government could not agree on which type of ship or where it would be stationed. ₁₀₄ Command was also an issue; after some of the experiences of Australian troops in the Boer War, questions over promotion and discipline also arose.

In July 1909, a Special Imperial Conference was summoned, charged with the task of examining the naval preparations of Australia and Canada. The War Office handled the Conference quite well. It had prepared well, and circulated new ideas including a number of its pet projects. The key problems involved coordination and cooperation. The questions needing to be resolved were about relative pay rates, assimilating ranks from the colonial and regular forces, and formulating rules for combined forces (governing areas such as military discipline in particular), along with establishing uniformity of equipment. ₁₀₅ The fact that many of these problems were for the most part resolved in short order meant Imperial forces could play a prominent role in the First World War.

 

Military Preparedness at the Outbreak of World War I

Britain was much better prepared for World War I than it had been for the Boer War. Since January 1911, a subcommittee of the CID had been charged with coordinating plans for any future war. This coordination was intensified after the “Battle of the Two Wilsons” and the attempt to force a consensus on a single strategy. The subcommittee codified and recorded the intended responsibilities of various commanders and administrators upon the outbreak of war. The so-called “War Book” thereby produced was not so much a set of detailed operational plans, as is often thought, but rather a clear breakdown of the tasks each department and service had in the mobilization of the country for war. ₁₀₆

Several important flaws show up in the pre-war planning of the CID and Imperial General Staff. There was a serious underestimation of the military’s manpower needs, even for a short war. The stockpiling of ammunition and other required stores, plus the necessary conversion of industry onto a war footing were also not well thought out. More disturbing, perhaps, was that little thought had been given to the structure of high command once war began—bodies such as the CID and Imperial General Staff were primarily administrative agencies, and were ill-prepared to take on the duties of operational command. ₁₀₇ This should not diminish the important achievements produced by the CID, which clearly aided Britain in the early stages of the war. Within the first three months of war, South Africa had released its British garrisons, Canada had sent 30,000 troops, Australia 20,000, and New Zealand another 7,000. ₁₀₈ If basic equipment had not been standardized, or if command structures could not be rapidly integrated, any troops provided by the dominions could have been seriously delayed. Instead, they swiftly provided additional weight to Britain’s armed forces.

Britain’s imperial possessions played unexpected roles. Egypt had always been thought of in pre-war planning as a station on the route to India. In World War I (as again in World War II), it proved instead to be a point of organization and the base for Mediterranean operations. Military units from the dominions, South Africa, and India were gathered there, marshalled into larger bodies, and then launched against the weakest states in the enemy alliance. ₁₀₉

Once fighting actually began, the Royal Navy discovered it was somewhat unprepared for one of its most important missions. The Royal Navy had concentrated much of its pre-war energy on pursuit of Mahan’s concept of command of the sea. To the Royal Navy’s admirals, this had meant placing priority on its ability to defeat the German battlefleet. Money went to construct dreadnaughts. Cruisers and destroyers were in short supply, especially once the need to patrol farflung waters became evident—a lack of pre-war planning that made the German submarine threat potent. Convoying was instituted only after submarines had done extensive damage. The Royal Navy had invested precious little time and effort into such exercises prior to 1914. ₁₁₀ By the end of that year, the CID was evolving into a war council. It comprised the Prime Minister, the Secretary of War, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, First Lord of the Admiralty, plus invited experts and guests. Decisions made in this council were acted on before being placed before Cabinet. Unlike the old CID, this council failed to maintain agendas, regular meetings and minutes. ₁₁₁

Unfortunately, the CID and even the General Staff operated poorly in the war. Some historians focus on the personalities and experience of those officers put in charge in their explanations of the command institutions’ weak performance. Men such as Kitchener (the Army’s Chief of General Staff) had little experience working with staffs, and did not understand how to manage them effectively. Some of the Cabinet’s ideas, however well-intended, should not have been pursued; yet without the close, serious scrutiny of a well-functioning General Staff, they were implemented anyway. ₁₁₂ Churchill’s propositions, which culminated in the Gallipoli campaign, are a case in point.

After the disasters at Gallipoli, internal investigations were initiated. These, however, failed to establish responsibility for many of the decisions made, illustrating how haphazardly wartime strategy was being produced. (The fact that no clear agenda or minutes existed also made the inquiry difficult.) The Asquith government fell in May 1915, and the new administration set about revamping decisionmaking procedures in light of the Gallipoli investigations. By November 1915, a new War Committee was established, with specific responsibilities for reporting to Cabinet. ₁₁₃ Once Lloyd George assumed the Prime Minister’s office, the CID secretariat became the Cabinet secretariat, so the cabinet might be able to follow up on policies and decisions of its own. Communications between various subcommittees was thereby enhanced.

By the end of the war, many of the old strategic concerns resurfaced. Russia’s collapse and revolution seemed to open the possibility of indirect German penetration into Asia, or perhaps even direct penetration by Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire. The protection of India again rose to the top of the agenda in 1918. British troops were moved from Mesopatamia into the Caucasus, from Southern Persia into the Caspian area, and from India into the Transcaspia. Any local governments in the former Tsarist Empire which vowed to oppose German or Turkish involvement were rewarded, and the British were interested in seeing other countries enter into similar arrangements. (An example would be Britain’s urging the Japanese to intervene in Siberia.) Britain’s actions—intended to defend India—clearly antagonized the new Soviet government. Britain decided to retain a role in the Middle East—and even expand it, by becoming involved in Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere—in order to prevent any future Soviet or German involvement there. While this expansion of responsibilities seems risky, one should note that it paid dividends during World War II, and protected vital supplies of oil. ₁₁₄

While expanding imperial possessions and responsibilities, Britain still failed rather spectacularly to tap the resources of the Empire. The Final Report of the Dominions Royal Commission issued in 1917 called for a survey of imperial resources, so that the military planners had an accurate assessment of the minerals and essential war material the Empire might contribute. ₁₁₅ Little came from such calls, however.

 

Britain’s Overstretch in the Interwar Period: The Failure to Adjust

Victory in World War I did little to resolve the basic problems of British military overextension. Victory did nothing to reduce Britain’s obligations. Instead, Balfour noted in December 1918 how victory actually increased Britain’s imperial overstretch: “We talk of huge protectorates all over the place. I am really frightened at the responsibilities which we are taking upon ourselves, because who has to bear the responsibilities? Two offices in the main—the Treasury and the War Office....Where are they going to find the men and the money for these things?” ₁₁₆

One writer noted the degree of the problem in 1938 by pointing out that Britain had to control militarily and to defend an empire of 12.5 million square miles, containing some 450 million people, from a myriad number of cultures, at different levels of economic development, scattered around the globe. ₁₁₇ Again this does not include the alliance obligations Britain also retained.

On the other hand, the systemic situation was largely to Britain’s benefit in the early 1920s. Germany lay defeated and beset by internal strife. The Soviet Union could be seen as a long-term threat, but in the 1920s it too was racked by internal strife, and was clearly unable to project power. France and the U.S. were allies. Only Japan stood as an immediate potential threat to Britain’s interests. Japan’s claims to great power status and equality clearly threatened Britain’s imperial possessions in Asia. ₁₁₈

Realizing that reduction of social policy expenditures would be political suicide, but that the budget had to be cut somewhere, Lloyd George’s government in 1919 moved to lower defense expenditures. In August of that year it ordered the services to draft estimates “on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years and no Expeditionary Force is required for that purpose.” ₁₁₉ In other words, commitments were now too high but the Treasury would set the level of resources leaving a widening gap between the two (what I label worsening afterglow). This allowed total expenditures by the defense services to be sliced by more than half (from £604 million in 1919 to £292 million in 1920). The annual total continued to fall to approximately £111 million, where it hovered until the mid-1930s.

In 1928 Winston Churchill, now serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was able to extend the assumptions underlying the 1920 estimates, that no involvement in a major war would occur in the next 10 years. The presupposition, perhaps a fair one in 1919, was converted into a standing assumption which rapidly lost any basis in reality. This “Ten-Year Rule” as it became known, would only be accepted until 1932, but by then the defense cutbacks were deep. ₁₂₀ Of course, the Treasury was able to play such a powerful role because in 1919, the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury officially became the head of the civil service. Warren Fisher held this post for approximately the entire interwar period: from October 1919 to September 1939. Accounting procedures and staffing of the civil service was standardized. From 1924 on, any new policies creating additional expenditures had to be approved by the Treasury before being submitted to Cabinet—a clear sign of Treasury dominance over the services. ₁₂₁

Faced with the mission of reducing military expenditures drastically, and allowing the economy to regain a peacetime footing, the CID faced some hard choices. In December 1920, the CID discussed the wisdom of maintaining the alliance with Japan, which was due for renewal in 1922. Prime Minister Lloyd George pointed out that Britain could not afford to face Japan as a rival. With the government’s fiscal situation, it would be impossible to engage in any sort of arms race. ₁₂₂ One cost-saving measure was discussed by the Haldane Report, issued in 1919. The Report examined the institutional structure of the government. Some had called for a single ministry of defense, and/or a single agency to handle military supply. The Haldane Report rejected such suggestions, arguing that the coordination achieved in the CID could serve the same ends within existing structures.

The Salisbury Committee, which sat at this time to review Britain’s defense organizations, recommended that a Chiefs of Staff Committee be established. This was implemented in 1923. The belief that the League of Nations would provide allied support in times of trouble, plus the desire for greater economy, led to further searches for possible savings. These desires were at the heart of the calls for the creation of a single department of defense. In 1922, Sir Eric Geddes’s Committee on National Expenditure recommended “the creation of a coordinating authority or a Ministry of Defense responsible for seeing that each force plays its part and is allotted appropriate responsibility for carrying out various functions.” The Cabinet responded to the report by arguing that it was not the appropriate time for “fusion of the administration of the three services under one Minister,” and instead took the position that “the CID should be in constant session all the year round in order to consider and advise on matters of policy affecting the three fighting services.” Although Parliament did not support the creation of a Ministry of Defense, a Treasury representative was officially added to the CID, to empower the Treasury to control how the services would be coordinated. ₁₂₃

Each of the services had identified a different threat, and each was preparing for a different sort of war in the 1920s. The Royal Navy was most concerned about war in Asia, and perceived Japan as the greatest threat. It opposed the creation of a single Ministry of Defense, where it thought its importance might be diminished. Instead, the Royal Navy wanted to return responsibilities to the CID. The Army also looked to Asia, but focused once again on its role in the defense of India. It perceived the Soviet Union to be Britain’s most likely future opponent, and feared a Soviet offensive aimed at India. Now there was also a third player involved. The Royal Air Force and a separate Air Ministry were created April 1, 1921. This intensified the rivalry for funds. The RAF tried to assess the potential for air power, and feared that French aviation posed a new threat to the British home islands. Thus each service felt that a different part of the Empire was under threat, and each identified a different country as the next likely enemy in any war; naturally each also saw an increased role for itself in responding to the threat it had identified. ₁₂₄

Meanwhile, serious tactical and strategic reassessments had to be made in light of experiences in the First World War. The advent of airpower caused the most serious recalculations. The future of the battleship as the major weapon in naval warfare was brought into question, not least by the proponents of airpower in Britain and America. It became impossible for the Royal Navy to argue for major new construction programs, given the strength of the disarmament movement, opposition from the Treasury based on the costs involved, and criticism from within the military establishment itself on the viability of the expensive warships. In fact, in the 1922 Parliamentary debates, one of the strongest sources of support for the creation of a single Ministry of Defense was the desire to see the RAF utilized to its fullest—at the expense of the Royal Navy. The control over aircraft involved in naval operations (the Royal Naval Air Service) became a major subject for interservice battles. ₁₂₅

The RAF also hoped to prove that air units could be used to police the frontiers of the Empire, and experiences from Iraq in the 1920s suggested a small force of RAF planes could indeed cover and command a wide territory. In 1919, Iraq had been occupied by 190,000 British and Indian troops. When Iraq came under the aegis of the RAF in the early 1920s, the number of battalions there was reduced from 33 to 3. While the RAF did a good job of maintaining British authority, it did have to stretch to fulfill its duties; its crews wound up manufacturing and operating armored cars for local operations. ₁₂₆

While a single, unified Ministry of Defense was yet to be created, the establishment of a single unified purely military decisionmaking body did occur. During the Chanak Crisis of 1922, which involved British troops caught up in fighting between Greeks and Turks, Prime Minister Lloyd George asked the three services to develop a joint contingency plan. The chiefs of each service began to meet informally; the Salisbury Committee gave this body a formal status in its Report of the Subcommittee of the CID on National and Imperial Defense. ₁₂₇

By and large in the interwar period, the Foreign Office did little to reduce Britain’s overseas commitments. (Beyond, perhaps, the faith placed in the League of Nations. This however, was an obligation as much as a chance to call on allies for help—though that was unclear in the early 1920s. Cost-cutting measures by the MacDonald government included a temporary abandonment of the development of Singapore—against the wishes and advice of the Admiralty, the Colonial Office, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand—with the argument that Britain’s imperial interests could be defended by the League. ₁₂₈ ) In fact, the Foreign Office even reasserted Britain’s commitment to a role on the Continent by participating in the 1925 Locarno Treaties, which pledged Britain to defend the new German-French and German-Belgian borders. ₁₂₉ Thus Britain’s explicit military commitments were kept up or even raised at the very same time that Britain’s military establishment was being reduced—indicative of a worsening afterglow.

The naval situation rapidly shifted from a position of strength to one worse than ever before. The decades before World War I had seen the redeployment of warships, as the fleets were called back home. The Imperial War Conference of 1917 resolved that “the Admiralty be requested to work out immediately after the conclusion of the War what they consider the most effective scheme for Naval Defense for the Empire for the consideration of the several governments summoned to this Conference.” The Admiralty produced a paper titled “Co-operation of the Dominions and Colonies in a System of Imperial Naval Defense” in 1920. The Admiralty suggested the creation of a single Imperial Navy. This however was bound to find little support among the Dominions. ₁₃₀

Britain came out of World War I with the largest navy afloat. With 61 battleships, the Royal Navy had more of the most potent maritime weapons of the period than the next two powers (who were both allies, France and the U.S.), and much more than any potential rivals (such as Italy and Japan). The ratios were even higher when the Royal Navy’s number of cruisers and destroyers is compared to that of other navies. ₁₃₁ But peace brought drastic reductions in these numbers.

After World War I ended and defense expenditures were slashed, it became obvious that the Royal Navy could not operate battle-fleets in both Asia and Europe. The fleet would have to remain concentrated at home, but be able to redeploy to the Pacific when needed. That meant a new base would have to be constructed for the fleet to operate from in the East. The planners confronting this problem decided their best option was to fortify a naval base in Asia which could survive on its own until portions of the home fleet could be sent in relief. Singapore was chosen as the base most suited to such a role in 1921. The Treasury would consistently oppose this plan because of the expenses involved in the construction of the new facilities and defenses, however. ₁₃₂

The number of smaller craft the Royal Navy operated also shrunk in the 1920s. By 1930, the number of cruisers that patrolled the sea lanes had been reduced to 54. Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe (serving as the Governor-General of New Zealand at the time), who had commanded the Grand Fleet at Jutland and once held the post of First Sea Lord, submitted a memorandum to London lamenting the decline in numbers. He pointed out that upon the outbreak of war in 1914, the Royal Navy had 114 cruisers, but immediately realized that number was insufficient and had to construct many more. How would 54 be able to carry out the same sort of duties? ₁₃₃

These comments were echoed in April 1931 by the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Frederick Field. He noted the decline in the number of destroyers as well as cruisers. At the end of World War I, the Royal Navy operated 433 destroyers; yet the London Naval Treaty reduced this to 120. Some of these were becoming obsolete by the early 1930s. Field also decried the underdevelopment of naval air power. In Field’s assessment, “owing to the operation of the `ten-year decision’ and the clamant [sic] need for economy, our absolute strength also has...been so diminished as to render the fleet incapable, in the event of war, of efficiently affording protection to our trade.” Similar assessments came from the other services. The Army Council warned in 1931 that under the Locarno Treaty, in which Britain pledged to defend the borders of France, Belgium, and Germany, the British Army could be expected to do little “except for the moral effect of its presence on the Continent.” ₁₃₄

Just as each service within Britain’s armed forces identified a different threat, each of the Dominions and important colonial administrations singled out regional threats as their greatest concerns in foreign policy. Disputes that arose in the 1923 Imperial Conference showed that the Dominions had very different perspectives on foreign policy. It would be impossible (for all practical purposes) to formulate a single “Imperial” foreign policy that could command support. From the 1926 Imperial Conference on, the balance of costs and benefits shifted noticeably against Britain. The Dominions exercised ever greater freedom politically, yet Britain retained the responsibility for coming to their aid. Prior to the 1930 Imperial Conference, the Combined Chiefs raised questions before Britain’s Prime Minister about the sharing of collective responsibilities by the various members of the Empire. ₁₃₅ Although an Economic Conference was held in 1932, at which the Imperial Preference System was set up, no Imperial Conferences were held between 1930 and 1937.

Meanwhile, the possibility of war, at least in the Pacific, was looming. The Japanese threat to China was obvious. By early 1932, Sir Frederick Field noted the Royal Navy could do little to protect Singapore and Hong Kong; the defenses designed for Singapore were still to be built. It was in the wake of such evaluations that the Cabinet was forced, in March 1932, to drop the “ten-year rule” despite opposition from the Treasury. ₁₃₆ Expenditures on military assets would have to rise, but the gap between resources and commitments was now quite wide and would take much too long to be closed. As long as commitments were retained, no meaningful adjustment could take place.

 

The End of the Ten-Year Rule and Afterglow

Once the “Ten-Year Rule” was abandoned in 1932, the battle between the services and the Treasury over expenditures was on. The staff of the Combined Chiefs was enlarged and developed into an efficient body. The Chiefs were soon in a much better position to take on Treasury arguments. In its General Staff Annual Review of October 1933, the Army heads reported that “we are forced to the conclusion that, should war break out in Europe, far from our having the means to intervene, we should be able to do little more than hold the frontiers and outposts of the Empire during the first few months of the war.” ₁₃₇ According to the report, only two divisions were available for action on the Continent. Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain was forced to agree that the military situation was at least as bad as the financial one.

The CID decided to set up a special committee to review Britain’s military deployments and formulate a new list of needs. The Defence Requirements Committee as it was called, suggested that Britain focus diplomatic attention on Japan. Britain should try to improve relations with Japan, and head off any diplomatic rapproachement between Japan and Germany. The Committee argued Britain should seek closer ties with Japan, despite any difficulties this might generate with the U.S., because Japan was open to reciprocal commitments whereas the U.S. was not. Plus, it was assumed that the U.S., France, and even Italy were likely to remain on friendly terms with Britain. Diplomatic overtures to Germany, on the other hand, were considered unlikely to gain much. ₁₃₈

While the Committee made specific suggestions about diplomatic postures, it also asked for “a much wider programme of rearmament than hitherto contemplated.” A new Ministerial Sub-Committee on Defence Policy and Requirements was created to handle these tasks. As Correlli Barnett remarks, after more than five years of constant demands from the military for expanded resources or a reduction in commitments, the politicians finally responded. ₁₃₉ The Treasury continued to keep a tight grip on expenditures, however. In June 1934, Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain lowered the Defence Requirements Committee’s recommendations from £76 million to £50 million over five years. Chamberlain argued through a memo that Britain could not afford a Continental Army, a powerful RAF, air defenses such as anti-aircraft guns and radar, Imperial garrisons and additions to the Royal Navy. As he put it, if Britain had to pay for defenses against the Luftwaffe, “we certainly can’t afford at the same time to re-build our battle-fleet.” ₁₄₀

Crises and activities in 1935 made the military more insistent about its claims for additional resources. Hitler denounced the Versailles Treaty, thus throwing away any pretext for Britain to be honoring the limitations placed on the German military. The April 1935 Annual Review of Imperial Defense by the Chiefs of Staff pointed out that Britain faced threats to the Empire in the Pacific from Japan, in Europe from a rearming Germany, and even in India from the Soviet Union. As they concluded, “That we should be called upon to fight Germany and Japan simultaneously without Allies is a state of affairs to the prevention of which our diplomacy would naturally be directed.” ₁₄₁

The Abyssinian Crisis that same year forced the General Staff to reassess its planning. The General Staff had previously not considered the Mediterranean an area of likely threat, because it had not perceived Italy as anti-status quo. Now it seemed that this was a new problem to deal with, one that reinforced the need to strengthen imperial forces. This desire to meet imperial obligations (which seemed under more direct pressure) created some support for the pursuit of appeasement in Europe. ₁₄₂ As the Chiefs of Staff explained in 1935,

a cardinal requirement of our national and imperial security that our foreign policy should be so conducted as to avoid the possible development of a situation in which we might be confronted simultaneously with the hostility, open or veiled, of Japan in the Far East, Germany in the West, and any power on the main line of communication between the two. ₁₄₃

From 1935 on Italy remained a problem. In March 1936, the Chiefs of Staff reported that the onset of a conflict with Germany would be extremely dangerous, given the focus of British resources on the Mediterranean. They asked the Cabinet for two months warning of impending hostilities, in order to redeploy their forces. ₁₄₄ During 1935–1936, the Joint Intelligence Committee (a subcommittee of the CID) did important work in coordinating the intelligence and planning work of the three services. ₁₄₅

In July 1935 the Defence Requirements Committee was reassembled and the services began to rethink their positions and estimates. The Defence Requirements Committee returned a report that fall, arguing that: the Royal Navy should have the ability to defend the home waters from Germany and Britain’s eastern imperial possessions from Japan; the Army should be capable of playing a role in a Continental war, and should therefore be able to send a Field Force five divisions strong across the Channel within two weeks of war erupting, plus be prepared to raise further divisions for reinforcement; and that Britain needed more serious industrial mobilization plans. ₁₄₆ (Needs of the RAF were not cited because it already had a building program underway.) These assessments were then approved by the Cabinet, and publicized in the Defence White Paper of 1936.

The one part of the paper which was unpopular was the notion that reserves (the Territorials) would be used to reinforce regular forces sent to the Continent. The War Office argued that if Britain was to honor its commitments, such as the guarantee of the borders between France, Belgium, and Germany (under the Locarno Treaties), Britain needed expeditionary forces. Yet such discussions conjured up memories of trench warfare in World War I, in all its horror. Instead, the 1936 Defence White Paper ranked Imperial Defense as the Army’s top priority, followed by defense of the home islands, and then only third the provision of a field force for overseas duty.

The RAF, on the other hand, had won early approval for its defense appropriations. The Cabinet, including the Treasury, found it easier to spend on the RAF because its primary missions could be defined in very defensive terms. Development of fighter aircraft, radar, and anti-aircraft defenses were purely defensive. Even the offensive side of the RAF could be cast as a defensive measure, since the development of strategic bombing was described as a deterrent. Even when the Treasury aimed its cost-cutting sights on the RAF, it sought only to eliminate bomber programs and was quite willing to continue to fund fighter development. ₁₄₇

Despite the Treasury’s hesitance, annual expenditure on rearmament increased dramatically. In 1936, rearmament accounted for £60 million; in 1938 that figure rose to £182 million, then in 1939 to £273 million. Income taxes had to be raised, and a Five-Year Defence Loan of £400 million was floated in 1937. Another Defence Loan was launched in 1939. ₁₄₈ While these helped close the gap between resources and commitments, the gap remained; some reduction in commitments would have helped. Even as late as December 1937, the Chiefs of Staff would argue that

without overlooking the assistance which we would hope to obtain from France and possibly other allies, we cannot foresee the time when our defense forces will be strong enough to safeguard our trade, territory and vital interests against Germany Italy and Japan at the same time...they could not exagerate the importance from the point of view of Imperial Defence of any political or international action which could be taken to reduce the number of potential enemies and to gain the support of potential allies. ₁₄₉

In their report on “The Military Implications of German Aggression against Czechoslovakia,” issued March 21, 1938, the Chiefs of Staff argued that “The advent of Japan on the side of our enemies, Germany and Italy, would produce a situation which neither the present nor projected strength of our defense forces is designed to meet.” ₁₅₀

The end result was, of course, a reduction in commitments that simply was not admitted until the commitments came into question: appeasement. Given their assessment of the situation, the Chiefs of Staff supported the Munich settlement of September 1938, believing that Britain was not yet ready to engage Germany in a war. ₁₅₁ Their comments, however, make it clear that they would have wished for a greater diplomatic emphasis on the search for allies; some analysts and historians have argued that Britain’s political leaders chose appeasement of Germany over deterrence based on the creation of a powerful counter-alliance, because these leaders saw the creation of such an alliance as polarizing, and therefore the first step down the path to another world war. ₁₅₂

The Treasury and financial circles also saw advantages to the strategy of appeasement. The Ministry and financial actors in the City of London believed the country could expend only so much on weaponry before higher taxation would kill any chance of economic recovery from the Depresssion. Not only did rearmament risk economic consequences, social unrest would surely follow as well. Even government borrowing to finance rearmament was frowned upon by some, because it might squeeze out private investment. Chamberlain’s idea of a National Defence Loan was originally opposed by the financial sector in 1937. Only in July 1939 did the Treasury accept the need for increased direct taxation. ₁₅₃

The Combined Chiefs also threw their support behind the creation of a new ministry in 1936. While the new post of Minister for the Coordination of Defense was approved, it was not quite what the proponents of rearmament had wanted. The Chiefs wanted a single powerful minister on their side, who could weigh in on Cabinet debates against the Treasury. They got the post they wanted, but without the Ministry behind it. The office was merely an extension of the CID, and came with a support staff of two. In December 1937, the new Minister, Sir Thomas Inskip, decided to devote immediate resources to the Army. Defense of the home islands and imperial commitments were placed at the top of priorities, with obligations to allies coming later. ₁₅₄

By 1939, the military realized that they had to be prepared to put troops into France on short notice. Staff conversations between the French and British General Staffs began on March 29, 1939—just two weeks after Germany reneged on the Munich agreement by seizing all of Czechoslovakia. ₁₅₅ Not unlike World War I, Britain would enter this world war with administrative preparations in place, but without the necessary operational combat units.

 

Conclusions: An Overview of Britain’s Military Overstretch

The story of Britain’s military overstretch has not been simple or straightforward. Afterglow was not the only response to the rise of German power prior to both world wars. Instead, Britain explored the possibility of military adjustment, as well as building up resources beyond her existing military establishment. The threats prior to 1905 were varied, just as they were in the 1930s. The proper response in either situation would have been to reduce commitments to a sustainable level (especially after World War I), as well as expend additional funds on defense to narrow the gap between military forces and commitments. Greater participation by the dominions or allies would have been a step in the right direction.

The fiscal balance is the other, often neglected side of the story. It is important to note that the fiscal balance is determined by revenues as well as expenditures. Britain’s expenditures were partially driven by systemic changes and relative economic decline, but not completely. Expenditures were also shaped by the revenues raised. The changes by the Liberal governments in the decade prior to World War I allowed the budget to stay in balance, yet build up the military at the same time. Thus one of the underlying questions this analysis raises (and one that deserves further examination) is the setting of new taxes; why had politicians been so reluctant to raise taxes before then? (figure 11 and figure 12)

Figure 11: Britain’s Responses to Military Overstretch When Commitments were Sustainable (Before 1880, little was done to change either resource levels or commitments.)

 

Figure 12: Britain’s Responses to Military Overstretch Once Commitments were Unsustainable (After 1906)

It is important to note that afterglow came earlier in this issue-area in comparison to the pattern observed in the policy responses to Britain’s currency overhang. This was because extent of commitments was different, as was the nature and source of the external rival. At the same time, we should not forget the apparent parallels as well. The similarities are driven by the role of the Treasury in each case. The Treasury’s chief concern has been government debt. The debt became a burden during World War I, which drove the Treasury to challenge the policy wishes of both the Bank of England and the defense establishment in the interwar period. The struggles between the institutions worsened afterglow by seeking to maintain (or even expand) unsustainable commitments while also reducing the resources available.

This case highlights how important the state’s tax revenues are in shaping the response to overcommitment. Systemic threats were nearly impossible to control against. Their rise and fall was beyond the power of the British decisionmakers. Commitments might have been reduced in the face of threats, but this proved unpopular and difficult. Indeed, Kupchan interprets some of these periods quite differently because in his view the commitments were necessary; what really mattered was prioritization among those obligations. In this case and the next (U.S. military overcommitment), the amount spent on military resources has been constrained by the willingness of the electorate to pay higher taxes—overstretch separate from sustainability. Many of the problems associated with the overstretch prior to World War I could have been prevented had Britain raised taxes earlier, since government funds were capped by public opinion rather than any absolute limit on the society’s ability to pay.

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Endnotes

Note 1: Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars (London: Temple Smith, 1972), p. 10.  Back.

Note 2: Ibid., p. 11.  Back.

Note 3: Michael S. Partridge, Military Planning for the Defense of the UK, 1814–1870 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 22.  Back.

Note 4: Ibid., pp. 70–72.  Back.

Note 5: Ibid., pp. 39–40.  Back.

Note 6: Ibid., p. 47.  Back.

Note 7: Ibid., pp. 48–51; W. S. Hamer, The British Army: Civil Military Relations 1885–1905 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 4–5.  Back.

Note 8: Partridge, Military Planning for the Defense of the UK, 1814–1870, pp. 54–55.  Back.

Note 9: Ibid., pp. 57–59.  Back.

Note 10: Ibid., pp. 8–9.  Back.

Note 11: Howard D’Egville, Imperial Defence and Closer Union (London: P. S. King & Son, 1913), p. 11; and Bryan Ranft, “The Protection of British Seaborne Trade and the Development of Systematic Planning for War, 1860–1906,” in Technical Change and British Naval Policy 1860–1939, ed. Bryan Ranft (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), p. 1.  Back.

Note 12: Franklyn A. Johnson, Defence by Committee: The British CID 1885–1959 (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 25.  Back.

Note 13: Partridge, Military Planning for the Defense of the UK, 1814–1870, p. 13.  Back.

Note 14: Richard A. Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense”: A Study of the Origins of the British Commmonwealth’s Defense Organization 1867–1919 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1967), pp. 18–19.  Back.

Note 15: Ibid., pp. 22–25.  Back.

Note 16: Ibid., pp. 25–26.  Back.

Note 17: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 17.  Back.

Note 18: Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), p. 134.  Back.

Note 19: Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” p. xiv.  Back.

Note 20: Bryan Ranft, “The Protection of British Seaborne Trade and the Development of Systematic Planning for War,” p. 8.  Back.

Note 21: D’Egville, Imperial Defence and Closer Union, p. 16.  Back.

Note 22: Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” p. 32.  Back.

Note 23: D’Egville, Imperial Defence and Closer Union, pp. 8–11; and Jon T. Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Financial Limitation, Technological Innovation and British Naval Supremacy, 1889–1914 (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 9–10.  Back.

Note 24: Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” p. 119.  Back.

Note 25: Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 15–16.  Back.

Note 26: Ibid., pp. 12, 15; Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” p. 35; and General Sir William Jackson and Field Marshal Lord Bramall, The Chiefs: The Story of the UK Chiefs of Staff (New York: Brassey’s (UK), 1992), pp. 8–9.  Back.

Note 27: Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” pp. 208–209.  Back.

Note 28: Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, pp. 8–9.  Back.

Note 29: Hamer, The British Army, p. 24.  Back.

Note 30: Ibid., pp. 78–79.  Back.

Note 31: Ibid., p. 81.  Back.

Note 32: Ibid., pp. 84–85.  Back.

Note 33: Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 14.  Back.

Note 34: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 17.  Back.

Note 35: Ibid., pp. 17–18; Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” pp. 91–93; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 12.  Back.

Note 36: Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” pp. 94–95.  Back.

Note 37: John Gooch, The Plans of War: The General Staff and British Military Strategy c. 1900–1916 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 6–7.  Back.

Note 38: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 18.  Back.

Note 39: A. G. Boycott, The Elements of Imperial Defence (London: Gale & Polden Ltd., 1938), p. 35.  Back.

Note 40: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 11.  Back.

Note 41: Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 19–21.  Back.

Note 42: Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, p. 12.  Back.

Note 43: Hamer, The British Army, pp. 94–98.  Back.

Note 44: Ibid., p. 99; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, pp. 14–15.  Back.

Note 45: Hamer, The British Army, pp. 105, 114–115.  Back.

Note 46: Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 16; and Ranft, “The Protection of British Seaborne Trade and the Development of Systematic Planning for War,” p. 5.  Back.

Note 47: Hamer, The British Army, p. 32.  Back.

Note 48: Gooch, The Plans of War, pp. 10–11.  Back.

Note 49: Ibid., pp. 10–11; and Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, pp. 14–15.  Back.

Note 50: Ranft, “The Protection of British Seaborne Trade and the Development of Systematic Planning for War,” p. 9.  Back.

Note 51: Gooch, The Plans of War, pp. 10–11; Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, pp. 14–15; Hamer, The British Army, p. 218.  Back.

Note 52: Ranft, “The Protection of British Seaborne Trade and the Development of Systematic Planning for War,” pp. 9–10.  Back.

Note 53: Hamer, The British Army, pp. 138–139.  Back.

Note 54: D’Egville, Imperial Defence and Closer Union, p. 29.  Back.

Note 55: Ibid.; Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 28–29; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 17.  Back.

Note 56: Hamer, The British Army, pp. 139–140; Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 28–29; and Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 17; Jay Stone, “The Anglo-Boer War and Military Reforms in the UK,” in The Boer War and Military Reform (New York: University Press of America, 1988), p. 9.  Back.

Note 57: Hamer, The British Army, pp. 32–33.  Back.

Note 58: Ibid., p. 90.  Back.

Note 59: Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, pp. 23.  Back.

Note 60: Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, pp. 12–13.  Back.

Note 61: Gooch, The Plans of War, p. 17.  Back.

Note 62: Nicholas d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy: Defence Administration in Peacetime Britain 1902–1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. x-xii, 10–11.  Back.

Note 63: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 41.  Back.

Note 64: Ibid., pp. 50–53; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, pp. 29–32.  Back.

Note 65: Boycott, The Elements of Imperial Defence, pp. 64–66; Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 55–56, 101–103.  Back.

Note 66: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, p. 73.  Back.

Note 67: Gooch, The Plans of War, pp. 44–45.  Back.

Note 68: Max Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire 1897–1921 (London: Methuen, 1969), pp. 140–141.  Back.

Note 69: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 60.  Back.

Note 70: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 15–16.  Back.

Note 71: Stone, “The Anglo-Boer War and Military Reforms in the UK,” pp. 9–10.  Back.

Note 72: Ibid., pp. 17–18.  Back.

Note 73: Hamer, The British Army, pp. 187–188.  Back.

Note 74: Hamer, The British Army, pp. 201–207; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 29.  Back.

Note 75: Gooch, The Plans of War, p. 50.  Back.

Note 76: Boycott, The Elements of Imperial Defence, p. 35.  Back.

Note 77: Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 36.  Back.

Note 78: Hamer, The British Army, p. 244.  Back.

Note 79: Gooch, The Plans of War, p. 107.  Back.

Note 80: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, p. 5.  Back.

Note 81: Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, pp. 24–25.  Back.

Note 82: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, Chapter 1.  Back.

Note 83: Gooch, The Plans of War, p. 180.  Back.

Note 84: It is interesting to note how Kupchan views this period. First, the disputes between the Army and Navy are never explored; second, the description of British moves makes it appear that clear and cold calculations were involved—that Britain chose to accommodate in the periphery, and thereby withdraw forces for use elsewhere. See chapter 3 in The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). Instead I am arguing that events outside Britain’s control occurred, altering calculations, making it possible for Britain to redeploy. The CID did push for the version of the treaty as renewed in 1905 to include the possible appeal for Japanese troops for the defense of India. But both the military high command and the Indian government feared that such a commitment might be viewed by Cabinet as a substitute for British troop deployments, and therefore played this option down. By 1907, operationally the likelihood of Japanese reinforcements for India was dead; by 1909, some of the same military and Indian government people considered Japan the greatest regional threat. See Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, pp. 102–103, 108.  Back.

Note 85: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 32–33.  Back.

Note 86: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 78.  Back.

Note 87: Ibid., pp. 84–85.  Back.

Note 88: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, p. 7; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 40; and Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, p. 152.  Back.

Note 89: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, pp. 74–75, and Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 43.  Back.

Note 90: Gooch, The Plans of War, pp. 190–191.  Back.

Note 91: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, pp. 11–12.  Back.

Note 92: Ibid., p. 212.  Back.

Note 93: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 45.  Back.

Note 94: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 106.  Back.

Note 95: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, pp. 237–238.  Back.

Note 96: Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, pp. 188–190.  Back.

Note 97: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 44–45.  Back.

Note 98: Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 114–116; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, pp. 46–47.  Back.

Note 99: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, p. 155; Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, pp. 27–28 ; and Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 48.  Back.

Note 100: Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, p. 153.  Back.

Note 101: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 48–50.  Back.

Note 102: d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy, pp. 87–88, 273.  Back.

Note 103: Boycott, The Elements of Imperial Defence, p. 27. See also Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 87.  Back.

Note 104: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 87.  Back.

Note 105: Ibid., p. 106; Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” pp. 401.  Back.

Note 106: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 131.  Back.

Note 107: Ibid., p. 136.  Back.

Note 108: Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defense,” p. 462.  Back.

Note 109: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 60.  Back.

Note 110: Ranft, “The Protection of British Seaborne Trade and the Development of Systematic Planning for War,” pp. 11–12.  Back.

Note 111: Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, pp. 188–189.  Back.

Note 112: See the discussion in Gooch, The Plans of War, especially chapter 10.  Back.

Note 113: Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, pp. 189–190, 209.  Back.

Note 114: Ibid., p. 255. Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 70  Back.

Note 115: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, pp. 117–118.  Back.

Note 116: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 71.  Back.

Note 117: Boycott, The Elements of Imperial Defence, p. 60.  Back.

Note 118: Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, pp. 344–345.  Back.

Note 119: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 78.  Back.

Note 120: Ibid., p. 89.  Back.

Note 121: Max Beloff, Wars and Welfare: Britain 1914–1945 (London: Edward Arnold, 1984), p. 80.  Back.

Note 122: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, p. 263.  Back.

Note 123: Johnson, Defence by Committee, p. 167; Boycott, The Elements of Imperial Defence, p. 78; and Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, p. 352.  Back.

Note 124: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 90; Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 176–177.  Back.

Note 125: Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 179–180.  Back.

Note 126: Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, pp. 119–123.  Back.

Note 127: Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 191–193.  Back.

Note 128: See the argument in Beloff, Wars and Welfare, p. 134.  Back.

Note 129: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 93.  Back.

Note 130: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, p. 118, 175.  Back.

Note 131: Ibid., p. 249.  Back.

Note 132: Ibid., p. 278; Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 87; and Beloff, Wars and Welfare, pp. 163–164.  Back.

Note 133: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, p. 289.  Back.

Note 134: Ibid., pp. 296–298.  Back.

Note 135: Ibid., pp. 205–211. Beloff, Wars and Welfare, pp. 117–118.  Back.

Note 136: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, pp. 300–301.  Back.

Note 137: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 98–99, 104; and Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 208–209.  Back.

Note 138: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 104–105; Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, p. 346; Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 225–227; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 151.  Back.

Note 139: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, p. 414.  Back.

Note 140: Ibid., p. 416; Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 114.  Back.

Note 141: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, pp. 349–350.  Back.

Note 142: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 102–103, 113.Ibid., pp. 118–119.  Back.

Note 143: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, p. 383.  Back.

Note 144: Anthony Wells, “Naval Intelligence and Decision Making in an Era of Technical Change,” in Technical Change and British Naval Policy 1860–1939, ed. Bryan Ranft (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), pp. 134–135.  Back.

Note 145: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 113–114.  Back.

Note 146: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, pp. 496–497; Jackson and Bramall, The Chiefs, p. 164.  Back.

Note 147: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 136.  Back.

Note 148: Ibid., pp. 118–119.  Back.

Note 149: Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, pp. 508–509.  Back.

Note 150: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 122.  Back.

Note 151: For one such argument, see Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, pp. 450–451.  Back.

Note 152: Beloff, Wars and Welfare, pp. 216, 241.  Back.

Note 153: Howard, The Continental Commitment, p. 116; Johnson, Defence by Committee, pp. 224, 228–237.  Back.

Note 154: Howard, The Continental Commitment, pp. 127–128.  Back.