| Popis: |
Historians have argued that the British Army was afflicted with an insular focus on home defence in the late nineteenth century and that this preoccupation was evidence of the paucity of military strategic thought and the lack of co-operation and dialogue between the two services. This chapter challenges that viewpoint and argues that the military leadership was, in fact, consistently much more interested in preparing for operations overseas than it was in planning to prevent an invasion. The military authorities were only deflected from this aim by differences of opinion with the Admiralty on the application of naval power and on the Navy’s inability to commit to the safe passage of troops by sea, disagreements which obliged the War Office to limit the scope of its strategic discourse. This had significant implications for both military and imperial policy, particularly the defence of India. |
