The wandering army the campaigns that transformed the British way of war, 1750-1850 / Huw J. Davies.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Davies, Huw J. (Huw John), 1981- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Great Britain--History, Military--18th century.
• Great Britain--History, Military--19th century.

Physical Description:

xix, 500 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color), maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2022]

Summary:

A compelling history of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--showing how the military gathered knowledge from campaigns across the globe At the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession in 1742, the British Army's military tactics were tired and outdated, stultified after three decades of peace. The army's leadership was conservative, resistant to change, and unable to match new military techniques developing on the continent. Losses were cataclysmic and the force was in dire need of modernization--both in terms of strategy and in leadership and technology. In this wide-ranging and highly original account, Huw Davies traces the British Army's accumulation of military knowledge across the following century. An essentially global force, British armies and soldiers continually gleaned and synthesized strategy from warzones the world over: from Europe to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Davies records how the army and its officers put this globally acquired knowledge to use, exchanging information and developing into a remarkable vehicle of innovation--leading to the pinnacle of its military prowess in the nineteenth century.

Contents:

• Machine generated contents note: 1. `Grasping in the Dark': Defeat and Humiliation, Adaptation and Innovation, 1745-1758
• 2. `I Was Come to Take Canada': Louisbourg, Quebec and Montreal, 1758-1760
• 3. The `Great Book of War': Forms of British Military Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century
• 4. `No Idea of Any Other Than a Direct Attack': William Howe in America, 1774-1777
• 5. `Indirect Manoeuvres': The Failure of Henry Clinton's American Strategy, 1775-1781
• 6. `Advance and Be Forward': Military Knowledge and Adaptation in India, 1750-1790
• 7. `Decisive Victory Will Relieve Us from All Our Distresses': The Lessons of War with Mysore, 1790-1803
• 8. `Totally Unfit for Service': Defeat and Humiliation, 1793-1799
• 9. The `Wandering Army': The Rebirth of the British Army, 1799-1801
• 10. The `Universal Soldier': Shorncliffe and the Light Division, 1803-1812
• 11. `The Scientifics': High Wycombe and the British Way of Warfare, 1803-1815
• 12. `The Dread of Innovation: From Enlightenment to Ignorance, 1815-1856.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

• 9780300217162
• 0300217161

OCLC:

1310149834