David French. Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People c. 1870-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 404 Seiten. $74.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-925803-1.

Reviewed by John Ferris (University of Calgary, Canada)
Published on H-Albion (July, 2006)

Regimental Rhetoric

David French ranks high among military historians in Britain, and beyond. His previous books have examined British grand strategy in the First World War, and the command and doctrine of its army in the second. His present work examines what usually is regarded as a (or the) central component of that army, the regimental system. French assesses the role of the British regiment from the reforms of 1870-81, to the evolution of the "post-modern regimental system" between 1945-70, although he also refers to contemporary events. Military Identities is one of the strongest studies in the social history of any army, or in British military history as a whole. It is informed by standard influences in social history, including cultural anthropology; Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1977); Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities(1983); and ideas about the Victorian invention of tradition, proving that military history can engage politically correct topics in more than a one-night stand. Military Identities rests on extraordinary research, and unparalleled knowledge of the breadth and depth of the topic. It analyses this material through a series of linked thematic chapters, each pursued, more or less, in a chronological fashion. These themes include training, recruitment, barrack life, officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs), deviance and discipline, "the construction of the idea of the Regiment," the army and the people, the regiment at war, and others. These narratives provide elegant architecture for a structure built on bricks of telling details and wry anecdotes, drawn from a ninety-year period.

French argues that historians and public have judged the regimental system essentially from the rhetoric of those who created or celebrated it. This system, according to the author, ensured that in every part of Britain, regular and auxiliary forces were linked together, manned by local populations, driven by their traditions, and led by their elites to war, their primary loyalties being to each other and to their real family, the regiment. In fact, French claims, the regimental system never was as simple as its exponents said, nor was it static. There were several regimental systems, not just one, and they evolved significantly over time. The system came closest to its image between 1890-1914. Even then, however, largely because of the marginalization of the local elements of the system (the Militia, Yeomanry, Volunteers and Territorials), regiments usually recruited most of their personnel from outside their nominal locality. Officers came from particular elements of a national elite, defined by social rather than regional considerations, and soldiers and NCOs from adjacent counties or Britain as a whole. Meanwhile, regimental traditions and loyalties stemmed not from nature but social construct, frequently shifting and of limited significance to soldiers, though more so for officers. From 1914, these differences between theory and practice in the regimental system became more pronounced and new ones emerged. In major wars, the local system collapsed. Centralized national systems handled recruiting and regiments took soldiers from any source they could find. In peacetime, the army met new demands from its soldiers, who were more educated, autonomous and urban than before. Increasingly from 1919, and decisively from 1945, soldiers ceased to treat the regiment as their only family, but also insisted on creating their own, biological ones. They and their wives rewrote the social contract underlying the system, demanding better, more expensive and family-friendly treatment. These heightened costs reduced the size of the army, which fell again because too few men were willing to enlist (or remain) even under the improved conditions of service. This made the army less useful for its ostensible purpose of imperial policing and shaped the decline of the British empire, by reducing Britain's strength in white soldiers and driving it to rely on cheaper, but less reliable expedients, such as airpower or native troops. Much of French's account is dedicated to illustrating these points, but he also offers a host of other observations. First, the once overwhelming presence of Irishmen in the army declined from the 1850s, as did alcohol related disciplinary problems from the 1890s. Second, court martial records indicate a tightening of discipline before every major offensive of 1916-18, presumably to increase obedience to orders. Third, from 1914, the presence of gentlemanly officers and their tradition declined steadily. As gentlemen accepted the need to become professional, the officer corps became more open to men of middling status, Staff College became the key to command, and gentlemen became professionals while professionals became gentlemen. Finally, the proportion of the army based in regiments (infantry and cavalry) collapsed compared to that in corps (artillery, engineers and armour).

French aims, according to the book's blurb, "to strip away the myths that have been deliberately manufactured to justify or to condemn the regimental system and to uncover the reality beneath them"; and this he does. He demolishes what we thought we knew about a topic deemed to be important, and replaces it with a different account of a less significant issue. Here, as ever, revisionist works answer some old questions (and render others irrelevant), pose new ones, and make still more possible. After the negative impact of revisionist works has been assimilated, characteristically, unwary readers wonder at their importance, because they more often rule out easy answers than end old debates. Similarly, French does not so much conclude arguments about the British army as eliminate simplistic culturalist explanations for them. He demonstrates that the regimental system cannot have made the British army fail in two world wars, as critics have alleged, because the army was not as they imagined, nor as central. Yet this system remains part of that problem, because Britain expanded its military strength through regiments, and delegated tactical training and command for mass armies to them. After false ideas about the system are eliminated, regiments remain as a social, organizational and tactical entity. Again, even if the regimental system could not have caused failings like inadequate professionalism within the officer corps, or a failure to prepare for combined arms, they may have had exactly the same effect as critics say--but perhaps not. By forcing scholars to abandon old answers, French also makes them reconsider their questions. Thus, what problems emerged in the training of a mass army and military performance in the world wars, and why? Because Britain had no system for raising an effective mass army, any army that it did create would be inferior to the trained continental armies, for some time. The issue, then, centered on the length of this lapse and the angle of the learning curve. Under the circumstances, did Britain do badly? Why does it seem to have done worse in the Second World War than the First? How did the real regimental system work in these wars? How did it contribute to these problems, and their solution?

French also raises a new set of socio-political questions. How did soldiers experience the process of belonging simultaneously to two families? What happened to military families? How did universal military and regimental service in two world wars affect masculine and social behavior across Britain? Did officers view regiments as a home, a club, or refuge? Did these units serve as a means to raise or maintain their status? How did changes in the status of officers, and the rise of a professional military caste, affect the ruling class in Britain? Why did politicians and officers promote, and seemingly believe, false things about the regimental system? Was this self-delusion; or a military equivalent of bourgeois mystification? Or did it represent the way rulers and officers thought things were, and perhaps even the way it was for them? Much remains mysterious about these issues, though French suggests the War Office was always more hard-headed about them than officers. Moreover, Scottish units fit the regimental tradition more than others, largely because many authorities consistently used their influence to manufacture national (or, sub-national) traditions. If British military identities were constructed, by whom and why and to whose benefit? What does the rhetoric of the regimental system--celebrating the union of all classes under local leadership within each region of the United Kingdom, each contributing its particular genius and energy to imperial purposes--say about the construction of national identities? And so too, what does the failure of this system say? In raising those questions, David French has made military history central to the social and cultural history of post-imperial Britain.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-albion.

Citation: John Ferris. Review of French, David, Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People c. 1870-2000. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. July, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11979

Copyright © 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.