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ABSTRACT
Charles Callwell’s Small Wars (1896, 1899, 1906) is widely considered both an ur-text for modern counter-insurgency studies, and a primer for the racialized late-Victorian approach to war against ‘savages’: either way it is usually only considered within a British context. Alongside the numerous examples Callwell used from British colonial campaigns, he frequently referred to those of other European powers – notably the Russian conquest of Central Asia. This article will seek to analyse Callwell’s views of Russian colonial warfare, establish the sources on which he relied, and evaluate his accuracy and the effect which the Russian example had on his thinking.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Mark Lawrence for his helpful comments and to Daniel Whittingham for sharing the manuscript of his forthcoming book.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Callwell, Small Wars, 1st ed. 1896, 2nd ed. 1899, 3rd ed. 1906 – references throughout are to the 1899 edition.
2. Strachan, “Colonial Warfare,” 76.
3. Laqueur, “Origins of Guerrilla Doctrine,” 361–3; and Porch, Counterinsurgency, 50–1.
4. Gates, “Small Wars,” 381–2; Beckett “Another British Way in Warfare”; and Whittingham “Warrior-scholarship in the age of colonial warfare.”
5. Betz, “Counter-insurgency, Victorian Style.”
6. Whittingham, “Savage warfare.”
7. Scheipers, Unlawful Combatants, 177–83.
8. Walter, Colonial Violence, 248–9.
9. Wagner “Savage Warfare”; Porch, Counterinsurgency, 50–7, 76.
10. Whittingham, Charles Callwell.
11. Whittingham, Charles Callwell; Moreman “Callwell, Sir Charles Edward (1859–1928)”. Letters from Callwell can be found in the Jellicoe Papers Vol.XLIX BL Add. MS 49037 f.130 (1919); Campbell-Bannerman Papers Vol.XLVII BL Add. MS 41252 f.173 (121); Callwell to Sir Eyre Crow 22/08/1914 TNA FO 800/102/77 ff.246–248; Callwell’s letters to Lord Kitchener in 1915–1916 are in TNA WO159 & PRO30/57.
12. Beckett, “Another British way in Warfare,” 92.
13. Callwell, “Lessons to be Learnt.”
14. Howard, “The British Way in Warfare”; Strachan, “Colonial Warfare”; Beckett, Victorians at War, 189; Beckett, “Another British way in Warfare”; Whittingham, Charles Callwell.
15. The first edition of Small Wars was translated into French in 1899, and Callwell drew upon some of the observations of his French translator when revising it for the second edition: Finch, A Progressive Occupation? 29.
16. The classic account of the Caucasus campaigns in English is Baddeley, Russian Conquest of the Caucasus. Published in 1908, the book cannot have been Callwell’s source for his Caucasian examples, but Baddeley, the St Petersburg correspondent for the London Standard, also published articles on the subject which Callwell may have drawn upon.
17. Morrison, “Killing the Cotton Canard”; and Morrison, “Beyond the ‘Great Game’”.
18. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889, 86.
19. Marvin, The Russian Advance Towards India, 98–9.
20. Novikova, Skobeleff and the Slavonic Cause.
21. Maslov, “Rossiya v Srednei Azii”; Shakhovskoi, “Ekspeditsiya protiv Akhal-Tekintsev”; V.N.G.: “Ocherk Ekspeditsii v Akhal-Teke” Kuropatkin Zavoevaniya Turkmenii. See further Rogger “The Skobelev Phenomenon.”
22. Siege and Assault of Denghil-Tépé; Dalton, “General Skobeleff’s Instructions.”
23. Grodekov, Voina v Turkmenii translated as Grodekoff, The War in Turkumania [sic].
24. Strachan, “Colonial Warfare,” 81–2.
25. Shamil was an Avar from Daghestan, not a Cherkess (Circassian).
26. Scheipers, Unlawful Combatants, 226–7.
27. Strachan, “Colonial Warfare,” 77.
28. von Hellwald, The Russians in Central Asia, 157–9.
29. Terent’ev, Istoriya Zavoevaniya Srednei Azii I, 345–9; Danish Risala ya Mukhtasari, 47–8; and Donish Istoriya Mangitskoi Dinastii, 47–8.
30. Romanovskii, Zametki po Sredneaziatskomu voprosu, 61 – translated as Romanovski Notes on the Central Asiatic Question, where the account of Irjar is on pp.lx – lxiv.
31. Callwell’s source here is probably Kostenko ‘Turkestan’, 912, a partial translation of Kostenko Turkestanskii Krai.
32. Beisembiev, The Life of ‘Alimqul, 64.
33. On this see Morrison, “The Turkestan Generals,” 168–72.
34. There is a vivid account in the report of Lt Soltanovskii, who led one of the storming parties: ‘Zapiska o deistviyakh vzvoda strelkovoi roty 7 Zapadno-Sibirskago bataliona pri shturme gor. Tashkenta 15, 16 i 17 iiunya 1865g’ 22/06/1865 in Serebrennikov, Turkestanskii Krai, 215–9.
35. Hellwald, The Russians in Central Asia, 146–7. Much more complete accounts can be found in Romanovski, Notes on the Central Asiatic Question, 13; Anon, “Russian Advances in Central Asia,” 408. Aberigh-Mackay Notes on Western Turkistan, 27; Schuyler, Turkistan I, 114–5. Callwell was clearly familiar with the latter text as he made use of it when writing of the 1875–6 campaign against Khoqand (see below).
36. In fact Georgian officers and men fought on the Russian side in the Caucasian campaigns.
37. See Potto, “Gibel otryada Rukina”; Terent’ev, Istoriya Zavoevaniya II, 62.
38. See Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier.
39. Russian Military Expedition to Khiva, which is a translation of Ivanin/Golosov “Pokhod v Khivu v 1839 godu.”
40. On this see Morrison, “Twin Imperial Disasters.”
41. Callwell’s source here and elsewhere when referring to the wars against Khoqand in the 1850s is almost certainly Michell, The Russians in Central Asia, here 363–5.
42. Callwell’s source is Schuyler Turkistan, II, 292.
43. Michell, “The Russian Expedition to the Alai and Pamir”; The standard account of the final Khoqand campaign in Russian was Serebrennikov, “K istorii kokanskogo pokhoda.”
44. Marvin, The Eye Witnesses’ Account of the Disastrous Russian Campaign; Callwell also seems to have used Delmar Morgan, “The Tekkeh Expedition of 1879.”
45. Terent’ev, Istoriya Zavoevaniya III, 14; and O’Donovan The Merv Oasis I, 136–7.
46. Marvin, The Eye Witnesses’ Account, 77.
47. Shakhovskoi “Ekspeditsiya protiv Akhal-Tekintsev, 171.
48. Belich, The New Zealand Wars, 311–21.
49. Kostenko, “Turkestan.”
50. Strachan, “Colonial Warfare,” 85–6.
51. Dalton, “General Skobeleff’s Instructions,” 714–5.
52. Marvin, The Disastrous Russian Campaign, 253–5; “Zhurnal zanyatii i voennykh deistvii Akhal-Tekinskogo ekspeditsionnogo otryada” 01/09/1879 Russian State Military-Historical Archive F.1300 Op.1 D.80 l.137ob; this also accords almost exactly with the account given by Demurov ‘Boi s tekintsami pri Denghil-Tepe’ no.3, 620.
53. Callwell’s source is Dalton, “General Skobeleff’s Instructions,” 714–5.
54. A slight paraphrase of Dalton, “General Skobeleff’s Instructions,” 716.
55. Terent’ev, Istoriya Zavoevaniya,II, 177.
56. Callwell takes this episode from Grodekoff The War in Turkumania III, 661–2.
57. Beckett, The Victorians at War, 4.
58. Morrison, “Camels and Colonial Armies.”
59. Khiva actually fell in 1873. Callwell’s source here is Trench, “The Russian Campaign against Khiva”; Trench in turn was relying on accounts in Russkii Invalid and on the articles about the campaign written for the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung by Lt. Hugo Stumm of the Prussian army, subsequently published as Stumm Der russische Feldzug nach Chiwa & translated as Stumm The Russian Campaign against Khiva.
60. Terent’ev, Istoriya Zavoevaniya, II, 169–182.
61. Heiden to Miliutin 06/02/1881 in Il’yasov (ed.) Prisoedinenie Turkmenii k Rossii, 484.
62. See for instance Curzon Russia in Central Asia in 1889, 84–6.
63. Skobelev, “Osada i Shturm kreposti Dengil-Tepe (Geok-Tepe)”, 52 translated as Siege and Assault of Denghil-Tépé; the phrase about ‘both sexes’ here occurs on p.54.
64. Nalivkin, “Moi Vospominaniya o Skobeleve”, 535–8; and Campbell, “Violent acculturation.”
65. Campbell, “Our friendly rivals”.
66. Walter, Colonial Violence, 249; and Gates, “Small Wars,” 381–2.
67. See Mackenzie, “European Imperialism”, and other essays in the same volume.
68. Wagner, ‘Savage Warfare’, 218–220.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alexander Morrison
Alexander Morrison is Fellow and Tutor in History at New College, Oxford. He previously taught at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, and at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868-1910. A Comparison with British India (Oxford, 2008), and is currently completing a history of the Russian conquest of Central Asia.