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Abstract
In November 1897, the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) North America and West Indies Station, Vice-Admiral Sir John Fisher, initiated plans to capture the French North American island group of St Pierre and Miquelon, using British garrison troops stationed at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Canadian Militia in a supporting role. His staff developed the scheme without consulting the Government of Canada or the War Office, and only brought the Halifax garrison commander into the planning process in October 1898, when the Fashola Crisis was in full swing. The War Office and the government of Canada eventually learned of the plans, which slumped along until 1903, but no one seemed sure who had the authority to deploy the Canadian Militia abroad. The plans were never executed, but the episode reveals a great deal about the dysfunctional state of British strategic planning in the late-Victorian period, especially between the War Office and the Admiralty, and the evolution of the dominion-imperial relations.
Acknowledgments
I would also like to thank Serge Durflinger, Roger Sarty, Jack Granatstein, Andrew L. Brown, David F rench, David Morgan-Owen, and two ananymous reviewers for the helpful andvice and guidance.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 The seven tiny islands that formed the colony of St. Pierre and Miquelon are the last remnants of France’s North American empire. They were returned to France with the Treaty of Paris (1763), along with fishing rights along the Newfoundland coast. The British later re-captured the islands in 1793, during the War of the First Coalition, but returned them to France in 1815.
2 The national Archives, Kew (TNA), WO 32/6367, Captain M.A. Bourke to Vice Admiral Sir John A. Fisher, 27 February 1898; and TNA, CAB 3/1, Naval Intelligence Department, Remarks on Offensive Over-sea Expeditions suggested by the War Office as feasible in the memorandum on the Military Needs of the Empire in a War with France and Russia (No. 1a, 12th August, 1901), 1 July 1903.
3 On evolving British grand strategy in the late-19th Century, see David Morgan-Owen, The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 22-42.
4 See TNA, CAB 3/1, Military Needs of the Empire in a War with France and Russia, 10 August 1901, 37.
5 TNA, ADM 1/7379B, “Threatened War with France – 1898 – Fashoda – Preparations for Mobilization.” St Pierre is not mentioned at all in this file.
6 TNA, CAB 3/1, Naval Intelligence Department, Remarks on Offensive Over-sea Expeditions suggested by the War Office as feasible in the memorandum on the Military Needs of the Empire in a War with France and Russia (No. 1a, 12th August, 1901), 1 July 1903.
7 For a synopsis of France’s history with St Pierre and Miquelon, see David Anglin, The St. Pierre and Miquelon Affaire of 1941: A Study in Diplomacy in the North Atlantic Quadrangle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 3-15.
8 Arthur J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905 (New York: Alfred J Knopf, 91409), 79. See also the table at Appendix II, which outlines just how differently the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and the Directorate of Naval Intelligence (DNI) viewed possible actions in the event of war with France. Ibid., 550-68.
9 Preliminary and Further Reports of the Royal Commissioners appointed to enquire into the Civil and Professional Administration of the Naval and Military Departments and the Relation of those Departments to Each other and the Treasury (Hartington Commission) C.5979 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1890), vi-viii.
10 A Naval and Military Committee of serving officers did meet intermittently to advise on matters involving inter-service cooperation, but it was only a sub-committee of the Colonial Defence Committee (CDC), itself a Colonial Office entity that mostly gathered information on colonial defence matters. The CDC had no executive authority in any event.
11 See for example, TNA ADM 1/379B, Preparations for War with France, 1 November 1898 (handwritten memorandum), “The details of operations on Foreign Stations are separately dealt with and are for the conduct of the respective Commanders-in-Chief.” .
12 Dominion of Canada, An Act Respecting the Militia and Defence of Canada (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1883), 22.
13 See for example, O.D. Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Volume II (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1965); J.W. Dafoe, Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics (Toronto: T. Allen, 1922); Desmond Morton, Ministers and Generals: Politics and the Canadian Militia, 1868-1904 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 133-200;.J.L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer, Prime Ministers: Ranking Canada’s Leaders (Toronto: Harper Collins, 1999), 46-60; Richard A. Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defence”: A Study of the Origins of the British Commonwealth’s Defence Organizations, 1867-1919 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1967), 283-307; and Graeme Thompson, “Reframing Canada’s Great War: Liberalism, Sovereignty, and the British Empire c. 1860s-1919,” International Journal vo. 73, no.1 (2018): 85-110.
14 Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Volume II, 293.
15 See for example, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The Edwardian Army: Recruiting, Training and Deploying in the British Army, 1902-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); John Gooch, The Plans of War: The General Staff and British Military Strategy c. 1900-1916 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974); Stephen J. Harris, Canadian Brass: The Making of a Professional Army, 1860-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988); Ian F.W. Beckett, ‘“Selection by Disparagement’: Lord Esher, the General Staff and the Politics of Command, 1904-1914” in The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, 1890-1939, eds. David French and Brian Holden Reid (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 41-56; and Douglas E. Delaney, The Imperial Army Project: Britain and the Land Forces of the Dominions and India, 1902-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
16 George F.G. Stanley, Canada’s Soldiers: The Military History of an Unmilitary People, Third Edition (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974); C.P. Stacey Canada and the Age of Conflict, Volume I, 1867-1921 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1977); Stephen J. Harris, Canadian Brass: The Making of a Professional Army, 1860-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988); and J.L. Granatstein, Canada’s Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).
17 Craig Stockings, Britannia’s Shield: Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hutton and Late-Victorian Imperial Defence (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
18 Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defence, 272-73.
19 Donald C. Gordon, The Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), 123-26.
20 H. Blair Neatby, Laurier and a Liberal Quebec (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 100-121.
21 Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Volume II, 59-118; and Norman Penlington, Canada and Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 183-197.
22 Carman Miller, The Canadian Career of the Fourth Earl of Minto: The Education of a Viceroy (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980), 80-84.
23 Desmond Morton, “Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Use of Canadian Troops for Overseas Service,” Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 81-87.
24 See Darrell Bates, The Fashoda Incident of 1898: Encounter on the Nile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
25 T.G. Otte, “From ‘War in Sight’ to Nearly War: Anglo-French Relations in the Age of High Imperialism, 1875-1898,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, 17, (2006): 693-714.
26 Reference to Fisher’s guidance of 22 November 1897 is at TNA WO/32/6367, Bourke to. Fisher, 27 February 1898. This is the earliest documentary reference to the enterprise. The “chronically-underemployed” description comes from Morton, “Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Use of Canadian Troops for Overseas Service,” 82.
27 TNA WO/32/6367, Bourke to. Fisher, 27 February 1898.
28 The populations of St Pierre, Miquelon, and nearby Ile Aux Chiens were 5,020, 544, and 683, respectively. Ibid.
29 There were two French cables, one laid in 1869 and one in 1879, as Colonel E. A. Altham pointed out. See marginal notes. Ibid.
30 In October 1898, there were at Halifax two cruisers (HMS Talbot, HMS Pallas), one battleship (HMS Renown), and one screw sloop (HMS Pelican). TNA, ADM 1/7379B, Threatened War with France, Fashoda Crisis-1898, Preparations for Mobilization October 1898, “North America.”.
31 TNA WO/32/6367, Seymour to Undersecretary of State for War, 22 April 1898.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 See Miller, The Canadian Career of the Fourth Earl of Minto, 80-82.
35 TNA WO 32/6367, Sir John A. Macdonald to Lord Melgund [Minto from 1891], 10 February 1885. Emphasis in original.
36 TNA WO 32/6367, Seymour to Undersecretary of State for War, 14 December 1898.
37 Dominion of Canada, An Act Respecting the Militia and Defence of Canada (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1883), 22.
38 An Admiralty delegation had visited the War Office on 26 October 1898, at the height of the crisis, but discussions dealt exclusively with coastal and port defences. TNA ADM 1/379B, Sir Frederick Richards to George Goschen, 27 October 1898.
39 TNA WO 32/6367, Seymour to Undersecretary of State for War, 11 December 1898. Emphasis in original.
40 TNA WO 32/6367, Permanent Under-Secretary to Lord William Seymour, 23 January 1899.
41 Ibid.
42 TNA WO 32/6367, Sir John A. Macdonald to Lord Melgund [Minto from 1891], 10 February 1885. Emphasis in original.
43 TNA WO 32/6367, Minto to Laurier, 25 March 1899.
44 TNA WO 32/6367, Minto to Seymour 1 April 1899. See also Minto, “Memorandum of Conversation with Sir W. Laurier on March 27th 1899 on the meaning of the 79th Paragraph of Militia Act.” (n.d.). Ibid.
45 Morton, “Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Use of Canadian Troops for Overseas Service,” 81-87.
46 TNA WO 32/6367, Minto to Seymour 1 April 1899.
47 Laurier, Interview with The Globe, 4 October 1899. Quoted in Neatby, Laurier and a Liberal Quebec, 105.
48 Henri Bourassa was the member of parliament for the Quebec riding of Labelle, who, fearing a dangerous precedent for future imperial wars, resigned five days after Laurier’s 13 October decision to send a “special service” contingent to South Africa. He regained his seat as an independent and held it until 1907. He founded the French-language daily, Le Devoir in 1910. See Joseph Levitt, Henri Bourassa on Imperialism and Bi-Culuturalism, 1900-1918 (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970).
49 TNA WO 32/6367, Lake to D.M.I. (Director Military Intelligence) 9 December 1899.
50 TNA WO 32/6367, Ardagh to Lake, 15 December 1899.
51 Ibid. See also TNA WO 32/6367, DMI to The General Officer Commanding Troops in the Dominion of Canada, 15 February 1900. Emphasis added.
52 Report of His Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Military Preparations and Other matters Connected with the War in South Africa (Elgin Commission Report), Cd.1789 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1903), 128.
53 TNA WO 32/6367, War Office to Lord William Seymour, 23 January 1899. See also marginal notes by E.A. Altham at Captain M.A. Bourke to Vice Admiral Sir John A. Fisher, 27 February 1898, Ibid.
54 TNA WO 32/6367, War Office to Lord William Seymour, 23January 1899.
55 TNA WO 32/6367, Seymour to Director of Military Intelligence, 26 February 1900.
56 TNA WO 32/6367, Minute Sir John Ardagh to Lake, 15 December 1899.
57 TNA WO 32/6367, Draft Observations of the Commander-in-Chief on the scheme for the seizure of St. Pierre, submitted by Officer Commanding Troops, Canada, 28th September 1900.
58 Ibid., and TNA WO 32/6367, Lake to DMI, 5 June 1901.
59 TNA WO 32/6367, Barrardiston to AAG, 17 October 1900; and Altham to DMI, 24 Oct 1900.
60 TNA WO 32/6367, Nicholson to Briscoe, 16 May 1901. Emphasis in original.
61 TNA WO 32/6367, Lake to DMI, 5 June 1901.
62 Dominion of Canada, An Act Respecting the Militia and Defence of Canada (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1883), 23.
63 TNA CAB 9/3, Report of the Committee on Canadian Defence, 1898; Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defence”, 246-7; and Stockings, Britannia’s Shield, 144-6.
64 On the Hutton-Seymour dispute about confidential reports for imperial officers in dominion service, see Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defence”, 255-6; and Miller, The Canadian Career of the Fourth Earl of Minto, 77-79.
65 See Hutton’s delineation of responsibilities in House of Commons (Canada) Sessional Papers, no. 19, 1898, Department of Militia and Defence for the Dominion of Canada, Report of the Year ended December 1898 (hereafter GOC Report 1898), 41.
66 No evidence exists for any correspondence between Seymour and Hutton on the St Pierre and Miquelon scheme in any of the War Office files, the files of Militia and Defence (Canada), the Hutton papers, or the F.W. Borden papers.
67 Stockings, Britannia’s Shield, 163.
68 TNA WO 32/6367, Minute, Nicholson to Commander-in-Chief, 4 July 1901.
69 TNA WO 32/6367, Kerr to Selborne, 22 July 1901.
70 TNA WO 32/6367, Vansittart-Neale to Under-Secretary of State, War Office, 14 September 1901.
71 Hartington Commission, vii.
72 Morgan-Owen, The Fear of Invasion, 42.
73 Andrew Lambert explores the “army challenge to the existing orthodoxy” in his chapter, “Doctrine, the Soul of Warfare’: Sir Julian Corbet and the Teaching of Strategy in the Royal Navy before 1914,” in Military Education and the British Empire, 1815-1949, eds. Douglas E. Delaney, Robert C. Engen, and Meghan Fitzpatrick (Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 2018), 48-50.
74 TNA, CAB 3/1, “Military Needs of the Empire in a War with France and Russia,” 10 August 1901.
75 It is the first document in the series, No. 1A. Ibid.
76 Ibid. p. 31.
77 Ibid.33-34, 37.
78 TNA, CAB 3/1, Naval Intelligence Department, Remarks on Offensive Over-sea Expeditions suggested by the War Office as feasible in the memorandum on the Military Needs of the Empire in a War with France and Russia (No. 1a, 12th August, 1901), 1 July 1903.
79 See Morgan-Owen, Fear of Invasion, 164-70.
80 Delaney, The Imperial Army Project, 11, 124.
81 See TNA, CAB 3/1 and CAB 3/2.
82 Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defence”, 284.
83 Canada raised “Special Service” contingents of volunteers for South Africa. And the Canadian Expeditionary Force (1914-1919) was also recruited separately from the militia, although many Canadian militiamen and officers volunteered.
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Douglas E. Delaney
Professor Douglas E. Delaney holds the Canada Research Chair in War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada. He is the author of The Imperial Army Project: Britain and the Land forces of the Dominions and India, 1902–1945 (Oxford, 2018), which was runner-up for the Templer Medal in 2019. His latest book is a co-edited volume: Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars (Cornell, 2021). He is a former Chair of War Studies at the Royal Military College, and a retired lieutenant-colonel, having served with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and the Canadian Airborne Regiment.