British counter-insurgency: a historiographical reflection

Abstract

The article aims to offer a survey of the historiographical analysis of British counter-insurgency practices and campaigns since the publication of Armed Forces and Modern Counter-insurgency, edited by the author and the late John Pimlott in 1985. It is argued that the volume in question was influential at a time when there was little academic interest in counter-insurgency in Britain. Moreover, the subject generally had been little studied in Britain in the past beyond work by a handful of military writers and theorists. Arguably, the analytical framework followed in Armed Forces and Modern Counter-insurgency holds its value even after over a quarter of a century. Since the 1980s, however, it has become apparent that the subject is of increasing academic interest, not least in terms of the ongoing debate on the nature and application of the concept of ‘minimum force’ in British campaigns.

Keywords:

• counter-insurgency
• colonial warfare
• military theory
• historiography
• minimum force
• British Army
• British campaigns

Notes

 1. Beckett and Pimlott, Armed Forces and Modern Counter-insurgency; Beckett and Pimlott, Counter-insurgency: Lessons from History.

 2. The author's only real primary research on counter-insurgency is to be found in Beckett, ‘Robert Thompson’.

 3. See Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency.

 4. Kitson, Low Intensity Operations.

 5. It is reflected in Beckett, ‘The British Counter-insurgency Campaign in Dhofar’.

 6. Haycock, Regular Armies and Insurgency.

 7. Beckett, Roots of Counter-insurgency.

 8. Charters and Tugwell, Armies in Low-intensity Conflict; Manwaring, Uncomfortable Wars; Marston and Malkasian, Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare.

 9. Beckett, ‘Forward to the Past’; Hazel, ‘British Counter-insurgency Doctrine’.

10. Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava, 13–16.

11. Collinson, ‘Remarks on the Military Operations in New Zealand’, ‘Remarks on Breaching Stockades with Bags of Powder’; Mould, ‘Sketch of the Military Proceedings in New Zealand’; Pasley, ‘The War in New Zealand’.

12. Alexander, Incidents of the Maori War, Bush Fighting, ‘The Armstrong Gun at Taranaki’, ‘Illustrations of the Maori Character’, ‘The Military Road, New Zealand’, ‘Description of a Serviceable Field Work’, ‘Notes on the Maori of New Zealand’.

13. Alexander, Bush Fighting , 7.

14. Baker, ‘Experience in Savage Warfare’; Gawler, ‘British Troops and Savage Warfare’.

15. Beckett, Wolseley and Ashant, 61, 249–50, 279–85.

16. Callwell, ‘Notes on the Tactics of our Small Wars’, ‘Notes on the Strategy of Our Small Wars’, ‘Lessons to be Learnt from the Campaigns in which British Forces have been employed since the year 1865’, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice .

17. Moreman, ‘The British and Indian Armies’, ‘Small Wars and Imperial Policing’, The Army in India .

18. Beckett, ‘Another British Way in Warfare’; Bickel, Mars Learning, 137, 226.

19. Heneker, Bush Warfare; Braithwaite, West African Warfare; Younghusband, Indian Frontier Warfare.

20. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, 19–20, 46, 48.

21. Gwynn, Imperial Policing; Simson, British Rule, and Rebellion.

22. See Palmer, ‘Calling Out the Troops’; Palmer, Police and Protest; Townshend, ‘Martial Law’.

23. Meade, Makers of Modern Strategy; Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy.

24. Preston, Wise, and Warner, Men in Arms.

25. Fuller, The Conduct of War; Ropp, War in the Modern World; Howard, War in European History.

26. Jones, The Art of War in the Western World.

27. Baylis, Booth, Garnett, and Williams, Contemporary Strategy .

28. Falls, The Art of War.

29. Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War; McInnes and Sheffield, Warfare in the Twentieth Century.

30. Ellis, A Short History of Guerrilla Warfare; Asprey, War in the Shadows; Gann, Guerrillas in History; Sarkesian, Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare; Laqueur, Guerrilla.

31. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out of Zion; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya ; Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War; Harper, Shifting Sands; Hoffman, Bruce. The Failure of Britain's Military Strategy in Palestine; Ledger, Last Sunset; Paget, Counter-insurgency Campaigning; Last Post: Aden, 1964 –67; Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya .

32. Bowden, The Breakdown of Public Security; Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, ‘The Defence of Palestine’, ‘Civilisation and Frightfulness’; Cox, ‘A Splendid Training Ground’; Gray, ‘Bombing the Mad Mullah’; Killingray, ‘A Swift Agent of Government’.

33. Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine , ‘British Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign’; Jones, Post-war Counter-insurgency and the SAS, SAS: The First Secret Wars , ‘The British Army and Counter-guerrilla Warfare in Transition’, ‘The British Army and Counter-guerrilla Warfare in Greece’.

34. Bennett, ‘A Very Salutary Effect’; Coates, Suppressing Insurgency; Gregorian, The British Army, the Gurkhas and Cold War Strategy in the Far East, ‘Jungle Bashing in Malaya’; Hack, ‘Screwing Down the People’, ‘Iron Claws on Malaya’, ‘The Malayan Emergency as Counterinsurgency Paradigm’; Holland, ‘Policing during the Malayan Emergency’; Ramakrishna, Emergency Propaganda , ‘Bribing the Reds to Give Up’; Smith, ‘General Templer and Counter-insurgency in Malaya’; Stockwell, ‘Insurgency and Decolonisation during the Malayan Emergency’, ‘A Widespread and Long-concocted Plot?’; Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare.

35. Easter, Britain and the Confrontation with Indonesia; Gregorian, ‘Claret Operations and Confrontation’. See also Van der Bijl, Confrontation .

36. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus.

37. Petersen, Oman's Insurgencies; Walker, Aden Insurgency.

38. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds, ‘Two Faces of 1950s Terrorism’.

39. Heather, ‘Intelligence and Counter-insurgency in Kenya’; Jeffery, ‘Intelligence and Counter-insurgency Operations’; Panagiotis, ‘British Intelligence and the Cyprus Insurgency’; Popplewell, ‘Lacking Intelligence’.

40. Mockaitis, British Counter-insurgency, British Counter-insurgency in the Post-imperial Era; Newsinger, British Counter-insurgency ; Townshend, Britain's Civil Wars.

41. Hamill, Pig in the Middle; Dewar, The British Army in Northern Ireland; Urban, Big Boys' Rules; Van der Bijl, Operation Banner.

42. Kennedy-Pipe and McInnes, ‘The British Army in Northern Ireland’; Newsinger, ‘From Counterinsurgency to Internal Security’; Bennett, ‘From Direct Rule to Motorman’; Thornton, ‘Getting It Wrong’.

43. Hills, ‘Basra and the Referent Points of Twofold War’; Wither, ‘Basra's not Belfast’.

44. Chin, ‘British Counter-insurgency in Afghanistan’, ‘Colonial Warfare in a Post-colonial State’.

45. Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars.

46. Newsinger, ‘Minimum Force’; Mockaitis, ‘Minimum Force’.

47. Percox, ‘British Counter-insurgency (COIN) Policy in Kenya’.

48. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged; Elkins, Imperial Reckoning , ‘Alchemy of Evidence’.

49. Branch, Defeating Mau Mau.

50. Bennett, ‘The Other Side of the COIN’, ‘The Mau Mau Emergency’, ‘Soldiers in the Court Room’, ‘Minimum Force in British Counterinsurgency’; Thornton, ‘The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, ‘Minimum Force: A Reply to Huw Bennett’.

51. Dixon, ‘Hearts and Minds?’; Reis, ‘The Myth of British Minimum Force in Counter-insurgency Campaigns during Decolonisation’.

52. Charters, ‘Special Operations in Counter-insurgency’.

53. Cesarani, Major Farran's Hat.

54. French, The British Way in Counter-insurgency.

55. Hughes, ‘The Practice and Theory of British Counterinsurgency’, ‘The Banality of Brutality’, ‘A Very British Affair?’; Raghaven, ‘Protecting the Raj’; Shoul, ‘Soldiers, Riot Control and Aid to the Civil Power’.

56. Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar; Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre , ‘The Amritsar Massacre and the Minimum Force Debate’, ‘Sir Michael O'Dwyer and Imperial Terrorism in the Punjab’.

57. Warren, ‘Bullocks Treading Down Wasps?’; Robson, Crisis on the Frontier.

58. Jacobsen, ‘Only by the Sword’.

59. Surridge, Managing the South African War, ‘Rebellion, Martial Law and British Civil-Military Relations’.

60. Tripodi, ‘Peace-making Through Bribes or Cultural Empathy’, ‘Good for One but not the Other’, ‘Negotiating with the Tribes of Waziristan’, ‘Negotiating with the Enemy’, Edge of Empire .