George Napier (1784-1855) was a brother of the famous soldiers Sir Charles and Sir William Napier, and himself had a distinguished career in the British Army as general and Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. He wrote these memoirs to guide and amuse his own children, not intending them to be widely circulated. In 1884, however, his son published them, earning a letter of congratulation from Queen Victoria. George Napier tells of his early army life, which took him around Europe from Sicily to Sweden to Bordeaux, and writes of his admiration for the Duke of Wellington, hailing him as 'one of the greatest captains that ever lived'. Napier's reflections on the responsibilities of an army officer (including the duty to obey and not to criticise), and his advice on how a regiment should be commanded, raise this work above a conventional autobiography.

Armies of Empire uniquely reflects upon the experience of two divisions from different armies facing similar challenges in the Second World War. The 9th Australian Division and the British 50th (Northumbrian) Division both saw long service and suffered heavy casualties, and both encountered morale, discipline and battlefield effectiveness problems. In this illuminating, comparative study of Australian and British divisions at war, Allan Converse draws extensively on primary sources as well as recent scholarship on morale and combat efficiency. His fresh approach questions the popular mythology surrounding the Australian Digger and the British Tommy, and shows how it was a combination of leadership, loyalty and tactics, rather than intrinsic national qualities, which resulted in victory for Churchill's armies.

The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict brings together and critically analyses the disparate conventional, customary, and soft law relating to non-international armed conflict. All the relevant bodies of international law are considered, including international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international human rights law. The book traces the changes to the legal framework applicable to non-international armed conflict from ad hoc regulation in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, to systematic regulation through the 1949 Geneva Conventions and 1977 Additional Protocols, to the transformation of the law in the mid-1990s. Armed conflicts ranging from the US civil war, the Algerian War of Independence, and the attempted secession of Biafra, through to the current conflicts in the Colombia, the Philippines, and Sudan are all considered. The identification and analysis of the law is complemented by a consideration of the practice, allowing both violations of, and respect for, the law, to be ascertained. Given that non-international armed conflicts are fought between states and non-state armed groups, or between armed groups, particular attention is paid to the oft-neglected views of armed groups. This is done through an analysis of hundreds of statements, unilateral declarations, internal regulations, and bilateral agreements issued by armed groups. Equivalent material emanating from states parties to conflicts is also considered. The book is thus an essential reference point for the law and practice of non-international armed conflicts.

"What happens if we bet too heavily on unmanned systems, cyber warfare, and special operations in our defense? In today's U.S. defense policy debates, big land wars are out. Drones, cyber weapons, special forces, and space weapons are in. Accordingly, Pentagon budget cuts have honed in on the army and ground forces: this, after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems like an appealing idea. No one really wants American boots on the ground in bloody conflicts abroad. But it is not so easy to simply declare an end to messy land wars. A survey of the world's trouble spots suggests that land warfare has more of a future than many now seem to believe. In The Future of Land Warfare, Michael O'Hanlon offers an analysis of the future of the world's ground forces: Where are large-scale conflicts or other catastrophes most plausible? Which of these could be important enough to require the option of a U.S. military response? And which of these could in turn demand significant numbers of American ground forces in their resolution? O'Hanlon is not predicting or advocating big American roles in such operations-only cautioning against overconfidence that we can and will avoid them. O'Hanlon considers a number of illustrative scenarios in which large conventional forces may be necessary: discouraging Russia from even contemplating attacks against the Baltic states; discouraging China from considering an unfriendly future role on the Korean peninsula; handling an asymmetric threat in the South China Sea with the construction and protection of a number of bases in the Philippines and elsewhere; managing the aftermath of a major and complex humanitarian disaster superimposed on a security crisis-perhaps in South Asia; coping with a severe Ebola outbreak not in the small states of West Africa but in Nigeria, at the same time that country falls further into violence; addressing a further meltdown in security conditions in Central America. "

More than 30,000 Australians visit Gallipoli every year, and the numbers are increasing each year as the centenary of the landing approaches in 2015. This practical guide book enables them plan their trip, work out what to see and in what order, and gives the historical background to the major battles. It gives all the necessary information - both practical and historical - to appreciate what happened, and where. Detailed tours (both walking and with transport) are described, and accompanied by specially drawn maps.

The mounted soldier is one of the most evocative symbols in Australian military history. Now a celebrated part of Australia's army heritage, the role and very existence of mounted troops in modern warfare was being called into question at the time of its most crowning military moments. Light horse regiments, particularly those that served in South Africa, Palestine and the trenches of Gallipoli, played a vital role in Australia's early military campaigns. Based on extensive research from both Australia and Britain, this book is a comprehensive history of the Australian Light Horse in war and peace. Historian Jean Bou examines the place of the light horse in Australia's military history throughout its existence, from its antecedents in the middle of the nineteenth century, until the last regiment was disbanded in 1944.

The story of the British Army has many sides to it, being a tale of heroic successes and tragic failures, of dogged determination and drunken disorder. It involves many of the most vital preoccupations in the history of the island - the struggle against Continental domination by a single power, the battle for Empire - and a cast pf remarkable characters - Marlborough, Wellington and Montgomery among them. Yet the British, relying on their navy, have always neglected their army; from the time of Alfred the Great to the reign of Charles II wars were fought with hired forces disbanded as soon as conflict ended. Even after the stuggles with Louis XIV impelled the formation of a reulgar army, impecunious governments neglected the armed forces except in times of national emergency. In this wide-ranging account, Major Haswell sketches the medieval background before concentrating on the three hundred years of the regular army, leading up to its role in our own time. He presents an informed and probing picture of the organization of the army, the development of weaponry and strategy - and the everyday life of the British soldier through the centuries. John Lewis-Stempel has brought Major Haswell's classic work right up to date by expanding the section on the dissolution of empire to include a full account of Northern Ireland and the Falklands War. He has added a new chapter to cover the Gulf War, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq; also the increasing role of special forces and the amalgamation of regiments.

A single breakthrough could change the world forever.Having just completed a complex recovery assignment, covert salvage specialist Korso is in no mood to take on another job so soon, but he has little choice when he's contacted by Cole Ashcroft, an ex-colleague who's calling in a debt. An official at the US Embassy in Bulgaria has approached Cole with a well-paying salvage job, but only if he can persuade Korso to plan the whole operation. A chemist for a pharmaceutical company has secretly developed a revolutionary glaucoma pill, one with an unexpected side effect that could make it the discovery of the century. But the chemist has since been found dead, and the prototypes are missing... Aware that ownership of these pills could shift the balance of military power overnight, the embassy man offers to pay Korso handsomely to locate and recover them using any means necessary. But with a job this big Korso also knows he'll have to assemble a team to help him, and that brings its own set of problems. Because with potential profits in the billions, can he really trust anyone...? A full-throttle thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end, perfect for fans of Mark Greaney, Ben Coes and Adam Hamdy.

International politics have become ever more volatile over the last decade, increasing the risk of large-scale military violence. Yet the precise character of future war will depend on a range of factors that relate to adversaries, allies, technology, geographical scope and multiple domains of warfighting. Few would question that land forces will be important also in the foreseeable future. However, given that the battlefield is in a state of transformation, so is the mission, purpose and utilization of land forces. Indeed, the future conduct of land warfare is subjected to serious and important questions in the face of large and complex challenges and security threats. Advanced Land Warfare explores the evolving role of land forces, paying particular attention to the changes that have taken place in the art of commanding and executing combat, as well as the role of rapid technological innovation and information dissemination in shaping warfare. The book provides insights into key contemporary developments in land warfare and presents case studies on land tactics and operations in different national contexts, drawing on the best of theory, practice, and professional experience and featuring chapters written by leading international scholars and practitioners. Relating to the realities of the modern battlefield, the book addresses a number of critical questions about land tactics and operations, combining a conceptual basis with empirical examples of tactical thinking and practice and emphasising the importance of understanding the perspectives of various national armies, in order to provide a current understanding of the central issues of land warfare. An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence.

A concisely detailed guide to the Allied tanks that fought from D-Day to the break out from Normandy, their qualities, numbers and performance, and how they were used on the battlefield. When Allied tanks began to roll off the landing craft on D-Day, it marked the start of one of the great periods of tank warfare in World War II. Often outgunned by the German Panzers, and fighting in the close confines of bocage country, they nevertheless managed to break out of Normandy and begin the liberation of Europe. It was a battle that was dominated by the Americans' legendary Sherman, but also saw a wide and complex range of armour committed to battle across the many armies involved, from British Churchills and special-purpose 'Funnies' to the Canadians' Ram tank. This book explains the qualities, strengths and weakness of the major British and US tank types as well as associated Allied units in Normandy including those of the Canadians, Poles and French, and describes how they really fought. It discusses the organization and equipment of the units, providing thumbnail sketches as well as statistical data on the types and categories of AFVs that saw action. This is a handy and concise guide for military historians, wargamers and military modelers interested in tank warfare of World War II.

Fascist Italy's ultimate defeat was foreordained. It was a pygmy among giants, and Hitler's failure to destroy the Soviet Union in 1941 doomed all three Axis powers. But Italy's defeat was unique; the only asset that it conquered - briefly - with its own unaided forces in the entire Second World War was a dusty and useless corner of Africa, British Somaliland. And Italy's forces dissolved in 1943 almost without resistance, in stark contrast to the grim fight to the last cartridge of Hitler's army or the fanatical faithfulness unto death of the troops of Imperial Japan. This book tries to understand why the Italian armed forces and Fascist regime were so remarkably ineffective at an activity - war - central to their existence. It approaches the issue above all from the perspective of military culture, through analysis of the services' failure to imagine modern warfare and through a topical structure that offers a social-cultural, political, military-economic, strategic, operational, and tactical cross-section of the war effort.

Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe examines the important roles of women who campaigned with armies from 1500 to 1815. This included those notable female individuals who assumed male identities to serve in the ranks, but far more numerous and essential were the formidable women who, as women, marched in the train of armies. While some worked as full-time or part-time prostitutes, they more generally performed a variety of necessary gendered tasks, including laundering, sewing, cooking, and nursing. Early modern armies were always accompanied by women and regarded them as essential to the well-being of the troops. Lynn argues that, before 1650, women were also fundamental to armies because they were integral to the pillage economy that maintained troops in the field.

Detention and confinementOCoof both combatants and large groups of civiliansOCohave become fixtures of asymmetric wars over the course of the last century. Counterinsurgency theoreticians and practitioners explain this dizzying rise of detention camps, internment centers, and enclavisation by arguing that such actions protect populations. In this book, Laleh Khalili counters these arguments, telling the story of how this proliferation of concentration camps, strategic hamlets, security walls, and offshore prisons has come to be.
"Time in the Shadows" investigates the two major liberal counterinsurgencies of our day: Israeli occupation of Palestine and the U.S. War on Terror. In rich detail, the book investigates Abu Ghraib, Guantinamo Bay, CIA black sites, the Khiam Prison, and Gaza, among others, and links them to a history of colonial counterinsurgencies from the Boer War and the U.S. Indian wars, to Vietnam, the British small wars in Malaya, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus, and the French pacification of Indochina and Algeria.
Khalili deftly demonstrates that whatever the form of incarcerationOCovisible or invisible, offshore or inland, containing combatants or civiliansOColiberal states have consistently acted illiberally in their counterinsurgency confinements. As our tactics of war have shifted beyond slaughter to elaborate systems of detention, liberal states have warmed to the pursuit of asymmetric wars. Ultimately, Khalili confirms that as tactics of counterinsurgency have been rendered more humane, they have also increasingly encouraged policymakers to willingly choose to wage wars."

The Devon and Dorsets rank among the finest and most respected infantry county regiments and have built and maintained the highest reputation. This latest history, largely pictorial but with easy to digest text, sadly will be their last as the Regiment is being amalgamated into a new large Regiment, The Rifles.

Over the 48 years since the amalgamation of the Devons with the Dorsets in 1958 the D and D's saw service in virtually every operational theatre involving the British Army; Malaya, Aden, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Belize, Iraq to name but some as well as numerous tours in Germany and the UK. Sometimes equipped with Armoured vehicles, at other times relying on their foot patrolling skills, the Regiment has consistently distinguished itself in many and varying testing situations.

This is no dry account of their activities and achievements - on the contrary it is a vibrant celebration of a proud regiment that is moving on in time-honored fashion to meet new challenges.

Illustrated with colour maps and images, this is an introduction to the Franco-Prussian War, a war that marked the beginning of the creation of modern Europe. The Franco-Prussian War started in 1870 when Otto von Bismarck engineered a war with the French Second Empire under Napoleon III, as part of his plan to unite Prussia with the southern German states as a new Germany. Stephen Badsey examines the build-up, battles, and impact of the war, which was an overwhelming Prussian victory with massive consequences. The French Second Empire collapsed, Napoleon III became an exile in Britain, and King Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of the new united Germany. In the peace settlement that followed, Germany gained the eastern French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, areas that were to provide a bone of contention for years to come. Updated for the new edition with revisions from the author and new images throughout, this is an accessible introduction to the largest and most important war fought in Europe between the age of Napoleon and the First World War.

This book describes the role and organization of the land forces of a renaissance state over a long period. It thus provides a model against which the military development of other countries can be measured in terms of the composition, control and cost of armies. Above all, it redresses the imbalance whereby only the naval forces of Venice have been studied seriously. It is thus an essential contribution to an understanding of the extension and maintenance of an empire by land and sea, and of the strength in troops and fortifications that preserved Venice as the one truly independent state in sixteenth-century Italy. It also adds significantly to an understanding of the relationship between Venice and the republic's subject territories.

At peak utilization, private security contractors (PSCs) constituted a larger occupying force in Iraq and Afghanistan than did U.S. troops. Yet, no book has so far assessed the impact of private security companies on military effectiveness. Filling that gap, Molly Dunigan reveals how the increasing tendency to outsource missions to PSCs has significant ramifications for both tactical and long-term strategic military effectiveness--and for the likelihood that the democracies that deploy PSCs will be victorious in warfare, both over the short- and long-term.
She highlights some of the ongoing problems with deploying large numbers of private security contractors alongside the military, specifically identifying the deployment scenarios involving PSCs that are most likely to have either positive or negative implications for military effectiveness. She then provides detailed recommendations to alleviate these problems. Given the likelihood that the U.S. will continue to use PSCs in future contingencies, this book has real implications for the future of U.S. military and foreign policy.

Some rebel groups abuse noncombatant populations, while others exhibit restraint. Insurgent leaders in some countries transform local structures of government, while others simply extract resources for their own benefit. In some contexts, groups kill their victims selectively, while in other environments violence appears indiscriminate, even random. This book presents a theory that accounts for the different strategies pursued by rebel groups in civil war, explaining why patterns of insurgent violence vary so much across conflicts. It does so by examining the membership, structure, and behavior of four insurgent movements in Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru. Drawing on interviews with nearly two hundred combatants and civilians who experienced violence firsthand, it shows that rebels' strategies depend in important ways on how difficult it is to launch a rebellion. The book thus demonstrates how characteristics of the environment in which rebellions emerge constrain rebel organization and shape the patterns of violence that civilians experience.

Cataphracts were the most heavily armoured form of cavalry in the ancient world, with riders and mounts both clad in heavy armour. Originating among the wealthiest nobles of various central Asian steppe tribes, such as the Massegatae and Scythians, they were adopted and adapted by several major empires. The Achaemenid Persians, Seleucids, Sassanians and eventually the Romans and their Byzantine successors. Usually armed with long lances, they harnessed the mobility and mass of the horse to the durability and solid fighting power of the spear-armed phalanx. Although very expensive to equip and maintain (not least due to the need for a supply of suitable horses), they were potential battle winners and remained in use for many centuries. Erich B Anderson assesses the development, equipment, tactics and combat record of cataphracts (and the similar clibanarii), showing also how enemies sought to counter them. This is a valuable study of one of the most interesting weapon systems of the ancient world.

At peak utilization, private security contractors (PSCs) constituted a larger occupying force in Iraq and Afghanistan than did U.S. troops. Yet, no book has so far assessed the impact of private security companies on military effectiveness. Filling that gap, Molly Dunigan reveals how the increasing tendency to outsource missions to PSCs has significant ramifications for both tactical and long-term strategic military effectiveness--and for the likelihood that the democracies that deploy PSCs will be victorious in warfare, both over the short- and long-term.
She highlights some of the ongoing problems with deploying large numbers of private security contractors alongside the military, specifically identifying the deployment scenarios involving PSCs that are most likely to have either positive or negative implications for military effectiveness. She then provides detailed recommendations to alleviate these problems. Given the likelihood that the U.S. will continue to use PSCs in future contingencies, this book has real implications for the future of U.S. military and foreign policy.

Few island nations have stirred the soul like Cuba. From Hemingway's intoxicating Havana to Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club, outsiders have persistently been fascinated by Cuba for its music (jazz to rumba), its rich literature, its art and dance (danzon to mambo) and perhaps above all for its bold experiment of a socialist revolution in action. Antoni Kapcia shows how the thaw in relations between Cuba and the USA now makes a fresh appraisal of the country and its modern history essential. He authoritatively explores the `essence' of the Cuban revolution, revealing it to be a maverick phenomenon tied not so much to socialism or Communism for their own sakes but instead to an idealistic vision of postcolonial nationalism. Reassessing the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the author examines the central personalities: not just the famous trio of Che Guevara, Fidel and Raul Castro in shaping the ideas of the revolution but, still further back, the visionary ideology of Jose Marti. Kapcia's book reflects on the future of the revolution as Raul and his government begin to cede power to a new generation.

At 21:00 on 9 May 1940 Codeword Danzig was issued alerting Adolf Hitler's airborne troops that they were about to spearhead an attack on Belgium and the Netherlands. The following day his blitzkrieg rolled forward striking the British Expeditionary Force and the French armies in Belgium and in northern France at Sedan. The desperate attempts of the allied armies to stem the Nazi tide proved futile and, once their reserves had been exhausted and the remaining forces cut off, Paris lay open. By early June, it was all over - trapped British, Belgian and French troops were forced to evacuate Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne and the defeated French army agreed to an armistice leaving the country divided in two. This dramatic story is shown in a sequence of over 150 historic photographs that Anthony Tucker-Jones he has selected for this memorable book. The images he has chosen cover every aspect of this extraordinary campaign, but his main focus is on the vital role played by the armoured fighting vehicles of both sides. The book is a graphic record of the destruction wrought by the Wehrmacht's lightning offensive through the Low Countries and France.

In this book, Ariel Ahram offers a new perspective on a growing threat to international and human security--the reliance of 'weak states' on quasi-official militias, paramilitaries, and warlords.
Tracing the history of several "high profile" paramilitary organizations, including Indonesia's various militia factions, Iraq's tribal "awakening," and Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Basij corps, the book shows why and how states co-opt these groups, turning former rebels into state-sponsored militias. Building on an historical and comparative empirical approach that emphasizes decolonization, revolution, and international threat, the author offers a new set of policy prescriptions for addressing this escalating international crisis--with particular attention to strategies for mitigating the impact of this devolution of violence on the internal and international stability of states.