ABSTRACT

The military history of Britain in the modern world, especially as addressed by the “new” scholarship on war and society, is a study of four interlocking themes that stretch from the outbreak of the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century to the current deployments of British forces in the Middle East. First, this period of British history has marked the rise of a relatively small, underpopulated island to become a powerful state and then, following the Second World War, struggle to define itself as a member of the EU, in a special relationship with the United States and as a former hegemon. Second, during its height, the British were also the imperial power, with a reach into all corners of the globe and into the lives of hundreds of millions of subject people. Many of them performed significant military roles in war production or as “martial race” soldiers and sailors. Others’ resistance against Britain justified the maintenance and expansion of vast armies and navies answering to both the state and corporate masters. Third, the sheer vastness of the empire, from its roots in the unification of the British Isles themselves, and the diversity of populations meant that military service, conquest, and traditions have been baked in as a cultural identity and assimilation tool since the Hundred Years’ War. Fourth, the means by which this dominance came about—undergirded by signature institutions in Britain, such as the Bank of England’s constitutional limits on the military’s political influence, military investments that stoked the Industrial Revolution, or strategic campaign decisions that redrew the world’s maps—shape a legacy of Anglophone legal, military, cultural, and economic structures around the globe.