Little Manchester University Press Cultural History of Modern War- Little wars of empire

Little Wars of Empire is first history of British multi-war veterans – the soldiers, nurses, and military families who experienced both colonial wars in the British empire and the First World War. Using their personal archives, it works to understand how at the turn of the twentieth century, colonization and militarization were interdependent.

Little wars of empire is the first academic history of a diverse group of British officers, soldiers, nurses, and military families who experienced multiple conflicts in the turn of the century British empire, from so-called expeditions, campaigns, rebellions, and wars to the First World War. By considering the lives of Britons who facilitated this particularly violent period in the history of the British empire and centring the military mobilization that place in response to the resistance of colonized people around the world, this book argues that British colonization and militarization were dependent upon one another.

Multi-war veterans were British men and women who served in or otherwise experienced both colonial wars that took place largely in Africa and World War I. Their lives and military experiences cut across traditional chronological divides between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and across persistent geographical divides between European and colonial theatres of war.

Using a wide range of archival sources, this group biography to asks how multi-war veterans understood and remembered their experiences of violent conflict. Photograph albums, letters, diaries, and family and regimental histories reveal the contradictory ways that multi-war veterans understood their wartime experiences, their roles in the racist politics of empire, and their identities as Britons. Their understandings of what their military service meant shaped how Britain itself came to remember – or disremember – its history of colonial violence. Little wars of empire argues that paradoxically, multi-war veterans themselves allowed the narrative of a “peaceable” nineteenth century British empire to persist.

Little Wars of Empire is a group biography of British veterans who experienced multiple wars across the British empire. Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain was constantly at war in its colonies, defending against anti-colonial resistance or trying to expand its influence. The veterans of these wars did not disappear once they were over, and many of them went on to later experience World War I.

By using personal sources such as letters, diaries, and photograph albums, this book works to show how colonial violence and British military history depend upon one another, and argues that colonial war fundamentally shaped the British experience of empire. This was true for all kinds of British veterans, from British Army soldiers and officers to nurses and military families, whose experiences demonstrate the central place of colonial violence to British life.