Big Implications from Small Wars: The Imperial Vision of Heroism, 1860–1911

Abstract

Large-scale operations of the Crimean and Indian variety were not the normal employment of the British military in the nineteenth century. The Army, and to a lesser extent, the Royal Navy were employed more often in small-scale operations designed to project power in an imperial context. In most cases they encountered a numerically superior but technologically inferior foe, and in so doing further questions as to the nature and limits of the new institutional heroism were raised and resolved. The duties of policing a globe-spanning empire presented a new environment for heroism; facing bodies of disciplined Russians supported by artillery was not the same as facing Maori rebels, cannibalistic Andaman Islanders, or assegai-wielding Zulus. The standard doctrine for mid-nineteenth century colonial warfare placed a premium on implacable aggressiveness as a way of establishing psychological superiority over the enemy.¹ This was reflected in a rash of ‘first in’ Crosses and recommendations in the 1860s, designed to reward the aggressive bravery of those first to breach an enemy stronghold.