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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Military Education and the British Empire, 1815–1949

Military education was the lifeblood of the armies, navies, and air forces of the British Empire and an essential ingredient for success in both war and peace. Military Education and the British Empire is the first major scholarly work to address the role of military education in maintaining the empire throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bringing together the world’s top scholars on the subject, this book places distinct national narratives – Canadian, Australian, South African, British, and Indian – within a comparative context. Ultimately, this book allows readers to consider the connections between education and empire from a transnational perspective.

268 pages | © 2018


Table of Contents

Introduction / Douglas E. Delaney and Robert C. Engen

1 Ubique: The Royal Engineers Establishment, 1815–69 / Claire Cookson-Hills

2 Fashioning Imperial Canadians: The Royal Military College, 1874–1900 / E. Jane Errington

3 “Doctrine, the Soul of Warfare”: Sir Julian Corbett and the Teaching of Strategy in the Royal Navy before 1914 / Andrew Lambert

4 Australian Military Education, 1901–18 / John Connor

5 South Africa and the Making of Military Officers, 1902–48 / Ian van der Waag

6 The Spirit of an Air Force: Learning about Air Power, 1919–49 / Randall Wakelam

7 Preparing for a Better War: The Admiralty’s Challenge of Educating Naval Officers, 1919–39 / Joseph Moretz

8 The British and Indian Army Staff Colleges in the Interwar Years / Mark Frost

9 Education in the Indian Army, 1920–46 / Alan Jeffreys

10 “Necessarily of an Experimental Character”: The Interwar Period and the Imperial Defence College / Andrew Stewart

11 From Imperial to Nationalist Canadians: The Impact of the Second World War on Canadian Army Staff Education / Howard G. Coombs

Concluding Remarks / Douglas E. Delaney and Meghan Fitzpatrick

Select Bibliography; List of Contributors; Index

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