Crisis of loyalty and the defense of Empire in the estimates of the british Military class: colonial army during the inter-war period

Abstract

In the interwar period, three powerful ideological factors – nationalism, pan-Islamism, and communism - simultaneously undermined the power of the metropolis in the dependent territories. Behind this façade, as was reasonably assumed in Delhi, Simla, Jerusalem, Cairo, and London, the interests of rival states were concealed. Overseas territories were seen both as a source of strength (economy, international prestige) and weakness (diversion of resources because of the leadership’s belief in the existence of an external threat).The historiography of the British Empire pays attention to how the colonial administrations and the metropolis responded to the challenges posed by the prospects of combining crises of loyalty and worsening international competition into a single problem of ensuring colonial order after the First World War. The question remains open about how the representatives of the military class themselves looked at such a cross-border threat. The article shows that, in this light, one of the key topics for the army corporation in the framework of the professional discussion was the institutionalization of the colonial army. To what extent did the esprit de corps of the British Army have an imperil character in terms of institutional peculiarities and public self-presentation? Was colonial service has been perceived as a priority over participation in conventional conflict in the training of the officer corps? How was it supposed to solve the problem of the growing obligations of the army to suppress anti-colonial protests (including guerrilla warfare in full-scale) against the background of worsening international relations, financial shortages and personnel restrictions? To what extend did the logics of the military thought development and corporate interests had mirrored the evolution of the colonial rule’ models after the Great War? As the results of the presented study demonstrates, these issues did not only constellate internal and interdepartmental discussions on the declared topic. Their participants had a hand in the further development of a wider discursive field – about the prospects for the future of the British Empire as such.