« The administration of discipline by the English is very rigid ». British Military Law and the Death Penalty (1868-1918)

Abstract

For too long, historians have regarded military law in isolation, as if it were an organic entity whose evolution is separate from the parent society. Taking as its starting point the relative severity of punishments — particularly the death penalty – in the British army during the First World War, this article analyses similarities in approaches to punishments in both the military and criminal codes. Despite attempts to reform the military code during the late nineteenth-century, those responsible for the the regulation of discipline in the army clung to traditional forms of punishment rather than modernising practises. In this respect Britain had more in common with the older empires of Russia and Austria than it did with those in France and Germany or with the United States. It is argued that the varying approaches to military discipline was clearly related to practises in modes of punishment within the parent societies.