The Influence of the Imperial Frontier on British Doctrines of Mechanized Warfare

Abstract

One of the most vexatious questions of twentieth century military history concerns the manifest ascendancy of British theoretical development of mechanized warfare during the inter-war period. Why this should be so in a society which was by no means the most motorized in the contemporary world and which was already displaying a distinct penchant for technological stagnation poses a perplexing riddle. Facile attributions of such hegemony to either the inherent genius of the two progenitors of mechanized warfare, J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart, or a shallow acceptance of these theories as an obvious ramification of British experience in the First World War would seem to neglect other profound intellectual and military influences. Such a renowned historian as John Keegan has even written that it is “unrewarding” to speculate on the reasons for British preeminence in military thought during the inter-war years. The search for such explanations, however, constitutes the historian's task.Although definitive resolutions to the conundrums posed by the emergence of intellectual trends can never be achieved, this essay will contend that Britain's leadership in the development of doctrines of mechanized warfare can be partially attributed to her heritage of mobile warfare along the frontiers of empire. The neglect of this imperial dimension is one of the factors which has thus far obscured our understanding of the genesis of innovative thought among British military intellectuals during the interwar years. Furthermore, the tendency to interpret Britain's military role almost solely in reference to the looming armored clashes on the European continent during World War Two has seduced some military historians into ignoring the long-term historical antecedents of an emphasis on celerity of movement bred by the imperial tradition of dynamic attack.