The Victorians at War (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Victorians at War Richard D. Fulton (bio) Ian Beckett , The Victorians at War (London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2003), pp. xv+272, $29.95 cloth. Victorians at War reads something like a script for a Michael Woodnarrated television series in search of the Victorian army. Each of the 22 chapters begins with a description of a contemporary place: "A simple, small square stone in a clearing by a crossroads in a Virginian wood," he opens chapter one, "is not the most obvious place from which to consider any aspect of the Victorian army… ." But he goes on to make that connection by showing how strongly the Confederate cause and Confederate tactics influenced the new (1870s–80s) generation of British army officers: Garnet Wolseley, Lord Roberts, George Colley and the various people under their commands. Or this beginning to "Stanhope's Storehouses": "Just behind the National Trust visitor centre and shop on Box Hill overlooking Dorking lies a now somewhat overgrown 'fort' originally constructed as part of the defences of London in 1888." Even serious Victorianists who have read (or at least have heard of) Chesney's Battle of Dorking are no doubt unaware that forts were built in 1888 to defend London against an invasion that was imagined in large part because of that classic Blackwood's short novel. But Beckett uses the fort as a jumping off place to discuss the politics of army organization and Stanhope's many successes as Secretary of State, including the issuance of the famous Stanhope Memorandum that finally (and incredibly) described the army's reason for being and how the description split both military and civilian politicians between Imperialists and Home Defencers. Throughout, Beckett adds odd little details that bring color and life to his narratives, from the simple (the Crimean Tommy's nickname "Got Such a Cough" for the Russian general Gorchakov) to the more crucial (mid-Victorian [End Page 330] artillery expertise was impeded by the fact that the line of fire on the Plumstead range crossed the Thames, and practice had to be suspended any time a vessel moved up or down river). Beckett describes how various forms of politics permeated the Victorian army, the various "rings" surrounding promising young officers, family influences, Parliamentary influences, personalities, personal quirks (from teetotalers to hopeless drunks, evangelicals to inveterate cads), physical abilities and disabilities, resentments over real or imagined slights. He also reminds his reader constantly that a consideration of the Victorian army must always be in the context of the geography of where it was stationed, the technology at its disposal, and the Victorian social and political culture that never really knew how to deal with the expensive complexities of a military establishment with multiple, and often contradictory, missions. Ultimately, this collection of essays focuses not so much on the Victorians at War – Victorian upper-class officers, yes, but not Victorian clerks or common soldiers (for Ian Beckett on Tommy Atkins, see The Amateur Military Tradition [1991]). But it is still an important reminder that for a significant slice of Victorian society, war (and glory, honor, courage – and medals, promotions, and Orders) was life. Everything else was just marking time. The only quarrel I have with this book is that it devotes too little space to the interplay between the military establishment and an increasingly influential press. Beckett gives William Howard Russell his due, and mentions the sometimes stormy relationship between commanders such as Kitchener in the Sudan and Roberts in South Africa and an aggressive press corps whose self-perceived role was often at odds with the official military mission. He mentions in passing press corps casualties in the frantic combats in the little wars in Africa, but he doesn't give us much about the influence of the press on public attitudes toward army issues, or of the specialized military press (the United Service Journal, the Journal of the United Service Institution, etc.) on military politics. Occasionally, he gets his press information wrong: Frank Vizetelly becomes Frank Vizitelly; he claims that "Three entirely new illustrated weekly periodicals appeared in January 1900 – the first to be launched since 1842… ." when in fact numerous pictorials...