In 1901, six previously independent Australian colonies, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia. One of the catalysts was the need for national defence as distinct from each colony providing for its own security. Strategic and technological developments meant that a national, coordinated approach to defending Australia was needed to counter rising European Imperialism and Asian nationalism. Federation had long been a desired outcome in British Imperial policy. Even though the six colonies shared a continent, they were, in effect, separate nations with their own defence forces, customs and border checks, laws and even differing local currency and railway gauges. This diversity was to greatly impact on their ability to work together for the ‘national good’ and, until Federation was achieved, it certainly hampered attempts to develop national defence.

The Australian colonies had all achieved self-government through a similar process during the second half of the nineteenth century. As noted by Lord Grey, a requirement was that each colony must develop a scheme of defence against external attack. This could be achieved either by raising citizen forces within the colony, paying for an Imperial garrison, hosting ships of the Royal Navy's Australia Station, or a combination of all three. Each colony also had the secondary task of maintaining law and order. In the absence of organized and effective police forces, this latter task traditionally fell upon the military.

Each of the Australian colonies had a British garrison of varying size and type until 1870; occasionally, they also played host to ships of the Royal Navy. Despite this Imperial presence, the number of redcoats was far too small to mount an effective defence of each colony from external attack while at the same time ensuring internal stability. Colonial governments, therefore, relied on raising units of local citizens acting in a voluntary capacity, to provide a measure of defence. To understand this important role, one needs an overview of colonial defence in Australia, how it evolved over time, and its links to the wider Imperial defence.

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815), the nature of the ‘amateur military tradition’ in Britain took on new forms. The militia, organized on a systematic basis since the mid-sixteenth century, was supplemented by a revival of the volunteers – first legislated for in 1782 at the close of the American Revolutionary War (1775–83) – and by the first appearance of the mounted volunteers or yeomanry. At the time of the Queen's accession in 1837, however, the militia and volunteers were both in effective abeyance, and the yeomanry had been reduced in strength to just over 19,000 officers and men. That the triumvirate of militia, volunteers and yeomanry in Britain should number over 361,000 in 1903 was testament both to continuing anxieties concerning external and internal threats during the course of her reign but also to the continuing perception of the wider political, social and cultural utility of the auxiliary forces. They provided the essential point of contact between army and society in Britain when the regular army was limited in size and invariably serving overseas. Thus, the militia, yeomanry and volunteers continuously reflected and transmitted attitudes towards military participation. Ultimately, the popular response to the South African War also demonstrated the role of the auxiliaries in the growth of militarism in Victorian Britain.

The militia had been disembodied at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and training suspended, only the permanent staff being retained. A new militia ballot – the force had been liable to conscription since 1757 – was ordered in July 1816 but actual training suspended annually until 1820. Training was then held in both 1821 and 1825. Another ballot was ordered in 1828 but suspended in 1829. In 1830 yet another ballot was ordered in the wake of the domestic reform crisis, and the fall of the French Bourbon monarchy, it being intended to train the force in the summer of 1831. In the event, popular opposition to the ballot brought its suspension in July 1831. The militia also came close to losing its permanent staff altogether in 1834–5.

Introduction

South Asia makes up almost one-fifth of the world's human population. And the Indian Army is the fourth largest in the world. The organizational ethos and manpower policy of the postcolonial states’ militaries to a great extent remain similar to that of the colonial army. The basic building block for both Indian and Pakistan armies remain the regimental structure of the British-Indian Army. Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) continue in the armies of both independent nations. However, it would be wrong to argue that independence did not usher any changes in the military machines of India and Pakistan. White officers were replaced by the brown officers. And instead of serving British imperial interests, the armies of India and Pakistan started fighting each other immediately after they were born.

Partition and the First India–Pakistan War, 1947–8

In 1947, after the partition of the subcontinent, India received 260,000 soldiers and Pakistan's share was 140,000 men. The Pakistan Army was organized in six infantry divisions and an armoured brigade. The basic structure of the Indian and Pakistan armies are more or less similar. A Pakistan Army division is commanded by a major-general and a brigade by a brigadier. The infantry division comprises infantry, artillery, engineers, signals, communications, supply and other support services required for sustained combat. An infantry division has three to four brigades and each brigade has three regiments. An Indian Army infantry division has three brigades and each brigade has three battalions. An infantry battalion has four rifle companies.

The Transformation of the Military Landscape

The structure of warfare changed during the early modern era. Historians of West European warfare are still debating whether it involved a military revolution (or a series of military revolutions) or a long military evolution. However, all scholars agree about the transition from medieval to modern warfare from c. 1500 to c. 1700. The changes in the format of warfare occurred in the fields of arms, equipment, organization and command. By 1550, arquebus replaced the crossbow as the principal missile weapon in the West European armies. Handguns caused immense casualties to masses of pikemen which had earlier driven away the feudal heavy cavalry from the military landscape. So, the armies included handgun-equipped infantry to protect their own pikemen and inflict casualties on the pikemen of the hostile parties. Gradually, the percentage of hand gunners among the infantry rose. During the 1690s and early 1700s, pikes were replaced with muskets fitted with bayonets. Matchlocks were gradually replaced with flintlocks attached with socket bayonets. The rate of misfire of a sixteenth-century arquebus was 50 per cent. However, the rate of misfire with a flintlock was reduced to 20 per cent. The post-1660 period witnessed the emergence of the prepackaged cartridge. The late seventeenth century witnessed transformation in the field of siege warfare. Parallels and zig-zag trenches along with mortars made their appearance.

The heyday of the military entrepreneurs in West and Central Europe was the era of Thirty Years’ War (1618–48).

Field Marshal Alexander Leslie and the majority of his fellow Scottish generals who served in the Thirty Years' War (1618–48) rose from predominantly humble social origins to make an impact on not only the campaigns of the continental conflicts in which they fought but also those that swept across the British Isles in the 1630s and 1640s. These men did so despite living in a contemporary culture dominated by the activities of Scotland's noble elite – a culture very often reimagined by a historiography solely concerned with the activities of the upper echelons of society. Through the study of Leslie and his contemporaries, however, a narrative emerges that demonstrates that the practice of military service, while helping to maintain the dominance of certain noble families within Scotland, also offered an effective vehicle towards social advancement for the soldiering class, both at home and abroad. This book does not suggest an alternative to the social structuring of society in early modern Scotland, but it does offer what has been lacking in previous biographies of Leslie and his contemporaries: an understanding of where and how they developed their military skills, and why they might have needed to immerse themselves in the art of war in the first place.

Tracing the origins of Alexander Leslie is not straightforward. His biographer, C. S. Terry, presents scant information on Leslie's roots or early years and lacks definite information on Alexander Leslie's parentage and place of birth.

Introduction

From the beginning of British rule until the end of the Raj in the subcontinent, the bulk of the soldiers of the British Indian Empire were Indian. They were recruited as sepoys (infantry and from the twentieth century known as jawans), sowars (cavalry) and golundazs (gunners). The land forces of British-India were collectively known as the Army in India. It was made up of British units and Indian units officered by the British. The Indian units officered by the British came under the Indian Army. Up to 1859, along with units of the British Army, the EIC also deployed its own private European units. This force was abolished after the White Mutiny in 1859. Until the 1890s, the land forces of British-India were divided into four armies: Bengal, Madras and Bombay armies and the Punjab Frontier Force (PFF, also known as the Punjab Irregular Force (PIF)). Each army included both British and Indian units. After 1859, selected contingents of the Indian princely troops equipped and officered by the British made up the Imperial Service Troops (IST), which also formed part of the Indian Army. The basic organizational structure of all these forces remained the regiment. General accounts of British-Indian military tend to focus on the role of sahibs (British officers) and to an extent on the sepoys and the sowars; Indian VCOs and the NCOs remain in limbo in such accounts. This chapter, by contextualizing the important roles played by the Indian VCOs and NCOs, attempts to redress the above-mentioned historiographical slip.

The principal Scottish generals discussed in this book – Alexander Leslie, Patrick Ruthven and James King – were born in the early reign of James VI and had direct or closely associated contact with violence at a familial or national level in their youth. It is arguable that the violence inherent in Scottish society in the later sixteenth century in some way fuelled their decision to enter military service. As discussed in Chapter 2, this choice eventually required them to move abroad in an effort to escape the violence or regain prestige for their family or even simply to earn a living. The Scottish proclivity for warlike behaviour has long dominated accounts of the nation's history. It is particularly evident in the stereotypical image of the early modern Scottish soldier – an image itself often drawn from, and conflating, a prejudicial view of Scottish ‘incivility’ and seasonal mercenary service in Ireland undertaken by men levied in the Highlands. Modern scholarship has done much to challenge and address our perceptions of the Scots, and Scottish Gael in particular, in this context. Scottish mercenaries certainly could be found in the period but, as discussed below, these did not represent the full extent of Scottish military power at home, nor did they even represent the main vehicle for Scottish military intervention abroad.

On 11 October 1899, after a lengthy period of failed negotiations, explosive rhetoric, ‘penultimatums’, and ultimatums, war between Great Britain and its empire and the Boer republics of the Transvaal (South African Republic) and the Orange Free State began. This armed conflict, the South African War (also known as the Second Anglo-Boer War and Die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog), officially concluded on the last day of May 1902 with the combatants’ acceptance of the Treaty of Vereeniging. The South African War has been labelled by some historians as one of Great Britain's ‘small wars’, but in terms of cost, duration, strategy and tactics it was hardly a campaign reminiscent of the many imperial conflicts it waged in Africa and Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century. But more so than any of those above factors, what distinguished the South African War from the others was the stress and strain put on the manpower resources of Britain's Regular Army. Unable to cope with determined Boer resistance, let alone Boer offensives into the British colonies of Natal and the Cape Colony, the army and the government were forced to look elsewhere to raise sufficient numbers of able-bodied men to bring the war to its successful conclusion. It found the answer to its problems in the expansion and modification of its auxiliary services – the Militia, Yeomanry and volunteers. In calling on British and imperial subjects to volunteer for overseas service, Great Britain was able to amass the necessary numbers to overwhelm Boer resistance and bring the war to its successful conclusion.

The origins of the South African War remain hotly contested by historians to this day. They have been the subject of a number of fine monographs and only a brief summary will be provided here. British ambitions in Southern Africa changed dramatically in the last third of the nineteenth century. The discovery of diamonds in the Kimberley region (Griqualand West) stimulated large-scale capital investment in the 1870s. In order to procure cheap labour and stabilize the region politically, Great Britain annexed territory, crushed local African resistance, and thwarted the efforts of ‘freebooting’ Boers.

Military history is neglected in the South Asian academic circuit due to the dominance of Marxism and, more recently, postmodernism. M. K. Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence and the Indian National Congress-led freedom struggle against British imperialism in South Asia also resulted in the marginalization of academic study of war in postcolonial India. And Western readers are mostly interested in the military adventures of the British in India. This book eschews the traditional ‘battles and campaigns’ approach and attempts to understand who joined the armies and why. Instead of the ‘drums and button’ history, rather than glorifying the valour and heroics of the regiments, the objective is to study the dialectics of the recruitment policies of the ruling elite and the objectives of the different communities from various regions who served in the armies and the navies at different times in varying numbers.

Some scholars have turned their attention to the issue of military recruitment and state building in South Asia. One of the longue durée studies we have is Stephen Rosen's monograph, Societies and Military Power: India and its Armies (1996). He argues that due to the divisive caste system, indigenous armies were merely mobs. This volume shows that far from being an armed mob, the pre-British indigenous armies were capable of manoeuvring and were not technologically stagnant. In fact, pre-British warfare was characterized by decisive battles and sieges. Further, by over-emphasizing the influence of the caste system, Rosen is reverting to a mono-causal reductionist argument.

Throughout the preceding chapters, McGrigor has frequently been identified as an important figure in the militarization of army medicine and in the promotion of the military medical officer identity. His appointment as inspector of hospitals in the Peninsula, and his subsequent role at the head of the AMD made him arguably the most influential individual in military medicine during, and for the half century following, the Peninsular War. This chapter will focus on McGrigor in the Peninsula, and will reconsider the traditional account of his time there in the context of the conclusions about military medicine already advanced. It will go on to discuss how and why McGrigor cultivated the patronage of Wellington, and the importance of that process to the military medical officer identity and to the militarization of army medicine.

The official writings, publications, records and personal letters of such an important figure should be subject to rigorous examination, but McGrigor's autobiography (which lingers on his time in the Peninsula) has been adopted almost without question by his biographer, Blanco, and other historians of the Wars such as Cantlie. These narratives are traditionally dominated by accounts of his ‘warm relationship’ with Wellington, his administrative reforms in the general hospitals and in casualty evacuation, and his innovations in medical returns. McGrigor is also credited with significant achievements in the elevation of the status of medical officers. Together, these form an oft-repeated triumphal medical history of the final years of the Wars.

The AMB was overhauled again in 1798 and given a new constitution. Sir Lucas Pepys and Thomas Keate remained on the AMB as physician and surgeon general, respectively, and Francis Knight was appointed inspector general of army hospitals. The AMB's new constitution divided previously shared responsibilities, created overlapping duties and resulted in illogical processes of appointment and promotion of medical officers. The Board was notorious for the infighting in which its members engaged and it was eventually discontinued. On 27 February 1810, the London Gazette announced the appointment of John Weir as director general and Theodore Gordon and Charles Kerr as principal inspectors of a new board ‘for superintending and conducting the whole Medical Business of the Army’.

The divisions within the AMD, between the AMB and the new school of ‘military medical officers’ adverted to in Chapter 1, widened during the course of the 1798 Board's tenure and provided a key focus for the expression of competing visions of the future of the AMD and military medicine generally. This chapter will examine those conflicts, which culminated in an inquiry into the Walcheren Campaign in 1809. It will show that debates about military medicine became violently personal and factionalized and that the vicious nature of these debates was driven not solely by an intellectual commitment to particular theories of disease, but also by a desire to procure the patronage of powerful men, such as the members of the AMB.

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British doctors travelled in unprecedented numbers to foreign and often exotic locations where they were confronted with battlefield injuries, virulent and mysterious diseases and complex military politics that few had encountered before. These experiences changed the way they viewed their profession, the nature of disease and the types of treatment that were effective. This book makes a departure from histories which depict their work as bloody, violent and futile, to examine instead how nearly twenty five years of sustained warfare affected the professional identity embraced by those doctors and thoroughly militarized their approach to medicine. I argue that the philosophy they came to embrace – that military medicine was a specialized field – was not only important to the practice of medicine within the British army, but also had significant implications for the development of medicine in nineteenth-century Britain.

Throughout the following chapters a handful of senior medical officers feature prominently as their influence on the development of military medicine is traced through their participation in campaign after campaign from 1793 to 1815. These men headed a department which expanded tenfold over the course of the Wars, providing vital opportunities for experiment and implementation of new ideas. It housed a large pool of medical recruits eager to learn and get ahead. In 1789, 152 medical officers were serving with the department; by 1814 this number had risen to 1,274. Over the entire period, 2,834 medical officers were recruited.