The Wandering Army: The Campaigns that Transformed the British Way of War. Huw J. Davies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022.
The Wandering Army by Huw J. Davies adds a new perspective to long-established scholarly debates on the British way of war. Whereas most scholars agree the British navy holds a special place of honor in understanding any conceptual British way of war, Davies instead promotes a boots-on-the-ground approach centered on the expeditionary nature of British arms. In this telling, the British army’s ability to institutionally develop, distribute, and apply knowledge during the long 18th century led to a worldwide military enlightenment.
A reader in Early Modern Military History at King’s College in London and the author of three books on the period, Huw J. Davies is eminently qualified to write on the topic of the British army of the 18th and 19th centuries. He relies on an impressive array of original source documents in the form of personal correspondences, memoranda, journals, and campaign maps, many of which have been previously overlooked or inaccessible to scholars. The Wandering Army is an attractive book and benefits from a plethora of colorful maps, images, and figures. Perhaps most impressively, Davies research spanned four continents and included collections held at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, the Wellington Papers at the University of Southampton, the Sir Eyre Coote papers at Michigan University, the papers of the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, D.C., the Punjab Archives in Lahore, the National Library of Australia, and the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney…to name only a few.
This combination of rich, original source material allows Davies to insightfully navigate and recreate the process of British officers’ observational and experiential learning throughout diverse and distant theaters of war. According to Davies, the need to face enemies who used novel tactics and strategies on unfamiliar terrain necessitated the need for the British army to learn and adapt to many new challenges. This need led officers and aristocratic elites to share their individual experiences and lessons learned via “informal knowledge networks” within their professional circles.[1] As Davies describes it, this spread of knowledge led to a military enlightenment and the professionalization of the British army. The descriptive analysis of how the British army learned by sharing doctrinal pamphlets, improving cartography, and conducting staff rides, cross training exercises, battle simulations, practice encampments, and war games is one of the many strengths of The Wandering Army. These new approaches for the preparation of military forces furthered the professionalization of the British army.
“Montcalm leading his troops at the Plains of Abraham” by Charles William Jefferys (Library & Archives Canada/Wikimedia)
The idea of knowledge diffusion throughout the ranks is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Davies’ book. He traces the professional associations of senior officers, their subordinates, and aristocratic elites throughout Great Britain’s many wars to create a link analysis of sorts, showing how ideas and lessons learned were interpersonally spread throughout the army. Notably, Davies guides the reader through Edward Braddock’s catastrophe in the Pennsylvanian backwoods, Jeffrey Amherst’s use of irregular tactics during the New York campaigns, and James Wolfe and Louis Montcalm’s showdown on the Plains of Abraham during the Seven Years’ War, describing how many of the junior officers who served in these battles later went on to assume senior positions and pass their lessons learned to their new units for use in the wars which followed.
Davies shows how the British army’s foundational experiences in the Seven Years’ War led British officers to theorize a new style of hybrid warfare, resulting in the creation of light infantry units capable of conducting both regular and irregular missions. Despite early setbacks, this new style of warfare was molded from lessons learned during the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years’ War, and the American Revolution and later enabled army victories over Tipu Sultan during the Third and Fourth Mysore Wars, the capture of Egypt from French forces, and victories over Napoleon’s generals during the Peninsular Campaign. To great effect, Davies shows that each of these victories were the result of lessons learned by officers who had learned from their past battle experiences.
Although he never uses the term in his book, the processes Davies describes are known as a revolution in military affairs. Although the term is somewhat out of fashion, MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray’s influential The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 define a revolution in military affairs as the process of “[m]ilitary organizations embark[ing] upon an RMA by devising new ways of destroying their opponents.”[2] They go on to suggest, “Revolutions in military affairs require a complex mix of tactical, organizational, doctrinal, and technological innovations to implement a new conceptual approach to warfare.”[3] The military enlightenment and the creation of hybrid warfare and light infantry units Davies describes in The Wandering Army should be considered a part of a grander revolution happening across the globe in the 18th century.
Other strengths of The Wandering Army include a critical look at the tensions and frictions within the officer class as key debates raged over whether to pursue decisive battle or wars of maneuver. This was due to many officers’ contrasting ideas from their experiences in foreign lands. Although the debate over whether to pursue decisive battle or use maneuver warfare was not unique to the British experience, Davies goes into great depth about how these differences of opinions impacted British operations in North America and may have even cost the British victory over their American cousins during the American Revolutionary War.
Despite its many key insights, The Wandering Army does not always see the forest for the trees. Although it is chock full of details and makes many profound connections, Davies sometimes fails to situate the importance of the issue in a broader global context, making it inaccessible for the uninformed reader. This book is very much written for the expert, while those unfamiliar with military history’s broader themes may have trouble grasping the significance of the military enlightenment Davies describes. Nonetheless, the reader well-versed in the period and the British army will find much to be excited about in Davies book.
One may quibble with some of Davies' conclusions, but overall The Wandering Army offers a new and powerful perspective on debates surrounding the British way of war. By suggesting that observational and experiential learning in previous wars led to experimentation and knowledge diffusion throughout the officer class, Davies challenges previous views on an old subject. As such, The Wandering Army makes a great contribution to the field of military history and is one that should be considered of interest to experts as Davies crafts a very interesting book that furthers opportunities for study and debate.
Brandon Bernick, is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer and a former instructor of history at the United States Military Academy and Florida State University, where he taught African, European, and U.S. Military histories as well as a senior seminar course on Military Intelligence. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: “The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras” by Elizabeth Thompson, Lady Butler (and Adobe, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2019 (National Gallery of Victoria/Wikimedia)
Notes:
[1] The concept of knowledge networks, both formal and informal, are a systemic approach used to describe the processes of knowledge diffusion throughout organizations, institutions, and social groupings. It can be applied to a variety of disciplines. See, Katrina Pugh and Laurence Prusak, “Designing Effective Knowledge Networks,” MIT Sloan Management Review 55, no. 1 (Fall 2013), https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/designing-effective-knowledge-networks/.
[2] MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, ed., The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 12.
[3] Knox and Murray, The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 12.