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The regimental system has been the foundation of the British army for three hundred years. This iconoclastic study shows how it was refashioned in the late nineteenth century, and how it was subsequently and repeatedly reinvented to suit the changing roles that were forced upon the army. Based upon a combination of official papers, private papers and personal reminiscences, and upon research in the National Archives, regimental museums and collections, and other depositories, this book challenges the assumptions of both the exponents and detractors of the system. The author, David French, shows that there was not one, but several, regimental systems and he demonstrates that localised recruiting was usually a failure. Many regiments were never able to draw more than a small proportion of their recruits from their own districts. He shows that regimental loyalties were not a primordial force; regimental authorities had to create them and in the late nineteenth century they manufactured new traditions with gusto, whilst in both World Wars regimental postings quickly broke down and regiments had to take recruits from wherever they could find them. French also argues that the notion that the British army was bad at fighting big battles because the regimental system created a parochial military culture is facile. This is the first book to strip away the myths that have been deliberately manufactured to justify or to condemn the regimental system and to uncover the reality beneath them. It thus illuminates our understanding of the past while simultaneously throwing glaring new light on the still continuing debate over the place of the regimental system in the modern army today.
Militarism has traditionally been regarded as a phenomenon of the political right. As this book demonstrates, however, various groups on the political left in Britain during the years before the Great War were able to accommodate, and even assimilate, militaristic ideas, sentiments, and policies to a remarkable degree.
A comprehensive account of how British race patriotism shaped the defense partnership between Britain and the dominions before the Great War.
 This is the second volume of a two-volume work entitled The British Army on Bloomsday. It contains detailed explanations of the military allusions in James Joyce’s groundbreaking novel, Ulysses, as well as an in-depth look at the two principal, fictional military characters: Major Brian Tweedy and his daughter, Marion (Molly Bloom). Also included are chapters on the minor military characters and personages that appear in the novel, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers (Tweedy’s old regiment), Gibraltar of the nineteenth century, and the British Army in Ireland on Bloomsday. The appendices contain period photographs of 1880s Gibraltar (where Molly Bloom spent her formative years) and barracks and other army facilities in Late-Victorian Dublin. While the first volume focuses on the British Army, this volume, The British Army in Ulysses, narrows in on the novel. The chapters on Molly Bloom and Major Tweedy present new findings that will likely provoke controversy among Joyceans. From the Introduction: James Joyce spent a good deal of his youth, and all his university years, in a British Army garrison city: Dublin. Throughout that period, 4,500 to 5,500 soldiers were quartered in that city of 250,000 residents. Barracks and former barracks were situated all over “dear, dirty Dublin” and probably one-in-eleven of the young men out in town during the evening and late afternoon was in uniform. The British Army was a major part of Dublin life and so it appears throughout Ulysses in characters, places, and references to wars and battles. Additionally, Joyce worked on Ulysses between 1912 and 1922. During that period, two wars were fought in the Balkans in 1913, and a "Great War" raged throughout Europe from 1914 through 1918. These conflicts, particularly the Great War, certainly influenced Joyce and his writing. As noted by Greg Winston in Joyce and Militarism, “it is not surprising that in Joyce's writings the martial element is frequent and ubiquitous.”