The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945-1967 by David French

The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945-1967 by David French

The claim by the Ministry of Defence in 2001 that 'the experience of numerous small wars has provided the British Army with a unique insight into this demanding form of conflict' unravelled spectacularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. One important reason for that, David French suggests, was because contemporary British counter-insurgency doctrine was based upon a serious misreading of the past. Until now, many observers believed that during the wars of decolonisation in the two decades after 1945, the British had discovered how western liberal notions of right and wrong could be made compatible with the imperatives of waging war amongst the people, that force could be used effectively but with care, and that a more just and prosperous society could emerge from these struggles. By using only the minimum necessary force, and doing so with the utmost discrimination, the British were able to win by securing the 'hearts and minds' of the people. But this was a serious distortion of actual British practice on the ground. David French's main contention is that the British hid their use of naked force behind a carefully constructed veneer of legality. In reality, they commonly used wholesale coercion, including cordon and search operations, mass detention without trial, forcible population resettlement, and the creation of free-fire zones to intimidate and lock-down the civilian population. The British waged their counter-insurgency campaigns by being nasty, not nice, to the people. The British Way in Counter-Insurgency is a seminal reassessment of the historical foundation of British counter doctrine and practice.

David French's authoritative..exemplarily fair-minded study...should be compulsory reading for modern British officers * Max Hastings, Sunday Times *
Brilliant...French explodes the myth that a uniquely British quest to recruit "hearts and minds" made the British end of Empire easy. * Ben Macintyre, The Times *
a sobering and timely book ... Professor French marshals an impressive volume of archival research ... fluent and always engrossing * Kenneth Payne, Times Literary Supplement *
a brilliant book that sheds light on a misunderstood and misquoted era ... masterly * Patrick Mercer, Military History *
a careful, often riveting book that has been constructed on the basis of rigorous archival research. French takes on a major task, insisting on a sweep of place and time that must have demanded he tackle an intimidating quantity of archival material, and the results are frequently a testament to modern historical scholarship. * Musab Younis, The Oxonian Review *
French's book represents the first comprehensive reassessment of the violence used by the British across the entire range of these insurgencies * Royal United Services Institute *
Based on unparalleled research into official documents on nine campaigns it is likely to be the authoritative work on the subject for years to come ... Indeed, Professor French has set the bar very high, and that can only be a good thing for the rest of us who yet labour in these contested trenches. * David Charters, Canadian Military History *
His counter-insurgency volume is ... likely to become the standard work on the subject. Thankfully, he avoid the temptation to adapt the book to the contemporary concerns of the academic-military-industrial complex. * John Newsinger, Race & Class *

David French was at the University of York and the War Studies Department at King's College London. He spent 27 years at University College London before taking early retirement in 2008 to become a full-time writer. Professor French is the author of six previous books, and has been the recipient of the Arthur Goodzeit Prize of the New York Military Affairs Symposium. He is a three-time winner of the Templer Medal awarded by the Society for Army Historical Research. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Historical Association, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Council of the Army Records Society.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780199587964
ISBN 10	0199587965
Title	The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945-1967
Author	David French
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2012-02-01
Number of pages	352
Prizes	Winner of Shortlisted for British Army Military Book of the Year 2012.
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.