BY The Hon. J. W. FORTESCUE Cambridge: at the University Press 1914 Cambridge: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS...

There is little in these lectures, or at any rate in three out of four of them, which I have not written at greater length in other volumes. I therefore publish them unwillingly, and in deference only to the wishes of some of my audience, whose good opinion I greatly value, and whose kindly sympathy I shall never forget. If this little volume should set but one student thinking seriously as to the meaning of military history, its object will be fully accomplished. The spelling of Indian names ha

When in the spring of the year 1913 my old College did me the honour to appoint me its first lecturer in Military History, I was obliged for the first time to ask myself seriously, What is military history? I confess that I have found it very difficult to furnish a satisfactory answer. Some would reply with a light heart that military history is the history of wars and warring. But what, in its turn, is war? It has been defined as an instrument of policy for the imposition of the will of one com

In my last lecture I attempted to deal with the broad subject of military history at large. To-day I shall treat of the narrower subject of British military history. There is nothing arbitrary or capricious in this; for British military history is, owing to our insular position, a thing apart. Foreign nations, indeed, would say that a country which has never in the whole course of her existence put fifty thousand of her own children in line upon any battle-field and very rarely so many even as t

I propose in my present lecture to deal with our colonial campaigns at large. You will recognise at once that a colonial campaign differs from other campaigns in one essential point. One does not attempt to form colonies in any but an empty or comparatively empty country, first because in any other there is no room for colonists, and secondly because a numerous native population may be subdued but cannot be displaced. It is therefore imperative that the indigenous inhabitants of a country, whith

To-day I propose to speak to you upon a very great and most intractable subject—British Military History in India. It is difficult to do so without saying something of the history of India itself; yet the subject is so immense that I must compress the whole of that vast story into one or two sentences. Let me begin then by reminding you that what we call India is divided into a northern portion, which extends from the Himalayas southward to the Narbada river and the Vindhya Mountains and is call