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Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution
Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution
Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution
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Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution

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Historians have long understood that books were important to the British army in defining the duties of its officers, regulating tactics, developing the art of war, and recording the history of campaigns and commanders. Now, in this groundbreaking analysis, Ira D. Gruber identifies which among over nine hundred books on war were considered most important by British officers and how those books might have affected the army from one era to another. By examining the preferences of some forty-two officers who served between the War of the Spanish Succession and the French Revolution, Gruber shows that by the middle of the eighteenth century British officers were discriminating in their choices of books on war and, further, that their emerging preference for Continental books affected their understanding of warfare and their conduct of operations in the American Revolution. In their increasing enthusiasm for books on war, Gruber concludes, British officers were laying the foundation for the nineteenth-century professionalization of their nation's officer corps. Gruber's analysis is enhanced with detailed and comprehensive bibliographies and tables.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 25, 2010
ISBN9780807899403
Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution
Author

Ira D. Gruber

Ira D. Gruber is Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at Rice University. From 1966 to 2009 he taught courses in early American and military history at Rice, the U.S. Military Academy, and the U.S. Army Staff College.

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    Although this book turned out to be just an extended essay with a lot of attached appendices, it's still a good essay. What Gruber argues is that the British officer corps learned a "prudent" style of war in the wake of the failures of the War of the Austrian Succession (after which there was a new commitment to professionalism), but prudential war was at odds with the aggressive course of action that London desired, leading to much command turbulence. The ultimate irony is that the American military leadership had assimilated the same lessons of prudence and were, ultimately, better served by them.

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Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution - Ira D. Gruber

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