army

army Long before the Norman Conquest, military obligation seems to have divided into two basic forms. One was an obligation for service by all adult males, established in English law as the militia by the Assize of Arms of 1181. The other was a small permanent standing army, usually represented in the medieval period by the warriors of the royal household.

By early modern times, English armies consisted almost entirely of troops paid in some fashion. However, any form of standing army was considered a potential instrument of royal despotism. The Yeomen of the Guard, founded by Henry VII in 1485 as a small royal bodyguard, is the earliest unit of the British army that has survived. The granting of money by Parliament to finance armies on a temporary basis became one of the most important issues between crown and Parliament. It reached a crisis in 1639–41 when Parliament refused Charles I money to repel a Scots invasion, and would not trust him with control of an army to suppress the Irish rebellion.

The direct ancestor of the modern British army is usually considered to be the parliamentary New Model Army of 1645. However, its part in enforcing Cromwell's rule in England and in subjugating Scotland and Ireland helped to establish a prejudice against soldiers which lasted well into modern times. The first properly constituted standing army, of tiny proportions, was created in 1661 by Charles II, and entitled ‘His Majesty's Guards and Garrisons’. The existence and function of the army was based on royal prerogative rather than statute, an issue which came to a head in the reign of James II and played a part in his overthrow. Thereafter the 1689 Declaration of Rights established that a standing army was illegal without Parliament's approval, granted every year in the Mutiny Act until 1953, when this was replaced by a five‐yearly Armed Forces Act.

Particularly after the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707, and the subsequent defeat of Jacobite uprisings, a large army at home was not required. Instead, the British needed a minimum force to keep order, garrisons for their overseas possessions, and small forces to contribute to coalitions for European wars. The British army developed in a manner regarded by European standards as both eccentric and old‐fashioned, with a central core of units providing the basis for a much larger army that could be expanded and disbanded according to need.

Whereas in some countries the army became the focus of political and social reform, in Britain it was always seen as a bastion of reaction. Particularly after the French Revolution, the army was deliberately kept apart from British society (through the building of barracks), and practices regarded as obsolete in continental warfare, such as officers purchasing their commissions, regiments having considerable autonomy from central authority, and the flogging of soldiers, persisted well into the 19th cent. Parliamentary fears of militarism meant rigid control of the army's budget, a deliberately divided command system, and a toleration of inefficiency in order to keep the army politically weak. Officers were drawn largely from the lesser gentry, with an admixture of the aristocracy, and recruits from the poorest classes.

After the loss of the American colonies in 1783, the largest single focus for the British army was India, following the crown's absorption of the East India Company army as the Indian army in 1858. Garrisoning British India with both British and Indian troops became the major army role of the late 19th cent. A series of reforms following the Crimean War (1853–6), associated in particular with the abolition of purchase by Edward Cardwell in 1871 and with the creation of the ‘county regiments’ structure ten years later, produced a largely infantry army to serve overseas. The revelation of serious military deficiencies in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) produced reforms to prepare the army for warfare in Europe, particularly associated with Richard Haldane.

The British tradition of a small long‐service army for use overseas meant that at the start of the First World War (1914–18) Britain was the only belligerent country without conscription, introduced with reluctance in January 1916. The creation of a mass citizen army for the war was of great social as well as political significance for Britain, marking the first real contact between the army and British society since the Civil War. Ultimately the British army was the most successful of the war, inflicting a crushing defeat upon Germany. However, with no shared military tradition to draw upon, the social and cultural impact of the war upon Britain was devastating, and persisted to the end of the 20th cent.

The experience of the First World War enabled Britain to cope rather better with the Second World War (1939–45). For the first time in British history peacetime conscription was introduced in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war. Although Britain once more emerged victorious, it faced in 1945 a changed military situation. In particular the traditional roles of the British army of garrisoning the empire and fighting in Europe were ceasing to be relevant. After 1945 Britain maintained, again for the first time in its history, peacetime conscription (known as National Service) until 1963, after which the army reverted once more to an all‐volunteer force. Its two major roles were from 1949 membership of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as part of the collective defence of western Europe against the Soviet Union until 1991, and covering the ‘Retreat from Empire’, a succession of wars as Britain dismantled its empire.