Huw Bennett
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3687778 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Huw Bennett |
| NOMBRES | Huw |
| APELLIDO | Bennett |
| FIRMA | BENNETT H |
| AFILIACIONES | Cardiff University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3325-3077 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 26 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 77 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 27 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2007 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
New writings on grand strategy
The recent revival in the study of grand strategy owes much to the search for meaning about the West’s global purpose after the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Long dominated by writing on the United States, the field is now more diverse than ever and unlikely to disappear any time soon, as scholars come under pressure to produce work deemed relevant to those in power. The urge to generate useful lessons for governments can undermine the search…
Encountering research in Northern Ireland
As Northern Ireland marks 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the political afterlife of the conflict persists in affecting the everyday lives of communities, kept alive through individual and institutional memories and stories. With state archives continuing to be released and living actors in the conflict still available to interview, they offer opportunities and challenges for researchers trying to understand the Troubles to n…
The Aden Protectorate Levies, Counter-Insurgency, and the Loyalist Bargain in South Arabia, 1951–1957
Loyalist bargains between European colonial powers and indigenous collaborators were fluid and frequently renegotiated. Indigenous forces could mutiny or refuse to execute orders they believed violated the terms of their agreement with the colonial power. As well as enabling colonial violence, locally recruited forces could also restrain it. This chapter examines the experiences and influence of local security forces in the Western Aden Protector…
Uncivil War
When Operation Banner was launched in 1969 civil war threatened to break out in Northern Ireland and spread over the Irish Sea. Uncivil War reveals the full story of how the British army acted to save Great Britain from disaster during the most violent phase of the Troubles but, in so doing, condemned the people of Northern Ireland to protracted, grinding conflict. Huw Bennett shows how the army's ambivalent response to loyalist violence undermin…
A haunting past
This article examines historical fictions as social processes by which ideas about conflict and warfare are constructed and narrated within society. Focusing on Britain, it explores ‘truth telling’ about the past in an applied context, examining efforts to construct and sustain narratives about Britain’s military past and their role in upholding forms of political and societal consensus that underpin the development and use of military power. We …
Military Loyalty in Britain’s Withdrawal from Aden, 1960–1967
This article argues an understanding of the British withdrawal from Aden in 1967 requires greater attention to be paid to the loyalty of the local security forces who were supposed to help repress the insurgency in south Arabia, and then secure a friendly state when Britain left. The Federal Regular Army (FRA), the most important formation, proved to be consistently unreliable through behaviours ranging from the attempted murder of British person…
Not an Afterthought
In January 1949, the Dutch Senate discussed the recent military offensive against the Indonesian Republic, which had been halted by Resolution 63 of the United Nations Security Council. Communist member Jan Haken quoted letters sent by Dutch conscripts. One case concerned an act of revenge for the death of two Dutch soldiers, when the company burned down the nearest kampung and ran domly shot at least ten local men. The soldier wrote, "If you tel…
‘Liever geen onderzoek’. Hoe schandalen over koloniaal geweld in de Britse en Nederlandse politiek onschadelijk gemaakt konden worden (1945-1960)
In this forum contribution Huw Bennett and Peter Romijn compare how British and Dutch authorities have dealt with reports on atrocities committed systematically by their own troops in the armed conflicts of decolonisation in Kenya and Indonesia, respectively. This comparison demonstrates the differences that existed in the Dutch and British dealing with and manipulation of information, the organisation of disinformation and the management of scan…
Rebooting Clausewitz
Students of war cannot resist a world-historical figure. For many International Relations undergraduates and military officers, Carl von Clausewitz is an inescapable personality. Misleadingly associated solely with conventional interstate conflagrations, his ideas were discarded by a generation of writers influenced more by ‘new wars’ theories and the growing prevalence of civil conflicts. In a world without the Warsaw Pact's massed formations lu…
Studying Mars and Clio
In ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’ (History Workshop Journal 85, 2018), Kim Wagner rightly argues that violence was a ubiquitous feature of colonial rule and that this fact must be acknowledged if we are to fully confront the legacies of empire, and their implications for conflict today.1 In presenting his case, however, Wagner makes serious historical errors as well as the sweepin…
Detainees Are Always One’s Achilles Heel’
Colonial officials often complained about outside meddling in their campaign to defeat the insurgency in the South Arabian Federation from 1963 to 1967. This article focuses on relations between the High Commission in Aden, Whitehall departments, Amnesty International, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, asking how far these two external organizations managed to uncover detention and interrogation practices, and how officials in Ade…
At the End of Military Intervention
"At the End of Military Intervention: Historical, Theoretical, and Applied Approaches to Transition, Handover, and Withdrawal." Small Wars & Insurgencies, 27(6), pp. 1067–1068
Enmeshed in insurgency
Ten years of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced little in Britain's national interest. This article examines the political objectives set in these wars and the reasons why they have proved elusive. The core foreign policy aim was to sustain Britain's position as a great power by assuming responsibility for global order. Alliances with the United States and NATO would be the diplomatic tool for pursuing this aim. These allianc…
The Strategy Bridge
The last few years have witnessed a great deal of soul searching and teeth gnashing about the urgent need for better strategy. Academic studies, military memoirs, parliamentary reports and journali
Defending the Realm? The Politics of Britain's Small Wars Since 1945
Fighting the Mau Mau
British Army counterinsurgency campaigns were supposedly waged within the bounds of international law, overcoming insurgents with the minimum force necessary. This revealing study questions what this meant for the civilian population during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, one of Britain's most violent decolonisation wars. For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship bet…
Fighting the Mau Mau
The Baha Mousa Tragedy
Research Highlights and Abstract Describes the conduct and findings of a public inquiry into the death of an Iraqi civilian in British Army custody in 2003. Assesses the development of British military detention and interrogation policy in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since 2003. Argues that serious failings in policy, doctrine and training led to the death of Baha Mousa in 2003. Finds that judicial intervention has been necessary to push reform…
Smoke Without Fire'? Allegations Against the British Army in Northern Ireland, 1972-5
When the British government imposed Direct Rule in Northern Ireland in March 1972, military policy lay in tatters. Internment without trial, deep interrogation and Bloody Sunday convinced many people that the British Army was fundamentally repressive. Yet the army maintained a policy commitment to always operating within legal constraints. This article assesses how the army, at the policy-making level, responded to allegations that it was treatin…
Soldiers in the Court Room
In April 2011, civil proceedings were launched in the High Court in London concerning alleged torture during the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya, from 1952 to 1960. In this on-going case, the claimants allege that torture was widespread in Kenya, and that it was condoned by the British state. This article explains the background to the case and describes the expert evidence given by the author on the British Army's role in the Emergency. The historica…
Social Sciences and the Military
Fighting for Britain
Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War David Killingray Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey, 2010 xi + 289 pp., ISBN: 978-1-8470-10155 (£45.00 hardback) The Second World War i...
From Direct Rule to Motorman
The British campaign in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s is often portrayed as consistent in its repressive character and its failure to successfully relate military means to political ends. This article argues that British military strategy was adaptable, alternating between defensive and offensive means depending on the changing political context. The low profile policy allowed the army to consolidate a firm basis for later offensive operati…
Minimum force in British counterinsurgency
With strategic success in Iraq and Afghanistan far from certain, comforting beliefs about Britain's superiority at counterinsurgency have come under increasingly sceptical scrutiny. This article contributes to the debate with particular reference to the supposedly pivotal principle of minimum force. After discussing the recent literature on the subject, the article critiques the methodology employed by advocates of the traditionalist view on Brit…
Radical war
Radical war: Data, attention and control in the 21st century." Journal of Strategic Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
The Other Side of the Coin
This article argues that the British government's deliberate exclusion of international law from colonial counterinsurgencies allowed the army to suppress opponents with little restraint. The oft-assumed national inhibitor, the principle of ‘minimum force’, was actually widely permissive. As a result exemplary force was employed to coerce the Kikuyu civilian population in Kenya into supporting the government rather than the insurgents. Apparently…
Minimum force in British counterinsurgency
With strategic success in Iraq and Afghanistan far from certain, comforting beliefs about Britain's superiority at counterinsurgency have come under increasingly sceptical scrutiny. This article contributes to the debate with particular reference to the supposedly pivotal principle of minimum force. After discussing the recent literature on the subject, the article critiques the methodology employed by advocates of the traditionalist view on Brit…
A very salutary effect’
The counter-insurgency lessons commonly drawn from the Malayan Emergency ignore strategy in the opening phase or dismiss it as characterised by mistakes committed in a policy vacuum. This article argues that the British army pursued a deliberately formulated counter-terror strategy until circa December 1949, aiming to intimidate the civilian Chinese community into supporting the government. Mass arrests, property destruction, and forced populatio…
Smoke Without Fire'? Allegations Against the British Army in Northern Ireland, 1972-5
When the British government imposed Direct Rule in Northern Ireland in March 1972, military policy lay in tatters. Internment without trial, deep interrogation and Bloody Sunday convinced many people that the British Army was fundamentally repressive. Yet the army maintained a policy commitment to always operating within legal constraints. This article assesses how the army, at the policy-making level, responded to allegations that it was treatin…
From Direct Rule to Motorman
The British campaign in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s is often portrayed as consistent in its repressive character and its failure to successfully relate military means to political ends. This article argues that British military strategy was adaptable, alternating between defensive and offensive means depending on the changing political context. The low profile policy allowed the army to consolidate a firm basis for later offensive operati…
Soldiers in the Court Room
In April 2011, civil proceedings were launched in the High Court in London concerning alleged torture during the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya, from 1952 to 1960. In this on-going case, the claimants allege that torture was widespread in Kenya, and that it was condoned by the British state. This article explains the background to the case and describes the expert evidence given by the author on the British Army's role in the Emergency. The historica…
Encountering research in Northern Ireland
As Northern Ireland marks 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the political afterlife of the conflict persists in affecting the everyday lives of communities, kept alive through individual and institutional memories and stories. With state archives continuing to be released and living actors in the conflict still available to interview, they offer opportunities and challenges for researchers trying to understand the Troubles to n…
The Baha Mousa Tragedy
Research Highlights and Abstract Describes the conduct and findings of a public inquiry into the death of an Iraqi civilian in British Army custody in 2003. Assesses the development of British military detention and interrogation policy in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since 2003. Argues that serious failings in policy, doctrine and training led to the death of Baha Mousa in 2003. Finds that judicial intervention has been necessary to push reform…
Studying Mars and Clio
In ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’ (History Workshop Journal 85, 2018), Kim Wagner rightly argues that violence was a ubiquitous feature of colonial rule and that this fact must be acknowledged if we are to fully confront the legacies of empire, and their implications for conflict today.1 In presenting his case, however, Wagner makes serious historical errors as well as the sweepin…
Enmeshed in insurgency
Ten years of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced little in Britain's national interest. This article examines the political objectives set in these wars and the reasons why they have proved elusive. The core foreign policy aim was to sustain Britain's position as a great power by assuming responsibility for global order. Alliances with the United States and NATO would be the diplomatic tool for pursuing this aim. These allianc…
Social Sciences and the Military
Fighting for Britain
Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War David Killingray Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey, 2010 xi + 289 pp., ISBN: 978-1-8470-10155 (£45.00 hardback) The Second World War i...
The Other Side of the Coin
This article argues that the British government's deliberate exclusion of international law from colonial counterinsurgencies allowed the army to suppress opponents with little restraint. The oft-assumed national inhibitor, the principle of ‘minimum force’, was actually widely permissive. As a result exemplary force was employed to coerce the Kikuyu civilian population in Kenya into supporting the government rather than the insurgents. Apparently…
A very salutary effect’
The counter-insurgency lessons commonly drawn from the Malayan Emergency ignore strategy in the opening phase or dismiss it as characterised by mistakes committed in a policy vacuum. This article argues that the British army pursued a deliberately formulated counter-terror strategy until circa December 1949, aiming to intimidate the civilian Chinese community into supporting the government. Mass arrests, property destruction, and forced populatio…
Social Sciences and the Military
Fighting for Britain
Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War David Killingray Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey, 2010 xi + 289 pp., ISBN: 978-1-8470-10155 (£45.00 hardback) The Second World War i...
From Direct Rule to Motorman
The British campaign in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s is often portrayed as consistent in its repressive character and its failure to successfully relate military means to political ends. This article argues that British military strategy was adaptable, alternating between defensive and offensive means depending on the changing political context. The low profile policy allowed the army to consolidate a firm basis for later offensive operati…
Minimum force in British counterinsurgency
With strategic success in Iraq and Afghanistan far from certain, comforting beliefs about Britain's superiority at counterinsurgency have come under increasingly sceptical scrutiny. This article contributes to the debate with particular reference to the supposedly pivotal principle of minimum force. After discussing the recent literature on the subject, the article critiques the methodology employed by advocates of the traditionalist view on Brit…
Soldiers in the Court Room
In April 2011, civil proceedings were launched in the High Court in London concerning alleged torture during the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya, from 1952 to 1960. In this on-going case, the claimants allege that torture was widespread in Kenya, and that it was condoned by the British state. This article explains the background to the case and describes the expert evidence given by the author on the British Army's role in the Emergency. The historica…
Fighting the Mau Mau
British Army counterinsurgency campaigns were supposedly waged within the bounds of international law, overcoming insurgents with the minimum force necessary. This revealing study questions what this meant for the civilian population during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, one of Britain's most violent decolonisation wars. For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship bet…
Fighting the Mau Mau
The Baha Mousa Tragedy
Research Highlights and Abstract Describes the conduct and findings of a public inquiry into the death of an Iraqi civilian in British Army custody in 2003. Assesses the development of British military detention and interrogation policy in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars since 2003. Argues that serious failings in policy, doctrine and training led to the death of Baha Mousa in 2003. Finds that judicial intervention has been necessary to push reform…
Smoke Without Fire'? Allegations Against the British Army in Northern Ireland, 1972-5
When the British government imposed Direct Rule in Northern Ireland in March 1972, military policy lay in tatters. Internment without trial, deep interrogation and Bloody Sunday convinced many people that the British Army was fundamentally repressive. Yet the army maintained a policy commitment to always operating within legal constraints. This article assesses how the army, at the policy-making level, responded to allegations that it was treatin…
The Strategy Bridge
The last few years have witnessed a great deal of soul searching and teeth gnashing about the urgent need for better strategy. Academic studies, military memoirs, parliamentary reports and journali
Defending the Realm? The Politics of Britain's Small Wars Since 1945
Enmeshed in insurgency
Ten years of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced little in Britain's national interest. This article examines the political objectives set in these wars and the reasons why they have proved elusive. The core foreign policy aim was to sustain Britain's position as a great power by assuming responsibility for global order. Alliances with the United States and NATO would be the diplomatic tool for pursuing this aim. These allianc…
Detainees Are Always One’s Achilles Heel’
Colonial officials often complained about outside meddling in their campaign to defeat the insurgency in the South Arabian Federation from 1963 to 1967. This article focuses on relations between the High Commission in Aden, Whitehall departments, Amnesty International, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, asking how far these two external organizations managed to uncover detention and interrogation practices, and how officials in Ade…
At the End of Military Intervention
"At the End of Military Intervention: Historical, Theoretical, and Applied Approaches to Transition, Handover, and Withdrawal." Small Wars & Insurgencies, 27(6), pp. 1067–1068
Rebooting Clausewitz
Students of war cannot resist a world-historical figure. For many International Relations undergraduates and military officers, Carl von Clausewitz is an inescapable personality. Misleadingly associated solely with conventional interstate conflagrations, his ideas were discarded by a generation of writers influenced more by ‘new wars’ theories and the growing prevalence of civil conflicts. In a world without the Warsaw Pact's massed formations lu…
Studying Mars and Clio
In ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’ (History Workshop Journal 85, 2018), Kim Wagner rightly argues that violence was a ubiquitous feature of colonial rule and that this fact must be acknowledged if we are to fully confront the legacies of empire, and their implications for conflict today.1 In presenting his case, however, Wagner makes serious historical errors as well as the sweepin…
‘Liever geen onderzoek’. Hoe schandalen over koloniaal geweld in de Britse en Nederlandse politiek onschadelijk gemaakt konden worden (1945-1960)
In this forum contribution Huw Bennett and Peter Romijn compare how British and Dutch authorities have dealt with reports on atrocities committed systematically by their own troops in the armed conflicts of decolonisation in Kenya and Indonesia, respectively. This comparison demonstrates the differences that existed in the Dutch and British dealing with and manipulation of information, the organisation of disinformation and the management of scan…
Not an Afterthought
In January 1949, the Dutch Senate discussed the recent military offensive against the Indonesian Republic, which had been halted by Resolution 63 of the United Nations Security Council. Communist member Jan Haken quoted letters sent by Dutch conscripts. One case concerned an act of revenge for the death of two Dutch soldiers, when the company burned down the nearest kampung and ran domly shot at least ten local men. The soldier wrote, "If you tel…
The Aden Protectorate Levies, Counter-Insurgency, and the Loyalist Bargain in South Arabia, 1951–1957
Loyalist bargains between European colonial powers and indigenous collaborators were fluid and frequently renegotiated. Indigenous forces could mutiny or refuse to execute orders they believed violated the terms of their agreement with the colonial power. As well as enabling colonial violence, locally recruited forces could also restrain it. This chapter examines the experiences and influence of local security forces in the Western Aden Protector…
Uncivil War
When Operation Banner was launched in 1969 civil war threatened to break out in Northern Ireland and spread over the Irish Sea. Uncivil War reveals the full story of how the British army acted to save Great Britain from disaster during the most violent phase of the Troubles but, in so doing, condemned the people of Northern Ireland to protracted, grinding conflict. Huw Bennett shows how the army's ambivalent response to loyalist violence undermin…
A haunting past
This article examines historical fictions as social processes by which ideas about conflict and warfare are constructed and narrated within society. Focusing on Britain, it explores ‘truth telling’ about the past in an applied context, examining efforts to construct and sustain narratives about Britain’s military past and their role in upholding forms of political and societal consensus that underpin the development and use of military power. We …
Military Loyalty in Britain’s Withdrawal from Aden, 1960–1967
This article argues an understanding of the British withdrawal from Aden in 1967 requires greater attention to be paid to the loyalty of the local security forces who were supposed to help repress the insurgency in south Arabia, and then secure a friendly state when Britain left. The Federal Regular Army (FRA), the most important formation, proved to be consistently unreliable through behaviours ranging from the attempted murder of British person…
Radical war
Radical war: Data, attention and control in the 21st century." Journal of Strategic Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Political science (25 obras) · Law (22 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Military History and Strategy (12 obras) · History (11 obras) · Politics (10 obras) · Colonialism (7 obras) · Criminology (7 obras) · History (6 obras)