Colonial Wars, 1815–1960

Bibliographic Data

ID20045153
AuthorsBruce Vandervort (corresponding author)
Year2002
Pages147-171
Publication date2002-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueEuropean Warfare 1815–2000 (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherMacmillan Education UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/978-1-4039-0705-9_7
OpenAlexW2606530273
ISBN9781403907059
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited3

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an account of the wars fought by European armies outside Europe from the age of rapid imperial expansion (1815–1914) to the era of equally rapid imperial decline (1914–1960). In the halcyon days of empire building in the nineteenth century, these conflicts were often called 'small wars' by European military writers to distinguish them from wars waged by Europeans against each other. This label referred not only to the smaller numbers of soldiers engaged in colonial warfare, which was accurate enough, at least for the 1800s, but to a presumed gap in warmaking capacity between European armies and their less advanced foes whose perception owed as much to racialist ideology and a Eurocentric worldview as to rational assessment. In the course of the twentieth century the label lost much of its descriptive power, as colonial wars became increasingly broad in scope and, with the absorption by non-European peoples of nationalist ideology and modern military technology, began increasingly to resemble the 'total wars' waged among Europeans.KeywordsImperial PowerGuerrilla WarfareFrench ArmyManpower ShortageForeign LegionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

Ancient history · Colonialism · Economic history · Empire · Ideology · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

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