Key Factors and Interconnectivity in Military Development

Explaining why warfare changed

Military development means changes in armies and the ways they fight: their organisation, recruitment, training, weapons and tactics. Explaining these changes involves more than identifying a new weapon or naming a reform. It means showing how an influence produced a particular result.

Three groups of factors help explain developments in warfare on land: governments and individuals; science, technology and communications; and attitudes in society. These are connected influences, not separate explanations competing in every situation. A weapon might create an opportunity, but decisions about funding, equipment and training determine how an army uses it.

Governments and individuals: turning decisions into change

Governments can organise armies, provide money and introduce reforms. Individuals can influence development through their ideas, decisions and leadership. An individual's proposal is not the same thing as the resources and authority needed to put it into practice.

In 1645, during the English Civil War, Parliament created the New Model Army. Regular pay and training helped make soldiering a more organised, professional activity. Promotion based on ability rather than social background also connected military organisation with ideas about who should hold responsibility.

The causal link is therefore more precise than ‘Parliament changed the army’. Parliament established an organisation in which regular training and pay could support a professional fighting force. Government action changed the conditions under which soldiers served.

Edward Cardwell, Secretary for War from 1868 to 1874, provides a nineteenth-century example. His reforms changed recruitment and army organisation:

• The Army Enlistment Act of 1870 introduced a twelve-year commitment, normally six years in full-time service and six in the reserve, rather than twenty-one years of service. Reservists were trained soldiers who could return to service when needed.
• In 1871, the purchase of officers' commissions was abolished. A commission gave an officer authority to command; ending its purchase reduced the role of wealth in obtaining rank and made merit and seniority more important.
• From 1872, linked infantry battalions shared local recruiting arrangements, with one serving at home and the other abroad. The home battalion supported recruitment and training for overseas service.

Cardwell's importance lay in directing reform through government. These developments changed the army's personnel and organisation, not simply its weapons.

Technology: new possibilities for fighting

Science and technology can change what weapons are capable of doing. Muskets and pistols became widely used during the seventeenth century; by the nineteenth century, rifles offered greater accuracy and range than earlier smoothbore muskets.

The Enfield rifle-musket, adopted in 1853, had grooves inside its barrel that spun the bullet, improving accuracy. It could deliver aimed fire at much greater distances than the Brown Bess musket used at Waterloo in 1815. Later breech-loading weapons could be loaded at the rear of the barrel, allowing faster reloading, including while lying down.

These improvements mattered because weapon capabilities affected tactics. Cavalry charging infantry faced accurate fire from further away, while faster reloading increased the number of shots fired before the horses reached the infantry. Technology therefore reduced the usefulness of cavalry charges without making horses disappear from warfare: they remained useful for scouting and transporting soldiers.

However, invention and military adoption are different stages. A weapon does not transform an army merely because it exists. Factory production helped supply weapons in large numbers, governments had to obtain them, and soldiers needed training. Technology created possibilities; production and organisation helped turn them into military change.

Communications and attitudes: pressure for reform

Communications affect who knows about a war and how quickly information reaches them. War reporting connected events overseas with people at home, making military leadership and soldiers' treatment matters of public concern.

During the Crimean War, 1854–56, William Howard Russell of The Times reported soldiers' suffering and failures in supplies and hospital care. His dispatches travelled by steamship and, from 1855, by telegraph. Faster communications helped bring criticism of the war's management into public debate.

Reports about hospital conditions helped generate support for better care. Florence Nightingale and thirty-eight nurses reached Scutari in November 1854. On 30 January 1855, the Commons voted for an inquiry into the conduct of the war, and Lord Aberdeen's government resigned.

Here, individuals, communications, attitudes and government worked together. Russell gathered and reported information; communications carried it to Britain; readers and MPs responded critically; government had the authority to organise a response. Public pressure mattered, but it could not by itself supply hospitals or reorganise the army.

Reporting was also selective. Roger Fenton's photographs of the Crimea in 1855 did not show the dead. Photography brought aspects of war before the public, but did not give viewers a complete account of its suffering.

How factors encouraged or obstructed change

Factors can encourage change by creating opportunities, demands or the means to act. They can inhibit change by delaying or preventing it. Government institutions did not always act together: in 1871, the House of Lords rejected the bill to abolish the purchase of commissions. Purchase was subsequently ended by royal warrant. Political opposition obstructed one route to reform, while another use of state authority enabled it.

The Crimean War example can be understood as a connected chain:

War reporting → public criticism → political pressure → government action.

Each link performed a different role. Reporting carried information, attitudes shaped the response, and government held the power to implement changes. Likewise:

Improved weapons + mass production + government adoption + training → changed military capabilities.

To evaluate importance, distinguish the factor that started pressure for change, the factor that made change possible, and the factor that implemented it. Government could be especially important in implementation without being the original source of an idea or demand. The strongest judgement explains a factor's contribution and its dependence on other influences, rather than declaring one factor universally decisive.