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The second boer war takes place with entirely different international domestic political and military context. The UK had a small professional force that it nee
by wbl 4y ago
The second boer war takes place with entirely different international domestic political and military context. The UK had a small professional force that it needed to husband not a large force of conscripts that enabled it to send troops to Africa without fear and firearms that let them be useful together with the means to supply them.
- hardlianotion 4y agoNo conscription in British army of the Boer War era. I believe conscription for the British army was an innovation that came into being during the First World War.
- dragonwriter 4y agoModern conscription was an innovation of the First World War, though the militia (restricted to domestic employment, AFAIK) had conscription to fill units in the 18th to early 19th Century.
- hardlianotion 4y agoAnd in any case, I misread parent comment.
- wbl 4y agoSo I don't really know the history but I thought British Army planned on mass call-ups either voluntary and then if needed by conscription long before WWI, as mass mobilization isn't something you can do overnight without prep.
- hardlianotion 4y agoI believe Lord Kitchener campaigned for this in WWI until it became clear to the government at large that sustaining an army appropriate to the struggle they had entered was going to be an order more difficult than envisaged.