Western powers have been engaged in counterinsurgency operations at least since the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. The requirement to occupy the Western Hemisphere from 1492 – and later the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, and Africa – involved Western powers in armed conflict with local populations, much of it irregular warfare. Contemporary US COIN doctrine in its twenty-first-century form is an outgrowth of the belief, common in nineteenth-century France and Britain, that military action provided the mechanism for the dissemination of modern, Western values and attitudes as a foundation for indigenous governance and social, political, and economic transformation of pivotal regions.

The nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of small wars as a discrete category of warfare in France and Britain, one that required a special doctrine, an uncommon type of officer with a mindset and outlook distinct from those who prepared for and fought continental conflicts. Not only must colonial warriors prove to be excellent tacticians, but also they must prepare to engage non-Western populations on a political and cultural level. Because irregular or “small wars” were associated with imperial expansion, colonial soldiers had also to assemble a cast of influential supporters among journalists, geographic societies, army and navy leagues, and politicians to sell what was in effect a political project. The bid for the recognition of small wars as a separate category of service came about for several reasons, the increasing professionalization and industrialization of continental warfare most prominent among them. Intensifying democratization of the political systems in these countries in an era of mass politics before 1914 also stimulated advocates of strategic superiority via small wars to fashion their own professional and doctrinal universe. In both Britain and France, demands for increased civilian control of the military that grew with the approach of the Great War joined with concerns about the barbarity of small war tactics and operations and questions about the risks and utility of imperial expansion.