Introduction

Garrisoning a growing British Empire put a permanent strain on the resources of the army. Because the Guards, most cavalry and specialist troops remained at home, the task largely fell to line infantry regiments. This was in contrast to all other imperial powers, which developed specific professional corps to police their colonies alongside locally raised levies, leaving their mass conscript forces to serve in European theatres. Although potential strife and subversion in Britain declined after 1848, the army was faced with the major manpower crisis of the Crimean War in 1854–56 and the Indian Mutiny of 1857–59, which engrossed the institution for the rest of the century. The Mutiny shook the foundations of the Empire. It led to the abolition of the East India Company's private army, and resulted in substantial British garrisons in India to control subversion and thwart Russia in the ‘Great Game’. Imperial postings were thus crucial to the army, with sometimes 75 per cent of infantry regiments deployed in the Empire. The central focus was India. With an average tour of 14 years for a battalion, most line infantrymen could expect to serve in the subcontinent, making it the typical Victorian soldiering experience.

High politics

In the late nineteenth century there was a gradual decline in officer MPs, in a direct relationship with the reform of Parliament: ‘There were still seventy-one MPs with military connections in 1853, but only twenty-five were on the active list. In 1868 there remained just thirty-four MPs who had served or were serving in the regular army’. However, officer MPs clung on, even after successive reform acts. As late as 1898 there were still 41 officer MPs, and it did not become illegal for serving officers to stand for Parliament until 1945. The proportion of MPs with military backgrounds supporting the Tories increased. They acted as loyal spokesmen for the needs of the army, despite potential disasters like the Crimean War. In contrast, the Whig/ Liberal voice on military matters became less well-informed and persuasive. The hard-line laisser-faire attitudes of Cobden and Bright combined with nonconformist pacifism and the radical wing to advocate cutting back on the standing army. Though the Liberal leadership attempted to disown the shrill rhetoric of some of their MPs, which bordered on class warfare against aristocratic officers, the military establishment looked increasingly to the Conservatives to protect their interests.