Engines for empire ─ The Victorian army and its use of railways

This wide-ranging and extensively researched work reviews the way in which the British army exploited the potential of railways from the 'dawn of the railway age' to the outbreak of the First World War. It explores the use of railways when the army was acting in aid of the civil power, as a factor in the planning for home defence, and as an increasingly efficient means of supporting the army on active service. It reveals that the army monitored the use of railways in foreign wars, experimented in the use of railways within rear areas, designed and built railways for strategic defence in India, and later exploited railways to transform the prospects of military success in the Sudan and South Africa.

Ultimately this was not simply a matter of the army learning to use, maintain and operate the latest technology. What the Victorian army demonstrated was a capacity to integrate the railway into its logistic planning, to grasp the imperative of operational management if the railway was to prove an asset and not a liability, and to envisage the railway as a key element in its mobilisation and strategic planning. Engines for empire will make fascinating reading for students, academics, and enthusiasts in military and imperial history, Victorian studies, railway history and colonial warfare.

Edward M. Spiers is Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leeds