Lessons in Imperial Rule - Instructions for British Infantrymen on the Indian Frontier, by General Sir Andrew Skeen
Book published by Frontline in 2008, 144 pages. Hardback with Dust Jacket (N4151)
Brand New Book
During the first half of the twentieth century, the mountainous North West Frontier represented one of the British Empire's most strategically important borders. For thousands of inexperienced British and Indian troops facing a local resistance the methods and lessons of their predecessors were vital for their survival. This border was often a brutal and bloody place - in 1919 the Third Afghan war broke out, as the Emir of Afghanistan sought to liberate provinces that had fallen under British rule, and the British Indian Army retaliated by fighting their way back into Afghanistan, over the Khyber pass. General Skeen spent the years 1919-20 on the frontier, fighting the Mahsuds and the Waziris, the most notorious of all cross border groups, and as the majority of his command at that time were wholly inexperienced and barely fit for frontier service, he sought to write a practical sound guide on fighting in this region..... General Sir Andrew Skeen's unofficial but authoritative textbook was thus written with these junior officers in mind. His work provided them with pragmatic and practical information on hill warfare in an accessible fashion. Skeen's understanding of frontier fighting remains as valuable to modern troops fighting local insurgents today as it was to successive generations of Imperial soldiers who faced tribal uprisings. His work became an unofficial textbook and was widely read in Britain and India. Despite the later introduction of armoured cars, light tanks and aircraft, it retains much of its value and it was recently reissued to the Pakistan army
| Condition | New |