Western Europe’s Small Wars of Empire

The establishment of nation-states across most of Europe extruded warfare into non-European colonial campaigns. This chapter studies the small wars of western Europe’s expanding empires, including the French evolution of razzia and inkspot strategies of counterinsurgency, Spain’s imperial rebound in the 1860s, Britain’s small wars, the growing East Indies focus of Dutch military experience, and the small wars and atrocities in the small wars of imperial latecomers (Belgium, German Empire and Italy). Three leading themes are developed. First, the domestic impact of popular and unpopular small wars is explained in its diverse qualities. Thus, the fillip to Spanish nationalism gained in the victory over Morocco in 1860 is contrasted with the soul-searching in France after the defeat of 1871 (when African small wars were blamed for inadequately preparing for large war against Prussia), and the assault on public opinion witnessed by the Charles Gordon affair in Britain. Second, the chapter explores the limits of large war technology (steeped in a ‘cult of the offensive’) in non-European small war theatres. Third, this chapter explores the extremes of counterinsurgent warfare, especially Spanish counterinsurgency in Cuba, Belgian and German atrocities in Africa, and the growth of military bureaucracies controlling civilians in insurgent zones (reconcentration). The chapter concludes with an overview of the persistence of small war culture even amidst rival notions of ‘nation in arms’ advocated by such salient figures as Jean Jaurès and Colmar von der Goltz.