ORCID Profile
0000-0002-1259-5801
Current Organisation
Deakin University
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Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-2008
Abstract: During the 1920s the French army benefited from a surplus of Renault FT-17 light tanks, whose capabilities had been assessed on the battlefields of 1917 and 1918. Following the First World War, these machines were used in operations during the Russo-Polish conflict in 1919—1920, and subsequently during the Druze uprising in Syria and the Rif War in Morocco in the mid-1920s. Writing in the pages of published military periodicals, enthusiastic officers could consider the future capabilities of the tank, and assess its capacities with reference to those conflicts. In Poland, the Renault FT was considered to have shown a surprising robustness. In Syria and Morocco, French officers were able to consider the utility of the tank in acting against a general rebellion, rather than against a European-style opponent. Moreover, in these theatres the tank's potential to act both in conjunction with the infantry and independently could be demonstrated. Thus French officers were drawn to the conclusion that in some circumstances the tank could be used as a true `armoured infantryman': a substitute for the regular soldier and a means to avoid casualties. Nevertheless, the exceptionality of the colonial theatre, and in particular the lack of enemy anti-tank capabilities there, meant that officers were cautious when attempting to apply these conclusions to the future European theatre. Rather, their approach was pragmatic, and in keeping with the idea of the `methodical battle' which was developed towards the end of the First World War.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-08-2018
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 12-2015
DOI: 10.1093/EHR/CEV283
Publisher: CAIRN
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.3917/VIN.141.0025
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 02-2014
DOI: 10.1093/EHR/CET366
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 16-07-2017
Abstract: French theorists of guerre révolutionnaire conceptualized contemporary conflict in the 1950s as a particular form of total war. Located in the idea of global subversive war which provided intellectual rationalization for the army’s experiences in colonial wars after 1945, the theorists argued that the collapse in the distinction between war and peace rendered war permanent and constant, so that France’s colonial wars were a symptom of a broader conflict necessitating the ideological mobilization of the French people. This article contends that much of the inspiration for these ideas can be found in intellectual developments preceding the Second World War.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Michael Finch.