During the middle of the 19th-Century, Britain and China would twice go to war over trade, and in particular the trade in opium. The Chinese people had progressively become addicted to the narcotic, a habit that British merchants were more than happy to feed from their opium-poppy fields in India. When the Qing dynasty rulers of China attempted to supress this trade--due to the serious social and economic problems it caused--the British Government responded with gunboat diplomacy, and conf...

Perhaps one of the most dramatic events of the late Victorian period was the death of General Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon at the hands of the Mahdi’s fanatical warriors as they finally broke their way into the Sudanese city of Khartoum. The story is well-known, recounted in numerous books and celebrated in the film Khartoum (1966) starring Charlton Heston. However, what is perhaps less well-known is the subsequent – and far more successful – campaign fought by the British against the Mahdi’s ...

In 1895, a small Indian Army garrison, commanded by Surgeon-Major Sir George Scott Robertson and Captain Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, was besieged by a Chitrali and Pathan army at the fort of Chitral. Despite the odds heavily stacked against them, Robertson’s beleaguered little garrison held out for forty-eight days until a relief expedition was able to fight its way through to the rescue. The siege and subsequent relief is a story of valour, including an award of the Victoria Cross, an...

On 18 June 1815 some 200,000 men fought in what would be the most important land battle Europe had ever seen, the Battle of Waterloo. It was not the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, nor would it actually be the last, but it ultimately brought to an end almost a quarter of a century of virtually uninterrupted conflict. The result of the battle, which the Duke of Wellington would later describe as a ‘near-run thing’, changed the course of history, and Europe – indeed much of the world ...

Pathan Rising tells the story of the large-scale tribal unrest that erupted along the North West Frontier of India in the late 1890s; a short but sharp period of violence that was initiated by the Pathan tribesmen against the British. Although the exact causes of the unrest remain unclear, it was likely the result of tribal resentment towards the establishment of the Durand Line and British 'forward policy', during the last echoes of the 'Great Game', that led the proud tribesmen to take u...

Britain's budding airborne forces saw their first prolonged combat in the battles for North Africa and Sicily in 1942–43, while their German counterparts - reinforced and expanded since their costly victory in Crete - proved their value as veteran 'fire fighters', able to counter emergencies.The airborne forces of Britain and Germany were among their best troops of World War II and when they met in battle the result was a brutal trial of strength. British paratroop...

The Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 pitted Nazi Germany and her allies against Stalin's forces in a mighty struggle for survival.Fighting alongside the spearhead Panzer divisions were Germany's highly skilled and veteran motorized infantrymen – including the German Army's premier unit, Infanterie-Regiment (mot.) Großdeutschland. Opposing these German mobile forces, the Soviets deployed the often ill-trained and poorly equipped men of the rifle reg...

The bloody campaigns of the American Revolutionary War pitted Britain's redcoats against Washington's Continentals in a host of encounters, from Germantown in 1777 to Cowpens in 1781.The Redcoats were a highly trained organization manned by long-serving and experienced infantrymen with a formidable reputation forged on European battlefields during the Seven Years' War. So, how were the poorly trained, poorly supplied Continental infantry able to hold their own and ...

Blood curdling account of the Seige of Lucknow in 1857 India.A fascinanting and shockingly testimony. This is the personal diary of Julia Selina Inglis, the wife of Major-General Sir John Eardley Inglis, who commanded the British troops at the Siege of Lucknow in 1857 in India during the mutiny and uprising of 1857. By June 1857, with three sons aged under five, Julia Inglis was living in the British Residency of Lucknow. On 30 June, under the overall command of Sir Henry Lawrence, the Bri...

Written by 43 Squadron's intelligence officer, Hector Bolitho, Finest of the Few revolves around Bolitho's friend, fighter ace John W.C. Simpson, who shot down 13 German aircraft during the Battle of Britain. The book was written in 1941 and was based on John Simpsons Combat Reports, his personal letters and papers together with Hectors own recollections of the heady days of the summer of 1940.Contains 80 black and white illustrations

Great battles mark history's turning points, occurring as they do where cultures and ideologies clash.While some battles have been won by the superior force, others have been won by a sheer dogged refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. Superior weaponry has sometimes brought victory, as at Plassey, while the superior generalship of a Napoleon, a Wellington, or a Marlborough has won the day on other occasions.All the great battles in this boo...

David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the surge." Now, in The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror. Kilcullen takes us "on the ground" to uncover the face of modern warfare, illuminatin...