Science and the British Officer: The Early Days of the RUSI (1829-1869)

By Michael Welch
18 Jun 2004

In the decades prior to 1914 the British though they had ‘scientific officers’ with a rather good understanding of the future conditions of warfare, and they thought they had institutions capable of utilising this information. Candidates for such centres of activity could be the many military debating societies that sprang up. The aim of this Whitehall Paper, as the title suggests, has been to highlight just one, albeit a very important centre of study of military science in the British context. This brief history of the RUSI prior to 1870 explores the relationship between scientific beliefs and values, and the conduct of warfare in the same period.

Index