The evolution of British airborne warfare cannot be fully appreciated without reference to the technological development required to convert the detail contained in the doctrine and concept into operational reality. My original contribution to knowledge is the detailed investigation of the British technological investment in an airborne capability in order to determine whether the development of new technology was justifiable, or indeed, entirely achievable. The thesis combines the detail contained in the original policy for airborne warfare and the subsequent technological investigations to determine whether sufficient strategic requirement had been demonstrated and how policy impacted upon the research programme. Without clear research parameters technological investment could not achieve maximum efficiency and consequent military effectiveness. The allocation of resources was a crucial factor in the technological development and the fact that aircraft suitability and availability remained unresolved throughout the duration of the war would suggest that the development of airborne forces was much less of a strategic priority for the British than has previously been suggested. Ultimately, despite the creation of a dedicated research institution in 1942 (Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment), and the development of specialist hardware such as the assault glider, the British did not possess the material resources required for the large-scale deployment of airborne troops. Analysis of the technology has revealed that the development of airborne warfare was as much for the purpose of psychological warfare and British morale as it was for offensive operations.

The idea of a learning process has become broadly accepted among military historians of the First World War, but explanations for how and why this occurred remain limited. This thesis uses a number of different disciplines alongside more orthodox historical analysis of what the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) did at the divisional level to learn the lessons from combat in an uncompromising operational environment. At the beginning of 1916 the BEF was predominantly a citizen army lacking experience. This marked a low-point in the BEF's fighting capabilities. This thesis charts the development from 1916 to the Armistice in 1918 using the British 32nd Division as a case study. The division participated in a number of major operations including the Battle of the Somme, the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, the Battles of Nieuport, Passchendaele, Amiens and the Hundred Days. They experienced both success and failure ensuring they are a representative case from which to draw broader conclusions. This thesis argues that the BEF's learning process developed as structural improvement occurred, battle experience was gained and leadership improved.

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Ernest William Turner served Canada admirably in two wars and played an instrumental role in unifying veterans’ groups in the post-war period. His experience was unique in the Canadian Expeditionary Force; in that, it included senior command in both the combat and administrative aspects of the Canadian war effort. This thesis, based on new primary research and interpretations, revises the prevalent view of Turner. The thesis recasts five key criticisms of Turner and presents a more balanced and informed assessment of Turner. His appointments were not the result of his political affiliation but because of his courage and capability. Rather than an incompetent field commander, Turner developed from a middling combat general to an effective division commander by late 1916. His transfer to England was the result of the need for a proficient field commander to reform the administration. Turner proved to be an excellent administrator, a strong nationalist, and was crucially responsible for improvements in administration and training in England. Finally, the conflict with Sir Arthur Currie, the commander of the Canadian Corps, rather than being motivated by obstructionist jealousy was the outcome of competing institutional imperatives and Currie’s challenging personality.

The history of the British Army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is generally associated with stories of British military victory and the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington. An intrinsic aspect of the historiography is the argument that, following British defeat in the Low Countries in 1795, the Army was transformed by the military reforms of His Royal Highness, Frederick Duke of York. This thesis provides a critical appraisal of the reform process with reference to the organisation, structure, ethos and learning capabilities of the British Army and evaluates the impact of the reforms upon British military performance in the Low Countries, in the period 1793 to 1814, via a series of narrative reconstructions. This thesis directly challenges the transformation argument and provides a re-evaluation of British military competency in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

In the discipline of International Relations, scholars have recently drawn attention to how political actors use narratives to claim legitimacy for themselves, their actions, and their use of force. Whilst such work provides welcome insights, there has been little attention given to how these narratives are often told through visual media on digital social media sites. In light of this, this thesis argues that visual media are central to how political actors claim legitimacy for the use of force in the digital age. Theoretically informed by work on aesthetics, narrative, and visual global politics, this thesis provides an analytical framework for studying the visual politics of legitimation. This is then explored through two case studies of the British Army and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces. In each case study I draw upon multiple methods to analyse the narrative and visual content of each actor’s official Facebook Page, as well as the contexts of media production and audience reception. This thesis contributes to studies of global politics by illustrating how each actor uses visual media to claim legitimacy for the use of force, and thereby provides the first empirical analysis of the visual politics of legitimation.

Malicious cyber-attacks, those cyber-attacks which do not rise to the level of force in international law, pose a significant problem to the international community. Attributing responsibility for malicious cyber-attacks is imperative if states are to respond and prevent the attacks from continuing. Unfortunately, due to both technical and legal issues attributing malicious cyber-attacks to the responsible state or non-state actor is difficult if not impossible in the vast majority of attacks. Even if an injured state may recursively trace the malicious cyber-attack to the responsible IP address, this is not enough under the current international customary law to hold a state or non-state actor responsible for the cyber-attack as it is virtually impossible to bridge the air gap between the computer system and end user to demonstrate affirmatively who initiated the attack. Even if a state could demonstrate the identity of the end user that initiated the attack, this is not enough to link the end user to the state for responsibility to lie under existing customary international law. As such this study was conducted to analyze the issue of malicious cyber-attacks as a matter of customary international law to ascertain mechanism to hold states responsible for malicious cyber-attacks which originate from a state’s sovereign territory. Specifically, this study addresses the issue of legal and technical attribution of malicious cyber-attacks for the purposes of holding states responsible for those attacks. This study argues that under existing customary international law attributing malicious cyber-attacks for the purpose of ascertaining state responsibility is difficult if not impossible. As such, this study proposes alternative theories, which already exist within customary international law, for holding states responsible for malicious cyber-attacks which originate from their sovereign territory. This study addresses alternative theories of state responsibility existing in customary international law such as those put forth in Trail Smelter and Corfu Channel and the theory of strict liability for ultra-hazardous activities. In addition, this study addresses the theory of indirect responsibility, the duty to prevent harm, and due diligence in cyber-space. Lastly this study analysis the impact of the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and NATO forces and determines that a burgeoning rule of attribution may be present which would impact the attribution of malicious cyber-attacks to states. This study makes an original and important addition to the corpus of international law by addressing the issues of technical and legal attribution, state responsibility, and the duty to prevent malicious cyber-attacks as a matter of customary international law. This study is needed; malicious cyber-attacks implicate international law, as the majority are interstate in nature. However, international law currently has no paradigm, per se, in place to effectively deal with the issue of malicious cyber-attacks.

India’s North-West Frontier was the one area where the British Raj could suffer a knockout blow from either external Russian invasion or internal revolt. Frontier defence was amongst the greatest burdens during India’s inter-War financial austerity. Despite the RAF’s operational and financial efficacy in 1920s Iraq, air control was never implemented on the Frontier and air power’s potential was never fully exploited. Instead, aircraft were employed to enhance the Army’s traditional battlefield capabilities, resulting in efficient tactical co-ordination during the 1930s Waziristan campaign - the RAF’s most operationally-active pre-War theatre. To address why air power was constrained on the Frontier, the Thesis examines the inter-War relationship between the Armies of India and the RAF and its impact on the development and application of RAF doctrine. It concludes that the conservatively-natured Indian Armies were slow to recognise the conceptual shift required to fully exploit air power. This entrenchment was reinforced by inter-Service rivalry and the threat of aircraft replacing land forces with a concomitant loss of political standing. The enduring high-level internecine conflict resulted in the squandering of both resources and the opportunity to test independent, ‘strategic’ air power theory prior to WWII. Its legacy impacted on Army-RAF relations into WWII.

Although historical studies are frequently perceived as clear narratives defined by a series of fixed events; in reality, even where critical historical events may be identified, historic documentation frequently lacks corroborative detail to support verifiable interpretation. Consequently, interpretation rarely rises above the level of unproven assertion and is rarely tested against a range of evidence. Agent-based simulation can provide an opportunity to break these cycles of academic claim and counter-claim. This thesis discusses the development of an agent-based simulation designed to investigate medieval military logistics so that new evidence may be generated to supplement existing historical analysis. It uses as a case-study the Byzantine army’s march to the battle of Manzikert (AD 1071), a key event in medieval history. It describes the design and implementation of a series of agent-based models and presents the results of these models. The analysis of these results shows that agent-based modelling is a powerful tool in investigating the practical limitations faced by medieval armies on campaign.

Numerous studies, books, and articles have been written on Britains retreat from its former empire in the 1960s. Journalists wrote about it at the time, many people who were involved wrote about it in the immediate years that followed, and historians have tried to put it all together. The issues of foreign policy at the strategic level and the military operations that took place in this period have been especially well covered. However, the question of military strategic alternatives in this important era of British foreign policy has been less studied. This dissertation discusses such high-profile projects as the TSR.2 and F.111, prospective VTOL aircraft and not least the CVA-01 fleet carrier, but most of all it focuses on the issue of military strategy. The rivalry between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force was largely about the questions of carrier aviation versus land-based air power – and which strategic option would best answer the British need to maintain influence as the garrisons were being scaled down. The Royal Navy argued for replacement fleet carriers for their mobile seaborne strategy, while the Royal Air Force argued that land-based air power would be as effective and far less costly. By using this underlying strategic debate as the framework for understanding more specific debates on aircraft, ships and weapon systems, this dissertation aims to bring new light to our understanding of the dramatic restructuring and altered priorities these two military services saw during the 1960s. The story may be divided into three broad periods: From 1960 until mid 1963, it was a conceptual debate on ‘Carrier Task Forces’ and a concrete alternative ‘Island Strategy’. This ended in July 1963 with a Cabinet decision in favour of new fleet carriers. However, the Royal Air Force and the Treasury kept fighting this decision. Their continued resistance, together with the new Labour Government with Denis Healey as Secretary of State for Defence, changed the decision of 1963. The highpoint of the debate on carrier aviation and land-based air power came during 1965-66, ending with the decision of February 1966 to cancel the CVA-01 and gradually phase out the existing carrier fleet. Denis Healey then used the arguments for land-based air power as a rationale for the decision. The dissertation rounds off with a discussion of the planned phase-out of the existing carrier fleet. However, the story saw a different end than planned, as new strategic challenges in home waters came about and the evolving VTOL Harrier aircraft and the ‘through-deck cruisers’ gave new possibilities. This is a historical study of the British debate about maritime air power and strategic alternatives in the 1960s. However, the detailed story and arguments used for and against both alternatives should clearly have relevance to any conceptual debates on carrier and land-based air power.

Battlefield sites are some of the most iconic locations in any nation’s store of heritage attractions and continue to capture the imagination of visitors. They have strong historic, cultural, nationalistic and moral resonances and speak to people on a national as well as a local scale. They have the power to provoke contention but at the same time foster understanding and respect through the consideration of deep moral questions. Battlefields are suffused with powerful stories of courage, sacrifice, betrayal and even cowardice. They have a strong sense of place and can provoke a range of cognitive and emotional reactions. But as sites they are inherently unremarkable and rely on the incarnative powers of interpretation to inform and enliven otherwise empty landscapes. This thesis is a wide ranging analysis of what battlefields mean to tourists and the effect interpretation has on battlefield sites. In order to further understand these aspects the development of the sites is also investigated including the historical and cultural forces which have been at play in creating such ‘attractions’. This makes use of the semiotic interpretation of tourist sites and the ‘site sacralisation’ model of Dean MacCannell in addressing the important question of what factors are present in the creation of an attraction. The study uses the four main ‘managed’ battlefield sites in the UK – Hastings (1066), Bannockburn (1314) , Bosworth (1485) and Culloden (1746) – to illustrate these objectives and comparisons are also made with a more recent conflict, that of the First World War (1914-18) at the Western Front in France and Belgium. Using an array of qualitative and quantitative methods the study addresses a hitherto relatively understudied area of tourism in exploring the meanings attached to the more historic sites and how they compare and contrast with visitor experiences at sites of more modern conflict. Interviews with experts/stakeholders involved with battlefield sites as well as both visitors at conventional times and at a re-enactment event were made and a large corpus of material was gathered from which conclusions were drawn. Although not statistically generalisable because of methodological constraints the results from the study add an important dimension to our understanding of battlefield tourism and what conflict sites mean to people. The study demonstrates how there is a very dynamic relationship between site and visitor and this is manifested in deep and wide ranging discourses which are reflected by the visitor comments. This is complemented by the views of experts/stakeholders. The study addresses some of the salient points surrounding the nature of visitor experience using the theory of the tourist ‘gaze’ propounded by John Urry. It asserts that a broader appreciation of the visitor interaction needs to be adopted utilizing a multi-sensory approach and not restricted to the dominance of the visual in interpreting the battlefield site. Interpretation is seen as critical in endowing relatively unremarkable sites with meaning and the existing approaches taken by the agencies managing the case study sites are found to be particularly effective in educational terms. The study examined the deeper meanings thought to be attached to places of suffering and death (the numen) but found a very weak response suggesting that the commercialisation of such sites results in a diminution of any visceral type of experience. For the Western Front the deeper meanings were eclipsed by grief and the study thus concluded that the numen can be subsumed into more complex reactions to places of death and suffering. With regard to the development of the historical sites the study challenges the stages of sacralisation in that more contemporary forces involved in attraction creation are neglected. A further commercialisation stage is added to update the model. Battlefield sites have much to inform us about how heritage is received and understood by the public. This is even more instructive in the case of a conflict site where the nature of the attraction might sit uncomfortably with public perception. This study aims to shed light on the meanings of such ‘dark’ sites within society and in doing so can in turn provide vivid reflections on our own culture milieu.