The revolution in the use of coal to produce the steam which enabled the mass
production of iron and then steel delivered, pre-eminently, the railway and the steamship.
Both had enormous strategic implications. Troops could be moved rapidly for the first
time. Moreover, they could be moved in large numbers, and then sustained logistically.
The first railway was built in Britain in 1 8 25, connecting Stockton and Darlington;
Liverpool and Manchester were connected in 1 8 30. The first major railway in France had
been completed in 1 828. In terms of demonstrated military utility, Prussia dispatched
soldiers by train to suppress revolution in 1 848. The Anglo-French expeditionary force
in the Crimea constructed a light railway to connect the harbour at Balaclava with the
troops inland, and the French moved an entire army by train to northern Italy in 1 8 59 in
just two weeks when they mobilized and deployed to fight the Austrians. The classic
study of the strategic influence of the rise of ‘rail power’, written by Edwin A. Pratt in
1916, had this to say about the extraordinary meaning of the railway for the American
Civil War: ‘Such were the conditions under which the War of Secession in the United
States was fought that without the help of railways it could hardly have been fought at
all’ (Pratt, 1916: 11). What Pratt refers to are the facts that the American theatres of war
approximated in geographical scale the size of much of Europe. That was a far cry in
time and space from Prussia’s much-praised employment of its railways in its wars with
Austria in 1 8 66 and France in 1 8 70–1. In fact, Pratt’s comment on railways as a vital
enabling agent for the conduct of the American Civil War could also have been made for
World War I, and indeed for World War II. They were both ‘railway wars’, among their
other qualities.
The Industrial Revolution, and the revolution in a more scientific agriculture that
accompanied it in some countries, created the wealth that enabled military preparation
and war to be financed. In addition, it allowed for the standardized mass production by
machine tools of the equipment and weapons with interchangeable parts in quantities that
large armies must have. The Victorians were proud to the point of boastfulness of the
material progress they achieved through science, technology and engineering. They first
showcased their technical triumphs in the Great Exhibition in London in 1 8 51. But,
inevitably, such progress also advanced the material culture of war.
In addition to the railway, which was the signature development of industrialization,
the invention in 1 8 12 of a safe and reliable means of preserving food by the process of
heat sterilization and canning had profound implications for military logistics. More
campaigns in history have been undone by hunger and its consequences than by the
combat skills of cunning and determined foes. Grand narratives of strategic history are
apt to neglect to mention that the nineteenth century registered the beginning of scientific
medicine. Nevertheless, it was not until the next century that disease was tamed as a
potential strategic show-stopper. Certainly it was a huge impediment to the designs of
military planners and the hopes of politicians.
As well as the railway and the preservation of food, another of the principal structural
achievements of the Industrial Revolution was its success in exploiting electrical
impulses for communications. Samuel Morse patented the electric telegraph in 1 8 37,
and the first operational system was functioning by 1 8 44. Morse went on to invent his
eponymous code, which after 1 8 50 greatly simplified and speeded transmission.
Communication by cable was a revolution. For example, the French Army in the Crimea
was linked by cable with Paris. One must add that this was a distinctly mixed blessing,
58 War, peace and international relations