improve, and it constituted another huge step-level jump in the lethality of weapons
available to the infantry for both offence and defence. Armies differed in their choices
among weapon system brands, their rate of introduction into the inventory, and their
exact placement of this formidable device in the force structure. But few could deny that
the machine-gun made a difference to the conduct of warfare.
The artillery story of the nineteenth century is too extensive to be developed here.
Its full consequences are discussed in Chapter 7. Guns changed in their material
composition from brass and iron to steel, and from being smooth-bored to rifled (1 8 60s).
Muzzle-loading gave way to breech-loading (1 8 60s) and firing mainly solid shot gave
way to firing high-explosive shells, which required the development of precise time fuses
along with the older system of shrapnel (which dated from 1 8 04 in the British Army).
Thanks to a more scientific approach to gunnery, indirect fire was introduced in the Boer
War by both sides, while its practice was advanced by the Russians, uncharacteristically
the technical leaders in this field, in their war with Japan (1904–5). Also, technologists
solved the problem of needing to re-lay a gun after every shot, with the consequent loss
of time, accuracy and repeated exposure of the crew. The answer lay in the invention of
a recoilless mechanism enabled by the rearward release of firing gases (1 8 90s).
Barbed wire was a civilian technical development adjunct to, but lethally synergistic
with, modern weaponry. The wire that closed the formerly open range of the American
prairie was invented in 1 8 74 and was first used in the Boer War (1 8 99–1902). It proved
deadly in its contribution to stalemate and the necessary resort to a strategy of attrition
in 1914–1 8.
For these innovations to be directed intelligently, perhaps just effectively, if not
necessarily efficiently, every state player that aspired to perform well at modern warfare
was obliged to acquire a general staff of military professionals genuinely expert in the
mysteries of logistics, especially of coordinated movement by railway. The railway
sections of general staffs dealt with mobilization, the binding task between movement
for war, which was believed to hold the key to swift victory, and war planning. The
Prussians had led the way, but as always happens the leader is followed and loses much
of his initial advantage, as this case illustrated.
By the closing decades of the century, aristocratic and other conservative anxieties
about the political risks of creating a nation in arms by universal conscription were
overridden by the more pressing demands of perceived military necessity, especially in
France. The French experience in 1 8 70–1, together with its large demographic shortfall
compared with the new Germany, provided conclusive reasons why the army should be
increased dramatically in size. Nevertheless, each continental great power continued to
size and shape its army with at least one eye on the political perils of the undesirably
democratic domestic consequences that would flow from large-scale expansion.
It may seem odd that thus far nothing has been said in this chapter of a naval, or more
broadly maritime, character. The omission may appear especially unjustifiable given that
the years 1 8 90 to 1914 saw the appearance of influential books by the most accomplished
strategic theorists in American and British history. Respectively, in 1 8 90 Admiral Alfred
Thayer Mahan, the American, preached the doctrine of superiority at sea via a dominant
and concentrated battle fleet as the only certain route to national greatness (Mahan,
1965). The Briton, Julian Corbett, was a civilian lawyer, a gifted historian and an inspired
Clausewitzian naval theorist. He wrote subtly and in terms that did not meet with
Nineteenth century: technology and war 67