Hidebound by tradition? Or ahead of the curve?

I recently came across this splendid colourised photo, which features members of the multi-national force which was deployed to China in 1900 to suppress the Boxer Rebellion:

From left to right, these men represent the contingents of: Great Britain, the USA, the Australian colonies, India, Germany, France, Austro-Hungary, Italy, and Japan (unfortunately the Russian force is not represented, but they wore white jackets and green trousers). For the photo, the men were clearly drawn up in order of height, with the British cleverly picking their tallest man. The hastily thrown-together coalition was known as the Eight Nation Alliance, with the forces of India and Australia both falling under the Union Jack.

What is noteworthy is that the only men in the photo wearing khaki are the British and (British) Indian soldiers.[i] Furthermore, the Australian is obviously a sailor (not a soldier, despite being bedecked in bandoliers) and thus presumably part of a landing party from HMCS Protector, a gunboat which comprised the entire navy of South Australia.[ii]

Though the British army last fought in red in 1885[iii], having started the transition decades earlier, the US army only started the move to khaki in 1898, with the Japanese following suit in 1906, and the mind-boggling vast Russian army in 1907. The polyglot, and rather chaotic, Austro-Hungarian Empire started the move from blue to ‘pike grey’ in 1908 – this wasn’t really much of an improvement, however, and would itself be replaced with a less-conspicuous uniform during the Great War. Rather belying their reputation for military efficiency and innovation, the German army only started to adopt ‘Feldgrau’ in 1910. Most remarkably of all, however, is that France had still not made the transition prior to the outbreak of the Great War, meaning the dauntless French infantry marched into battle clad in their famous ‘pantalon rouge’ well into 1915.

And it is not just the uniforms which suggest the British Empire was ahead of the curve: during the Boxer Rebellion, an attached liaison officer reported that, though they fought bravely, the Japanese – who fielded the largest contingent of the alliance – used densely-packed attack formations and recklessly aggressive tactics, suffering severely as a result.[iv] The observer cited the examples of the assaults made at both Tianjin and Peking, where Japanese troops suffered disproportionately high losses due to these inappropriate tactics.

Yet we are endlessly told that the British army of the period was stuck in the past, hide bound by tradition, and hopelessly outdated. Compared to who, exactly?

Perhaps, instead, it is time for the True Believers – especially the dusty old fossils that still stagger about the History Department of Pretoria University – to accept that it is actually these self-serving myths which are hopeless outdated.

NOTES:

[i] It would seem that German Marines – not army – wore khaki in the Boxer Rebellion. American forces are depicted as wearing a mix of their traditional blue, and the new khaki

[ii] HMCS stood for ‘Her Majesty’s Colonial Ship’. From 1901, after the Federation of the various Australian Colonies, she was known as HMAS Protector

[iii] Despite what some of the more ignorant battlefield guides in South Africa try to tell their clients, the Battle of Ginnis is accepted as the last time the British wore red in action

[iv] Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945, p.99