Victor Kiernan for Sutton The reprint of the Faber War and European Society series brings back (retitled) one I missed. Kiernan is the usual shifty lefty rascal with wishy-washy slacker opinions but for once he constitutes a perfect piquant source for the bulk of his topic. All warfare is, lets face it, pretty reprehensible but colonial warfare is way off the scale. Technically and organisationally superior entitles exploit inferior ones while at the same time feeling aggrieved that those damn darkies were not grateful for being exploited. Kiernan gives the other side a fair hearing, and even in his clear sight one can see the dangerous and fierce joy of the colonial soldier. There are the usual jogs through the subject areas (mostly British and French empire but with good detail on others). Most interestingly there are some views about how the Great War was conditioned by the colonial experience. Both Britain and France had plenty of young officers who had seen what elan could do in the Empire, it is perhaps not surprising they tried the same in Alsace. More Book Corner: The King's Army Culloden and The '45 1918 The Unexpected Victory The Boyne & Aughrim Scalp Dance Napoleon William The Lion 1143-1214 The Art of Warfare During The Middle Ages Philip Augustus James IV The Twilight of a Military Tradition Colonial Empires And Armies 1815-1960 Back to Perfidious Albion #96 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com