World War I was the first great general conflict to be fought between highly industrial societies able to manufacture and transport immense quantities of goods over land and sea. Yet the armies of the war were too vast in scale, their movements too complex, and the infrastructure upon which they depended too specialized to be operated by professional soldiers alone.

In Civilian Specialists at War, Christopher Phillips examines the relationship between industrial society and industrial warfare through the lens of Britain’s transport experts. Phillips analyzes the multiple connections between the army, the government, and the senior executives of some of prewar Britain’s largest industrial enterprises, revealing that civilian transport experts were a key component of Britain’s strategies in World War I. This book also details the application of recognizably civilian technologies and methods to the prosecution of war, and documents how transport experts were constrained by the political and military requirements of coalition warfare.

ChristopherPhillips is a lecturer in international security in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.

Introduction

Part I: Preparation

1. Forging a relationship: the army, the government and Britain’s transport experts, 1825–1914

2. A fruitful collaboration: Henry Wilson, the railways and the BEF’s mobilization, 1910–14

Part II: Expansion

3. Stepping into their places: Britain’s transport experts and the expanding war, 1914–16

4. Commitment and constraint I: the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway and the port of Boulogne

5. Commitment and constraint II: Commander Gerald Holland and the role of inland water transport

Part III: Armageddon

6. The civilians take over? Sir Eric Geddes and the crisis of 1916

7. ‘By similar methods as adopted by the English railway companies’: materials and working practices on the western front, 1916–18

8. The balancing act: Britain’s transport experts, the global war effort and coalition warfare, 1916–18

9. The road to victory: transportation in the British Expeditionary Force, 1917–18

Conclusion