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The British Experience of Warfare, c1790–1918

The recruitment of the fighting forces 1790-1918

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

Recall questions on impressment, why men enlisted, long and short service, the militia, Kitchener's volunteers and the Pals battalions, and conscription from 1916.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Process

What methods were used to recruit the fighting forces in this period?

Numbers

What was impressment?

Who and when

Why did men enlist in the army?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What methods were used to recruit the fighting forces in this period?

    Model answer

    Impressment (press gangs, chiefly for the navy), voluntary enlistment, and eventually conscription.

  2. 2

    What was impressment?

    Model answer

    The forcible recruitment of merchant seamen into the navy by press gangs, legal and essential in wartime, which ended in practice after 1815.

  3. 3

    Why did men enlist in the army?

    Model answer

    Unemployment, hunger, debt or drink far more often than patriotism; the bounty was a substantial sum for a labourer and recruiting sergeants targeted the desperate.

  4. 4

    How was the army recruited in the nineteenth century?

    Model answer

    Entirely by voluntary enlistment, initially for long service of twenty-one years, reduced by Cardwell to six years with the colours and six in the reserve.

  5. 5

    What was the militia?

    Model answer

    The home defence force raised by ballot and later by volunteers, which trained annually and provided a pool of partly trained men for the regular army.

  6. 6

    How did recruitment work in the early part of the First World War?

    Model answer

    Through Kitchener's appeal, which raised over two million volunteers by 1916, including the Pals battalions of men from the same town or workplace.

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