Lieutenant-Colonel Seton Churchill and the financial lessons of the African campaigns, 1879-1902

摘要

Lieutenant-Colonel Seton Churchill of the Army Pay Department (APD) delivered three lectures at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) between 1895 and 1903, where he identified the existing problems of military administration generally and the inflexibility of the existing system of Army financial administration. Churchill had gained his financial experience in the field during three African campaigns and was critical of the existing system that completely failed during the second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Army financial organisation and reform are not attractive areas of research by mainstream war historians, and the system of financial structures of the pre-1914 British Army have gone unnoticed within the overall field of military history. Indeed little has been attempted to determine what it cost Britain to have an Empire (Davis & Huttenback, 1987).