A Kinder, Gentler British Army: Mid-Victorian Experiments in the Management of Army Vice at Gibraltar and Aldershot
1996; Routledge; Volume: 14; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1179/war.1996.14.2.21
ISSN2042-4345
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoIn the early 1860s,one of the first practical fruits of what Chaplain General George Robert Gleig had once called instilling the 'moral discipline' of the British army took shape in behaviour control experiments with troops stationed at Aldershot.1 These experiments, made in the context of Crimea-era reforms and based on earlier efforts made in much smaller garrisons, explored the application of a secular ethic of the 'home' and 'respectability' to problems of army discipline. During the 1840s and 1850s,military religious reform increased official toleration of denominational plurality and religious practice in the army. Public scrutiny of the army after Crimea also drove a reform of service conditions. By the later 1850s, even the hardest and most secular officers had to work with the intangibles of 'character building' rather than with the older disciplinary methods of jail and lash. There also emerged a civilian parallel in a missionary drive among the army. That effort later enjoyed gre9-tsuccess by relying upon tenets of 'home' and 'motherhood' in the context of vital Christianity. This article will concentrate, however, upon the military social reform in the army and its themes of public sexual ideology and controlling the power of the 'home'.
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