Wavell, Archibald. Allenby: A Study in Greatness, George G. Harrap & Co. (Vol. 1 1940; Vol. II 1943.)

 The life of Edmund Allenby, a soldier and a statesman, in many ways anticipated the trials of his first biographer, Archibald Wavell. Born of "old-rooted English stock," Allenby grew into a tall, barrel-chested young cavalry officer. He served among the first generation of officers in which attendance at Staff College, rather than purchase, ensured promotion. He loved literature, the outdoors, and hunting; his letters to his wife rarely depict warfare, but often mention nature. Allenby's first  experience in a contest of arms occurred during the Boer War of 1899-1902. He served ably, but more importantly he developed connections with the soldiers who later became the key officers of the First World War. Such connections helped ensure his promotion through the ranks. When the Great War began he immediately assumed command of a division of cavalry as a major-general. But the weight of command transformed his personality, so that an "easy-going young officer and a good-humoured squadron leader [became] a strict colonel, an irascible brigadier, and an explosive general." Out of fear and resentment, his men coined him "The Bull." The early years of the First World War cemented his reputation, as thousands of men died under Allenby's command as he bluntly executed orders from above. The year 1917 proved particularly fateful. Allenby began the year with serious losses at the Battle of Arrass, removal from the Western front, and the loss of his only son to German artillery shells; Allenby ended the year in the Middle East with the conquest of Jerusalem. The next year, he conquered Damascus. Given fresh resources and a weakened enemy, Allenby commanded one of the most decisive and efficient campaigns in the history of modern warfare as he swept up the Mediterranean coast and destroyed the Ottoman Empire. His relentless energy provided the Egyptian Expeditionary Force with the necessary momentum to decisively defeat the enemy.

 T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom gives a far more heroic portrait of Allenby than Wavell does here; in fact, Wavell goes to great lengths to temper Lawrence's praise with a sober assessment of Allenby's flaws: his zeal for rules, loyalty, and unquestioned service. Wavell writes with praise, and yet a subtle sense of irony creeps into the biography, as though Wavell no longer believes in greatness. While it lacks the humor of some of Wavell's other works, the book sustains interest as a surprisingly impersonal reflection on Wavell's views of military and civilian leadership.

Archibald Wavell (Field Marshal, Viscount, and Viceroy of India) published his two volume biography of Field Marshall Edmund Allenby in the midst of his own challenges. Wavell served under Allenby in the First World War as a liaison and a staff officer with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. As Wavell finished the first volume of the biography, he served as Commander in Chief in the Middle East, a status similar to the command Allenby once held. As Wavell finished the second volume, he held the Viceroyalty of India, a status somewhat greater than Allenby's eventual post of High Commissioner of Egypt and the Sudan.

Louis, Wm. Roger. Imperialism: the Robinson and Gallagher controversy. New Viewpoints (1976).                 

While many academic arguments suffer a stillborn-death, others crawl out of their initial environment and cheerfully permeate the field. The arguments of Robinson and Gallagher's Africa and the Victorians decidedly fit the latter category. The debates surrounding their arguments consumed many subsequent volumes, conferences, and journals. To assist in tracking the discussion (and to celebrate its proliferation) Wm. Roger Louis presents Imperialism: the Robinson and Gallagher controversy, a collection of articles and essays that wrestle with the themes of continuity, informal empire, and indigenous-European collaboration. Robinson and Gallagher challenge the notion that the major European powers felt a sudden, dramatic urge to divide and conquer Africa in the late 19th century. Rather, the authors argue that an impulse for economic expansion remained a constant throughout the entire Victorian era. Further, the official character of the expansion shifted between informal and formal empire not because of changing domestic opinion in European states, but because of changing local conditions among indigenous non-European territories. African politics especially determined the character of Victorian political practice, and not the other way around. From the fog of Victorian history, one principle emerges: "It is only when and where informal political means failed to provide the framework of security for British enterprise... that the question of establishing formal empire arose." The arguments of Robinson and Gallagher hold interest for three separate cliques of historians: economic historians, historians of Africa, and historians of generalized European imperialism. It seems that previous historians greatly over-estimated the 'divide and conquer' impulse of the late Victorian era, and incorrectly perceived the mechanics of imperial power. 

Robinson and Gallagher's theme of an incessant and expansionist Victorian spirit attacked the assumptions of economic historians of both the Leninists and free-market variety, both of which assumed that the Victorian political objectives drastically changed in the last decades of the 19th century. The theme of indigenous cooperation challenged the assumptions of African studies in regards to the mechanics of European hegemony. And all the themes together created a picture suggesting that historians of European imperialism greatly over-estimated the 'divide and conquer' aspect of the late Victorian era. As Louis writes, "This is history written with a vengeance."

The debates surrounding Robinson and Gallagher raise many interesting questions: Did industrialization lead to a continuous and constant 'spirit of the age?' Should academic history concern itself with generalized theory? More practically, to what extent should historians consider the influence of individual 'characters' like Disraeli, Gladstone, or Leopold II? Such questions plow the field and keep it fresh for future students of history. Casual readers, however, may have trouble digesting the book's engagement with the particulars of Leninist and liberal economic theory.  

          Why, after centuries of neglect, did Britain and the other European powers rush to appropriate nine-tenths of the African continent within sixteen years? In Africa and the Victorians, Robinson and Gallagher sought to provide a new answer, one that firmly refuted the traditional diagnoses of both the economic historians and the popular imagination. The authors (with the aid of Alice Denny) sought evidence from the records of late-Victorian cabinets and consuls. "If the workings of the mind of government can be deciphered," they argue, "it may then be possible to translate back from the symbols of policy-making into the terms of why the partition really took place." In doing so, they uncovered the workings of what they termed 'the official mind.' They discovered that the Evangelical revival and the rise of secular liberalism construed the spirit of the age, and that the spirit never experienced a sudden shift towards imperialism, but rather armed itself with formal imperialism only when informal efforts faltered against rising African nationalism. The late-Victorians sought, in each case, to safeguard the precious routes to India and the eastern empire. Contrary to the economic historians, simple statistics showed that African markets could not possibly explain the onrush of late Imperialism. Instead, Egyptian nationalism sparked the 1882 Suez intervention, and the Suez intervention in turn sparked the division of Africa. "The so-called imperialism of the late-Victorians began as little more than a defensive response to [indigenous] rebellions... the 'imperialism' of the late-Victorians was not so much the cause as the effect of the African partition." The Europeans, it seems, stumbled (rather than strode) into possession of Africa.

Robinson and Gallagher disagreed with the arguments of the economic historians, but they full-heartedly embraced the 'spirit of abstraction' that accompanies such debates. As a consequence, historic figures like Gladstone and Goldie, Chamberlain and Salisbury, Kitchener and Rosebery peak out from their graves, but never fully come to life. The ideas that inspired them remain mysteriously buried, for the authors offer no intellectual history of Victorian morality and its discontents. Surely such an examination would shed light on how liberalism and Evangelicalism interacted to create the predominate 'spirit of the age' that suffuses Africa and the Victorians as a necessary condition for both formal and informal modes of imperialism. Still, despite the book's brevity and abstractions, it unveils the tension of late-Victorian foreign relations, and provides a fascinating window into the tragi-comedy of imperial foreign policy and its unexpected consequences.