Charles William Gwynn

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Sir Charles William Gwynn (born November 4, 1870 in County Down , Ireland , † November 12, 1962 in Dublin ) was a British professional officer and counterinsurgency theorist . He developed the strategy of Imperial Policing , which primarily envisaged the massive use of air forces . As a theorist, he succeeded Sir Charles Edward Callwell . His concepts for the Small War show parallels to those of his contemporary Giulio Douhet for the Great or Symmetrical War .

Military career

Gwynn, son of a professor at Trinity College , Dublin , studied at Sr. Columbia's College in Dublin and at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich . He served with the Royal Engineers from 1889 and took part in the sofa expedition in Sierra Leone in 1893/94 . From 1911 to 1914 he was at the Royal Military College Duntroon in Australia . During the First World War he was a staff officer of the 2nd Australian Division (II nd ANZAC Corps) in the Middle East .

In 1925 he was promoted to major general and was in command of Staff College from 1926 to 1930 and was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath when he left the army in 1931 .

The concept of imperial policing

Gwynn had investigated various uprisings against British colonial rule from 1919, such as the uprising in Amritsar , India , 1919, the Moplah rebellion in 1921 and the uprising in Cyprus in 1931. He then developed four principles of counterinsurgency, which he described in his 1934 work Imperial Policing published, which had official character:

  1. The primacy of civil over military measures.
  2. The use of minimal force.
  3. The need for decisive and coordinated action in order not to lose control of the political situation.
  4. The need to coordinate political and military action.

The concept of using air forces to save personnel against primitively armed insurgents was also a result of the First World War , in which Great Britain suffered more losses with a good 870,000 deaths than in any war before or after. Rebellions in the colonies should be put down as quickly and effectively as possible, as Gwynn recognized that the (independence) propaganda of insurgents was usually more effective than their own.

literature

  • Spencer C. Tucker (Editor): Encyclopedia of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A New Era of Modern Warfare. ABC-CLIO Llc., Santa Barbara, Denver and Oxford 2013, p. 220 f.
  • Tim Moreman: “Watch and ward”: the Army in India and the North-West Frontier, 1920-1939 , in: David Killingray / David Omissi (eds.): Guardians of empire: the armed forces of the colonial powers, c. 1700-1964 , Manchester 2000, pp. 137-56.
  • David Killingray / David Anderson (eds.): Policing and Decolonization: Nationalism, Politics, and the Police, 1917-1965 , Manchester 1992.
  • David E. Omissi: Air power and colonial control. The Royal Air Force 1919-1939 , Manchester 1990.
  • Keyword: Gwynn, Maj. Gen. Sir Charles William (1870-1963) , in: Ian FW Beckett: Encyclopedia of Guerilla Warfare , New York 2001, pp. 95f.
  • Charles W. Gwynn: Imperial Policing , 2nd edition, London 1939 (first edition 1934).

See also

Web links

  • Group Captain Peter W. Gray: The Myths of Air Control and the Realities of Imperial Policing , in: Aerospace Power Journal , Fall 2001: airpower.maxwell.af.mil

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Spencer C. Tucker (editor): Encyclopedia of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A New Era of Modern Warfare , pp. 220/221
predecessor Office successor
Edmund Ironside Commandant of Staff College Camberley
1926–1931 		John Dill
personal data
SURNAME Gwynn, Charles William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British professional officer and counterinsurgency theorist
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH County Down , Ireland
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1962
Place of death Dublin