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Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice. By C. E. Callwell. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996 [1896; 3d ed., 1906]. ISBN 0-8032-6366-X. Index. Pp. xviii, 559. $25.00.
The text of a 1937 U.S. Army extension course correctly identified Colonel C. E. Callwell as "an authority of long standing" on the topic of small wars. Prior to World War II his book provided the only detailed, English-language study of warfare against irregulars. First published in 1896, the work underwent two revisions, and, as Douglas Porch writes in his excellent introduction to this facsimile edition, Small Wars "came to be regarded as a minor classic of military writing" (p. v).
Before the flood of publications on irregular warfare during the Cold War, only the 1940 Small Wars Manual of the U.S. Marine Corps rivaled Calwell's work. Although Callwell's remarks on a number of subjects, including the tactical value of the square, are clearly antiquated, Small Wars retains a surprising...