The Coloniality of the British Army: A Decolonial Framework

In this article, we seek to shift debate on the coloniality of the British Army by using a decolonial framework to think differently about the institution and its core concepts. Two conceptual moves are central to this effort. First, we argue that conceptions of the British Army need to be broadened to acknowledge its reliance on a ‘Reserve Army of Labour’: that is, the racialized and gendered auxiliary labour that is indispensable but often expendable for its operations. Second, we reframe the British Army's core institutional logic of ‘operational effectiveness’—as imagined in the context of counter-insurgency warfare and associated with ‘minimum force’—as an instance of the coloniality of power. Both these conceptual moves, we argue, make visible the coloniality embedded in the Army's institutional fabric. In addition, they resituate conversations currently largely held in terms of discrimination, diversity and inclusion through a deeper assessment of the relations and entanglements structuring the British Army. We conclude by drawing practitioners' attention to the tensions inherent to ‘decolonizing’ the British Army, and suggesting that scholarship on the British Army should acknowledge coloniality as a core feature of the modern institution: not merely as a historical foundation, but as a contemporary reality.