Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 - Background and The Need For Reform

Background and The Need For Reform

In 1899, with the outbreak of the South African War, the British Army was committed to its first large-scale overseas deployment since the 1850s. The intervening period had seen extensive redevelopments of the Regular Army. The Cardwell Reforms of 1868–1872 had abolished the purchase of commissions, professionalising the officer corps, and reformed the system of enlistment so that recruits now served for six years with the colours and then a further six years liable for reserve service. The new reserve system had been tested in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War (when reservists fought overseas for the first time) and during the Pendjeh Crisis, when the reserves of one cavalry regiment and fifteen infantry regiments, totalling 4,681 men, were mobilised.

The administrative structure of the Army had been further reinforced by the creation of regimental districts, where regular infantry regiments were paired together to share a depot and linked to the local militia and volunteer units. In the early 1880s, the next step was taken by the Childers Reforms, which formally amalgamated the regiments into a single two-battalion unit along with the militia and volunteers. This meant that, in general, one battalion of each infantry regiment was based at home with its depot and one was based overseas, which meant that roughly half the Regular Army was available in the United Kingdom for responding to any new overseas commitments. It was estimated, by the "Stanhope Memorandum" of 1891, that a mobilisation of the whole Army would provide two full Army Corps of regular troops—with units reinforced individually by reservists—and a third composed partly of Regulars and partly of Militia, with the remaining auxiliary forces used for garrisons in fixed defences at the ports and around London.