Civilian specialists at war: Britain's transport experts and the First World War

This book examines the connection between the senior executives in Britain’s largest transport companies and the British Army in the period surrounding the First World War. It argues that the evolving professional relationship between Britain’s transport experts and the military, both in peacetime and during the war, illustrates the ways in which the army conceptualised industrial warfare and the role to be played by technical expertise in such a conflict. This book demonstrates the complexities involved in the introduction of novel, pioneering management techniques to the administration of a force engaged in coalition warfare on foreign soil, and sheds new light on the multiple and diverse contributions of Britain’s transport experts to the prosecution of the war effort between 1914 and 1918.