The Battle of Dorking

The Battle of Dorking

The Battle of Dorking was originally published anonymously in Blackwood’s Magazine in May 1871. The story is a fictitious account of the invasion of Britain, told by a grandfather to his grandchildren, and describes the events surrounding the imagined invasion of Britain fifty years earlier.

The anonymous author was later identified as George Tomkyns Chesney, a serving officer in the British army. Chesney wrote the story as a warning regarding Britain’s precarious situation following Germany’s conquest of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The book resonated with the general public and, according to Clarke, ‘gained world-wide notoriety’ (p. 2). Chesney wrote it to raise awareness about his concerns regarding Britain’s national safety at a time of European political upheaval. The following extract provides some insight into his views:

The army cost enough, and more than enough, to give us a proper defence, and there were armed men of sorts in plenty and to spare, if only they had been decently organised. It was in organisation and forethought that we fell short, because our rulers did not heartily believe in the need for preparation. The fleet and the Channel, they said, were sufficient protection. So army reform was put off to some more convenient season… (p. 6, London edition).

The Special Collection holds two different editions of The Battle of Dorking (London and Melbourne editions, both published in 1871) and interestingly, there are differences in the wording in various parts of the texts. The meaning however, generally remains the same. As an example, the extract above from the London edition is almost entirely missing from the Melbourne edition (p. 5, Melbourne edition) with just the sentence ‘The fleet and the Channel, they said, were sufficient protection’, left to convey the author’s disillusionment with the government’s defence policy.

Other examples of the differences between the London and Melbourne editions can be seen in the following excerpts:

At any rate, the Ministry, baffled on all sides, gave up by degrees all the strong points of a scheme which they were not heartily in earnest about. It was not that there was any lack of money, if only it had been spent in the right way (p. 6, London edition).

At any rate the Ministry were only too glad of this excuse to give up all the strong points of a scheme which they were not really in earnest about (p. 5, Melbourne edition). (The final sentence in the London example above: ‘It was not that there was any lack of money, if only it had been spent in the right way’ is entirely missing from the Melbourne edition).

Prior to the publication of The Battle of Dorking, tracts and pamphlets using the premise of an imaginary future war had occasionally been published in order to raise awareness about various political agendas; however none had managed to attract as much attention as Chesney’s story. As a result of the success of The Battle of Dorking, more books in a similar vein were published. Because of this, it is generally regarded as the book which, as described by Kirkwood, 'spawned an entire genre of 'invasion literature…' (p. 3). Clarke believes that ‘the tale of war-to-come as the most favoured means of presenting arguments for – or against – new political alliances, changes in the organization and equipment of armies, technological innovations in naval vessels, or even schemes for colonial expansion’ had been established by the success of The Battle of Dorking (p. 1).