Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919-1939

This study examines the origins, character and effectiveness of air policing and its role not only in offering a cheaper means of "pacification", but also in securing the survival of the Royal Air Force as an independent service. The book identifies its significance in specific geographical contexts, its effects on the mentality of imperial administrators and air force personnel together with the reactions and responses of the people against whom it was directed. The author aims to illustrate the potentialities and limitations of the new aerial technology by considering the characteristics of the flying machines and the problems of the men who flew them. This work aims to provide a treatment of air-policing and to make contributions to the history of colonial resistsnce and its suppression, to the relative significance of technology in the maintenance of imperial rule and to the origins and development of the RAF. It also considers the debates of politicians and service commanders about the application and relative success of aerial deployment in civil unrest.