This book complements the Geological Society’s Special Publication 362: Military Aspects of Hydrogeology. Generated under the auspices of the Society’s History of Geology and Engineering Groups, it contains papers from authors in the UK, USA, Germany and Austria. Substantial papers describe some innovative engineering activities, influenced by geology, undertaken by the armed forces of the opposing nations in World War I. These activities were reactivated and developed in World War II. Examples include trenching from World War I, tunnelling and quarrying from both wars, and the use of geologists to aid German coastal fortification and Allied aerial photographic interpretation in World War II. The extensive introduction and other chapters reveal that ‘military geology’ has a longer history. These chapters relate to pre-twentieth century coastal fortification in the UK and the USA; conflict in the American Civil War; long-term ‘going’ assessments for German forces; tunnel repair after wartime route denial in Hong Kong; and tunnel detection after recent insurgent improvisation in Iraq.
This book contains 20 papers from authors in the UK, USA, Germany and Austria. Historically, it gives examples of the influence of groundwater on battlefield tactics and fortress construction; describes how groundwater was developed for water supply and overcome as an obstacle to military engineering and cross-country vehicular movement by both sides in World Wars I and II; and culminates with examples of the application of hydrogeology to site boreholes in recent conflicts, notably in Afghanistan. Examples of current research described include hydrological model development; the impact of variations in soil moisture on explosive threat detection and cross-country vehicle mobility; contamination arising from defence sites and its remediation; privatization of water supplies; and the equitable allocation of resources derived from an international transboundary aquifer.
Several ofthe themes of this study have been treated in earlier publica tions, some by means of a general analysis and some through a detailed handling of problems raised by a particular theme or historian. Both the more general theoretical treatment of the theme and the concrete historiographical treatment are, I think, indispensable aids to the proper understanding of the development of historical scholarship in nineteenth-and twentieth-century England. There are a number of problems in a concrete historiographical approach: there is first the mass of historians to be faced, and then the immense amount of historical themes dealt with in various periods. As a guideline through the tangle of themes we chose the historiography on the development of the English parliament. We can only hope that we have made a responsible choice of the historians concerned. Un fortunately it was not always possible for us to give extensive biogra phies of some of the more recent historians, as several 'papers' are still firmly in the possession of families, and a number of them mus- despite of years - still be labelled 'confidential.' The Pollard Papers in the London Institute of Historical Research thus remained inaccessible. Fortunately the lack was partly compen sated by some important material being found apart from these Papers.