Guerrilla warfare definition us history
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1883 - 1963) and his father unified the Moroccan tribes under their control and took up arms against the Spanish and French invaders in 1920. The Moroccan military leader Abd el-Krim ( c. Arthur Wellesley (in India 1797-1805) had commanded forces assigned to defeat Pazhassi's techniques, but failed. Kerala Varma (Pazhassi Raja) (1753-1805) used guerrilla techniques in his war against the British East India Company in India between 17.Īrthur Wellesley adopted the term "guerrilla" into English from Spanish usage in 1809 - after the Pazhassi revolt against the British. In the 17th century, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, founder of the Maratha Empire, pioneered Shiva sutra or Ganimi Kava (Guerrilla Tactics) to defeat the many times larger and more powerful armies of the Mughal Empire. Since the Enlightenment, ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and religious fundamentalism have played an important role in shaping insurgencies and guerrilla warfare.
#Guerrilla warfare definition us history manual#
In the later tenth century this form of warfare was codified in a military manual known by its later Latin name as De velitatione bellica ('On Skirmishing') so it would not be forgotten in the future. Tactics involved a heavy emphasis on reconnaissance and intelligence, shadowing the enemy, evacuating threatened population centres, and attacking when the enemy dispersed to raid. In the medieval Roman Empire, guerrilla warfare was frequently practiced between the eighth through tenth centuries along the eastern frontier with the Umayyad and then Abbasid caliphates.
This strategy would influence guerrilla tactics into the modern era. In the 3rd century BC, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, widely regarded as the "father of guerrilla warfare", devised the Fabian strategy which the Roman Republic used to great effect against Hannibal's army. This inspired developments in modern guerrilla warfare. The Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his The Art of War (6th century BC), became one of the earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare. Evidence of conventional warfare, on the other hand, did not emerge until 3100 BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Prehistoric tribal warriors presumably employed guerrilla-style tactics against enemy tribes. Main article: History of guerrilla warfare
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The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale, and scope between the guerrilla army and the formal, professional army of the state. However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes the specific style of warfare. The term guerrilla was used in English as early as 1809 to refer to the individual fighters (e.g., "The town was taken by the guerrillas"), and also (as in Spanish) to denote a group or band of such fighters. In correct Spanish usage, a person who is a member of a guerrilla unit is a guerrillero ( ) if male, or a guerrillera ( ) if female. The term became popular during the early-19th century Peninsular War, when, after the defeat of their regular armies, the Spanish and Portuguese people successfully rose against the Napoleonic troops and defeated a highly superior army using the guerrilla strategy. The Spanish word guerrilla is the diminutive form of guerra ('war'). Spanish guerrilla resistance to the Napoleonic French invasion of Spain at the Battle of Valdepeñas Guerrilla groups often depend on the logistical and political support of either the local population or foreign backers who do not engage in an armed struggle but sympathize with the guerrilla group's efforts. Guerrilla tactics focus on avoiding head-on confrontations with enemy armies, instead engaging in limited skirmishes with the goal of exhausting adversaries and forcing them to withdraw.
Guerrilla warfare has been used by various factions throughout history and is particularly associated with revolutionary movements and popular resistance against invading or occupying armies. The 3rd century BC Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus is also cred with inventing many of the tactics of guerrilla warfare through what is today called Fabian strategy. In the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu proposed the use of guerrilla-style tactics in The Art of War. Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility, to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military.Īlthough the term "guerrilla warfare" was coined in the context of the Peninsular War in the 19th century, the tactical methods of guerrilla warfare have long been in use.