Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (born June 24, 1850, near Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland—died June 5, 1916, at sea off Orkney Islands) was a British field marshal, imperial administrator, conqueror of the Sudan, commander in chief during the South African War, and (perhaps his most important role) secretary of state for war at the beginning of World War I (1914–18). At that time he organized armies on a scale unprecedented in British history and became a symbol of the national will to victory.

Educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, Kitchener was commissioned in the Royal Engineers, and from 1874 he served in the Middle East. In 1886 he was appointed governor (at Sawākin [Suakin], Sudan) of the British Red Sea territories, and he subsequently was assigned to Egypt as adjutant general in Cairo. His energy and thoroughness led to his appointment as sirdar (commander in chief) of the Egyptian army in 1892. On September 2, 1898, he crushed the religious and politically separatist Sudanese forces of al-Mahdī in the Battle of Omdurman and then occupied the nearby city of Khartoum, which he rebuilt as the centre of Anglo-Egyptian government in the Sudan. His reputation in Great Britain was enhanced by his firm, tactful, and successful handling (from September 18, 1898) of an explosive situation at Fashoda (now Kodok), where Jean-Baptiste Marchand’s expeditionary force was trying to establish French sovereignty over parts of the Sudan. (See Fashoda Incident.) He was created Baron Kitchener in 1898.

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After a year as governor-general of the Sudan, Kitchener entered the South African War (Boer War) in December 1899 as chief of staff to Field Marshal Sir Frederick Sleigh Roberts, whom he succeeded as commander in chief in November 1900. During the last 18 months of the war, Kitchener combated guerrilla resistance by such methods as burning Boer farms and herding Boer women and children into disease-ridden concentration camps. These ruthless measures, and Kitchener’s strategic construction of a network of blockhouses across the country to localize and isolate the Boers’ forces, steadily weakened their resistance.

On returning to England after the British victory in the war, he was created Viscount Kitchener (July 1902) and was sent as commander in chief to India, where he reorganized the army in order to meet possible external aggression rather than internal rebellion, which previously had been the primary concern. His quarrel with the viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, over control of the army in India ended in 1905 when the British cabinet upheld Kitchener and Curzon resigned. Remaining in India until 1909, Kitchener was bitterly disappointed at not being appointed viceroy. In September 1911 he accepted the proconsulship of Egypt, and until August 1914 he ruled that country and the Sudan. Protection of the peasants from seizure of their land for debt and the advancement of the cotton-growing interest were his basic concerns. Tolerating no opposition, he was about to depose the hostile Khedive ʿAbbās II (Ḥilmī) of Egypt when World War I broke out.

Kitchener, who was on leave in England and had just received an earldom and another viscountcy and barony (June 1914), reluctantly accepted an appointment to the cabinet as secretary of state for war and was promoted to field marshal. He warned his colleagues, most of whom expected a short war, that the conflict would be decided by the last 1,000,000 men that Great Britain could throw into battle. Quickly enlisting a great number of volunteers, he had them trained as professional soldiers for a succession of entirely new “Kitchener armies.” By the end of 1915 he was convinced of the need for military conscription, but he never publicly advocated it, in deference to Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith’s belief that conscription was not yet politically practicable.

In his recruitment of soldiers, planning of strategy, and mobilization of industry, Kitchener was handicapped by British governmental processes and by his own distaste for teamwork and delegation of responsibility. His cabinet associates, who did not share in the public idolatry of Kitchener, relieved him of responsibility first for industrial mobilization and later for strategy, but he refused to quit the cabinet. His career was ended suddenly, by drowning, when the cruiser HMS Hampshire, bearing him on a mission to Russia, was sunk by a German mine.