page_title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener
section_title: India
hierarchical_section_title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener / India
caption_attribution_description: English: The First World War 1914-1918- Personalities Full length portrait of Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum, in full dress uniform and carrying his Field Marshal's Baton, taken shortly after being promoted to the rank and before his appointment as British Governor General of Egypt and the Sudan.
context_page_description: Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, PC was an Irish-born senior British Army officer and colonial administrator who won notoriety for his imperial campaigns, most especially his scorched earth policy against the Boers and his expansion of Lord Roberts' internment camps during the Second Boer War and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War.
  Kitchener was credited in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan for which he was made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. As Chief of Staff in the Second Boer War he played a key role in Lord Roberts' conquest of the Boer Republics, then succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief – by which time Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces imprisoned Boer civilians in concentration camps. His term as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India saw him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigned. Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent and Consul-General.
  In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Kitchener became Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister.
context_section_description: General Lord Kitchener was in late 1902 appointed Commander-in-Chief, India, and arrived there to take up the position in November, in time to be in charge during the January 1903 Delhi Durbar. He immediately began the task of reorganising the Indian Army. Kitchener's plan "The Reorganisation and Redistribution of the Army in India" recommended preparing the Indian Army for any potential war by reducing the size of fixed garrisons and reorganising it into two armies, to be commanded by Generals Sir Bindon Blood and George Luck.
  While many of the Kitchener Reforms were supported by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who had originally lobbied for Kitchener's appointment, the two men eventually came into conflict. Curzon wrote to Kitchener advising him that signing himself "Kitchener of Khartoum" took up too much time and space – Kitchener commented on the pettiness of this (Curzon simply signed himself "Curzon" as an hereditary peer, although he later took to signing himself "Curzon of Kedleston"). They also clashed over the question of military administration, as Kitchener objected to the system whereby transport and logistics were controlled by a "Military Member" of the Viceroy's Council. The Commander-in-Chief won the crucial support of the government in London, and the Viceroy chose to resign.
  Later events proved Curzon was right in opposing Kitchener's attempts to concentrate all military decision-making power in his own office. Although the offices of Commander-in-Chief and Military Member were now held by a single individual, senior officers could approach only the Commander-in-Chief directly. In order to deal with the Military Member, a request had to be made through the Army Secretary, who reported to the Indian Government and had right of access to the Viceroy. There were even instances when the two separate bureaucracies produced different answers to a problem, with the Commander-in-Chief disagreeing with himself as Military Member. This became known as "the canonisation of duality". Kitchener's successor, General Sir O'Moore Creagh, was nicknamed "no More K", and concentrated on establishing good relations with the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge.
  Kitchener presided over the Rawalpindi Parade in 1905 to honour the Prince and Princess of Wales's visit to India. That same year Kitchener founded the Indian Staff College at Quetta (now the Pakistani Command and Staff College), where his portrait still hangs. His term of office as Commander-in-Chief, India, was extended by two years in 1907.
  Kitchener was promoted to the highest Army rank, field marshal, on 10 September 1909 and went on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. He aspired to be Viceroy of India, but the Secretary of State for India, John Morley, was not keen and hoped to send him instead to Malta as Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Mediterranean, even to the point of announcing the appointment in the newspapers. Kitchener pushed hard for the Viceroyalty, returning to London to lobby Cabinet ministers and the dying King Edward VII, from whom, whilst collecting his field marshal's baton, Kitchener obtained permission to refuse the Malta job. However, Morley could not be moved. This was perhaps in part because Kitchener was thought to be a Tory (the Liberals were in office at the time); perhaps due to a Curzon-inspired whispering campaign; but most importantly because Morley, who was a Gladstonian and thus suspicious of imperialism, felt it inappropriate, after the recent grant of limited self-government under the 1909 Indian Councils Act, for a serving soldier to be Viceroy (in the event, no serving soldier was appointed Viceroy until Lord Wavell in 1943, during the Second World War). The Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, was sympathetic to Kitchener but was unwilling to overrule Morley, who threatened resignation, so Kitchener was finally turned down for the post of Viceroy of India in 1911.
caption: A portrait of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener in full dress uniform taken shortly after being promoted to the rank
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