Military History and the Principles of War

PME 420 · Professional Military Education · Level 400 (officers and senior non-commissioned officers)

A Royal Army College course on the study of war: why an officer reads military history, the principles of war and their Commonwealth lineage, how to study a campaign, and what endures and what changes in the conduct of operations.

Course length: 10 hours, studied online and asynchronously at the student's own pace, together with any in-person practical instruction and assessment the course requires.

Foreword

An officer who would understand their profession must understand its past, because war and the conduct of operations have a history from which the profession has drawn the principles it lives by, and because the study of how others have succeeded and failed is the largest store of experience an officer can draw on beyond their own. The command courses taught that judgement is built partly from the vicarious experience of study; this course is where that study is taken up in earnest, through military history and the principles of war that history has distilled. It teaches the officer not a set of dates and battles to be memorised, but a way of studying the past that builds judgement: the reading of campaigns for their lessons, the principles of war as a framework for thinking about operations, and the understanding of what endures and what changes in war across time.

This is a course for a small humanitarian home-defence force, and it is honest about what that means. The Royal Kaharagian Army is young and holds no campaign history of its own, no battle honours, no record of operations to study, and this course never pretends otherwise. What it offers instead is the wider study of war, the campaigns and principles of the broader military tradition, adapted to the understanding and the tasks of a small defensive and humanitarian force, and the honest history of the Principality and its young Army as it actually is. The principles of war are taught not as a recipe for conquest, which is no part of this Army's purpose, but as a framework for thinking clearly about any operation, including the floods, fires, searches, and home-defence tasks this Army actually conducts, because the principles that govern the concentration of effort, the clarity of aim, and the sustaining of a force apply as much to a relief operation as to a battle.

How this course works

This is an intermediate-to-advanced professional course, studied online lesson by lesson, with its guided readings and short essays assessed in person. It assumes Foundations of Military Leadership (LDR 201) and builds naturally on the command thinking of Command, Mission Command, and Decision-Making (LDR 410). It pairs with the wider professional military education series, and its study of the principles of war underlies the operational thinking taught across the College.

Structure

Where this sits

PME 420 is a Level-400 professional military education course, building on Foundations of Military Leadership (LDR 201) and the command thinking of Command, Mission Command, and Decision-Making (LDR 410), whose estimate and judgement it deepens with the study of war and its principles. It rests alongside the other professional military education courses (PME) and underlies the operational understanding taught across the College.

A note on sources

This is the College's own course, written fresh in Kaharagian and Commonwealth terms on the British and Commonwealth tradition of the principles of war and the study of military history, adapting its sources rather than reproducing them and drawing the principles from the settled doctrinal tradition rather than from any single author. Where it touches the history of the Principality and its Army, it tells that history honestly, as that of a recently founded force without a campaign record, and invents no battle honours or operational history. It is written in formal British English and carries Crown Copyright. Its examples are illustrative and use generic settings, since the Principality holds no territory of its own.

Crown Copyright © 2026 | Published by Authority of H.R.H. The Prince of Kaharagia