SHEA, Gen Sir John Stuart Mackenzie (1869-1966)

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0099 KCLMA Shea
Held at	: Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://www.kingscollections.org/catalogues/lhcma ›
Full title	: SHEA, Gen Sir John Stuart Mackenzie (1869-1966)
Date(s)	: 1897-1966
Level of description	: Collection (fonds)
Extent	: 2 boxes
Name of creator(s)	: Shea | Sir | John Stuart Mackenzie | knight | 1869-1966 | General

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Born 1869; educated Sedbergh School and Sandhurst; commissioned Royal Irish Regiment, 1888; Lt, 15 Lancers, Indian Army, 1891; Boer War, South Africa, 1900-1902; Major, 1906; Western Front and Palestine, including role as commander 60 Div under the then Gen Edmund (Henry Hynman) Allenby, World War One, 1914-1918; GOC, Central Provinces District, 1921-1923; instrumental in reforming commissioning process for Indians in the British Army in India; ADC General to HM, 1924-1928; Adjutant-General in India, 1924-1928; General, 1926; GOC, Eastern Command in India, 1928-1932; retired 1932; prominent in scouting movement in India and UK; died, 1966.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Copies of papers coverning the career of Shea in South Africa, France, Palestine and India, general correspondence and lectures, 1897-1966; notably including letters and despatches from the Boer War, 1901-1902, compiled by Shea as an officer in De Lisle's Australian brigade with an account of a march to sieze the drift over the Vet Reiver, accounts and commendations; diaries describing his service in France, 1914-1915; papers on service in Palestine, including correspondence, congratulatory telegrams from Gen Edmund (Henry Hynman) Allenby, Gen Sir Edward Stanislaus Bulfin and Maj Gen Philip Walhouse Chetwode on operations in Palestine, notes on fighting issued to 60 Div, Orders of Battle and composition of British and Turkish forces at Beersheba, Gaza and Jerusalem, other tactical notes, photographs of Jerusalem, encampments, troops crossing the Jordan river, Shea and other officers, and correspondence on the subsequent Official History of Palestine, 1917-1955; material on Shea's India service, principally guidance notes on relations with civilian Indians, notes by Shea on the Duzdap railway line, India-Persia, report entitled 'A review of the Waziristan situation with suggestions regarding the future', correspondence on Shea's address to the 1900 Club and the House of Commons and India Committee on conditions in India, maps of Eastern Command, North West Frontier Province and India in its entirety (3 items), 1921-1933; Camberley Staff College assignment reports on the defence of the land frontier of India and Belgium, and other essays on Basutoland and the balance of power in Europe, 1905-1906; general correspondence with Shea describing retirement, decorations, cavalry in the Russian Civil War (1919-1920), and on cavalry actions in the 20th Century, 1919-1955; notes on Aldershot Interdivisional Army Manoeuvres, 1912; typescript lectures and addresses by Shea on the Palestine campaign under Allenby, and on India, 1918-[1942]; maps and aerial photographs of Flanders, with trench positions, Le Touquet and Macquart, 1915-1916, photographs of Sadowa and surrounding countryside, Czechoslovakia (18 items), pencil sketch map of Swat Valley, India, 1897; obituaries of Shea, 1966.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

Arranged into eight principal sections covering the main spheres of operation during Shea's career in chronological order.

Conditions governing access:

Open, subject to signature of reader's undertaking form.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied for research use only. Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, attention of the Director of Archive Services.

Finding aids:

Summary Guide entry available on-line at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/top.htm, and in hard copy in the Centre's reading room.

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Transferred to the Centre by the family in 1986.

Allied Materials

Related material:

Materials relating to Shea in the Centre include a script of a radio broadcast by Shea on Allenby, 1936 (Allenby 1/14/32); correspondence with Shea on Allenby by FM Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (Harrap and Co, London, 1940) (Allenby 6/6-10); correspondence on promotions (Bartholomew 1/1); notes of a discussion and correspondence between Shea and Basil Liddell Hart (Liddell Hart 11/1926, LH2S/89/1-8); numerous items of correspondence on Army operations on the Western Front and in India (Montgomery Massingberd 7/32, 8/21 and others).

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Entry compiled by Geoff Browell for the RSLP AIM25 Project. Sources include Who was who and newspaper obituaries.

Rules or conventions:
Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
June 2003