The British army is due to be reduced to 82,000 by 2020, prompting claims it will be the smallest it has been since the 19th Century. But if Britain had a small army then, how did it control an empire? Considering the British Empire at its peak included a quarter of the world's population, But the British Empire managed to maintain hegemony over dozens of colonies with a relatively tiny number of men.
Defence Secretary Liam Fox announced this week he planned to cut regular army numbers to 82,000 - 120,000 in total including the Territorial Army (TA) - by 2020. It was widely reported this was the smallest it had been since the Boer war. So has the army ever been smaller than it will be in 2020?
Scene from Cecil Rhodes BBC documentary The British Empire's expansion into Africa was driven by traders like Cecil Rhodes
"The first regular army - the New Model Army [of England] - was created by Oliver Cromwell and it grew in size from 44,000 to 68,000," says Rylance.
The army kept growing throughout the 18th Century (as the British army after the acts of union of 1707) and after the Napoleonic Wars it fell to 92,000 in 1817, before growing again as the British Empire expanded.
But Michael Codner, head of military science at the Royal United Services Institute, says Britain has never had a large army.
"What we needed was the Royal Navy and a system of indigenous constabularies overseen by a small but professional British army," he says.
Military historian, Dr Huw Davies, from King's College London, points out India was garrisoned by hundreds of thousands of locally-recruited sepoys, supervised by fewer than 30,000 British troops.
"The empire had to pay for itself and had to be profitable and if you put too much into building up the army the empire is no longer a profitable enterprise," he says.
Defence Secretary Liam Fox announced this week he planned to cut regular army numbers to 82,000 - 120,000 in total including the Territorial Army (TA) - by 2020. It was widely reported this was the smallest it had been since the Boer war. So has the army ever been smaller than it will be in 2020?
Scene from Cecil Rhodes BBC documentary The British Empire's expansion into Africa was driven by traders like Cecil Rhodes
"The first regular army - the New Model Army [of England] - was created by Oliver Cromwell and it grew in size from 44,000 to 68,000," says Rylance.
The army kept growing throughout the 18th Century (as the British army after the acts of union of 1707) and after the Napoleonic Wars it fell to 92,000 in 1817, before growing again as the British Empire expanded.
But Michael Codner, head of military science at the Royal United Services Institute, says Britain has never had a large army.
"What we needed was the Royal Navy and a system of indigenous constabularies overseen by a small but professional British army," he says.
Military historian, Dr Huw Davies, from King's College London, points out India was garrisoned by hundreds of thousands of locally-recruited sepoys, supervised by fewer than 30,000 British troops.
"The empire had to pay for itself and had to be profitable and if you put too much into building up the army the empire is no longer a profitable enterprise," he says.
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