When did "basic training" begin?

[syncrolecyne]

When I read about people being inducted into the military in say the Civil War, many times it just seems the men assembled to form a unit, marched to the front lines, and just went to battle cold. Aside from the drilling that occured in marching the troops until they reached the battlefield, was there any formal training regimen for enlisted men?

When did “modern basic training” (6 to 12 weeks at a training camp barracks, drill instructors with bad attitudes, intense concentration on details such as shining boots and folding sheets) originate??

[paperbackwriter]

In the Civil War, most units engaged were raised by the states and inducted into national service. Consequently, training was somewhat haphazard, especially at the beginning, when regiments were formed up and thrown into battle very quickly. General Sherman talks in his memoirs of taking command of a group in Missouri that had been created that week and leading them to a small skirmish.

The United States Army in times of peace consisted of a small number of regiments prior to that time. Drill manuals, of course, existed as early as the Revolutionary war. But before the Civil War, training in the Regular Army was the responsibility of the company the soldier was serving in:

A regiment of ten companies-with regiment and battalion one and the same-was standard throughout the period. For training and for battle purposes, the eight battalion companies were placed in line by a complex arrangement according to the seniority of their captains

Militia training was very haphazard at this time:

What is more, militia training differed widely from state to state, so that it was hard to fuse units from the several states into one army…In the large seaboard cities there were independent or chartered companies of citizen soldiers …These units usually received charters from the states, and they very soon constituted an elite corps. This corps became the parent of the National Guard of the twentieth century.

Despite all this, there was a plan to create a training establishment in the Civil War:

Since Congress was not in session, President Lincoln began the war buildup in May 1861 with a proclamation of doubtful constitutionality. On the strength of his executive authority, he summoned thirty-nine regiments of volunteer infantry and one of cavalry to serve for three years…The result was a recommendation in favor of the French structure. This included regiments of three battalions instead of one. Two battalions were supposed to take the field, the third to maintain a regimental depot for collecting and training recruits.

All above quotes from the Army’s infantry history overview
I have been trying to find a cite for this, but the earliest standard form of basic training I am aware of was during World War One. This is part of the reason that there was a gap between our declaration of war in April, 1917 and the large-scale deployment of troops in the field in May of 1918.

Currently, basic training is the responsibility of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. TRADOC traces its organizational predecessors back to WWII:

Joined and focused under TRADOC, the individual training mission and the combat developments mission each had its own lineage. The individual training responsibility had descended to CONARC from Headquarters Army Ground Forces, or AGF, of World War II. The AGF had established replacement training centers (RTC) for the basic training of the great masses of trainees that that war required, prior to their assignment to divisions or other organizations for unit training before shipment to the war theaters.

So the short answer seems to be that there were attempts during wartime to create a dedicated training establishment, but until WWII and the Cold War era, there was nothing permanent.

[Cerowyn]

Before I answer the OP, were you looking for just the American situation, or did you mean more generally? paperbackwriter has provided a wonderfully detailed answer for the former case, but it’s not even close to correct in the latter.

[paperbackwriter]

Cerowyn, I realize that the origins of drill date back all the way to Charles “The Hammer” Martel, and that formal training establishments in the French and Prussian armies have long histories. Because of the reference to the American Civil War, I assumed that cuate meant in the USA.