Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present ed. by John A. Lynn

Abstract

172 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE long-wave theory to benefit from Hugill’s penetrating insights and solid understanding of technology in its geographic and human context. J. F. Guilmartin Dr. Guilmartin is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University. Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfarefrom the Middle Ages to the Present. Edited by John A. Lynn. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993. Pp. xii+326; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $44.50. This fine anthology is a venture in “the new military history.” This genre eschews operational histories of battles and campaigns led by great captains. Instead it favors more critical and analytical works that treat war and the military as social institutions. The causes, courses, and consequences of war are explored not on the battlefield but in realms such as logistics, one of the most fruitful and stimulating branches of the genre. Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonia Army (1978) and Geoffrey Parker, The Army ofFlanders and the Spanish Road, 1567-1659: The Logistics ofSpanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Country Wars (1972) are exemplars. The great synthesis is Martin van Creveld’s Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977). It is around van Creveld’s study that editorJohn Lynn has built his introduc­ tion to the current volume. He recognizes the originality and impact of Supplying War but points out as well its many flaws. Lynn’s introduction faults van Creveld for two crimes of omission and one of commission. Supplying War, says Lynn, neglects naval warfare and the experience of the United States. These deficiencies are made up in the present volume by excellent articles: Timothy Runyan’s on naval logistics in the Hundred Years’ War, John F. Guilmartin’s on Spanish naval warfare in the 16th century, Jon Tetsuro Sumida’s on Britain in World War I,John Shy on the American Revolution, and Robert V. Bruce on research and development during the American Civil War. Students of military history will recognize these as major scholars in the field writing out of their previous research, a generalization that fits almost all the contributions to this volume. Errors of commission in Supplying War, according to Lynn, misrepre­ sent army logistics in Europe between the wars of religion and the 20th century. Lynn actually suggests that van Creveld selected his evidence to suit his thesis and that his statistics occasionally look “more like a shell game” (p. 23) than counting beans. Lynn supports his criticisms effec­ tively, both in his introduction to the volume and in his own contribu­ tion on the wars of Louis XIV. Other authors in the collection write without reference to van Creveld. Walter Kaegi reveals that the Byzantines were less efficient in logistics than one might expect, while Bernard Bachrach suggests that medieval Europeans before the Crusades were more efficient. The latter TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 173 point continues Bachrach’s long-standing argument that “military technology in early medieval Europe is consistently underestimated by modern scholars” (p. 62). On 20th-century topics, in which the impor­ tance of logistics has long been recognized, Daniel Beaver writes on the development of the 21^-ton truck in the United States before World War II, and Joel D. Meyerson explores the logistical build-up in Vietnam. At their best, these articles demonstrate the power of logistics as a category of analysis. Operational history may have its place; strategy, tactics, and great captains may explain some battles and wars. But armies and navies have always been tethered to supply. Sometimes the tether is decisive. Lynn, for example, explains why Louis XIV and his contemporaries fought for land they knew they would have to abandon later; an army of 60,000 men required 67.5 tons of bread a day and 400 tons of dried fodder for the horses. Most of this had to be prepositioned in magazines or foraged from the land. Commanders had to fight starvation before they could fight the enemy. Similarly, Shy offers a novel interpretation of the American Revolu­ tion: the logistical failure of the Americans in the Revolutionary War was caused not by government incompetence so much as by an inadequate transportation...