Plotting Power: Strategy in the Eighteenth Century by Jeremy Black

Abstract

Reviewed by: Plotting Power: Strategy in the Eighteenth Century by Jeremy Black Neil Guthrie Jeremy Black, Plotting Power: Strategy in the Eighteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana, 2017. Pp. xiv +312. $45. Jeremy Black, Plotting Power: Strategy in the Eighteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana, 2017. Pp. xiv +312. $45. Mr. Black's subject did not exist for much of the century, at least as a matter of terminology. While "strategy" is a coinage [End Page 201] of the later eighteenth century, strategy as a practice and perhaps also as a concept existed long before that. The Romans certainly thought and acted strategically. In the period of the Scriblerians, examples come readily to mind to anyone whose research has even touched on matters of war and peace. The possessions of the Hanoverian dynasty in Germany involved Britain in strategic choices about Bremen and Verden that would have concerned no one under the reign of a Stuart. On a grander scale, the prospect of a Bourbon on the thrones of both France and Spain determined the direction of military action, foreign policy, and domestic politics across Europe in the early part of the century. Mr. Black, disagreeing with some military historians, argues that strategy was never limited to the battlefield; it encompassed social policy, politics, diplomacy, and trade. It is difficult to argue with his lucid exposition of this point. As he says in a postscript on military history, "Strategy precedes the term, and unsurprisingly so." Without making the concept so elastic as to be meaningless, he admits that "a looser definition" of strategy is both "valuable but beside the point." Examples are taken not just from Europe and North America, but also from China, Japan, Russian expansion into central Asia, the Mughals, and Persia. The second half of the book deals largely with material that is beyond our immediate interests: the strategy of continental empires in the late eighteenth century and of the non-European "barbarians," the rise of republican strategies from 1775 to 1800, and "imperial imaginings" in the same period. The initial chapters are, however, of direct relevance for Scriblerian readers. In a somewhat rueful preface, Mr. Black reminds us of the failures of strategy (or perhaps that is "strategery") in the last twenty years or so, suggesting that the present can "guide and equip questions and thoughts about the past," provided we do not judge solely with the benefit of ahistorical hindsight. A general introduction sets out Mr. Black's overall project, including his definitional challenges and his points of departure from other historians. Mr. Black then focuses on strategy in England and France, mostly in the early eighteenth century, before examining the specific origins of the term "strategy" as it emerged in the flow of French ideas following their defeat by the British in 1763. He concludes with some thoughts on modern historians of strategy. Mr. Black's grasp of historical material is assured, but there are times when the discussion can be a bit fuzzy: a little more than a page on the "tone" and "style" of strategy is not enough to tell us what those mean, for example. There is also the odd prose train wreck: "As part of this process, but also separate to it, the building blocks of strategic culture, strategic debate, and policy, for example glory, honor, and natural interests, or Thucydides's fear, honor, and interests, were not uniform or unchanging in their impact." Mr. Black's book is short (only about 220 pages of actual text without the references), so there was room to flesh out the vague and the overcompressed in an otherwise well-argued book. Neil Guthrie University of Toronto Copyright © 2019 W. B. Gerard, E. Derek Taylor, Kellye Corcoran, Melanie Holm, J. T. Parnell, David Venturo, and Donald R. Wehrs