The Cambridge History of Warfare

Abstract

This is, as one might expect from the expertise of the contributors, a highly competent survey of warfare from the Greek hoplites to the contemporary so-called Revolution in Warfare. Victor Davis Hanson covers war in classical antiquity, Bernard H. Bachrach the millennium from 300 to 1300, Christopher Allmand the middle ages, Geoffrey Parker himself the early modern period, John Lynn Europe from 1660 to 1815, and Williamson Murray the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All of their contributions are of a predictably high standard, expert, erudite and readable. All fully show the interplay between warfare, economics, and social history. There is a comprehensive bibliography and glossary, and as an introduction to the topic the book could hardly be bettered. But what makes it exceptional are the prologue and epilogue provided by the editor. Professor Parker meets head-on the criticism that this is only a history of western warfare. A global history in a single volume, he asserts, would be unfeasible, and anyhow it was ‘the western way of warfare’ that ultimately, however briefly, conquered the world. An interesting chapter by Patricia Seed on the conquest of the Americas shows the cutting-edge of the West at work on cultures familiar with neither metal weapons nor horses. But with our appetites whetted by more recent events it is possible to regret that her colleagues did not deal more fully with those cultural conflicts rather nearer home; the Moslem conquest of and expulsion from Spain, and the Turkish conquest of, and expulsion from, South-East Europe. The latter John Lynn does describe as ‘almost another great crusade’, but he does not explain the reasons for Austrian, and later Russian, victories. In his prologue Parker reminds us of the elements in western societies that enabled their armies to overrun the world: exploitation of technology, discipline, aggressiveness, and the development of economies that enabled them to sustain prolonged campaigns at a great distance; qualities all developed in intramural conflicts that were ultimately to prove mutually destructive. As for warfare in the twenty-first century, although, as Murray ruefully remarks, Western governments still ‘displayed an enviable ability to win wars, [they] … seemed unable or unwilling to turn their victories into a lasting peace’. This is a problem that the new ‘Revolution in Warfare’ does not seem to address.