Is there a 'Western way of war' which pursues battles of annihilation and single-minded military victory? Is warfare on a path to ever greater destructive force? This magisterial account answers these questions by tracing the history of Western thinking about strategy - the employment of military force as a political instrument - from antiquity to the present day. Assessing sources from Vegetius to contemporary America, and with a particular focus on strategy since the Napoleonic Wars, Beatrice Heuser explores the evolution of strategic thought, the social institutions, norms and patterns of behaviour within which it operates, the policies that guide it and the cultures that influence it. Ranging across technology and warfare, total warfare and small wars as well as land, sea, air and nuclear warfare, she demonstrates that warfare and strategic thinking have fluctuated wildly in their aims, intensity, limitations and excesses over the past two millennia.
The Eastern Association has an assured place in any history of the Civil War. Within the region, early in 1643, Oliver Cromwell and his 'Iron-sides' first rose to prominence; in 1644 the seven constituent countries raised the force which, at Marston Moor, tipped the military balance decisively against the king, and was to become the major component in the New Model Army in 1645. Using a wide selection of original national and local archival materials, Dr Holmes seeks to provide an explanation of the impressive performance of the Association in the war. He emphasizes the need to combine studies which have too often been regarded as autonomous fields of enquiry - of military organization, of central politics, of the local communities - to obtain a total perspective.
This book describes British policy in South-East Asia in the early years of World War II. Britain, a major colonial power in Asia at this time, was unable to maintain its military dominance as war with Germany taxed its resources. Instead, Britain attempted to establish diplomatic dominance, trying to avert the Japanese military expansion and total penetration of Asia, and relying on the Americans to help. This book focuses in detail on Britain's wartime relations with Dutch India, the Philippines, French Indo-China and Thailand. It is an important reinterpretation of the origins of the Pacific War which escalated European conflict into a world war.
This book describes British policy in South-East Asia in the early years of World War II. Britain, a major colonial power in Asia at this time, was unable to maintain its military dominance as war with Germany taxed its resources. Instead, Britain attempted to establish diplomatic dominance, trying to avert the Japanese military expansion and total penetration of Asia, and relying on the Americans to help. This book focuses in detail on Britain's wartime relations with Dutch India, the Philippines, French Indo-China and Thailand. It is an important reinterpretation of the origins of the Pacific War which escalated European conflict into a world war.
The conflict that ended in 1945 is often described as a 'total war', unprecedented in both scale and character. Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War adopts a transnational approach to offer a comprehensive and global analysis of the war as an economic, social and cultural event. Across twenty-eight chapters and four key parts, the volume addresses complex themes such as the political economy of industrial war, the social practices of war, the moral economy of war and peace and the repercussions of catastrophic destruction. A team of nearly thirty leading historians together show how entire nations mobilized their economies and populations in the face of unimaginable violence, and how they dealt with the subsequent losses that followed. The volume concludes by considering the lasting impact of the conflict and the memory of war across different cultures of commemoration.
Today when you factor in the interest on the national debt from past wars and total defense expenditures the United States spends almost 40% of its federal budget on the military. It accounts for ove
As Europe descended into an epoch of total war and nineteenth-century hopes for peace based on co-operation faded, warfare itself was transformed by the growth of nationalism and rapid technological d
From 1776 to the end of World War II, the United States spent nineteen years at war with other nations. Since 1950, the total is twenty-two years and counting. On four occasions, U.S. presidents elec
The Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marine or RM) began the Second World War with one of the largest fleets in the world. Included in this was a total of 59 fleet destroyers, and others were added during t
This pathbreaking book paints a vivid picture of the dynamics of total war on rural communities, from the calling up of troops to the reintegration of veterans into society. Drawing on intimate firsth
The story of Camp Rucker, Alabama, during the Second World War illustrates the colossal effort of a quiet nation to shake off its peaceful slumber and mobilize for total war. Camp Rucker's role in tha
In July 1941 the United States, after a decade of worsening economic relations, announced a total embargo against Japan. The embargo had actually begun in 1940 with a so-called moral embargo under whi
In this meticulous study of the impact of total war on the civilian population of Essex between 1939 and 1945, Paul Rusiecki examines how people coped with the immense stress caused by heavy bombing,
A new assessment of the debates about Just War in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the imperial wars of the nineteenth century through the age of total war, the evolution of human rights
From the Introduction In the end, then, the Vietnam War was a conflict of myriad complexities. It was a colonial war and a regional war. It was a total war and a limited war. It was a civil war, an
The wrenching events of the Civil War transformed not only the United States but also the men unexpectedly called on to lead their fellow citizens in this first modern example of total war. Jacob Dols
The wrenching events of the Civil War transformed not only the United States but also the men unexpectedly called on to lead their fellow citizens in this first modern example of total war. Jacob Dols
When Portugal’s colonial rule in Angola ended in 1974, three liberation groups—UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), and MPLA
There are unique periods in history when a single year witnesses the total transformation of international relations. The year 1989 was one such crucial watershed. This book uses previously unavailabl
In 1939, New Zealand was far less well prepared for war than it had been in 1914. Nevertheless, more than 140,000 New Zealanders - nearly 9 per cent of the dominion's total population - enlisted to fi
