 | |
| Author | John Keegan |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | War |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | 1993 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 432 |
| ISBN | 978-0679730828 |
A History of Warfare is a 1993 book by military historian John Keegan, which was published by Random House.
| | |
| Author | John Keegan |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | War |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | 1993 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 432 |
| ISBN | 978-0679730828 |
A History of Warfare is a 1993 book by military historian John Keegan, which was published by Random House.
Keegan discusses early warfare, the proliferation of Bronze Age warfare and then Iron Age warfare (Greek hoplites and phalanxes, Roman legions and maniples). He also talks about the conquests of the "horse peoples", first under the Assyrians, then the Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanids; then in the 7th century the Arabs conquer a lot of territory, followed by the Mongols under Genghis Khan and finally the last of the horse peoples under a Mongol named Tamerlane, who unleashes massive carnage and destruction.
The rise of medieval Europe causes the raising of money for castles, with infantry being paid to dig under castles for their destruction. Western Europe perfects castles that are impregnable. At the same time, cavalry is gradually eliminated from the battlefield; matchlocks, flintlocks and eventually Smith & Wesson revolvers become dominant (they help Japan win the Russo-Japanese War).
In World War I, mustard gas, grenades, artillery and guns kill a massive number of soldiers that are buried in muddy graveyards on the Western Front. In World War II, millions die on the Eastern Front because of Adolf Hitler's theories of living space (Lebensraum).
Keegan takes issue with Carl von Clausewitz's idea that war is an extension of politics, implying that war is carried on in a rational way under the conscious control of politicians. Rather he sees the existence of armies and warriors as distorting the nature of politics and of culture, sometimes becoming the dominant cultural form and that war itself is ultimately a disastrous and irrational outcome of a failure of politics and diplomacy. His book is less concerned with the technology and lists of battles as [maybe "than"?] underlying motivations and social anthropology.
Keegan dedicates his book to an ancestor, a Lieutenant Bridgman in the Régiment de Clare, one of the Wild Geese mercenaries of the French Army, who was killed at the Battle of Lauffeld in 1747.
In a review in Foreign Affairs , Eliot A. Cohen wrote, "Despite some graceful writing and pointed observations, A History of Warfare fails to live up to the title's promise or the author's reputation". Cohen described it as "a vendetta against a liberal German soldier-theorist of the early nineteenth century [Clausewitz]". [1]
A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force commitment.
Carl Philipp Gottfriedvon Clausewitz was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral", in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege, though unfinished at his death, is considered a seminal treatise on military strategy.
Medieval warfare is the warfare of the Middle Ages. Technological, cultural, and social advancements had forced a severe transformation in the character of warfare from antiquity, changing military tactics and the role of cavalry and artillery. In terms of fortification, the Middle Ages saw the emergence of the castle in Europe, which then spread to the Holy Land.
Vom Kriege is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. It is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written, and remains both controversial and influential on strategic thinking.
A siege is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or a well-prepared assault. This derives from Latin: sedere, lit. 'to sit'. Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static, defensive position. Consequently, an opportunity for negotiation between combatants is common, as proximity and fluctuating advantage can encourage diplomacy. The art of conducting and resisting sieges is called siege warfare, siegecraft, or poliorcetics.
Total war is a type of warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs.
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek word strategos, the term strategy, when first used during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", or "'the art of arrangement" of troops. and deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy.
Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda. The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people".
Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and materiel. The word attrition comes from the Latin root atterere, meaning "to rub against", similar to the "grinding down" of the opponent's forces in attrition warfare.
Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan was an English military historian, lecturer, author and journalist. He wrote many published works on the nature of combat between prehistory and the 21st century, covering land, air, maritime, intelligence warfare and the psychology of battle.
Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare, is a military strategy which seeks to shatter the enemy's overall cohesion and will to fight.
The military history of France encompasses an immense panorama of conflicts and struggles extending for more than 2,000 years across areas including modern France, Europe, and a variety of regions throughout the world.
Major military efforts were taken by Kublai Khan of the Yuan dynasty in 1274 and 1281 to conquer the Japanese archipelago after the submission of the Korean kingdom of Goryeo to vassaldom. Ultimately a failure, the invasion attempts are of macro-historical importance because they set a limit on Mongol expansion and rank as nation-defining events in the history of Japan. The invasions are referred to in many works of fiction and are the earliest events for which the word kamikaze is widely used, originating in reference to the two typhoons faced by the Yuan fleets.
Mongol military tactics and organization enabled the Mongol Empire to conquer nearly all of continental Asia, along with parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Annihilation is a military strategy in which an attacking army seeks to entirely destroy the military capacity of the opposing army. This strategy can be executed in a single planned pivotal battle, called a "battle of annihilation". A successful battle of annihilation is accomplished through the use of tactical surprise, application of overwhelming force at a key point, or other tactics performed immediately before or during the battle.
The Mongol conquests of the 13th century resulted in widespread and well-documented destruction. The Mongol army conquered hundreds of cities and villages and killed millions of people. One estimate is that about 11% of the world's population was killed either during or immediately after the Mongol invasions, around 37.75–60 million people in Eurasia. These events are regarded as some of the most deadly acts of mass killing in human history.
The New York Military Affairs Symposium (NYMAS), is an independent, not for profit educational body dedicated to the preservation and furthering of military history in the city of New York. The membership includes scholars, active and retired military personnel, and concerned civilians. NYMAS is devoted to increasing public knowledge, awareness and understanding of military history, arms control, international relations, defense policy, disarmament, civil-military relations, international security, Veterans Affairs and the interrelationship of war, society, and culture through the presentation and dissemination of diverse scholarly viewpoints - with particular reference to the history of warfare involving the United States and of Americans at war.
The use of horses in World War I marked a transitional period in the evolution of armed conflict. Cavalry units were initially considered essential offensive elements of a military force, but over the course of the war, the vulnerability of horses to modern machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire reduced their utility on the battlefield. This paralleled the development of tanks, which ultimately replaced cavalry in shock tactics. While the perceived value of the horse in war changed dramatically, horses still played a significant role throughout the war.
The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World is a treatise on modern warfare written by General Sir Rupert Smith and published in 2005. Smith is a retired general who spent 40 years in the British Army; he commanded the 1st Armoured Division in the First Gulf War and served as General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles. He was motivated to write the book by his experiences in the Balkans. He commanded the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia from 1995 to 1996, during which time the Srebrenica massacre occurred and the capital, Sarajevo, was under siege by Serb forces. Smith was instrumental in the lifting of the siege by arranging for NATO air strikes and an artillery barrage. This enabled a ground assault by Bosnian and Croatian forces that ended the siege and led to the Dayton Agreement. Smith's second involvement with the Balkans was in 1999 during the Kosovo War, when he was serving as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, overseeing air strikes against Serb targets.
The military of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) were the armed forces of the Yuan dynasty, a fragment of the Mongol Empire that Kublai Khan established as a Mongol-led dynasty of China. The forces of the Yuan were based on the troops that were loyal to Kublai after the Division of the Mongol Empire in 1260. Initially, this force was a Tamma, a frontier army drawn from all Mongol tribes for conquest of China, which had no central organisation but was rather a loose collection of local warlords and Mongol princely armies. However, the army was gradually reformed by Kublai Khan into a more systematic force.