Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #279354 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Interesting and challenging
This is one of those history books that is more a challenge to accepted opinion than a set of radical ideas in itself. The author writes on a range of military matters, mostly centred around how we should be looking to shake off our Western centric view of military history, in that the rise of the West in history was largely due to technical and professional prowess.

The author of course, provides plenty of reasons as to why this is completely wrong, many of which most readers will probably be aware of. The examples cited are ones I have certainly come across before, but taking all those examples together in one book really does present an interesting viewpoint. He indicates at length that our view of military history is largely borne from historical phenomenon - industrialised societies combined with mass conscription. Of course, we no longer live in this world. Western societies are still advanced, but rely often on production in other countries. And hardly any western countries still conscript; certainly very few would be able to do so if the event arose.

As an interesting example, the author considers why there is not more military history written about the Ottoman Empire, a hugely successful and powerful empire which lasted some 800 or so years. The author asks why we are only aware of battles like the seige of Vienna or the naval battle of Lapento. A number of reasons are suggested - the reformation tends to take up a lot more focus in medieaval European history as one. And perhaps the relative peripheral nature of the Ottoman Empire in Europe is another. But then the author turns the issue on its head, and points that actually, to the Ottoman Empire, Europe was actually just one of a few concerns, and a reasonably minor one at that. They were far more concerned with Persia, and the various Tartat states in the North (later Russia), than dealing with an unco-ordinated rabble of independantly minded European states. Europe provided little threat to the Ottoman Empire, probably into the C19th.

Another issue raised is that of how powerful were the European colonial powers, really, and for how long? Again, the evidence suggests that it was probably not until the C19th that technical military superiority started to really give them an edge. Remembered are the many glories of Empires, defeating hordes of natives with a few professional soldiers. Forgotten are the many frequent setbacks suffered at the hands of the natives. European forces in the Americas, Africa or the Far East were never that numerous. The edge that they did have was naval, economic and diplomatic. The British in India for example actually fought very few battles, winning their wars through diplomacy, trade and money. The Americas were won through the odd battle, aided considerably by disease. Many of the Indians were prepared to put up the British, so long as they were not provoked. When natives did struggle against colonial empires such as the Boers did against the British, the struggle consumed enormous resources.

The author does not rest soley on historical matters too, though. He also discusses the pressures on publishers, academics and writers of military history. Much like the fiction market, the tendancy is to produce books on subjects readers are reasonably familiar with. The amount of money that an author gets is remarkably little, pressurising them further to produce something popular in place of something challenging. So we end up with volumes and volumes of history on subjects like WW2, technical specs of vehicles (always popular), and remarkably little on many of the much more important and relevant wars happening in recent times and in fact, today.

I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone wishing to challenge their perspective on military history. I would also recommend the reading of another book just out, "War Nerd" by Gary Brecher - a highly entertaining, often spurious, but very interesting book trying to re-centre our view away from technologically driven wester style warfare to an appreciation of overwhlemingly more commonplace warfare - low tech battles, almost tribal in nature. The wars of course, that we know almost nothing about.

I found this a very thought provoking book. There are few like it around.