Product Description

A brilliant history of the rise to dominance of the West, exploring the links between cultural values and military success. Instead of weighing up the West through its cultural and literary accomplishments. Hanson engages with the much starker record of the Western battlefield. In place of The Great Books, he studies The Great Battles, and offers graphic representations of nine representative clashes between West and non-West. Hanson writes uncommonly well about battle, and has an uncanny ability to evoke the chaos and terror of warfare, so crystallising his argument into records of a few hours of intense combat. Hanson argues that the West has won not just because of technology and military might, but because of its focus on individualism, democratic political structures, and scientific rationalism. However this is no mere Eurocentric account of the steady millennia-long rise of Western power. Rather, it is an explanation of why the West finds itself now militarily unmatched, its values spreading around the globe - sometimes with devastating effects on local cultures which have at times adopted the worst of what European traditions have offered or imposed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #173755 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Review
A Californian scholar surveys warfare over two and a half millenia, from the battle of Salamis to the Tet offensive in Vietnam. He concludes that victory in war is most likely to lie with the side that most prizes individuals. Free societies, he thinks, contain a cultural ingredient which makes them superior to despotisms. Besides Salamis and Tet, he discusses seven other battles: Gaugamela, Cannae, Poitiers (Charles Martel's victory, not the Black Prince's), Tenochtitlan, Lepanto, Rorke's Drift and Midway. Dozens of asides make clear that his knowledge of military history is much wider. For each battle, he summarizes its strategic weight as well as going into a gruesome mass of tactical detail; assesses the impact of ground and weather; and sums up the results. He has many telling phrases, such as this : 'the garrison at Rorke's Drift proved to be the most dangerous hundred men in the world.' He lays stress on just those features of battle that get left out by most strategic analysts: he discusses in detail the impact of weapons on flesh, and leaves his readers in no doubt about what a shocking business war has to be. Shock, in fact, is what the 'Western' fighting man is most eager to impose on his enemy. He begins each chapter with an extract from a classical Greek author, and maintains that the Greeks and Romans in turn developed the concept of the citizen soldier, who has a say in how and why he is to endanger himself for his community. He insists, as Aristotle did, that war is a normal way of life for mankind, gloomy though the prospects of modern war with modern weaponry have become. He is sounder on tactics and on armament than he is on political theory. This is a most thought-provoking book, of lasting interest and value. (Kirkus UK)

Sunday Telegraph, October 21, 2001
At the heart of this big, combative and gutsy book there is an argument which is powerful and convincing.

Daily Telegraph
"His latest book can only enhance his reputation among readers with common sense."

Customer Reviews

Fascinating
Even if you are not particularly interested in history or the military, this book will fascinate you right from the beginning. It gives you insight into nine great battles fought between 480 B.C. (Salamis) and 1968 (Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War). All battles described are encounters between western and non-western armies and almost all have been won by western countries. Hanson asks himself what factors eventually contributed to these western victories and he comes up with very convincing answers. He maintains that the keystone for military success was laid in ancient Greece. The old Greeks fought uniquely differently from their adversaries (e.g. the Persians or Carthaginians) in so far as their soldiers fought on a sense of personal freedom, superior discipline, matchless weapons, egalitarian camaraderie,, individual initiative, constant tactical adaption and flexibility, preference for shock battle of heavy infantry. All these positive aspects could have only developed in the constitutionally governed Greek city-states where ordinary people voted for their representatives, where there was equality among classes, where soldiers had a say in military affairs, where even the small farmer owned property etc.
Hanson never merely describes the battles, but always gives insight into the economic, social, cultural and political conditions under which soldiers lived and stood up for their countries.
I have never read a better book in terms of military history.

Triumphalist and rather smug
The book comes across as a bit of a cheerleading piece for the western superiority, real or otherwise. The author makes much in the early chapters of the Greek soldiers and their motivations personal freedom, egality, and the rest. To apply this to subsequent western armies may be stretching it in many cases. How many freedoms and privileges did the average British redcoat enjoy? I found it a rather wearisome read. Americans may enjoy it as a feelgood book.

Excellent
This is a bold declaration of the supremacy of the Western way of war, by the respected Greek historian Victor Hanson. It details 9 major pivotal events which underpin the key role that Western tactics and technology, that eventually triumphed to shape the world we live in today. The book does not at all claim moral superior of Western morals, just superior force of arms.