War: A Short History

Jeremy Black

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781441155412
• eBook ISBN: 9781472578129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In this concise history of war, Jeremy Black ranges widely, giving due attention to non-western as well as western traditions. The history of war is inextricably bound to the history of the world. Through a detailed exploration of 'world-scale' issues of warfare, presented within a chronological framework that spans human history, Jeremy Black skilfully illustrates this fact whilst providing the reader with other astute insights and compelling interpretations of war. War: A Short History is a dramatic move away from the formulaic, western approach to military history. Too narrow in its focus on wars specific to the west and too simple because of an over-reliance on a technologically-deterministic reading of warfare, this approach has been rejected by Jeremy Black in favour of a global model that takes all factors into account when considering the strengths and weaknesses of a particular military tradition. This is a book that is as important for its relevance to current world issues of conflict as it is for its thorough consideration of a monumentally significant aspect of human history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Until the ‘Barbarian’ Invasions
• 2 From the Creation of the Islamic World to the Start of European Transoceanic Expansion, 630–1490
• 3 The Gunpowder Empires of the Early-Modern World, 1490–1630
• 4 From the Mid-Seventeenth Century Crisis to the Age of Revolutions, 1630–1800
• 5 The World of the European Empires, 1800–1950
• 6 To the Present, 1950–
• 7 Conclusions: Assessing War
• Selected Further Reading
• Index