Defender—Winter 2006
42
reviews
The Cambridge History of
Warfare
Edited by Geoffrey Parker
The Oxford History of Modern
War
Edited by Charles Townsend
A review essay by Professor Peter Dennis
In the last two decades there has been an enormous
increase (I hesitate to say explosion) in the popularity of
military history, none more so than in universities. Galling
as this is to some academics, who continue to harbour the
notion that the study of war somehow suggests an approval
of or endorsement of war, students above all understand that
the big issues – the rise and fall of nations, struggles on an
epic scale, the drama and tragedy of war and its uncertain
outcomes – are the ones that engage the imagination, that
encompass the widest range of human experience, and that
raise profound moral questions.
Forty years ago, when I was both an undergraduate and
a graduate student of military history, the range of general
treatments of war was limited, to say the least. There were
really only two broad surveys available: Richard Preston
and S.F. Wise’s Men in Arms (1955, and four subsequent
editions), and Theodore Ropp’s War in the Modern World
(1959). As it happened, both Ropp and Preston were revered
professors of mine at Duke University, Durham, North
Carolina, while Wise became official historian at National
Defence Headquarters, Ottawa, and subsequently a professor
at Carleton University. Each of these works had distinct
merits. Ropp’s book was as much an exploration of ideas,
underpinned by extensive bibliographical footnotes that,
while now dated, still retain a value for the discerning reader.
Preston and Wise were intent on explaining the development
of warfare from its earliest beginnings in the western world,
concentrating in particular on the interrelationship between
armed forces and societies. Each of these books was, and is,
valuable to students of military history, and in my day as a
student were indispensable in any broad course.
How times have changed. There is now a plethora of
surveys of military history, let alone the resources of the
world-wide-web (which is both a blessing and a curse for
those who teach in this area – and a trap for unwary students).
Broad treatments, more specialised studies, encyclopedias,
biographical dictionaries, atlases; one can barely keep up
with the flow of publications. As is always the case, some are
much better than others, being either too general, or poorly
illustrated (especially with maps; photographs being less
useful these days with the enormous resources available on
the web), or written for a particular group but marketed as
though having more general appeal.
How to choose? The two books under review here are, in
their different ways, excellent examples of the sorts of surveys
now available for teachers, students and the general interested
public. Each is written by a distinguished group of academic
historians, whose individual achievements must surely
inspire confidence. Some of the names will be more familiar
to general readers than others, but all come with substantial
publications in their respective fields of specialisation to add
weight and authority to their pronouncements.
The Oxford History of Modern War seeks to explain how
the changes in warfare from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
centuries, deriving from and in turn impacting upon the
changing structure of European states, gave those states a
predominance in world affairs that has largely persisted to
the present day. A history of warfare can reasonably be cast
in terms of the history of the western tradition of warfare
because, apart from the currently fashionable interest in the
writings of Sun Tzu, it is the western tradition, harnessing
new technology to evolving economic, social and political
structures, that has given the West its pre-eminence in
world affairs. (Even those countries such as Japan that have
temporarily challenged the supremacy of the West, have
essentially operated within the western military tradition.)
The scope of the book is wider than a ‘history of warfare’;
rather it is a ‘history of war’ in its social and cultural
context.
The book is divided into two sections. The first section of
ten chapters is a chronologically-organised series of essays
covering the changes of the period of the so-called ‘Military
Revolution’ of the sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, the
developments of the eighteenth century, the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic Wars, the nineteenth century and the age
of militarised nationalism and imperial expansion, the two
world wars, the Cold War and ‘people’s war’. In each essay
the respective authors explain the complex relationship
