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The history of man is to a large extent the history of organisations. For as long as there are written records to study, people have co-operated to make use of scant resources in a more effective way. This book focuses on the dynamic interaction of organisations, norm systems and institutional changes.
This work seeks to offer a new way of viewing the French Wars of 1792–1815. Most studies of this period offer international, political, and military analyses using the French Revolution and Napoleon as the prime mover. But this book focuses on military and civilian responses to French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, throughout the rest of Europe and the Americas. It shows how the unprecedented mobilization of this era forged a generation of soldiers and civilians sharing a common experience of suffering, bequeathing the West with a new veteran sensibility. Using a range of sources, especially memoirs, this book reveals the adventure and suffering confronting ordinary soldiers campaigning in Europe and the Americas, and the burdens imposed on civilians enduring rising and falling empires across the West. It also reveals how the wars liberated slaves, serfs, and common people through revolutions and insurgencies.
In Warriors for a Living, Idan Sherer examines the experience of the Spanish infantry during the formative period of the Italian Wars. Decades of clashes between Spain and France transformed Italy into a crucible of military tactics and technology and brought about the emergence of the Spanish infantry tercios as Europe’s finest military force for more than a century. From their recruitment, through the complexities of everyday life in the army and culminating in the potential brutality of soldiering, the book offers a fresh and much needed exploration, analysis and, at times, reconsideration of what it meant to be a professional soldier in early modern Europe.
In Masters of Warfare, Eric G. L. Pinzelli presents a selection of fifty commanders whose military achievements, skill or historical impact he believes to be underrated by modern opinion. He specifically does not include the household names (the "Gods of War" as he calls them) such as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Wellington, Napoléon, Rommel or Patton that have been covered in countless biographies. Those chosen come from every period of recorded military history from the sixth century BC to the Vietnam War. The selection rectifies the European/US bias of many such surveys with Asian entries such as Bai Qi (Chinese), Attila (Hunnic), Subotai (Mongol), Ieyasu Tokugawa (Japanese) and Võ Nguyên Giáp (Vietnamese). Naval commanders are also represented by the likes of Khayr al-Din Barbarossa, Francis Drake and Michiel de Ruyter. These 50 "Masters of War" are presented in a chronological order easy to follow, with a concise overview of their life and career. Altogether they present a fascinating survey of the developments and continuities in the art of command, but most importantly their contribution to the evolution of weaponry, tactic and strategy through the ages.
In the heyday of empire, most of the world was ruled, directly or indirectly, by the European powers. Unconquered States explores the struggles for sovereignty of the few nominally independent non-Western states in the imperial age. It examines the ways in which countries such as China, Ethiopia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Siam managed to keep European imperialism at bay, whereas others, such as Hawai'i, Korea, Madagascar, Morocco, and Tonga, long struggled, but ultimately failed, to maintain their sovereignty. The chapters in this book address four major aspects of the relations these countries had with the Western imperial powers: armed conflict and military reform, unequal treaties and capitulations, diplomatic encounters, and royal diplomacy. Bringing together scholars from five continents, this book provides the first comprehensive global history of the engagement of the independent non-European states with the European empires, reshaping our understanding of sovereignty, territoriality, and hierarchy in the modern world order.
The Hero of Italy examines a salient episode in Italy's Thirty Years' War with Spain and France, whereby the young duke Odoardo Farnese of Parma embraced the French alliance, only to experience defeat and occupation after two tumultuous years (1635-1637). Gregory Hanlon stresses the narrative of events unfolding in northern Italy, examining the participation of the little state in these epic European events. The first chapter describes the constitution of Cardinal Richelieu's anti-Habsburg alliance and Odoardo's eagerness to be part of it. A chapter on the Parman professional army, based on an extraordinary collection of company roster-books, sheds light on the identity of over 13,000 indivi...
Italy 1636 is one of the most closely-researched and detailed books on the operation of early modern armies anywhere, and is explicitly inspired by neo-Darwinian thinking. Taking the French and Savoyard invasion of Spanish Lombardy in 1636 as its specific example, it begins with the recruitment of the soldiers, the care and feeding of the armies and their horses, the impact of the invasion on civilians in the path of their advance, and the manner in which generals conducted their campaign in response to the information at their disposal. The next section describes the unfolding of the long and stubborn battle of Tornavento, where Spanish, German, and Italian soldiers stormed the French in th...
The early 17th century was a time of great literature the era of Cervantes and Shakespeare but also of international tension and heightened diplomacy. This book looks at the relations between Spain under Philip III and Philip IV and England under James I in the period 1603-1625. It examines the essential issues that established the framework for diplomatic relations between the two states, looking not only at questions of war and peace, but also of trade and piracy. Óscar Alfredo Ruiz Fernández expertly argues that the diplomatic relationship was vital to the strategic interests of both powers and also played a highly significant role in the domestic agendas of each country. Based on Spanish and English archival sources, England and Spain in the Early Modern Era provides, for the first time, a clear picture of diplomacy between England and Spain in the early modern era.
This book explores the attitudes of the Spanish army officer corps towards the evolution of warfare during the early decades of the twentieth century, and their influence on the armies of the Spanish Civil War. It examines how the Spanish military coped with technological innovations such as the machine gun and the tank, how it adapted the army ́s battlefield doctrine to changes in warfare before the Civil War, and the influence of this doctrine on the outcome of the conflict. Of the different armed forces that fought in the Spanish Civil War, it is paradoxically the Spanish army that remains most forgotten - especially its military doctrine. Scholarship on the Spanish military in this period focuses on its politics, ideology and institutional reforms, touching upon 'hard' professional issues only superficially, if at all. Based on original research and using largely unstudied Spanish primary sources, this book fills a major scholarly gap in the history of the Spanish army and the Spanish Civil War.