Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A note on referencing
- Part I Introduction
- PART II Long-term constants
- 2 Warfare and mindsets from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
- 3 Warfare and mindsets in early modern Europe
- 4 Themes in early thinking about Strategy
- PART III The Napoleonic paradigm and Total War
- PART IV Naval and maritime Strategy
- PART V Air Power and nuclear Strategy
- PART VI Asymmetric or ‘small’ wars
- PART VII The quest for new paradigms after the World Wars
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Warfare and mindsets from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
from PART II - Long-term constants
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A note on referencing
- Part I Introduction
- PART II Long-term constants
- 2 Warfare and mindsets from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
- 3 Warfare and mindsets in early modern Europe
- 4 Themes in early thinking about Strategy
- PART III The Napoleonic paradigm and Total War
- PART IV Naval and maritime Strategy
- PART V Air Power and nuclear Strategy
- PART VI Asymmetric or ‘small’ wars
- PART VII The quest for new paradigms after the World Wars
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
And the prince must ponder that victory comes from God and that his kingdom and his rule depend upon Him.
(Robert de Balsac 1502: g.ii)Part II of the present book will deal, first, in chapters 2 and 3, with the changes in attitudes to war, the theory and practice of strategy from Antiquity to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Then, in chapter 4, it will deal with enduring themes and debates, some of which can be traced back one and a half millennia, some continuing to the present.
Technology and warfare
For the two hundred or so millennia of human existence for which we have archaeological evidence, and during the roughly six millennia for which we have any form of written records, until the nineteenth century, the human mastery of technology showed no steady progress. Related to this, Western warfare showed no steady development from primitive to ever more sophisticated, warfare did not become steadily more deadly or humane or limited or unlimited. The same is true for military technology of all sorts. Martin van Creveld has rightly noted that there were fluctuations in warfare, but no real quantum leaps ahead, between 750 BCE and 1500 CE, with many factors remaining ‘unaltered well into the age of gunpowder’, or even until well into the nineteenth century (Creveld 1989: 34f.). Indeed, today we must add that many forms of old technology have survived right into the nuclear age. The sword, used for nothing but warfare (as opposed to hunting or agricultural pursuits) since the Bronze Age, seemed to have ceased to have anything beyond symbolic functions in the nineteenth century. Yet machetes – originally cutting tools for use on vegetation – were used as swords in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The last cavalry charge in history was thought to have occurred in the Second World War, but at least one took place in Afghanistan in the early twenty-first century.
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- The Evolution of StrategyThinking War from Antiquity to the Present, pp. 39 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010