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Print Price: $130.99

Format:
Paperback
560 pp.
188 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199797455

Copyright Year:
2016

Imprint: OUP US

Waging War

Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History

Wayne E. Lee

Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History provides a wide-ranging examination of war in human history, from the beginning of the species until the current rise of the so-called Islamic State. Although it covers many societies throughout time, the book does not attempt to tell all stories from all places, nor does it try to narrate "important" conflicts. Instead, author Wayne E. Lee describes the emergence of military innovations and systems, examining how they were created and then how they moved or affected other societies. These innovations are central to most historical narratives, including the development of social complexity, the rise of the state, the role of the steppe horseman, the spread of gunpowder, the rise of the west, the bureaucratization of military institutions, the industrial revolution and the rise of firepower, strategic bombing and nuclear weapons, and the creation of "people's war."

Readership : For undergraduate students in world military history, war and society, and history of Western warfare.

Reviews

"It takes the sharp interdisciplinary mind of Wayne E. Lee to bring together so much material over such a broad span of history and make it not only intelligible but fresh and exciting to read. He has given us a truly global history of war that will serve as one of the standards in the field for years to come."
--Michael S. Neiberg, author of Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I
"Wayne E. Lee's incisive overview of innovation in warfare convincingly shows the importance of both technology and technique in military competition. He skillfully embeds military matters in their larger social, political, and economic contexts to provide one of the very few world histories of warfare."
--J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University
"Waging War ranks as the most important survey of humankind's warrior past in decades. This accessible and yet profound work is a superb act of vision and of intellectual courage."
--John Lynn, University of Illinois
"Waging War is a far-reaching study of war that brilliantly probes the theme of innovation. This important work deserves wide attention."
--Jeremy Black, author of A Century of Conflict: War, 1914-2014
"Wayne Lee's Waging War weaves a vast, global tapestry depicting how wars have been conducted from prehistory to the modern age. Drawing on an impressively wide range of disciplines and scholarship, Waging War traces the origins and dynamics of military innovations throughout history and how their influence shaped the past and present conduct of war around the world. With Waging War, Wayne Lee takes his place among the leading practitioners of global military history."
--Roger Spiller, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, emeritus

List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
Preface
About the Author
Introduction: Capacity, Calculation, and Culture
1. The Origins of War and of the State: to 2500 BCE
Is War Innate? - War among Animals, Chimpanzees - The Evidence for Early Human Warfare - Biology and Selection - Sedentism, Agriculture, and War - A Lord among Lords and the Rise of the State - Warring Complex Societies outside the State
2. Carts, Chariots, Cavalry, and Catastrophe: 3500-700 BCE
Kings and Carts - Inventing the Chariot: Tribes, Horses, and Bronze on the Steppe - Chariots and the Urban Politics of the Near East and Egypt 1500-1200 BCE - Chariots under Heaven: China, 1200-400 BCE - Gods and Heroes: The Chariot in India and Europe - Catastrophe, Cavalry, and the Decline of the Chariot in the Near East
3. Men in Lines with Spears: 900 BCE - 300 BCE
Masses of Men in the Background - Assyria Reborn - Communal Solidarity and the Greek Hoplite Phalanx - The Macedonian Sarissa Phalanx
4. Discipline and Frontiers in the Agricultural Empires: Rome and China, 300 BCE - 400 CE
Rome: Disciplina and Limes - Infantrymen and Walls in Han China
5. The Horsemen of Europe and the Steppe: 400 CE - 1450 CE
European Heavy Horsemen - The Steppe Warrior System - The Mongols
6. War under Oars: 700 BCE-1600 CE
The Earliest Shipping - The Trireme and the Mediterranean - Variations on a Theme: Hellenistic Invention and Gigantism, Rome, Greek Fire, and the Gunpowder Galley
7. Gunpowder in Europe and in the Ottoman Empire: 1300 CE-1650 CE
Europe and the Ottoman Empire 1300-1683 - The Technology of Gunpowder and Gunpowder Weapons - Siege Cannon to 1650 - The Artillery Fortress, 1450 to 1650 - Infantry and Firearms, 1450-1650 - Conclusion: A Military Revolution?
8. Adapting to Gunpowder (or not): On the Open Seas, Africa, North America, and Asia
Maritime Power - The Gun-Slave Cycle in Africa?- Amerindians and Gunpowder - Gunpowder and the Steppe: China from Ming to Manchu - Conclusion: The Military Revolution Problem
9. Institutionalization, Bureaucratization, and Professionalization: China, Japan, and Europe: 1650-1815
Manchu China - Private Enterprise War in Europe to 1650 - Institutionalization, Bureaucratization, and Professionalization in Europe, 1650-1789 - Japan's Variant Path, 1500-1868 - The Levée en Masse and Mass Conscript Armies
10. The Age of Steam and the Industrial Empires, 1815-1905
Invention and Production - Coal & Steam Navies - Scrambling for Empire - The Rise of Japan
11. Men Against Fire, 1861-1917
The American Civil War: A False Dawn of "Modern War"? - Prussian Reforms, a General Staff, and German Unification - Firepower-Firepower and the Scramble for Empire: Dahomey and Ethiopia - World War I
12. Wars of Maneuver?: 1919-2003
Doctrine - Avoiding Deadlock and World War II - The German Model? - The Arab- Israeli Wars - AirLand Battle
13. The Lure of Strategic Air Power, The Nuclear Paradox, and the Revolution in Military Affairs?: 1915-2003
Strategic Bombing, 1915 to July 1945 - Nuclear Weapons as Air Power - The Nuclear Shadow and Limited War in Korea and Vietnam - The Return of Strategic Air Power and the Revolution in Military Affairs?
14. Bringing Down the State: Guerrillas, Insurgents, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency, 1930-2014
The Revolutionary Response to the Industrial State: Mao, Giap, and Guevara - Terrorism and Insurgency by Terrorism - Counterinsurgency and Counter Terror
Credits
Index

E-Book ISBN 9780190267216

Wayne E. Lee is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina and Chair of the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense. He is the author of Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865 (OUP, 2011) and Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War (2001).

Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones
A Century of Conflict - Jeremy Black
Forging the Modern World - Jay Carter and Richard Warren
The Thinking Past - Adrian Cole and Stephen Ortega
The World Transformed - Michael H. Hunt
The Vietnam War - Assoc. Professor Mark Atwood Lawrence
Empires and Colonies in the Modern World - Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz

Special Features

Situates innovations, technological, institutional, organizational, or otherwise, within the relevant cultural framework and then tracks their impacts on that society and on others that come into contact with it.
Simultaneously combines a global and long term coverage of human warfare with deep, exemplary plunges into the origins and impact of specific military, or military-related innovations.
Side-by-side comparison of war beyond the western world.
Focuses on accessible sources so as not to overwhelm the reader with details of debates.
Provides students with a similar set of questions to use in different historical contexts, helping students make connections between societies and cultures.
Includes approximately 45 maps, 35 figures, and 75 photos.