Jeremy Black's Blog

No, Darren Jones, Magna Carta does not support the scrapping of jury trials. Item for The Telegraph, 26 November 2025

My forthcoming edited work on history of Infantry:

Current confidence in the present role and future potential of drones wrongly suggests that infantry is passed, finally redundant in an age of technology, as it already should have been for over a century in the shadow of artillery and in the face of tanks. This is mistaken as an account of today but also of the past, for, in both, the role of infantry has been underrated. Instead, as discussed in this volume, the presence of infantry has been fundamental to warfare and therefore changes in its characteristics, both absolute and relative to other arms, are of great consequence. This volume provides an opportunity to make this case and, in doing so, we have deliberately focused on military history outside its Western European concentration, for discussion of the military history of Western Europe and North America, particularly in the last half-millennium, overly dominates the literature, classifications, chronology and methodology of the subject. This volume is important both for what it offers for the present and for what it suggests for future work.

History is not just a data set for the present. Item for The Critic

Review of The Pacific’s New Navies, by Thomas M. Jamison on StrategyPage

Review of Dale C. Copeland, A World Safe for Commerce. American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China, for New Diplomatic History

Coming 30 Nov: : From 1950 to the Present Day (Arcturus). Find out more on Amazon

Review of On Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World, by Sudhir Hazareesingh, for New Criterion (Dec 2025)

Forthcoming by Jeremy Black and Stephen Morillo

An innovative work on the long-term in European military history, this accessible and wide-ranging book focuses on the continuities that tied together the fifteen centuries of European military development it covers. While noting the character, contexts, and changes of warfare over that time, the emphasis on continuities questions the recent historiographical fascination with “revolutions”. And by tackling Europe it also throws light on the nature of warfare around the world. We begin with the emergence of a new world after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and trace the deeply continuous evolution of that world down to the aftermath of World War One, when fundamental changes really did set in. The Introduction lays out the historical and historiographical perspectives that inform the book’s approach. The concluding chapter addresses the implications of the book for later developments and for the state of military history today. What modern, modernity and modernisation mean are shown to be more complex and varied than often presented, and this has important implications for the understanding of war now and into the future.

Review of Phillips Payson O’Brien’s War and Power: Who Wins Wars-and Why for Strategy Page

Review of Josephine Baker’s Secret War: The African American Star Who Fought for France and Freedom, by Hanna Diamond.for the NYMAS Review