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Cambridge Illustrated Histories
The Cambridge History of Warfare
A compelling subject, war is common to almost all known societies and almost all periods of history. The Cambridge History of Warfare is a comprehensive account of war in the West. The combined effort of seven leading experts, this book treats the history of all aspects of the subject: the development of warfare on land, seas, and air; weapons and technology; strategy and defense; discipline and intelligence; mercenaries and standing armies; cavalry and infantry; chivalry and blitzkreig; guerrilla assault and nuclear warfare. It places in context particular key elements in the history of armed engagement, from the Greek victory at Marathon, through the advent of gunpower in medieval England and France, to the jungle warfare of Vietnam and the strategic air strikes of the Gulf War. Throughout, there is an emphasis on the socio-economic aspects of military progress and how these help explain the rise of the West over the past two millenia to global military dominance.
536 pages, Paperback
Published November 3, 2005
123 people are currently reading
418 people want to read
About the author
Geoffrey Parker
98 books172 followersGeoffrey Parker is Andreas Dorpalen Professor of European History and an Associate of the Mershon Center at The Ohio State University. He has published widely on the social, political and military history of early modern Europe, and in 2012 the Royal Dutch Academy recognized these achievements by awarding him its biennial Heineken Foundation Prize for History, open to scholars in any field, and any period, from any country.
Parker has written or co-written thirty-nine books, including The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), winner of the 'best book prize' from both the American Military Institute and the Society for the History of Technology; The Grand Strategy of Philip II (Yale University Press, 1998), which won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society of Military History; and Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2013), which won the Society of Military History’s Distinguished Book Prize and also one of the three medals awarded in 2014 by the British Academy for ‘a landmark academic achievement… which has transformed understanding of a particular subject’.
Before moving to Ohio State in 1997, Parker taught at Cambridge and St Andrews universities in Britain, at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and at Illinois and Yale Universities in the United States, teaching courses on the Reformation, European history and military history at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He has directed or co-directed over thirty Doctoral Dissertations to completion, as well as several undergraduate theses. In 2006 he won an OSU Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.
He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and has four children. In 1987 he was diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis. His latest book is Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (Yale University Press, 2014).
Parker has written or co-written thirty-nine books, including The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), winner of the 'best book prize' from both the American Military Institute and the Society for the History of Technology; The Grand Strategy of Philip II (Yale University Press, 1998), which won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society of Military History; and Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press, 2013), which won the Society of Military History’s Distinguished Book Prize and also one of the three medals awarded in 2014 by the British Academy for ‘a landmark academic achievement… which has transformed understanding of a particular subject’.
Before moving to Ohio State in 1997, Parker taught at Cambridge and St Andrews universities in Britain, at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and at Illinois and Yale Universities in the United States, teaching courses on the Reformation, European history and military history at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He has directed or co-directed over thirty Doctoral Dissertations to completion, as well as several undergraduate theses. In 2006 he won an OSU Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.
He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and has four children. In 1987 he was diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis. His latest book is Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (Yale University Press, 2014).
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 3, 2023
Bu adla İş Bankası'nın bastığı bir kitabın önemli noktalara parmak basmaması şaşırtıcı olurdu. Ama kitapta genel bir dağınıklık, ruhsuzluk var. Çevirinin de muhteşem olduğu izleniminde değilim. Bence bu kitabın niyetlendiğini daha başarılı yapan kitaplar vardır. Bulurum.
Want to read
January 31, 2022Library-of- Congress U27 C26 2005 Memorial Library
March 13, 2025
A great idea for an edited volume, but the title is a little misleading on two counts: first, it is not really a history of warfare, but a history of European warfare; and second, about midway through the book it stops being a history of warfare (i.e. how the methods, logistics, technology and strategies of warfare have changed over time) to just become a humdrum regurgitation of a bunch of modern wars, dropping the study of warfare to just precis the political power-squabbles among 20th century generals.
The first point immediately hamstrings the overall narrative by arbitrarily isolating European military developments from the context of wider historical developments. Geoffrey Parker, pushing the annoyingly two-dimensional 'Western Way of War' narrative (which I'm tempted to label a poor-man's version of Charles Tilly 'War makes the state and the state makes war'), suggests that Europeans were unusual for how recursively they adopted new military strategies and tactics from their interactions with each other, but John Keegan's A History of Warfare made a more persuasive argument for how military strategies spread and evolved through global interactions long before Shield Maidens were a twinkle in Ragnar Lothbrok's bleary eye.
Perhaps European armies really did have a self-contained development that merits study, perhaps they didn't, but it's hard to be persuaded either way by a book that doesn't actually explain the alternative possibilities against which it is ostensibly comparing its main subject. The closest attempt at an answer that Parker comes up with is that China's immense military bureaucracy over-focused on the challenge of amassing large numbers of troops, whereas European military bureaucracies tended to focus on improving technology, logistics, and financial strategies that could keep men in the field for longer, more intense bouts of violence via a focus on capital-intensive, rather than labour-intensive, warfare.
Such Eurocentricity is obviously annoying, but I will admit that the central thesis nevertheless has the decency to be surprising, since rather than follow the typical 'European big brain conquers the world' narrative, Parker actually argues that the historically unique feature of Europe is that for most of its history it was simply the most violent, bloodthirsty place on Earth. In this reading, the West's colonial dominance ultimately arose from the fact that Europeans got so inventive and well-practiced at killing each other that their internal wars tended to lead to extended stalemates and deadlocks, whereas when they went abroad to inflict those tactics on other cultures the results were so unexpectedly savage that indigenous populations simply had no precedent on how to deal with such uninhibited barbarity.
As an argument, that's a fairly witty rebuttal to narratives of early modern Enlightement bringing civilization to the wider world, but I think it's a little unfair to everyone involved. There's no universal scale for measuring different types of violence, but at the end of the day there isn't a spot on Earth that didn't already have a scalped skeleton or two buried beneath the soil by the time European sails first flashed up on the horizon. I don't know if it counts as stealth Eurosupremicism to take decolonial critiques of Europe's darker underbelly, then rewrite that like a trendy hipster after their first read of Nietzsche into actually being another justification for considering the continient super cool and awesome. Nobody does genocide quite like us! Yeah, well, maybe the Neanderthals have something to say about that one.
Setting that aside, the book is fairly strong in the first half as it tells the story of technological, cultural, and logistical developments in military technologies across Ancient Greece, Rome, the Dark Ages, and Early Modern eras. But then sometime around the middle of it narrating WW1, the book suddenly loses its sense of direction and just starts retelling the political events of 20th century history without grounding that in specific technological and institutional developments. There's still the odd mention of V2 bombers or factory production, but these references just become more and more sparse, and by the time you get to the Arab-Israeli wars, entire military campaigns are just handwaved away with vague allusions to Egyptian class hierarchies getting in the way of battlefield logistics. I'd love for that to have been expanded on, but apparently it was really important to have another regurgitation of Churchill's grand strategic genius bloat out across huge chunks of the wordcount, despite me being able to drown myself in the same kind of verbiage anytime I want by just pulping two copies of The Telegraph into a bathtub and turning on the tap.
It's also hard not to point out that the book becomes suspiciously more cosy as the timeline progresses. The historians of the later period seem to cleave too gleefully to their protagonists' moral values, which reaches its apogee with the chapter on the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein detailing half a dozen reasons for Bush's motivations without even once mentioning the word 'oil'. It's hard to take any kind of analysis seriously that treats the proclamations of a belicose political administration so credulously. Likewise, one reference to Britain's "stable and responsible military leadership on the scene" when decolonising India is certainly a unique way of interpreting the Partition.
Nevertheless, there's a few interesting titbits scattered throughout the book. The chapters on Alfred the Great's administrative reforms of England's military defences, and the chapters on military developments in the New World following European arrival are full of fascinating interpretations. Some highlights across the general book include:
- Early Greek city states constructed such successful economies in part because they developed a cultural institution of ritualised warfare that would deliberately draw up battles in fixed rural areas, meaning they could fight one another in pitched battles without having to destroy each other's infrastructures, thereby limiting damage to both state's resources.
- Indigenous warfare in pre-conquest Americas was so personalised that warriors often knew each other by name, and would seek out specific enemies for duels on the battlefield, which left them completely unprepared for the European method of warfare that was entirely anonymous, understanding the enemy only in terms of categories. This differing style of warfare was also reflected in their weaponry, with indigenous weaponry often being flat, which eliminated the need for armour since both sides were trying to wound, incapacitate and enslave their opponents, not kill them on the battlefield.
- An exception to this was the Incas, who were bloodthirsty as all hell, but used stone weapons to do so rather than wood ones due to their mountainous terrain. This strategy left them utterly unable to do anything to the Conquistators and their iron armour, with one of their only kills in one battle being on a guy who'd forgotten to put on his helmet.
- The Conquistators, and Europeans in general, were brilliant at Divide and Rule tactics on the native populations, but the civil wars that Conquistators had amongst themselves were a missed opportunity for natives to apply the same tactic against their invaders in subsequent military campaigns.
- The one time the book really acknowledges global movements of technology, outside of obligiatory references to China and gunpowder, is in discussing the Portuguese experience of African poison arrows. To resist this, the Portuguese learned to deploy cotton shirts and leather armour. When they then travelled to the Carribean, natives started using poison darts against them, which led to the Portuguese redeploying leather armour, thereby teaching the tactic to the Carribean natives, who also quickly learned how to deploy the iron weaponry that Europeans were bringing over for their own wars.
- This exchange of technology panicked the Portuguese, who suddenly realised that they'd messed up and so they tried to ban selling iron to the natives, only for the Dutch to roll in and sell iron weapons and guns like crazy. The Dutch authorities banned colonists from teaching the natives to ride horses on pain of death, but by the time they realised that the natives were getting really good with firearms and tried to ban sales, the horses, as it were, had already bolted through the gate, and their own colonists were too eager for riches to abide by the ban anyway.
- The reason why Spanish and Portuguese colonists were better at enforcing their bans than the British or Dutch was because of their different cultural context. The Arab conquests of the Iberian penninsula had led to bans on Christians or Jews owning iron weaponry, with the Spanish returning the treatment when they retook the land. Thus Spanish and Portuguese colonialists were familiar with, and encultured to, the concept of arms control in a way that other nations were not.
- General Mark Clark in WW2 perhaps singlehandedly led to the war being extended after he let the Wehrmacht's 10th army escape through an allied encirclement during the Italian campaign, simply because he wanted to enter Rome and take the credit as being a glorious liberator. 44 000 men were subsequently slaughtered by the newly entrenched Germans, and the campaign extended for another year. If this, admittedly extreme, reading is true, how many additional people died in the concentration camps, on the Eastern Front, in merchant vessels, civilian bomb shelters, and across shattered, nuked, and burned-out cities over the next year all for one man's photo op? Perhaps the strongest contender for #InfluencersInTheWild of his day.
- Kennedy appointed Robert Strange McNamara as his secretary of defence during the Vietnam war - a man whose main qualification was being the president of the Ford Motor Company. His accountancy mindset subsequently led to the excessive quantification of wartime planning, assuming that the accumulation of lists, numbers, stats, and data could secure the invasion's success via the sheer clarity and power of uninhibited Instrumental Rationality. Perhaps there's no better refutation to Curtis Yarvin's drooling, brainrotted thirst for CEO world leaders than that example of fetishised technocratic slime brain.
You'd think the epilogue would have been a good place to summarise this progression and offer some thoughts on the future direction of warfare. Geoffrey Parker obviously thought so too, which is what makes it even more remarkable how little the epilogue is able to offer anything of substance. You can't finish off a 600 page book describing Europe as the most singularly violent political miasma in World History, then express dismay at modern Liberals feeling awkward about their origins!
The first point immediately hamstrings the overall narrative by arbitrarily isolating European military developments from the context of wider historical developments. Geoffrey Parker, pushing the annoyingly two-dimensional 'Western Way of War' narrative (which I'm tempted to label a poor-man's version of Charles Tilly 'War makes the state and the state makes war'), suggests that Europeans were unusual for how recursively they adopted new military strategies and tactics from their interactions with each other, but John Keegan's A History of Warfare made a more persuasive argument for how military strategies spread and evolved through global interactions long before Shield Maidens were a twinkle in Ragnar Lothbrok's bleary eye.
Perhaps European armies really did have a self-contained development that merits study, perhaps they didn't, but it's hard to be persuaded either way by a book that doesn't actually explain the alternative possibilities against which it is ostensibly comparing its main subject. The closest attempt at an answer that Parker comes up with is that China's immense military bureaucracy over-focused on the challenge of amassing large numbers of troops, whereas European military bureaucracies tended to focus on improving technology, logistics, and financial strategies that could keep men in the field for longer, more intense bouts of violence via a focus on capital-intensive, rather than labour-intensive, warfare.
Such Eurocentricity is obviously annoying, but I will admit that the central thesis nevertheless has the decency to be surprising, since rather than follow the typical 'European big brain conquers the world' narrative, Parker actually argues that the historically unique feature of Europe is that for most of its history it was simply the most violent, bloodthirsty place on Earth. In this reading, the West's colonial dominance ultimately arose from the fact that Europeans got so inventive and well-practiced at killing each other that their internal wars tended to lead to extended stalemates and deadlocks, whereas when they went abroad to inflict those tactics on other cultures the results were so unexpectedly savage that indigenous populations simply had no precedent on how to deal with such uninhibited barbarity.
As an argument, that's a fairly witty rebuttal to narratives of early modern Enlightement bringing civilization to the wider world, but I think it's a little unfair to everyone involved. There's no universal scale for measuring different types of violence, but at the end of the day there isn't a spot on Earth that didn't already have a scalped skeleton or two buried beneath the soil by the time European sails first flashed up on the horizon. I don't know if it counts as stealth Eurosupremicism to take decolonial critiques of Europe's darker underbelly, then rewrite that like a trendy hipster after their first read of Nietzsche into actually being another justification for considering the continient super cool and awesome. Nobody does genocide quite like us! Yeah, well, maybe the Neanderthals have something to say about that one.
Setting that aside, the book is fairly strong in the first half as it tells the story of technological, cultural, and logistical developments in military technologies across Ancient Greece, Rome, the Dark Ages, and Early Modern eras. But then sometime around the middle of it narrating WW1, the book suddenly loses its sense of direction and just starts retelling the political events of 20th century history without grounding that in specific technological and institutional developments. There's still the odd mention of V2 bombers or factory production, but these references just become more and more sparse, and by the time you get to the Arab-Israeli wars, entire military campaigns are just handwaved away with vague allusions to Egyptian class hierarchies getting in the way of battlefield logistics. I'd love for that to have been expanded on, but apparently it was really important to have another regurgitation of Churchill's grand strategic genius bloat out across huge chunks of the wordcount, despite me being able to drown myself in the same kind of verbiage anytime I want by just pulping two copies of The Telegraph into a bathtub and turning on the tap.
It's also hard not to point out that the book becomes suspiciously more cosy as the timeline progresses. The historians of the later period seem to cleave too gleefully to their protagonists' moral values, which reaches its apogee with the chapter on the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein detailing half a dozen reasons for Bush's motivations without even once mentioning the word 'oil'. It's hard to take any kind of analysis seriously that treats the proclamations of a belicose political administration so credulously. Likewise, one reference to Britain's "stable and responsible military leadership on the scene" when decolonising India is certainly a unique way of interpreting the Partition.
Nevertheless, there's a few interesting titbits scattered throughout the book. The chapters on Alfred the Great's administrative reforms of England's military defences, and the chapters on military developments in the New World following European arrival are full of fascinating interpretations. Some highlights across the general book include:
- Early Greek city states constructed such successful economies in part because they developed a cultural institution of ritualised warfare that would deliberately draw up battles in fixed rural areas, meaning they could fight one another in pitched battles without having to destroy each other's infrastructures, thereby limiting damage to both state's resources.
- Indigenous warfare in pre-conquest Americas was so personalised that warriors often knew each other by name, and would seek out specific enemies for duels on the battlefield, which left them completely unprepared for the European method of warfare that was entirely anonymous, understanding the enemy only in terms of categories. This differing style of warfare was also reflected in their weaponry, with indigenous weaponry often being flat, which eliminated the need for armour since both sides were trying to wound, incapacitate and enslave their opponents, not kill them on the battlefield.
- An exception to this was the Incas, who were bloodthirsty as all hell, but used stone weapons to do so rather than wood ones due to their mountainous terrain. This strategy left them utterly unable to do anything to the Conquistators and their iron armour, with one of their only kills in one battle being on a guy who'd forgotten to put on his helmet.
- The Conquistators, and Europeans in general, were brilliant at Divide and Rule tactics on the native populations, but the civil wars that Conquistators had amongst themselves were a missed opportunity for natives to apply the same tactic against their invaders in subsequent military campaigns.
- The one time the book really acknowledges global movements of technology, outside of obligiatory references to China and gunpowder, is in discussing the Portuguese experience of African poison arrows. To resist this, the Portuguese learned to deploy cotton shirts and leather armour. When they then travelled to the Carribean, natives started using poison darts against them, which led to the Portuguese redeploying leather armour, thereby teaching the tactic to the Carribean natives, who also quickly learned how to deploy the iron weaponry that Europeans were bringing over for their own wars.
- This exchange of technology panicked the Portuguese, who suddenly realised that they'd messed up and so they tried to ban selling iron to the natives, only for the Dutch to roll in and sell iron weapons and guns like crazy. The Dutch authorities banned colonists from teaching the natives to ride horses on pain of death, but by the time they realised that the natives were getting really good with firearms and tried to ban sales, the horses, as it were, had already bolted through the gate, and their own colonists were too eager for riches to abide by the ban anyway.
- The reason why Spanish and Portuguese colonists were better at enforcing their bans than the British or Dutch was because of their different cultural context. The Arab conquests of the Iberian penninsula had led to bans on Christians or Jews owning iron weaponry, with the Spanish returning the treatment when they retook the land. Thus Spanish and Portuguese colonialists were familiar with, and encultured to, the concept of arms control in a way that other nations were not.
- General Mark Clark in WW2 perhaps singlehandedly led to the war being extended after he let the Wehrmacht's 10th army escape through an allied encirclement during the Italian campaign, simply because he wanted to enter Rome and take the credit as being a glorious liberator. 44 000 men were subsequently slaughtered by the newly entrenched Germans, and the campaign extended for another year. If this, admittedly extreme, reading is true, how many additional people died in the concentration camps, on the Eastern Front, in merchant vessels, civilian bomb shelters, and across shattered, nuked, and burned-out cities over the next year all for one man's photo op? Perhaps the strongest contender for #InfluencersInTheWild of his day.
- Kennedy appointed Robert Strange McNamara as his secretary of defence during the Vietnam war - a man whose main qualification was being the president of the Ford Motor Company. His accountancy mindset subsequently led to the excessive quantification of wartime planning, assuming that the accumulation of lists, numbers, stats, and data could secure the invasion's success via the sheer clarity and power of uninhibited Instrumental Rationality. Perhaps there's no better refutation to Curtis Yarvin's drooling, brainrotted thirst for CEO world leaders than that example of fetishised technocratic slime brain.
You'd think the epilogue would have been a good place to summarise this progression and offer some thoughts on the future direction of warfare. Geoffrey Parker obviously thought so too, which is what makes it even more remarkable how little the epilogue is able to offer anything of substance. You can't finish off a 600 page book describing Europe as the most singularly violent political miasma in World History, then express dismay at modern Liberals feeling awkward about their origins!
April 15, 2023
It was a very interesting read that does however, despite the title, only focus on Western Warfare. It is continually argued throughout the book that Western Warfare is particularly unique in world histroy but many academic review articles correct the book at several times for not giving due credit to non-Western military matters. It makes many interesting analysis of the history of warfare but also devolves in latter chapters to simple play-by-play of the World Wars rather than a larger analysis, this is space that could have been reserved for non-Western warfare. Overall it is also incredibly lenient to the mainstream western culture of capitalism, racism and imperalism. It also sees Marxism as similarly corrosive as Fascism.
The book ends with commentary on how the modern western cultures are incredibly self-conscious and feel self-hatred towards their own past and criticises this as something the west should move past as no other culture feels like this. This seems ridiculous considering that it has spent the pages of the book claiming how the Wester Way of War is superior and the Western has remained an unconquered world hegemon for centuries. Surely if the West is such a leader of warfare then there is also room to consider it a violent and bloody culture that perhaps needs some self-doubt.
The book ends with commentary on how the modern western cultures are incredibly self-conscious and feel self-hatred towards their own past and criticises this as something the west should move past as no other culture feels like this. This seems ridiculous considering that it has spent the pages of the book claiming how the Wester Way of War is superior and the Western has remained an unconquered world hegemon for centuries. Surely if the West is such a leader of warfare then there is also room to consider it a violent and bloody culture that perhaps needs some self-doubt.
April 16, 2016
Mi problema con este libro es no es una Historia de la guerra sino una Historia de las guerras. Me explico. El primer capítulo está dedicado a la falange griega: su composición y cómo ésta no es más que un reflejo de la sociedad en la que surge. Y a continuación expone como los cambios en esta sociedad se reflejan también en la forma de hacer la guerra, tanto durante la guerra del Peloponeso como durante el periodo helenístico. Un capítulo bastante interesante y que yo pensaba que sería la pauta para el resto del libro.
Pero me equivocaba.
Después de un decepcionante cap��tulo dedicado a los romanos, el libro continúa ya no con una descripción de cómo se ha hecho la guerra a lo largo de la historia, sino narrando la lista de conflictos que han aquejado a Occidente (aunque se centra casi exclusivamente en Europa Central y, posteriormente, EEUU).
Quitando ese capítulo inicial, el resto del libro dedica muy poco tiempo a hablar de la guerra (cuáles son las formas, armas, formaciones, estrategias, desafíos, respuestas...) para centrarse a hablar de las guerras. No era lo que yo buscaba y se me acabó haciendo bastante repetitivo, aunque reconozco que al lector que busque un resumen de los conflictos europeos le puede resultar interesante.
Pero me equivocaba.
Después de un decepcionante cap��tulo dedicado a los romanos, el libro continúa ya no con una descripción de cómo se ha hecho la guerra a lo largo de la historia, sino narrando la lista de conflictos que han aquejado a Occidente (aunque se centra casi exclusivamente en Europa Central y, posteriormente, EEUU).
Quitando ese capítulo inicial, el resto del libro dedica muy poco tiempo a hablar de la guerra (cuáles son las formas, armas, formaciones, estrategias, desafíos, respuestas...) para centrarse a hablar de las guerras. No era lo que yo buscaba y se me acabó haciendo bastante repetitivo, aunque reconozco que al lector que busque un resumen de los conflictos europeos le puede resultar interesante.
November 23, 2021
Has some very interesting snippets of information but oftentimes turns into a big list of weapons or boats that cost more money than other boats and had more guns. There is a lot to learn but there is also a lot of what I consider 'filler' because it does not add to your understanding of the history of warfare in-depth but rather gives statistics that don't necessarily matter. That said, I still recommend you read it if you are studying the history of warfare for those few and far in between moments when it really gives some fascinating insight into why the west was so dominant for so long.
November 23, 2021
Main textbook for my history course. Prose was kind of convoluted and wordy, and it can only go so in-depth since it's covering almost all of history, but I enjoyed it.
August 26, 2025
Parker and co. attempt to write a History of Warfare. While not clear in the title, it’s focused on the History of Warfare in the West and Parker goes to great lengths to describe the Western Way of War. The issues begin here. A Western Way of War implies Western Exceptionalism and many of his arguments about Western exceptionalism do have gaping holes when considering non-Western great powers, like China, Japan and the Ottomans. Parker also does not have a clear idea of what is the West. Some chapters like the WWII chapter discuss Russia extensively, while the Cold War chapter (of all chapters) omit discussion of Russia/the USSR. Nor is there discussion of russian expansion under Peter the Great. Also, while it is an edited volume, there is much inconsistency in the text. Some chapters focus a lot of narrating wars and battles, while others discuss the development of warfare without discussing battles and wars during that time period much, producing a highly uneven text.
March 5, 2023
There's some very interesting sections on how warfare changed, what triggered those changes and occasional glimpses on tactical and strategic warfare.
Problem was that those things got diluted by an exacerbated recounting of historical events, statistics and figures.
Also, there's an extensive bibliography at the end that seems very promising for those wanting a more in depth and focused read.
Problem was that those things got diluted by an exacerbated recounting of historical events, statistics and figures.
Also, there's an extensive bibliography at the end that seems very promising for those wanting a more in depth and focused read.
May 10, 2023
A very informative and fun book that helped me learn a lot about the development of warfare and the transition from the cavalry based armies of old to modern armies of infantry, tanks, artillery, airplanes, navy, and logistics
September 21, 2022
not detailed enough
March 27, 2025
La parte de la guerra en la antigüedad, el prólogo y el epilogo están bien y sin interesantes.
October 5, 2025
A first class general history of warfare, deliberately focused on the western approach.
May 16, 2023
Title: The Cambridge History of Warfare
Editor: Geoffrey Parker
**General Introduction**
- The introduction sets the stage for the book's exploration of the evolution of warfare, mainly focusing on the "Western Way of War." Parker emphasizes the impact of technological change, societal transformations, and strategic innovations on the conduct and nature of warfare.
**Chapter 1: War in the Ancient World**
- The first chapter delves into warfare's earliest roots in ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It discusses the strategic deployment of infantry formations like the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion, underlining the importance of discipline, training, and superior tactics in achieving victory. The chapter also explores the role of cavalry, siege warfare, and naval battles in the ancient world.
**Chapter 2: War in the Medieval World**
- This chapter traces the changes in warfare from the fall of the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages. It highlights the advent of heavily armored knights, the crucial role of castles in defensive strategies, and the impact of religious wars, particularly the Crusades. It also discusses the development of more sophisticated siege techniques and the introduction of gunpowder to the Western world.
**Chapter 3: Gunpowder Revolutionizes Warfare**
- The third chapter examines how gunpowder dramatically transformed warfare, shifting the balance from defensive to offensive strategies. It covers the development of artillery, the role of fortified places, and the evolution of infantry tactics in response to the new technology. The chapter emphasizes the revolutionary changes gunpowder brought to the battlefield, leading to a new era in warfare.
**Chapter 4: War in the Early Modern Era**
- Covering the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries, this chapter explores key conflicts like the Thirty Years' War and the Napoleonic Wars. It highlights the evolution of military strategy, tactics, and technology during this period, including the use of linear formations and the integration of artillery into battlefield tactics.
**Chapter 5: Industrialization and War**
- This chapter investigates how the Industrial Revolution changed warfare, focusing on the American Civil War and World War I. It explains the concept of total war, the mass production of weaponry, the importance of logistics and supply chains, and the devastating impact of new weapons like machine guns and chemical weapons.
**Chapter 6: World War II and the Destruction of the Old Order**
- Focusing on World War II, this chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the key campaigns, strategies, and technologies employed. It discusses the strategic bombing campaigns, the role of tanks and mechanized warfare, and the advent of nuclear weapons. The chapter also examines the political and social consequences of the war, including the shift in global power dynamics.
**Chapter 7: The Cold War and After**
- This chapter explores the military strategies and technologies of the Cold War era, including nuclear deterrence and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. It also delves into the nature of proxy wars and the emergence of asymmetrical warfare in the aftermath of the Cold War. The chapter analyzes how these developments have reshaped warfare and international relations.
**Chapter 8: The Future of Warfare**
- The concluding chapter speculates on future warfare trends, such as cyber warfare, drone warfare, and the implications of artificial intelligence on the battlefield. It discusses the challenges these developments pose for traditional military strategy and international law, highlighting the increasingly blurred lines between war and peace in the digital age.
**General Conclusion**
- Parker concludes by reflecting on the themes and insights presented throughout the book. He emphasizes the persistent influence of the "Western Way of War" and underscores the constant evolution of warfare due to technological advancements, strategic innovations, and societal transformations.
Editor: Geoffrey Parker
**General Introduction**
- The introduction sets the stage for the book's exploration of the evolution of warfare, mainly focusing on the "Western Way of War." Parker emphasizes the impact of technological change, societal transformations, and strategic innovations on the conduct and nature of warfare.
**Chapter 1: War in the Ancient World**
- The first chapter delves into warfare's earliest roots in ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It discusses the strategic deployment of infantry formations like the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion, underlining the importance of discipline, training, and superior tactics in achieving victory. The chapter also explores the role of cavalry, siege warfare, and naval battles in the ancient world.
**Chapter 2: War in the Medieval World**
- This chapter traces the changes in warfare from the fall of the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages. It highlights the advent of heavily armored knights, the crucial role of castles in defensive strategies, and the impact of religious wars, particularly the Crusades. It also discusses the development of more sophisticated siege techniques and the introduction of gunpowder to the Western world.
**Chapter 3: Gunpowder Revolutionizes Warfare**
- The third chapter examines how gunpowder dramatically transformed warfare, shifting the balance from defensive to offensive strategies. It covers the development of artillery, the role of fortified places, and the evolution of infantry tactics in response to the new technology. The chapter emphasizes the revolutionary changes gunpowder brought to the battlefield, leading to a new era in warfare.
**Chapter 4: War in the Early Modern Era**
- Covering the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries, this chapter explores key conflicts like the Thirty Years' War and the Napoleonic Wars. It highlights the evolution of military strategy, tactics, and technology during this period, including the use of linear formations and the integration of artillery into battlefield tactics.
**Chapter 5: Industrialization and War**
- This chapter investigates how the Industrial Revolution changed warfare, focusing on the American Civil War and World War I. It explains the concept of total war, the mass production of weaponry, the importance of logistics and supply chains, and the devastating impact of new weapons like machine guns and chemical weapons.
**Chapter 6: World War II and the Destruction of the Old Order**
- Focusing on World War II, this chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the key campaigns, strategies, and technologies employed. It discusses the strategic bombing campaigns, the role of tanks and mechanized warfare, and the advent of nuclear weapons. The chapter also examines the political and social consequences of the war, including the shift in global power dynamics.
**Chapter 7: The Cold War and After**
- This chapter explores the military strategies and technologies of the Cold War era, including nuclear deterrence and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. It also delves into the nature of proxy wars and the emergence of asymmetrical warfare in the aftermath of the Cold War. The chapter analyzes how these developments have reshaped warfare and international relations.
**Chapter 8: The Future of Warfare**
- The concluding chapter speculates on future warfare trends, such as cyber warfare, drone warfare, and the implications of artificial intelligence on the battlefield. It discusses the challenges these developments pose for traditional military strategy and international law, highlighting the increasingly blurred lines between war and peace in the digital age.
**General Conclusion**
- Parker concludes by reflecting on the themes and insights presented throughout the book. He emphasizes the persistent influence of the "Western Way of War" and underscores the constant evolution of warfare due to technological advancements, strategic innovations, and societal transformations.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 17, 2024
Un libro interesante para quien esté interesado en la Historia Militar puramente dicha, y sencillo de leer ya que no presta la más mínima atención a otros componentes de la historia como los aspectos sociales, económicos y políticos.
Aunque se me ha hecho entretenido, lo cierto es que tiene varios problemas tremendos, más allá del hecho de que la mayoría de los capítulos NO los escribe Parker, y la diferencia de enfoque y de calidad se nota mucho entre los distintos autores.
Primer problema: decir que es eurocéntrico se queda corto. Es eurocéntrico hasta el año 1775 (y concretamente anglocéntrico; sólo se mencionan los países en cuanto a su relación con Gran Bretaña); entonces pasa a ser automáticamente USAcéntrico. La segunda mitad del libro es un repaso de qué hace EEUU en los distintos conflictos mundiales, dándose el caso, por ejemplo, de dedicar 30 páginas a la Guerra de Secesión y ni una sola coma a las guerras por la independencia de América Latina.
Segundo problema: la falta de objetividad es absolutamente brutal. Desde 1775 a la actualidad, los EEUU actúan siempre como salvadores (ni una sola mención al petróleo), y cuando algo sale mal es porque algunos individuos aislados (políticos o militares) se separaron del noble rebaño del pueblo elegido. Mención aparte merece el capítulo dedicado al conflicto Árabe-Israelí, en el cual se presenta a Israel básicamente como lo hacen ellos mismos: la gente elegida por Dios en persona, que tiene que contener a los demonios del infierno en forma de árabes decididos a destruir el mundo entero.
En fin; entretenido e interesante, pero increíblemente tendencioso y anglo-USAcéntrico.
Aunque se me ha hecho entretenido, lo cierto es que tiene varios problemas tremendos, más allá del hecho de que la mayoría de los capítulos NO los escribe Parker, y la diferencia de enfoque y de calidad se nota mucho entre los distintos autores.
Primer problema: decir que es eurocéntrico se queda corto. Es eurocéntrico hasta el año 1775 (y concretamente anglocéntrico; sólo se mencionan los países en cuanto a su relación con Gran Bretaña); entonces pasa a ser automáticamente USAcéntrico. La segunda mitad del libro es un repaso de qué hace EEUU en los distintos conflictos mundiales, dándose el caso, por ejemplo, de dedicar 30 páginas a la Guerra de Secesión y ni una sola coma a las guerras por la independencia de América Latina.
Segundo problema: la falta de objetividad es absolutamente brutal. Desde 1775 a la actualidad, los EEUU actúan siempre como salvadores (ni una sola mención al petróleo), y cuando algo sale mal es porque algunos individuos aislados (políticos o militares) se separaron del noble rebaño del pueblo elegido. Mención aparte merece el capítulo dedicado al conflicto Árabe-Israelí, en el cual se presenta a Israel básicamente como lo hacen ellos mismos: la gente elegida por Dios en persona, que tiene que contener a los demonios del infierno en forma de árabes decididos a destruir el mundo entero.
En fin; entretenido e interesante, pero increíblemente tendencioso y anglo-USAcéntrico.
June 28, 2014
Starting with the infantry of the ancient Greeks, this book endeavors to explain the social, political and military tactics that enabled the West to dominate everyone they came in contact with. Both brief and detailed this book is dense, the pictures and diagrams help to keep the reader on track.
Why I started this book: It was one of my goals for this year, and I knew that I would need time to make my way through it.
Why I finished it: I did a big push at the end, I wanted to stop hauling with large book around. Plus I am more familiar with the wars of the last century. It was a good introduction and I was surprised with the authors candor about the necessity and costs of war. Most surprising was the comparison between Hitler and George W.; both started costly wars despite the protests of millions.
Why I started this book: It was one of my goals for this year, and I knew that I would need time to make my way through it.
Why I finished it: I did a big push at the end, I wanted to stop hauling with large book around. Plus I am more familiar with the wars of the last century. It was a good introduction and I was surprised with the authors candor about the necessity and costs of war. Most surprising was the comparison between Hitler and George W.; both started costly wars despite the protests of millions.
May 6, 2019
Tanto como si eres aficionado como si quieres introducirte en el mundo de la historia militar es un buen libro. Cada uno de los cooperantes es experto en ese momento histórico. Además da una imagen de conjunto de lo que ha supuesto la forma de hacer la guerra occidental tanto como para occidente como para el mundo
January 5, 2018
No se me ocurre un mejor libro para empezar el 2018. Tremendo!
October 9, 2021
Konuya giriş yapmak isteyenler için harika bir kitap. Akıcı bir tarzı var, kalın olmasına rağmen hemen okuyup bitirebilirsiniz.
August 26, 2022
La versión de Cambridge. Muy etnocéntrica pero entretenida.
Want to read
March 15, 20231035- 31
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