What do you think?
Rate this book
Войната: Възходът на Западната военна мощ
Войната винаги е била и си остава един от основните крайъгълни камъни в развитието на човешката цивилизация. Едновременно ненавиждана, но и възпявана, тя е била мощен катализатор за прогреса на обществото и технологиите.
Професор Джон Франс изследва историята на войната като социално-културен феномен. Въпреки огромните си различия, хората по цял свят воюват по сходен начин от зората на писаната история чак до XIX век, когато фабриките на Запада променят всичко.
Франс поставя под съмнение утвърдените схващания за развитието на военната сила, влиянието на културата върху войната и бъдещето на западната цивилизация. Защо Римската империя успява да организира и поддържа армии в мащаб, за който разкъсаните феодални държави на Средновековна Европа могат само да си мечтаят? Как концепцията за тоталната война оказва влияние върху еволюцията на цивилизацията?
Представата, че войната е далечно явление, което може да се случи само в други краища на света, е опасна илюзия и конфликтът в Украйна го доказа. Безспорното технологично и логистично могъщество на Европа и Америка е без значение, ако не е подкрепено с мотивация и воля да защитят ценностите и свободите, които са направили западния свят велик.
Професор Джон Франс изследва историята на войната като социално-културен феномен. Въпреки огромните си различия, хората по цял свят воюват по сходен начин от зората на писаната история чак до XIX век, когато фабриките на Запада променят всичко.
Франс поставя под съмнение утвърдените схващания за развитието на военната сила, влиянието на културата върху войната и бъдещето на западната цивилизация. Защо Римската империя успява да организира и поддържа армии в мащаб, за който разкъсаните феодални държави на Средновековна Европа могат само да си мечтаят? Как концепцията за тоталната война оказва влияние върху еволюцията на цивилизацията?
Представата, че войната е далечно явление, което може да се случи само в други краища на света, е опасна илюзия и конфликтът в Украйна го доказа. Безспорното технологично и логистично могъщество на Европа и Америка е без значение, ако не е подкрепено с мотивация и воля да защитят ценностите и свободите, които са направили западния свят велик.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
About the author
John France
52 books4 followersJohn France is Professor Emeritus and Director of the Callaghan Centre for Conflict Studies at Swansea University, and a former Visiting Professor at the United States Military Academy, West Point. A specialist on the history of crusading and warfare, he has travelled extensively in the Middle East and is the author of numerous articles and books on the subject.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 17, 2022
Войната от древността до наши дни: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/v...
Франс започва с встъпителна глава за ролята на войната в човешката култура – и както ясно посочват и Стивън Пинкър в “По-добрите ангели на нашата природа”, и Джаред Даймънд в “Пушки, вируси и стомана”, миналото принадлежи почти изключително на нея, състоянието на война е естественото човешко състояние от началото на организираното общество, и теорията за “добрия дивак” на Русо е просто пожелателно мислене. Човешките същества живеят в конфликтна среда изначално и чак съвремието дава излаз от него – но гарнирайки го с периоди на възможно най-мащабното унищожение досега, две противоречия, които се допълват в историята на миналия и този век. Авторът проследява пространно тактиките на водене на бойни действия, традициите, свързани с воюването, причините, ефективността, жертвите, включително научих и че най-ранното оцеляло мирно споразумение е на глинена плочка и датира от 1258 г. пр.Хр.
Изд. "Сиела"
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/v...
Франс започва с встъпителна глава за ролята на войната в човешката култура – и както ясно посочват и Стивън Пинкър в “По-добрите ангели на нашата природа”, и Джаред Даймънд в “Пушки, вируси и стомана”, миналото принадлежи почти изключително на нея, състоянието на война е естественото човешко състояние от началото на организираното общество, и теорията за “добрия дивак” на Русо е просто пожелателно мислене. Човешките същества живеят в конфликтна среда изначално и чак съвремието дава излаз от него – но гарнирайки го с периоди на възможно най-мащабното унищожение досега, две противоречия, които се допълват в историята на миналия и този век. Авторът проследява пространно тактиките на водене на бойни действия, традициите, свързани с воюването, причините, ефективността, жертвите, включително научих и че най-ранното оцеляло мирно споразумение е на глинена плочка и датира от 1258 г. пр.Хр.
Изд. "Сиела"
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/v...
Want to Read
August 28, 2011by Noel Malcolm in the Daily Telegraph
Is there such a thing as a Western way of war? A bestselling book by the American historian and political commentator Victor D Hanson argues that there is, and for many this has become an article of faith. Ever since the ancient Greeks, allegedly, Western societies have triumphed on the battlefield because of their essential values: democracy, individualism, and so on. The battle against non-Western despotism of all kinds was won on the playing fields of Athens.
John France, an Emeritus Professor at Swansea, has a word for this: “nonsense”. Styles of warfare, he says, are dictated by material circumstances, basic social conditions, technology and other such factors; democracy has little to do with it. In ancient Greece the best fighters were formed by Sparta, the least individualistic society. Yes, Athenians bravely defended their city when it was under attack; people are usually more motivated to defend their own homes and land.
But most Greek warfare – overlooked in the feelgood accounts of the glory that was Greece – consisted of predatory raiding.
France does not deny that Western powers developed, in the long run, a military advantage that shaped the course of modern history; his book is subtitled The Rise of Western Military Power. But he has a very different account of how, when and why this happened.
In a work of extraordinary breadth and ambition, ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and taking in almost everything in between, he puts forward a new world history of warfare.
One of his basic distinctions is between two kinds of population: people of the steppe, and “agro-urban” societies. For elementary geographical reasons, the former flourished in the plains of central Asia, while the latter developed in both Europe and China. Agro-urban armies were based on infantry, supplemented by cavalry and artillery; steppe armies consisted essentially of mounted archers, with the advantage of rapid mobility and (often) huge numbers.
When steppe peoples took over agro-urban societies, as the Manchus did in China, the Mughals in India and the Ottomans in Asia Minor and Europe, they quickly adopted the military skills and technologies of their new subjects. The expansion of Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries was based not on any essential difference in its “way of war”, but merely on the lucky fluke that Western economic growth coincided with oriental political weakness.
France is good both on the technological advances in weaponry and on the underlying continuities in the ways that those weapons were used. As he points out, warfare in the 18th century still depended, as it had done in the ancient world, on soldiers in close order engaging with their enemies with sharp objects. He is unimpressed, therefore, by some of the “military revolutions” that historians have identified: the development of masonry-busting cannons, which made castles obsolete in the 15th and 16th centuries, or the introduction of drill for infantry formations in the 17th.
For him there was only one military revolution, and it came in the latter part of the 19th century, thanks to cheap high-quality steel and machine-tooling. The new rifles, artillery and machine-guns developed by Gatling, Krupp and others gave armies a firepower that made the old way of fighting in close order simply suicidal. Any kind of offensive warfare – against a similarly equipped army, that is – now came at a huge price. The Americans discovered this in their Civil War, and the British learned it at the Somme.
As France points out, the military lessons of the First World War were complex: the need for smaller units acting with speed and initiative on the one hand, and the large-scale co-ordination of infantry, tanks, artillery and air power on the other.
A dysfunctional British military culture largely failed to absorb those lessons; some senior Russian officers did, but they were eliminated by Stalin. It was left to the Germans to work out how to fight the next war – a war they would have won, if only they had stuck more closely to the principles they had established.
This is a powerful book, opinionated but crisply argued, and packed with information about everything from metallurgy to dynastic history. There are some little slips here and there – incorrect dates for the English Civil Wars, for example – and the near-absence of source references means that one can never be sure how well founded some of the factual claims may be. But it’s hard to think of a more impressive single-volume history of the not-only-Western way of war.
September 8, 2017
A fun and easy read, but not sure if I agree with much of France's conclusions. The author traces the entire history of World warfare, with an emphasis on Western traditions. As a survey book the pace is quick but very enjoyable to whip through- hundreds of years at a time. We go from the invention of killing tools to the Missile age in less than 400 pages, and just about any reader will be satisfied with the flow. I found a few statistical mistakes (Subhas Bhose's Indian National Army attracted 12,000, not 40,000 of the 45,000 Raj Soldiers captured at Singapore in 1942, for instance) and other errors, but the book is a good resource on this topic. My only real reservations came with the conclusions drawn at the end, where I think many readers may disagree with Professor France's ideas. His vision of the future seems bleak and unappealing. While Military Enthusiasts will see the value here, Gamers/Modellers will use this only on deepest background.
June 1, 2026
John France's Perilous Glory belongs to a familiar genre: the sweeping survey of human history that attempts to identify broad lessons about war, society, and civilization. Like most books of this type, it inevitably sacrifices depth for scope, glossing over important periods and treating some topics far more thoroughly than others, often reflecting the interests and biases of its author. One contemporary reviewer suggested that Wikipedia provided better coverage of some of the subjects France discusses. While somewhat uncharitable, the criticism is difficult to dismiss.
The book's strongest section is its opening critique of Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War, itself a deeply flawed work that advanced the notion that there was something uniquely democratic and decisive about ancient Greek hoplite warfare that ultimately shaped Western Civilization™. France, a medievalist by training, succeeds in dismantling this argument. Close-order warfare was hardly a uniquely Western phenomenon, but rather a near-universal feature of human conflict before the military-industrial revolution. Here France is operating comfortably within his area of expertise, and the result is some of the book's most convincing analysis.
The book's greatest weakness, however, is its lack of citations. Readers are frequently forced to take France at his word, producing a work that often feels half scholarship and half polemic. This becomes particularly problematic when France ventures beyond ancient and medieval history. There are factual mistakes—Einstein, for example, did not sign the 1914 manifesto supporting the Imperial German government—and the absence of sources makes it difficult to assess where interpretation ends and error begins. It is frankly disappointing for a book published by Yale University press, although maybe not surprising considering the state of academic monograph publishing today.
The problem only grows more severe as the narrative approaches the present day. France argues, for example, that American and British strategy during the Second World War suffered from ignorance of "the primary lessons of the war, that deep penetration into the enemy's rear areas paid the highest dividends." Yet it is equally plausible that Allied strategy reflected a different lesson altogether: that overwhelming industrial superiority was the decisive factor in modern warfare, a point France himself emphasizes in his discussion of the American Civil War. Similar issues plague the chapters on Vietnam and the Second Gulf War, where citations disappear almost entirely and France often offers little more than a broadly informed layman's interpretation of highly contested conflicts. The omission of the UNOSOM II intervention in Somalia is especially surprising, as it would seem to strengthen rather than weaken his broader argument regarding the failures of the post-Cold War international consensus.
As a result, the book's final arguments often struggle under even basic scrutiny. France contends that one of the greatest challenges facing the West is that Western societies find defense spending "deeply disconcerting." Yet the United States, with broad bipartisan support, spends more on defense than the next several countries combined—a fact France himself notes earlier in the book before seemingly forgetting it. The disconnect leaves many of his conclusions feeling asserted rather than demonstrated.
At the same time, France's informal style gives the book much of its appeal. Because he is less constrained by academic convention than many historians, he is willing to venture into speculation and contemporary commentary that more cautious scholars might avoid. Some of these observations remain surprisingly thought-provoking. Very well perhaps "the dangers of legalisation are less the risks of continuing to fight a lost 'war on drugs'."
The final section of the book coalesces around the argument that the West must reconsider its pursuit of "free-ranged chickens or a carbon-free world" in order to harden itself for the more unpleasant business of confronting the genuine threats facing democratic societies. France was presumably thinking primarily of external geopolitical rivals. Reading the book a decade later, however, one cannot help but wonder how he would respond to the argument that the most significant anti-democratic forces have instead emerged from within: multinational capital, democratic backsliding, and the homegrown far right. In that sense, the book has aged unevenly. Yet France was not entirely wrong. If nothing else, he correctly identified a broader sense of complacency that had taken hold in much of the West during the post-Cold War era.
The book's strongest section is its opening critique of Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War, itself a deeply flawed work that advanced the notion that there was something uniquely democratic and decisive about ancient Greek hoplite warfare that ultimately shaped Western Civilization™. France, a medievalist by training, succeeds in dismantling this argument. Close-order warfare was hardly a uniquely Western phenomenon, but rather a near-universal feature of human conflict before the military-industrial revolution. Here France is operating comfortably within his area of expertise, and the result is some of the book's most convincing analysis.
The book's greatest weakness, however, is its lack of citations. Readers are frequently forced to take France at his word, producing a work that often feels half scholarship and half polemic. This becomes particularly problematic when France ventures beyond ancient and medieval history. There are factual mistakes—Einstein, for example, did not sign the 1914 manifesto supporting the Imperial German government—and the absence of sources makes it difficult to assess where interpretation ends and error begins. It is frankly disappointing for a book published by Yale University press, although maybe not surprising considering the state of academic monograph publishing today.
The problem only grows more severe as the narrative approaches the present day. France argues, for example, that American and British strategy during the Second World War suffered from ignorance of "the primary lessons of the war, that deep penetration into the enemy's rear areas paid the highest dividends." Yet it is equally plausible that Allied strategy reflected a different lesson altogether: that overwhelming industrial superiority was the decisive factor in modern warfare, a point France himself emphasizes in his discussion of the American Civil War. Similar issues plague the chapters on Vietnam and the Second Gulf War, where citations disappear almost entirely and France often offers little more than a broadly informed layman's interpretation of highly contested conflicts. The omission of the UNOSOM II intervention in Somalia is especially surprising, as it would seem to strengthen rather than weaken his broader argument regarding the failures of the post-Cold War international consensus.
As a result, the book's final arguments often struggle under even basic scrutiny. France contends that one of the greatest challenges facing the West is that Western societies find defense spending "deeply disconcerting." Yet the United States, with broad bipartisan support, spends more on defense than the next several countries combined—a fact France himself notes earlier in the book before seemingly forgetting it. The disconnect leaves many of his conclusions feeling asserted rather than demonstrated.
At the same time, France's informal style gives the book much of its appeal. Because he is less constrained by academic convention than many historians, he is willing to venture into speculation and contemporary commentary that more cautious scholars might avoid. Some of these observations remain surprisingly thought-provoking. Very well perhaps "the dangers of legalisation are less the risks of continuing to fight a lost 'war on drugs'."
The final section of the book coalesces around the argument that the West must reconsider its pursuit of "free-ranged chickens or a carbon-free world" in order to harden itself for the more unpleasant business of confronting the genuine threats facing democratic societies. France was presumably thinking primarily of external geopolitical rivals. Reading the book a decade later, however, one cannot help but wonder how he would respond to the argument that the most significant anti-democratic forces have instead emerged from within: multinational capital, democratic backsliding, and the homegrown far right. In that sense, the book has aged unevenly. Yet France was not entirely wrong. If nothing else, he correctly identified a broader sense of complacency that had taken hold in much of the West during the post-Cold War era.
April 7, 2023
Монументален труд за еволюцията на войната от древността до днешни дни.
В прединдустриалните общества характеристиките на войската се определят най-вече от географията, топографията, климата и земеделските практики. Битките почти навсякъде протичат по сходен начин - с водеща роля на пехотата и поддържаща на кавалерията (ако я има) и стрелците. Победите се печелят в директен бой лице в лице с противника. Крайният изход ��е определя от дисциплината и мотивацията, която често бива изцяло финансова при наемниците.
Книгата проследява военното развитие на големите световни култури: Средиземноморието и Европа, Китай, Индия, Япония и азиатската степ. Особено внимание е отделено на предпоставките за съвременната доминацията на западния свят в стила на "Пушки, вируси, стомана" на Джаред Даймънд.
Войната коренно е преобразена от две ключови събития - Френската революция с нейните идеи за национализъм и демокрация, и индустриалната революция. Технологичният скок напълно променя вида на сраженията. Нарастващото население на света води до все по-многобройни армии, съответно прогресивно повече жертви. Особено внимание е обърнато на партизанската война, която е заплаха за съвременните армии.
Колко наивно днес звучи изводът на писателя от XIX век Ян Блох. В книгата си "Бъдещата война и нейните икономически последици" той твърди, че войната е вече толкова ужасна, че става немислима. Уви, той жестоко греши.
В прединдустриалните общества характеристиките на войската се определят най-вече от географията, топографията, климата и земеделските практики. Битките почти навсякъде протичат по сходен начин - с водеща роля на пехотата и поддържаща на кавалерията (ако я има) и стрелците. Победите се печелят в директен бой лице в лице с противника. Крайният изход ��е определя от дисциплината и мотивацията, която често бива изцяло финансова при наемниците.
Книгата проследява военното развитие на големите световни култури: Средиземноморието и Европа, Китай, Индия, Япония и азиатската степ. Особено внимание е отделено на предпоставките за съвременната доминацията на западния свят в стила на "Пушки, вируси, стомана" на Джаред Даймънд.
Войната коренно е преобразена от две ключови събития - Френската революция с нейните идеи за национализъм и демокрация, и индустриалната революция. Технологичният скок напълно променя вида на сраженията. Нарастващото население на света води до все по-многобройни армии, съответно прогресивно повече жертви. Особено внимание е обърнато на партизанската война, която е заплаха за съвременните армии.
Колко наивно днес звучи изводът на писателя от XIX век Ян Блох. В книгата си "Бъдещата война и нейните икономически последици" той твърди, че войната е вече толкова ужасна, че става немислима. Уви, той жестоко греши.
December 30, 2015
Survey of warfare from pre-history to present time, in particular drawing out the distinction between 'agro-urban' and steppe armies pre1600. Sadly aside from the need to condense much history to fit in so few pages, leading to spitting out many confused sentences, suffers many of the prejudices of contemporary historians including the cultural cringe at the age of discovery. But the final chapter deserves comment for collapsing in unhinged paranoia. This author hasn't really learned from his source material.
May 12, 2013
Four stars not for the narrative and information, which is decent but not amazing, but for the lesson France tries to teach, kicking down foolish notions and comfort blankets our societies have dreamed up about the nature of warfare and culture - from both sides (and the centre) of the political spectrum.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews