Warfare and Culture in World History

by Wayne E. Lee (Editor)

Overview

It has long been acknowledged that the study of war and warfare demands careful consideration of technology, institutions, social organization, and more.  But, for some, the so-called "war and society" approach increasingly included everything but explained nothing, because it all too often seemed to ignore the events on the battlefield itself.

The military historians in Warfare and Culture in World History return us to the battlefield, but they do so through a deep examination of the role of culture in shaping military institutions and military choices. Collected here are some of the most provocative recent efforts to analyze warfare through a cultural lens, drawing on and aggressively expanding traditional scholarship on war and society through sophisticated cultural analysis. With chapters ranging from an organizational analysis of American Civil War field armies to the soldiers' culture of late Republican Rome and debates within Ming Chinese officialdom over extermination versus pacification, this one volume provides a full range of case studies of how culture, whether societal, strategic, organizational, or military, could shape not only military institutions but also actual battlefield choices.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814752784
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2011
Series:	Warfare and Culture , #9
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Wayne E. Lee is Bruce W. Carney Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina. He is author of Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History and Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865.

Table of Contents

List of Maps
1 Warfare and Culture
Wayne E. Lee
2 The Last Campaign: The Assyrian Way of War and the Collapse of the Empire
Sarah C. Melville
3 Disciplining Octavian: A Case Study of Roman Military Culture, 44–30 BCE
Lee L. Brice
4 Of Bureaucrats and Bandits: Confucianism and Antirebel Strategy at the End of the Ming Dynasty
Kenneth M. Swope
5 The Battle Culture of Forbearance, 1660–1789
John A. Lynn II
6 Success and Failure in Civil War Armies: Clues from Organizational Culture
Mark Grimsley
7 German Military Culture and the Colonial War in Southwest Africa, 1904–1907
Isabel V. Hull
8 Connecting Culture and the Battlefield: Britain and the Empire Fight the Hundred Days
David Silbey
9 The American Culture of War in the Age of Artificial Limited War
Adrian R. Lewis
About the Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This book provides the best introduction yet published to the wide and exciting study of war and culture. Readers interested in war, culture, and their roles in global history will find here some of the best current research and writing on the topic."-Michael S. Neiberg,author of Dance of the Furies

"A terrific demonstration of the fresh insights cultural analysis can bring to military history. The fascinating range of case studies shows that cultures of war are recoverable—and well worth recovering—from Assyrian times to the present and from all over the globe."-Stephen Morillo,Professor of History, Wabash College

“No future discussion of this fraught topic will be complete without this collection of essays. Vivid arguments, telling points, striking reformulations: this will be a standard work for decades.”-Robert Citino,author of The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich

Editorial Reviews

"No future discussion of this fraught topic will be complete without this collection of essays. Vivid arguments, telling points, striking reformulations: this will be a standard work for decades."

Robert Citino

"This book provides the best introduction yet published to the wide and exciting study of war and culture. Readers interested in war, culture, and their roles in global history will find here some of the best current research and writing on the topic."

Michael S. Neiberg

"A terrific demonstration of the fresh insights cultural analysis can bring to military history. The fascinating range of case studies shows that cultures of war are recoverable—and well worth recovering—from Assyrian times to the present and from all over the globe."

Stephen Morillo

No future discussion of this fraught topic will be complete without this collection of essays. Vivid arguments, telling points, striking reformulations: this will be a standard work for decades.”-Robert Citino,author of The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich

"This book provides the best introduction yet published to the wide and exciting study of war and culture. Readers interested in war, culture, and their roles in global history will find here some of the best current research and writing on the topic."-Michael S. Neiberg,author of Dance of the Furies

"A terrific demonstration of the fresh insights cultural analysis can bring to military history. The fascinating range of case studies shows that cultures of war are recoverable—and well worth recovering—from Assyrian times to the present and from all over the globe."-Stephen Morillo,Professor of History, Wabash College

From the Publisher