In this brilliant history of warfare, Jeremy Black is the first to approach the entire modern era from a comprehensive global perspective. He provides a wide-ranging account of the nature, purpose, and experience of war over the past half-millennium and argues the importance of viewing the rise of European power within a wider international context. Investigating both land and sea warfare, Black examines weaponry, tactics, strategy, and resources as well as the political, social, and cultural impact of conflict. The book takes issue with established interpretations, not least those that emphasize technology, and challenges the view that European military and naval forces were dominant throughout the period. European mastery at sea did not always translate into equivalent success on land, says Black, and many non-European military systems―the Ottomans in their expansionist years, Babur and the Mughals in sixteenth-century India, and the Manchu in China in the following century, for example―were formidable in their own right. The author contends that in the nineteenth century, the focal period of Europe’s military revolution, the international military balance shifted decisively. Black shows how military developments, combined with political, economic, and ideological shifts, influenced the nature and success of European imperialism. Linking debates on early modern history with those of more recent centuries, he offers a fundamental reexamination of the role of war in the progress of nations.
Author
Professor Jeremy Black MBE is an English historian and a Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of over 100 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". Black graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge with a starred first, and then undertook postgraduate work at St John's and Merton Colleges, Oxford. He taught at Durham University for 16 years from 1980 to 1996, firstly as a lecturer and then as a Professor. In 1996 he moved to Exeter University where he took up the post of Professor of History. He has lectured extensively in Australasia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the U.S.. He was editor of Archives, the journal of the British Records Association, from 1989 to 2005. He has served on the Council of the British Records Association (1989–2005); the Council of the Royal Historical Society (1993–1996 and 1997–2000); and the Council of the List and Index Society (from 1997). He has sat on the editorial boards of History Today, International History Review, Journal of Military History, Media History and the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (now the RUSI Journal). He is an advisory fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center at the University of North Texas. He was awarded an MBE in 2000 for services to stamp design, as advisor to the Royal Mail from 1997.
