War And The World:
Military Power and the
Fate of Continents

Old Duffer's Book Corner

Reviewed by Charles Vasey

Jeremy Black for Yale

This is a very wide-ranging review of warfare and the wider world. Starting with Gibbon's analysis of nations and societies and their tendency towards different ends Black demonstrates just how often these trends can be less obvious while happening. The contrast of technological western warriors versus nomad hordes or wild savages is shown to be less pronounced than we might expect.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are shown to be still very much the era of the nomad hordes. Technology was state building were still not allowing the west to do much, and disease and logistics completed the inefficiencies. The major exception is South and Central America where the formidable spirit on the Conquistadors won through. But they did so with the aid of the locals. Portuguese seapower (the one element that really favoured the West) was still heavily limited. Spanish apart the Mughals and Turks would have been the more obvious bets.

The Seventeenth century with the growth of fleets still saw the West just a littoral power. The expansion of Russia, China and the fleets of other powers still meant that though the potential might be there it was not yet applied (though Black does not stress the way the west poured a lot of energy into internecine strife).

Only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries does the balance begin to tilt, and everywhere there are exceptions.

Even if this book was not one with an interesting and well discussed then it would still be a bargain. In order to illustrate the march of events Black attempts to track with brief mentions the major warfare of all the subject areas. So that you can a good overview of (say) Persia, a nation that probably saved the Rhine from being the Military Frontier against the Turk (Croats of the Vosges anyone?). The range of military events should prevent many of us running out of topics to game. A tonic against Eurocentrism that never fails to respect just what Europe did achieve.

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© Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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