Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things: The New Military History of Europe Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494-1789 by Andr

Corvisier; War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620 by John R. Hale; War and Society in Europe, 1618-1789 by Matthew Anderson; War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870 by Geoffrey Best; War and Society in Europe, 1870-1970 by Brian Bond; European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960 by Victor G. Kiernan Review by: Torbjrn L. Knutsen Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), pp. 87-98 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/424148 . Accessed: 08/05/2012 04:56
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ISSN 0022-3433 Journal of Peace Research, vol. 24, no. 1, 1987

Review Essay

Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things: The New Military History of Europe*

TORBJORN L. KNUTSEN International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, and Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University
Military history has tended to emphasize politics, chronology, and great men. The narrative often represents attempts to analyze rulers and generals in order to understand the reasons behind their decisions. This traditional approach all too often descends to the level of 'a chronicle of one damn battle after another'. In recent years a 'New Military History' has emerged that eschews narration of events and is primarily interested in the social and institutional context of warfare. Its attention is not focused on battles, tactics, and weapons systems, but on social structures, military attitudes, relationships between officers and the rank-and-file, and on the interrelations between military and civil society. This essay adumbrates the background for this new historiography, reviews some recent volumes which seek to reinvestigate the military history of Europe and sketchily relates these books to the study of the modern world system.

1. The challenge to military history Guided by Leopold von Ranke's dictum to reconstruct the past 'as it really happened', traditional historians have been much concerned with protocolled processes of decisionmaking, notably with the well-chronicled activities of monarchs, generals and politicians. Their understanding of Ranke's insistence on using only 'the purest and most immediate of documents' made them focus on state activities in general and on wars in particular (Iggers 1962). At the turn of the century, many scholars opposed the predominance of the Rankean method with its bias toward battles, kings and state affairs. Franqois Simiand wrote with some contempt of its emphasis on individual events strung along a chronological thread. He criticized what he called the
* A review of Andre Corvisier: Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494-1789. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979, ix-209 pp. John R. Hale: War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620. London: Fontana, 1985, 285 pp. Matthew Anderson: War and Society in Europe, 1618-1789. London: Fontana, forthcoming. Geoffrey Best: War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870. London: Fontana, 1982, 336pp. Brian Bond: War and Society in Europe, 1870-1970. London: Fontana, 1984, 256 pp. Victor G. Kiernan: European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 18151960. London: Fontana, 1982, 285 pp. All the Fontana volumes are available in paperbacks.

'three idols of the tribe' of historians - the idols of the individual, of politics, and of chronology - suggesting that historians ought to apply more comparative methods and take more interest in long-term, secular trends.' Historians who took Simiand's criticism seriously changed their focus from means of destruction to means of production in their analysis of European History. They concerned themselves less with biography and decisionmaking and more with interaction between economic classes, political power and social structures; less with single events and more with long-term trends. The 'New History' and the relativist revolts against traditional concerns stimulated a quest for new historical sources and new methods of investigation. Military historians were particularly conservative in both regards. When the early decades of this century saw a prolific growth of historical approaches, military historians stuck to their Rankean guns. The reasons for this conservatism may lie partly in the attitudes of its authors and partly in the sources they use. Traditional military historians must believe that battles decide things; that battles 'sway the fortunes of mankind' and 'have helped to make us what we are'. Exactly what battles decide, and how they shape man's fate, are questions

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that the individualhistorian is left free to which decidefor himself. 'It is a dispensation whole squads of modern militaryhistorians have seized on to justify an endless, repetitive examination of battles which by no stretch of the imagination can be said to have done anythingbut to make the world
worse.. ..' They must also believe that battles are formative experiences in the lives of individual men; that war is a game of ultimate stakes, in whichvictoriesinvite celebrations and defeats demand explanations.Military historyis often writtenby practitioners by winnersas well as losers:by retiredsoldiers, former governmentofficials and pensioned politicians.These authorsare less concerned with debates on methods and sources than with telling a story 'wie es eigentlich gewesen'. Manyof them are intimatelyfamiliar with the protocolledprocessesof decisionmaking behind the events; they may have readyaccess to the type of sourcesvon Ranke recommended;and they may find a vocation in 'setting the record straight'. Recently, several academic historians have returnedto militaryhistory.They have been amazed by the richness of military archivesand by the new light they shed not only on militaryhistory in a narrowsense but on society as a whole. 2. The new military history (Keegan 1983, p. 60).

personnel to write his Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494-1789.

The single most influential application of these 'new' sources of military history is undoubtedly that of Andr6 Corvisier. He reliedon massiveofficialregistersof military Violence was omnipresent in ancien regime society, writes Corvisier. Civil and militaryfunctions overlapped considerably and military values were largely accepted andemulatedby membersof societyat large. By the eighteenthcentury, the traditionally
close civil-military relations were changing in western parts of Europe. Military functions grew more specialized and were differentiated from civil society. Also, civil society grew weary of military values. The aristocracy still dominated the European offi-

cers' corps, although their impact was dwindling- in France only one nobleman in four served in the armed forces, and usuallyonly very brieflyat that. Whereas the states in Western Europe developed a civilianemphasis,the opposite evolution took place in Eastern Europe. Here civil society was increasinglymilitarized. In Prussiaand Russia active military servicebecamea prerequisiteof social presfor tige and madea militarycareerattractive the aristocracy. a result, the militaryand As civilian elites increasinglyoverlapped.This contrast between Eastern and Western Europe, roughlydividedby the Elbe, blazes throughCorvisier'saccount. The social contrast between the officers' corps and the rank-and-file soldiers is anotherleitmotifin the book. Corvisiersets out to explore how the military forces of early modern Europe constituted a social in macro-system their own right. He examines the social composition of European armies;he discussesthe social originsof the various strata of the militaryhierarchy;he investigates the various forms of military recruitment feudallevy, conscription, volserviceuntaryenlistment,and mercenary and relatesthem to the variousstrataof civil society. Corvisier'sanalysis reveals that the new militaryhistory, too, has its share of tribal idols. His emphasison the longue durde and his sensitivity towards social stratification mean that individualdecisionmakers,military campaignsand single battles get short shrift. His attempt to define the extent to which the armiesof differentstates formed a specific social macro-systemleaves little room for traditionalnarration. The English-speakinq world, too, has its historians. An increasing numnew military ber of English and Americanscholarshave in recent years insisted on the importance of studyingwar and militaryaffairsin their social context. Militaryforces exist in peace time as well as in war. They interact with
civilian institutions in a multitude of ways and should be studied as part of the civil world they purport to serve. Many recent scholarly journals have taken up this challenge. Armed Forces and Society and War

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and social factors. Developed because of point. In another reflection of this rising his mobility, endowed with large economic interest,Fontanahasissueda seriesof paper- means and vast social prestige, he had for backs, the Fontana History of European War centuriesenjoyeda virtualmonopolyof miliand Society, edited by Geoffrey Best. He taryactivity.But withthe adventof firearms, writes in the preface to the series that 'war the costs of combatwere twistedout of recandsociety studies'beganlargelyin reaction ognizable proportions: Guns enabled a to traditionalmilitaryhistory: simple footsoldier with little training to launch a small projectile from a great disSometimes sinking to uniforms, badges and buttons, tance against a mounted knight, who was it rarely rose above campaigns and battles; it viewed trainedand equippedat staggeringcost, and them from the professional soldier's angle; it tended kill him. to extract the fighting side of war from its total historical context; and it usually meant a view of an The new weaponssystemsspelled the end army, navy, or air force from within, little concerned to the primarily feudal institution of the about the nature of their connections with the society noble man-at-arms. They broughtabout the on whose behalf war was, nominally, being fought. Much might be learned from such books about the adventof the footsoldier,puta new emphasis way an army did the job set for it and, especially on the infantryand caused a rapid increase from between the lines, about the way in which in the size of Europeanarmies. The advent soldiers viewed themselves; little, however, about of new militarytechnology also lent a new how soldiers got to be like that, and nothing at all professionalism to soldiering and helped about how armed forces fitted into, emerged from, divisionbetweenmilitaryand and perhaps in their turn made impressions upon drawa sharper the societies to which they belonged (Best 1982, p. civiliansociety. 7). The Italian Wars (1494-1525) are commonly viewed as the first 'modern' war 2.1 Hale on Renaissance wars 1450-1620 because the participantarmies consisted of John R. Hale's War and Society in Ren- the now traditional three branches aissance Europe, 1450-1620, shows from its cavalry,artillery, andinfantry deployedin firstpages how war was omnipresentin the mutually supportingtactical combinations. High Middle Ages - a matter of 'violent During these wars, the cavalrycomponent housekeeping'in a society which took viol- in every army was reduced, whereas the ence for granted. 'Peace', he writes, is a infantrycomponentgrew more numerous. In spite of the rapid growth of infantry relativelymodern phenomenon;duringthe Middle Ages, 'peace, overall peace, was a during the early part of the Renaissance, myth ... There was probably no single year armies remained relatively small by later throughoutthe period in which there was standards. When Charles VIII sought to neitherwarnor occurrences that looked and assemble a fightingforce of 20,000 men in felt remarkably like it.' 1491 for a campaign against Brittany, this What Braudel refers to as the 'long six- was considered quite a large army. The teenth century' contained a series of far- majorreasonsfor this smallnesswere, first, reachingmilitarydevelopments.Among the the growing expenses associated with the most importantones was the introduction of new warfareand, secondly, the difficultyin firearms - artillery as well as portable getting men to serve. Soldiers' pay was guns- on a large scale. These changedthe usuallylower than that of unskilledlaborers conditionsandformations whichaffectedthe and tended to decline duringthe prolonged morale and the combat behaviorof troops; inflationof the sixteenthcentury.Those who they altered the equipment that soldiers served, did so for a varietyof reasons.A few wore and carried;they affected the nature were driven by honor, some wanted to get of combatants' wounds,for they brokebones away from poverty and drudgeryat home, and led to the loss of limbsby gangrene;and still some were pressed to serve while others
and Society Newsletter are only two cases in they increased the costs of war. During the Middle Ages, the superiority of the noble knight hinged on both technical fled from the law. But most of them served in the hope of becoming rich through sack and plunder.

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Morecivilianswoulddie thansoldiersduring the sacking and looting of towns, for combat accounted for only a small portion of the fatalities. Duringthe siege of a town, women, childrenand other 'uselessmouths' would be driven out by the defenders. The besiegerswould drive them back again, and in the end most of them would die from hungerand disease under the walls of their owntown. In the countryside, too, the means of warmade life uncertainand miserablefor whole populations. Where soldiers passed through, local populationswere forced not only to house and feed them, but often to provide the digging, trenching and carting servicesas well. On the top of this came the diseases spread by wounded men. In 1627 a French army of 6,000, marching across Europefrom La Rochelle to northernItaly, spread diseases which killed over a million civiliansaccordingto later estimates. The Renaissance shows some soldiers being transformed from rags to riches throughthe looting of wealthytowns- the sackingof Rome in 1527 and of Antwerpin 1576are two outstandingcases in point. For the large majority of men, however, this turned out to be a vain hope. The great fortuneswere made not by soldiers, but by those who organized the expeditions, supplied the armiesand financedthe wars. During the latter part of the sixteenth century, wars were carriedon by large international contractorson a commercialbasis. volume Hale'sbook is a good introductory
to the Fontana History of War and European

century, his book is somewhatweakend by its restricted focus. It emphasizescontinental Europe and omits Europe north and east of Germany. Admittedly, the Italian and the Iberianpeninsulasdominatedthe earlyRenaissanceworld. But as the sixteenthcentury gave way to the seventeenth, as the Mediterraneanworld experiencedeconomic and demographic stagnation, as continental Europe was ravaged by the Thirty Years' War, the centre of Europe moved northto westwards the areasbordering English the Channel.This movementis linkedto a series of naval developmentsand cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by Hale's book, which emphasizesthe evolution of modern land-forces.In naval warfare,too, artillery brought about important changes in force structures.Mountedon ships, the new guns enabled sea-faringnationsto launcha rapid north-Europeanexpansion along Mediterranean, African, Asian and American coasts. This inauguratedan age of colonial expansion which had far-reachingconsequencesfor the socio-economicstructureof all of Europe- indeed, for the whole world. 2.2. Andersonon the ancien-rigime period The second volume of the Fontana series, MatthewAnderson'sWarand Society,16181789, is still unpublished. However, the series' editor has kindly made available a synopsisof the argument.It is organizedinto four broad sections tailored to the task of covering the turbulent era between the Thirty Years' War and the French Revolution. The firstsectionsurveysthe militarysituation in Europe in 1618 and follows up many of the long-term tendencies already identified by Hale: The growthof armysizes, the increasingimportance of mercenaries and professionalsand the expandingrole of the military entrepreneurs - a role which reachedits climaxby the 1630s.In addition, Anderson introduces some of the points whichHale left out: First, that professional, highly trained forces developed primarily west of the Elbe. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, the traditional,partlyfeudal force structurespersisted. Second, Anderson explainshow the Mediterranean World

Society. Its emphasis is very much on the 'society'of the title - the society of soldiers no less thanthe socio-economicimplications of soldieringfor the various civil strata of European countries. But it is not an easy introduction.Hale asks many questionswhy there were wars, why people fought (or soughtto avoidcombat),whatsort of people they were, how they were organized, equipped and paid, what civilians thought
about them and what they thought about civilians - but his answers are often multifaceted and tend to lose their clarity in a kaleidoscopic sparkle of historical detail. Although Hale has explained well the chief military dynamics of the long sixteenth

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wason the waneandhow the areasbordering the English Channel were emerging as the dynamic core of Europe in demographic, economic as well as in militaryterms. The second section of Anderson'smanuscript emphasizesthe decline of the Mediterraneanworld and the fall of the military entrepreneur. It discusses how continued militaryprofesionalizationboosted government control over land forces. This drew a sharper distinction between soldiers and civilians - although autonomous bodies retained a significantrole in naval and colonial warfarewith the advent of the chartered companies. The third section focuses on the emergence of Sweden,FranceandRussiaandtakes the evolution up to about the middle of the eighteenth century. The military forces of these emerging nations were characterized by greater state control, increased professionalism,emergenceof standingarmies, increasing uniformity in military organization and greater destructiveness of weapons systems. By the 1750snavies, too, grew increasinglyprofessionalizedand centheir relianceon trallydirected,diminishing hired merchantships. Withstate-directed,standingarmiescame the need for permanentcampsand barracks, for controlled institutions of supplies and for reliable systems of recruitment. More organizations led to coordinating waroffices, higher but more constant defense and military expenditures to institutionalized budgets. Rising costs were commonly coveredby taxationandled to improvements in fiscalsystems. In short, the centralization of military forces greatly stimulated the growthof the modernstate structures. Increased centralization of politics, reflectedin the advent of the absoluteking, affectedthe relationsbetween states. As the nation states of Europe grew more formaaccepted lized, they alsobecameincreasingly as the only organismsentitled to act on the level. This developmentacceninternational tuated the concept of state sovereigntyand helped develop notions about laws of war and rules for internationalbehavior. The fourth section of the synopsis emphasizes those evolutionary character-

istics which point towardsthe French Revolutionandthe Napoleonicera. UnderLouis XIV the French army was expanded and streamlinedinto the most efficient military force in Europe. The French Court, led by the absolute monarch who was also the supreme military commander, became an ideal which other monarchs sought to emulate. The aristocracy temporarily increasedits influencein the officers'corps in all Europeancountries. This produceda wideninggulf between officers and soldiers that characterized the armed forces of Europe's ancien r6gimes. On the internationallevel, the advent of the nation-stateandthe tendencyto see military forces as a complement to economic power created the possibilityfor something like worldwars. This was firstevidentin the wars of Louis XIV (1672-1715) and later in the Seven Years' War (1756-63). By the middleof the eighteenthcenturyit was clear that any major war in Europe implied conflict overseas. The settlement of any European warwouldfrom now on take the situation outside Europe into serious account. The periodbetweenthe ThirtyYears'War and the FrenchRevolutionis a complexera and Anderson seeks to systematizea great deal of the turbulenceit contains. England problem. It does not representsa particular conform neatly to the larger evolutionary trendsof the Continent- its political centralizationis limited and its force structures are exceptionallyweak, yet it develops into a dominantpower in Europe after the Wars of Louis XIV. The seeds of industrialism were sown in Englandduringthe eighteenth century, and there is a hot debate among historiansabout whether the great wars of the 1760shelped or hinderedthe Industrial Revolution. 2.3 Best on revolutionary Europe A plethora of recent books discusses the importantchanges in warfare producedby the French Revolution and by the Napoleonic Wars. Geoffrey Best's War and Europe,1770-1870, Societyin Revolutionary does not add much to this existing body of literature.What neverthelessmakes Best's book differentis the way it tells the familiar

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story. Best replaces the traditional focus on battles and campaigns with a broader emphasis on the socio-economic, psychological and ideological dimensions of warfare. This new broadness of the discussion is foreshadowed in the very first pages of the book, where Best defines war as containing a horizontal as well as a vertical dimension: War is 'the organized and controlled use of armed force by one state against another', but it is also 'the use of the armed force of the state against the rebel and the law-breaker'. The explicit inclusion of a vertical dimension in the analysis forces us to consider issues of social stratification as well as factors of race, religion and geographical differentiation. It makes us ask questions like 'Whose work is the armed force doing?' 'To what social group or class's idea is it answering?' This book exemplifies well the questions which occupy the 'new military historians'. Part I of the book, 'Rumblings of the Revolution', is a compact 45-page essay on the Old Regimes of Europe. It discusses the armed forces of the major European countries in terms of defense expenditures, methods of recruitment, the social origins of soldiers and their integration into civil society. Its systematic attention to social Anderson's stratification complements account, and allows Best to present a set of similarities and differences in the military organization of Europe's ancien regimes. Part II, 'The French and Rest', discusses the military revolution of the French Republic and the Empire: After the Battle of Valmy (1792), when revolutionary France found itself alone and at war with the monarchies of Europe, its revolutionary ideals permeated the armed forces. The two main branches of the old army were reorganized into a single force and the levie en masse was instituted. The entire nation was with one blow mobilized for war; a new model army of citizens was forged, over one million strong, in which talent was quickly spotted and richly rewarded. In 1793/94 a new style of warfare brought the revolutionary armies a string of victories and brought the Republic into new depths of militarization: 'France became more and more of a military State through the later nineties; to such an extent

that its turning into a military dictatorship marked the end of a logical road', writes Best. In order to contain the French expansion, the monarchies of Europe were forced to emulate Napoleon's military organization and institutions. Generals of the eighteenth century had fought their largest battles with armies of 50,000 or 60,000 men. Napoleon commanded about 50,000 men at Marengo (1800); at Ulm and Jena (1806) he commanded nearly 200,000 men; the forces assembled for the invasion of Russia (1812) approached 600,000. After a series of military reforms had washed across Austria, Prussia, Russia and England, Napoleon met harder and tougher resistance: Austria assembled some 85,000 men for the Ulm campaign; Prussia mustered nearly 150,000 for the fields of Jena. In 1815, Austria, Russia, Prussia and England agreed to produce nearly 600,000 men to march by converging routes on Paris. Part III of the book, 'After Napoleon', discusses how this rapid growth in military force affected the armed services of European nations. Best argues that the French innovations inaugurated a new intensity in warfare by calling people into armed partnership with government. The Restoration, although it established some distance between the people and the armies that supported the monarchic regimes, never completely eradicated the ideal of popular participation in armed conflict. The ideal emerged half a century later and, bureaucratically and technologically perfected by Prussia in the 1860s, was to haunt Europe and the world ever since. This is an excellent account of the decisive impact of the generation of European warfare and the military changes unleashed by the French Revolution. It is highly critical of traditional military history - maybe too much so: In contrast to Hale and Anderson, Best has curiously little to say about technological and demographic changes. He touches the technical and tactical improvements which changed the face of European battle, but he touches them lightly. He is more concerned with the sociological and psychological implications of armed force.

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One of the most importantlegacies of the tool - 'an instrumentfor developingsocial Napoleonic Wars, Best characteristically cohesionandpoliticaldocilityin the masses'. argues, was 'its popularization of pro- Europe's larger standing armies, Bond fessional militaryactivity for its own sake, remarks,both come to reflect the internaits savoringof war as such'. But there are tional tensionsof the day and to make their other importantlegacies as well - the new solution more difficult. The thirdchapterexaminesthe diplomatic scope of warfare,the new weaponssystems, the new tactics and strategies and the new and military arrangements which transscale of destructionmade possible by new formed the Balkan squabble to an all-out ways of exploitingtechnologicaland demo- Europeanwarandexplainswhy a protracted graphicresources - which he could have war of attrition occurred despite the prewrittenmore about. dictionsof virtuallyall experts. Most illuminating is the discussionof how a popular, 2.4 Bond on the period of the WorldWars militaristicmentalitydeveloped in Western Brian Bond's War and Society in Europe, Europeat the eve of WorldWarI. This may 1870-1970opens with an expositionof Ger- be the best chapterin the book, convincingly many's unificationin the 1860s and closes taking issue with some popular misconwith a discussion of Germany's division ceptionswhileretaininga clearfocuson civilnearlya hundredyears later. This 'German militaryrelations. century' covers a complicated period in Unfortunately,duringthe remainingfour Europeanmilitary history.But the highcom- chapters,the 'society' of the title driftsinto and the traditional'idols of plexityof the subjectmattercannot entirely the background excuse the fact that this is a disappointing the tribe'take controlof the discussion.The concludingvolume to the Fontanaseries. analysislacksthat conceptionof socialstratiThe book opens very well. The two first fication which is so importantin the other chaptersdemonstrateconvincinglyhow the volumesof the Fontanaseries.The questions creation of the German empire 'drastically which characterize the new military hisalteredthe powerstructureof the European tory - Which social strata did the soldiers states, and also provided the first dreadful and the officerscome from?How were they foretaste of the nature of modern "total" recruited? Whydid some men choose a miliwarfare between industrialized nations tary career? Why did others seek to avoid capableof raisinghuge conscriptarmiesand battle? - are addressed,but not discussed maintaining them in the field'. Prussia's in depth. The questionswhich were so cenquick victories over Austria at K6niggritz tralin Best's volume- Whoseworkwas the (1866) and over Franceat Sedan (1871) sur- armedforce doing?To what social groupor prisedmilitaryobserversof the day. Search- class's idea was it answering?- are not new-woninvin- asked at all. The book loses sight of the ingfor the causesof Prussia's centralissues of the new militaryhistoryat cibility, they noted the new weapons especially the Krupp steel breech-loading, the very point where it could have shed for some historical light on contemporary rifledcannons- and the use of railroads first-linetroops. But most of all affairs. transporting Neither does this volume concern itself they emphasizedPrussia'ssuperiormilitary organization;particularlythe use of short- with the longue duree of Europeanhistory. serviceconscriptsand trainedreservesfrom This absence is disappointingfor readers a complete cross-sectionof the population, who expect the concluding volume of the the divisionof the armyinto geographically Fontanaseries to relate some of the secular localized corps and the new general staff trends mentioned by Hale, Anderson, and issues. For example, Best to contemporary system. By the 1880s, other nations were emu- one of the themes which blazes throughthe
lating Prussia. In some of them conscription transcended its role as a vital component of national security; it became a propaganda new military history of Europe is the steadily widening social, economic and military differences between eastern and western

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Europe. What impacthas this wideninggap had on European history since 1850? Was the gap bridgedor accentuatedby the unificationof Germany?Is the present division of Europe a logical outcome of a centurylong process?This type of question is strikingly absentin the concludingvolume of the Fontanaseries.
2.5 Kiernan on colonial wars Victor G. Kiernan's European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960 is a natural

companionvolume to the Fontanaseries. It is a topical examinationof Belgian, British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanishimperialistactivity in every corner of the world. It is organized mainly in a chronologicalmanner;most sections are on in campaigns varioustheatersbut some treat weapons systems and ideologies associated with overseas conquest. Kiernanexpressesconcernfor the effects that colonial conquest had on European society: 'If conquestwas doing somethingto civilize the outer world', he writes, 'it was also doing somethingto barbarizeEurope'. The imperial frontiers attracted certain elements of Europe'supper classes and fortified their tendencies towardauthoritarianism and militarism,claims Kiernan. These effects of imperialismupon Europe varied widely with the political traditionsof individual countries, he continues: Colonial effects were noticeable in Ireland, but their effects on English politics and society were generallylimited due to Whitehall'scontrol of its proconsuls.In Spainand France,however, colonial soldiers exercized a malign influence. Algeria, for example, had 'an importantbearing on the rise of Bonaparof tism, thatprecursor fascism',in the 1850s, and was a cause behind the fall of the 4th French Republic a century later. Kiernan presents a series of connections between European society and colonial wars still indeed,he suggeststhatpastimperialism
casts shadows over the European present and is likely to do so far into the future as well. But for the most part, his discussions of the socio-political effects of colonialism are cautious and tentative. The book would have constituted a superior companion vol-

ume to the Fontanaserieshadthis issuebeen more systematically pursued. Kiernan's focus is not so much on the Europeancontextas on the societiesbrought into conflictwithEurope.The book does not emphasize structuredtheorizing about the causes and the nature of colonial conquest; it rather offers a pointillist picture of the violence and crueltythat Europeansbrought to other continents. On the face of it, the book offers a narrativeof war, epidemics, genocide, slavery, and other types of violence and suffering.But on a deeper level, it discusses the racism revealed in this interethnic violence, and the domination it broughtto large parts of the globe. On this second level Kiernanasks: Why were small Europeanforces far from home so successful against numericallysuperior, native armies?Partof the answeris that the Europeans had superior weapons systems. But thistechnicaladvantage,Kiernan insists, was of major significanceonly late in the period. Europe's main advantage, lay in organization,morale, and 61an,he argues. Colonial victories were brought about through clever applicationof minimumof force with maximumof precision.Although the colonial forces may have been small by the contemporary Europeanstandards, conto sequences were often catastrophic native societies. Kiernansuppliesa long list of campaignsof conquestand repressionand notes repeatedly the vast disproportionin casualties between the combatants.This imbalance got worse when the colonialiststook to bullets, usingpicricacid, melinite, dum-dum lyddite shells and machine-guns. Kiernan'ssympathiesare passionatelyon the side of the native populations. But he also sympathizes withthe Europeansoldiers, basing his accountson clever use of diaries and autobiographies.The soldiers' ranks were thinned by unknown diseases from which alcohol often offered the only relief. 'Sordid conditions, and boredom, made drinkingthe only escape, apartfrom desertion, far less easy overseas than in Britain, or the more drastic one of suicide, which was far from rare'. Without this solace, concludes Kiernan, 'the empire could not have been won'.

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This detailed summarystudy is not easily withthe subaccessibleto readersunfamiliar ject matter, but it is a rewarding experience for those willing to do some background reading.It addressesissues that are left out by Bond's volume, but it also leaves some stones unturned. For example, were the white conquerorsthe only villainsin the history of colonialism?Were the overseasconquestsa necessaryor an accidentalaspectof Europeanwars and societies? 3. Consequences worldsystemsanalysis for The FontanaHistoryof Warand European Society offers more than a new view of Europe'smilitaryhistory, it suggests a new vantage point for analyzing the modern world system. It implies that interstate dynamics,expressedin militarycompetition between territorial nation-states, have contributedmore to the emergenceand the development of the modern world system thananalystshave hithertoassumed.Instead of only focusingon the means of production to explain the advent of the modernworld, we ought to considerthe impactof meansof destructionas well. For several decades, social scientistshave tended to discussthe originsof the modern worldin economicterms. The debate on the transitionfrom feudalismto capitalism,for example,hasbeen dominatedby two groups: those who find the decline of feudalismand origins of capitalismin the growth of longdistance trade (Sweezy 1950; Wallerstein 1974), and those who find the key to the transition in the evolution of new means of production(Dobb 1947; Brenner 1977). Authors who have focused on political and militarydynamicshave hardly been represented in the debate at all. Corvisier,Hale, Anderson- and to a lesser extent Best and Kiernan - redress this imbalance. Hale's examis volumein particular an outstanding of the rich insightsthat the new military ple historycanbringto bearuponthe discussion. Hale implicitlyremindsus that feudalism was just as much a mode of protectionas a mode of production. He explains that the of socialhierarchies fifteenthcenturyEurope more command reflectedrelationsof military than they reflected relations of production.

He reiteratesthat in the long sixteenthcenturywars'arisefromthe relationship,at any given moment and dependingon the mood auth(andresources)of the decision-making ority, between greed, fear, and altruism'. Explaining this claim, he stresses a point which economy-centered authors tend to underestimate: that 'greed'must not be viz. understood in economic but in territorial terms.For in the fifteenthand sixteenthcenturies, ownershipof land still had less to do with the modern notion of privateproperty than with military capabilities, glory and prestige. Duringthe long sixteenthcentury, 'Political Europe was like an estate map' and 'war was a socially acceptableform of propertyacquisition'.Land and the glory it brought with it, 'was a far more potent motive for war than any anticipatedeconomic profit' (Hale 1985, pp. 22f). With this caveat in mind, the new militaryhistorynot only helps explain the breakdownof feudal Europe.It also shedsnew lighton the advent of the modernEuropeanworldsystemcharacterized by territorialnation states which were led by absolutemonarchsaidedby representative national assemblies, and which increasingly operatedon capitalistprinciples of productionand distribution. First,the medievalcity-statewas rendered obsolete as a social formation by the socalled gunpowder revolution. The largescale use of firearmsduringthe ItalianWars rendered the high, thin walls of medieval fortificationsindefensible. Iron balls from the new, large siege guns brought them down.Thisblowto the ancientinsticrashing tution of the city-state was the first step towards a modern internationalsystem in is nation-state the domiwhichthe territorial nant social formation(Parker1980, p. 201; McNeill 1982, pp. 89f). Second,both Hale andAndersonmention lost that noble men-at-arms their traditional social role due to the new weaponssystems. Theysuggestthat footsoldiersequippedwith reversed the costs of firearmsdramatically sincethe armiessuddenly war.Furthermore, grewin size, andsincethe new weaponswere suppliedin rapidlyincreasingnumbers,the costs of equippinga Renaissancearmygrew could no longer so high that local aristocrats

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afford to raise large armies of professional soldiers. Only the king could afford the expenses of costly, modern warfare. 'The man who had at his disposalthe taxes of an entirecountrywas in a positionto hire more warriorsthan any other'.3 Third, the increasing cost of warfare in late medievalEurope not only strengthened to Europeanmonarchies,it also contributed their peculiar absolutistnature: The kings' need to cover soaringmilitaryexpenditures vastly stimulated the evolution of more efficient structuresand routines of tax collection. 'Thisconceptionallowsus to reconstruct the most profound causes of social change', arguesJoseph A. Schumpeter,for 'taxationis not only a superficialphenomenon' it is the very essence of the modern territorialstate. Fiscal institutionsnot only in participated the creationof the state, they also gave it a particularform. 'The fiscal apparatuswas the institutionwhich pulled the other institutionsin its wake' (Schumpeter 1976,p. 341). The two most important of these other institutionswere the modern national assemblies and the capitalistpractices of productionand distribution. Fourth, the soaringmilitaryexpenditures and the growth of new and efficient fiscal institutions alienated important domestic groups, notably the nobility whose position was rapidly eroding. In order to tax the wealthyestates, the monarchsfound it wise in to includethem as participants mattersof national expendituresso as to more easily obtaintheirconsent. It is no coincidencethat the characteristic representativeinstitutions of late medieval Europe - Cortes, Reichstags, Estates-Generaland Parliamentsappearedat about the same time in a variety of countries. It is noteworthy that the emergence of representativeinstitutionswas more prevalent in western than in eastern Europe. In the west, socio-economicchangesweakened the position of the nobility in the long run;

tunities for social mobility for able men of low birth. In the east, reforms tended to worsen the position of the peasantryand to extend and consolidate serfdom. Such differences in social organization,emphasized by Corvisierand Anderson, exacerbateda widening socio-economic and political gap between western and eastern Europe. Finally, the development of new fiscal structures routinesdid more thanstimuand late the growth of representative, participatory, political institutions in western Europe. According to Schumpeter,it also 'caused profound economic modifications andinduceda family-based, privatepolitical economy' (Schumpeter1976, p. 341). The new fiscalinstitutions,when combinedwith capital accumulationin the hands of successful merchants and bankers like Witshare tingtonandCoeur,madean increasing of the growingnational wealth availableto the centralpowerof the state. Thisfurnished the monarch with an added power base which- and this was the best of all - was independentof the feudal aristocracy.This base broadened with the increasing comof mercialization economic life. During the long sixteenth century, many emerging nation states increasinglyconstituted militarily protected territories(Herz 1959, pp. 41ff) withinwhichearlycapitalaccumulation was encouragedto take place with the blessings of the Crown(Dorn 1963,pp. lff; Wolf 1982, p. 109). Economic historians have long debated whether war in early modern Europe retardedor stimulatedeconomicgrowthand the development of capitalism. The five points above add up to a view whichis strikingly at odds with the more accepted claim crucialresources necthatwarfaresquanders essary to economic development. Neither Hale nor Anderson are likely to be much by impressed this debate. Hale, for example, appearsto think that this whole discussion is based on a faulty premise: Militaryand in the east the position of the nobles was economic aspects of social life cannot be strengthened. In the west, new systems of separatedas easily as oil and water. Modern weapons are products of econconscription increasingly tended to absorb vagrants, criminals, and the unemployed, omicprocesses;economicresources,monies not only easing the population pressure in and men, are the sinews of war. Duringthe poorer areas, but also offering some oppor- sixteenthcentury,Hale andAndersonagree,

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wars were carriedon by internationalcontractorson a commercialbasis. Armieswere raised, maintainedand led into increasingly battleby a classof entrepreneurs whose only bond of loyalty to their employer was the of and assurance cashpayment,punctually in and full. Warfare its needs wereso intimately interwovenin the economicand socialfabric of RenaissanceEurope that they cannot be separated. War cannot be analytically removed from society at large for the purpose of decidingwhat would have happened without it. NOTES
1. Simiand's criticism was taken seriously by many European and American historians at the turn of the century (Burke 1980, pp. 23ff). Among them were two professors at the University of Strasbourg, Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. They launched a movement for a 'new kind of history' and founded a journal to promote it: Annales d'histoire economie et sociale. This journal (later renamed Annales ESC) published some of the most decisive arguments for the New History, based upon a confluence of History and the Social Sciences. Febvre was particularly interested in social psychology and human geography; Bloch was preoccupied with the Sociology of Emile Durkheim, especially by his exposition of the comparative method. After World War II the Annales-school's notion of a 'total history' based on historical comparisons was represented by Fernand Braudel. 2. Michael Roberts has long been occupied with issues similar to those of Corvisier; already his inaugural lecture, 'The Military Revolution, 1560-1660' (1967) drew attention to the transformation of wartare in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Michael Howard's book War in European History (1977) is an inexpendable short account. The important overview by Richard A. Preston and Sydney F. Wise (1962) fall partly into the tradition of new military history. William H. McNeill's The Pursuit of Power (1982) is a valuable attempt to chart the relationships between armed forces and economic life from the ancient societies to our own times. Attention must also be drawn to John Keegan's Face of Battle. The first chapter of this remarkable book on the battlefield experience of individual soldiers has supplied the title to this review essay. Keegan, in turn, has borrowed the line from William Wordsworth's poem, The Solitary Reaper: Will no one tell me what he sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And Battles long ago. 3. Fernand Braudel writes that at the end of the fifteenth century 'it was becoming clear that only the rival of the city-state, the territorial state, rich in

land and manpower, would in the future be able to meet the expense of modern warfare; it could maintain paid armies and afford costly artillery; it was soon to indulge in the added extravagance of full-scale naval wars. Examples of the new pattern emerging at the end of the fifteenth century are Aragon under John II, Louis XI's expansion beyond the Pyrenees; Turkey under Muhammad II, the conqueror of Constantinople; later France under Charles VIII with his Italian ambitions and Spain in the age of the Catholic Kings. Without exception, these states all had their beginnings far inland, many miles from the Mediterranean coast, usually in poor regions where there were fewer cities to pose obstacles' (Braudel 1972, p. 657). 4. Richard A. Preston and Sydney F. Wise write: 'At approximately the same time the characteristic representative institutions of late medieval Europe appeared: The Spanish Cortes and the German Reichstag in the late thirteenth century, the Estates-General of France in 1302, and the "Model Parliament" of Edward I in 1295. In all these assemblies the burgesses of the towns and the prosperous gentry of the countryside were represented, and it is interesting to note the close connection, particularly in England, between the monetary needs of the king in time of war and the growth in power of these middle-class institutions' (Preston & Wise 1962, pp. 83f). REFERENCES Anderson, Matthew (forthcoming). War and Society, 1618-1789. London: Fontana Press. Best, Geoffrey 1982. War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870. London: Fontana Press. Bond, Brian 1984. War and Society in Europe, 18701970. London: Fontana Press. Braudel, Fernand 1972. The Mediterranean. New York: Harper & Row. Brenner, Robert 1977. 'The Origins of Capitalist Development', New Left Review, no. 104, pp. 25-92. Burke, Peter 1980. Sociology and History. London: Allen & Unwin. Corvisier, Andre 1979. Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494-1789. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dobb, Maurice 1947. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dorn, Walter S. 1963. Competition for Empires. New York: Harper & Row. Hale, John R. 1985. War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620. London: Fontana Press. Herz, John H. 1959. International Politics in the Atomic Age. New York: Columbia University Press. Howard, Michael 1977. War in European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Iggers, George G. 1962. 'The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought', History and Theory, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 17-40. Keegan, John 1983. The Face of Battle. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Kiernan, Victor G. 1982. European Empires from Conquest to Collapse 1815-1960. London: Fontana Press.

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Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress. Parker,Geoffrey 1980. 'Warfare',in Peter Burke, ed.

McNeill, William H. 1982. The Pursuit of Power.

UniversityPress. Preston, RichardA. & SydneyF. Wise 1962. Men in

Companion Volume - vol. XIII in the New Cambridge History of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge

Hickel, ed. Rudolf Goldscheid, Joseph Schumpeter: Die Okonomie der Staatsfinanzen. Frankfurt a.M.:

staats', firstpublishedin 1918, reprinted Rudolf in

vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 134-57. Roberts,Michael1967.'TheMilitary Revolution,15601660',firstpublishedin 1956,revisedand reprinted Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974. The Modern World in Essays in Swedish History. Minneapolis: UniSystem.New York: AcademicPress. Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the People Without versityof MinnesotaPress, pp. 195-225. of Press. History.Los Angeles:University California Schumpeter,Joseph A. 1976. 'Die Krise der Steuer-

Arms: A History of Warfareand its Interrelationships with Western Society. New York: Praeger.

Suhrkamp. 1985.'Methodehistorique science Simiand,Frangois et sociale', firstpublishedin 1903;Englishtranslation printedin Review,vol. 9, no. 2 (Fall 1985),pp. 163213.
Sweezy, Paul M. 1950. 'A Critique', Science and Society,

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