History today is not so much a coherent academic discipline as an assemblage of loosely related sub-fields. The traditional divisions of time and space persist, but these now frame social and economic history as well as narratives of politics and war. New methodologies and theoretical approaches have inspired systematic reappraisal of earlier findings while simultaneously inviting us to discover history in nooks and crannies of the human experience previously overlooked. The result is a body of published research swollen to such immense proportions that few historians would claim to have mastered the relevant material for an entire sub-field. It thus requires considerable courage for an individual to pursue even a narrowly defined theme from prehistory to the present.
Poor choices invite errors of fact, method, and concept.
Since this book bears directly on a controversial public policy, it is unfortunate that it fails all of these tests. The opening chapter is conceptual, partisan, and flawed. De Pauw cannot, however, make such a concession. The insistence on lethality in De Pauw's concept of war conveniently eliminates the modern-day genderless class of economic warriors from the discussion. Future studies should focus on this question above all.