Warfare and culture in world history
By: [edited by] Wayne Lee
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
ISBN-13: 9780814752777; 9780814752784
Subjects: Political culture; Military art and science; War and society; Military history; HISTORY / Military / General; HISTORY / United States / 20th Century; History
Description: "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.--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Warfare and culture / Wayne E. Lee; title: The last campaign : the Assyrian way of war and the collapse of the empire / Sarah C. Melville; title: Disciplining Octavian : an aspect of Roman military culture, 44-30 BCE 50 / Lee L. Brice; title: Of bureaucrats and bandits : Confucianism and anti-rebel strategy at the end of the Ming Dynasty / Kenneth M. Swope; title: The battle culture of forbearance, 1660-1789 / John A. Lynn II; title: Success and failure in civil war armies : clues from organizational culture / Mark Grimsley; title: German military culture and the colonial war in Southwest Africa, 1904-1907 / Isabel V. Hull; title: Connecting culture and the battlefield : Britain and the empire fight the hundred days / David Silbey; title: The American culture of war in the age of artificial limited war / Adrian R. Lewis.