War in Europe

War in Europe is an overview of war and military development in Europe since 1450, bringing together the work of a renowned historian of modern European and military history in a single authoritative volume. Beginning with the impact of the Reformation and continuing up to the present day, Jeremy Black discusses the following key themes: long-term military developments, notably in the way war is waged and battle conducted the relationship between war and transformations in the European international system the linkage between military requirements and state developments the consequences of these requirements, and of the experience of war, for the nature of societyAdopting a clear chronological approach, Black weaves a rich and detailed narrative of the development of war in relation to transformations in the European international system, demonstrating the links between its causes and consequences in the military, political and social spheres. Assimilating decades of important research as well as bringing new perspectives to the topic, War in Europe is a key text for students taking courses in European history, international relations and war studies.

War in Europe is an important addition to every military history collection, and worth reading by any serious student of military history., A bold, tightly-conceived overview of European military history from 1450 to the present, which combines a wealth of often unfamiliar detail with characteristically provocative and challenging re-interpretations of traditional opinion on warfare, state and society. From scepticism about the role of “military revolution” during the early modern centuries, through challenges to the “nation in arms” of the Revolutionary Wars, or to his stress on the increase in civilian control over armies as a phenomenon of WW2 and thereafter, War in Europe draws upon patterns, changes and continuities in conflict from the Hundred Years War to the War in Iraq. The book will not disappoint those already familiar with Professor Black’s iconoclastic and revisionist approaches, and provides a point of departure for students and other interested readers wanting an accessible but distinctive approach to the history of organizing and fighting war in Europe., Addressing the relationship between war and state formation, Jeremy Black offers a skeptical examination of Charles Tilly's formulation that war made the state and the state made war. Black's study suggests that Tilly's adage tells us more about the centrality of national governments for citizens (and social scientists) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than it does about pre-modern states, societies, and war. Black's historiographical breadth and global scope will challenge readers' assumptions regarding well established models, such as the rise of the State, the rise of the West, and the gunpowder revolution., A thoughtful and wide-ranging reappraisal of the role of war in European history from early modernity to the present, stressing the complexities and ambiguities in the interaction of military and political change.

Jeremy Black is Professor of history at the University of Exeter, UK and a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, USA. He has written widely on modern military and diplomatic history and his most recent publications include The Power of Knowledge (2013) and War in the Modern World (2014).