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Reviewed by:
  • Warfare and Society in Europe, 1898 to the Present, and: Warfare in World History
  • Timothy C. Dowling
Warfare and Society in Europe, 1898 to the Present. By Michael S. Neiberg. New York: Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0-415-32719-9. Notes. Index. Pp. vii, 199. $27.95.
Warfare in World History. By Michael S. Neiberg. New York: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-415-22955-3. Notes. Index. Pp. vii, 114. $17.95.

In two rather slim volumes, Michael Neiberg has taken on two rather fat topics. The aim in both cases is to make military history something more than a novelty accessible to only a few specialists. To that end, the texts are clearly and simply written without a great deal of cumbersome military jargon. [End Page 971] Students at a freshman or an advanced secondary level should find them approachable. Warfare in World History, as part of the "Themes in World History" series edited by Peter Stearns, clearly is intended to capitalize on the flood of world history courses now required in American high schools, colleges, and universities. Rather than simply explaining why one side won and the other lost, Neiberg attempts to connect warfare to "larger world history themes . . . epidemiology and germ transmission; processes of diffusion and syncretism; the 'rise of the west'; and the industrial revolution" (p. 100). In similar fashion, Warfare and Society in Europe rides the wave of broad, comparative courses that are replacing more traditional national surveys. Yet both texts run counter to the trend by reinserting "great men," power politics, and warfare into narratives that have been largely subsumed by themes of trade, culture, and social comparison.

This is most obvious in Warfare in World History. The book is structured in a straightforward fashion around "the men, the weapons, and the battles"(p. 3). Each of the seven sections (classical, post-classical, gunpowder, industry, World War I, World War II, and Cold War) begins with a general and a battle and then moves on to discuss the tactics and weapons prevalent in that era, as well as the level of technology available. A list of suggested readings that covers the classics and some new scholarship concludes each chapter. Neiberg's writing throughout is simple and concise, but the book lacks any maps and diagrams that might add clarity to a self-proclaimed "introduction". Not unexpectedly, the conversation is primarily Occidentalist once the classical and post-classical periods are finished. The Mongols, the Turks, and the Chinese get some mention, but Africa and the Americas do not appear to have had military histories until European civilization touched those shores. Naval forces also merit little mention.

This last flaw, at least, is rectified in Warfare and Society in Europe. Neiberg is careful, within his top-down discussion of politics and warfare, to throw in a paragraph or two on naval matters in each chapter. What he does not do, despite repeated proclamations to the contrary, is bring society into the picture in a convincing manner. A section on "The impact of the war on European society," for example, examines the redrawing of Europe's political map, reparations, and American foreign policy, and European-colonial relations—hardly the stuff of social history, and all in just over six pages. The text is essentially a rehash of standard European politics in the twentieth century followed by a broad outline of the military actions and consequences that this engendered. Instead of the social and cultural effects of any military actions, Neiberg often adds the American perspective, citing the "dominant role of the Americans in European military history and of Europe in American military history"(p. 5) Devoting nearly twenty-five pages of an already slender volume to the politics of the United States and selecting 1898 as the start of the European twentieth century based largely on the Spanish-American War, however, is a bit much. It may provide students in comparative European courses with a "necessary" perspective, but it also [End Page 972] seems to prevent the inclusion of the promised social aspects that would make this book truly different and useful on its own.

In the end, Neiberg has provided two useful supplemental texts. Warfare in...

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