Warfare in the Western World, 1882-1975 (review)

This work completes a trilogy by the author that commenced with European Warfare, 1660-1815 (1994) and Western Warfare, 1775-1882 (2001). Separate chapters cover Western expansion from 1882 to 1936, War in the West from 1882 to 1913, World War I, the interwar years, World War II, naval power, air power, the Western retreat from empire between 1942 and 1975, and military power in the West, 1946 to 1975. Black commences his third volume in 1882 because in that year Britain ended Egypt's independence, an event he considers indicative of the pace and progress of Western imperialism in the nineteenth century. He closes the work in 1975 with the coeval fall of South Vietnam and the withdrawal of Portugal from Africa, two events, as Black sees them, that marked the end of the Western transoceanic empires (p. ix.).

As in his earlier works in the series, Black focuses on placing military capabilities and conflicts within their political and social contexts. While he treats the conflicts and developments among the Western powers, he seems more interested in warfare between the West and non-Western states and societies. From his study, he concludes that the Western concept of linear military development is faulty, and that it is futile and misleading to seek paradigms and patterns in the evolution of warfare when seen from a global perspective. He finds that "variety" and "unpredictability" are all that can be safely assumed about warfare in its broader dimensions. (Preface, passim, and Conclusions, p. 215 and ff.).

Black's scholarship is evident throughout his work, but I think it strains the evidence to claim a parallel between the outcome of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the decline of traditional Western overseas imperialism. Similarly, I disagree that the American failure in Vietnam dealt an enduring blow to confidence in American military methods or to Western military methods in general. It seems to me that events since 1975 have rendered this interpretation invalid. If Black attempts a fourth volume to bring his account into the twenty-first century, I wonder what he will make of the Islamist war on the West by terror, or of the American response to the challenges of asymmetrical warfare in the post-Cold War age. In any case, and like the work under review, such an account should make for interesting, if controversial, reading.