European Military Rivalry, 1500–1750: Fierce Pageant examines more than 200 years of international rivalry across Western, Central, and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean rim. The book charts the increasing scale, expenditure and duration of early modern wars; the impact of modern fortification on strategy and the movement of armies; the incidence of guerrilla war and localized conflict typical of the French wars of religion; the recourse by warlords to private financing of troops and supplies; and the creation of disciplined standing armies and navies in the age of Absolutism, made possible by larger bureaucracies. In addition to discussing key events and personalities of military rivalry during this period, the book describes the operational mechanics of early modern warfare and the crucial role of taxation and state borrowing. The relationship between the Christian West and the Ottoman Empire is also extensively analysed. Drawing heavily upon international scholarship over the past half-century, European Military Rivalry, 1500–1750: Fierce Pageant will be of great use to undergraduate students studying military history and early modern Europe.

The period 1350–1750 saw major developments in European warfare, which not only had a huge impact on the way wars were fought, but also are critical to long-standing controversies about state development, the global ascendancy of the West, and the nature of 'military revolutions' past and present. However, the military history of this period is usually written from either medieval or early-modern, and either Western or Eastern European, perspectives. These chronological and geographical limits have produced substantial confusion about how the conduct of war changed. The essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of land and sea warfare across Europe throughout this period of momentous political, religious, technological, intellectual and military change. Written by leading experts in their fields, they not only summarise existing scholarship, but also present new findings and new ideas, casting new light on the art of war, the rise of the state, and European expansion.

The Scramble for Italy offers fresh insights on the set of conflicts known as the Italian Wars of 1494-1559. The aim of this book is to explore the trends of continuity and change that characterized the sixteenth century in order to demonstrate the significance of the Italian Wars as an especially intense period of warfare that drove forward several important social, political, and especially military developments. Employing a myriad of primary and secondary sources, this book illustrates how the European nobility, still very much steeped in knightly and chivalric ideals, was fashioning the Italian Wars into an essentially traditional aristocratic war, while the rise of military professionalization and privatization, accompanied by the processes of centralization and consolidation of political power, were rapidly changing their world. Moreover, the book attempts to demonstrate that although the debate on a supposed military revolution in late medieval and early modern Europe still rages, sixteenth-century soldiers and intellectuals were quite certain, and anxious, about the potential effects of gunpowder weapons and novel tactics and strategy on their world. Scholars and general readers who are interested in the political and military history of late medieval and early modern Europe should find this study especially instructive.

The eleven years of conflict that engulfed Ireland (1641-53) can be seen as a drama in three acts, each of which drew Ireland into progressively closer alignment with the Civil Wars (1642-52) in the other two Stuart kingdoms, Scotland and England. The first act in the Wars of Religion in Ireland (1641-53) began in October 1641 with a rising in Ulster and shuddered to a halt in September 1643 when the insurgents, now embodied as the Confederate Catholics, agreed a ceasefire with Charles I’s representative in Ireland. This study is confined to Act One to manage its sheer scope and scale. Not a single county in Ireland was unscathed by war and in summer 1642 there were more men under arms than there ever had been or would be again. Moreover, Act One was singularly nasty. Insurgent slaughter of Protestant settlers in the winter of 1641-42 quickly gained canonical status. English and Scots armies routinely massacred natives in the spring and summer that followed. After their uprising failed, the Irish in 1642 were attacked by English and Scottish armies that were bigger, in aggregate, than any before or since. And that includes the armies of Elizabeth I, Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange. Lacking munitions, forced to disperse their strength, and usually outfought in open battle, the Confederate Catholics pushed back in war-as-process and food-fights in which castles dominating a chequerboard of hinterlands jostled with hostile neighbors. The Catholics were winning this small war when the music stopped in 1643. This is a study of the Catholic armies in Act One through a succinct narrative which reveals underlying pattern and purpose in what would otherwise be one apparently random battle, siege, skirmish, massacre, and cattle raid after another, devoid of form or meaning. The narrative focuses in and out, from the strategic through the operational down to the tactical and what happened in a particular place on a given day. The narrative also shifts from the southern or Leinster/Munster theater to the northern or Connacht/Ulster theater. Meaning is disclosed through narrative in which the strengths and shortcomings of the Irish armies become clearer. The quotation in the title sets up two such shortcomings, of leaders and led. One reason why the Catholics lost so many battles may be that their generals fought battles when they needn’t have, showed a fatal preference for the all-out attack, and did not always deploy in a manner that let their army’s components, pike, shot and horse act in mutual support. Another reason may be that the rankers were less invested in the Catholic cause than their officers. But the establishing quotation is followed by a question mark. Perhaps the real question to be asked is how the Catholic armies achieved so much rather than why they failed.

Robert Crowcroft has assembled a world-class, international cast of outstanding scholars and international figures to produce a stimulating collection of essays on applied history and policy making. With contributors such as Philip Bobbitt, Margaret MacMillan, and Jeremy Black, this collection of essays addresses some of the most important geopolitical challenges confronting the world today. From reconstructing collapsed political regimes to security competition in the China Seas and the evolution of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, it explores a range of statecraft, policy, and strategy. The essays span a number of policy areas and historical problems, tackling important questions about what historians do (and should do), and considering the nature and limits of historical judgement. With some examining how applied history can be used to rethink contemporary challenges, others explore how it has been used and abused in the past. Making a splash in intellectual debate by making a definitive case for Applied History, this book demonstrates that a knowledge of the past, and the insight it provides, is imperative to effective statecraft.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the early modern military history of Portugal and its possessions in Africa, the Americas, and Asia from the perspective of the military revolution historiographical debate. The existence of a military revolution in the early modern period has been much debated in international historiography, and this volume fills a significant gap in its relation to the history of Portugal and its overseas empire. It examines different forms of military change in specifically Portuguese case studies but also adopts a global perspective through the analysis of different contexts and episodes in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Contributors explore whether there is evidence of what could be defined as aspects of a military revolution or whether other explanatory models are needed to account for different forms of military change. In this way, it offers the reader a variety of perspectives that contribute to the debate over the applicability of the military revolution concept to Portugal and its empire during the early modern period. Broken down into four thematic parts and broad in both chronological and geographical scope, the book deepens our understanding of the art of warfare in Portugal and its empire and demonstrates how the military revolution debate can be used to examine military change in a global perspective. This is an essential text for scholars and students of military history, military architecture, global history, Asian history, and the history of Iberian empires.

International tragedies, national disgraces, and local dangers: reporting can magnify trauma. But how can we gain a deeper analytical understanding of episodes seemingly too immediate for detached observation by our sources or even, perhaps, by ourselves? This volume brings together a broad range of current research in Europe and abroad, regarding an issue of crucial importance for understanding past cultures and our own. Papers discuss the ramifications of media-induced anxiety and anxiety-induced mediality, engaging the humanities, including history, film studies, literature, folklore, creative writing and adjacent fields intersected by sociology, politology, psychology, & anthropology. News media here include all means of mass communication impinging on daily experience, from books to music, from the social web to films, on multiple platforms and in multiple languages across municipal, state, and regional boundaries.