War: Past, Present And Future - Hardcover

This study of war since the fifteenth century reassesses warfare as a whole, showing that many of the themes identified by military historians have been flawed or only partial in their truth. The importance of technology, the pre-eminence of the West and clear-cut predictions about the future of war in the nuclear age are all demonstrated to be wide of the mark. Instead Professor Black proposes a new history of war in the world that owes more to chaos theory than to any neat assumption about the invulnerability of superpowers.
Jeremy Black places war in its social and cultural context, from the evolution of specialised troops in the earliest civilisations to the likely future scenarios for war in the space age. He uses a rich array of concepts and counterfactuals to illustrate the limitations of the old military history and to urge careful consideration of a much broader range of issues from which to approach the question of what war will be like in the future. We are shown that, for all the advances in technology, with pinpoint accuracy of weaponry and space-age communications technology, war in the future will not be so clear-cut as we imagine. Warfare has never been, and can never be such a simple matter.
Anyone interested in the history of human conflict or intrigued by the possible causes and outcomes of war in the future will be gripped by this powerful and provocative book by a leading military historian.

Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter.