Chapter One: Why the West Has Won
There is an entire genre of scholarship devoted to various explanations of Western military dominance, mostly from the sixteenth century onward. See most prominently C. Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansionism (Cambridge, 1965); M. Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560–1660 (Belfast, 1956); G. Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1996); J. Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke, England, 1991); P. Curtin, The World and the West: The European Challenge and the Overseas Response in the Age of Empire (Cambridge, 2000); D. Eltis, The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (New York, 1995); and C. Rodgers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, Colo., 1995). For the argument of an even earlier military revolution, see A. Ayton and J. L. Price, eds., The Medieval Military Revolution: State, Society, and Military Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York, 1995).
For East-West contacts and exchanges of technology, see D. Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600–1914 (Chicago, 1990); R. MacAdams, Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist’s Inquiry into Western Technology (Princeton, N.J., 1996); L. White, Machina Ex Deo: Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); and especially, D. Headrick, Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981). The wider question of European cultural dynamism is covered brilliantly in two books: D. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York, 1998), and E. L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge, 1987). See also the essays in L. Harrison and S. Huntington, eds., Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York, 2000).
A good discussion of the nature of Western culture and its critics in the university is found in three engaging works: K. Windshuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past (New York, 1996); A. Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York, 1997); and D. Gress, From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents(New York, 1998). See also T. Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History (New York, 1998).
In contrast, the bibliography of anti-Western criticism is huge, but a good introduction to the nature and methodology of the scholarship is K. Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York, 1990); D. Peers, ed., Warfare and Empires: Contact and Conflict Between European and Non-EuropeanMilitary and Maritime Forces and Cultures(Brookfield, Vt., 1997); F. Fernandez-Armesto, Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years (New York, 1995); M. Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (New York, 1989); T. Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York, 1984); and F. Jameson and M. Miyoshi, eds., The Cultures ofGlobalization (Durham and London, 1998).
Postmodern approaches to Western dominance characterize M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York, 1972); M. de Certeau, The Writing of History (New York, 1988); E. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London, 1993); Orientalism (London, 1978); F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London, 1991). For a sampling of the traditionalists’ defense of Western civilization, see S. Clough, Basic Values of Western Civilization (New York, 1960), and C. N. Parkinson, East and West (London, 1963). N. Douglas has an amusing polemic on the West in Good-Bye to Western Culture (New York, 1930).
Representative works of the biological and geographical explanations for the rise of the West are J. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York, 1997); A. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, 1986); and M. Harris, Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (New York, 1978). An effort to balance natural determinism with human agency and culture is found in W. McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago, 1991), and The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago, 1982).
A masterful survey of the role between culture and war is J. Keegan’s A History of Warfare (New York, 1993). See, too, K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Cambridge, Mass., 1998). Surveys of the “Great Battles” are best begun with E. Creasy, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World:From Marathon to Waterloo (New York, 1908); T. Knox, Decisive Battles Since Waterloo (New York, 1887); J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World (New York, 1954); A. Jones, The Art of War in the Western World (New York, 1987); and R. Gabriel and D. Boose, The Great Battles of Antiquity: A Strategic and Tactical Guide to Great Battles That Shaped the Development of War (Westport, Conn., 1994).
Chapter Two: Freedom—or “To Live as You Please”
Salamis, September 28, 480 B.C.
The chief problems associated with the battle surround the exact date of the fighting, the size of the Persian fleet, the purported ruse of Themistocles, and the identification of particular islands in the Salamis strait. These issues are discussed in a number of fine histories in English of the Persian Wars. See, for example, J. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece 490–479 B.C. (Warminster, England, 1993); P. Green, The Greco-Persian Wars (Berkeley, Calif., 1994); and C. Hignett, Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (Oxford, 1963). Still valuable is G. B. Grundy, The Great Persian War and Its Preliminaries (London, 1901). In some ways, George Grote’s masterful chronicle of Salamis in the fifth volume of his History of Greece, 2nd ed. (New York, 1899) remains unmatched; a new edition with an Introduction by Paul Cartledge is now available from Routledge (London 2000).
A number of scholars have attempted to sort out the baffling topography and conflicting ancient accounts of the battle. See G. Roux, “Éschyle, Hérodote, Diodore, Plutarque racontent la bataille de Salamine,” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 98 (1974), 51–94, and the relevant sections in H. Delbrück, Warfare in Antiquity, vol. 1 of The History of the Art of War (Westport, Conn., 1975); N. G. L. Hammond, Studies in Greek History (Oxford, 1973); and W. K. Pritchett, Studies in Ancient Greek Topography I (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965). For comments on the pertinent Greek passages in Herodotus and Plutarch, see W. W. How and J. Wells, eds., A Commentary on Herodotus(Oxford, 1912), vol. 2, 378–87, and F. J. Frost, Plutarch’s Themistocles: A Historical Commentary(Princeton, N.J., 1980).
The idea of freedom in the Greek world is discussed in a number of books. Begin with A. Momigliano, “The Persian Empire and Greek Freedom,” in A. Ryan, ed., The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin (Oxford, 1979), 139–51; and O. Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (New York, 1991). See also the essays in M. I. Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (New York, 1982). For the later symbolism of Salamis in popular Athenian ideology, see C. Meier, Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age (New York, 1998), and N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).
There are a number of fine studies of the Achaemenids that draw on Persian sources in addition to Greek literature. See H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg and A. Kuhrt, Achaemenid History I: Sources, Structures and Synthesis (Leiden, 1987); J. Boardman et al., eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., Persia, Greece and the WesternMediterranean c. 525 to 479 (Cambridge, 1988); J. M. Cook, The Persian Empire (New York, 1983); M. Dandamaev, A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire (Leiden, 1989); and A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, Achaemenid Period (Chicago, 1948). On the history of Iran, see the chapter on the Achaemenids in R. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich, 1984). And for the letter of Darius to Gadatas, see R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, eds., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, repr. ed., 1989).
More specific accounts of Greek-Persian cultural relations are covered in D. Lewis, Sparta and Persia: Lectures Delivered at the University of Cincinnati, Autumn 1976, in Memory of Donald W. Bradeen (Leiden, 1977), and Selected Papers in Greek and Near Eastern History (Cambridge, 1997); A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West, c. 546–478 B.C. (New York, repr. ed., 1984); M. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C. (Cambridge, 1997); and especially the article by S. Averintsev, “Ancient Greek ‘Literature’ and Near Eastern ‘Writings’: The Opposition and Encounter of Two Creative Principles, Part One: The Opposition,” Arion 7.1 (Spring/Summer 1999), 1–39. For an accessible synopsis of the Persian army, see A. Ferrill, The Origins of War: From the Stone Age to Alexander the Great (New York, 1985).
On Greek navies and sea power in general, see C. Starr, The Influence of Sea-Power on Ancient History (New York, 1989); L. Casson, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (London, 1959), and Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton, N.J., 1971); and J. S. Morrison and R. T. Williams, Greek Oared Ships 900–322 B.C. (London, 1968). For reconstructions of the ancient trireme, consult J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, and N. B. Ranov, The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship (Cambridge, 2000), and An Athenian Trireme Reconstructed: The British Sea Trials of ‘Olympias,’British Archaeological Series 486 (Oxford, 1987).
There is also a growing academic industry that chronicles the Greeks’ purported prejudicial perceptions of Persia; cf. E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-DefinitionThrough Tragedy (Oxford, 1989); F. Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988); and P. Georges, Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience: From the Archaic Period to the Age of Xenophon(Baltimore, Md., 1994). An extreme example is P. Springborg, Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (Austin, Tex., 1992).
Chapter Three: Decisive Battle
Gaugamela, October 1, 331 B.C.
Gaugamela is amply treated in a variety of academic genres, most of them narrow journal articles in academic publications. For the general reader, it is best to begin with purely military histories of Alexander’s reign. There exists a fine, though brief monograph on the battle by E. W. Marsden, The Campaign of Gaugamela (Liverpool 1964). Gaugamela also forms a key part of the discussion in J. F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (London, 1958); is reviewed competently by H. Delbrück, Warfare in Antiquity, vol. 1 of The History of the Art of War (Westport, Conn., 1975), and J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, vol. 1 (London, 1954); and is found as well in E. Creasy, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (New York, 1908).
For purely military matters, see also J. Ashley, The Macedonian Empire: The Era of Warfare Under Philip II and Alexander the Great, 359–323 B.C. (Jefferson, N.C., 1998), and D. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley, Calif., 1978). N. G. L. Hammond is brilliant on Alexander’s army but far less so on any historical assessment of his reign and achievements: e.g., Alexander the Great: King, Commander, and Statesman (Park Ridge, N.J., 1989); Three Historians of Alexander the Great: The So-Called Vulgate Authors, Diodorus, Justin, and Curtius (Cambridge, 1983); and, with G. T. Griffith, A History of Macedonia, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1979).
The complex ancient sources of information about Gaugamela—mostly reconciliation of the contrary accounts of Plutarch, Diodorus, Arrian, and Curtius—are best discussed in J. R. Hamilton, Plutarch’s Alexander: A Commentary (Oxford, 1969); N. G. L. Hammond, Sources for Alexander the Great: An Analysis of Plutarch’s Life and Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandros (Cambridge, 1993); A. B. Bosworth, A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1980); J. C. Yardley, Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, Books 11–12: Alexander the Great (Oxford, 1997); J. Atkinson, A Commentary on Q. Curtius Rufus’ Historiae Alexandri Magni, Books 3 & 4 (London, 1980); and L. Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (New York, 1960).
There are countless biographies of Alexander the Great that discuss the campaign of Gaugamela. The most accessible in English are R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London, 1973); W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, vols. 1–2 (Chicago, 1981); P. Green, Alexander of Macedon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974); U. Wilcken, Alexander the Great (New York, 1967); and especially the excellent and sober portrayal by A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1988). Despite the work of Bosworth, Green, and important journal articles by E. Badian, the romance of Alexander the Great as a philosopher king and advocate of universal brotherhood has again regained credence both in America and elsewhere in the current age of multiculturalism and renewed ethnic tension in the Balkans.
For the Western origins and traditions of decisive battle, see V. D. Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Berkeley, 2000); and The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization (Berkeley, 1999); D. Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World (Boulder, Colo., 1996); R. Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington, Ind., 1991); R. Preston and S. Wise, Men in Arms: A History of Warfare and Its Interrelationships with Western Society (New York, 1970); and G. Craig and F. Gilbert, eds., Makers of ModernStrategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton, N.J., 1943). For the difference in primitive skirmishing and shock “civilized” collisions, see H. H. Turney-High, Primitive War: Its Practice and Concepts (Columbia, S.C., 1971).
General Persian sources are discussed under the prior chapter devoted to Salamis, but there are a few works specific to the later Achaemenid era, and especially to Darius III. See, for example, E. Herzfeld, The Persian Empire (Wiesbaden, 1968); A. Stein, Old Routes of Western Iran: Narrative of an Archaeological Journey (New York, 1969); and for a revisionist view, P. Briant, Histoire de l’empire perse (Paris, 1996).
Chapter Four: Citizen Soldiers
Cannae, August 2, 216 B.C.
Primary sources for Cannae are the historians Polybius (3.110–118) and Livy (22.44–50), with anecdotal information found in Appian, Plutarch’s Fabius, and Cassius Dio. The main problems of the battle lie in reconciling Polybius’s much larger figures for both the size of (86,000) and number killed in (70,000) the Roman army with the usually more suspect Livy’s smaller—and more believable—figures (48,000 killed). In addition, scholars still argue over Hannibal’s wisdom in not marching on Rome and besieging the city in the shocking aftermath of the slaughter. Less critical controversies surround the exact armament and tactics of Hannibal’s African and European allies—were they swordsmen or pikemen or both?—and the positioning of the Roman encampments.
Graphic accounts of the battle itself are available in M. Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 47 (1990), 7–29; P. Sabin, “The Mechanics of Battle in the Second Punic War,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 67 (1996), 59–79; and V. Hanson, “Cannae,” in R. Cowley, ed., The Experience of War (New York, 1992).
For the larger topographical, tactical, and strategic questions that surround Cannae, see F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1957), 435–49; J. Kromayer and G. Veith, Antike Schlachtfelder in Italien und Afrika (Berlin, 1912), vol. 1, 341–46; and H. Delbrück, Warfare in Antiquity, vol. 1 of The History of the Art of War (Westport, Conn., 1975), (Berlin, 1920), vol. 1, 315–35.
The most balanced and researched account of the Second Punic War and the battle of Cannae is J. F. Lazenby’s excellent Hannibal’s War: A Military History of the Second Punic War (Norman, Okla., 1998), which provides a narrative closely supported by ancient sources. For a more general study, see B. Craven, The Punic Wars (New York, 1980), and N. Bagnall, The Punic Wars (London, 1990).
For military biographies of Hannibal for the general reader, consult K. Christ, Hannibal (Darmstadt, Germany, 1974); S. Lanul, Hannibal (Paris, 1995); J. Peddie, Hannibal’s War (Gloucestershire, England, 1997); and T. Bath, Hannibal’s Campaigns (Cambridge, 1981). Questions of manpower and the potential of Roman military mobilization are surveyed in A. Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy, 2 vols. (London, 1965), and especially P. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C.–A.D. 14 (London, 1971).
There are good, accessible accounts of the history and institutions of ancient Carthage in D. Soren, A. Ben Khader, and H. Slim, Carthage: Uncovering the Mysteries and Splendors of Ancient Tunisia (New York, 1990); J. Pedley, ed., New Light on Ancient Carthage (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1980); and G. and C. Picard, The Life and Death of Carthage (New York, 1968). S. Lancel, Carthage: A History (Oxford, 1995), has a lively narrative of Roman-Carthaginian interaction. The larger strategic canvas of Roman imperialism and the Punic Wars is discussed in W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327–70 B.C. (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1984), and J. S. Richardson, Hispaniae, Spain, and the Development of Roman Imperialism, 218–82 B.C. (New York, 1986).
The traditions of civic militarism and constitutional government as they relate to military efficacy are thematic in D. Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare (Boulder, Colo., 1996), and discussed in detail by P. Rahe, Republics, Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992). In a series of articles and books, B. Bachrach has made the argument for a military continuum in western and northern Europe without much interruption from imperial Roman times to the Middle Ages; see especially his Merovingian Military Organization (481–751) (Minneapolis, Minn., 1972).
The bibliography of the Roman army is vast; a good introduction to the legions of the republic is F. E. Adcock, The Roman Art of War Under the Republic (Cambridge, Mass., 1940); H. M. D. Parker, The Roman Legions, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1971); B. Campbell, The Roman Army, 31 B.C.–A.D. 37: a sourcebook (London 1994); and L. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army (Totowa, N.J., 1984). For the influence of Cannae on later Western military thought, see J. Kersétz, “Die Schlacht bei Cannae und ihr Einfluss auf die Entwicklung der Kriegskunst,” Beiträge der Martín-Luther Universität (1980), 29–43; A. von Schlieffen, Cannae (Fort Leavenworth, Kans., 1931); and A. du Picq,Battle Studies (Harrisburg, Pa., 1987).
Chapter Five: Landed Infantry
Poitiers, October 11, 732
We have almost no full contemporary account of the battle of Poitiers, since a number of the standard sources for late antiquity and the early Dark Ages end before 732. Gregory of Tours stopped his Historia Francorum in 594. The anonymous Liber Historiae Francorum was completed at 727. Venerable Bede’s history leaves off at 731, a year before the battle.
Although the Chronicle of Fredegar ends at 642, a continuator left a brief account of the fighting in 732 (J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Four Books of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations [London, 1960]), as did the anonymous continuator of the Chronicle of Isidore (T. Mommsen, Isidori Continuatio Hispana, MonumentaGermaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, vol. 11 [Berlin, 1961]). The absence of good firsthand accounts of the battle have led to widely contrasting appraisals of its conduct and importance. It is common to read in major surveys of the age—before 1950 almost exclusively in German and French—that Poitiers marked the rise of feudalism, the dominance of heavy knights in stirrups, and the salvation of Western civilization, even as more sober accounts deny that horsemen played much, if any role, at Poitiers, that feudalism as it later emerged was years in the future, and that Abd ar-Rahman’s invasion was merely one of a series of small raids that gradually waned in the eighth century, as the Muslim bickering in Spain and Frankish consolidation in Europe inevitably conspired to weaken Islamic expansion from the Pyrenees. Most likely, Poitiers was an understandable victory of spirited infantrymen on the defensive, rather than the result of a monumental technological or military breakthrough, a reflection of increasing Arab weakness in extended operations to the north, rather than in itself the salvation of the Christian West.
For the battle of Poitiers itself, see the monograph of M. Mercier and A. Seguin, Charles Martel et la bataille de Poitiers (Paris, 1944). Consult especially the work of B. S. Bachrach, “Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and Feudalism,” in his Armies and Politics in the Early Medieval West (Aldershot, England, 1993). This volume of essays serves as a collection of Bachrach’s most compelling arguments about the relative importance of cavalry, horsemen, and fortifications during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods. See also his Merovingian Military Organization (Minneapolis, Minn., 1972), and “Early Medieval Europe,” in K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Washington, D.C., 1999).
On the Franks, the latter Merovingians, and the early Carolingians, there are good surveys in K. Scherman, The Birth of France (New York, 1987); P. Riché, The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe (Philadelphia, 1993); E. James, The Origins of France: From Clovis to the Capetians, 500–1000 (London, 1982); and H. Delbrück, The Barbarian Invasions, vol. 2 of The History of the Art of War (Westport, Conn., 1980).
For the life of Charles Martel, see R. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987). For two famous narratives of the battle, consult J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, vol. 1, From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto (London, 1954), 339–50, and E. Creasy, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (New York, 1908), 157–69.
European war making between A.D. 500 and 1000 is outlined in D. Nicolle, Medieval Warfare: Source Book, vol. 2, Christian Europe and Its Neighbors (New York, 1996), which has much comparative material. Perhaps the most accessible and analytical account is J. Beeler, Warfare in Feudal Europe, 730–1200 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971). General detail about arms and military service—albeit mostly after 1000—is easily accessed in a variety of standard handbooks, especially P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (London, 1984), and F. Lot, L’Art militaire et les armées au moyen age en Europe et dans le proche orient, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946), which has a list of German and French secondary sources that concern the battle. Cf. random mention also in M. Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford, 1999); T. Wise, Medieval Warfare (New York, 1976); and A. V. B. Norman, The Medieval Soldier (New York, 1971). For the later warfare of the Franks and western Europeans, consult J. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999), and Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994).
Valuable essays on the cultural aspects of medieval warfare are collected in D. Kagay and L. Andrew Villalon, eds., The Circle of War in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History (Suffolk, England, 1999). There are a number of excellent illustrations in T. Newark, The Barbarians: Warriors and Wars of the Dark Ages(London, 1988).
Provocative ideas about the larger culture and history of Europe during the so-called Dark Ages are found in H. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (London, 1939), and R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe: Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983). For standard surveys of the intellectual cosmos of the Middle Ages in the West, begin with R. Dales, The Intellectual Life of Western Europe in the Middle Ages (Washington, D.C., 1980), and W. C. Bark, Origins of the Medieval World (Stanford, Calif., 1958). For more literary emphasis, see M. Golish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400–1400 (New Haven, Conn., 1997). See also the classic survey and standard view of the Dark Ages by C. Oman, The Dark Ages, 476–918 (London, 1928).
The early history of Islam and the creation of an expansive Arab military culture are surveyed by P. Crone in Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge, 1980), and Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, N.J., 1987); cf. M. A. Shaban, Islamic History, A.D. 600–750 (A.H. 132) (Cambridge, 1971).
For the long-term significance of Poitiers, see the counterfactual speculations of B. Strauss, “The Dark Ages Made Lighter,” in R. Cowley, ed., What If? (New York, 1998), 71–92.
Chapter Six: Technology and the Wages of Reason
Tenochtitlán, June 24, 1520–August 13, 1521
The conquest of Mexico has taken center stage in the contemporary academic cultural wars, especially concerning the use of evidence that is drawn mostly from either Spanish eyewitnesses or Spanish collections of Aztec oral narratives. Often scholars accept Spanish descriptions of the magnificence of Tenochtitlán and the beauty of its gardens, zoos, and markets, but reject outright the same authors’ more gruesome accounts of cannibalism and systematic human immolation, sacrifice, and torture. European “constructs” and “paradigms” are considered inappropriate contexts in which to understand Aztec culture, even as Mexican art, architecture, and astronomical knowledge are praised in more or less classical aesthetic and scientific terms. Yet, our interests here are not in relative moral judgments, but in military efficacy, not so much the amorality of the conquistadors as the methods of their conquest.
We should remember also that our present argument for military dynamism based on technological preeminence is not always shared by Spanish accounts of the times, which quite wrongly emphasize the conquistadors’ moral “superiority,” innate intelligence, and Christian virtue.
There are a number of justifiably renowned narratives of the Spanish conquest. Perhaps unrivaled in its sheer power of description is still W. H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1843). For modern English readers, H. Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York, 1993) is invaluable. See also R. C. Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico, 1503–1541 (Columbus, Ohio, 1967). For some good comparative discussion, see also A. B. Bosworth, Alexander and the East (Oxford, 1996).
A plethora of contemporary and near contemporary accounts surrounds the conquest. Begin with the masterful narrative of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521, trans. A. P. Maudslay, (New York, 1956); the letters of Hernán Cortés, whose reliability has often been questioned (Letters from Mexico, trans. A. Pagden [New York, 1971]); and P. de Fuentes, The Conquistadors: First-Person Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1963).
For Aztec narratives and harsh criticism of the Spanish conquest, see Bernardino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain: Florentine Codex, Book 12— The Conquest of Mexico, trans. H. Cline (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1975), and the anthology edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of theConquest of Mexico, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1992). Cf. also Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Ally of Cortés (El Paso, Tex., 1969).
Biographies of Cortés are innumerable; the most accessible are S. Madariaga, Hernán Cortés: Conqueror of Mexico (Garden City, N.Y., 1969), and J. M. White, Cortés and the Downfall of the Aztec Empire: A Study in a Conflict of Cultures (New York, 1971). The near contemporary hagiography by Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary (Berkeley, Calif., 1964), contains much information not found elsewhere.
A specialized study of Spanish military practice of the sixteenth century can be found in G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars (Cambridge, 1972), and R. Martínez and T. Barker, eds., Armed Forces in Spain Past and Present (Boulder, Colo., 1988). On the general status of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European warfare, see C. M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion 1400–1700 (New York, 1965); J. Black, European Warfare 1160–1815 (New Haven, Conn., 1994); and F. Tallett, War and Society in Early-Modern Europe, 1495–1715 (London and New York, 1992). For the political and military position of Spain in the sixteenth century and the effect of its empire on its influence in Europe, see J. H. Elliott, Spain and Its World, 1500–1700: Selected Essays (New Haven, Conn., 1989), and R. Kagan and G. Parker, eds., Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliot (Cambridge, 1995).
Ross Hassig has written a series of seminal books on Aztec warfare that seeks to explain the conquest from a Native American perspective: Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (London and New York, 1994); Aztec Warfare: Political Expansion and Imperial Control (Norman, Okla., 1988); and War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992). For larger questions of Aztec culture and society, consult P. Carasco, The Tenocha Empire of Ancient Mexico: The Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan (Norman, Okla., 1999), and G. Collier, R. Rosaldo, and J. Wirth, The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800: Anthropology and History (New York, 1982).
The key role of the Spanish brigantines on Lake Texcoco is covered in C. H. Gardiner, Naval Power in the Conquest of Mexico (Austin, Tex., 1956), and his Martín López: Conquistador Citizen of Mexico (Lexington, Ky., 1958).
For cultural explanations that downplay the role of European tactics and technology in the conquest, see the article by G. Raudzens, “So Why Were the Aztecs Conquered, and What Were the Wider Implications? Testing Military Superiority as a Cause of Europe’s Preindustrial Colonial Conquests,” War in History 2.1 (1995), 87–104. Also see T. Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York, 1984); I. Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge, 1987); and I. Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge, 1991). And for a critique of all such approaches, see K. Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past (New York, 1997).
Chapter Seven: The Market—or Capitalism Kills
Lepanto, October 7, 1571
For centuries, accounts of Lepanto were cloaked in Christian triumphalism that emphasized the great relief in the West that the Turk was finally checked in his expansion across the Mediterranean. More recent study of the battle has been remarkably free of ideological bias. There still is absent, however, a single up-to-date scholarly monograph in English devoted entirely to the engagement itself. As a consequence, we often forget that aside from Salamis and Cannae, Lepanto may have been the single deadliest one-day slaughter in European history. Surely, in no other conflict have Westerners butchered more prisoners than did the Spanish and Italians in the aftermath of the battle, when most of the thousands of Turkish seamen lost their lives. The battle of Lepanto takes its place alongside the Somme and Cannae as a testament to man’s ability to overcome the constraints of time and space in killing literally thousands of human beings in a few hours.
For complete accounts of the battle that discuss primary sources in Italian, Spanish, and Turkish, see G. Parker, Spain and the Netherlands, 1559–1659 (Short Hills, N.J., 1979); D. Cantemir, The History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire, trans. N. Tinda (London, 1734); A. Wiel, The Navy of Venice (London, 1910); and especially K. M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 4, The Sixteenth Century from Julius III to Pius V (Philadelphia, 1984). W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, vol. 4 (Philadelphia, 1904), has an engaging narrative of the battle. Other than disagreements over casualty numbers, the actual position of a few ships in the vicinity of the Greek coast, and the long-term strategic consequences of the victory, there is little major scholarly controversy concerning the actual events of the battle.
For more specialized assessments see A. C. Hess, “The Battle of Lepanto and Its Place in Mediterranean History,” Past and Present 57 (1972), 53–73, and especially M. Lesure, Lépante: La crise de l’empire Ottomane (Paris, 1971). There are also invaluable discussions of the strategy and tactics of Lepanto in the surveys of C. Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1937); J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, vol. 1, From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto (London, 1954); and R. C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Levant, 1559–1853 (Princeton, N. J., 1952).
Lepanto and the primary sources for the battle are also the subjects of chapters in scholarly accounts of sixteenth-century warfare; see, for example, G. Hanlon, The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts, 1560–1800 (New York, 1998); J. F. Guilmartin, Jr., Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technologyand Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1974); and W. L. Rodgers, Naval Warfare Under Oars, 4th to 16th Centuries (Annapolis, Md., 1967). There are good illustrations in R. Gardiner and J. Morrison, eds., The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times (Annapolis, Md., 1995). See also F. C. Lane, Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance (Westport, Conn., 1975).
A number of accessible narratives of the battle exists for the general reader, with good contemporary illustrations. See, for example, R. Marx, The Battle of Lepanto, 1571 (Cleveland, Ohio, 1966), and J. Beeching, The Galleys of Lepanto (London, 1982). Valuable information about Lepanto can be found in biographies of Don Juan of Austria, especially the classic by W. Stirling-Maxwell, Don John of Austria (London, 1883), with its collation of contemporary sources; and see, too, the moving narrative of C. Petrie, Don John of Austria (New York, 1967). For the spectacular commemoration of the Christian victory in art and literature, see L. von Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages (London, 1923). An anthology, G. Benzoni, ed., Il Mediterraneo nella Seconda Metà del ’500 alla Luce di Lepanto (Florence, 1974), has a perceptive article in English for the general reader on Ottoman sources of the conflict: H. Inalcik, “Lepanto in Ottoman Sources,” 185–92.
For conditions of the Mediterranean economy and society in the sixteenth century, see D. Vaughan, Europe and the Turk: A Pattern of Alliances (New York, 1976); K. Karpat, ed., The Ottoman State and Its Place in World History (Leiden, 1974); and H. Koenigsberger and G. Mosse, Europe in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1968). On questions of geography and capitalism, see especially the works of F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century: The Perspective of the World (New York, 1979), and The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. 1 (New York, 1972). Cf., too, E. L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments,Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge, 1987).
For earlier Western military practice, see J. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999). More detailed accounts of the Turkish army and navy are found in R. Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1999). On the economy of Venice, see W. H. McNeill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081–1797 (Chicago, 1974), and A. Tenenti,Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580–1615 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967).
Ottoman military, social, and economic life is a vast field, but good introductions to the structure of the empire and its approach to finance and military expenditure are found in the sympathetic studies of H. Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600 (London, 1973); W. E. D. Allen, Problems of Turkish Power in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1963); S. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 1, Empire of the Gazas: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808 (Cambridge, 1976). More recent general surveys are A. Wheatcroft, The Ottomans (New York, 1993), and J. McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (London, 1997).
The relationship between Islam and capitalism is a minefield of controversy, as Western critics on occasion emphasize the inherent restrictions on the market found under Muslim rule, even as Muslim scholars themselves often argue that there is nothing incompatible with free markets in the Islamic faith. For a review of the problems, see H. Islamoglu-Inan, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy (Cambridge, 1987); M. Choudhury, Contributions to Islamic Economic Theory (London, 1986); and M. Abdul-Rauf, A Muslim’s Reflections on Democratic Capitalism (Washington, D.C., 1984). David Landes has written two excellent appraisals on the role of capitalism in East-West relations: The Rise of Capitalism (New York, 1966), and The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, 1969).
Chapter Eight: Discipline—or Warriors Are Not Always Soldiers
Rorke’s Drift, January 22–23, 1879
There is a heavily footnoted official British history of the war that is a model of nineteenth-century scholarship: Narrative of Field Operations Connected with the Zulu War of 1879 (London, 1881). A number of fascinating memoirs were also published in connection with the war. The Zulu-speaking Henry Harford was attached to the Natal Native Contingent and was involved in the thick of the fighting of the center column; see D. Child, ed., The Zulu War Journal of Colonel Henry Harford, C.B., (Hamden, Conn., 1980). A defense of Colonel Durnford, whose misguided deployments may have lost Isandhlwana, together with a contemporary sympathetic account of the Zulus, is found in F. E. Colenso (daughter of the bishop of Natal), History of the Zulu War and Its Origin (Westport, Conn., 1970). For an account written shortly after Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift by a veteran of tribal wars in South Africa, see also T. Lucas, The Zulus and the British Frontiers (London, 1879). There is a small amount of information about the end of the Zulu War in the diaries of Sir Garnet Wolseley: A. Preston, ed., The South African Journal of Sir Garnet Wolseley, 1879–1880 (Cape Town, 1973). More valuable is a memoir of a Boer translator employed by the Zulus, Cornelius Vign, whose diary was translated from the Dutch by Bishop J. W. Colenso: C. Vign, Cetshwayo’s Dutchman: Being the Private Journal of a White Trader in Zululand During the British Invasion (New York, 1969).
J. Guy has written a sympathetic portrait of the fall and aftermath of the Zulu kingdom that makes much of the economic foundations of the war, specifically the exploitative nature of British and Boer colonial life: The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War in Zululand, 1879–1884 (Cape Town, 1979). See also C. F. Goodfellow,Great Britain and South African Confederation, 1870–1881(London, 1966), and especially J. P. C. Laband and P. S. Thompson, Field Guide to the War in Zululand and the Defence of Natal 1879 (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 1983).
For a classic narrative of the rise of the Zulus and the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, see D. Morris, The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879 (New York, 1965). The major campaigns of the war are covered well by D. Clammer, The Zulu War (New York, 1973); M. Barthorp,The Zulu War (Poole, England, 1980), which contains invaluable illustrations; and A. Lloyd, The Zulu War, 1879 (London, 1974). The most up-to-date accounts of the war is R. Edgerton, Like Lions They Fought: The Zulu War and the Last Black Empire in South Africa (New York, 1988), which has graphic accounts of the actual fighting, and S. Clarke, ed., Zululand at War: The Conduct of the Anglo-Zulu War (Johannesburg, 1984).
There are a number of monographs devoted entirely to Rorke’s Drift. Perhaps the best known is M. Glover, Rorke’s Drift: A Victorian Epic (London, 1975), but there are also fascinating illustrations and photographs in J. W. Bancroft, Terrible Night at Rorke’s Drift (London, 1988). See, too, R. Furneux, The Zulu War: Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift (London, 1963).
The bibliography on Zulu culture and the brief existence of its empire is huge, but besides comprehensive accounts, there are accessible introductions in English to the main issues and problems. See the various surveys in J. Selby, Shaka’s Heirs (London, 1971); A. T. Bryant’s classic, The Zulu People: As They Were Before the White Men Came (New York, 1970); and J. Y. Gibson, The Story of the Zulus (New York, 1970). An American missionary, Josiah Tyler, has left a vivid narrative of Zulu life and customs in Forty Years Among the Zulus (Boston, 1891). Perhaps the best account of the Zulu army is I. Knight, The Anatomy of the Zulu Army: From Shaka to Cetshwayo, 1818–1879(London, 1995).
For a small sampling of the myriad of publications on the nineteenth-century British army, see G. Harries-Jenkins, The Army in Victorian Society (London, 1977); G. St. J. Barclay, The Empire Is Marching (London, 1976); T. Pakenham, The Boer War (New York, 1979); M. Carver, The Seven Ages of the British Army (New York, 1984); and J. Haswell, The British Army: A Concise History(London, 1975). For the importance of drill, see W. H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); and for the relationship of drill, bravery, and the nature of courage, see W. Miller, The Mystery of Courage (Cambridge, Mass., 2000).
For general accounts of the nature of tribal warfare, see B. Ferguson and N. L. Whitehead, eds., War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (Santa Fe, N.M., 1992); J. Haas, ed., The Anthropology of War (Cambridge, 1990); and especially H. H. Turney-High’s classic, Primitive War: Its Practice and Concepts (Columbia, S.C., 1971).
Chapter Nine: Individualism
Midway, June 4–8, 1942
The battle of Midway has been the subject of several books, and often marks the “midway” chapter in comprehensive treatments of the Pacific theater of operations during World War II. For monographs on the battle itself, one should begin with G. Prange (assisted by D. Goldstein and K. Dillion), Miracle at Midway (New York, 1982), which covers the main problems. P. Frank and J. Harrington, Rendezvous at Midway: U.S.S. Yorktown and the Japanese Carrier Fleet (New York, 1967), has an analysis of the repair, return, and sinking of the Yorktown in the battle. Walter Lord’s Incredible Victory (New York, 1967) is a well-written popular account that draws on firsthand oral and written interviews with both Japanese and American veterans of the battle. In addition, there are at least four general studies that largely describe the battle from the American side: A. Barker, Midway: The Turning Point (New York, 1971); R. Hough, The Battle of Midway (New York, 1970); W. W. Smith, Midway: Turning Point of the Pacific(New York, 1966); and I. Werstein, The Battle of Midway (New York, 1961).
For chapter treatments of Midway in general histories of the Pacific theater, still invaluable is Samuel Eliot Morison’s Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August 1942, vol. 4 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (New York, 1949); to be complemented by J. Costello, The Pacific War, 1941–1945 (New York, 1981); and H. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, Md., 1983). D. van der Vat, The Pacific Campaign, World War II: The U.S.-Japanese Naval War, 1941–45, has a good general review of the battle with invaluable observations from the Japanese side. In John Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare (New York, 1989), Midway is discussed as representative of the gradual diminution of the battleship in favor of the aircraft carrier. R. Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York, 1996), also has some astute pages devoted to the battle that emphasize Japanese advantages in weapons and experience. The importance of American intelligence operations is discussed in D. Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York, 1996), and R. Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Cyphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York, 1982).
There are a number of helpful photographs, drawings, charts, tables, and statistics that concern the Japanese navy in A. Watts and B. Gordon, The Imperial Japanese Navy (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), and J. Dunnigan and A. Nofi, Victory at Sea: World War II in the Pacific (New York, 1995).
Two veterans of the Midway-Aleutian campaign, M. Fuchida and M. Okumiya, in Midway, the Battle That Doomed Japan: The Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, Md., 1955), wrote a riveting memoir from the Japanese side, which is balanced and reflective throughout. M. Okumiya and J. Horikoshi, along with M. Caidin (Zero! [New York, 1956]), discuss Midway in the context of the Pacific naval air war. Equally interesting is the diary of M. Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–45 (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1991). There is an anthology of Japanese eye-witness accounts on the major naval encounters of the Pacific theater in D. Evans, ed., The Japanese Navy in World War II in the Words of Former Naval Officers (Annapolis, Md., 1986).
There are also fine chapters from the Japanese point of view in R. O’Connor, The Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II (Annapolis, Md., 1969); P. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Annapolis, Md., 1978); E. Andrie, Death of a Navy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II (New York, 1957); and J. Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945, 2 vols. (New York, 1970).
Much of the battle can be learned from biographies of the opposing supreme commanders. See H. Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy (Annapolis, Md., 1979); J. Potter, Yamamoto: The Man Who Menaced America (New York, 1965); T. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance(Boston, 1974); and E. Hoyt, How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals (New York, 1970).
A number of books discuss the process of Westernization in Japan. See, in general, S. Eisenstadt, Japanese Civilization: A Comparative View (Chicago, 1995); and M. and S. Harries, Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, 1868–1945 (New York, 1991). A more academic and detailed appraisal is found in J. Arnason, Social Theory and Japanese Experience: The Dual Civilization (London and New York, 1997). The specifics of Japan’s adaptation of Western military practice and European technology during the nineteenth century are found in E. L. Presseisen, Before Aggression: Europeans Prepare the Japanese Army (Tucson, Ariz., 1965); R. P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan (London, 1959); and especially S. P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1957).
On the history of the Japanese military and Japan’s cultural assumptions in the organization and practice of war, see T. Cleary, The Japanese Art of War: Understanding the Culture of Strategy (Boston, 1991), and R. J. Smethurst, A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism: The Army and the Rural Community (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974). Robert Edgerton, Warriors of the Rising Sun: A History of the Japanese Military (New York, 1997), provides a good discussion of Japanese behavior toward conquered peoples and captives, and suggests that the 1930–45 period of brutality may have been an aberration in the long history of Japanese military practice.
Chapter Ten: Dissent and Self-Critique
Tet, January 31–April 6, 1968
More has been written on Vietnam than perhaps on all the other battles of this volume combined, no doubt reflecting the wealth and influence of American media and publishing, and the somewhat self-absorption of the present generation of Americans who grew up in the aftermath of World War II. Obvious differences exist over the conduct of the Vietnam War, but increasingly they seem predicated more on chronology than ideology. Much of what was published between 1965 and 1978 is hostile to the American presence and strategy, either the work of leftist critics who emphasize the inhumanity of the United States’ presence, or of more conservative scholars who cite military ineptitude coupled with weak political leadership.
But by the early 1980s—after the absence of free elections in a unified Vietnam, the mass exodus from Vietnam by the boat people, the Cambodian holocaust, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran hostage crisis—there was a gradual but unmistakable shift in perceptions about Vietnam. While most Americans still agreed that the war had been fought wrongly, and perhaps unnecessarily, a good many argued that nevertheless the cause was more right than wrong, and the war could have been won with the right decisive military strategy. There was a confident air among revisionists who felt history had somehow proved them right, and a worried, if sometimes apologetic, stance by most earlier vehement critics, some of whom had visited North Vietnam, praised the communist regimes of Southeast Asia, and broadcast on radio propaganda against U.S. soldiers in the field.
For a synopsis on various topics of research, see J. S. Olson, The Vietnam War: Handbook of the Literature and Research (Westport, Conn., 1993), and R. D. Burns and M. Leitenberg, The Wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, 1945–1982 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1983). For Tet itself, begin with the somewhat dated but still invaluable monograph by D. Oberdorfer, Tet! (New York, 1971). There are some insightful essays on the offensive collected in M. J. Gilbert and W. Head, eds., The Tet Offensive (Westport, Conn., 1996). See also W. Pearson, Vietnam Studies: The War in the Northern Provinces, 1966–8 (Washington, D.C., 1975). There are also good chapters on the Tet Offensive in standard histories of the battle, e.g., S. Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965–1973 (Novato, Calif., 1985). P. Braestrup’s massive two-volume study of the coverage of Tet remains a damning portrait of the American media: P. Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder, Colo., 1977). Some interesting maps and illustrations of the Tet Offensive are found in J. Arnold, Tet Offensive 1968: Turning Point in Vietnam (London, 1990).
For the failures of United States intelligence to give an accurate prediction of the Tet surprise, see R. F. Ford, Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise (London, 1995), who blames the political infighting among intelligence agencies that resulted in failure to make proper use of the excellent raw data that were gathered. There are some invaluable essays on the war and especially the role of airpower during Tet in D. Showalter and J. G. Albert, An American Dilemma: Vietnam, 1964–1973 (Chicago, 1993); for military operations in the aftermath of Tet, see R. Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York, 1993).
For statistics about the soldiers who fought in Vietnam—age, economic background, type of service, race, casualty ratios, etc.—see T. Thayer, War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam (Boulder, Colo., 1985); and for misconceptions about Vietnam veterans: E. T. Dean, Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (Norman, Okla., 1989). Some of the political intrigue in Washington that surrounded Tet is discussed in T. Hoopes, The Limits of Intervention: An Inside Account of How the Johnson Policy of Escalation in Vietnam Was Reversed (New York, 1973), who devotes a chapter to the offensive.
Reasons for the American loss in Vietnam are examined carefully by J. Record, The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Annapolis, Md., 1998)—mostly military ineptitude and the absence of political and strategic reasons for being there in the first place. G. Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York, 1978); L. Sorley, A Better War: TheUnexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York, 1999); and M. Lind, Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict (New York, 1999), all mention the misrepresentations of Tet as part of larger efforts to correct the standard wisdom that Vietnam was not winnable and was morally wrong—as represented perhaps best by the popular accounts of S. Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York, 1983), and N. Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York, 1988).
Tet looms large in various collections of primary documents, speeches, and articles that are designed as readers for university courses; the editors of such anthologies adopt a critical approach to America’s intervention and the military’s conduct in general in Vietnam. See J. Werner and D. Hunt, eds., The American War in Vietnam (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993); G. Sevy, ed., The American Experience in Vietnam: A Reader (Norman, Okla., 1989); M. Gettleman et al., eds., Vietnam and America: A Documented History (New York, 1995); and J. Rowe and R. Berg, eds., The American War and American Culture (New York, 1991). More balanced collections of documents are found (through 1965) in M. Raskin and B. Fall, eds., The Vietnam Reader: Articles and Documents on American Foreign Policy and the Viet-Nam Crisis (New York, 1965), and H. Salisbury, ed., Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War (New York, 1994). For favorable accounts of those protesters who went to North Vietnam, see M. Hershberger, Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War (Syracuse, N.Y., 1998), and J. Clinton, The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North Vietnam, 1965–1972(Boulder, Colo., 1995).
There are also numerous recent narratives of the twenty-six-day, house-to-house fighting at Hué, many of them memoirs by veterans of the ordeal. See N. Warr, Phase Line Green: The Battle for Hue, 1968 (Annapolis, Md., 1997); K. Nolan, Battle for Hue, Tet, 1968 (Novato, Calif., 1983); G. Smith, The Siege of Hue (Boulder, Colo., 1999); and E. Hammel, Fire in the Streets: The Battle for Hue, Tet 1968 (Chicago, 1991). On Khesanh, see the moving narrative of J. Prados and R. Stubbe, Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh (New York, 1991), and cf. R. Pisor, The Siege of Khe Sanh (New York, 1982). The role of airpower in the siege is well chronicled in B. Nalty, Air Power and the Fight for Khe Sanh (Washington, D.C., 1973), published by the Office of Air Force History.
There are good revisionist, strongly opinionated memoirs written shortly after the war by some of the principal American military figures involved. Start with W. C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York, 1976); M. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York, 1972); and U. S. Sharp, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (New York, 1978).