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-European Military 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 of Globalization (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 Western Mediterranean 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 G
reek-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 Modern Strategy: 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).
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