Essential Militaria is an invaluable repository of information and facts about warfare through the ages. It is the place to find the largest naval battles; the most decisive weaponry; the ranks of the British Army and some very fine speeches. Essential Militaria also encompasses curiosities such as animal bravery awards; the most significant special operations in history; Napoleon's generals; and the eight wounds sustained by Alexander the Great. Authoritative, unusual and irreverent, it is the indispensable companion for armchair generals everywhere.
In this companion volume to his 1995 bibliography of the same title, Daniel Blewett continues his foray into the vast literature of military studies. As did its predecessor, it covers land, air, and naval forces, primarily but not exclusively from a U.S. perspective, with the welcome emergence of small wars from publishing obscurity. In addition to identifying relevant organizations and associations, Blewett has gathered together the very best in chronologies, bibliographies, biographical dictionaries, indexes, journals abstracts, glossaries, and encyclopedias, each accompanied by a brief descriptive annotation. This work remains a pertinent addition to the general reference collections of public and academic libraries as well as special libraries, government documents collections, military and intelligence agency libraries, and historical societies and museums.
Though the Roman Empire has been a hot topic within New Testament studies in the twenty-first century, its military aspect has--strangely--been almost entirely neglected. This volume will fill that lacuna by reprinting pivotal, but difficult to access, essays on the topic from the past forty years. The book will help bring scholars up to speed on what Roman military experts have been saying on the matter and give a sense for key developments within the field over the last forty years. The contents of this book include a variety of pivotal essays, though most are difficult to find without access to a major research library.
In this riveting book, political journalist Peter Snow and military historian Dan Snow bring to life the most intense and bitterly fought battles of the 20th century - from the apocalyptic terrain of the Western Front to the desert landscape of Iraq. Punctuated by powerful eyewitness testimony, their compelling and often shocking narrative highlights the strategy of military commanders as well as the experience of men on the frontline. 20th Century Battlefields looks back at the most violent century in history and examines the challenges facing armed forces in the future.
This unique new work of reference traces the origins of the modern laws of warfare from the earliest times to the present day. Relying on written records from as far back as 2400 BCE, and using sources ranging from the Bible to Security Council Resolutions, the author pieces together the history of a subject which is almost as old as civilisation itself. The author shows that as long as humanity has been waging wars it has also been trying to find ways of legitimising different forms of combatants and regulating the treatment of captives. This first book on warfare deals with the broad question of whether the patterns of dealing with combatants and captives have changed over the last 5,000 years, and if so, how? In terms of context, the first part of the book is about combatants and those who can 'lawfully' take part in combat. In many regards, this part of the first volume is a series of 'less than ideal' pathways. This is because in an ideal world there would be no combatants because there would be no fighting. Yet as a species we do not live in such a place or even anywhere near it, either historically or in contemporary times. This being so, a second-best alternative has been to attempt to control the size of military forces and, therefore, the bloodshed. This is also not the case by which humanity has worked over the previous centuries. Rather, the clear assumption for thousands of years has been that authorities are allowed to build the size of their armed forces as large as they wish. The restraints that have been applied are in terms of the quality and methods by which combatants are taken. The considerations pertain to questions of biology such as age and sex, geographical considerations such as nationality, and the multiple nuances of informal or formal combatants. These questions have also overlapped with ones of compulsion and whether citizens within a country can be compelled to fight without their consent. Accordingly, for the previous 3,000 years, the question has not been whether there should be a limit on the number of soldiers, but rather who is or is not a lawful combatant. It has rarely been a question of numbers. It has been, and remains, one of type. The second part of this book is about people, typically combatants, captured in battle. It is about what happens to their status as prisoners, about the possibilities of torture, assistance if they are wounded and what happens to their remains should they be killed and their bodies fall into enemy hands. The theme that ties all of these considerations together is that all of the acts befall those who are, to one degree or another, captives of their enemies. As such, they are no longer masters of their own fate. As a work of reference this first volume, as part of a set of three, is unrivalled, and will be of immense benefit to scholars and practitioners researching and advising on the laws of warfare. It also tells a story which throws fascinating new light on the history of international law and on the history of warfare itself.
For armchair admirals, history buffs, and naval enthusiasts everywhere, A Naval Miscellany is an indispensible and entertaining collection of fascinating and little-known facts, anecdotes, lists, curiosities and stories from our naval past. Forgotten heroes, amazing blunders, surprising trivia, and strange-but-true stories are all included. Who were the naval heroes of the ancient world, and the world's worst admirals? How much did a midshipman get paid in the eighteenth century? What are the origins of sea shanties? Where are the biggest naval bases in the world today? And how does a ship float? It's all here in this little book that will amaze and enlighten even the most avid student of naval history!
In the theater of war, how important is costume? And in peacetime, what purpose does military spectacle serve? This book takes us behind the scenes of the British military at the height of its brilliance to show us how dress and discipline helped to mold the military man and attempted to seduce the hearts and minds of a nation while serving to intimidate civil rioters in peacetime. Often ridiculed for their constrictive splendor, British army uniforms of the early nineteenth century nonetheless played a powerful role in the troops' performance on campaign, in battle, and as dramatic entertainment in peacetime. Plumbing a wide variety of military sources, most tellingly the memoirs and letters of soldiers and civilians, Scott Hughes Myerly reveals how these ornate sartorial creations, combining symbols of solidarity and inspiration, vivid color, and physical restraint, enhanced the managerial effects of rigid discipline, drill, and torturous punishments, but also helped foster regimental esprit de corps. Encouraging recruitment, enforcing discipline within the military, and boosting morale were essential but not the only functions of martial dress. Myerly also explores the role of the resplendent uniform and its associated gaudy trappings and customs during civil peace and disorder--whether employed as public relations through spectacular free entertainment, or imitated by rioters and rebels opposing the status quo. Dress, drills, parades, inspections, pomp, and order: as this richly illustrated book conducts us through the details of the creation, design, functions, and meaning of these aspects of the martial image, it exposes the underpinnings of a mentality--and vision--that extends far beyond the military subculture into the civic and social order that we call modernity.
