The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw many ambitious European rulers develop permanent armies and navies. War and the State in Early Modern Europe examines this military change as a central part of the political, social and economic transformation of early modern Europe. This important study exposes the economic structures necessary for supporting permanent military organisations across Europe. Large armed forces could not develop successfully without various interest groups who needed protection and were willing to pay for it. Arguing that early fiscal-military states were in fact protection-selling enterprises, the author focuses on: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden the role of local elites the political and organisational aspects of this new military development War and the State in Early Modern Europe offers an impressive insight into the conditions surrounding the growth of military organisations in Europe, and will appeal to European and Military historians alike.

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few "bad apples." But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."
Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive,
finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

In this monumental account and brilliant new analysis of the Napoleonic era in Europe, Frederick W. Kagan, distinguished historian and military policy expert, reveals the complex interaction of continental politics and war that dominated Europe in the early nineteenth century. Using hitherto untapped archival materials from Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, Kagan tells the story of Napoleon and Europe that is vastly different from previous histories. He presents these crucial years from the perspective of all the major players of Europe, as well as countless others. With clear and lively prose, Kagan deftly guides the reader through the intriguing and complex web of international politics and war. The End of the Old Order is the first in a new and comprehensive series of studies of Napoleon and Europe.

In 1919, Keynes participated in the negotiations of World War I's armistice. He strongly disagreed with terms of reparation imposed on Germany, arguing in this controversial book that German impoverishment would threaten all of Europe. This prophetic view of the European marketplace in the early 20th century represents a much-studied landmark of economic theory.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

This book is a history of firearms across the world from the 1100s up to the 1700s, from their invention in China to the time when European firearms had become clearly superior. It asks why it was the Europeans who perfected firearms when it was the Chinese who had invented them, and answers this question by looking at how firearms were used throughout the world. Early firearms were restricted to infantry and siege warfare, limiting their use outside of Europe and Japan. Steppe and desert nomads imposed a different style of warfare on the Middle East, India, and China - a style with which firearms were incompatible. By the time that better firearms allowed these regions to turn the tables on the nomads, Japan's self-imposed isolation left Europe with no rival in firearms design, production, or use, with consequences that are still with us today.

This is a new edition of Geoffrey Parker's much-admired illustrated account of how the West, so small and so deficient in natural resources in 1500, had by 1800 come to control over one-third of the world. Parker argues that the rapid development of military practice in the West constituted a 'military revolution' which gave Westerners an insurmountable advantage over the peoples of other continents. This edition incorporates new material, including a substantial 'Afterword' which summarises the debate which developed after the book's first publication.

Pulling back the curtain on the secretive world of the global arms trade, Andrew Feinstein reveals the corruption and the cover-ups behind weapons deals ranging from the largest in history - between the British and Saudi governments - to BAE's controversial transactions in South Africa, Tanzania and eastern Europe, and the revolving-door relationships that characterise the US Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex. He exposes in forensic detail both the formal government-to-government trade in arms and the shadow world of illicit weapons dealing - and lays bare the shocking and inextricable links between the two. "The Shadow World" places us in the midst of the arms trade's dramatic wheeling and dealing, ranging from corporate boardrooms to seedy out-of-the-way hotels via far-flung offshore havens, and reveals the profound danger this network represents to all of us.

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind?
Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world’s great military powers.
By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

《太白阴经》十卷，唐代兵书，作者为李筌。明以后有题作《神机制敌太白阴经》的。《新唐书·艺文志》、《宋史·艺文志》皆有著录。清代编辑的《四库全书总目提要》在谈及此书时说：“杜佑《通典·兵类》取通论二家，一则李靖兵法，一即此经。”认为“佑之采用此书与李靖之书，无异其必有取之矣”。清代以后论兵者，也都对《太白阴经》一书相当重视。