I recently finished reading this book, published in 1993. Keegan was a very popular military historian. I loved his first book but the glow wore off on his later works. More on that later, but first on to reviewing the book at hand.
The book has two main thrusts;
one, to dethrone Clausewitz, who preached what he considered the eternal truth
about warfare - war is politics by other means. Second, war can be about
culture rather than politics and there are other modes of war than the western
way. Most interesting but Keegan sometimes shoe-horned facts to fit his thesis.
For example, he said the chariot warriors were the nomadic precursors of the
horse-archer armies (Huns, Turks, Mongols, etc.). He then said that Darius III’s
army was chariot based. I find that quite a stretch. The Persians tried to use
scythed chariots once, at Arbela/Gaugemela, an experiment that failed signally. Their
army at this time seems to have been based on a mix of heavy cavalry, Greek
mercenary heavy infantry and anyone else they could get, aside from the
ceremonial chariot Darius was perched upon.
Later, in the part about the
decline of the later Persian Empire, it seems the Parthian dynasty took power
and then was overrun by the Muslim Arabs. No mention of the intervening
centuries of Sassanid rule. Minor nitpicking that may be, but every now and
then such omissions and/or oversights occur.
His analysis of the Muslim theology/politics
struck me as less than convincing. I don’t have a theory of how or why so many
Muslim dynasties used slave soldiers (Mamelukes, Janissaries, etc.) but I’m not
sold on his; that it was a way for Muslims to get around the ban on fighting other believers, since the slave soldiers were all converts.
That said, the book is quite
interesting. Disagreeing with some of his views didn't mean it was all problematic. It has a lot of tidbits that history geeks (like me) will find intriguing.
Clausewitz was nearly unknown until von Moltke the Elder (victor of the 1866
and 1870 wars) cited his work. Berthier’s Neuchatel Battalion (I have one in miniature)
was taken into Prussian service after Napoleon was deposed and in time morphed
into the Prussian Guard Schuetzen Battalion. There are all sorts of these
little gems.
Keegan points out that the worship of Clausewitz led western general staffs down the road to the disasters of World Wars I and II. Not all the blame is laid at the foot of that Prussian officer/author, but enough adheres. After the carnage of the world wars, the western way of war has led us to the current dilemma of mutually assured destruction via our arsenals of nuclear weapons. I do agree with Keegan that the cheap weapons saturating the poor nations are the industrial world’s most shameful product.
If you can find a copy of this book (mine was free), it is worth a read. I don’t take it as gospel.
John Keegan 1934-2012
Keegan’s first book, The Face of Battle, was a revelation, like a meditation on violence. I waited breathlessly for his next work, purchasing them as they were published. Each failed to reach the heights of his first. He could always produce an interesting turn of phrase, but the whole book never cohered quite as the first did. In time my worship of him waned. I do find that often the best writing in each book is the introduction, where Keegan revealed more about his personal life. In the first he revealed he’d never been in battle. Later he reported his physical handicap, and growing up in England when the Allied armies were forming up for D-Day. I would pay for a collection of his introductions. Shelf space in my apartment being at a premium, some of his works have been sold to a used book store.
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