War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800

Download War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Brill Academic Pub
ISBN 13 : 9789004243644
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (436 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800 by : Jeff Fynn-Paul

Download or read book War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800 written by Jeff Fynn-Paul and published by Brill Academic Pub. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In War, Entrepreneurs and the State, leading authors on the topic of military logistics provide cutting-edge insights into the role of the entrepreneur in making war and building states in Europe and the Mediterranean between 1300 and 1800.

War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800

Download War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004271309
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800 by :

Download or read book War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In War, Entrepreneurs, and the State, Jeff Fynn-Paul (Leiden) assembles an internationally acclaimed selection of authors to push forward the debate on the role of entrepreneurs in making war and building states in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Topics covered include logistics, supply, recruitment, and the finance of war. Chapters have been carefully commissioned with an eye towards complementarity. In an introduction co-written with Marjolein ‘t Hart and Griet Vermeesch, Fynn-Paul challenges existing discourses of military entrepreneurialism. A new benchmark is proposed: did states choose to work with entrepreneurs, or to restrict their activities and subvert the market? From the introduction and the individual chapters, a new more expansive vision of the military entrepreneur emerges. Contributors are: Carlos Álvarez-Nogal, Pepijn Brandon, William Caferro, Stephen Conway, Thomas Goossens, Aaron Graham, Rhoads Murphey, David Parrott, Helen Paul, Guy Rowlands, Kahraman Şakul, Marjolein 't Hart, Andrea Thiele, and Rafael Torres Sánchez.

The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur

Download The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501764993
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur by : Suzanne Sutherland

Download or read book The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur written by Suzanne Sutherland and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur explores how a new kind of international military figure emerged from, and exploited, the seventeenth century's momentous political, military, commercial, and scientific changes. In the era of the Thirty Years' War, these figures traveled rapidly and frequently across Europe using private wealth, credit, and connections to raise and command the armies that rulers desperately needed. Their careers reveal the roles international networks, private resources, and expertise played in building and at times undermining the state. Suzanne Sutherland uncovers the influence of military entrepreneurs by examining their activities as not only commanders but also diplomats, natural philosophers, information brokers, clients, and subjects on the battlefield, as well as through strategic marital and family allegiances. Sutherland focuses on Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609–80), a middling nobleman from the Duchy of Modena, who became one of the most powerful men in the Austrian Habsburg monarchy and helped found a new discipline, military science. The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur explains how Montecuccoli successfully met battlefield, court, and family responsibilities while contributing to the world of scholarship on an often violent, fragmented political-military landscape. As a result, Sutherland shifts the perspective on war away from the ruler and his court to instead examine the figures supplying force, along with their methods, networks, and reflections on those experiences.

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century

Download Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198784112
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century by : Rafael Torres Sánchez

Download or read book Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century written by Rafael Torres Sánchez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century offers a new approach to the relationship between warfare and state construction. Historians looking at how war funding impinged on state development, and how state growth made wars more significant, have tended to downplay the role of military-provisioning entrepreneurs. Written off as corrupt and selfish, these entrepreneurs jarred with the received view of a rationally growing and modernising state. This volume shows that the state-entrepreneur relationship was much more fluid and constant than previously thought. The state was not able to enforce a top-down military supply policy; at the same time it benefited from the entrepreneurs' collaboration and their shared mercantilist ambitions. The entrepreneurs' mobilisation of military supplies was crucial for extending state authority and helped to knit together national and colonial markets. But this fluid state-entrepreneur relationship gradually became shrouded in privileges and monopolies, not so much ideology driven or imposed by the entrepreneurs but rather as an arrangement exploited by the state to boost its control over them, whittling down middlemen and ensuring the solvency and creditworthiness of the chosen few. This arrangement spiralled into a risky inter-dependence and cramped entrepreneurial competition. Rafael Torres Sanchez furnishes new insights into the role of military entrepreneurs in debates about warfare and state construction.

Early Modern Overseas Trade and Entrepreneurship

Download Early Modern Overseas Trade and Entrepreneurship PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000079066
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Early Modern Overseas Trade and Entrepreneurship by : Kaarle Wirta

Download or read book Early Modern Overseas Trade and Entrepreneurship written by Kaarle Wirta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on an impressive range of archival material, this monograph delves into the careers of two businessmen who worked for Nordic chartered monopoly trading companies to illuminate individual entrepreneurship in the context of seventeenth-century long-distance trade. The study spans the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, examining global entanglements through personal interactions and daily trading activities between Europeans, Asian merchants and African brokers. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of individuals and their networks within the great European trading companies of the early modern period. This unique book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of economic history, business history, early modern global history and entrepreneurship.

The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War

Download The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198875401
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War by : Thomas Pert

Download or read book The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War written by Thomas Pert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-07 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War examines the experience of exiled royal and noble dynasties during the early modern period through a study of the rulers of the Electorate of the Palatinate during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). By drawing on a wide range of archival source materials, ranging from financial records, printed manifestos, and considerable quantities of diplomatic and personal correspondence, it investigates the resources available to the exiled 'Palatine Family' as well as their attempts to recover the lands and titles lost by Elector Frederick V--the son-in-law of King James VI and I of England and Scotland--in the opening stages of the Thirty Years' War. This work focuses on the years between Frederick's death in 1632 and the partial restoration of his son Charles Louis under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Although the 'Palatine Question' remained one of the most divisive and important issues throughout the entire Thirty Years' War, the years 1632-1648 have been greatly overlooked in previous examinations of the Palatine Family's exile. By considering the experiences of exiled elites in early modern Europe--such as the relationship between the Palatine Family and the Stuart Dynasty--this work will reveal the influence of dynastic and familial obligations on the high politics of the period, as well as the importance of conspicuous display and diplomatic recognition for exiled regimes in seventeenth-century Europe. It will demonstrate that that dispossessed rulers and houses were not automatically rendered politically insignificant after losing their lands and titles, and could actually remain an important player on the geo-political stage of early modern Europe.

The Allure of Battle

Download The Allure of Battle PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199910995
Total Pages : 701 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Allure of Battle by : Cathal Nolan

Download or read book The Allure of Battle written by Cathal Nolan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-02 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains - from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon - play a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.

Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies

Download Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000588173
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (5 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies by : Steven O’Connor

Download or read book Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies written by Steven O’Connor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book showcases new historical research on foreign soldiers, including an overview of the early modern period and numerous case studies which cover the last 175 years and stretch over 5 continents. The last two decades have seen the term ‘foreign fighter’ enter our everyday vocabulary. The insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Syrian Civil War and the rise and fall of the Islamic State group have sparked public interest in the phenomenon of people choosing to leave their own country and fight in a foreign conflict. Foreign fighters, their origins, motives, activities and potential danger to their home countries have become subjects of debate, attracting contributions from politicians, military personnel, the media, political scientists, legal scholars but to a much lesser extent from historians. The ten essayss in this volume showcase new historical research on foreign military labour. The aim of the volume is to better understand the experiences and challenges faced by both the foreigners and the host country, particularly its armed forces, and to highlight the significance of these trends to the contemporary debate on foreign fighters. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal European Review of History.

Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes

Download Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633867428
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes by : Andrei Cusco

Download or read book Imperial Designs, Postimperial Extremes written by Andrei Cusco and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anchored in the Russian Empire, but not limited to it, the eight studies in this volume explore the nineteenth-century imperial responses to the challenge of modernity, the dramatic disruptions of World War I, the radical scenarios of the interwar period and post-communist endgames at the different edges of Eurasia. The book continues and amplifies the historiographic momentum created by Alfred J. Rieber’s long and fruitful scholarly career. First, the volume addresses the attempts of Russian imperial rulers and elites to overcome the economic backwardness of the empire with respect to the West. The ensuing rivalry of several interest groups (entrepreneurs, engineers, economists) created new social forms in the subsequent rounds of modernization. The studies explore the dynamics of the metamorphoses of what Rieber famously conceptualized as a “sedimentary society” in the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet settings. Second, the volume also expands and dwells on the concept of frontier zones as dynamic, mutable, shifting areas, characterized by multi-ethnicity, religious diversity, unstable loyalties, overlapping and contradictory models of governance, and an uneasy balance between peaceful co-existence and bloody military clashes. In this connection, studies pay special attention to forced and spontaneous migrations, and population politics in modern Eurasia.

The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs

Download The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110657597
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs by : Mark Fissel

Download or read book The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs written by Mark Fissel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-12-05 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs updates two central debates in military history--the one surrounding the concept of military revolution, and the one on military affairs--whilst advancing original research in both fields. Only a handful of publications consider the military revolution and the RMA in tandem. This book breaks new ground conceptually and appeals to an exceptionally large and diverse readership. Comparative revisionist studies of the military revolution and RMA better enable us to comprehend the historical continuum and reveal the new RMA for what it is. And for what it is shortly to become. This book presents original contributions within the "epicentre" of the military revolution debate, the 1500s, with an emphasis on gunpowder revolution (offensively and defensively). The connections with the Revolution in Military Affairs are then made explicit by scholars, a practitioner, and an analyst, with an emphasis on airborne lethal autonomous weapons systems. This is a chronologically broad and unique methodological approach to a historical debate that begs for clarification as we enter an era where killer robots will almost certainly take from humans their monopoly on violence.

A global history of early modern violence

Download A global history of early modern violence PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526140624
Total Pages : 427 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A global history of early modern violence by : Erica Charters

Download or read book A global history of early modern violence written by Erica Charters and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This is the first extensive analysis of large-scale violence and the methods of its restraint in the early modern world. Using examples from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe, it questions the established narrative that violence was only curbed through the rise of western-style nation states and civil societies. Global history allows us to reframe and challenge traditional models for the history of violence and to rethink categories and units of analysis through comparisons. By decentring Europe and exploring alternative patterns of violence, the contributors to this volume articulate the significance of violence in narratives of state- and empire-building, as well as in their failure and decline, while also providing new means of tracing the transition from the early modern to modernity.

Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland

Download Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Helsinki University Press
ISBN 13 : 9523690396
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (236 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland by : Petri Talvitie

Download or read book Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland written by Petri Talvitie and published by Helsinki University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early modern centuries, gunpowder and artillery revolutionized warfare, and armies grew rapidly. To sustain their new military machines, the European rulers turned increasingly to their civilian subjects, making all levels of civil society serve the needs of the military. This volume examines civil-military interaction in the multinational Swedish Realm in 1550–1800, with a focus on its eastern part, present-day Finland, which was an important supply region and battlefield bordered by Russia. Sweden was one of the frontrunners of the Military Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. The crown was eager to adapt European models, but its attempts to outsource military supply to civilians in a realm lacking people, capital, and resources were not always successful. This book aims at explaining how the army utilized civilians – burghers, peasants, entrepreneurs – to provision itself, and how the civil population managed to benefit from the cooperation. The chapters of the book illustrate the different ways in which Finnish civilians took part in supplying war efforts, e.g. how the army made deals with businessmen to finance its military campaigns and how town and country people were obliged to lodge and feed soldiers. The European armies’ dependence on civilian maintenance has received growing scholarly attention in recent years, and Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland brings a Nordic perspective to the debate.

The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660-c.1783

Download The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660-c.1783 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131703984X
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660-c.1783 by : Aaron Graham

Download or read book The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660-c.1783 written by Aaron Graham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of the 'fiscal-military state', popularised by John Brewer in 1989, has become familiar, even commonplace, to many historians of eighteenth-century England. Yet even at the time of its publication the book caused controversy, and the essays in this volume demonstrate how recent work on fiscal structures, military and naval contractors, on parallel developments in Scotland and Ireland, and on the wider political context, has challenged the fundamentals of this model in increasingly sophisticated and nuanced ways. Beginning with a historiographical introduction that places The Sinews of Power and subsequent work on the fiscal-military state within its wider contexts, and a commentary by John Brewer that responds to the questions raised by this work, the chapters in this volume explore topics as varied as finance and revenue, the interaction of the state with society, the relations between the military and its contractors, and even the utility of the concept of the fiscal-military state. It concludes with an afterword by Professor Stephen Conway, situating the essays in comparative contexts, and highlighting potential avenues for future research. Taken as a whole, this volume offers challenging and imaginative new perspectives on the fiscal-military structures that underpinned the development of modern European states from the eighteenth century onwards.

Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats

Download Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004700854
Total Pages : 537 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (47 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats by :

Download or read book Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-08-19 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Money, money, and more money.” In the eyes of early modern warlords, these were the three essential prerequisites for waging war. The transnational studies presented here describe and explain how belligerent powers did indeed rely on thriving markets where military entrepreneurs provided mercenaries, weapons, money, credit, food, expertise, and other services. In a fresh and comprehensive examination of pre-national military entrepreneurship – its actors, structures and economic logic – this volume shows how readily business relationships for supplying armies in the 17th and 18th centuries crossed territorial and confessional boundaries. By outlining and explicating early modern military entrepreneurial fields of action, this new transnational perspective transcends the limits of national historical approaches to the business of war. Contributors are Astrid Ackermann, John Condren, Jasmina Cornut, Michael Depreter, Sébastien Dupuis, Marian Füssel, Julien Grand, André Holenstein, Katrin Keller, Michael Paul Martoccio, Tim Neu, David Parrott, Alexander Querengässer, Philippe Rogger, Guy Rowlands, Benjamin Ryser, Regula Schmid, and Peter H. Wilson.

A Dissimulated Trade

Download A Dissimulated Trade PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004504117
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (45 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Dissimulated Trade by : Germán Jiménez-Montes

Download or read book A Dissimulated Trade written by Germán Jiménez-Montes and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-21 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germán Jiménez-Montes sheds light on the role of foreigners in the Spanish empire. The book examines how a group of Dutch, Flemish and German merchants came to dominate the supply of timber in Seville.

The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600

Download The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199948720
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 by : Karen Hagemann

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 written by Karen Hagemann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To date, the history of military and war has focused predominantly on men as historical agents, disregarding gender and its complex interrelationships with war and the military. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 investigates how conceptions of gender have contributed to the shaping of war and the military and were transformed by them. Covering the major periods in warfare since the seventeenth century, the Handbook focuses on Europe and the long-term processes of colonization and empire-building in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia. Thirty-two essays written by leading international scholars explore the cultural representations of war and the military, war mobilization, and war experiences at home and on the battle front. Essays address the gendered aftermath and memories of war, as well as gendered war violence. Essays also examine movements to regulate and prevent warfare, the consequences of participation in the military for citizenship, and challenges to ideals of Western military masculinity posed by female, gay, and lesbian soldiers and colonial soldiers of color. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 offers an authoritative account of the intricate relationships between gender, warfare, and military culture across time and space.

Logistics

Download Logistics PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Pen and Sword Military
ISBN 13 : 1399006029
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (99 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Logistics by : Jeremy Black

Download or read book Logistics written by Jeremy Black and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-10-30 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging military history examines the vital yet overlooked role of logistics through the global evolution of warfare. An army cannot operate without supplies, yet military researchers and historians often overlook the essential aspect of logistics. In this comprehensive study, Jeremy Black provides an informative yet concise world history of military logistics through the ages. With special focus on key conflicts, Black examines such factors as climate, geography, food supplies, welfare of troops, payment, transport, communications, terrain, and distance. He also considers related factors including government policy, stability, and financial conditions. He covers the sweep of history, from ancient and medieval times to modern eras of industrial warfare, highlighting technological advances from oil and steam to cyber warfare and smart weapons.