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Keegan, John. A History of Warfare. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

            In his monumental study On War, Carl von Clausewitz argued war was the continuation of politics.  His thesis has for almost two centuries been the basis of scholarly work on the subject of war.  In fact, military historians spend considerable text verifying or refuting his conclusions.  The military historian John Keegan in his award winning A History of Warfare describes Clausewitz’s work as a “great” work of “ideology, laying down a vision of the world not as it actually was but as it might be” (21).  By providing a comprehensive look at warfare from pre-history to the present, Keegan hopes to hash out the meaning of war.  He centers his study on a Clausewitzian framework, namely by asking and, then attempting to answer, the question, “what is war?”  Keegan reasons there is a cultural level to war that Clausewitz fails to answer or address.  War, Keegan states, “is always an expression of culture, often a determinant of cultural forms, in some societies the culture itself” (12).  World War I, for example, was the result of a militaristic culture in Europe, not a political struggle as other historians have suggested.  Clausewitz can be considered the “ideological father” of World War I, but only because of the militaristic climate he helped to create.  Keegan does not fault Clasuewitz for his limited scope, but through a linear analysis of the history of war, Keegan hopes to prove that culture, not politics, is central to warfare.

            Keegan refutes the idea that man is predisposed for warfare and violence.  His initial examination of four societies reveals that many lived a simple, pastoral lifestyle until a shift in cultural attitudes toward violence.  The Zulus, for example, originally led a “gentle” life that was fundamentally altered by the rise of Shaka and Zulu imperialism.  In fact, Keegan argues “Shaka was a perfect Clauswitzian.  He designed a military system to serve and protect a particular way of life, which it did with dramatic efficiency” (32).  Additionally, Keegan demonstrates how the dominance of the Samurai in Japan shows that “war may be, among other things, the perpetuation of a culture by its own means” (46).  Yet, through a careful analysis of the historical record, Keegan believes man has started to distance himself from war.  The costs of war have begun to outstrip the benefits, and in the process man has moved from an “undoubtedly warlike past towards [a] potentially peaceful future” (60).

            Keegan breaks the history of warfare into four eras: stone, flesh, iron, and fire.  Each marks a transition in the art of war, and between each chapter he discusses a particular innovation in warfare, from fortifications to the development of armies.  In his first “interlude,” Keegan examines the limitations of warmaking.  Wealth, water, weather, and “deficiencies of propulsive power” contributed over the centuries to victory and defeat.  Much of the globe has never seen warfare, and most of the major sea battles in history have been fought in relative proximity to one another.  Moreover, heavy rain, rough seas, drought, and snow have dictated the course of many battles, as has half of the human population, females.  While Keegan concludes females do not fight, the theft of women has been a major cause of war in history.  But the discussion of women and their role in war provides Keegan with a transition to the question of why men fight.

            The inherent bellicosity of man is one of Keegan’s central themes and possibly where he deviates from the most recent work on the nature of early man.  Keegan argues that “the violent individual is the principle threat to the norm of cooperativeness within groups…” (79).  In his chapter on stone, Keegan outlines types of warfare in primitive societies and the “transition” brought about by the Sumerians to more “civilised” combat.  Groups such as the Yanomamo engaged in a type of ritualistic combat where most lived to fight another day.  Thus, in contrast to a Clausewitzian paradigm, war was not the product of politics nor was total defeat the primary objective.  Other cultures practiced brutal forms of combat, but again, cultural limitations precluded wholesale slaughter.  Keegan, in short, portrays warfare as an abhorrent process for early man.  It was not until man learned better military organization and the desire for colonies that warfare resembled the modern version of combat.  With the proper fighting tools at their disposal, the Sumerians began the warfare revolution.  Other cultures quickly assimilated to their form of combat and thus created the need for stronger defensive positions.

            The dawn of civilized warfare brought forth the era of fortification.  Simple agricultural societies recognized the value of a strong defensive position, but the chariot and other improvements to warmaking capabilities created a need for more effective keeps.  Strongholds contributed to the decentralization of ancient and medieval history.  “They proliferate when central authority has not been established or is struggling to secure itself or has broken down” (142).  To be sure, the proliferation of strongholds in medieval Europe was the result of incessant barbarian raids, though Keegan insists they were also constructed for reasons of power and prestige.  After a central authority asserted itself, strongholds were erected for strategic defense, primarily in frontier provinces.  Keegan contends the value of a stronghold to a strategic defense plan hinged on the ability of a central authority to maintain adequate supply and high morale amongst the garrisons.

              The horse necessitated the creation of strongholds and led to the development of new weapons and fighting tactics.  “Kings,” Keegan states, “were made by the first great horses” (156).  Charioteers allowed the Assyrians to conquer Mesopotamia and the Hyksos to dominate Egypt.  A byproduct of the chariot was the utilization of the warhorse by the fifth century A.D., a process that “transformed war, making it for the first time a thing in itself” (189).  The horse people introduced long range campaigns, high-speed combat, and the idea “that war could be an autonomous activity and the warrior’s life a culture in itself” (216).  Muslim and Mongolian warriors used “flesh” to forge expansive empires, though neither could translate military success into permanent power.  The ability of the horse people to emotionally detach from the killing fields led to a fusion between horse and warrior and a type of brutal warfare that practiced deliberate atrocity.  “A horse horde closed in for the kill, it slaughtered without compunction” (213).  This attitude, which predates Clausewitz, would filter into the warfare of settled peoples.  Thus, nomadic warfare had more to do with the concept of a complete, ferocious, and ruthless victory than Clausewitz liked to believe.  Nineteenth-century Europe relied on such tactics, often attributed to Clausewitz and Napoleon, but medieval Europe was forged by a horse culture native to Asia and the Middle East.

            The formation of armies led Clausewitz to the conclusion that war was the continuation of politics.  Citizen armies led to universal suffrage and the militarization of society.  The consequences of mass conscription—high costs and low citizen morale—would have to be dealt with by nineteenth- and twentieth-century governments.  Yet, Keegan illustrates that other forms of organized combat, though ignored under the Clausewitzian paradigm, were as effective in both offensive and defensive struggles as their “modern” counterparts.  Other forms, such as warriors, mercenaries, slaves, and regulars, performed equally as well as their more modern conscript and militia counterparts.  The Cossacks, for example, were a group ignored by Clausewitz because of their unconventional fighting style.  Keegan proves deviation in military styles had much to do with culture, time, and place.  The Cossacks did not fight like Western Europeans because they were a product of the horse peoples and traditional Russian society and remained aloof, for the most part, from centralized tsarist Russia.  Traditional units were used by European powers to augment conscription and militia forces into the nineteenth century.  But Keegan argues the roots of the modern army are found in the proliferation of iron in the tenth century B.C.

            The first recorded militaristic iron users were the Hallstatt cultures of Eastern Europe.  Keegan describes them as aggressive swordsmen “who counted on a sharp edge and long point to overcome and opponent” (239).  The Hallstatt peoples migrated to Greece where they dramatically influenced the course of Greek warfare.  To be sure, the Greeks’ attachment of war to politics influenced men such as Clausewitz and Jean-Jacque Rousseau, both of whom believed in the political nature of war.  Greek warmaking, however, relied on the culture of the region.  Warlike games mirrored their attitude toward war, and the development of the phalanx brought face-to-face warfare to the Western model.  The hearty Spartans, cerebral Athenians, and aggressive Macedonians crushed foes that were not yet advanced enough to resist the shield and spear wall of the phalanx.  Moreover, Greek military discipline allowed for complete victory on both land and sea during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

After the fall of the Hellenistic Kingdoms, the Romans would enhance the nature of armed conflict.  Brutal and aggressive, the Romans, in Keegan’s estimation, perfected the art of organized warfare, and in the process, created the standard for the modern army.  Again, a militaristic Roman culture necessitated yearly, destructive campaigns waged for glory, money, and territory.  “In retrospect, how easy it is to see that Rome’s principal contribution to mankind’s understanding of how life may be made civilised was its institution of a disciplined and professional army” (283).  The interregnum between Rome and the centralized governments of the sixteenth century was one of feudalism, crusading knights, and a type of warfare Keegan describes as horrible and bloody.  In many ways, warfare in the Middle Ages resembled that of primitive societies, but by the end of the Medieval Period, the use of iron “had run its course” (298).

            Keegan’s final interlude concerns logistics and supply.  While stone, bronze, and iron were the weapons of combat, warfare depended on the ability of an army or raiding party to operate with full supply.  Thus, until the modern era, campaigns were typically limited by time and distance.  The only exception, initially, was the cavalry army.  Roads and navigable waterways alleviated some of the problems of logistics and supply during the Roman Era, and by the nineteenth-century A.D., railroads allowed for industrialized regions to sustain armies at greater distances from their home territory.  But even into the twentieth century, large standing armies faced problems of food and ammunition supplies.  The importance of industrial capacity and smooth supply lines can not be underestimated.  Keegan argues “supply and logistics were…to bring clear-cut victory in the Second World War, and at almost marginal cost…to the principal winner” (313).  In short, logistics and supply dictated the outcome of a conventional conflict in the twentieth century.

            Keegan’s final chapter analyzes the role of fire, principally gunpowder, in warfare.  He begins his discussion with Greek fire and ends with a look at nuclear warfare.  Gunpowder brought the era of fortification to an end and changed the nature of sea battles.  Personal armor was no longer a necessity; hence cavalry and infantry units began wearing lighter and more flexible protection in battle.  Gunpowder revolutionized the composition of units in an army and changed the nature of organization and preparation for combat.  Drilling became necessary to achieve victory on the battle field.  The modern solider, Keegan believes, needed constant training in order to maintain rank in the face of withering gunfire.  By the mid-twentieth century, “revolutionary weapons, the warrior ethos and the Clausewitzian philosophy of integrating military with political ends were to ensure that, under Hitler’s hand, warmaking in Europe between 1939 and 1945 achieved a level of totality of which no previous leader…had ever dreamed” (372).  Gunpowder changed not only the way wars were fought but also they way in which they could and did affect civilian populations.  Nuclear weapons, as the ultimate method of destruction, do not, in Keegan’s opinion, fit a Clausewitzian framework, though Western military leaders attempt to justify their creation through the doctrine of deterrent.  Man, Keegan reasons, has in the last 4000 years made war a habit, but like all bad habits one that needs to be reassessed and discarded.

            Keegan concludes by stating he hopes to have “cast doubt on the idea that man is doomed to make war or that affairs of the world must ultimately be settled by violence” (386).  His generally cooperativist view of man belies other scholarly work on the inherent nature of man to make war.  Man, he believes, has a penchant for violence but also the ability to limit violence and reach agreement through negotiation rather than bloodshed.  “Politics must continue; war cannot” (391).  Warriors are still necessary to keep the peace and preserve civilization, but warriors, in his opinion, should no longer be seen as the extension or continuation of politics.  If the world does not change, Keegan believe the future is doomed to bloodied hands and incessant conflict.

            A History of Warfare has been recognized as one of the best comprehensive studies of world conflict.  Keegan’s conclusions, however, are debatable.  Lawrence Keeley’s War Before Civilization contradicts Keegan’s assessment of the passivity of early man; Johanna Bourke, in An Intimate History of Killing, supplies ample evidence on the role of women in combat and warmaking; and Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles contains a political approach to the history of warfare, one that is somewhat in line with a Clauswitzian vision of conflict.  Yet Keegan is undeniably correct in portraying the complexity of war.  To be sure, war can not be relegated to politics alone; culture does play a role, as Victor Hanson has shown in Carnage and Culture.  While Keegan’s book makes an excellent primer for a military history course, his romantic vision of pre-historic man and consistent reiteration of the centrality of culture to warfare leaves the reader unsatisfied.  A History of Warfare should be read in combination with the aforementioned works in order to gain a complete perspective on the nature and history of conflict.