War and World History [repost]

For thousands of years, military engagements between opposing nations and societies have had important effects on all aspects of human civilization. While the most direct and recognizable impacts of war are the victories and defeats that shape the course of history, warfare also affects human culture in ways that are not always appreciated or understood.

Surprising as it may seem, war often creates as well as destroys. As the most complex of all human endeavors, warfare—from ancient to modern—has spurred the growth of essential new technologies; demanded the adoption of complex economic systems; shaped the ideology and culture of nations; promoted developments in art and literature; and spread faith across the globe.

Consider, for example, just a few intriguing facts about the important role of warfare in human history:

The banking and credit systems that are mainstays of our culture developed as a specific response to the needs of war.
Although wars often appear to emerge from conflict within political systems, in many cases— such as the Ottoman Empire and the European nation-states—the political systems themselves emerged from the activity of war.
The New England colonies in the United States would probably never have survived economically if it were not for huge profits from piracy and privateering.
Here, then, is a highly provocative encounter with history. In War and World History, celebrated military historian and Professor Jonathan P. Roth of San José State University offers you a fresh and challenging insight into human societies through a deep look at the effects and roles of war.

These 48 lectures take you on an exploration of humanity's interface with armed conflict across five continents. But this is far from a traditional approach to military events. This panoramic series is not the history of battles or military campaigns, but the story of the intimate interconnections of war with human cultures and societies and how these connections have shaped history.

As a penetrating view of the many contexts and meanings of warfare, War and World History is for anyone interested in understanding the evolution of our civilization, past and present.


The Global Terrain of Human Conflict

Huge in scope and fascinating in its details, War and World History explores the complex effects of culture, economics, politics, and religion on war—and war's influences on them. In this context, you chart the colorful history of the practice and methodology of warfare.

As your guide, Professor Roth is unusually well qualified to present a broad-minded view of these events. A war protester in his youth, he later served for six years in the New York Army National Guard, then became an acclaimed scholar of warfare. With his richly informed perspective, the lectures unfold as an enthralling inquiry into the nature of organized conflicts.

In probing the links between evolving human cultures and warmaking, the course reveals the ways in which the fate of civilizations is determined by the fate of military events.

But there's another core feature of the lectures: Seen through the lens of armed struggle, this is world history itself at its most vivid and compelling. You witness the dramatic rise of organized societies, economic systems, empires, and nations, as well as world-shaping creeds, ideologies, cultural forms, and developing conceptions of religion, citizenship, and social identity.

Professor Roth makes the great scope of the material directly understandable by focusing the lectures around the core themes of economics, politics, religion, and social culture in their relation to warfare.

War Pays Its Way

In the 8th century B.C. the Phoenicians—famous as traders—staked out maritime colonies across the Mediterranean. Their goal: vast profit from silver, slaves, and other commodities. But this trade came about through warfare and was pursued in support of warfare. Backed by the first warships designed specifically to fight other ships, the Phoenicians' trade in silver funded the armies of the Assyrian Empire.

This deep interweaving of warfare with economies forms a theme you investigate across the arc of history. In selected lectures you learn

how the cost of a single medieval castle consumed as much as a third of a kingdom's entire revenue;
how bitter conflict over war budgets led to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215;
how Renaissance credit and banking empires arose in response to the financial strains of war;
how the victory of liberal democracies over totalitarian regimes in the 20th century was due to successful management of capitalist economies.


Lectures:

1. What Is War?
2. The Historiography of War
3. The Stone Age War
4. Peace, War, and Civilization
5. The Chariot Revolution
6. The Sword Revolution
7. Steppes, Standing Armies, and Silver Trade
8. Pirates and Hoplites
9. Great Empires of West and East
10. War and the Rise of Religion
11. The Greek Way of War
12. An Age of War throughout the Core
13. New Empires and an Armed Peace
14. Monotheisms and Militaries
15. Barbarians and the Fall of Three Empires
16. Conquest Links the Core
17. The Middle Ages and a Common Way of War
18. Armored Horsemen and Global Feudalization
19. Crusade, Jihad, and Dharma Yuddha
20. The Mongols Conquer a World
21. The Business of War in Medieval Europe
22. The Gunpowder Revolution
23. War at the Margins
24. A World Apart.War in the Americas
25. Renaissance and Military Revolution
26. Conquest and Colonies
27. The Gunpowder Empires
28. More Holy Wars
29. The Rise of the Regiment
30. The Wooden World
31. The Global War to Control Trade
32. Warfare and the Nation-State
33. War and the Making of the Americas
34. War and the Unmaking of Africa and Asia
35. The Industrialization of War
36. The Nationalization of War
37. Race and Class at War
38. Imperialism and the Triumph of the West
39. The 19th-Century Culture of War
40. A Common Way of War.The 20th Century
41. War and 20th-Century Ideology
42. War and the Persistence of Nationalism
43. Economies and Economics at War
44. Culture and War in the 20th Century
45. The Weaponization of Information
46. Guerrilla War and Terrorism
47. The Struggle for Peace and Justice
48. Warfare at the Turn of a New Century

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Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers

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