War, Peace, and International Relations. An Introduction to Strategic History

Questions

1. What was the strategic significance of the railways, food canning and the
   electric telegraph?


2. How persuasive do you find the theory of military revolutions? Answer with
   reference to the French and Industrial revolutions.


3. What intellectual and practical problems did the rapid pace of technological
   advance pose for strategists in the nineteenth century?


4. Why was there no general European war between 1815 and 1914?

Further reading

M. S. Anderson The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815–1914, 3rd edn (Harlow: Pearson Education,
2003).
C. J. Bartlett Peace, War and the European Powers, 1814–1914(London: Macmillan, 1991).
G. Best War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770–1870(London: Fontana, 19 8 2).
T. C. W. Blanning (ed.) The Nineteenth Century: Europe, 1789–1914(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
F. R. Bridge and R. Bullen The Great Powers and the European States System, 1814–1914, 2nd
edn (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2005).
D. Gates Warfare in the Nineteenth Century(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
H. A. Kissinger A World Restored: Europe after Napoleon: The Politics of Conservatism in a
Revolutionary Age(New York: Grosset and Dunlop, 1964).
A. D. Lambert The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia, 1853–56(Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1990).
P. W. Schroeder The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848(Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1994).
D. Showalter The Wars of German Unification(London: Arnold, 2004).
G. Wawro Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792–1914(London: Routledge, 2000).

60 War, peace and international relations

Key points

1. The period 1 8 15–1914 was not a century of peace; rather, it was only a century
   that did not register a general European war.


2. The Industrial Revolution introduced a routinization of the process of invention.
   Strategists were challenged to understand the implications of the new
   technologies that appeared at a near-frenetic pace.


3. The Industrial Revolution was one of the six (or seven) great military
   revolutions in modern strategic history.


4. The signature innovations of the Industrial Revolution were the railway and the
   steamship. Both posed novel risks and opportunities for strategists.


5. The invention of the electric telegraph revolutionized civilian and military
   communication.


6. The character of World War I was directly attributable to the consequences of
   the French and Industrial revolutions. Those revolutions were the vital enablers
   of ‘total’ war.