1 Themes and contexts of strategic history
Introduction: a binding framework
The historical narrative and its analysis here are held together by the organizing thesis
that modern international relations can be understood within the framework of strategic
history. Furthermore, that framework, partial though it is, provides a tolerably reliable
guide to the course of international relations globally. However, as grand theory,
the strategic historical postulate is minimal almost to a fault. What other ideas might
bind this long period of modern history for better comprehension? What other aids to
analytical coherence can be identified and exploited? This chapter provides and discusses
answers to those questions in the forms of themes and contexts. Six major themes are
identified which run through the whole of the text. These vital six are relevant to every
period in the two centuries, and to all matters having to do with war and peace. Next, the
principal contexts are presented. In total, they constitute the variable conditions within
which war and peace occur in international relations. Again, in common with the themes,
these contexts are as permanent in their existence and generic significance as they are
vastly diverse in content and relative influence. This discussion of themes and contexts
leads to formal confrontation with the following question: is there some master plot,
some truly grand design, which can be employed to unlock the major mysteries of why
and how modern strategic history took the frequently bloody course that it did? But first
it is necessary to register an important caveat.
One needs to be aware of what deserves to be called the historian’s curse: the curse
of unavoidable foreknowledge or hindsight. The historian knows, broadly at least, what
happened, though not necessarily why. Blessed or cursed with this godlike wisdom, it is