understanding of war requires contextualization. Military history exists in a context of
other histories’ (Black, 2004: 243).
Context is so significant that it can overwhelm the scholar, with the unhappy result that
a strategic history may be all context and scarcely any war or warfare. One must not make
that mistake. However, strategic history proceeds on its erratic, sometimes non-linear,
way, in context (in fact, in multiple contexts). For clarity in analysis this discussion treats
the principal contexts of war separately, but strategic history moves holistically, with
everything influencing everything else simultaneously. The contexts discussed here are
always in play. Every event, episode or process that later chapters consider as a note-
worthy happening in strategic history occurred subject to the influence of contemporary
detail in the contexts identified here.
With some compression and many exclusions, the winning shortlist of the contexts
of war comprises the political; the socio-cultural; the economic; the technological;
the military-strategic; the geographical; and the historical. Some of these may be less
than fully self-explanatory, so it is necessary to probe a little beneath the bare labels on
the concepts. There are two purposes to this exercise. First, strategic history makes no
sense if it comprises the story of force bereft of context. Second, because it will be
necessary to make frequent references to one context or another throughout the historical
discussion in this text, it is essential that there should be no vagueness as to their
meaning.
The political context provides the lion’s share of the fuel for the strategic strand in
history. It is what war is about, by and large at least. It is where war and peace come from.
Decisions to fight, or not, are the products of a political process. Armies and their military
behaviour are, or should be, the servants of a political context. Needless to add, perhaps,
even when a state has a tradition of strict separation of civilian from soldier, the armed
forces are not only an instrument of policy, but a part of the society they are pledged to
protect. To a highly variable degree, soldiers are the agents of a political context and they
themselves are an integral part of that context.
Next, strategic history is made within a socio-cultural context. Strategic performance
typically bears a label with its maker’s name. States and their societies approach strategic
issues, and behave militarily, in ways shaped by their prevalent values and beliefs. Those
values and beliefs will evolve over time, but they provide a definite socio-cultural context
within which policy and strategy must be made. The socio-cultural context is by no
10 War, peace and international relations
Box 1.2Contexts of strategic history
- Political
- Socio-cultural
- Economic
- Technological
- Military-strategic
- Geographical
- Historical