Abstract
There is no doubt that war has been one of the most important catalysts of social change in history. The legacies of previous wars are visible throughout contemporary societies in so many ways: from the parliamentary systems, electoral politics, and democratic institutions to the existing citizenship laws, welfare provisions, and increased infrastructural capacities. As Otto Hintze showed long time ago, our parliamentary institutions originated in the medieval assemblies of warriors where one’s membership in a political community was dependent on their willingness to fight in wars. Similarly, the rudimentary forms of democracy that emerged in ancient Greece and medieval Switzerland were a direct product of warfare whereby self-armed farmers–soldiers attained their voting rights through their regular participation in military actions. The gradual expansion of citizenship rights across different social strata was premised on the willingness of various social groups to fight in wars or actively support the war effort. For example, in 1918, British Representation of the People Act recognised the war contribution of urban workers and women by extending the suffrage rights to citizens who did not own property and to women over 30 years of age. The earliest forms of welfare state can be traced back to the military objectives of Prussian government which introduced pensions for war veterans and war widows in order to increase the level of recruitment and to prevent mass emigration to Americas. The contemporary welfare state is a direct consequence of the mass scale war participation in the WWII. Previous wars have also left visible legacies in the development of science and technology, transport and communication systems and many areas of everyday life – from the pre-packaged food, air traffic control to sanitary napkins, and so on. In other words, the experience of warfare has shaped most of social institutions that underpin contemporary world.
Margaret MacMillan’s new book explores this long-term legacy of organised violence and the impact war had on social change. The focus is on the interdependency of war and society through time. MacMillan argues that warfare has shaped almost every aspect of human living experience and that without comprehending its historical pervasiveness one cannot fully understand the contemporary social orders. The author emphasises that historically war has been an instrument of mass destruction and death, but it has also inspired sacrifice for others and creation of new and more equal societies. Hence ‘war is not an aberration, best forgotten as quickly as possible. Nor is it simply an absence of peace which is really the normal state of affairs’ (p 2). Instead, war is a crucial part of human historical experience and as such deserves more analytical attention than it usually receives.
The book zooms in on different aspects of war and military experience including the reasons for warfare, the role of military strategy, tactics and traditions in the combat zone, the social contexts that generate warrior ethics and behaviour, the different historical trajectories of fighting, the role of technology in the modernisation of war, the position of civilians in times of violent conflicts, the intrinsic friction and unpredictability of the battlefield environments, and the remembrance of war in art and collective memory.
MacMillan opts for the thematic instead of chronological presentation. Hence, rather than exploring the transformation of warfare through time the focus is on different aspects of military history. The book is illustrated with abundance of historical examples from very different time periods and variety of locations from around the world. As the book is aimed primarily for the general audience rather than for the specialists in this field much of the narrative consists of short synthesis of existing scholarship.
This is an interesting and valuable book that could inspire non-academics to devote more attention to the study of relationship between war and society. MacMillan shows convincingly that warfare had profound impact on many areas of social life and that ignoring this historical legacy is counterproductive for understanding many contemporary developments in the world. The book is also written in an erudite yet very accessible style. The key points are nicely illustrated with the numerous historical examples. MacMillan is also successful in bringing together historical knowledge with lively illustrations from the world of literature, everyday life, and her own experience. The book is particularly good at charting the contribution of women to war throughout history. MacMillan gives a voice to women warriors, from ancient Scythia to Soviet Union during World War II, as well as the various guerrilla movements, but also shows how the labour and ideological support of women were central for the war effort in different periods of history.
However, the book also has some pronounced weaknesses. First, the thematic focus is not fully developed, and the author often jumps quickly from one to another issue without elaborating on the points raised. More importantly the book does not offer an opportunity to explore how exactly war has changed social relations and institutions. The overemphasis on the random examples from history does not help the reader to see the dynamics of social change. Instead of identifying specific social mechanisms and processes that have shaped war and have been shaped by war, one encounters overly descriptive accounts of various wars where there is no sense of how, why, and when social change transpires. In some instances, MacMillan seems to be arguing that the relationships between war and society have not changed much or at all. For example, she states that ‘the underlying reasons [for war] have not changed significantly over the centuries . . . greed, self-defence, emotions and ideas are still the midwifes of war. And in its fundamentals, strategy, the broad goals of war, has not changed’ (p. 60). This kind of blanket statement goes against everything we know about the historical relationship between war and society. The institution of war has changed substantially over the past 5000 years and particularly in the last 300 years when warfare has reshaped entire societies. The pre-modern and modern wars differ profoundly in terms of organisational capacity and competence to mobilise different social strata, ideological penetration of society, ability of states to envelop the networks of micro-solidarity, technology, strategy, tactics, logistics, and so many other factors. This type of static reasoning leads the author to make very ahistorical, Eurocentric, and almost anti-sociological pronouncements such as that Europe’s Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) are essentially similar to the contemporary conflicts in Afghanistan and Somalia (p. 284) or that the use of religious rhetoric in contemporary warfare makes them almost identical to the religious wars of premodern world (‘today of course we have religious wars again and the targets are again without limit until the final goal is achieved’, p. 52). Most historical sociologists who systematically study organised violence would find this type of reasoning deeply problematic.
Second discernible weakness of this book is its lack of engagement with the recent research on war. Since the book aims to look at the relationship between war and society, one would expect that the author engages at least briefly with the contemporary scholarship on this topic. Nevertheless, apart from military history and international relations literature, there is no attempt to consult vast recent research in academic fields directly related to this topic such as sociology, psychology, archaeology, or anthropology. The consequence of this is that at times the book reproduces some old clichés about war that contemporary scholarship has largely discredited. For example, MacMillan relies on Napoleon Chagnon’s 1960s research on Yanomami to indicate that violence is prevalent among hunter gatherers (p. 16). However, many anthropologists have demonstrated not only that Chagnon’s findings were deeply flawed but also that he himself was responsible for arming Yanomamis during his expedition. Recent anthropological and archaeological scholarship by Douglas Fry, Brian Ferguson, and many others shows clearly that most simple hunter gatherers avoid violent encounters and that the institution of war develops very late in human history. Similarly, MacMillan insists that ‘from the time of the earliest cave paintings we have been trying to portray war’ (p. 164) but what archaeologists show is that most cave paintings do not show violence between humans, only hunting of animals. Although some cave paintings are 40,000 years old, it is only in the later years that one can find sporadic depictions of violent conflict. As Dale Guthrie corroborates in his work the palaeolithic art and cave paintings in particular do not show any inter-human violence. The book contains many such examples which indicate a lack of engagement with the recent research on war across different disciplines. This is a lost opportunity as consulting wider scholarship on war would certainly be beneficial for this book.
Despite these shortcomings, this is still a very useful book that help us contextualise the role of warfare in social development and as such should appeal to the wider readership. War remains a puzzle that continues to shape social life. War also generates many unintended consequences that continue to mould human experience.