Kaushik Roy - A Global History of Pre-Modern Warfare: Before the Rise of the West, 10,000 BCE–1500 CE

Focusing on the relationship between Asia and Europe, this is an important and fascinating account of the development of military practice and systems. The

concept of convergence and divergence serves Professor Roy well in a study that

deserves widespread attention.

Jeremy Black, University of Exeter, UK

This outstanding work is a hugely ambitious and scholarly analysis of the diver

sity of the human experience of war over millennia. Kaushik Roy eschews sim

plifications and slogans to come to grips with one of the most important and

most horrible aspects of human behaviour and reveals patterns of change and

development across the millennia of human existence.

John France, Swansea University, UK

Military historiography has long favored the narrative of Western exceptional

ism, rising out of Greece and Rome, and carried forward by knights against

Islamdom until European gunpowder armies and navies conquered the world

as part of the supposed Military Revolution. Kaushik Roys present book is a

tour de force in its reassessment of Eurasian military history and its demonstra

tion that many of the elements of war in different periods attributed to a Western lineage beginning with the Romans and the Greeks were actually born in and

shared across Eurasia, that there were in fact many military revolutions across

Eurasia that marked the rise of Asian military prowess, and that will into the

eighteenth century, European armies could still have been outmatched by the

Mongol armies of the thirteenth century. This book with its more complex dis

tillation of the findings of the growing literature on nonwestern military devel

opments, its timely relocation of historical military developments to multiple Eurasian nodes, and its erudite analysis of the factors that kept Asian armies competitive with those of Europe is a significant contribution to our understanding

of the world of warfare prior to 1500.

Michael W. Charney, SOAS, University of London, UK

This sweeping new survey persuasively challenges many of the hoary axioms

that have long dominated Western historians views on premodern warfare.

Kaushik Roy takes aim at earlier analyses that turned on over-simplified notions

of Eastern and Western Ways of War, and the dominance of technological

change. In their place, he offers a more textured model of recurring conver

gence, divergence and amalgamation in the organization of military forces and

the conduct of war within and among the diverse civilizations of premodern

Eurasia, driven by a matrix of cultural, political, geographic, and technological

factors. This is an essential read for all students of world military history.

Karl Friday, University of Georgia, USA

A GLOBAL HISTORY OF PRE-MODERN

WARFARE

This book examines the military histories of the regions beyond Western Europe

in the pre-modern era.

Existing works on global military history mainly focus on warfare in the

western part of Eurasia after 1500 ce. As regards the ancient period, such works

concentrate exclusively on Greece and Rome. So, global military history is

actually the triumphal story of the West from Classical Greece onwards. This

volume focuses not only on the eastern part of Eurasia but also on South

America, Africa and Australasia and seeks to explain the history and varied

trajectories of warfare in non-Western regions in the pre-modern era. Further,

it evaluates whether warfare in non-Western regions should be considered

primitive or inferior when compared with Western warfare. The book notes

that Western Europe became militarily significant only in the early modern era

and argues that the military divergence that occurred during the early modern

era is not unique it had also occurred in the Bronze Age, the Classical era

and in the medieval period. This was due to the dynamism and innovativeness

of non-Western militaries and the interconnectedness that existed in parts of

the Eurasian landmass. Further, those polities which were able to construct a

balanced military force by synthesising diverse elements were not only able to

survive but also became capable of projecting power across continents.

This book will be of much interest to students of military history, strategic

studies and world history.

Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Professor in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, India. He is a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo,

Norway.

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For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Cass

Military-Studies/book-series/CMS

A GLOBAL HISTORY

OF PRE-MODERN

WARFARE

Before the Rise of the West,

10,000 BCE1500 CE

Kaushik Roy

First published 2022

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 Kaushik Roy

The right of Kaushik Roy to be identified as author of this work has

been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other

means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and

recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks

or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and

explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Roy, Kaushik, 1971 author.

Title: A global history of pre-modern warfare : before the rise of the

West, 10,000 bce-1500 ce / Kaushik Roy.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, [2022] | Series:

Cass military studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.