This book examines the politics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the crucial period between the Russian tsar Peter the Great's victory over Sweden at the battle of Poltava and the 1717 Silent Sejm, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament's session which is traditionally seen as responsible for opening the way to Russian domination of Polish-Lithuanian politics. It not only challenges the accepted view of the passivity of the Lithuanian gentry and their subservience to the Russians, but also presents a clear view of how the Lithuanian economy and political system were functioning in 1710-1717, factors which have never been studied in depth in any language. Sapoka argues that much more blame for the Confederations of Vilnius and Tarnogrod that had led to the Silent Sejm can be attributed to the Polish king Augustus II than is argued by the conventional scholarship. By so completely and deliberately ignoring the Commonwealth's institutions and refusing to work within them, the Polish king provoked justified suspicion that by destroying the basis of the consensual political system, he wanted to introduce absolute monarchy.

For the first time in print a book identifies each regiment and illustrates the change in uniforms, the colour of the facings and the nature and shape of the lace for the officers, NCOs and private soldiers over the period of the Napoleonic War 1793-1815. In British Napoleonic Uniforms, Carl Franklin's lavishly illustrated third volume for The History Press, these changes to the uniforms of all the numbered regiments of cavalry and infantry are discussed in detail. It is illustrated with more than two hundred full-colour plates of the uniforms and every aspect of their regimental distinctions. The book is divided into four parts. Part One looks at the commonalities of the cavalry and considers uniforms appropriate to each regiment such as headwear, the evolution of the uniforms and horse furniture. Part Two considers the uniforms of the heavy and light cavalry regiments. It includes full-page colour illustrations of the Household Cavalry, the Heavy Cavalry (Dragoon Guards and Dragoons), and Light Cavalry (the Light Dragoons and Hussars). Part Three shows the commonalties of the infantry and considers the uniform appropriate to each regiment, such as those of the Drummers and Highland Regiments, as well as their tartans. Part Four discusses the uniforms and distinctions of the infantry, including the regiments of Foot Guards and Infantry of the Line (Fusiliers, Light Infantry, Riflemen and Highland Regiments). For this revised edition Carl Franklin has updated many of the artworks and provided a colour guide specifically for modellers.

War is one of the greatest human evils. It has ruined livelihoods, provoked unspeakable atrocities and left countless millions dead. It has caused economic chaos and widespread deprivation. And the misery it causes poisons foreign policy for future generations. But, argues bestselling historian Ian Morris, in the very long term, war has in fact been a good thing. In his trademark style combining inter-disciplinary insights, scientific methods and fascinating stories, Morris shows that, paradoxically, war is the only human invention that has allowed us to construct peaceful societies. Without war, we would never have built the huge nation-states which now keep us relatively safe from random acts of violence, and which have given us previously unimaginable wealth. It is thanks to war that we live longer and more comfortable lives than ever before. And yet, if we continue waging war with ever-more deadly weaponry, we will destroy everything we have achieved; so our struggles to manage warfare make the coming decades the most decisive in the history of our civilisation. In War: What Is It Good For? Morris brilliantly dissects humanity's history of warfare to draw startling conclusions about our future.

The outbreak of World War I saw the collapse of socialist notions of class solidarity and reaffirmed the enduring strength of nationalism. The workers of the world did not unite, but turned on one another and slaughtered their fellows in what was then the bloodiest war in history. There have been many efforts to explain the outbreak of war in 1914, but few from so intimate a perspective as LeBon's. He examines such questions as why German scholars tried to deny Germany's obvious guilt in the war, and what explained the remarkable resolve of the French army to persevere in the face of unprecedented adversity.

To such questions, LeBon proposes answers built upon principles well articulated in the larger body of his work. He transforms the character of the debate by demonstrating how psychological principles explain more persuasively both the causes of German academic ignominy and the origins of French valor. Convinced as he was that only psychology could illuminate collective behavior, LeBon dismisses purely economic or political interpretations as ill-conceived and inadequate precisely because they fail to appreciate the role of psychology in the collective behavior of national statesmen, prominent scholars, and ordinary soldiers.

The Psychology of the Great War provides a bridge to study both crowd behavior and battlefield behavior by illustrating how ordinary people are transformed into savages by great events. This element in LeBon's thinking influenced Georges Sorel's thinking, as he had seen the same phenomenon in those who participated in general strikes and revolutions. And in a later period and different context, Hannah Arendt gave this strange capacity of the ordinary to be transformed into the extraordinary the name "banality of evil." The book will be of interest to social theorists, psychologists concerned with group behavior, and historians of the period.

The exact legacies of the two Hague Peace Conferences remain unclear. On the one hand, diplomatic and military historians, who cast their gaze to 1914, traditionally dismiss the events of 1899 and 1907 as insignificant footnotes on the path to the First World War. On the other, experts in international law posit that The Hague's foremost legacy lies in the manner in which the conferences progressed the law of war and the concept and application of international justice. This volume brings together some of the latest scholarship on the legacies of the Hague Peace Conferences in a comprehensive volume, drawing together an international team of contributors.

Examines Eighth Army's 1,000-strong tank force - rebuilt, reorganized, and equipped with brand-new Sherman and Churchill tanks - that secured victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein. When Eighth Army retired into the defensive line at El Alamein on 30 June 1942, it was tired, dispirited and had lost almost all its tanks during a string of defeats at Gazala, Tobruk and Mersa Matruh. After savage defensive fighting at First Alamein, the reinforced Desert Rats defeated Rommel's last offensive in a tank-to-tank clash at Alam Halfa in September. The next month, a completely rebuilt and reorganized Eighth Army, equipped with over 1,000 tanks including the American M4 Sherman, launched the offensive that would finally drive Rommel out of Africa. Montgomery shaped the Eighth Army according to his own military ideas, and on 23 October was able to attack the Axis defenses with the largest force of armoured divisions in its history, with the 1st, 8th and 10th united in a new 'corps de chasse' intended to defeat the Afrika Korps at its own game, and the 7th and two infantry support tank brigades assigned to support the XXX and XIII Corps. With the exception of the A9, 10 and 13 cruisers of 1940-41, as the offensive began, the Eighth Army contained every type of tank employed during the North Africa campaign. Using detailed illustrations of the tanks involved with an analysis of the tactics employed for battle, this is a focused examination of the tank forces that won the Second Battle of El Alamein - the most famous British Army victory of World War II, and one of the turning points of the war.

Focusing on three of the defining moments of the twentieth century - the end of the two World Wars and the collapse of the Iron Curtain - this volume presents a rich collection of authoritative essays, covering a wide range of thematic, regional, temporal and methodological perspectives. By re-examining the traumatic legacies of the century's three major conflicts, the volume illuminates a number of recurrent yet differentiated ideas concerning memorialisation, mythologisation, mobilisation, commemoration and confrontation, reconstruction and representation in the aftermath of conflict. The post-conflict relationship between the living and the dead, the contestation of memories and legacies of war in cultural and political discourses, and the significance of generations are key threads binding the collection together. While not claiming to be the definitive study of so vast a subject, the collection nevertheless presents a series of enlightening historical and cultural perspectives from leading scholars in the field, and it pushes back the boundaries of the burgeoning field of the study of legacies and memories of war. Bringing together historians, literary scholars, political scientists and cultural studies experts to discuss the legacies and memories of war in Europe (1918-1945-1989), the collection makes an important contribution to the ongoing interdisciplinary conversation regarding the interwoven legacies of twentieth-century Europe's three major conflicts.

*** 'If you only read one book about the Falklands make sure it's this one.' - Soldier magazine 'An extraordinarily detailed account of the bloodiest battle of the Falklands war.' - Major General Jonathan Shaw CB CBE When 3 Para began their assault under cover of darkness on Mount Longdon in June 1982, nobody knew what to expect. The three platoons of B Company each approached the mountain silently, treading carefully through a series of defensive minefields. But following an explosion, fighting quickly escalated with shocking speed and severity, resulting in some of the bloodiest close hand fighting, terrible injuries, and shocking loss of life experienced by British troops since the Korean war. Recreating 3 Para's bloody Falklands battle from multiple angles, James O'Connell - who fought there and was seriously injured himself - has written a gut-wrenching 360 degree classic. Frustrated by highly inaccurate books about the battle, O'Connell decided to set the record straight. What he did next was extraordinary - he revisited the Falkland's five times with comrades and Argentine soldiers and literally walked through the battle with them, step-by-step, creating an unprecedented masterpiece of immersive military publishing. Combined with rare access to the Battalion's records and radio logs, the resulting book is the last word on Mount Longdon, and might be the most harrowingly realistic description of modern warfare you will ever read.

Military Diasporas proposes a new research approach to analyse the role of foreign military personnel as composite and partly imagined para-ethnic groups. These groups not only buttressed a state or empire's military might but crucially connected, policed, and administered (parts of) realms as a transcultural and transimperial class while representing the polity's universal or at least cosmopolitan aspirations at court or on diplomatic and military missions. Case studies of foreign militaries with a focus on their diasporic elements include the Achaemenid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Roman Empire in the ancient world. These are followed by chapters on the Sassanid and Islamic occupation of Egypt, Byzantium, the Latin Aegean (Catalan Company) to Iberian Christian noblemen serving North African Islamic rulers, Mamluks and Italian Stradiots, followed by chapters on military diasporas in Hungary, the Teutonic Order including the Sword Brethren, and the Swiss military. The volume thus covers a broad band of military diasporic experiences and highlights aspects of their role in the building of state and empire from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and from Persia via Egypt to the Baltic. With a broad chronological and geographic range, this volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the history of war and warfare from Antiquity to the sixteenth century.

"We will be judged in our own time and in the future by measuring the aid that we, inhabitants of a free and fortunate country, gave to our brethren in this time of greatest disaster." This declaration, made shortly after the pogroms of November 1938 by the Jewish communities in Sweden, was truer than anyone could have forecast at the time. Pontus Rudberg focuses on this sensitive issue - Jewish responses to the Nazi persecutions and mass murder of Jews. What actions did Swedish Jews take to aid the Jews in Europe during the years 1933-45 and what determined their policies and actions? Specific attention is given to the aid efforts of the Jewish Community of Stockholm, including the range of activities in which the community engaged and the challenges and opportunities presented by official refugee policy in Sweden.

This book explains the history and development of the military design movement, featuring case studies from key modern militaries. Written by a practitioner, the work shows how modern militaries think and arrange actions in time and space for security affairs, and why designers are disrupting, challenging, and reconceptualizing everything previously upheld as sacred on the battlefield. It is the first book to thoroughly explain what military design is, where it came from, and how it works at deep, philosophically grounded levels, and why it is potentially the most controversial development in generations of war fighters. The work explains the tangled origins of commercial design and that of designing modern warfare, the rise of various design movements, and how today's military forces largely hold to a Newtonian stylization built upon mimicry of natural science infused with earlier medieval and religious inspirations. Why does our species conceptualize war as such, and how do military institutions erect barriers that become so powerful that efforts to design further innovation require entirely novel constructs outside the orthodoxy? The book explains design stories from the Israel Defense Force, the US Army, the US Marine Corps, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Australian Defence Force for the first time, and includes the theory, doctrine, organizational culture, and key actors involved. Ultimately, this book is about how small communities of practice are challenging the foundations of modern defence thinking. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, and security studies, as well as design educators and military professionals.

This volume begins with an investigation of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It draws upon eye-witness German accounts of what occurred, and supplements these with German archival and detailed Soviet materials. The Soviet government has released extensive amounts of formerly classified archival materials from the period. This material has been incorporated into the maps and text.

Early-modern Venice is predominantly remembered as a maritime power, yet historians have become increasingly interested in its political and military aspirations within the Italian mainland. Adding to the growing literature on this subject, Giulio Ongaro's book addresses the practical management of the Venetian military apparatus in this period. Focusing on two provinces - Vicenza and Brescia - he interrogates a broad spectrum of primary source documents produced by these rural communities that illuminate Venetian military activities between the mid-sixteenth century and the end of the War of Candia in 1670. From the production of the saltpeter, the construction of the fortresses, the supplying and the training of the rural militia and the quartering of troops, this book shows how essential military activities were managed and overseen at the local level. In so doing, it demonstrates how local autonomy over the management of Venetian military apparatus - particularly from an economic point of view - did not necessarily conflict with wider, ongoing processes of state building or moves towards the centralization of particular public functions. Indeed the state appeared to encourage local elites (initially urban, then rural) to take a leading role in overseeing the localised management of military tasks. The result was a system that both supported the resilience of the local economy (both public and private), and which strengthened and improved the Republic's military assets, allowing it to remain the only Italian state free from the domination of European monarchies.

Forty papers link the study of the military orders' cultural life and output with their involvement in political and social conflicts during the medieval and early modern period. Divided into two volumes, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe respectively, the collection brings together the most up-to-date research by experts from fifteen countries on a kaleidoscope of relevant themes and issues, thus offering a broad-ranging and at the same time very detailed study of the subject.

Forty papers link the study of the military orders' cultural life and output with their involvement in political and social conflicts during the medieval and early modern period. Divided into two volumes, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe respectively, the collection brings together the most up-to-date research by experts from fifteen countries on a kaleidoscope of relevant themes and issues, thus offering a broad-ranging and at the same time very detailed study of the subject.

When Japanese signals were decoded at Bletchley Park, who translated them into English? When Japanese soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, who interrogated them? When Japanese maps and plans were captured on the battlefield, who deciphered them for Britain? When Great Britain found itself at war with Japan in December 1941, there was a linguistic battle to be fought--but Britain was hopelessly unprepared. Eavesdropping on the Emperor traces the men and women with a talent for languages who were put on crash courses in Japanese, and unfolds the history of their war. Some were sent with their new skills to India; others to Mauritius, where there was a secret radio intercept station; or to Australia, where they worked with Australian and American codebreakers. Translating the despatches of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin after his conversations with Hitler; retrieving filthy but valuable documents from the battlefield in Burma; monitoring Japanese airwaves to warn of air-raids--Britain depended on these forgotten 'war heroes'. The accuracy of their translations was a matter of life or death, and they rose to the challenge. Based on declassified archives and interviews with the few survivors, this fascinating, globe-trotting book tells their stories.

The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman domination. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalised old ones - from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia or the modernizing Ataturk, and destroyed others. And it completely re-drew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, including Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia - all of them (with the exception of Turkey) under the 'protection' of the victor powers, Britain and France. For many, the self-serving intervention of these powers in the region between 1914 and 1919 is the major reason for the conflicts that have raged there on and off ever since. Yet many of the most commonly accepted assertions about the First World War in the Middle East are more often stated than they are truly tested. Rob Johnson, military historian and former soldier, now seeks to put this right by examining in detail the strategic and operational course of the war in the Middle East. Johnson argues that, far from being a sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the centre of gravity in a war for imperial domination and prestige. Moreover, contrary to another persistent myth of the First World War in the Middle East, local leaders and their forces were not simply the puppets of the Great Powers in any straightforward sense. The way in which these local forces embraced, resisted, succumbed to, disrupted, or on occasion overturned the plans of the imperialist powers for their own interests in fact played an important role in shaping the immediate aftermath of the conflict - and in laying the foundations for the troubled Middle East that we know today.

This book introduces an English-speaking public to the life of Madeleine Riffaud - one of the last living leaders of the French Resistance. It considers the nature of the rebel hero in France's founding historical narratives (revolution, insurrection, resistance) while asking what contributions such a hero might make to debates on national identity today. Through a series of narrative close-ups, the book offers perspectives on major chapters in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French history through the eyes of activists who experienced them: the Revolution of July 1830 and the 1851 insurrection against Napoleon, as experienced by Riffaud's ancestor Edme Liron, and the French Resistance, the Vietnam War and French-Algerian conflict as experienced by Riffaud herself. The book aims to explore the kinds of choices individuals face when their beliefs set them at odds with the state, and to suggest that there is a place for individual action in a global arena where state boundaries are becoming increasingly less relevant.

'If there were a Nobel Prize in History, Colley would be my nominee' Jill Lepore, New Yorker 'One of the most exciting historians of her generation, but also one of the most interesting writers of non-fiction around' - William Dalrymple, Guardian 'Colley takes you on intellectual journeys you wouldn't think to take on your own, and when you arrive you wonder that you never did it before' - David Aaronovitch, the Times 'A global history of remarkable depth, imagination and insight' Tony Barber, Financial Times Summer Books Starting not with the United States, but with the Corsican constitution of 1755, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen moves through every continent, disrupting accepted narratives. Both monarchs and radicals play a role, from Catherine the Great of Russia, with her remarkable Nakaz, to Sierra Leone's James Africanus Horton, to Tunisia's Khayr-al-Din, a creator of the first modern Islamic constitution. Throughout, Colley demonstrates how constitutions evolved in tandem with warfare, and how they have functioned to advance empire as well as promote nations, and worked to exclude as well as liberate. Whether reinterpreting Japan's momentous 1889 constitution, or exploring the significance of the first constitution to enfranchise all adult women on Pitcairn Island in the Pacific in 1838, this is one of the most original global histories in decades.

The Compendium of World Sovereigns series contains three volumes Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern. These volumes provide students with easy-to-access 'who's who' with details the identities and dates, with ages and wives, where known, of heads of government in any given state at any time within the framework of reference. The relevant original and secondary sources are also listed in a comprehensive bibliography. Providing a clear reference guide for students, to who was who and when they ruled in the Dynasties and other ruler-lists for the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern worlds - primarily European and Middle Eastern but including available information on Africa and Asia and the pre-Columbian Americas. The trilogy accesses and interprets the original data plus any modern controversies and disputes over names and dating, reflecting on the shifts in and widening of focus in student and academic studies. Each volume contains league tables of rulers' 'records', and an extensive bibliographical guide to the relevant personnel and dynasties, plus any controversies, so readers can consult these for extra details and know exactly where to go for which information. All relevant information is collected and provided as a one-stop-shop for students wishing to check the known information about a world Sovereign. The Early Modern volume begins with Eastern and Western Europe and moves through the Ottoman Empire, South and East Asia, Africa and ends in Central and South America. Compendium of World Sovereigns: Volume III Early Modern provides students and scholars with the perfect reference guide to support their studies and to fact check dates, people, and places.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) pitted conservative forces including the army, the Church, the Falange (fascist party), landowners, and industrial capitalists against the Republic, installed in 1931 and supported by intellectuals, the petite bourgeoisie, many campesinos (farm laborers), and the urban proletariat. Provoking heated passions on both sides, the Civil War soon became an international phenomenon that inspired a number of literary works reflecting the impact of the war on foreign and national writers. While the literature of the period has been the subject of scholarship, women's literary production has not been studied as a body of work in the same way that literature by men has been, and its unique features have not been examined. Addressing this lacuna in literary studies, this volume provides fresh perspectives on well-known women writers, as well as less studied ones, whose works take the Spanish Civil War as a theme. The authors represented in this collection reflect a wide range of political positions. Writers such as Maria Zambrano, Merce Rodoreda, and Josefina Aldecoa were clearly aligned with the Republic, whereas others, including Mercedes Salisachs and Liberata Masoliver, sympathized with the Nationalists. Most, however, are situated in a more ambiguous political space, although the ethics and character portraits that emerge in their works might suggest Republican sympathies. Taken together, the essays are an important contribution to scholarship on literature inspired by this pivotal point in Spanish history.