This book explains how changing understandings of mind and body in the period 1450-2000 transformed war, military culture, and military theory. This book includes ground-breaking macro study of the experience and culture of war. It uses previously neglected sources, particularly memoirs and autobiographies of pre-1900 soldiers and synthesizes personal memoirs of common soldiers, theoretical military guidebooks, religious conversion narratives, philosophical treatises and visual art.For millennia, war was viewed as a supreme test. In the period 1750-1850 war became much more than a test: it became a secular revelation. This new understanding of war as revelation completely transformed Western war culture, revolutionizing politics, the personal experience of war, the status of common soldiers, and the tenets of military theory.

For millennia, war was viewed as a supreme test. In the period 1750-1850 war became much more than a test: it became a secular revelation. This new understanding of war as revelation completely transformed Western war culture, revolutionizing politics, the personal experience of war, the status of common soldiers, and the tenets of military theory.