1st Edition
Routledge Handbook of Medieval Military Strategy
This Handbook provides the first comprehensive and global analysis of medieval military strategy, covering the period from the sixth to the seventeenth century.
Challenging the widely held notion in modern strategic studies that medieval strategy was non-existent, the Handbook brings together leading scholars to explore a range of literatures, campaigns, laws, and contexts that highlight medieval warfare’s multifaceted contours. The scope of the work is ambitious, with over 30 chapters dedicated to analysing strategy across six continents. From Charlemagne to Henry V and Scandinavia to Florence; southbound to Morocco then across the Sahara to Kongo; past the Adriatic to Byzantium and Georgia and the Crusades and Egypt; further still into Indian and Chinese dynasties and Japan; and finally, to Central and South America—this Handbook provides ready access to military strategy across the medieval world stage. In the process, it fills a significant gap in the history of strategy and serves to connect the ancient world with the modern, demonstrating that—whatever the period—military leaders have consistently plied warfare in the pursuit of greater ends.
This Handbook will be of much interest to researchers and students of military strategy, medieval military history, and strategic studies in general.
Introduction
Part I: Europe
1. Charlemagne’s Long-Term Strategic Goal: Obtaining the Imperial Title in the West
Bernard S. Bachrach
2. Anglo-Saxon and Viking Military Strategies
Richard P. Abels
3. Grand Strategy of the Ottonian Empire, 919-973
David S. Bachrach
4. Strategy in the High Middle Ages: Anglo-Normans, Capetians and Plantagenets
Steven Isaac
5. Insurgency: Unconventional Strategy in the West, 500-1300
Laurence W. Marvin
6. The Continuous Crusade in Northeast Europe: Warfare in Livonia, Estonia, Prussia and Lithuania, 1198-1411
Alan V. Murray and Gregory Leighton
7. Military Professionalization and Strategy in Late Medieval England
David Simpkin
8. Beyond the Town Walls: Economy and the Florentine Forces, 1336-1392
William Caferro
9. The Origins of National Navies in the West
Susan Rose
10. Strategy and Military Revolutions
Clifford J. Rogers
Part II: The Mediterranean
11. Strategy and Grand Strategy: Resources, Geopolitics and Ideology in the East Roman/Byzantine Empire
John Haldon
12. Maurice and His Legacy: Strategike in the Byzantine Military Manuals
Georgios Theotokis
13. The Fatimids and Syria
Yaacov Lev and David Bramoullé
14. The Crusades: Western Armies and Eastern Strategies
John France
15. The Rule of the Temple and the Military-Religious Orders
Helen J. Nicholson
16. Raiding as a Strategy in Medieval Georgia
Mamuka Tsurtsumia
17. Spain’s Leading Thirteenth-Century Law Code and (Incidental) Military Treatise Las Siete Partidas
L.J. Andrew Villalon
18. Ottomans: Mehmed the Conqueror
Juho Wilskman
Part III: Asia and Africa
19. Beyond and Behind the Wall: Siege Warfare of Sui-Tang China, 600-900
Kai Wan Kwan
20. China in the Gunpowder Age, Song to Ming Dynasties
Peter Lorge
21. Strategy and Warfare in Ancient and Medieval Japan
Thomas Conlan
22. Strategies in Post-Gupta India
Kaushik Roy
23. Strategy of the Delhi Sultanate, 1206-1526
Kaushik Roy
24. Strategy and the Mughal Empire
Andrew de la Garza
25. Strategy in the Mongol Way of War
Timothy May
26. Almoravid Tactics and Strategy
Joe Morrel
27. “The Kingdom of Ethiopia Shall Live Forever”: Military Strategies in Ethiopia (13th-16th Centuries)
Deresse Ayenachew Woldetsadik
28. Military Strategies in Pre-17th Century West Africa
Gérard Chouin
29. The Military-Political Strategy of the Medieval Kingdom of Kongo
John Thornton
Part IV: Western Hemisphere
30. The Excan tlatoloyan and Military Strategies for Mesoamerican Control in the Late Post-Classic Period
Marco Antonio Cervera Obregón
31. Late Andean Warfare: Evolving Military Sophistication under the Inka
David O. Brown
32. Medieval Strategy: Conclusions and New Directions
Daniel P. Franke
Biography
John D. Hosler is a Professor of Military History at the Command and General Staff College. He is the author, most recently, of Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace (Yale UP), and is the editor of Seven Myths of Military History (Hackett).
Daniel P. Franke is Associate Professor of History at Richard Bland College of William & Mary in Petersburg, Virginia. He specializes in the military history of Germany and England, and is currently completing a study of Frederick Barbarossa as a military commander.
"A major contribution not only to strategic studies but also to our understanding of medieval warfare as a whole, this collection fully vindicates its thesis that strategy existed before the term and was of fundamental importance."
Jeremy Black, author of Military Strategy: A Global History, University of Exeter, UK
"This is a groundbreaking resource, surveying approaches to military strategy from across the planet. Written by an impressive line-up of leading experts, this collection provides a scholarly benchmark for research on an astonishing range of military societies, whilst simultaneously offering new insights on many aspects of global military history."
Nicholas Morton, Nottingham Trent University, UK
