War and the Cultural Turn

Another volume from the highly prolific pen of Jeremy Black, this book examines the cultural dynamics of warfare. He argues that culture, like any other variable, is a changeable and not a constant force in military activity and that cultural ‘explanations’ for military behaviour and outcomes need to be used with discrimination and an awareness of the dangers of simplification. He warns that ‘culture’ is in danger of taking the place of ‘technology’ as a ‘grab-all’ explanation that may not, in fact, explain that which it seeks to describe. He makes his case with a series of case studies drawn from the Renaissance to the immediate present.