Armament And History: The Influence Of Armament On History From The Dawn Of Classical Warfare To The End Of The Second World War - Softcover

Fuller, J. F. C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0306808595 ISBN 13: 9780306808593

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1998

Synopsis

Although skill, leadership, strategy, and number of forces have been important factors in battles, armaments have played the most decisive role in determining ultimate military victory. Entranced by the power and precision of armaments, man has continuously invented faster, more accurate, and more devastating weapons, from the javelin, stone axe, sword, and the arrow to the cannon, musket, rifle, tank, super-fortress, and missile. In this study of the influence of armaments on history, J.F.C. Fuller shows how the inventive genius of man can potentially obliterate his sense of moral values and destroy civilization. Divided into armament epochs—Ages of Valour, Chivalry, Gunpowder, Steam, Oil, and Atomic Energy—Armament and History examines the most influential military innovations of each period as well as the key leaders (including Alexander, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, and Napoleon) who skillfully employed these weapons. Although the author acknowledges that war cannot be eliminated entirely, he urges man to impose restrictions on warfare before society descends into a second Dark Age. Completed immediately after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—chilling examples of mass destruction caused by armaments—this impassioned work remains relevant more than a half-century later.

About this title

Review:

Major General J.F.C. Fuller argues provocatively that technology matters far more than brainpower in war:

Tools, or weapons, if only the right ones can be discovered, form 99 percent of victory.... Strategy, command, leadership, courage, discipline, supply, organization, and all the moral and physical paraphernalia of war are nothing to a high superiority of weapons--at most they go to form the one per cent which makes the whole possible.

If that sounds outlandish--how much, one might ask, of an effect did technology have at Chancellorsville?--consider this more plausible formulation: In modern wars, "no army of 50 years before any date selected would stand 'a dog's chance' against the army existing at that date." Sounds about right.

Armament and History is a broad survey spanning the ancient world to the atomic age, showing how military innovation has changed the course of history time and again. Fuller never gets mired in dense detail, and has a knack for finding apt (and sometimes humorous) anecdotes. Mounted war elephants, for example, traditionally have had a dramatic impact on troops who had never seen them before. When one general employed them against the Gauls, he confessed, "I am ashamed to think that we owe our safety to these sixteen animals." Yet as Fuller shows, successful weapons always meet even more successful ones (an army once attacked war elephants by covering pigs with pitch, lighting them on fire, and driving them toward the burly beasts). This is a fine introduction to the development of weaponry over the last 3,000 years. --John J. Miller

About the Author:

Major General J.F.C. Fuller (1878-1966) was one of the most important and original military thinkers of this century. He served as lieutenant in the Boer War, organized the first British tank corps in World War I, and developed the strategy and tactics of tank warfare which were later put to such effective use by the Nazis for their World War II blitzkriegs. His many books include A Military History of the Western World (3 volumes), The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant, and The Generalship of Alexander the Great, all of which are available from Da Capo Press/Perseus Book Group.

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0306808595
• ISBN 13: 9780306808593
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228