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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Generals preparing to go to war are, we are often told, fond of reading military classics on the Art of War. Some of the stories may be apocryphal - did Norman Schwarzkopf really have a copy of the ancient Chinese strategist Sunzi on the subject in his back pocket when he launched the Gulf War, or did Napoleon have it at his bedside? - but it is certainly studied widely, along with Machiavelli's essay of the same title, and Clausewitz's On War, at West Point, Sandhurst and Saint Cyr. So are the strategies and manoeuvres of classical military engagements from the Greco-Persian Wars of the 5th century BC through to the Crimean and Franco-Prussian Wars of the 19th century and on into the world conflicts of the 20th century. The curriculum of the PLA National Defence Academy in Beijing, which claims to be China's equivalent of West Point, no doubt has a similar historical and geographical breadth. The academic study of war, while recognising the shift to what is generally called ‘modern warfare’ brought about by the Napoleonic wars (or, in some views, rather earlier) also takes a longer and wider view of the subject. As the British war studies professor Lawrence Freedman has observed, ‘The [strategic] debates of today can be traced back to those of classical times, so that Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian wars from 400 BC can still serve as a starting point for analyses of the causes of war while Machiavelli can still be read with profit by aspiring strategists.’
1 Lawrence Freedman ed., War (Oxford Reader), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 7.
2 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Random House, 1993), 3.
3 Patrick M Cronin ed., Global Strategic Assessment 2009: America's Security Role in a Changing World (Wahington: Department of Defense, 2009), 145.
4 Thucydides, History, Book 4. 62 (my translation).
5 John Gittings, The Glorious Art of Peace: from the Iliad to Iraq (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
6 David Barash, ed., Approaches to Peace: A Reader in Peace Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
7 Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A portrait of the world before the war 1890-1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1965), ch. 5, 229-88.
8 ‘Adam Curle’, The Guardian, 4 October 2006
9 See further Alexandru Balas, Andrew P. Owsiak, Paul F. Dieh, ‘ Demanding Peace: The Impact of Prevailing Conflict on the Shift from Peacekeeping to Peacebuilding’, Peace and Change, 37:2, April 2012, 171-194.
10 See for example the output of The Economics and Security Journal, launched in 2006, which addresses issues related to the political economy of peace and security, with special emphasis on ‘ constructive proposals for conflict resolution and peacemaking’.
11 See further the special issue on peace education, Peace and Change, 34:4, October 2009.
12 The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame claims to have produced more than 1,200 graduates who now work ‘at all levels of society to build a more just and peaceful world’.
13 Charles F Howlett ‘Peace History Society’, in Encyclopedia of Peace Education (online, 2008).
14 Li Shijia, ‘Harmonious World: China's Ancient Philosophy for New International Order’, People's Daily (online), 2 October 2007.
15 The Iliad, trans. E. V. Rieu, ed. Peter Jones (London: Penguin Books, 1993), xxxiv.
16 I have identified no less than six points in the narrative of the Iliad where Homer holds out the possibility of an end to the war. One of the most striking occurs in Book 2 where the entire Greek army turns its back on Troy and rushes to the boats to embark for home - their desire to abandon the war is only foiled by divine intervention! See further The Glorious Art of Peace 42-44.
17 Plutarch, Greek Lives, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), ‘Nicias’, 193.
18 A number of US scholars have re-assessed with insight Greek history and drama in the light of our experience of modern warfare, comparing aspects of the Peloponnesian War with the Korean and Vietnam Wars. They include the Vietnam veteran Lawrence Tritle, From Melos to My Lai: War and Survival (London: Routledge, 2000); Robert Meagher, Herakles Gone Mad: Rethinking Heroism in an Age of Endless War (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2006); Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Scribner, 1994); and David McCann and Barry Strauss, eds., War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001).
19 ‘The Conflict between War and Peace in Early Chinese Thought’, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 16 March 2012. For analysis of the Book of Songs and the Chronicle of Zuo, see The Glorious Art of Peace, 47-53.
20 For a classic study of Erasmus and his fellow- humanists, see Robert P Adams, The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives, on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496-1535 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962).
21 Tolstoy's Sevastopol reports are translated in Louise and Aylmer Maude, trans., Tales of Army Life (London: Oxford University Press, 1933).
22 Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).
23 Augustine, City of God, 19: 13, trans. Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 1st series, vol. i (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887).
24 Charles Darwin The Descent of Man (1871), ch. 4.
25 J. Novikow, War and its Alleged Benefits (London: Heinemann, 1912); Jan Bloch [Jean de Bloch], The Future of War in its Technical, Economic and Political Relations (Boston: The World Peace Foundation, 1914).
26 Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'alembert, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751-72), vol. xi, online at http:/fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L'encyclopédie (my translation).
27 The Praise of Folly and Other Writings, trans. Robert Adams (New York: Norton, 1989), 105-6.
28 Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers, and John Sloboda, Global Responses to Global Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century (London: Oxford Research Group, 2006).
29 Ken Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
30 Richard Gott, Britain's Empire: Resistance, repression and revolt, (London: Verso, 2011).
31 ‘Jeannette's Song, You are going far away’, words by Charles Jefferys, music by Charles William Glover, c. 1848. This is the first song in a set of four published as The Conscript's Vow. Its second verse is reproduced here.
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