Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 1000-1800

Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 1000-1800 PDF Author: Jos J. L. Gommans
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195666595
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
The essays in this volume represent pioneering attempts to shed light on the neglected field of South Asian military history. They trace the impressive military developments that occurred in South Asia - often in close interaction with the outside world - in organisation, tactics and technology.

Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 1000-1800

Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 1000-1800 PDF Author: Jos J. L. Gommans
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195666595
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
The essays in this volume represent pioneering attempts to shed light on the neglected field of South Asian military history. They trace the impressive military developments that occurred in South Asia - often in close interaction with the outside world - in organisation, tactics and technology.

Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia

Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia PDF Author: Kaushik Roy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110701736X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This book traces the evolution of theories of warfare in India from the dawn of civilization, focusing on the debate between Dharmayuddha (Just War) and Kutayuddha (Unjust War) within Hindu philosophy. This debate centers around four questions: What is war? What justifies it? How should it be waged? And what are its potential repercussions?

The Mughal Empire at War

The Mughal Empire at War PDF Author: Andrew de la Garza
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317245318
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
The Mughal Empire was one of the great powers of the early modern era, ruling almost all of South Asia, a conquest state, dominated by its military elite. Many historians have viewed the Mughal Empire as relatively backward, the Emperor the head of a traditional warband from Central Asia, with tribalism and the traditions of the Islamic world to the fore, and the Empire not remotely comparable to the forward looking Western European states of the period, with their strong innovative armies implementing the “military revolution”. This book argues that, on the contrary, the military establishment built by the Emperor Babur and his successors was highly sophisticated, an effective combination of personnel, expertise, technology and tactics, drawing on precedents from Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and that the resulting combined arms system transformed the conduct of warfare in South Asia. The book traces the development of the Mughal Empire chronologically, examines weapons and technology, tactics and operations, organization, recruitment and training, and logistics and non-combat operations, and concludes by assessing the overall achievements of the Mughal Empire, comparing it to its Western counterparts, and analyzing the reasons for its decline.

Military Manpower, Armies and Warfare in South Asia

Military Manpower, Armies and Warfare in South Asia PDF Author: Kaushik Roy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317321278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Roy investigates the various factors that influenced the formation and mobilization of military forces in the region from 300 BC to the modern day.

War in Human Civilization

War in Human Civilization PDF Author: Azar Gat
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 839

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Book Description
Why do people go to war? Is it rooted in human nature or is it a late cultural invention? How does war relate to the other fundamental developments in the history of human civilization? And what of war today - is it a declining phenomenon or simply changing its shape? In this truly global study of war and civilization, Azar Gat sets out to find definitive answers to these questions in an attempt to unravel the 'riddle of war' throughout human history, from the early hunter-gatherers right through to the unconventional terrorism of the twenty-first century. In the process, the book generates an astonishing wealth of original and fascinating insights on all major aspects of humankind's remarkable journey through the ages, engaging a wide range of disciplines, from anthropology and evolutionary psychology to sociology and political science. Written with remarkable verve and clarity and wholly free from jargon, it will be of interest to anyone who has ever pondered the puzzle of war.

Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives

Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives PDF Author: Maaike van Berkel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004315713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.

Empires of the Weak

Empires of the Weak PDF Author: J. C. Sharman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691210071
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J. C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea. Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the twenty-first century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era. Bringing a revisionist perspective to the idea that Europe ruled the world due to military dominance, Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order.

Understanding War

Understanding War PDF Author: Christian P. Potholm
Publisher: UPA
ISBN: 0761867740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
The third book in Professor Christian Potholm’s war trilogy (which includes Winning at War and War Wisdom), Understanding War provides a most workable bibliography dealing with the vast literature on war and warfare. As such, it provides insights into over 3000 works on this overwhelmingly extensive material. Understanding War is thus the most comprehensive annotated bibliography available today. Moreover, by dividing war material into eighteen overarching themes of analysis and fifty seminal topics, and focusing on these, Understanding War enables the reader to access and understand the broadest possible array of materials across both time and space, beginning with the earliest forms of warfare and concluding with the contemporary situation. Stimulating and thought-provoking, this volume is essential for an understanding of the breadth and depth of the vast scholarship dealing with war and warfare through human history and across cultures.

Military Thought of Asia

Military Thought of Asia PDF Author: Kaushik Roy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000210693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Military Thought of Asia challenges the assertion that the generation of rational secular ideas about the conduct of warfare is the preserve of the West, by analysing the history of ideas of warfare in Asia from the ancient period to the present. The volume takes a transcontinental and comparative approach to provide a broad overview of the evolution of military thought in Asia. The military traditions and theories which have emerged in different parts of Eurasia throughout history are products of geopolitics and unique to the different regions. The book considers the systematic and tight representation of ideas by famous figures including Kautlya and Sun Tzu. At the same time, it also highlights publications on military affairs by small men like mid-ranking officers and scattered ideas regarding the origin, nature and societal impact of organised violence present in miscellaneous sources like coins, inscriptions, paintings and fictional literature. In so doing, the book fills a historiographical gap in scholarship on military thought, which marginalises Asia to the part of cameo, and historicises the evolution of theory and the praxis of warfare. The volume shows that the ‘East’ has a long unbroken tradition of conceptualising war and its place in society from the Classical Era to the Information Age. It is essential reading for those interested in the evolution of military thought throughout history, particularly in Asia.

Approaches to History

Approaches to History PDF Author: Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
Publisher: Primus Books
ISBN: 9380607172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
History as a social science is arguably more self-reflective than associated disciplines in that family. Other social scientists seem to see little reason to look beyond the paradigm they are developing in the present times. Historians on the other hand, tend to depend on the cumulative process of the development of their craft and the fund of accumulated knowledge. Yet, while this is acknowledged in the practice of research, Historiography in itself as a subject of study has rarely found its place in the syllabi of Indian universities. Knowledge of Historiography is taken for granted when a scholar plunges into research. In an attempt to address this lacuna, the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) has planned a series of volumes on Historiography comprising articles by subject specialists commissioned by the ICHR. The first volume in the series, Approaches to History: Essays in Indian Historiography brings to the readers the first fruits of that endeavour. While the essays encompass areas of research presently at the frontiers of new research, scholars will also find the bibliographies accompanying the essays of significant appeal.