Murray, Williamson The dark Path. The Structure of War and the Rise of the West

Heraclitus wrote that "war is the father of all things", and it has shaped much of the modern world. Although the fundamental nature of war has not changed over the centuries, constant changes, innovations and adaptations have continued to reshape the way wars are fought in the West. In The Dark Path, Williamson Murray examines the social and military revolutions that led the West to global dominance by tracing five revolutions in military practice: the emergence of the modern state, which created bureaucracies and professional armies; the Industrial Revolution, which produced the financial and industrial means to maintain and equip large armies; the French Revolution, which created the ideological basis for maintaining armies in wars of continental scale; the fusion of the Industrial and French Revolutions in the American Civil War; the accelerated integration of technological progress, financial capacity, ideology, and government, which unleashed the modern capacity for total warfare. In explaining the forces behind the scale and lethality of warfare in the 21st century, Murray shows how the world continues to recreate war - and how war, in turn, continues to recreate the world.