Main entry:

McNeill, William Hardy, 1917-2016, author.

Title & Author:

The pursuit of power : technology, armed force, and society since A.D. 1000 / William H. McNeill.

Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Description:

x, 405 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Notes:
Includes index.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Arms and Society in Antiquity -- The Era of Chinese Predominance, 1000-1500 -- The Business of War in Europe, 1000-1600 -- Advances in Europe's Art of War, 1600-1750 -- Strains on Europe's Bureaucratization of Violence, 1700-1789 -- The Military Impact of the French Political and the British Industrial Revolutions, 1789-1840 -- The Initial Industrialization of War, 1840-84 -- Intensified Military-Industrial Interaction, 1884-1914 -- World Wars of the Twentieth Century -- The Arms Race and Command Economies since 1945.

Summary:

In this book, a text that synthesizes military, technological, and social history, the author explores a millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that confront us in the twentieth century. The author moves from the crossbow -- banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another -- to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. The author's central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers, with command economies of the twentieth century replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. This book does not solve the problems of the twentieth century, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on twentieth century fears and, as the author hopes, 'a ground for wiser action'.--adapted from publisher description.

Resources:
Table of contents
Rutgers restricted
Electronic access restricted; authentication may be required:

ISBN:

0226561577
9780226561578
0226561585
9780226561585

Subject:

Military art and science History.
Military history, Medieval.
Military history, Modern.
World politics.
Art et science militaires Histoire.
Histoire militaire médiévale.
Histoire militaire moderne et contemporaine.
Politique mondiale.
Military art and science.
Gesellschaft
Kriegführung
Militär
Technik
Technologie.
Krijgsmacht.
Poder Politico.
Military history.

Form/genre:

History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 102214
Call No.: ID:86-B20355
Status: Available