Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
Where to buy Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power books online?
Product Description
Through plain depictions of historic battles, Champion Davis Hanson reveals the tie between the West’s superiority on the battlefield and its rise to world dominance.
Why have Western values triumphed? Why are Western thoughts and practices spreading unopposed throughout the globe? In this sweeping and ambitious work of military and cultural history, Champion Davis Hanson convincingly argues that it all comes down to the Western knack for killing.
Hanson is a superb writer with a particular gift for dropping the reader into the midst of clashing armies. With his trademark zest for bringing the stark realities of battle to life, he vividly re-makes nine vital confrontations between Western and non-Western armies, from the stunning Greek victory at Salamis in 480 B.C. to Cortés’s conquest of Mexico City in 1521 to the grueling urban warfare of Vietnam’s Tet Offensive. But Hanson goes beyond the conventions of the “guns and trumpets” genre to reveal the cultural underpinnings that determined the course and consequences of each engagement and in the process advances a bold and provocative thesis about the reasons for Western global dominance. Replying to persons who stress environmental and additional nonhuman factors in the rise of Western hegemony, Hanson shows that the rise of the West was not a fluke of geography or “germs” but a logical result of Western cultural dynamism as manifested in its ways of building war.
Each battle illustrates a crucial element in the distinctive and powerful matrix of Western identity. Hanson delineates the characteristics of successful armies–including individual initiative, superior organization and discipline, access to matchless weapons, and tactical adaptation and flexibility. Then he shows how these characteristics renovate and flourish as a result of such traditional Western institutions and ideals as consensual government, free inquiry and innovative enterprise, rationalism, and the value placed on freedom and individualism. These are the cultural values that have enabled Western armies, regularly vastly outnumbered and far from home, to slaughter their opponents and impose their social, economic, and political ideals on additional civilizations.
Through his detailed reconstructions of these battles, some of which were really lost by Western armies, Hanson tells the tale of the rise of Western global dominance. He thereby joins the fantastic debate about the character and future of the West, sparked by recent controversial works by authors such as Samuel Huntington, Paul Johnson, and Francis Fukuyama.
Amazon.com Review
Many theories have been offered regarding why Western culture has spread so successfully across the world, with opinion ranging from genetics to superior equipment to the creation of enlightened economic, moral, and political systems. In Carnage and Culture, military historian Champion Hanson takes all of these factors into account in building a bold, and sure to be controversial, argument: Westerners are more effective killers. Focusing specifically on military power rather than the scenery of Western civilization in all-purpose, Hanson views war as the essential reflection of a society’s character: “There is…a cultural crystallization in battle, in which the insidious and more devious institutions that heretofore are murky and undefined became stark and unforgiving in the finality of organized killing.”
Though technological advances and superior weapons have certainly played a role in Western military dominance, Hanson posits that cultural distinctions are the most significant factors. By bringing personal freedom, discipline, and organization to the battlefield, powerful “marching democracies” were more apt to defeat non-Western nations hampered by unstable governments, limited funding, and intolerance of open discussion. These crucial differences regularly ensured victory even against long odds. Greek armies, for instance, who elected their own generals and freely debated strategy were able to win wars even when far outnumbered and deep within enemy territory. Hanson further argues that granting warriors control of their own destinies results in the kind of glorification of horrific hand-to-hand combat necessary for right domination.
The nine battles Hanson examines include the Greek naval victory against the Persians at Salamis in 480 B.C., Cortes’s march on Mexico City in 1521, the battle of Midway in 1942, and the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. In the book’s fascinating final chapter, he then looks forwards and ponders the consequences of a perfect cultural victory, challenging the widespread belief that democratic nations do not wage war against one another: “We may well be all Westerners in the millennium to come, and that could be a very treacherous thing indeed,” he writes. It seems the West will permanently seek an enemy, even if it must come from within. –Shawn Carkonen
Buy Cheap Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power Online
Related posts:
- Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller–Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
- Warriors: Battles of the Clans
- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
- The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Gentle Ways to Stop Bedtime Battles and Improve Your Child’s Sleep
- Western Garden Book
This book is pure nonsense. There is no such thing as “Western Civilization,” and the notion of the West as opposed to the East is pure fabrication. What is exhibited here is ideological Euro-American cultural triumphalism. The battles may be wonderfully described, but the organizing thesis that there is a Western manner of warfare, and it reflects Western cultural values is pure fiction…
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I particularly loved very ancient Greek warfare. This is of course Hanson’s specialty. But I do reflect this should be required reading for any student of warfare or politics,
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Exciting, and the thesis is alluring and thought provoking. As you go through it, but, it is less appealing, the logic has a lot of holes, and one tires of the didactic presentation.
Appealing, but that was it for me…
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Hanson’s well-written book proves that there is a well-organized mechanistic cruelty at the very heart of western capitalist-democracy. He claims it as a virtue. I wouldn’t.
He spoils the book in my opinion with his final chapter on Vietnam. It seems to have small weight to the opinion open elsewherr in the book. It is used as a convenient hanger for Mr Hanson to slam persons whom he aver “lost” the Vietnam War for America.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
A self-congratulatory tone combined with a bizarre ignorance of military history sullies this book. You could go through any encyclopedia and look up battles that were won by luck and come up with a more realistic explanation of why “the West” is now so dominant in the world. It’s simple to pick apart this book from the military side and the history side. It ignores the really huge battles of the 20th century which don’t fit into the “Western lethality” thesis. It claims victories (such as Tet for the U.S.) where none exist.(Will there ever be an American leader who can admit we LOST the Vietnam war ?) It ignores even very ancient past examples that don’t fit into the leader’s very narrow view of world history. The largest battles of the 20th century were fought by the Germans and the Soviets- participants certainly NOT in the “western” tradition described by the leader. The Battle of Midway was mostly won by luck- not automatically by the square-jawed determination “western” heroes. In fact “western” militarism was never able to squarely defeat a communist country by force of arms. Rourke’s Drift followed the Battle of Isandhlwana where the Brits were hideously defeated- Rourke’s Drift is like Dunkirk- a hollow propaganda “victory”. So really “western” lethality didn’t and doesn’t permanently work and in itself the “lethality” concept just means “technological advantage”. I have a feeling that jury is still out on whether our overwhelming military lethality will finally win the terrorism war. Western “democracies” today win wars by alternative and choosing the ones which will make them look excellent and seem tough- you could call it the Cowardly Turkeyshoot (or Gutless Cakewalk?) concept where overwhelming technological and economic forces are brought to bear on basically defenseless Third World countries. Individualism, democracy, freedom and the Very ancient Greek tradition added up to this?
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5