Insurgency and counterinsurgency: a global history

摘要

Jeremy Black's study is an important new contribution to the historiography of insurgencies and counterinsurgency. Having taught history at the universities of Exeter and Durham before his retirement, Black is a prolific author of a wide range of books, including a History of Warfare in the Western World, 1882-1975 (1990) in which he displayed an early concern for the western-centric bias in military history. In this new book Black ventures to locate the historiography of insurgency in the complicated arena of global history, focusing generally on patterns of internal conflict within states or dynastic empires rather than the usual focus on warfare between states. In some fourteen chapters, he explores patterns of insurgency from the early modern period onwards, while the period of Ancient History and the Middle Ages is concentrated, rather wisely, into one brief preliminary survey up to 1500.