Violent Lessons

One of the most uncomfortable facts of history is that war has been a creative force of the first order. This continues to be the case. Not only does war persist in the world, even ‘humanitarian interventions’ or the fight against terrorism has not been able to avoid war. But why do humans and states turn to means of war in the first instance? How have wars facilitated change or prevented it? Was war indispensable in the European laboratory of states and societies? Langewiesche has worked on these questions for years and now offers us a fundamental analysis, not of gun powder and battle noise, but of the place of war in the history of modernity.