The Cambridge History of Strategy: Volume 2, From the Napoleonic Wars to the Present (The Cambridge History of Strategy)

By: Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Beatrice Heuser

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Synopsis: Volume II of The Cambridge History of Strategy focuses on the practice of strategy from 1800 to the present day. A team of eminent scholars examine how leaders of states, empires and non-state groups (such as guerrilla forces, rebel groups and terrorists) have attempted to practise strategy in the modern period. With a focus on the actual 'doing' of strategy, the volume aims to understand real-world experiences when ideas about conflict are carried out against a responding and proactive opponent. The case studies and material presented in the volume form an invitation to rethink dominant perspectives in the field of strategic studies. As the case studies demonstrate, strategy is most often not a stylised, premeditated and wilful phenomenon. Rather, it is a product of circumstance and opportunity, both structural and agential, leading to a view of strategy as an ad hoc, if not chaotic, enterprise.