Bücher der Reihe Routledge Library Editions: Security and Society

Merchants of death was an epithet used in the USA in the 1930s to attack industries and banks that supplied and funded the First World War (then called the Great War). Originally published in 1934, this book uses the term to expose the international arms industry at the time.

Originally published in 1994, the late Keith F. Otterbein's scholarship had followed an overall design since 1962, when he began conducting comparative studies of warfare using both ethnographic and cross-cultural methods. Through a conceptual framework derived from systems theory, he made signal contributions to our understanding of the role of warfare in human social evolution. He formulated a Fraternal Interest Group theory, utilizing it to explain not only feuding and warfare but also rape and capital punishment. Believing that armed combat is learned behaviour, he posed questions about its learning process that had yet to be answered. He acted as a major synthesizer of the growing literature on warfare and led attempts among anthropologists to apply their knowledge of war and peace to current events. This volume will serve both as a useful introduction to the anthropology of war and as a needed compendium of Professor Otterbein's ideas.

Originally published in 1976, this book explores the relationship between European society and the military institutions it fostered from 1815-1918.In the period from the fall of Napoleonic imperialism to the outbreak of the First World War armies and navies grew in complexity, cost and size. The first half of this book investigates these institutions from within, and looks at some of the factors which held them together in an increasingly difficult and hostile world, at their self-image, and at the pressures upon them from society at large.As the role of military institutions within society increased in importance, analysts began to look for the effects which this interpenetration had on society. Part 2 is concerned with the effects of this growing dominance of society by its defenders. By the end of period covered by this book, the age of total mobilisation for the war effort was upon us. In a sense this second part of the book reinforces the conclusions of the first, that military institutions are separate from the societies which surround them, and between the two a growing gap of misunderstanding and incomprehension yawned.

'The Duke is a soldier - a bad education for a statesmen in a free country'. Sir Walter Scott's fear of the political soldier has long been part of Western political life. Yet although many countries would have preferred to keep the military out of politics few have been successful.Originally published in 1976, this book examines the careers of five distinguished twentieth century soldiers and assesses their contribution as statesmen. Hindenburg, Byng, Franco, Eisenhower and De Gaulle all came into political life in different circumstances, but none did so in the name of the profession or to establish a praetorian state. Each was a professional soldier who found himself drawn into the political arena. Each of these essays illuminates one aspect of the range of political, sociological and historical issues which now surround the interrelationship of civil and military. At a time when the tensions of democracy, both internally and externally, impose increasing pressure on the role of the military in society it is important to study the history of soldiers-as-statesmen.