ABSTRACT
War and the fear of war have been by far the most powerful among the influences that have shaped the course of international relations over the past two centuries. It is the central thesis of this book that the history of the use and threat of force enables us to make sense of the main currents of events. What is strategic history? It is the history of the influence of the use and threat of force. Strategy, and strategic, sometimes is a contested concept, and the term is widely misused (Gray, 1999: 17). This text adapts and adheres strictly to a slightly amended version of the definition given by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), whose ideas and significance are explained in Chapter 2. Strategy refers to the use made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy (Clausewitz, 1976: 177). This book is not a military history. The strategic focus ensures that our prime concern will be on the instrumentality of military power. Furthermore, notwithstanding the primacy of the strategic, the mission here does not comprise a reductionist effort to conflate the rich and interweaving strands of history into a single mould. The analysis is heavily political throughout, because it is only the political context that gives war its meaning.
