Full Description
The idea of general war was introduced by Arnold Toynbee in his Study of History. In the last quarter of the 20th century, scholars have been studying such wars, though they have differed on the naming and dating of general wars. This study reviews the major assumptions about general wars against the data available in world history. Ultimately, using criteria that had been applied by others to the West, the author found 38 cases of general war, 33 of them from nine other civilizations. It was then possible to test a numbe rof hypotheses generated from a consensus of scholars studying Western wars against this much wider array of cases.
Contents
The concept of general war; establishing a framework for enquiry; general wars in the ancient Western world; general wars of the Indian/Pacific rim; general wars in affiliated civilizations; Western general wars; the attributes of general war; putting general war in civilizational perspective.
