Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History provides a wide-ranging examination of war in human history, from the beginning of the species until the current rise of the so-called Islamic State. Although it covers many societies throughout time, the book does not attempt to tell all stories from all places, nor does it try to narrate "important" conflicts. Instead, author Wayne E. Lee describes the emergence of military innovations and systems, examining how they were created and then how they moved or affected other societies. These innovations are central to most historical narratives, including the development of social complexity, the rise of the state, the role of the steppe horseman, the spread of gunpowder, the rise of the west, the bureaucratization of military institutions, the industrial revolution and the rise of firepower, strategic bombing and nuclear weapons, and the creation of "people's war."

Wayne E. Lee is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina and Chair of the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense. He is the author of Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865 (OUP, 2011) and Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War (2001).

List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
Preface
About the Author

Introduction: Capacity, Calculation, and Culture

1. The Origins of War and of the State: to 2500 BCE
Is War Innate?
War among Animals, Chimpanzees
The Evidence for Early Human Warfare
Biology and Selection
Sedentism, Agriculture, and War
A Lord among Lords and the Rise of the State
Warring Complex Societies outside the State

2. Carts, Chariots, Cavalry, and Catastrophe: 3500-700 BCE
Kings and Carts
Inventing the Chariot: Tribes, Horses, and Bronze on the Steppe
Chariots and the Urban Politics of the Near East and Egypt 1500-1200 BCE
Chariots under Heaven: China, 1200-400 BCE
Gods and Heroes: The Chariot in India and Europe
Catastrophe, Cavalry, and the Decline of the Chariot in the Near East

3. Men in Lines with Spears: 900 BCE-300 BCE
Masses of Men in the Background
Assyria Reborn
Communal Solidarity and the Greek Hoplite Phalanx
The Macedonian Sarissa Phalanx

4. Discipline and Frontiers in the Agricultural Empires: Rome and China, 300 BCE-400 CE
Rome: Disciplina and Limes
Infantrymen and Walls in Han China

5. The Horsemen of Europe and the Steppe: 400 CE-1450 CE
European Heavy Horsemen
The Steppe Warrior System
The Mongols

6. War under Oars: 700 BCE-1600 CE
The Earliest Shipping
The Trireme and the Mediterranean
Variations on a Theme: Hellenistic Invention and Gigantism, Rome, Greek Fire, and the Gunpowder Galley

7. Gunpowder in Europe and in the Ottoman Empire: 1300 CE-1650 CE
Europe and the Ottoman Empire 1300-1683
The Technology of Gunpowder and Gunpowder Weapons
Siege Cannon to 1650
The Artillery Fortress, 1450 to 1650
Infantry and Firearms, 1450-1650
Conclusion: A Military Revolution?

8. Adapting to Gunpowder (or not): On the Open Seas, Africa, North America, and Asia
Maritime Power
The Gun-Slave Cycle in Africa?
Amerindians and Gunpowder
Gunpowder and the Steppe: China from Ming to Manchu
Conclusion: The Military Revolution Problem

9. Institutionalization, Bureaucratization, and Professionalization: China, Japan, and Europe: 1650-1815
Manchu China
Private Enterprise War in Europe to 1650
Institutionalization, Bureaucratization, and Professionalization in Europe, 1650-1789
Japan's Variant Path, 1500-1868
The Levée en Masse and Mass Conscript Armies

10. The Age of Steam and the Industrial Empires, 1815-1905
Invention and Production
Coal & Steam Navies
Scrambling for Empire
The Rise of Japan

11. Men Against Fire, 1861-1917
The American Civil War: A False Dawn of "Modern War"?
Prussian Reforms, a General Staff, and German Unification
Firepower
Firepower and the Scramble for Empire: Dahomey and Ethiopia
World War I

12. Wars of Maneuver?: 1919-2003
Doctrine
Avoiding Deadlock and World War II
The German Model?
The Arab-Israeli Wars
AirLand Battle

13. The Lure of Strategic Air Power, The Nuclear Paradox, and the Revolution in Military Affairs?: 1915-2003
Strategic Bombing, 1915 to July 1945
Nuclear Weapons as Air Power
The Nuclear Shadow and Limited War in Korea and Vietnam
The Return of Strategic Air Power and the Revolution in Military Affairs?

14. Bringing Down the State: Guerrillas, Insurgents, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency, 1930-2014
The Revolutionary Response to the Industrial State: Mao, Giap, and Guevara
Terrorism and Insurgency by Terrorism
Counterinsurgency and Counter Terror

Credits
Index