Jeremy Black

Logistics is an essential aspect of warfare and this is an original and much-needed contribution. All commanders know that an army (or navy) cannot operate without supplies yet most aspects of war studies emphasise strategy, tactics, weaponry and command. This book fills a gap in war studies with logistics as a huge subject at the centre of all conflict, globally and historically. The focus is on key conflicts, developments and concepts, illustrating the vital role of logistics with technologies changing but underlying issues remaining constant. Here is a world history of logistics - a veritable compendium - but within a detailed and comprehensive but concise text. Factors affecting logistics include, for example, climate, geography, food supplies, welfare of troops, payment, transport, communications, terrain and distance, but also government policy, stability and financial conditions. All are considered, including theoretical and practical factors of supply, from classical, ancient, early and medieval times, to modern eras of industrial warfare, especially with oil and steam, and scientific and technical advances - even cyber warfare and 'smart' weapons.

Between 1760 and 1815, British troops campaigned from Manila to Montreal, Cape Town to Copenhagen, Washington to Waterloo. The naval dimension of Britain’s expansion has been superbly covered by a number of excellent studies, but there has not been a single volume that does the same for the army and, in particular, looks at how and why it became a world-operating force, one capable of beating the Marathas as well as the French. This book will both offer a new perspective, one that concentrates on the global role of the army and its central part in imperial expansion and preservation, and as such will be a major book for military history and world history. There will be a focus on what the army brought to power equations and how this made it a world-level force. The multi-purpose character of the army emerges as the key point, one seen in particular in the career of Wellington: while referred to disparagingly by Napoleon as a ‘sepoy general,’ Wellington’s ability to operate successfully in India and Europe was not only impressive but also reflected synergies in experience and acquired skill that characterised the British army. No other army matched this. The closest capability was that of Russia able, in 1806-14, to defeat both the Turks and Napoleon, but without having the trans-oceanic capability and experience enjoyed by the British army. The experience was a matter in part of debate, including over doctrine, as in the tension between the ‘Americans’ and ‘Germans,’ a reference to fields of British campaigning concentration during the Seven Years War. This synergy proved best developed in the operations in Iberia in 1809-14, with logistical and combat skills utilised in India employed in a European context in which they were of particular value. The books aims to further to address the question of how this army was achieved despite the strong anti-army ideology/practice derived from the hostile response to Oliver Cromwell and to James II. Thus, perception and politics are both part of the story, as well as the exigencies and practicalities of conflict, including force structure, command issues, and institutional developments. At the same time, there was no inevitability about British success over this period, and it is necessary to consider developments in the context of other states and, in particular, the reasons why British forces did well and that Britain was not dependent alone on naval effectiveness.

A concise, accessible account of strategy and the Second World War. How the war was won . . . and lost.. In 1941, the Second World War became global, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union; Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor; and Germany declared war on the United States. In this timely book, which fills a real gap, Black engages with the strategic issues of the time - as they developed chronologically, and interacted - and relates these to subsequent debates about the choices made, revealing their continued political resonances. Beginning with Appeasement and the Soviet-German pact as key strategic means, Black examines the consequences of the fall of France for the strategies of all the powers. He shows how Allied strategy-making was more effective at the Anglo-American level than with the Soviet Union, not only for ideological and political reasons, but also because the Americans and British had a better grasp of the global dimension. He explores how German and Japanese strategies evolved as the war went badly for the Axis powers, and discusses the extent to which seeking to mould the post-war world informed Allied strategic choices from 1943 onwards, and the role these played in post-war politics, notably in the Cold War. Strategy was a crucial tool not only for conducting the war; it remains the key to understanding it today.

From the Great Exhibition's showcasing of British national achievement in 1851 to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Stratford in 2012 and on to Brexit, an insightful exploration of the transformation of modern BritainThis revised and updated fourth and final volume in the concise Brief History of Britain series begins in the specially-constructed Crystal Palace, three times the length of St Paul's Cathedral, in Hyde Park at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century. The Great Exhibition it housed marked a high point of British national achievement, at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, at the heart of a great empire, with Queen Victoria still to reign for fifty years. It was a time of confidence in the future, and exuberant patriotism for Britain's role in it. The beginning of the Second World War in 1939 marks a turning point because of the great change it heralded in Britain's global standing. At its peak, protected by the world's greatest navy, the British Empire stretched from Australasia to Canada, from Hong Kong and India to South Africa, and from Jamaica to the Falklands. Now the empire is no more: a fundamental change not only for the world, but also for Britain. The Second World War had been won, but it had exhausted Britain and marked the beginning of its national decline. Black links cultural and political developments closely - transport, health, migration and economic and demographic factors - in order to make clear how porous and changeable the manifestations of national civilisation can be, and to make sense of themes such as the triumph of town over country, Britain's international clout and the shift from the dominance of the market at the turn of the nineteenth century to the growing significance of the state. Importantly, he also looks at how public history has presented the nation's past, and how the changing and different ways we look at that past are central aspects of our shared history.

Casting aside conventional narratives of The Great War, Jeremy Black returns to a vast range of original sources and investigates not only the key events of the war, but its consequences in restructuring the old order. Black also considers the struggle not only in its historical context, but also how it has been remembered and memorialised, especially as the generation who experienced it firsthand are passing away. Now in paperback, this book has been updated with a foreword and afterword to consider recent developments.

Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British Empire, at perhaps the height of its power, lost control of its American colonies. Critiquing the traditional emphasis on the value of alliance during the Seven Years’ War, and the consequences of British isolation during the War of American Independence, Jeremy Black shows that this rests on a misleading understanding of the relationship between policy and strategy. Encompassing both the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence and grounded in archival research, this book considers a violent and contentious period which was crucial to the making of modern Britain and its role in the wider world. Offering a reinterpretation of British strategy and foreign policy throughout this time, To Lose an Empire interweaves British domestic policy with diplomatic and colonial developments to show the impact this period and its events had on British strategy and foreign policy for years to come.

Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British Empire, at perhaps the height of its power, lost control of its American colonies. Critiquing the traditional emphasis on the value of alliance during the Seven Years’ War, and the consequences of British isolation during the War of American Independence, Jeremy Black shows that this rests on a misleading understanding of the relationship between policy and strategy. Encompassing both the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence and grounded in archival research, this book considers a violent and contentious period which was crucial to the making of modern Britain and its role in the wider world. Offering a reinterpretation of British strategy and foreign policy throughout this time, To Lose an Empire interweaves British domestic policy with diplomatic and colonial developments to show the impact this period and its events had on British strategy and foreign policy for years to come.

The most current and insightful look at the politics and culture of the Bond world as the last Daniel Craig movie hits theaters. This book presents an insightful and thoroughly entertaining exploration of the political context of the Bond books and films. Jeremy Black offers a historian’s interpretation from the perspective of 2020 and the latest Bond film, assessing James Bond in terms of the greatly changing world order of the Bond years—a lifetime that stretches from 1953, when the first novel appeared, to the present. Black argues that the Bond novels—the Fleming books as well as the often-neglected novels authored by others after Fleming died in 1964—and films drew on current fears in order to reduce the implausibility of the villains and their villainy. The novels and films also presented potent images of national character, explored the rapidly changing relationship between a declining Britain and an ascendant United States, charted the course of the Cold War and the subsequent post-1990 world, and offered an evolving but always potent demonology. Bond was, and still is, an important aspect of post–World War II popular culture throughout the Western world. This was particularly so after Hollywood launched the filmic Bond, thus making him not only a character designed for the American film market but also a world product and a figure of globalization. Class, place, gender, violence, sex, race—all are themes that Black scrutinizes through the ongoing shifts in characterization and plot. His well-informed and well-argued analysis provides a fascinating history of the enduring and evolving appeal of James Bond. This updated edition explores new developments in the Daniel Craig years, looks to the post-Craig years, and considers the cultural significance of Bond in the modern world.

Dedicated fans of Jane Austen's novels will delight in accompanying historian Jeremy Black through the drawing rooms, chapels, and battlefields of the time in which Austen lived and wrote. In this exceedingly readable and sweeping scan of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain, Black provides a historical context for a deeper appreciation of classic novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. While Austen's novels bring to life complex characters living in intimate surroundings, England in the Age of Austen provides a fuller account of what the village, the church, and the family home would really have been like. In addition to seeing how Austen's own reading helped her craft complex characters like Emma, Black also explores how recurring figures in the novels, such as George III or Fanny Burney, provide a focus for a historical discussion of the fiction in which they appear. Jane Austen's world was the source of her works and the basis of her readership, and understanding that world gives fans new insights into the multifaceted narratives she created.

Dedicated fans of Jane Austen's novels will delight in accompanying historian Jeremy Black through the drawing rooms, chapels, and battlefields of the time in which Austen lived and wrote. In this exceedingly readable and sweeping scan of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain, Black provides a historical context for a deeper appreciation of classic novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. While Austen's novels bring to life complex characters living in intimate surroundings, England in the Age of Austen provides a fuller account of what the village, the church, and the family home would really have been like. In addition to seeing how Austen's own reading helped her craft complex characters like Emma, Black also explores how recurring figures in the novels, such as George III or Fanny Burney, provide a focus for a historical discussion of the fiction in which they appear. Jane Austen's world was the source of her works and the basis of her readership, and understanding that world gives fans new insights into the multifaceted narratives she created.

King of Britain for sixty years and the last king of what would become the United States, George III inspired both hatred and loyalty and is now best known for two reasons: as a villainous tyrant for America's Founding Fathers, and for his madness, both of which have been portrayed on stage and screen. In this concise and penetrating biography, Jeremy Black turns away from the image-making and back to the archives, and instead locates George's life within his age: as a king who faced the loss of key colonies, rebellion in Ireland, insurrection in London, constitutional crisis in Britain and an existential threat from Revolutionary France as part of modern Britain's longest period of war. Black shows how George III rose to these challenges with fortitude and helped settle parliamentary monarchy as an effective governmental system, eventually becoming the most popular monarch for well over a century. He also shows us a talented and curious individual, committed to music, art, architecture and science, who took the duties of monarchy seriously, from reviewing death penalties to trying to control his often wayward children even as his own mental health failed, and became Britain's longest reigning king.

The story of the battlefield in the 20th century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of tanks. In Tank Warfare, prominent military historian Jeremy Black offers a comprehensive global account of the history of tanks and armored warfare in the 20th and 21st centuries. First introduced onto the battlefield during the World War I, tanks represented the reconciliation of firepower and mobility and immediately seized the imagination of commanders and commentators concerned about the constraints of ordinary infantry. The developments of technology and tactics in the interwar years were realized in the German blitzkrieg in World War II and beyond. Yet the account of armor on the battlefield is a tale of limitations and defeats as well as of potential and achievements. Tank Warfare examines the traditional narrative of armored warfare while at the same time challenging it, and Black suggests that tanks were no "silver bullet" on the battlefield. Instead, their success was based on their inclusion in the general mix of weaponry available to commanders and the context in which they were used.

A wonderfully concise and readable, yet comprehensive, history of the Mediterranean Sea, the perfect companion for any visitor -- or indeed, anyone compelled to stay at home.'The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean.'Samuel Johnson, 1776The Mediterranean has always been a leading stage for world history; it is also visited each year by tens of millions of tourists, both local and international. Jeremy Black provides an account in which the experience of travel is foremost: travel for tourism, for trade, for war, for migration, for culture, or, as so often, for a variety of reasons. Travellers have always had a variety of goals and situations, from rulers to slaves, merchants to pirates, and Black covers them all, from Phoenicians travelling for trade to the modern tourist sailing for pleasure and cruising in great comfort. Throughout the book the emphasis is on the sea, on coastal regions and on port cities visited by cruise liners - Athens, Barcelona, Naples, Palermo. But it also looks beyond, notably to the other waters that flow into the Mediterranean - the Black Sea, the Atlantic, the Red Sea and rivers, from the Ebro and Rhone to the Nile. Much of western Eurasia and northern Africa played, and continues to play, a role, directly or indirectly, in the fate of the Mediterranean. At times, that can make the history of the sea an account of conflict after conflict, but it is necessary to understand these wars in order to grasp the changing boundaries of the Mediterranean states, societies and religions, the buildings that have been left, and the peoples' cultures, senses of identity and histories. Black explores the centrality of the Mediterranean to the Western experience of travel, beginning in antiquity with the Phoenicians, Minoans and Greeks. He shows how the Roman Empire united the sea, and how it was later divided by Christianity and Islam. He tells the story of the rise and fall of the maritime empires of Pisa, Genoa and Venice, describes how galley warfare evolved and how the Mediterranean fired the imagination of Shakespeare, among many artists. From the Renaissance and Baroque to the seventeenth-century beginnings of English tourism - to the Aegean, Sicily and other destinations - Black examines the culture of the Mediterraean. He shows how English naval power grew, culminating in Nelson's famous victory over the French in the Battle of the Nile and the establishment of Gibraltar, Minorca and Malta as naval bases. Black explains the retreat of Islam in north Africa, describes the age of steam navigation and looks at how and why the British occupied Cyprus, Egypt and the Ionian Islands. He looks at the impact of the Suez Canal as a new sea route to India and how the Riviera became Europe's playground. He shows how the Mediterranean has been central to two World Wars, the Cold War and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. With its focus always on the Sea, the book looks at the fate of port cities particularly - Alexandria, Salonika and Naples.

This is a comprehensive history of Portugal that covers the whole span, from the Stone Age to today. An introduction provides an understanding of geographical and climatic issues, before an examination of Portugal's prehistory and classical Portugal, from the Stone Age to the end of the the Roman era. Portugal's history from ad420 to the thirteenth century takes in the Suevi, Visigoths and Moors. Then, a look at medieval Portugal, covers the development of Christian Portugal culminating with the expulsion of the Moors, with a focus on key sites. A subsequent section on Spanish rule, between 1580 and 1640, explains why Spain took over and why Spanish rule collapsed. There is a significant focus on Portugal's global role, particularly during the age of exploration, or expansion, in the fifteenth century to 1580: Manueline Portugal, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama and Belém. Portugal was the first of the Atlantic empires, with territory in the Azores, Madeira, West Africa and Brazil, and it remained a major empire until the 1820s, retaining an African empire until the 1970s. It's empire in Asia - in Malacca, Macao, Goa and Timor - continued even longer, until the 1990s. Black shows how Portugal had a global impact, but the world, too, had an impact on Portugal. Baroque Portugal, between 1640 and 1800, is explored through palaces in Mafra, Pombal and elsewhere and the wealth of Brazil. The nineteenth century brought turmoil in the form of a French invasion, the Peninsular War, Brazilian independence, successive revolutions, economic issues and the end of the monarchy. Republican Portugal brought further chaos in the early years of the twentieth century, then the dictatorship of Salazar and its end in the Carnation Revolution of 1974. Portugal's role in both world wars is examined, also its wars in Africa. From the overthrow of autocracy to a new constitution and the leadership of Soares, contemporary, democratic Portugal is explored, including the fiscal crisis of recent years. Throughout Black introduces the history and character of the country's principal regions, including the Azores, Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands. He looks at key national sites, at Portuguese food and wine and the arts, with special sections devoted to port, Portugal's famous tiles and the university established at Coimbra in 1290.

In this new and updated edition of A New History of England, historian Jeremy Black takes a cool and dispassionate look at the vicissitudes of over two millennia of English history. He identifies two central themes: the lack of geographical and economic uniformity within England; and the fact that, from the Roman invasion onwards, a united England was often politically associated with part of Europe, from the Scandinavian Cnut to the German origins of the Hanoverians and their descendants. Professor Black steers his way through the labyrinthine complexities of historical narrative with elegance and clarity, providing a lively analysis of major events and personalities and important underlying themes, taking his account right up to the Brexit controversy.

A History of Europe is a masterful narrative, bringing together the continent's common threads of history from the end of the ice ages until the present day. Travel back in time to rise of the Roman Empire, the brutal Viking raids, the cultural explosion of the Renaissance period, all the way up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the rise of consumer culture in the 21st century. Accomplished historian Jeremy Black acts as a knowledgeable guide to the past and the ways that it has shaped society today. Beautifully illustrated with more than 200 colour photographs, detailed timelines and fascinating maps, A History of Europe takes the sprawling history of the continent and makes it tangible.

Packed with contemporary maps, this is a visual survey of how conflict was recorded and planned before and during World War II, revealing how warfare and its documentation and presentation changed throughout the conflict. World War II was a global conflict on an unprecedented scale. On land, sea, and in the skies, nations threw everything that they had into the fray in order to achieve victory. This exciting collection of contemporary maps shows in vivid detail the true scope of the conflict, from the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, through the fighting in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific, all the way up to the end of the conflict. Alongside maps showing how the war was conducted at strategic, operational, and tactical levels, this book contains maps produced for political purposes, including those depicting economic production, social changes such as large-scale evacuations, and those used in the all-important propaganda wars designed to bolster morale and influence public opinion. Following on from his Maps of War and Mapping Naval Warfare, renowned historian Jeremy Black collates a brilliant selection of fascinating maps and shows how they have been used to both illustrate and plan campaigns throughout the conflict.

How did it feel to hear Macbeth's witches chant of "double, double toil and trouble" at a time when magic and witchcraft were as real as anything science had to offer? How were justice and forgiveness understood by the audience who first watched King Lear; how were love and romance viewed by those who first saw Romeo and Juliet? In England in the Age of Shakespeare, Jeremy Black takes readers on a tour of life in the streets, homes, farms, churches, and palaces of the Bard's era. Panning from play to audience and back again, Black shows how Shakespeare's plays would have been experienced and interpreted by those who paid to see them. From the dangers of travel to the indignities of everyday life in teeming London, Black explores the jokes, political and economic references, and small asides that Shakespeare's audiences would have recognized. These moments of recognition often reflected the audience's own experiences of what it was to, as Hamlet says, "grunt and sweat under a weary life." Black's clear and sweeping approach seeks to reclaim Shakespeare from the ivory tower and make the plays' histories more accessible to the public for whom the plays were always intended.