About the Book
This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, arguing that it is crucial to ground contemporary experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq in a global framework. Unlike other studies that begin with the American and French revolutions, this book reaches back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. Interweaving thematic and chronological narratives, Black probes the enduring linkages between beliefs, events, and people on the one hand and changes over time on the other hand. He shows the extent to which power politics, technologies, and ideologies have evolved, creating new parameters and paradigms that have framed both governmental and public views.
Tracing insurgencies ranging from China to Africa to Latin America, Black highlights the widely differing military and political dimensions of each conflict. He weighs how, and why, lessons were “learned” or, rather, asserted, in both insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare. At every stage, he considers lessons learned by contemporaries, the ways in which norms developed within militaries and societies, and their impact on doctrine and policy. His sweeping study of insurrectionary warfare and its counterinsurgency counterpart will be essential reading for all students of military history.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Abbreviations
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Insurgency to 1500
Chapter 3: Contesting Religion and Power, 1500–1700
Chapter 4: Entering the Modern? The Eighteenth Century
Chapter 5: Insurgencies in an Age of Imperialism: The Nineteenth Century
Chapter 6: The Ideology of People’s War Refracted, 1900–40
Chapter 7: Insurrections at a Height, 1940–60
Chapter 8: The Fall of Empires, 1960–80
Chapter 9: The Variety of Goals and Means, 1980s
Chapter 10: After the Cold War, 1990s
Chapter 11: Interventionism and Its Failings, 2000s
Chapter 12: A World without Shape? The Present
Chapter 13: Speculations about the Future
Chapter 14: Conclusions
Notes
Selected Further Reading
Index
About the Author :
Jeremy Black graduated from Cambridge University with a starred First and did graduate work at Oxford University before teaching at the University of Durham and then at the University of Exeter, where he is professor emeritus of history. He has held visiting chairs at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Texas Christian University, and Stillman College. He is a 2018 Templeton Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Black received the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History in 2008. His recent books include Air Power: A Global History; War and Technology; Naval Power: A History of Warfare and the Sea from 1500 Onwards; and Rethinking World War Two: The Conflict and Its Legacy.
Review :
The nature of war has changed, especially since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Now the public no longer worries about nuclear Armageddon, but instead fears suicide bombers in European capitals. Consequently, the face of war has been altered. In his new study, respected military historian Black seeks to enlighten readers by highlighting not only the mainstream analysis of guerrilla operations but, more importantly, the evolution of counterinsurgency doctrine. Commentators have even given insurgency a new name: asymmetrical war. Although the author takes readers on a brief tour of insurgencies throughout history, especially those in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, his prime focus remains on the situations found in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. But to get there, Black traces the beginnings, when the component parts of both the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union sought independence. It was those conflicts, Black stresses, that were the beginning of a new revolution in military affairs that the powers-that-be still grapple with today. Asignificant and timely contribution to understanding the new meaning of war. Summing Up:Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A Global Perspective provides the military professional with the vicarious experience of insurgency and counterinsurgency through the ages and across the globe. It fills a crucial gap in the Western understanding of intra-state conflict, particularly the cultural perspective on organized violence for political ends and its utility in cultures other than our own. While the predictions on the future of sub-state political violence may seem trite, Black justifies them by viewing them through the Western ethnocentrism that underpins our analysis. However, Western ethnocentrism is also the reason that this book contributes to the historiography of insurgency; it takes us away from our pre-conceived notions of the political ends and utility of sub-state violence. Despite the recent turn away from COIN, wars amongst the people will be an enduring characteristic of war.
This work is essential for anyone with an interest in insurgency and counterinsurgency. Black references the foundational writers of insurgency and counterinsurgency theory to include Clausewitz, Mao Zedong, and David Galula, and combatant commanders of the past two decades such as Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, while also including the analysis of newer thinkers such as John Nagl and David Kilcullen. The conclusion of the work looks to the future of warfare on the hybrid battlefield, heavily influenced by the rise of population, globalization, and the growth of megacities around the world. Black notes that, though every lesson learned in the counterinsurgency operations of the past cannot be neatly applied to those of the future, they should not be soon forgotten either.
As an explicit rejection of analyses that simplistically ‘read backward’ from contemporary geopolitics to explain away the complexities of insurrection and rebellion, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency is a welcome addition to this evergrowing body of literature. Starting with the central premise that insurgent warfare is decidedly not a modern phenomenon, Jeremy Black is driven by an over-arching concern—one that rises to the level of a warning—that the political and military effectiveness of counterinsurgency measures remains encumbered by limited learning from previous historical examples…. No stone goes unturned in this dense yet highly readable book (its subtitle, A Global History, is no exaggeration or misnomer). Although organized chronologically, it is not merely a chronology; and although explicitly comparative, it is not properly a comparative study. Black seeks to ‘probe the linkage between beliefs, events, people, and time progression,’ thus making his work akin to an encyclopedic, narrative compendium of exhaustive research that culminates in a vast wealth of knowledge on the provenance of insurgencies throughout world history…. [A] commendable work.
Jeremy Black’s Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A Global History is…a tour de force, discussing the historical evolution of insurgenciesand counterinsurgencies. The book takes a chronological approachto the rise of insurgencies, thus making it possible to consider how and whylessons were learned.
[Jeremy Black’s] global approach reveals that insurgencies are far from being a uniquely modern or uniquely anti-Western phenomenon. Rather, Black takes the reader on a cross-cultural, cross-continental exploration of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies starting with Judas Maccabeus' revolt against the Syrians in 166 BCE and concluding with the current war in Syria. . . . The book is ideally suited for survey reading to understand the wider context of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies.
The problem of insurgencies and how to defeat them still poses tremendous challenges to modern militaries. Industrial weapons, modern systems of organization, and now computerized information have all proven elusive as war winners against adaptive insurgents. Jeremy Black brings much-needed historical perspective to this problem, which will be invaluable for all who wrestle with trying to understand where insurgents come from and how to reduce the threat they pose.
A masterful survey from the Roman Empire to present-day Syria. Jeremy Black not only discusses the historical evolution of armed rebellions and COIN but also throws light on their probable nature in the near future.
Jeremy Black does it again in this comprehensively researched, clearly presented analysis of insurgency and counterinsurgency in a global historical context. A major resource for courses and individual readers alike.
