Armstrong Starkey – författare

War in the 18th century war was a complex operation, including popular as well as conventional conflict, between Europeans and with non-Europeans. These conflicts influenced European intellectuals and contributed to the complexity of Enlightenment thought. While Enlightenment writers regarded war as the greatest evil confronting mankind, they had little hope that it could be eliminated; thus, peace proposals of the day were joined by more realistic discussion of the means by which war might be limited or rendered more humane. In this book, the author considers the influence of ideas and values on the actions of Enlightenment military personnel and how the rational spirit of the time influenced military thought, producing a military enlightenment that applied rational analysis to military tactics and to the composition of armies. In the late Enlightenment, military writers explored the psychological foundations of war as a means of stimulating a new military spirit among the troops.The Enlightenment was, however, not the only cultural influence upon war during this century. Religion, the traditional values of the ancien regime, and local values all contributed to the culture of force. When Europeans engaged in military encounters with peoples in other parts of the globe, cultural interchange inevitably occurred as well. Further, there is a revolutionary element that one must consider when defining the military culture. The result of all these factors was a creative tension in 18th century warfare and an extraordinarily complex military culture.

This fascinating survey blends anthropology and military history to reexamine the European invasion of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Tracing conflicts beginning with King Philip's War in New England and ending with the conquest of Indians in the Old Northwest, Armstrong Strakey shows the evolution of both Indian and European warfare methods during this turbulent period.Rather than considering military history as an isolated phenomenon, Starkey describes military encounters as only one aspect of a more fundamental conflict of cultures. Drawing on recent scholarship in ethnohistory, Starkey dismantles numerous stereotypes of Indian and European warriors and methods of warfare. He shows that Indians and Europeans were allies as frequently as they were enemies and that the most successful European fighters were those who adopted the Indian way of war as their own. Thus, according to the author, the story of European and Native American warfare is as much one of cultural exchanges as cultural conflict.