Preface. The Study of War

Abstract

Starting with Thucydides during the last decades of the fifth century B.C and reaching all the way to the present, there have been many excellent military historians. Their contribution to our understanding of war is immense and growing still. Yet history and theory are not the same. History focuses on the specific, the non-repeatable, and the ephemeral. Its objective is to record what events took place, understand why they took place, and, perhaps where they may be leading. Theory, on which more later, seeks to understand patterns and, if possible, use them to draw generalisations that will be valid for more than one time and one place. It both describes and, at times, prescribes the nature of the subject matter; what its causes and purpose are; into what parts it should be divided; how it relates to all sorts of other things; and how to cope with it and manage it