Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800, by Brian L. Davies, editor

Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012. Pp. vi, 364. Maps, tables, notes, biblio., index. $182.00. ISBN: 978-9-0042-2196-3.

Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800, a volume in Brill’s “History of Warfare” series, takes a look at the organization for and conduct of war in Eastern Europe, an area largely neglected in most standard Western works on warfare, but which in some ways was more innovative than the West, in other ways paralleling
developments there, and in still others less progressive.

Prof. Davies (UT Austin), author or editor of numerous works on early modern Russia and other regions of Eastern Europe, such as Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500-1700 and Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe: Russian-Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century, has collected a dozen essays by various specialists in the field that comparing and contrasting military practice in the region encompassing the Hapsburg lands, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, with that in the West, in a period that saw the decline of both Ottoman and Polish-Lithuanian power, and the rise of the Hapsburgs and of Russia.  These essays help demonstrate how the military institutions of the states in the region largely reflected prevailing political,historical, social, and physical conditions. 

Those interested in the evolution of warfare in the early modern period will find this a rewarding read.

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