The Dynamics of Military Revolution aims to bridge a major gap in the emerging literature on revolutions in military affairs, suggesting that there have been two very different phenomena at work over the past centuries: 'military revolutions', which are driven by vast social and political changes; and 'revolutions in military affairs', which military institutions have directed, although usually with great difficulty and ambiguous results. By providing both a conceptual framework and a historical context for thinking about revolutionary changes in military affairs, the work establishes a baseline for understanding the patterns of change, innovation, and adaptation that have marked war in the Western World since the thirteenth century - beginning with Edward III's revolutionary changes in medieval warfare, through the development of modern Western military institutions in seventeenth-century France, to the cataclysmic changes of the First World War and the German Blitzkrieg victories of 1940. This history provides a guide for thinking about military revolutions in the coming century, which are as inevitable as they are difficult to predict.
1. Introduction Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox; 2. 'As if a new sun had arisen': England's fourteenth-century RMA Clifford J. Rogers; 3. Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France John A. Lynn; 4. Mass politics and nationalism as military revolution: the French Revolution and after MacGregor Knox; 5. Surviving military revolution: the US Civil War Mark Grimsley; 6. The Prusso-German RMA, 1840-71 Dennis E. Showalter; 7. The battlefleet revolution, 1885-1914 Holger H. Herwig; 8. The First World War and the birth of modern warfare Jonathan B. A. Bailey; 9. May 1940: contingency and fragility of the German RMA Williamson Murray; 10. Conclusion: the future behind us Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox.
