Western Europe’s Small Wars and Counterinsurgencies Since Napoleon: After the Great Wars

This bookfocuses on the wars that are normally relegated to the periphery of geo-politics at the heart of Europe’s ’new’ military history. The military history of the past two centuries of European history has tended to be viewed in the shadow of total war. The impact and aftermath of the French upheaval of 1792-1815, the mid-century struggles for national unification, the World Wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45, and the prospect of mutually assured destruction in the Cold War, were all framed as a totalization of warfare and as a tragic pretext for projects of human rights, collective security, and political integration. But this emphasis on large wars overlooks the impact of the wars waged by minor powers as well as the small wars and counterinsurgencies waged by great powers overseas. The suppression of southern European revolutions in the 1820s, Belgian independence, Cuban struggles against Spanish rule, and the wars of new imperialism ranging from Aceh to Annual, all shaped the strategic and domestic environment in which the Great War happened, and they reverberated on the post-1918 growth of totalitarianism. Equally the post-1945 wars of decolonization militarized the culture and politics in the democratic and authoritarian states of the old continent, in ways which belied the macro-political identities of the Cold War.

Mark Lawrence is Senior Lecturer in Military History at the University of Kent, UK.