Strategy Before Clausewitz: Linking Warfare and Statecraft, 1400-1830 (Cass Military Studies)

First, it explores the strategy making of three monarchs whose biographers have claimed to have identified strategic reasoning in their warfare: Edward III of England, Philip II of Spain and Louis XIV of France. The case studies featured in this book show that strategic thinking did indeed exist before the last century, and that there was strategy making, even if there was no commonly agreed word for it. Several chapters deal with reflections on naval strategy long thought not to have existed before the nineteenth century. Combining in-depth historical documentary research with strategic analysis, the book illustrates that despite social, economic, political, cultural and linguistic differences, our forebears connected warfare and the aims and considerations of statecraft just as we do today.This book will be of great inte

. She is the author of many books, including The Evolution of Strategy (2010) and Reading Clausewitz (2002). Beatrice Heuser is Professor of International Relations at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and currently a visiting professor at the Sorbonne and at Sciences Po in Paris

'Strategy is a word of comparatively recent origin but Beatrice Heuser shows us that 'strategic thinking' about the role of military force in the achievement of state policies long preceded the great 19th Century masters of military thought. Her writing is accessible, even entertaining, her scholarship impeccable. It was, the book argues, a tradition to which Clausewitz himself belonged: as the final essay shows, he had read many of these works and fully understood their import.' -- Alan Forrest, University of York, UK