Small States, History of
Small states have been the subject of historical enquiry since the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides. Intertwined with the history of empire, the survival or demise of small states has regularly inspired patriotic encomium or tragic lament. Small states threatened by large empires or ambitious neighbors developed numerous survival strategies including alliance, the balance of power, economic specialization, and reliance upon military manliness. All of these were failing by the mid-eighteenth century, leading to a crisis of the small states and the development of new strategies to maintain them in a world increasingly dominated by large commercial empires.
European Warfare, 1660-1815
European warfare and its global context Weaponry and tactics Decisiveness Warfare 1660--1721 Warfare 1721--63 Warfare 1763--91 Warfare in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic age 1792--1815 Social and political context Conclusion.
The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750
These centuries, as the author demonstrates, were the era in which the most deeply rooted of ancient institutions disappeared for all time. By 476 the Russian empire had vanished from western Europe; by 655 the Persian empire had vanished from the Near East. Mr. Brown, Professor of History at Princeton University, examines these changes and men's reactions to them, but his account shows that the period was also one of outstanding new beginnings and defines the far-reaching impact both of Christianity on Europe and of Islam on the Near East. The result is a lucid answer to a crucial question in world history; how the exceptionally homogeneous Mediterranean world of c. 200 A.D. became divided into the three mutually estranged societies of the Middle Ages: Catholic Western Europe, Byzantium, and Islam. We still live with the results of these contrasts.