Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power

Rating:
Summary: History at its Most Exciting
Review: This book takes us from the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. to the Tet Offensive of 1968 and shows that history can be as much fun as an action movie. The way history is taught in most schools, you'd think there was nothing duller. I would like to see a high school history class based on this book; you'd have an excellent chance of producing history buffs by the dozen.
I especially enjoyed the chapter on the battle of Tenochtitlan, in which Hernan Cortes destroyed the Aztec empire and created modern Mexico. This is a period I knew little or nothing about. As with all the battles he discusses, Hanson uses it as an example of his theory that the West is dominant today is because of its ability to kill with impunity. Obviously not everyone agrees with this, or with Hanson's analysis of any of these battles, but he makes a good case for it.
The chapter on the battle of Midway, essentially the turn of the tide in the war in the Pacific in WWII, was also great fun. I loved Hanson's phrase discussing the contributions of the eccentric American code breakers to the success of the U.S.: "Hundreds of brave Japanese sailors would be cremated at Midway because an officer working in his slippers knew they were coming."
Overall, fun for both history buffs, and for people who don't usually like history but do like action.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: Hanson really seems to have a knack for analyzing how society's input has shaped Western warfare. I must admit, I was biased towards the chapters on Rorke's Drift and Midway, however the entire book is fascinating. I found it easy to side with Hanson on most points, though I tended to lean his way before reading the book.

The only drawback to the book was the ending chapter (the Tet Offensive). I would have loved to have seen an analysis of the first Persian Gulf War or Any of the US military excursions to Africa in the late 90's.

Rating:
Summary: The Lethal West
Review: Carnage and Culture is a briskly paced examination of some signature battles in Western history. While not all are victories, all highlight the particular genius that the West brings to warfare. Hanson's thesis stands in sharp contrast with Jared Diamond's approach, which emphasizes geography, demographics, and random chance. Rather, says Hanson, uniquely Western cultural institutions (constitutional government, civic militarism, market economies, free inquiry, open dissent, shock battle, individualism) in the long run lead to Western military hegemony, even when, in the short run, Western forces lose battles due to poor leadership, bad decisions, random chance, etc.

Hanson's an excellent writer. He takes war seriously and avoids glamorizing it. He refuses to romanticize non-Westerners he depicts (Persians, Carthaginians, Ottoman Turks, Aztecs, Zulus, Imperial Japanese, Vietnamese), details their frequent prowess, skill, and courage, while resolutely indicating the cultural resources they lacked.

Culture and Carnage starts with the Greco-Persian War, and concludes with the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. There is also a postscript for the second edition that reflects on the recent Islamofascist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the American response. In Hanson's account, the traits that account for Western military success are strikingly similar across thousands of miles and over two millennia. Even given the Al Qaeda attacks, Hanson still believes that the greatest long term threats that the West faces is from . . . . the West: rival Western (or newly Westernized) powers in possession of deadly militaries and practices.

This is an excellent work, lively and strong.

Rating:
Summary: A work of fiction
Review: Hanson "explains" the fictional military dominance of the West over the last "2,500 years" (during which time the Romans were well matched by the Persians, Germanic tribes, and others, the forces of Islam spent about 700 years dominating Western forces and taking parts of Europe, and the Mongols beat the crap out of Russia and then smashed the combined forces of Europe in Poland) with the "Western tradition of personal and civic freedom, government by mutual consent, and individualism."
Never mind that this "tradition" was also entirely absent from the West for about 1,750 of those 2,500 years of fictional dominance.
Apparently Hanson never heard the term "feudalism."
Lots of other assertions are also just plain false, for example contradicting the account of the commander himself about why he decided to do what he did in a battle, but why even bother reading a book that explains a complete falsehood with another complete falsehood, as its central theme? The details are false and the broader points are also false.


Rating:
Summary: A Timely But Controversial Book
Review: Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" is worth reading for its vigorous style as well as its thought-provoking thesis. Books about military history are often fairly dry, but Hanson writes clearly and in the active voice, perhaps unconciously emulating the Western military tactics he describes.

He argues that Western success on the battlefield is a cultural phenomenon, not just the result of good fortune in the allocation of resources or the serendipity of technology. Free nations produce leaders and soldiers who take the initiative. Citizens who are protected by law against arbitrary action feel free to "audit" battles and criticize soldiers, leading to improved strategy and tactics. Western military commands are heirarchical, but not unduly so, so that they adapt well to changing circumstances. The result is an approach to battle that has been evolving since the time of the ancient Greeks, and that now involves applying maximum disclipline and violence at the point of engagement in order to annihilate, not merely defeat, an opponent.

Hanson discusses a series of battles to illustrate the differences between the "Western" style of war and the practices of cultures that he deems to be "non-Western": Salamis (480 BC); Gaugamela (331 BC); Cannae (216 BC); Poitiers (732); Tenochtitlan (1520-21); Lepanto (1571); Rourke's Drift (1879); Midway (1942) and Tet (1968). Each of these struggles illustrates a Western preference for decisive battle that inflicts enormous and disproportionate casualties on the loser.

Throughout, Hanson is very careful to stress that the losers are brave, smart individuals--he is not a racist and goes out of his way to explain that, person for person, the citizens of the West are no better than their non-Western counterparts. He does, however, argue that Western culture, for better or worse, produces better results on the battlefield than non-Western culture does. This position is sure to be viewed as politically incorrect, but it is certainly worth pondering.

"Carnage and Culture" is particularly interesting in these troubled times. I began reading the book shortly after the September 11 attacks, and I have found it to be highly predictive of the American conduct of the war in Afghanistan, as well as America's relentless success in that war. The collapse of the Taliban that seems remarkable to media pundits and those untutored in the Western way of war looks almost inevitable to those who have read Hanson's work. A wounded republic, like Rome after its horrendous defeat at Cannae, is a determined and ruthless enemy. As the historian Ross Leckie wryly observed in "Hannibal": "The Romans were a thorough lot. Carthage is a memory."

Having said all this, Hanson's book leaves almost untouched some fairly important questions. If freedom and initiative are so critical to Western military success, how do we explain the performance of totalitarian Germany's military in the early years of World War II and its quick defeat of the French democracy in 1940? Why were the Soviets, who endured purges and arbitrary executions in the 1930s and throughout World War II, ultimately successful against the more "Westernized" Germans? I suspect that Hanson could offer cogent answers to these questions, but it puzzles me that he did not volunteer them in his book.

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Summary: The Triumph of the West(s)?
Review: I enjoyed this book. The depiction of each set piece battle is masterfully researched and written, and I agree with the author's central argument, that Western cultural adaptability and political freedom culminate in war machines capable of projecting Western military power globally. The "West" is an elastic concept, however, and I would have liked him to pin it down more specifically. For example, the German tribes who resisted assimilation by the might of Rome and ultimately carved up her empire between them - were they "Western?" More "Western" than Rome? Had exposure to Roman cultural influence
"Westernized" them? Or was the degeneration of the imperial court into "Oriental despotism" the source of its downfall?

In his afterward, Hanson complains about being deluged with a flood of "minutiae, with references to obscure battles and weapons that would substantiate, modify or reject my thesis - as if nine representative battles from some 2,500 years of military history could in any way be exhaustive in matters of detail." (p 462). Well, you were the one making the sweeping assumptions, Vic. Anyway, here is some minutiae of mine to add to the pile.

"Past, present, and future, the story of military dynamism in the world is ultimately an investigation into the prowess of Western arms," Hanson assures us. How about Western luck?

In 1241 an army whose discipline, mobility, and amorality had never before been seen (or emulated) in the West was at the gates of Europe. The Mongols, having already subdued the Asian steppe, overrun Russia, defeated the Poles and their German allies at Leignitz and Hungary at the Sajo River, were only stopped by the death of their khan in December of that year.

Hanson does not refer to this - in fact, the word "Mongol" doesn't appear in his book. The most he will allow is to refer to "Tribal musters fueled by promises of booty," leading to "enormous and spirited armies... the nomadic invasions of Genghis Khan (1206-27) and Tamerlane (1381-1405), who overran much of Asia, are the most notable examples... But even the most murderous hordes could not really sustain - feed, clothe, and pay - a military force with sophisticated weaponry for a lengthy period of time." (p 275). This is an unfair characterization of the Mongols, who produced what remains, pound for pound, the most perfect war machine in history, and were the terror of the Old World for generations.

Hanson says, "Adrianople (378) and Manzikert (1071) were horrendous Western defeats; but the Romans and Byzantines who were slaughtered there were for the most part vastly outnumbered, far from home, poorly led, and reluctant emissaries of crumbling empires." (p 12-13). "Poorly led," yes, but the Romans were not outnumbered at Adrianople and vastly outnumbered the Turks at Manzikert; far from being "far from home," Adrianople was less than a hundred miles from the imperial capital at Constantinople, and Manzikert, while remote, was still within imperial territory; and far from being "reluctant emissaries of crumbling empires," the Roman and Byzantine armies were comprised of professional soldiers led in person by their emperors and defending a state that had centuries of life left to it.

In Chapter 5 - "Landed Infantry" - Hanson argues in rather romantic terms that the free, property-owning warriors of the Merovingian Empire saved Western civilization from the first great Islamic Jihad at Poitiers in 732. In fact, Europe had already passed its greatest test in a confrontation he only touches on - the Byzantine repulse of the Arab siege of Constantinople from 673-78, and their second successful defense against an even larger Arab Armada in 717-18 (which he curiously neglects to mention).

Hanson admits, even in the event of defeat at Poitiers, "Permanent Islamic possession of the entirety of France... was unlikely." (p 143). If Byzantium had fallen, the Caliphs would have transferred their flag to Constantinople, and everything from the Bosphorus to the Baltic would have been Islamized within a generation. Christianity would have been isolated and hemmed in against the Atlantic. It may have collapsed altogether.

This didn't happen because the Byzantines prevailed. Why? Because they were "Western?" Modern historians don't consider them so, and neither did contemporary Westerners. Arab penetration of Europe was halted not by free property owning citizen farmers defending a nascent democratic republic, but by a civilization no less theocratic, and much more rigidly autocratic, than its "alien" rival.

The thesis of Chapter 9 - "Individualism" - which uses the example of the Japanese defeat at Midway do demonstrate superior Western initiative being harnessed as a component of a superior war machine, is also problematic. How much of "the West" are we talking about here?

Japan was more than a match for any other Western power it challenged in the Pacific. First Russia (a "Western" power?) was humiliated at the turn of last century, then, in the space of little more than two months, Japan stripped The Netherlands of her entire empire in the East Indies, a region she had dominated for centuries, and inflicted some of the worst defeats in British history.

On every front in 1941 Japanese tactics, initiative and equipment were superior to that of the Western powers they faced. The United States was capable of making a comeback. The others were not. Britain was no match for Japan. Even if she had been free to send her entire fleet to the Pacific to confront the Rising Sun, I strongly suspect the result would have been another Tsushima.

Was the United States successful because it was more "Western" than the rest of the West? If so, how?

The same question applies to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - both vastly more powerful than any Western power other than the United States, and capable of tremendous scientific achievements that gave them a cutting edge in warfare. How do they fit into Hanson's "Western" paradigm?

Rating:
Summary: Answers the question left hanging by Guns, Germs, and Steel
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I suggest reading it after Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. At the end of that book, Diamond leaves the question hanging as to why Western Civilization ended up dominating the globe. This book provides a compelling answer.

I especially liked the section that described how the Spanish Conquistadors defeated the Aztecs. He explains that after landing in Mexico, the Spanish set up a gunpowder factory. All of the ingredients necessary for making gunpowder were there, but the Aztecs hadn't discovered it.

The other thing he points out is that the Aztec way of fighting emphasized capturing their opponents so they could be sacrificed in a ritual. The Spanish concentrated on killing the enemy. This difference and the fact that the Aztec dictatorship was unpopular in surrounding areas are what enabled a relatively small number of Conquistadors to defeat the Aztec empire.

Rating:
Summary: From what I've read so far...
Review: I'm about half way through the book and so far it seems very well thought out. My biggest complaint is how Salamis is glorified and Thermopylae's contribution to the Greek defense is downplayed to a ridiculous extent. Overall Carnage and Culture is a very well thought out book that explains Western military dominance.

Rating:
Summary: The Democratic War Machine
Review: Love him (and I do) or hate him, Victor Davis Hanson's work is dependably bold and provocative. One of his latest books, "Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power," is certainly no exception.

The book was written, at least in part, as a response to the critically acclaimed and wildly popular "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. Hanson derides the geographic deterministic conclusions presented by Diamond - the idea that Western power is more or less a fluke of geography - and lays out an alternative explanation for the dominance of the Western world over other cultures. But rather than offering an alternative anthropological perspective, Hanson uses military history to explain the West's dominance since the Hellenistic age. From a strictly objective and amoral perspective, Hanson says, Western liberal democracies have proven incredibly efficient at killing enemies in war and thus conquering much of the globe.

Hanson central thesis is that there are nine "paradigms" that, when combined, account for the superiority of Western warfare and the extreme bloodshed when Western nations fight one another: 1) political freedom as the cornerstone of Western culture from which all else flows; 2) the quest for decisive battles of annihilation rather than ritualistic battle often found in non-Western cultures; 3) the concept of military service as a civic duty, which provides the West with large numbers of highly motivated troops; 4) a focus on heavy infantry shock engagements; 5) a spirit of rationalism and the scientific method, which has paid huge dividends in the form of advanced military technology; 6) the economic model of capitalism, which has exploited technological advances to their fullest and rapidly put weapons in the hands of large Western armies; 7) the discipline to fight as a unit and thus get the most out of Western technology and mass production capability; 8) individualism and initiative in battle; and 9) dissent, self-critique and civic audit of military operations. He uses individual East-West battles - including Western "defeats" such as Cannae, Isandhlwana (along with his discussion of Rorke's Drift) and Tet (from a strategic perspective) - throughout history to illustrate each of the paradigms. The author is quick to note that his selection of battles has little to do with his overall conclusions and that a completely different collections of battles could be used to demonstrate the same points.

Each chapter is well written and vivid in its description of the various battles (early on Hanson notes that war is all about killing men, not the more antiseptic issue of strategy). For those whose reading has tended to focus on contemporary military history, the early chapters on Salamis, Guagamela, Cannae (Hanson is a professor of classics, so these first three are his speciality), Poitiers and Tenochtitlan will be particularly enlightening and rewarding.

In the end, Hanson's arguments are compelling, but far from convincing. The notion that Western scientific inquiry and commercial enterprise have greatly facilitated military power is undeniable. So too is his argument that military professionalism and its focus on discipline have proven decisive in lopsided engagements. However, the idea that only citizens of a Western democracy can field large armies of motivated men capable of initiative or that seeking decisive shock battle is key to victory are much more debatable. Nevertheless, "Carnage and Culture" is worth your time and highly recommended - even if you challenge most of Hanson's conclusions.

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Summary: CAPITALISM RULES BECAUSE IT PRODUCES BETTER KILLERS
Review: Put two armies on a field, one an army from a free culture and the other from an enslaved culture and the free culture army will win or, in the case of Cannae, recover and win. This is the thesis advanced by Victor Davis Hanson in CARNAGE AND CULTURE. Mr. Hanson uses nine battles to illustrate his ideas: Salamis, Gaugamela, Cannae, Poitiers, Tenochtitlan, Lepanto, Rorke's Drift, Midway and Tet. In each case, he shows the efficiency of warrior-killers produced by more capitalistic, freer cultures, prizing indivilual freedoms and individual initiative. For example, during the Tet offensive some 40,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers were killed but only 1000 to 2000 Americans. This efficiency is the result of a citizenship of free men fighting for their freedom, of economically freer cultures able to produce better weapons, of the western idea of decisive battle where the enemy is brought to battle and annihilated, of individuals not afraid to improvise and take initiative, of a culture where free inquiry, rational thinking and science are traditions. In a phrase, it is the result of Western culture. Mr Hanson does not say that the Other warrior is not brave or not intelligent or that he is inferior in any way. Sometimes their generals were even brilliant as was Hannibal at Cannae. And sometimes Western forces are led by fools and isolated and wiped out as the British were at Isandlwanda by the Zulus. But he is saying that the Other culture, which is often despotic, irrational, not capitalistic, and which discourages science and penalizes initiative, explains why they eventually lose to the West. This argument is very convincing. My only complaint is that Mr. Hanson makes this argument over and over and about a third of this 506-page book could have been edited out. Nevertheless, the descriptions of the battles are very well done and fascinating. CARNAGE AND CULTURE is a great book for the general history buff and for anyone interested in how culture affects the outcome of wars. Most of all, the reader will gain a perhaps previously unrealized appreciation for our western traditions of capitalism and democracy and individual freedoms: they have saved the West from conquest by producing better killers. Otherwise, we might all be speaking Arabic and praying to Allah today.