The most important conflicts in the founding of the English colonies and the American republic were fought against enemies either totally outside of their society or within it: barbarians or brothers. In this work, Wayne E. Lee presents a searching exploration of early modern English and American warfare, looking at the sixteenth-century wars in Ireland, the English Civil War, the colonial Anglo-Indian wars, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.Crucial to the level of violence in each of these conflicts was the perception of the enemy as either a brother (a fellow countryman) or a barbarian. But Lee goes beyond issues of ethnicity and race to explore how culture, strategy, and logistics also determined the nature of the fighting. Each conflict contributed to the development of American attitudes toward war. The brutal nature of English warfare in Ireland helped shape the military methods the English employed in North America, just as the legacy of the English Civil War cautioned American colonists about the need to restrain soldiers' behavior. Nonetheless, Anglo-Americans waged war against Indians with terrifying violence, in part because Native Americans' system of restraints on warfare diverged from European traditions. The Americans then struggled during the Revolution to reconcile these two different trends of restraint and violence when fighting various enemies.Through compelling campaign narratives, Lee explores the lives and fears of soldiers, as well as the strategies of their commanders, while showing how their collective choices determined the nature of wartime violence. In the end, the repeated experience of wars with barbarians or brothers created an American culture of war that demanded absolute solutions: enemies were either to be incorporated or rejected. And that determination played a major role in defining the violence used against them.

Product Description: In this culminating work of a long and distinguished career, historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown looks at the theme of honor―a subject on which he was the acknowledged expert―and places it in a broader historical and cultural context than ever before...read more

Product Description: GOING DOWN HILL : Legacies of the American Revolutionary War Author: Harry M. Ward Credentials: PhD, Richard Binford Vest Professor of History, University of Richmond. Author of The American Revolution: Nationhood Achieved 1763 1788...read more

Product Description: Written by leading historians and political scientists, this collection of essays offers a broad and comprehensive coverage of the role of war in American history. Addressing the role of the armed force, and attitudes towards it, in shaping and defining the United States, the first four chapters reflect the perspectives of historians on this central question, from the time of the American Revolution to the US wars in Vietnam and Iraq...read more

A reinterpretation of the development of the United States argues that warfare has played a leading role in shaping North America throughout the past five hundred years, in a history that focuses on the lives of eight men, including George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Colin Powell. Reprint.

Examines the effect of war on American society, culture, and national identity in 395 contributed articles.

Examines the effect of war on American society, culture, and national identity in 395 contributed articles.

Explores the ways that contending memories of the Civil War clashed or intermingled in public memory from 1863 to 1915, focusing on race as the main problem in how Americans decided to remember and forget the Civil War. (view table of contents)

Product Description: McGraw-Hill manufacturing and systems engineering series.