The Concept of "Total War" in the Revolutionary-Napoleonic Period

• Autores: M. G. Broers
• Localización: War in history, ISSN-e 1477-0385, ISSN 0968-3445, Vol. 15, Nº. 3, 2008, págs. 247-268
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The use of the term `total war' with reference to pre-twentieth-century military conflicts has become a matter of some urgency and controversy amid nineteenth-century historians. It has been made all the more so for Napoleonic scholars by the recent appearance of David Bell's thought-provoking book The First Total War. The article attempts to counter and nuance some of Bell's major claims for the applicability of the term, through a discussion of its pertinence to the ideological and political conflicts of the Revolutionary-Napoleonic period, alongside the questions it evinces in technological and military terms.