American History

The article The  Western Way of War found in the book  The Cambridge History of Warfare  is crafted and written by Geoffrey Parker, a History professor at the Ohio State University who has written over thirty books related to military affairs including warfare. The articles thesis is how the West was won through the superior utilization of economic and intellectual factors and of weaponry.  The focus of the essay is to explicate the exact meaning of the western way of war through the insightful exploration of the history of western war from the antiquity up to the present in a socio-economic and global context.

The essay discusses the triumph of the west through its superiority and dominance in five key aspects. The first of these aspects is the reliance on technological superiority (Parker 2005).  Second aspect is superior discipline and training (Parker 2005). This aspect tells  readers that the victories of the Western armies were largely attributable to their infantry (Parker 2005). This aspect also shows Wests ability to compensate for the numerical inferiority. The third factor  is the remarkable pursuit of the Western armies to continue their military tradition of their military theory  (Parker 2005).  Such tradition and ideals bring to mind the challenge and response of the armies which were deeply rooted from the determined and competitive western way of war (Parker 2005). The fourth and fifth aspects described by Parker are the armies rapid adjustment and transformation, and innovation (Parker 2005).

The author is able to present a decent account of western way of warfare by providing several historical perspectives and the insights on why certain militarycircumstances transpired. However, the author falls short in giving maximum depth on any individual subject and fails to discuss in greater detail the military trends in the western way of war at the contemporary period to give fuller coverage of the earlier periods. The essay can be used as a general starting point in any studiesn or research on military history.