The Nature of War: How does War end? The Problem of Victory (and Defeat)
Thursday, 17 February 201117:00 - 18:30
Location: Room 1, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, 8 Mill Lane, Cambridge
Humanitas Visiting Professor in War Studies 2011
The Humanitas Chair in War Studies has been
made
possible by the generous support of Sir Ronald Grierson
Professor Hew Strachan (Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford)
The Nature of War
Lecture 3: How does War end? The Problem of Victory (and Defeat)
Napoleonic imagery suggests that decisive battlefield success leads to victory in war, but Napoleon lost his war. The relationship between what happens within a war and its eventual outcome is not one to which military historians have devoted much attention; their scholarship has focused on the making of war not on the making of peace. Diplomatic historians have not been of much help, tending only to pick up the story once hostilities are over, so ignoring the contacts between the two parties within a war or the modification of their objectives by one or both sides in order to make an agreement possible. The problems are not just collective, but also personal, beginning with the decision of an individual soldier to surrender. In the ancient world surrender would probably lead to slavery or summary execution. Although the granting of rights to prisoners of war increased the incentive to surrender, there is little evidence that it has caused wars to end sooner.
Further lectures in the series are:
A symposium will take place on Friday 18 February at the Møller
Centre, Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
The lectures are free and open to all. Registration is required for the
symposium
About Prof Hew Strachan
Professor
Hew Strachan is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the
University of Oxford, Fellow of All Souls College, and Director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 2003 and awarded an Hon.
D.Univ., (Paisley) 2005. He is also Life Fellow of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, where he was
successively Research Fellow, Admissions Tutor and Senior Tutor,
1975-92. From 1992 to 2001 he was Professor of Modern History at the
University of Glasgow, and from 1996 to 2001 Director of the Scottish
Centre for War Studies.
