Content area
Full text
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. By Victor Davis Hanson. New York: Anchor Books, 2002. ISBN 0-385-72038-6. Maps. Photographs. Epilogue. Afterword. Glossary. Bibliographical essay. Index. Pp. XVII, 506. $16.00.
Carnage and Culture is an enthralling, hard-hitting analysis that convincingly explains why the West for 2,500 years has militarily prevailed over opponents. Contemporary historians have failed to "appreciate that the classical legacy is at the core" of this success. Hanson's thesis, that since the beginnings of Western Civilization in ancient Greece, the West has rarely been defeated militarily by an Asian or Middle Eastern power, challenges the prevailing view that Eastern and Western cultural development were roughly equivalent until the sixteenth century, when the West invented firearms. The author readily concedes that non-Western armies have won spectacular victories, conquered swaths of territory and had long periods of glory and achievement, but over time they have been unable to stand up to the lethality of Western arms.
Hanson's icon-smashing explanation is that shock infantry units in possession of advanced weaponry and equipment, well trained, highly motivated, and largely voluntary, have proved to be unbeatable. The uberous amalgam of capitalism and freedom (individualism, free empirical inquiry, civilian audit, and dissent) fueled technological innovation and is the key to understanding the West's success in battle as well as the West's domination of the modern world. Hanson demonstrates his thesis by examining nine major battles from Salamis in 480 B.C. to Tet in 1968. "Themistocles, Alexander the Great, Cortes, and the British...