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Nicola Di Cosmo's (ed.) Military Culture in Imperial China, is a valuable addition to the small, but growing, number of books on Chinese military history. As is often true of volumes of this kind, there has been a considerable delay between the original conference (which I attended in 2001) and the publication of the papers, but this in no way detracts from the high quality of the book itself and of its individual chapters, which range in quality from merely good to truly excellent. Indeed, one of the most significant aspects of this book is its demonstration of the breadth of the field of Chinese military history, or perhaps military culture, and the diverse scholarly perspectives available.
In his introduction Di Cosmo directly confronts the question of what "military culture" is, providing some guidance and organization to the otherwise disparate chapters of the book. He offers four definitions:
First, military culture refers to a discrete, bounded system of conduct and behavior to which members of the military are supposed to adhere, made of written and unwritten rules and conventions as well as distinctive beliefs and symbols. Second, military culture can mean strategic culture, which involves a decision-making process that transcends the specific behavior of military people and involves instead the accumulated and transmitted knowledge upon which those involved in making strategic choices, from both the civil and military side, base their arguments, validate their positions, and examine a given situation. Third, military culture can be understood as the set of values that determine a society's inclination for war and military organization ... Fourth,...