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War in the Age of Revolution, 1775-1815. Edited by Roger Chickering and Stig Förster. Washington: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-89996-3. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Pp. ix, 422. $85.00.
It has been standard practice for historians in most fields for at least two decades to reject the notion of "turning points" or "revolutions," and to argue that things once perceived as great events were simply snapshots of moments during long and vaguely-defined eras. As the historian Arthur Gustav Haas once joked, "I'm afraid I might wake up one morning to find that nothing has ever happened!" Although they do not quite tiptoe out to that precipice, some of the essays in Part I of this volume do call into question why the book conjures an "Age of Revolution" that few of its contributors are willing to acknowledge.
The volume begins with Azar Gat's historiographie essay on the understanding of a European mditary revolution. Gat is skeptical enough of the concept to refer to it as "so-called," and prefers a broader context of change dating from the ascent of gunpowder and its chadenge to fortifications. Obviously ad change can be perceived as rooted in previous practices, and - as Gat himself concedes - the ascendancy of firepower over fortifications lasted only a Uttle more than a century and resulted in a reconception of military...