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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Intellectual History of the Napoleonic Wars, February 27, 2007
We have grown accustomed to viewing the World Wars of the 20th century as the first total wars in modern history, for they required the total mobilization and militarization of the societies involved. Their accompanying ideologies, fascism and communism, were appropriately called totalitarian since they left no aspect of society unaffected. Now historian David A Bell has written a new and different history of the Napoleonic Wars (1792 - 1815) arguing that they were in fact the first total wars.
In his introduction, Bell tells us that he is borrowing techniques from intellectual history to write a military history. Traditionally military historians have restricted themselves to accounts of battlefield tactics and weapon systems. Bell is attempting to go further in showing that the ideals of the Enlightenment played a role in what he calls the first total war. He believes that the French Revolution - the apotheosis of the Enlightenment - radicalized people's ideas about how and why wars should be fought.
During the time of the ancien regime - which is Bell's main standard of comparison - wars were limited and short-lived. They were fought according to established rules and usually to defend the honor of this or that aristocrat; in fact, many times the armies were made up of mercenaries. The philosophes of the Enlightenment such as Kant, Diderot, d'Alembert, and the Marquis de Condorcet were certain that with the advent of reason wars would be a thing of the past. As late as 1790 Robespierre was declaring in the Assembly that the French nation had no desire to engage in war, that to invade another country and make it adopt their laws and constitution was the furthest thing from their minds.
Much changed in two years. By 1792 there was growing opposition to the revolutionary government in Paris, especially in Vendee. The government decided to put down this rebellion with a degree of brutality not seen before. They conducted a scorched-earth policy that spared no one. They made no distinction between combattants and non-combattants. The dogs of war had been unleashed to save the revolution and to obliterate any dissent.
Bell explores the nature of total war and how it feeds on itself. Once the military becomes front and center of the government, war becomes unstoppable. All of the nations resources and efforts went to the Grand Armee to create an empire in places as far as Egypt and Russia.
In his retelling of the Spanish campaign, Bell attempts to draw a parallel with America's intervention in Iraq. To an extent there are some parallels. Napoleon claimed to be bringing Enlightenment ideals and reform to Spain, yet the insurgency would have none of it. This, however, is a distraction from Bell's thesis; whatever else it is doing in Iraq, America is not conducting a total war. This is a very restrained and cautious use of military power. In fact, Napoleon's excursion into Spain was somewhat cautious to be called total war.
When contrasted with what transpired in the preceding century and what the philosophes predicted, the Napoleonic Wars were barbaric and total, but it is still not clear how they were different from, say, the Mongol invasions of the Middle Ages or the military expeditions of Alexander the Great. Its seems that the so-called total wars of Napoleon have been done before. The total mobilization of people and resources is as old as human history. Mutual and absolute hatred for the enemy is a timeless emotion. Bell's argument that hell hath no fury like a citzen's army is reminiscent of Victor Davis Hanson's thesis in Carnage and Culture, and it is as unconvincing.
Bell's book provides much food for thought on how quickly circumstances can change from permanent peace to permanent war without pinpointing exactly what triggers the change. Paranoia, perceived threat,and survival are all factors in the devolution of high ideals to base hostility. And why armies of citizens driven by Enlightenment ideals fight more effectively than previous armies is still unanswered. However, Bell makes a robust effort with this original work.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed but fascinating, May 8, 2008
This review is from: The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Paperback)
As a brief history of the late Enlightenment and the French Revolution: 4 stars
As a brief history of the Napoleonic Wars (only 3 of 8 chapters): 3 stars
As a coherent political theory: 2 stars
On average, this amounts to 3 stars and makes for a light readable history accompanied by some often interesting theory. However, if you're getting the book based on its title, 2.5 stars might be more accurate.
The history itself is fine, making for a broad overview with a few good insights, so my critique will focus on the theory and the parallels Bell draws.
Bell is not an idiot and seems to have a good grasp of general history, capable of soberly pointing out that the total American casualties in the War on Terror have so far amounted to less than what the Russians would have suffered in an average 6 hours during WWII. Yet he will often come up with the most inane comments to keep the book contemporary. For instance, he repeatedly states how "uncannily similar" the guerrilla war in Spain is to the current Iraq insurgency. "Uncannily similar" in what sense? The answer seems to be that they're both insurgencies - just like Afghanistan, Somalia, Vietnam, Lebanon, and thousands of other historical insurgencies. Arguably Iraq has more in common with the Jewish revolt against the Romans than with the Peninsula War. But then, of course, if he argued that, he would be admitting that fanatical insurgency predates the French Revolution by a long margin.
What he terms "Total War" is also problematic. The West has only fought a handful of total wars since Napoleonic times. Instead, less technologically advanced societies have tended to be the ones to most fully mobilize their populations in war. But is this really a modern phenomenon? Bell admits city states fought total wars in this [his] sense, but so too did tribal societies, nomadic pastoralists, and small colonies. Some of the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century seemed pretty total too. Perhaps he has things the wrong way around and it is "limited war" that needs explaining.
On the other hand, he is right to emphasise the role the French Revolution played in the military/civilian split, the advent of the literate soldier, and the rise of propaganda. He also brings up the birth of the philosophical concept of a War to End All Wars (in the non-Biblical sense, of course). Did these things lead to Total War though? He is unconvincing. Wars had already long been fought as much to eliminate other powers as for plunder or to keep a system of powers in balance. "Delenda Carthago/Carthage must be destroyed" is not a modern call to war.
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30 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting but flawed thesis, January 5, 2007
David Bell has written an interesting but somewhat flawed book which states that the Napoleonic Wars was the first total war in European history. According to Bell the intellectual origins of the Napoleanic wars occurred with the writings of elightenment philosophers who wanted to go back to the Classical period in which all the citizens of the republic were part of the army. This theory about the armed republic became reality during the French revolution in which mass conscription took place. As a result of the Napoleonic wars, accroding to Bell, aristocrats soon lost their place with the French army and later in the nineteenth century with other Eurpean armies. As a result classes that taught aristcratic values for army officers were soon replaced by those that stressed technical skills. Also every citizen was judged a combatant and this led to massacres committed by French forces during the Vendee and in Spain and Italy. The are two main weaknesses in Bell's case that the Napoleonic Wars was the first truly modern war in history. The first is Bell's belief that aristocrats and royals were eliminated from the army but this was not the case with the German army in the First World War which included the Bavarian Prince Ruppert as a commander of the main German armies and the Tsarist army of the same time period who had Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich and Tsar Nicholas II as head of the army. Also the Napoleonic wars as being a precursor to the atrocities committed during the two world wars seems to be flawed in that the genocides that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century were based on the physical elimination of class and ethinc groups unlike the massacres in Spain,France, and Italy in the early nineteenth century. Despite these major flaws this book is still an interesting book to read.
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