The Cambridge History of Strategy: Volume 2, From the Napoleonic Wars to the Present

Volume II of The Cambridge History of Strategy focuses on the practice of strategy from 1800 to the present day. A team of eminent scholars examine how leaders of states, empires and non-state groups (such as guerrilla forces, rebel groups and terrorists) have attempted to practise strategy in the modern period. With a focus on the actual 'doing' of strategy, the volume aims to understand real-world experiences when ideas about conflict are carried out against a responding and proactive opponent. The case studies and material presented in the volume form an invitation to rethink dominant perspectives in the field of strategic studies. As the case studies demonstrate, strategy is most often not a stylised, premeditated and wilful phenomenon. Rather, it is a product of circumstance and opportunity, both structural and agential, leading to a view of strategy as an ad hoc, if not chaotic, enterprise.

About the Author

Isabelle Duyvesteyn is Professor of International Studies/Global History at the Institute of History at Leiden University. Between 2012 and 2017 she held the Special Chair in Strategic Studies at the Political Science Institute of Leiden University. Between 2008 and 2020 she was a member of the national Advisory Council on International Affairs assigned to advise the Netherlands government on issues of peace and security, and between 2012 and 2021 she was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Netherlands Defence Academy.

Beatrice Heuser holds the Chair of International Relations at the University of Glasgow, and is seconded to the General Staff College of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg as Section Chief for Strategy. She has worked at NATO Headquarters as a consultant. She has served on academic advisory boards of the Royal United Services Institute, the French Institute of International Affairs (IFRI) and the French government's strategic studies think tank IRSEM. She has previously taught at universities in the UK, Germany and France.