Chapter 4 brings ideas from philosophy, the philosophy of science, and anthropology concerning the debate over worldviews (conceptual schemes) on the one hand and the plurality of worlds on the other. It takes up conceptual and ontological relativism as it pertains to the history of early sciences and the world(s) to which they referred.

This chapter examines the strategic history of the British seapower state, the last great power to rely on naval power as its primary strategic instrument in peace and war. Maritime strategies reflect the reality that seapower states need to control maritime communications for security and prosperity: that control allows them to attack the shipping, overseas possessions and, critically, the economies of their rivals as an alternative to a land invasion. Military great powers have responded to the maritime threat by building military navies to secure command of the sea, to facilitate the invasion and overthrow of a seapower rival. If that option fails they use naval resources to attack floating trade of a seapower adversary. The Navy become central to national identity.

Between 1688 and 1945 Britain developed and used a unique maritime strategic model that linked strategic decision-making to policy aims, political structures, and economic realities. This strategy enabled Britain, a small offshore island, to act as great power in the European, and later global systems, but it was a fragile asset. Naval power had limited strategic impact, even the purely naval Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century were settled by economics, not sea battles. The combination of insularity and powerful financial instruments enabled Britain to wage long wars of limited mobilisation, but it needed allies to defeat great power rivals. Securing such allies cost money, and restricted war aims. The key strategic concerns were naval dominance, the security of the Low Countries and the legal basis of economic warfare. Whenever possible the Navy was used to maintain peace through deterrence and suasion, war with other great powers was always unwelcome because it would be long, costly and bad for business. There was no short-war strategic option. In war the British Army supported maritime strategy, it was not a ‘continental’ force, and was never committed to that role in peacetime while Britain remained a great power. Britain’s rivals employed a variety of naval strategies to counter or limit the impact of this maritime strategy, an invasion of Britain, arms racing, fleets in being, coastal defences and commerce raiding, but the only method that succeeded was the United States attack that broke the British economy between 1939 and 1945, backed by the construction of an immense fleet. Although no longer a great power after 1945 Britain’s global maritime interests and insular location remained critical aspects of national security.

The strategy of the Mongol Empire underwent four basic phases. The first centered on the rise and creation of the Yeke Monggol Ulus (Great Mongol State/Nation) by Chinggis Khan and the Mongols’ irruption from the steppes. The second phase was the formulation of a coherent strategy of conquest during the reign of Ögödei Qa’an. While this was derived from the campaigns of Chinggis Khan, it sought to maximise the deployment of the empire’s military on multiple fronts while simultaneously not overextending the resources of the empire. This further evolved into a third phase during the reign of Möngke Qa’an, who, through a series of reforms, allowed the Mongols to marshal more resources. In doing so, the Mongol strategy altered as they no longer had concerns of overextending themselves. During Möngke’s reign, the Mongols truly became a juggernaut. The final phase of strategy came into formulation with the dissolution of the Mongol Empire after Möngke’s death in late 1259. As the empire split into rival states often embroiled in internecine conflict, each new state had to develop its own coherent strategy, but without the massive resources of a united empire. The Mongols conceived of pragmatic grand strategy that was viable, if not always successful, rather than simply theoretical plans.

King Frederick II (‘the Great’) of Prussia (r. 1740–1786) led his armies personally into a series of wars that doubled the size of his state during his reign. Frederick’s invasion of Silesia, and his subsequent attempts to hold onto it and expand his dominions further, reflected his risk-taking personality. Frederick enjoyed a much greater variety of strategic options than his predecessors because of the large army and well-stocked treasury bequeathed to him by his father, and this reflected the steady growth of states in this period and their increasing capacity to mobilise resources for war. The Hohenzollerns had for generations operated within a strategic context defined by the Holy Roman Empire, which covered all the German lands and within which a variety of princely dynasties competed for prominence under the overall hegemony of the Austrian Habsburgs. Successful Hohenzollern mobilisation of resources, however, made Frederick II the first German ruler in the early modern period to challenge the Habsburgs from a position of relative military parity. His successful gamble created a bipolar Germany, in which the two great powers of Austria and Prussia raised ever greater resources for their struggle against each other, far outstripping the other German states.

Chapter 3 analyzes the contribution of three prominent historians of science in the mid twentieth century who shaped the modern historiography of the ancient astronomical sciences. Its objective is to expose fundamental philosophical and historiographical underpinnings to the writing of the history of science in antiquity.

This chapter traces the ways in which Hume’s ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’ responds not only to Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) but also to Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748). The large federal constitution that Hume proposed at the end of his Political Discourses turns out to have as much in common with Montesquieu’s understanding of modern monarchy as it does with Harrington’s vision for an equal republic. Indeed, there is reason to suspect that Montesquieu’s criticism of Oceana in his chapter ‘On the English Constitution’ prompted Hume to devise his alternative version of Harrington’s commonwealth. Hume adapted Oceana’s framework for uniform electoral districts and tiers of representation to the spirit of commerce and competition that he and Montesquieu associated with modern Britain. The result was a state with ‘all the advantages of both a great and little commonwealth’.

"This chapter will examine the practice of strategy – the relationship between available resources, competing aims and geopolitical realities – by focusing on the Habsburg dynasty in the period from 1500 to 1650. The Habsburg monarchies brought together a diverse series of different concerns focused on dynasty, geopolitics and religion, within a framework of planning, prioritisation and opportunism. I will also seek to examine changes in practice over time. How do strategic conceptions and the pursuit of strategic aims shift in the century between the reign of Charles V and the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg rulers at the time of the Thirty Years War? How did changing political and military circumstances over this century alter the aims and dynamics of strategy? Or were there fundamental continuities in, for example, the constraints on mobilising financial and human resources, sustaining warfare or achieving desired outcomes through war or diplomacy?

The chapter will be based on two case studies. The first of these examines the strategic implications of the transformation to the dynasty enabled by the extraordinary inheritance of Charles V, and the vast European monarchía that this brought into existence. It will look at Charles’s strategic aims and goals; the resources, both material and ideological, that could be mobilised in pursuit of these goals; the enemies that he faced; and the way in which they forced him to prioritise and compromise. Ultimately the largest compromise was the decision to divide his inheritance between two branches of the family. The account will pass over the later sixteenth century and resume with the strategies, priorities and resource mobilisation of the Austrian and Spanish branches of the family during the Thirty Years War. The account will look at the way in which they sought to re-create a strategy based on close family co-operation, and mobilising resources that were significantly different from those of Charles V. The comparison raises a number of themes, both structural and contingent, that I hope will contribute to the larger discussion of the volume.

Chapter 4, Moratorium or guarantee (May 25 - May 27), traces the communications between central and private bankers as they realize that a moratorium may be on its way. Central and private bankers increasingly try to avoid a moratorium and Norman uses his network to get the international creditors to organize themselves. There is an increasing sense of urgency and uncertainty, but it seems that the BIS and central banks are successful in averting a moratorium and getting a guarantee instead. There are still many unknowns, however, and the occasional conflict in the epistemic community also appears.

After a brief introduction to the outbreak of the Austrian Credit Anstalt crisis in May 1931 and the early response by central bankers from Bank of England, the BIS and the New York Federal Reserve Bank, this chapter proceeds to present the book’s overall issues and main concepts, which will be used as a heuristic framework throughout the narrative. The main concepts of the book are radical uncertainty, sensemaking, narrative emplotment, imagined futures and epistemic communities. In the chapter, I discuss how these concepts are helpful in understanding central bankers’, and other actors’, decision-making and practices in the five month from May through September. The chapter also discusses my analytical strategy and presents the empirical material, which comes from the Bank of England, Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the J.P. Morgan Archive, the Rothschild Archive and a few others. At the end of the chapter, I present the structure of the book.

As noted by Richard Reid, African military history remains ‘perhaps the last bastion of the kind of distorted Eurocentric scholarship that characterised African studies before the 1960s’. This is especially true of the pre-colonial period, on account of both the dearth and the inherent limitations and biases of the sources available for study. The purpose of this contribution is to show that, in both tactical and strategic terms, African pre-colonial warfare was as complex as warfare in any other historical setting. We propose to substantiate our argument by exploring a number of regional case studies organised in a loose chronological order: warfare in the medieval empires of the Sahel, Asante warfare in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, Zulu and Ngoni warfare in southern Africa and east-central African warfare in the age of warlords. The driving questions that the collection proposes to address will be briefly explored in these different contexts, each of which highlights specific strategic dynamics and priorities.