The lexicalised use of the term ‘bad data’ in present-day sociolinguistics refers to fragmentary material which is the only data for a certain source, for example a historical stage of a variety/language. Although far from ideal, such data can nonetheless yield significant insights if examined and assessed judiciously. In this chapter two quite different cases are considered to illustrate how one can proceed with such data. The first considers the development of Voice Onset Time in Received Pronunciation, embodied in the recorded speeches of English monarchs, while the second looks at how supraregional accents of Irish English changed between the late nineteenth and the mid twentieth century by appraising the changes in pronunciation across generations of speakers, which resulted from shifts in political and cultural status and which were subsequently mirrored by shifts in linguistic identity.

War was a regular feature and, at times, a dominant characteristic of international relations between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the beginning of monarchical Europe’s struggle with Revolutionary France in 1792. At least until the Enlightenment, contemporaries viewed it not merely as an acceptable way of pursuing international rivalries, but as a more normal and natural state of affairs than peace. Periods of open conflict, during which diplomatic representatives would usually be withdrawn, were assumed to be inevitable and, indeed, were frequently the anticipated outcome of the policies adopted by rulers and their advisers. The eighteenth century was significantly more pacific than its seventeenth-century predecessor had been, though in turn much more bellicose than its nineteenth-century successor. According to one calculation, the European ‘great powers’ were engaged in warfare for eighty-eight years of the century 1600–1700, sixty-four years from 1700–1800, and twenty-four years from 1800–1900. During the shorter period between 1700 and 1790, Russia was at war at some point during all nine decades; Austria, France, and Britain during eight; Spain and Sweden during seven; Prussia during six; and the Ottoman Empire during five: figures which underline the ubiquity of armed struggle even during the less bellicose eighteenth century.

The mid-fifteenth century saw the slow emergence of new states across mainland and island South-East Asia after a period of substantial political decentralisation and fragmentation, on the one hand, and the withdrawal or ejection of Chinese armies, on the other. The new or reinvigorated states of the region – including Ava (Upper Burma), Pegu (Lower Burma), Ayudhya (today Thailand), and Dai Viet (today Vietnam) – stimulated a new period of martial vigour from the 1450s as they expanded at the expense of their neighbours. In successful campaigns in the 1450s and in 1471, Dai Viet conquered Champa on its southern frontier twice, leaving the Vietnamese state as the permanent hegemon over mainland South-East Asia’s eastern littoral, relegating Champa to a mere tributary shadow of its former self. (See Map 14.) Ava and Pegu waged a bitter war for decades for dominance over the Irrawaddy valley, a contest that spilled over into Arakan, on the Bay of Bengal, mainland South-East Asia’s thin, western littoral. Ayudhya, in the central mainland, made itself the dominant political and military power in the Chao Phraya river valley.

Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History was undoubtedly a quintessential by-product of an age that believed in universally applicable rules, in this case that a navy’s function was the same in the seventeenth as in the nineteenth century, the command of the sea its ultimate goal. Naturally enough, over the years Mahan’s sweeping theoretical framework has received its share of criticism. In his 1911 book Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Sir Julian Corbett argued that it was more important to deny to one’s opponent the command of the sea, rather than seize it for oneself, so that ‘the enemy can no longer attack our lines of passage and communication effectively, and that he cannot use or defend his own’. Taking a leaf from Corbett, John F. Guilmartin underscored how Mahan’s principles cannot be applied to the early modern Mediterranean, the physical conditions of the area defying the paradigms applied by Anglo-American naval historians to the oceanic world. Besides, even if Mahan did acknowledge the importance of weaponry, Geoffrey Parker has pointed out that The Influence of Sea Power upon History ‘contained no discussion of guns, sails or ship design, because the author did not believe that changes in these things could affect the application of strategic principles’.

In her book A Translucent Mirror, Pamela Crossley wrote that “The Ming empire (1368–1644) was perpetually engaged in a struggle against various peoples along its northern borders.” This bald statement contradicts conventional wisdom that the Ming dynasty, having endured Mongol rule for about a century, attempted to limit relations with foreign lands and developed a policy of isolation. In fact, the Ming empire became embroiled in numerous conflicts along its frontiers. Some of these clashes were defensive, but others were attempts to annex additional territory. The court resolved a few of these conflicts through diplomacy or withdrawal from alien lands, yet others festered throughout the dynasty. It scarcely enjoyed clear-cut victories. Nonetheless, such repeated battles necessitated improvements in military strategy and technology, and it is no accident that a spate of texts on the military appeared during this time. The first Ming emperor himself had to master principles of land and naval warfare in the course of defeating other rebel groups and in seeking to gain the throne.

The Qing Empire’s military drew from the traditions of bodyguards and booty warfare in North-East Asia (primarily what is now southern Jilin province) in the late sixteenth century. The foundations of imperial expansion were built during the long war with Ming China, from 1618 to 1644, which allowed the Qing to absorb the central features of Ming military technology. Patterns of human management and technology application established in this period persisted over the next forty years as the Qing completed their conquest of China and Taiwan. After 1685, Qing expansion spread out to Mongolia, Qinghai, Tibet, and what is now the province of Xinjiang. These wars, against less densely populated, sometimes nomadic zones, changed Qing campaigns significantly. By the nineteenth century, the century and a half of focus on the continental frontiers left the Qing poorly prepared for seaborne challenges, and from some technologies that the Qing had previously regarded as less relevant to their military needs.

The Japanese archipelago and the Korean peninsula are neighbouring regions, with histories of similarities and contrasts. Currently inhabited by a population of about 123 million in an area slightly bigger than Germany, Japan has been relatively isolated throughout much of the last two millennia. In the late nineteenth century, Japan reinvented itself from a land on the margins of the Sinitic cultural zone to a world power. In contrast, Korea – a landmass a little larger than Great Britain and inhabited by about 78 million people – was an active participant in the China-centred world order during much of its 2,300 year-history before losing sovereignty to Imperial Japan in 1910. (See Map 13.)

For almost three millennia the pastoral nomads of the Eurasian steppe formed a great reserve of mounted cavalry, threatening their settled neighbours while offering them goods and services of great value – in particular horses and skilled soldiers for their armies. The Eurasian nomads were also empire-builders, creators of imperial ideology and administrative structures that were passed down through generations of successor states. Their imperial centre in Mongolia was home to two related peoples – the Turks and the Mongols – each defined by the powerful empires they erected. The Türk Empire, which flourished from the mid-sixth to mid-eighth centuries, was the first of these and it controlled the steppe from Mongolia to the Volga river, fighting and trading with China, the empires of the Middle East, and Byzantium. The second great state was the Mongol Empire, founded by Chinggis Khan in 1206. The Mongols extended their power yet further than the Turks, conquering much of Eurasia.

Generations of historians have seen the interplay between the early modern state and its armed forces, and between warfare and state formation, as key factors in the process of modernisation. The creation of the modern state was most powerfully expressed through the supposed symbiosis between absolute regimes and standing armies. The image of geometric order and discipline generated by formations of infantry drawn up in kilometre-long battle lines; the authorities’ direct involvement in provisioning, equipping, and uniforming its soldiers; central government’s reach into every aspect of warfare and military planning. All of these have been regarded as defining traits of the interconnection between the standing army and the state. Research on the inner structures of early modern military society has, until recently, been coloured by preconceptions about functioning hierarchies and chains of command, an increasingly effective military administration, rigid discipline, and corresponding efficiency in the waging of warfare. Such a top-down view remained unchallenged as long as researchers relied almost exclusively on sources derived from governmental and/or legal provenance, leaving an impression of overwhelming state authority reaching right down to the level of the common soldier.

The four volumes of the Cambridge History of War were conceived in global terms. The aim was to go beyond a history centred on warfare in Europe, in which the global context emerged solely through the eyes of European exploration, trading, and colonisation. Instead, the volumes would seek to provide the reader with a broader approach to warfare across the world, in which the experiences and trajectories of states and their military systems could be examined and compared. Europe and Europe’s military engagement with the wider world would have a place, but would not be the single point of reference from which global warfare would be seen. This aim was the starting point for Volume III, both as initially conceived by the first editors, John Childs and Arthur Waldron, and then by the current editorial team.

‘Bella gerant alii.’ In 1516, by means of traditional dynastic finagling, the house of Habsburg acquired the thrones of Castile and Aragon, or Spain for short: the most bellicose and spectacularly expanding state in Latin Christendom. Henceforth, it seemed, the Habsburgs would no longer be able to leave war to others.

Since concluding Castile’s civil conflicts in the 1470s, the Spanish monarchs had, by force of arms, reconquered parts of French Catalonia, and added other acquisitions to their realms: southern Navarre, the western Canary Islands, Melilla, much of the Caribbean, and the kingdoms of Granada and Naples. For what came to be known as the Spanish monarchy it was the start of the most sustained period of success – measured by the crude, but decisive, standards of victory in the field and expansion on the frontiers – any Western European state had achieved since the Roman Empire.

The siege played such a dominant role in both medieval and early modern warfare that it is difficult to overstate the significance of the twin revolutions in gunpowder artillery and fortification which together transformed fortress warfare and the face of Europe. The continent was to be marked by chains of new frontier and coastal forts, expanded naval bases, and girdles of earth-filled ramparts and bastions around towns, often sweeping away picturesque medieval walls and towers and replacing them by much lower-profile works. The rash of urban citadels by which so many rulers sought to guarantee their security would be matched by what Parker called the ‘demilitarised zone’ of central France following the Wars of Religion and the Fronde. Ruined fortresses litter the continent. The demolitions following most civil wars, rebellions, or frontier adjustments speak to the importance of fortified places. Whether it was the local power projected by castle or border fort or the major concentration of resources protected by walled towns or major fortresses, fortified places were the main objective of offensive operations.

For all of the obvious importance of warfare in the period when the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736) was in power in Iran, relatively little has been written on the topic of the military in this formative phase of Iranian history. Jamil Quzanlu, Vladimir Minorsky, and Laurence Lockhart were the first to address the organisation and development of the army in the Safavid period. Their studies have since been supplemented by the work of Yahya Dhuka, Khanbaba Bayani, Masashi Haneda, Richard Tapper, Willem Floor, Walter Posch, Giorgio Rota, and the present author. Much work remains to be done, though, and what follows is therefore a preliminary survey.

Sea power, classically defined as a strategy to control communications, was an essential asset for the creation of European maritime empires, enabling them to secure seaborne trade, open new markets, and acquire territory. It has often been conflated with seapower, a concept developed by the ancient Athenians to distinguish states like their own, whose economy, culture, and identity were enmeshed in the maritime sphere, from continental military powers like Sparta and Persia. In this period Britain, the only seapower Great Power, created an extensive maritime empire outside Europe, one combining colonies of settlement, like Australia, with those of occupation, and informal imperialism based on economic power. While many Continental European powers created maritime empires after 1815, they did so in the knowledge that their possessions would be exposed to British naval power in the event of war, and tended to focus on land and security rather than commerce.