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.)

This chapter discusses the variegated dynamics of English-language rap in the complex, stratified, and multilingual sociolinguistic environment of India. The first section provides a brief overview of the historical and sociocultural positioning of English in India. The following section lays out a genealogy of English rap in India, discussing its evolution over the past three decades. The third and final section, which forms the analytical crux of the chapter, uses examples from lyrics and an interview to contextually analyze how the choice to rap in English reproduces as well as contests the intersections between sociolinguistic dynamics, politics of regionalism and marketability, caste identities, and racialization. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how English rap in India is simultaneously rife with possibilities for artists while also transcending the oversimplifications associated with English usage in India.

This chapter invites readers to consider how an engagement with hip-hop music and culture can contribute to a better understanding of mental health, psychiatry, psychology, public health, and neuroscience. It provides an introduction to hip-hop therapy, highlighting the use of rap by psychologists and counsellors to promote mental well-being. The chapter goes on to examine the work that the Hip-Hop Psych initiative has undertaken in advancing the role of hip-hop in primary care. With hip-hop’s pre-eminence as a global musical force, greater attention to how mental health is represented in hip-hop can provide healthcare professionals with tools to aid discussions with patients about potential trends related to hip-hop icons, such as contagion effects of suicide, self-harm, and self-medication. Hip-hop offers a platform for artists and those who embrace the culture to address their emotional experiences through rap. By exploring lyrical content, the chapter uncovers how performers express their mental health challenges and fashion resilience within challenging circumstances. It argues that attention to this material could also help identify language disturbances associated with mental health conditions, and indicates the potential gains from the use of technology and neuroscientific research to support hip-hop music interventions.

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.

This chapter explores the history of sound system and emcee culture. Originating in Jamaica, during the 1950s, the sound system has spawned numerous multi-billion dollar generating genres, including electronic dance music and hip-hop. The chapter outlines the contribution that figures such as Clement Dodd, Duke Reid, and Prince Buster made to the emergence of dancehall culture and the innovations of Count Machuki and U-Roy to the development of emceeing. It goes on to examine the role that sound system culture played in the birth of hip-hop, and the movement of artists from Jamaica, the United States and the UK, across the Atlantic, which has produced an outernational sound. The chapter reveals the ongoing significance of dubplates to garage music, clashing in grime, and riddims throughout the history of hip-hop culture. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the influence of the sound system on popular music culture across the globe.

Music award shows play a key role in shaping the direction of popular music, by reflecting current trends and predicting future movements within a music scene. In Tanzania, the rise of music awards in the early 2000s paralleled the growth of rap, R&B, and the locally created genre bongo flava. This chapter explores how award shows contributed to the popularity of these genres, providing artists a means to both celebrate their musical achievement and attain a sense of legitimacy. Award shows also became spaces to contest political and social norms in the country. During the early 2000s, for instance, artists in these genres used their music to counter state censorship and to openly critique politicians and government policies. Conversely, the government attempted to influence artistic expression through state-sponsored music awards shows that often promoted winners who aligned with specific values viewed as more favorable to state ideologies. Thus, music awards in Tanzania became a platform that not only celebrated artistic achievement but also actively attempted to influence the relationship between artists and political authority.

This chapter provides a historical grounding and introduction to rap – the lyrical element of hip-hop – as the genre with which we identify it today. It details the origins and the multicultural nature of the deep history that rap carries in its words and rhythms, blending cultural influences and practices across the continents, stretching as far back as the seventeenth century. For such a contemporary and relevant form of music, rap has deep and widespread roots, both musical and lyrical. The chapter therefore tackles some of the complex questions that arise regarding the genre’s changing, and often contested, musical and political identity, as well as its potential to represent the plethora of different communities that claim it as their own. Is rap a vessel for otherwise unheard voices? Does it represent all that came together to make it what it is today, or have these identities shifted over time and space? The chapter concludes with a case study of French rap as an example of dialogue between rap, politics, and cultural representation.

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.

From rap’s dense lyrical content to its speech-like vocal delivery, it seems apparent that few genres of music or cultural movements place a greater focus on language than hip-hop. As such, it should come as no surprise that hip-hop music and hip-hop culture have been the subject of a range of linguistics-oriented research. This chapter presents an overview of linguistic approaches to hip-hop, exploring sociolinguistic research on African-American English in the context of hip-hop, discourse analytical approaches to rap lyrics, and linguistic approaches to hip-hop musicology. Though the chapter’s literature review of linguistic research into hip-hop should not be considered exhaustive, it will serve as a starting point for those interested in diving deeper into the field of hip-hop linguistics. Following its literature review, the chapter shifts its attention to one of hip-hop’s most prolific artists – Tupac “2Pac” Shakur. It examines from several hip-hop linguistics perspectives how 2Pac’s lyrical content, speech, and style of rapping evolved throughout his career. The results of the case study indicate that 2Pac manipulated his speech accent and rap flow over time to express his newfound identity as West Coast hip-hop’s leading figure during the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop feud of the 1990s.

What is Chinese hip-hop? How is its authenticity negotiated and contested in China? Instead of seeing Chinese hip-hop as a given cultural form that follows a singular trajectory, this chapter conceptualizes it as a precarious cultural formation suspended by competing claims to authenticity and overdetermined by divergent forces, such as the hip-hop communities, the state, and commercial forces. The broadcast of The Rap of China in 2017 was a decisive moment in the massification of hip-hop in China, in which the subcultural genre was domesticated, commercialized, and re-infused with hegemonic ideology. Focusing on the televisual remediation of hip-hop in China, this chapter illuminates how battles for authenticity have been fought out among different actors or groups, how tensions between the ethos and the techne of hip-hop unfold, and how censorship and propaganda imperatives delimit the contours of the genre’s representation to the mass audience. It problematizes the line between “the underground” and the mainstream, while foregrounding the process in which different horizons of hip-hip negotiate with one another, co-shaping what is visible, audible, and commendable. The issues discussed in this chapter will likely remain central to the development and dilemma of Chinese hip–hop in the years to come.

‘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.