For over 400 years, Sassanid Persia was the greatest state in Asia. To the east, the Kushan Empire was already in decline. The only strong opponent of Iran was the Roman Empire in the west. Military competition for influence in northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and the Caucasus region dominated Iranian–Roman relations, orienting the strategic activities of the early Sassanids to the western fringes of the empire. The breakthrough came in the mid-fourth century, with the emergence of the Kidara Huns in the east. Iran faced a ‘strategic dilemma’: it was crucial to avoid wars on multiple fronts. The Hephthalites or White Huns, became the most important enemy of the Sassanians until the end of the following century; the adoption of such a strategic paradigm enforced the maintenance of peace with the Roman Empire in the west. However, the Sassanian ruler, having secured the eastern territories, was able to move against Iran’s age-old enemy, Rome, this way beginning a period of wars in the west that, with few interruptions, lasted almost until the collapse of the Persian state. Defending such an enormous area was a challenge, as was preventing it from centrifugal tendencies, typical for multi-ethnic states. Despite these factors, the Iranian state managed to assure the territorial integrity of its core areas for four centuries. The tool to achieve this was the army – mobile, efficient, disciplined and motivated.

The essay focuses on the career of playwright Arthur Laurents from his graduation from college to the opening of West Side Story, including discussions of his early plays and screenplays as well as his involvement in the development of the classic musical.

As a dramaturg who specialises in adaptations for the stage, Jane Barnette considers West Side Story in light of its source, Romeo and Juliet. There are many different ways to focus dramaturgical work for theatrical adaptations, depending on the specific needs of the work in question. Although the entirety of any dramaturgical approach for West Side Story ultimately depends on the approach taken by the director and creative team behind a particular production, in this essay, Barnette grounds her initial inquiry regarding the relationship of West Side Story to Romeo and Juliet in questions central to adapturgy itself. Specifically, she examines the ‘spirit of the source’, as well as the pleasures available for spectators familiar with the source material. Finally, she questions the geography of adaptation–how questions of time and space figure into comparisons between the texts–as well as their production histories.

From the 1940s into the late 1950s, juvenile delinquency was a real and potent threat to Americans. Gang violence, especially in large centres like New York, threatened the fabric of society and local communities. A series of artistic responses, from films to novels, attempted to address the problem and the reasons why teens became delinquent. Ultimately, West Side Story addressed the phenomenon for the first time in musical theatre terms, but it also galvanized original audiences with its gritty and realistic portrayal of crime in the streets. Although the musical has come to be seen as tame by today’s standards, it was cutting-edge entertainment in its time and fitted in with other contemporary portrayals of gang violence and its outcomes.

The Mughals tried their hand at empire building twice in early modern south Asia. The first attempt in the early sixteenth century was thwarted by a resurgence of Afghan power in north India. Following a brief hiatus, the second – and more successful – attempt ensued in the mid-sixteenth century under the rule of the third emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). During the half-century of his rule, Mughal armies conquered most of north India and started expanding fur-ther towards the south, north-west and east. The war in the south consumed much of Mughal energy under his successors for the next hundred years and brought most of the Indian pen-insula under imperial control by the early eighteenth century. In contrast, several wars in the north-west and the east consumed many imperial resources without bringing much lasting ter-ritorial gain. The present chapter focuses on the evolving nature of strategy that went into the making of this vast empire. It discusses the ways in which imperial armies negotiated various types of adversary, the different motivations behind military expeditions, the methods of mili-tary planning and mobilisation, and finally the kind of political expansion all of this brought about. Reflecting on contemporary imperial texts that serve as our main historical sources today, it also seeks to understand their cultural politics as well as the nature of strategic objectives they fulfilled within the political milieu where they were written and circulated. The chapter especially seeks to understand the role of strategy both in the military success that Mughal armies met with in most of south Asia and in the multiple failures that they encountered, especially on its north-western and eastern frontiers. In the process, it shows how Mughal strategy was neither frozen in time nor isolated in its existence. Rather, the c hapter highlights the changing nature of Mughal strategy and how it constantly evolved through its interactions with diplomacy, warfare, ideology, environment, culture and resource mobilisation.

The Forty-Years War in Afghanistan has defied many expectations. Approaching the war as a forty-year strategic interaction, this chapter illustrates the interdependence of the strategic practices – using, creating and controlling force – and show how practising strategy in one way influences the strategic interaction of the ensuing phase of the war. The war in Afghanistan can be divided into a Soviet phase, a civil war phase and a Western phase. During each of these phases of the war, the use of force varied across changing political ends as well as the flux of circumstance and opportunity. Actors sided with former enemies, loyalties shifted, but the fighting continued as generations of young, mainly Afghan men were introduced to the hardship of war. War as a constant companion to everyday Afghan life for the past four decades also illustrates the old strategic adage that it is easier to start a war than to end it.

The Serbian strategy of war crimes to achieve a new state project formed the core of the Yugoslav War. Neighbourhood adversaries also committed atrocities in response. International engagement and humanitarian concern had to find ways to oppose both the aims and the means of the Serbian project and, in a subsidiary way, the worst of the local adversaries’ actions. International operations were as far apart in character from those of the Serbian project as could be. In the end, the strategy of war crimes backfired, as it prompted significant engagement to stop the Serbian project and led to the creation of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, where many senior figures were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This chapter explores the long-term patterns of mainland south-east Asian strategic conduct and the variables behind it. In this region, the ancient Khmer Empire, the Tai polities and the Burmese, whose statecraft was influenced by Hindu and Buddhist belief, were warlike. The Hindu–Buddhist imperial concept of cakravati became the expansionistic norm shared among ambitious monarchs. Thereupon, the south-east Asian polities continually engaged in warfare to impose control over the population and tributaries. Wars were waged to displace the mass of the vanquished to enhance the victor’s economic capacity and prestige. The development of military strategy and war aims generally were geared towards the displacement and resettlement of the enemy population. Interestingly, territorial gains were minor objectives except for the crucial lines of communication and coastal areas vital for trade; polities would secure and expand their power spheres rather than dominating demarcated spaces. The fortification of the central polity also led to protracted siege warfare. In this war of attrition, stratagems, such as ruses and guerilla raids on enemy camps and supply lines, were widely employed against invading armies. There were continual shifts from forceful subjugation and vassalage to the strategic destruction of enemy polities from the twelfth to the nineteenth century in order to seize the centre. Failure to muster manpower and secure influences led to the decline and destruction of the state by more aggressive neighbors. Polities that survived or were revived then pursued a more expansionist policy and waged pre-emptive warfare against smaller states and peer competitors. The military means to achieve such strategic goals consisted of a mass of corvée forces that formed the main body. The core of the army consisted of skilled professional units comprising the aristocratic royal elite and foreign adventurer ‘specialist’ mercenaries. Gunpowder weapons became the crucial instruments to maintain tactical superiority on the battlefield and in siege warfare, as well as assuring control over the displaced population. War elephants and cavalry forces operated as shock units to smash and scatter enemy forces in set-piece battles. However, sieges were the majority of military conduct.

The production of West Side Story at the Vienna Volksoper in 1968 contributed to the rise of the Austrian metropolis as a European centre of American musical theatre. As this chapter shows, the main link between Bernstein, Broadway, and Vienna was Marcel Prawy (1911–2003), a well-known Austrian dramaturg, opera connoisseur, and critic. Prawy created a German adaptation of West Side Story, and in it he imputed Central European cultural viewpoints and preferences into the American artform, particularly in its representation of ethnic conflicts. The differences between Prawy’s German adaptation and the English original suggest that Prawy was concerned about making the American work more understandable for Viennese audiences not only through his approach to language and the poetic properties of the lyrics, but also by subtle but significant changes of the work’s meaning. Most prominently, Prawy aimed at increasing the Broadway work’s exoticist elements.

As in other world regions, warfare played an important role in shaping the sociopolitical landscape of pre-Columbian North America. In contrast with many of these, however, written records are lacking for all but the last few centuries following European contact. The history of indigenous North American warfare and war strategy must therefore be reconstructed largely from archaeological remains. One of the most accessible types of information available on war strategy from this source pertains to defence, as archaeological features such as rock walls, palisades and lookout towers tend to preserve in the archaeological record. The type of defensive measures used reveals people’s degree of concern with attack and shows how they employed attributes of their environment to protect themselves. The location of features may also provide insight into the direction and identity of the threat. Burned houses and unburied bodies, on the other hand, document strategies used by enemies when defences were breached. Stone weapons also preserve in the archaeological record and can reveal the arsenal available to combatants at different times and places, as well as forms of engagement: shock weapons imply hand-to-hand combat, for example, whereas projectile weapons can be deployed from a greater distance, suggesting ambush or open battle. The skeletal remains of the victims provide some of the most definitive evidence for the existence and nature of active conflict, including the demographic characteristics of victims, the spatial relationship between victim and attacker(s), and the scale and lethality of conflict (e.g. a few victims versus 500 in a mass grave). In combination with early European written accounts, which inform on aspects of Native American warfare not readily apparent in the archaeological record, the collective evidence yields a picture of war in pre-Columbian North America that is both unique and reminiscent of war in other world regions, and argues for the importance of including North America in global histories of human warfare.

This chapter explores practices and trends in Hispanic representation and casting in historic productions of West Side Story, particularly the 1957 Broadway production directed by Jerome Robbins, and the 1961 film directed by Robert Wise. Representation of the Puerto Rican ‘Sharks’ has been debated from sociological and cultural studies perspectives. Casting practices showing differentiation between the characters Anita and Maria as agents–sexually and racially–along with the problem of ‘racial profiling’ of Puerto Rican characters (including ‘brown face,’ homogenous accents, hairstyles, and colour) indicate ambivalent approaches toward these roles. Subsequent productions of West Side Story, including 1980 and 2009 Broadway revivals, and the 2012 intersection in the television series Glee, reproduce these practices. The chapter also explores how recent productions, including the 2020 Broadway revival directed by Ivo van Hove and !the 2021 film remake directed by Steven Spielberg, have made efforts to positively revise casting and representation issues.