A world history of war, with contributions from renowned experts and over 110 documents and color maps.

In premodern societies, war was more a norm than an exception, profoundly rooted in societal structures. To deepen our understanding of it, this book opens with the first traces of war among groups of humans continuing on to examine the worlds of China, India, and the Mediterranean before ending with medieval conflicts, from the Hundred Years' War to the Mongol expansion and Islamic conquests. What emerges from this world history of war is the portrait of a warlike world, from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages.