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The Concept of "Decisive Battles" in World History
YUVAL NOAH HARARI
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
| Up until a few decades ago, battles were the historical events par excellence, and "decisive battles" served as axes around which many histories of the world revolved. Every educated person in the West was taught, for example, that the fate of Western civilization hung in the balance on the plains of Marathon, Chalons, and Tours. Edward Gibbon famously wrote that if Charles Martel had lost the battle of Tours, in 732, "Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomat."1 Not a few attempts were made to narrate the history of the world as a chain of such decisive battles, for example by Edward Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (1851).2 |
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Even today, this battle version of world history is very popular among the general public. People who know little else about the Middle Ages are still familiar with the name of Hastings, whereas urban geography in numerous cities keeps hammering in names such as Waterloo, Trafalgar, and Austerlitz. "Battle world history" also has a few staunch defenders among professional historians, most notably Victor Davis Hanson in his The Western Way of War (1989) and Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (2001).3 |
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Yet among the vast majority of world historians, battles are decidedly out of favor. It is extremely unfashionable today to ascribe global or even regional historical developments to the outcome of this or that battle. William H. McNeill's A World History, which tends to pay more attention to military and political events than most current world history textbooks, and which discusses in some length the Muslim invasion of Spain and Gaul, nevertheless devotes only a single sentence to the battle of Tours itself, saying merely that "the Franks defeat a Muslim raiding party at the battle of Tours in central Gaul (732 C.E.)."4 Most other world history textbooks are even less generous to the old "famous victories" of the Western—and non-Western—canons. |
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Battles suffer from an eclipse even in their home field of military history. Whereas previously it had been very common for military history books to be little more than surveys of major battles and battle tactics,5 the New Military Historians have increasingly focused on matters such as recruitment, administration, supply systems, society at war, and the culture of war. Even when narrating or analyzing the operational side of war, they have tended to downplay the importance of set-piece battles. Thus in medieval military history it is now the mainstream opinion that medieval war was dominated by sieges, raids, skirmishes, and ambushes—not by battles.6 Much the same is true of scholarship on early modern warfare and the Military Revolution debate.7 |
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This paper aims to explain both why the concept of "decisive battles" was found so useful by historians from ancient times until a few decades ago, and why the concept was largely abandoned lately. It also tries to evaluate whether this concept may still be of any use to historians in general, and to the writing of world history in particular. In order not to remain in the field of abstract theory, this paper focuses on one exemplary test case, namely the battle of Antioch, which took place on 28 June 1098 between the army of the First Crusade and the army of the atabeg Kerbogah of Mosul. Kerbogah was leading a coalition of Muslim powers from Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor, and his defeat saved the Crusaders from annihilation and opened the way for their conquest of the Levantine coast.8 |
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