This book offers a highly readable account of warfare in Europe and the Mediterranean from the Battle of Poitiers to the Wars of the Roses. With an emphasis on superb full-colour cartography and illustration, The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare: The Middle Ages, 768 1487 focuses on military strategy, debunking some of the prevailing myths of medieval warfare. Often characterized as an era dominated by lone knights and long sieges, the Middle Ages in fact had a military culture as sophisticated and complex as our own, with organized armies and a high degree of tactical intelligence. This complexity is detailed in maps, plans, and an informative text. Development of naval warfare, cavalry, and siege tactics are all covered, as is the nature of contemporary logistics and contemporary understanding of the science of warfare.

The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare: Renaissance to Revolution provides a thorough introduction to the military and naval history of the years 1492 to 1792, covering the period from the European Renaissance to the revolutionary wars of the late eighteenth century. Detailed colour maps, battle plans, and colour and black-and-white illustrations combine with an authoritative text to illuminate developments in warfare on both land and sea. Particular attention is paid to the effects of European military expansion on the rest of the world including the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Mediterranean. Special feature panels are devoted to key events, to the more complicated and intriguing military confrontations, to individual tacticians and to the key topics such as weapons, battle strategies, the rise of naval warfare, and the composition of armies. The book is written by a leading historian of the early modern period.

The new edition of The Cambridge History of Warfare offers an updated comprehensive account of Western warfare, from its origins in classical Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and the early modern period, down to the wars of the twenty-first century in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Combining superb illustration with authoritative text, this is a major political and social history of France from earliest times to the eve of the new millennium. Colin Jones offers not only an expert's account of political, social and cultural developments, but also a fresh and full interpretation of French history. The Cambridge Illustrated History of France places an innovatory emphasis on the importance of issues of regionalism, class, gender and race in the French heritage. Ranging across social, political, geographical and cultural lines - from prehistoric menhirs to the Pompidou Centre, from Louis XIV's Versailles to twentieth-century high-rises, from Marie Antoinette to Marie Claire - the author provides a host of lively and penetrating new insights into the shaping of the modern nation.

Utilizing a “crusading ethos,” from 772 to 804 AD, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, waged war against the continental Saxons to integrate them within the growing Frankish Empire and facilitate their conversion to Christianity. While substantial research has been produced concerning various components of Carolingian history, this work offers a unique examination of Charlemagne’s Saxon Wars as a case study for understanding methods of conversion used in the Christianization of Europe, as well as their significance for subsequent conversion strategies employed around the globe. Converting the Saxons builds on prior scholarly research, is grounded in primary sources, and is contextualized with a robust historical introduction. Throughout the text, particular emphasis is given to Christian encounters with paganism and the way paganism was interpreted, confronted, and transformed. Within those encounters, we observe myriad forces of coercion and incentivization used in societal religious conversion, demonstrating the need for a serious reconsideration of the standard narratives surrounding Christian missions. This book provides a scholarly and accessible resource for students and researchers interested in transhistorical methods of conversion, the history of Christianity, Early Medieval paganism, Colonial religious encounters, and the nature of religious conversion.

New history richly illustrated in colour and aimed at the general reader.

Up to World War II and beyond, the British ruled over a vast empire. Modern western attitudes towards the imperial past tend either towards nostalgia for British power or revulsion at what seem to be the abuses of that power. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire adopts neither of these approaches. It aims to create historical understanding about the British empire on the assumption that such understanding is important for any informed appreciation of the modern world. Through striking illustration and a text written by leading experts, this book examines the experience of colonialism in North America, India, Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean, as well as the impact of the empire on Britain itself. Emphasis is placed on social and cultural history, including slavery, trade, religion, art, and the movement of ideas. How did the British rule their empire? Who benefited economically from the empire? And who lost?

Commanding its own museum and over 200 years of examination, observation and scholarship, the monumental embroidery, known popularly as the Bayeux Tapestry and documenting William the Conqueror’s invasion of England in October 1066, is perhaps the most important surviving artifact of the Middle Ages. This magnificent textile, both celebrated and panned, is both enigmatic artwork and confounding historical record. With over 1780 entries, Szabo and Kuefler offer the largest and most heavily annotated bibliography on the Tapestry ever written. Notably, the Bayeux Tapestry has produced some of the most compelling questions of the medieval period: Who commissioned it and for what purpose? What was the intended venue for its display? Who was the designer and who executed the enormous task of its manufacture? How does it inform our understanding of eleventh-century life? And who was the mysterious Aelfgyva, depicted in the Tapestry’s main register? This book is an effort to capture and describe the scholarship that attempts to answer these questions. But the bibliography also reflects the popularity of the Tapestry in literature covering a surprisingly broad array of subjects. The inclusion of this material will assist future scholars who may study references to the work in contemporary non-fiction and popular works as well as use of the Bayeux Tapestry as a primary and secondary source in the classroom. The monographs, articles and other works cited in this bibliography reflect dozens of research areas. Major themes are: the Tapestry as a source of information for eleventh-century material culture, its role in telling the story of the Battle of Hastings and events leading up to the invasion, patronage of the Tapestry, biographical detail on known historical figures in the Tapestry, arms and armor, medieval warfare strategy and techniques, opus anglicanum (the Anglo-Saxon needlework tradition), preservation and display of the artifact, the Tapestry’s place in medieval art, the embroidery’s depiction of medieval and Romanesque architecture, and the life of the Bayeux Tapestry itself.