On Small War: Carl von Clausewitz and People's War

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Sibylle Scheipers (Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of St Andrews)

On Small War

Carl von Clausewitz and People's War

Sibylle Scheipers (Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of St Andrews)

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English

Oxford University Press
01 March 2018

Military history; International relations; Theory of warfare & military science

Carl von Clausewitz has long been interpreted as the paradigmatic thinker of major interstate war. This book challenges this assumption by showing that Clausewitz was an ardent analyst of small war and integrated many aspects of his early writings on partisan warfare and people's war into his magnum opus,

On War. It reconstructs Clausewitz's intellectual development by placing it in the context of his engagement with the political and philosophical currents of his own times - German Idealism, Romanticism, and Humanism. The central question that Clausewitz and his contemporaries faced was how to defend Prussia and Europe against Napoleon's expansionist strategy. On the one hand, the nationalization of war that had occurred as a result of the French Revolution could only be countered by drawing the people into the defence of their own countries. On the other, this risked a descent into anarchy and unchecked terror, as the years 1793 and 1794 in France had shown. Throughout his life Clausewitz remained optimistic that the institution of the Prussian

Landwehr could achieve both an effective defence of Prussia and a social and political integration of its citizens. Far from leaving behind his early advocacy of people's war, Clausewitz integrated it systematically into his mature theory of war. People's war was war in its existential form; it risked escalating into 'absolute war'. However, if the threat of defensive people's war had become a standard option of last resort in early-nineteenth century Europe, it could also function as a safeguard of the balance of power.

By: Sibylle Scheipers (Senior Lecturer in International Relations Senior Lecturer in International Relations University of St Andrews)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 242mm, Width: 163mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 448g
ISBN: 9780198799047
ISBN 10: 0198799047
Pages: 186
Publication Date: 01 March 2018
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1: Introduction 2: Clausewitz and the Eighteenth Century Context of Partisan Warfare: the Fusion of Tactics and Politik 3: 'The Most Beautiful of Wars': Clausewitz's Perspective on People's War 4: Partisanship, Demagoguery, and the Decline of Politik After 1815 5: From Small Wars to On War: Clausewitz's Systematic Integration of People's War Into His Theory of War 6: Conclusions

Sibylle Scheipers is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Her publications include Unlawful Combatants (OUP, 2015), Prisoners in War (OUP, 2010), The Changing Character of War (co-edited with Hew Strachan, OUP, 2011), and Heroism and the Changing Character of War (Palgrave, 2014).