Men, Machines & WarWilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1988 M11 30 - 219 páginas Using examples from the last two centuries, this collection of essays discusses the close links between technology and war. In the opening essay, distinguished historian William H. McNeill demonstrates the extent to which military technology has often led to differentiations among people, both within and between societies. The other studies examine various aspects of weapons technology, drawing on the history of the armed forces of Britain, Prussia, and Australia, among others. Some of these illustrate how the adoption of new weaponry frequently depended as much on national pride and party politics as it did on the purely technical merits of the weapons involved; that financial considerations became increasingly primary in technological developments in British army after World War I; and that decisions made prior to 1939 about the aviation technology to be developed for military purposes largely determined what kind of the RAF was able to fight. The chapter by Dr. G.R. Lindsay, the Chief of the Operational Research and Analysis Establishment at the Department of National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, makes the case that, with nuclear weapons added to the scene, the impact of technology on international security has never been as great as at present, and that the competition of nations seeking the technological edge in weaponry threatens to destabilize the precarious balance that has existed since 1945. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 82
... gun corps ) , and the inno- vation of the tank all led to the creation of a new British doctrine . The emergence of this doctrine was affected by the enormous expansion of the British Army , an expansion which required a changed command ...
... gun was to be adopted as the Australian armed forces ' submachine gun hinged on factors ranging from the loosely technological to the nationalistic . While the Owen gun was the technical better of its competitors , Haycock shows ...
... guns for more than a century before achieving clear and unmistakeable success ? One reason , clearly , was that the innovators were fascinated by a vision of wall - destroying monsters , ones which might make existing 12 Joseph Needham ...
... guns alone made sense . This pretty well explains why the Mongols never tried to develop European - style monster guns . European political ge- ography , on the contrary , by dividing the continent among competing sovereignties , made ...
... guns were cast , Europeans could dig deeper and come up with greater quantities of ore than anyone else in the world . Metal therefore became relatively cheap in Europe , and was available for casting guns on a scale that other ...
Contenido
21 | |
Observations on the Dialectics of British Tactics 190445 | 49 |
The Royal Navy and Technological Change 18151945 | 75 |
The Influence of Technology on Airpower 191945 | 93 |
Artillery from 1815 to 1914 | 113 |
Technology Society and International Security Since 1945 | 153 |
Australias Owen Gun Story | 183 |
Index | 215 |