"The Dynamics of Military Revolution" bridges a major gap in the emerging literature on revolutions in military affairs. It suggests that two very different phenomena have been at work over the past centuries: "military revolutions," which are driven by vast social and political changes, and "revolutions in military affairs," which military institutions have directed, although usually with great difficulty and ambiguous results. MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray provide a conceptual framework and historical context for understanding the patterns of change, innovation, and adaptation that have marked war in the Western world since the fourteenth century, beginning with Edward III's revolution in medieval warfare, through the development of modern military institutions in seventeenth-century France, to the military impact of mass politics in the French Revolution, the cataclysmic military-industrial struggle of 1914-1918, and the German Blitzkrieg victories of 1940. Case studies and a conceptual overview offer an indispensible introduction to revolutionary military change, which is as inevitable as it is difficult to predict.

Thinking about revolutions in warfare /Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox -- "As if a new sun had arisen": England's fourteenth-century RMA / Clifford J. Rogers -- Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France / John A. Lynn -- Mass politics and nationalism as military revolution: the French Revolution and after / MacGregor Knox -- Surviving military revolution: the U.S. Civil War / Mark Grimsley -- The Prusso-German RMA, 1840-1871 / Dennis E. Showalter -- The battlefleet revolution, 1885-1914 / Holger H. Herwig -- The First World War and the birth of modern warfare / Jonathan B.A. Bailey -- May 1940: contingency and fragility of the German RMA / Williamson Murray -- Conclusion: the future behind us / Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox.