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GOLDSTEIN : Wars and peace treaties (előszó)

 

The idea for this book had its origins in an earlier work written by Arthur Ponsonby, MP, Wars & Peace Treaties, 1815 to 1914, published in 1918 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. It came out as the First World War was ending and the Paris Peace Conference was about to convene to determine the peace treaties. It was meant then as a handy, quick guide to the more significant wars of the previous hundred years, and how they were settled. For its time it was a remarkably balanced work, not showing much sign of a sense of European or British superiority. Each entry considered who were the belligerents, what was the background cause of the war, what provided the occasion for the outbreak of hostilities, how the course of the war developed and, finally, what was the political result achieved. It was thought useful in this book to take the straightforward approach initiated by Ponsonby and to cover the period from the fall of Napoleon to the present day.

This work does not claim to be comprehensive, for it is almost impossible to find any agreed definition or list of wars which could serve as the guidelines to make it so. Ponsonby covered 40 wars for the century he wrote on; this work has picked 74 conflicts for the period dealt with by Ponsonby and overall covers 124 wars. The general criterion for choosing the conflicts described has been that they should be wars between states recognized as having the ingredients of sovereignty and as participating in the international system. Civil wars have been omitted, for to include them would have swelled the book to an unmanageable size. Some wars, however, occur in tandem with civil wars, for instance the Lebanon Crisis and the South Africa-Angola War, and these have been included for their international dimension. The colonial wars of the last century present a particular problem, especially in Africa. Here several wars are included as approximating to the general guidelines, although there are others that fall into a grey area. Minor border skirmishes are omitted, but major border fighting is included where it has an important international dimension, for example the Sino-Soviet Dispute of 1969.

I am greatly indebted to several individuals for their advice and comments on various sections of this work and I would like to express my very great thanks to my colleagues Arnold Hughes, David Armstrong, Stuart Croft and Martin Kolinsky at the University of Birmingham, and to John Maurer at the United States Naval War College, as well as to George J. Marcopoulos of Tufts University. The responsibility for whatever deficiencies may exist rests with the author.

EG

 

Katalógus Goldstein Tartalom
KATALÓGUS TARTALOM

 


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