Britain and the Netherlands [electronic resource] : Volume VI: War and Society. Papers Delivered to the Sixth Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference / edited by A. C. Duke, C. A. Tamse
War has ever exercised a great appeal on men's minds. Oscar Wilde's witticism notwithstanding this fascination cannot be attriยญ buted simply to the wicked character of war. The demonic forces released by war have caught the artistic imagination, while sages have reflected on the enigmatic readiness of each new generation to wage war, despite the destruction, disillusion and exhaustion that war is known to bring in its train. If there never was a good war and a bad peace why did armed conflicts recur with such distressing regularity? Was large-scale violence an intrinsic condition of Man? The answers given to such questions have differed widely: it has even been suggested that the states of war and peace are not as far removed from one another as is usually supposed. The causes of war and the interaction between war and society have long been the subject of philosophical enquiry and historical analysis. Accordยญ ing to Thucydides no one was ever compelled to go to war; Cicero remarked how dumb were the laws in time of war, while Clausewitz's profound observation concerning the affinity between war and politics has become almost a commonplace. War being the severest test a society or state can experience historians have naturally been concerned to investigate their relaยญ tionship
CONTENT
1 The English People and War in the Early Sixteenth Century -- 2 Hollandโs Experience of War during the Revolt of the Netherlands -- 3 The Army Revolt of 1647 -- 4 Hollandโs Financial Problems (1713โ1733) and the Wars against Louis XIV -- 5 Municipal Government and the Burden of the Poor in South Holland during the Napoleonic Wars -- 6 The Sinews of War: The Role of Dutch Finance in European Politics (c. 1750โ1815) -- 7 Britain and Blockade, 1780โ1940 -- 8 Away from Impressment: The Idea of a Royal Naval Reserve, 1696โ1859 -- 9 Problems of Defence in a Non-Belligerent Society: Military Service in the Netherlands during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century -- 10 World War II and Social Class in Great Britain -- 11 The Second World War and Dutch Society: Continuity and Change
