Rumours of War

Abstract

The previous chapter assessed developments in war in the nineteenth century against the background of post-Enlightenment assumptions concerning human progress. The central argument was that the destructive military potential of the new civilization was not evident in the dominant narratives of modernity, and that modernity, in the mode of modernization, was highly destructive. The analysis also revealed how many of the new productive techniques of industrialization came originally from a military environment. But this was not meant to imply a form of technological determinism. On the contrary, this book advances the proposition that the essential driving force of war lies in society’s culture. By this I mean key norms and values, patterns of social organization, and, even without a conscious use of propaganda, popular culture.