Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll have produced a book that attempts to reevaluate military history through the lens of economic theory and historical case studies. In particular, they want to ask new questions about the past, including tools such as the impact of demand and supply, prices, efficiency, and optimization. They pick and choose events and topics from the historical record to analyze, sometimes going with examples that are less than obvious. Nonetheless, their analysis and discussion of military history is fascinating and mirrors the substantial recent interest on the economic dimensions of conflicts and the fiscal importance of strategic choices. Such explicit use of economic theory to explain military decision making has been rare in the literature so far.

Brauer and van Tuyll have opted to use case studies to illustrate the usefulness of economic theory in their analysis. In particular, they use the cost of building medieval castles, the decision making involved in some of the great early modern battles, strategic bombing of Germany in the Second World War, and France's force frappe in the Cold War era as phenomenon to be reexamined. Many of their findings are not necessarily new, such as the sunk costs and effectiveness of castles as tools in warfare or the linking of the Cold War arms race to strategic doctrines, although they are the clever in their approach. For example, while their analysis of medieval castles is innovative, they do not necessarily take into account the cost-benefit implications arising from the new gunpowder technologies in the early modern period. Moreover, they could have possibly taken into account the recent work (some of it not yet published) by Philip Hoffman on the early modern “arms race” and armaments prices.

Similarly, the discussion of the effectiveness of the strategic bombing has been discussed elsewhere too, by contemporary politicians in Great Britain and the United States and other scholars (and is even discussed in the documentary, The Fog of War, which concentrates on the life of Robert McNamara), yet the authors are effective in putting the strategic bombing efforts into their proper context of ultimate futility, at least in the absence of actual military victories in the battlefield, often contingent on the effective mobilization of scarce resources. Thus, they are making an important contribution to the ongoing discourse about what exactly constitutes total war and, in particular, what makes economic warfare successful; or a failure, which is more often the case.

The strengths of this book include the clarity of the material and the writing style, the accessibility of both the economic theory and historical cases used, and the various illustrations and additional materials. It also covers an extensive time period, something that is atypical for economists, and includes innovative cases studies. The introduction sets up the material in the book concisely and effectively. This book should attract a wide audience, in particular academic scholars in the fields of military and economic history, as well as economics (especially defense economics), given its focus both on warfare and military history. The authors seem quite comfortable covering and discussing the interdisciplinary challenges posed and rewards offered by such an effort, and by and large utilize the most relevant historical literature on military-fiscal changes over time, such as Niall Ferguson's various contributions. I can also see great potential for this book as a textbook (and I intend on utilizing it in my own classes).

The book has some obvious weaknesses too. First of all, I have to admit I am still somewhat perplexed about the authors' assertions about the representativeness of the cases. They seem convinced that the readers would need to prove their selections “wrong” before they could accept possible flaws in the selection process. One could think of various other historical case studies that would be illustrative and useful in terms of linking them with economic theory. For example, the most pivotal aspect of the early modern arms race, in my humble opinion, was the fact that naval domination was now required for a country to expand into the Atlantic trade and establishing colonies (eventually). That naval arms race, albeit with more limited data, could be analyzed in a comparative context, with tools arising from defense economics. Or, instead of focusing on the decision making involved in some of the great power battles leading ultimately to the era of total war with the French Revolution and Napoleon, why not take naval blockades as examples, especially given the availability of material and analysis in Lance Davis and Stanley Engerman's recent book (Davis, Lance E., and Stanley L. Engerman. Naval Blockades in Peace and War: An Economic History Since 1750. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)? Or bring in David Bell's (David A. Bell. The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007) groundbreaking new foray into the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars as the first world war into the discourse? Finally, the world wars could certainly be analyzed with macroeconomic tools as well, like Mark Harrison and Stephen Broadberry have done in their recent volumes (Mark Harrison, ed. The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; and Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison, eds. The Economics of World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)—thus, the use of strategic bombing is interesting, but could have benefited from a broader discussion of the economic dimensions of these wars.

Ultimately, the authors have simply tried to break some new ground with their selection of cases, and they have certainly succeeded in that sense. Yet, to claim that this study is more comprehensive than it is would be misleading. Nonetheless, I can heartily recommend this for everyone interested in military history and on how economic theory can help us understand historical outcomes better.