Description
Book Synopsis
This edited volume analyses siege warfare as a discrete type of military engagement, in the face of which civilians are particularly vulnerable. Siege warfare is a form of combat that has usually had devastating effects on civilian populations. From the near-contemporary Siege of Sarajevo to the real and mythical sieges of the ancient Mediterranean, this has been a recurring type of military engagement which, through bombardment, starvation, disease and massacre, places non-combatants at the heart of battle. To date, however, there has been little recognition of the effects of siege warfare on civilians. This edited volume addresses this gap. Using a distinctive regressive method, it begins with the present and works backwards, avoiding teleological interpretations that suggest the targeting of civilians in war is a modern phenomenon. Its contributors interrogate civilians'' roles during sieges, both as victims and active participants; the laws and customs of siege warfare;
Table of Contents
1. Civilians under Siege from Sarajevo to Troy: Introduction; Alex Dowdall and John Horne.- 2. Transmission and Transformation: Memories of the Siege of Sarajevo; Ivana Maček.- 3. 'This did not happen’: Survivors of the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944) and the ‘Truth about the Blockade’; Alexandra Wachter.- 4. ‘Like Troy, though about as much larger…as the Encyclopaedia Britannica is larger than the Iliad’: Civilians and Siege Warfare during the First World War; Alex Dowdall.- 5. Siege Warfare in Comparative Early-Modern Contexts: Norms, Nuances, Myth and Massacre during the Revolutionary Wars; Fergus Robson.- 6. Between Positional Warfare and Small War: Soldiers and Civilians during the ‘Desolation of the Palatinate’ (1688-89); Emilie Dosquet.- 7. Before the Storm: Civilians under Siege during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1630); Jane Finucane.- 8. A Race against Time – A Fight to the Death: Combatants and Civilians in the Siege and Capture of Jerusalem, 1099; Alan V. Murray.- 9. As They Were Ripped from the Altars: Civilians, Sacrilege and Classical Greek Siege Warfare; Joshua R. Hall.- 10. Civilians under Siege in the Ancient Greek World; Philip de Souza.- Index
