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evidence put forward for this broad statement. It is not enough merely to state: one must demonstrate. In fact, many of these internal moves produced economic and social advancement. Again, in another later chapter, after spending considerable effort in attempting to demonstrate the role of Puritan beliefs in constraining material acquisition, she admits that that heritage was ‘ambiguous’. And she takes no note of recent research that shows that the later an emigrant came during the decade of the ‘Great Migration’the more likely he was to be rigid in his Puritanism. Nonetheless, the author makes some interesting points in furthering the ‘religious explanation’. It remains an open debate. Chapter 2, ‘Passage’ tells us what folk took with them and clearly shows that making the crossing was expensive. Stressing the seminal experience of the voyage, she says that ‘in a very real sense, the beginnings of New England society date less from the moments of the settlers’ arrival in Boston or Salem than from the time of their departure from’ England. All members of the first generation, no matter what their backgrounds or motives, underwent the same harrowing experience of those early sea crossings. Also in Chapter 3, ‘Transplantation’, she very usefully shows, in some detail, the fortunes of a number of single young men and servants. In Chapter 4, ‘Competency’, the author provides a summary of early Massachusetts economy, concluding that ‘landownership appeared to offer greater economic security. . . than did labor at their English occupations’. Those who did maintain their old occupations tended to be carpenters, joiners and shoemakers. But in this, as in the final chapter, Anderson’s role-group strangely disappear from lengthy portions of her text. Moreover, there are rather vague and imprecise observations regarding the extent of social stratification in early Massachusetts. There was more than she is prepared to allow.

The concluding chapter, ‘Legacy’, is in some ways the most interesting. It clearly illustrates the chasm between New England’s first and second generations. As Increase Mather wrote: ‘The first Generation of Christians in New England, is in a manner gone off the Stage, and there is another and more sinful generation risen up in their stead.’ Apparently oblivious to the message of the book of Job, New England leaders during the 1660s were trapped in a notion of causality: because of the observable crises facing their colony, together with a perceived spiritual decline, it was supposed that the failure of the second generation to emulate the first had brought about this declension. The ‘Great Migration’ understandably formed a central motif in the initial settlers’ self-definition. Yet, however understandable, it assumed an unnatural centrality, for it automatically had barred their children from the highest rung of religious expectation.

Taken as a whole, this well-written book provides a worthwhile contribution to the historical literature on New England’s early years and makes a spirited attempt to bring us closer to some of its previously anonymous first-generation settlers.

University of Wales, Aberystwyth Boyd Stanley Schlenther

Historical and Political Writings, Carl von Clausewitz; Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (ed. and trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), xvii +397 pp., S29.9V~25.00.

In 1842, the Duke of Wellington, who had brusquely refused to write anything about his campaigns, was so irritated by Clausewitz’s account of the Battle of Waterloo, that he put pen to paper. With characteristic pungency and fluency, he wrote a defence of his

370 Book Reviews

operations in Belgium, and deplored the readiness of all historians, ‘to criticise the acts and operations not only of their own Generals and armies, but likewise of those of their best friends and allies. . . and even of those acting in cooperation with its armies’. Such views have been aired numerous times by commanders since then. It is testimony to the probing quality of Clausewitz’s historical analysis (though not necessarily to its accuracy) that Wellington, who had refused to read the work of historians because ‘I might be tempted to reply’, was indeed provoked into writing a critical commentary on his account.’

Clausewitz has a reputation in the English-speaking world (especially among soldiers) for being difficult to read. This stimulating volume, carefully translated, dispels this expression. The book falls into two parts. The first covers Clausewitz’s historical writings, and is devoted mainly to campaign studies and the historical background to Prussian military reform. The second explores Clausewitz’s political views. Each of the two parts are introduced by valuable short essays by the editors. Contrary to the accepted view, Clausewitz wrote in an easy, concise and, on the whole, well crafted style. The vivid pen portraits are especially enjoyable. An entire essay is devoted to Clausewitz’s mentor, Scharnhorst, though many other individuals feature in these pages etched with precision and penetration. According to Clausewitz, ‘Scharnhorst’s speech was “long-winded, vague, and halting. . . “. In this he resembled Liddell Hart, who also gave the impression that “he found it difficult to communicate his ideas”‘(p. 101).

The essays reproduced here were helpful to Clausewitz in organising and developing his thoughts. In this process, he like other military thinkers, found history an intellectual catalyst; indeed Clausewitz himself underlined his dependence on historical study; but it is important to stress that his historical accounts are also interesting for what he made of them as history. Doubtless students of military thought will be attracted to this volume for what it reveals about the evolution of On Wm. The relationship of personality and ideas is imaginatively considered in the essay on Scharnhorst, which is the most personal and revealing of the pieces included in this collection. Clausewitz observed of Scharnhorst that:

Such a mind brought noble ideas quietly to fruition but was not like a resplendent tree in bloom. Scharnhorst resembled plants whose bounty forms the staff of life but flower inconspicuously, while the eloquent and witty among us may be compared to flowering bulbs whose sole product is a delightful if often stupefying

scent (p. 100).

The fruits of this volume flower inconspicuously. From the outset, in his study of the War of the Austrian Succession, Clausewitz recognised that strategy is ‘saturated with politics’ (p. 22). Two prime theses of On War are given due attention, ‘friction’ (pp. 165-166) and the pursuit (pp. 179-180, 217). Clausewitz urged ‘In general, it is quickest and most effective to exploit an advantage at the point where it was gained; no time is lost on marches and the iron is struck while hot’. But the theme which transcends the value of specific prognoses such as these, is the readiness of Clausewitz to discuss the wider elements which give battles and campaigns their shape. He does not tire the reader with the accumulation of detail.

This concern with broad, challenging structures led Clausewitz into a paradox in his political writings. As Dr Moran points out, as a thinker influenced by the enlightenment, Clausewitz favoured the decentralisation of power (p. 229). Yet his stress on policy [it was Prussia’s ‘poor policies’ (p. 73) that led to her catastrophic defeat in 18061 and ‘political methods . . . vigorous and worthy of the state’ (p. 246) indicate an overwhelming demand in the harsh, realist, Clausewitzian world of international relations, for centralisation and the efficient utilisation of power. What is demanded of great men is pertinacity, ‘a high degree of orderly, focused activity directed towards a great goal’ (p. 271). Statesmen

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should concern themselves with a realistic appraisal of their interests and the changing equation of power between them. In Clausewitz’s view, ‘The balance ofpowersystem only reveals itself when the balance is in danger of being lost’ (p. 244). The prime mechanism for adjusting the balance is coalition in war and peace. There are two kinds of coalitions, those directed towards defeating or destroying the enemy, and those designed to weaken or preoccupy allies. It is indicative of this paradox that though Clausewitz considered that the Germans have a unique gift for decentralisation, he believed that German unity (towards which he is lukewarm at best) could only be achieved when ‘one state subdues all the others’ (p. 350). This book is perhaps not essential reading, but it is interesting reading, and should be consulted by all scholars of military thought.

King’s College, London Brian Holden Reid

NOTES

1. ‘Memorandum on the Battle of Waterloo’, Supplementary Dispatches andMemoranda of Field Marshal Arthur, Duke of Wellington, ed. Second Duke of Wellington (London: John Murray, 1858-1872) Vol. x, p. 517; Richard Aldington, WeIIington (London:

Heinemann, 1946), p. 239.

‘be Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, Ruth Saunders Magurn (trans. and ed.) (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1991), xiv + 528 pp., paper.

One looks back from Golub’sMercenaries to Picasso’s Guernica to Goya’sMassacres to Rubens’ Horrors of War. Rubens describes the picture’s allegorical images in a letter to his client. A woman with a broken lute symbolizes War and its partners Pestilence and Famine. A mother with a child in her arms indicates that fecundity, procreation and charity are thwarted by War. A grief-stricken woman, clothed in black, with torn veil, ‘robbed of her jewels and other ornaments’, is the unfortunate Europe who has suffered plunder, outrage and misery.

Symbols such as those are like statistics, like body-counts in the American war against Vietnam, the dollar-cost for reconstructing Sarajevo, the sum of starving Somalians. A woman with a broken lute! A woman robbed of her jewels! Her attribute, Rubens adds, is the globe.

Today we inhabit the same globe. All over its warped surface of happy and sad places occur war, pestilence, famine. But our style of symbolising has changed. In Rubens’ time, photojournalism didn’t exist. Legions of disastrous moments in the lives of individuals couldn’t be visually recorded but only summarised as the inaugural or climactic event, or by global signs like the Star of Bethlehem or the star-circle of Maastricht. Typeset chronicles were just beginning to be produced- then narratives could be added to link symbols, and allegories written as factual reports. But letters were the standard bearers of communication, written by hand, copied by scribes, delivered by horse-drawn carriages and wind-driven ships. Only the literate could communicate by writing, if unable to employ secretaries and afford postage. Mail was slow in coming, but also slow were preparations for war and the advances of armies and flotillas. In our era, only diplomacy