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Description
Ever since humans began to live together in settlements they have felt the need to organize some kind of defense against potentially hostile neighbors. Many of the earliest city states were built as walled towns, and during the medieval era, stone castles were built both as symbols of the defenders' strength and as protection against potential attack. The advent of cannon prompted fortifications to become lower, denser, and more complex, and the forts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could appear like snowflakes in their complexity and beautiful geometry. Without forts, the history of America could have taken a very different course, pirates could have sailed the seas unchecked, and Britain itself could have been successfully invaded.
This book explains the history of human fortifications, and is beautifully illustrated using photographs, plans, drawings, and maps to explain why they were built, their various functions, and their immense historical legacy in laying the foundations of empire.
About the Author
Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, UK, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, USA.
Praise For…
“The number and quality of the illustrations make this book a real bargain, and it is easy to recommend it to anyone interested in fortifications.” —The Coast Defense Journal
“Beautifully illustrated.” —Army Magazine