Victor Mair’s translation of the Sunzi Bingfa. Image Source. When translated into English, the Sunzi Bingfa, usually titled Sunzi’s Art of War, is a fairly small work. When we take away the commentary and annotation added by its translators we are left with a sparse text indeed: Roger Ames’ translation is 71 pages long, the […]
Joe Posner’s “Isis Control in Iraq and Syria” Source: Max Fischer and Zack Beauchamp, “14 Maps that Explain ISIS,” Vox.com (25 September 2014) A few months ago Small Wars Journal published an essay by Gary Anderson titled “Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and the Theory and Practice of Jihad.“[1] Al-Baghdadi, of course, is the leader of […]
This is Part II of a two part series. We strongly recommend reading Part I before reading another sentence of this post. A modern depiction of Huo Qubing’s cavalry charging a surprised Xiongnu force. Image Source. Edward Luttwak is wrong. The Han did not corrupt, bribe, or culturally weaken the Xiongnu Empire into submission. If […]
A Mongolian stamp depicting Maodun, founder of the Xiongnu Empire.Image source. A few weeks ago a friend passed along one of the least correct essays I have ever had the misfortune to read. It was written by Edward Luttwak, secret agent author of classic titles in the field of strategic studies like Coup D’état: […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit.TOP BILLING“The Little Divergence“‘Pseuderoerasmus,’ Pseudoarasmus (12 June 2014) In this blogpost I will argue the following : While very few economic historians now dispute that East Asia had lower living standards than Europe well before 1800, …there is no agreement on whether European economies prior to 1800 were “modern” […]
A Chinese coast guard ship fires a water cannon at a Vietnamese vessel.Image Credit: AP News (16 May 2014) Over the last two weeks remarkable things have happened in the South China Sea. I assume that the readers of The Stage have read the relevant news reports; I will not copy them here. At the […]
USGS topographical map. “Japan, Korea, and Northeast China.” 2006. Image Source: koryostudies.com. What leads men and states to the path of war? For centuries thinkers and strategists of the Western tradition have turned to Thucydides and his history to find answers to this question. The great historian speaks of Athenian envoys rising up in hostile […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. TOP BILLING “‘The standard of living in ancient societies: a comparison between the Han Empire, the Roman Empire, and Babylonia“ Bas van Leeuwen, Reinhard Pirgruber, and Jieli van Leeuwen-Li. Working Papers 50, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History. The global and long-term development of […]
Far Eastern Economic Review (2 August 1997)with Thayer’s investigative work featured as its cover story. Image Credit: Wikimedia If you read one thing this weekend, this should be it. Nate Thayer was the Far Eastern and Economic Review‘s man on the ground in Cambodia for most of the 1990s. One of his editors […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. This is the first “Notes From All Over” I have written this month, so this list is a long one. TOP BILLING When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose TooMaryn McKenna. Wired. 20 November 2013. If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance […]
