This chapter has two parts. Adopting an accretionist perspective on the Sun Tzu text – regarding it as developing over an extended period with no single author – the first part provides basic background on the Warring States era in which the text took shape. It analyzes an early Chinese battle illustrating Sun Tzu principles, then ends with discussion of logistics aspects of Warring States warfare. Shifting from battlefields to texts, the second part provides comparative overview of different extant copies of the Sun Tzu text, some traditionally transmitted, one archaeologically recovered. Some textual issues aside, the Sun Tzu text is in relatively good shape for a text of its antiquity. The second part ends with overview of a set of eleven traditional commentators on the text; perspective on the sprawling modern Sun Tzu literature; and brief orientation to the Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), one of China’s great pre-modern vernacular novels. Although this novel of Ming dynasty vintage is not properly part of the Sun Tzu tradition, in modern times many Chinese have been exposed to Sun-Tzu-esque thinking through the Sanguo’s vivid, albeit fictionalized, stories.

This chapter has two parts. Adopting an accretionist perspective on the Sun Tzu text – regarding it as developing over an extended period with no single author – the first part provides basic background on the Warring States era in which the text took shape. It analyzes an early Chinese battle illustrating Sun Tzu principles, then ends with discussion of logistics aspects of Warring States warfare. Shifting from battlefields to texts, the second part provides comparative overview of different extant copies of the Sun Tzu text, some traditionally transmitted, one archaeologically recovered. Some textual issues aside, the Sun Tzu text is in relatively good shape for a text of its antiquity. The second part ends with overview of a set of eleven traditional commentators on the text; perspective on the sprawling modern Sun Tzu literature; and brief orientation to the Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), one of China’s great pre-modern vernacular novels. Although this novel of Ming dynasty vintage is not properly part of the Sun Tzu tradition, in modern times many Chinese have been exposed to Sun-Tzu-esque thinking through the Sanguo’s vivid, albeit fictionalized, stories.

Allegations over atrocities committed in Ireland by the English throughout the early modern period have generated bitter debate but little genuine insight. The Cromwellian Wars of the 1650s, however, are widely acknowledged as one of the most traumatic episodes in Irish history. According to English accounts, Ireland suffered a demographic collapse in the face of total war, which included the widespread killing of captured soldiers and Catholic clergy, as well as the deliberate targeting of the indigenous community and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure. These brutal tactics triggered a major famine, which in turn enabled the spread of diseases such as plague and dysentery, killing tens of thousands in the process. Following their military victory, the English transplanted thousands of Catholic landowners, and their dependents, to make way for a new Protestant settler community, and forcibly transported significant numbers of men, women and children across the Atlantic to work in New World colonies. Few today would argue that the excesses of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland constitute a major war crime but to date nobody has specifically charged the government of the English republic with genocide. This chapter will determine whether in fact there is a case to answer.