Small wars in the age of Clausewitz: the watershed between partisan war and people's war

Heuser, B. (2010) Small wars in the age of Clausewitz: the watershed between partisan war and people's war. Journal of Strategic Studies, 33 (1). pp. 139-162. ISSN 1743-937X doi: 10.1080/01402391003603623

Abstract/Summary

Around the time of Clausewitz’s writing, a new element was introduced into partisan warfare: ideology. Previously, under the ancien régime, partisans were what today we would call special forces, light infantry or cavalry, almost always mercenaries, carrying out special operations, while the main action in war took place between regular armies. Clausewitz lectured his students on such ‘small wars’. In the American War of Independence and the resistance against Napoleon and his allies, operations carried out by such partisans merged with counter-revolutionary, nationalist insurgencies, but these Clausewitz analysed in a distinct category, ‘people's war’. Small wars, people's war, etc. should thus not be thought of as monopoly of either the political Right or the Left.

Additional Information	Free access to the full text of this article is available in the Related URLs field "Publisher". A shorter version of this item was published in German as ‘Clausewitz und der Kleine Krieg’ [Clausewitz and small wars] in Clausewitz Informationen 1 (2005), pp. 35-65.
Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/18795
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Politics and International Relations
Uncontrolled Keywords	Small Wars; Insurgencies; Counterinsurgency; Clausewitz; Guerrilla; Partisan Warfare
Additional Information	Free access to the full text of this article is available in the Related URLs field "Publisher". A shorter version of this item was published in German as ‘Clausewitz und der Kleine Krieg’ [Clausewitz and small wars] in Clausewitz Informationen 1 (2005), pp. 35-65.
Publisher	Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
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