An evolutionary approach to military history

Abstract

This paper provides a new way of analysing the concept of change within the field of military history. The proposal is based on the use of complex adaptive systems and evolutionary theory. We introduce the concepts of selection, adaptation and coevolution to explain how war is managed in different societies, and game theory to explore decision-making processes of commanders. We emphasize the value of integrating formal modeling and computational simulations in order to apply the approach to real case studies. Our conclusions outline the advantages of an evolutionary military history in the difficult task of understanding the causes of transformation in past battlefields and armies.

Keywords

• Military History
• Evolution
• Complex Systems
• Game Theory
• Agent-Based Modeling