Books by Brett Bowden

In a succinct yet wide ranging survey of history and of ideas that calls in to question a number of conventional wisdoms, Civilization and War explores these issues and more whilst outlining the two-way relationship between civilization and war.

This book explores and explains the reasons why the idea of universal history, a form of teleological history which holds that all peoples are travelling along the same path and destined to end at the same point, persists in political thought.

The term civilization comes with considerable baggage, dichotomizing people, cultures, and histories as civilized - or not. This book examines how the idea of civilization has informed our thinking about international relations over the course of ten centuries.