CJ Peers

Chris Peers provides an excellent assortment of facts to reveal how Genghis Khan constructed his elaborate but effective Mongol war machine which allowed him to savage both the Occident and the Orient within the space of a few decades. The only myopic aspect of this book was that Peers glosses over Khan's early childhood and the sterling roles of the likes of his Captains such as Subotai who did the grassroots work of organizing his militaries into the fearsome war machines which they eventually became. Otherwise, for students of military history this book is a must read and of biblical proportions.… (more)

The title is a bit misleading, it should have been "Chinese Armies from the Mongol Conquest to the Ming Dynasty. " The subject is well chosen for that title. The effect of trying to rule China if one was a Mongol led quickly to the sinification of the Mongols, and local conditions led to the armies being largely infantry, and eventually under the Ming, the serious adoption of primitive gunpowder weapons. There is little discussion of the hand weapons of the Yuan and Ming armies, and a fair amount on the steps leading to the later matchlock weapons. The Armour is also scantily described, but there are a number of fortification plans. A pretty normal Osprey treatment of a complex subject.… (more)

This was the first Osprey book I've read and it was a nice, compact compendium for the layperson of a specialized area of interest. The chronology, illustrations, plates and diagrams were very useful. I was rather uncomfortable with the very general references--no footnotes--and the presentation of Chinese names only in transliteration; unless one is already familiar with the historical personae referred to, if the Chinese characters for their names are not offered, it's very hard to know what a name actually is. Without tonal markings, is the surname "Wei" 魏 or 韋? And for the given names, there are even more possibilities. The book is nonetheless a useful resource.
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Chinese military history is a topic that is hardly covered by Western authors. Given the limited interest in the West, short-sighted books such as this one try to cover the gap by covering 2000 years of Chinese history in 150 pages. Such a concept is bound to fail and it does as the author has to spend too many of the limited number of pages just to catch up with the intermittent centuries that pass between chapters. Characters and places are introduced rather sloppily and one never begins to care about the sort of the protagonists. The book is also not about battles but selected campaigns but it is unclear what criteria were used to include or exclude these. Fittingly, the maps are bad too. Overall, this book was produced without love and care. The author probably had to fulfill a long outstanding contract and handed in an ailing manuscript. Readers are better off with the author's collection of his Osprey titles about the Chinese armies, "Soldiers of the dragon : Chinese armies 1500 BCE-1840 CE".

Ancient Chinese military history is still waiting for its Stephen Turnbull, someone who collects what is available in Chinese and makes it accessible and interesting for Western audiences. A well made title about the Three Kingdoms should sell well in the West. Hopefully, someone will undertake a real effort.… (more)