A new volume on The World of the Siege: Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare will soon be published by Brill in its History of Warfare series.

This collective volume is edited by Anke Fischer-Kattner and Jamel Ostwald and includes diverse essays on early modern siege warfare. The volume grew out of a fascinating conference organized by Anke Fischer-Kattner at Duke University in 2014 on The World of the Siege. I participated in the conference and contributed a chapter on “‘The Enterprises and Surprises that They Would Like to Perform’: Fear, Urban Identities, and Siege Culture during the French Wars of Religion,” to the collective volume.

“The World of the Siege examines relations between the conduct and representations of early modern sieges. The volume offers case studies from various regions in Europe (England, France, the Low Countries, Germany, the Balkans) and throughout the world (the Chinese, Ottoman and Mughal Empires), from the 15th century into the 18th. The
international contributors analyse how siege narratives were created and disseminated, and how early modern actors as well as later historians made sense of these violent events in both textual and visual artefacts. The volume’s chronological and geographical breadth
provides insight into similarities and differences of siege warfare and military culture across several cultures, countries and centuries, as well as its impact on both military combatants and civilian observers.”

The book description is available on the Brill website and the book is listed on Brill’s History of Warfare series site.