In this first global history of strategic practice, we define strategy making (following K. Kagan) as making choices, prioritising means in pursuit of political ends in the context of armed conflict, actual or threatened. The usage of the term took a long time to spread from the East Roman Empire to the Occident, and most civilisations discussed in these volumes did not have a distinct word to describe what they were doing in the modern sense. Yet by applying Kagan’s definition, we see evidence of complex reasoning and prioritisation of means and ways; even the greatest empires could not pursue unlimited ends. Our volumes bring together experts on each individual civilisation and period to explore analogous dimensions of strategy making: who are the enemies, and why? What means are available to them? What are the political strategic goals? And the central questions: how were ultimate and immediate goals formulated, and how were they linked up with military means? What were the enablers and limitations, in terms of geography, resources and other means, which produced distinctive approaches? But also, was there a transfer of ideas and methods? How were they translated, adopted, enacted, imitated and emulated in warfare around the world?

Here we lay the ground and define the parameters of this project. Definitions of strategy are discussed, giving the rationale for the one chosen to guide our work: Kimberly Kagan’s definition that sees evidence of strategy where prioritisation and choices about means of pursuing political aims at the level of the state (or higher social entity) have been made. This allows us to identify strategic decision making even when no documents have survived that contain explicit articulations of such reasoning.

Warfare did not evolve in a linear fashion. This is most obvious on the physical level: the weapons and armies of polities across time and space have fluctuated in sophistication, so that early European medieval armies had more in common with ancient Israelite or Greek contingents than with the Roman war machinery, and, up to the nineteenth century or even the twentieth, raiding warfare in some parts of Africa or the islands of south-east Asia was akin to patterns of pre-Columbian warfare in the Americas, prehistoric warfare in Europe and ghazis and booty expeditions in Europe and around the Mediterranean. Where warfare’s aims went beyond mere raiding, for much of world history, the paucity or even absence of relevant sources has made it difficult to reconstruct political–strategic aims. We also encounter vast varieties conditioned in part by hard factors such as climate, geography and resources. We have encountered and possibly not always avoided the danger of squeezing cultural differences into a Procrustean bed of Western concepts and languages. Yet some striking patterns have emerged. Not only Indo-European cultures, but also Mongols and Chinese, came up with a strategic aim of establishing a universal monarchy, or defending against the imposition of such an overlordship. The forming of alliances for common strategic purposes and the defence of allies or clients is another widespread pattern, strategic co-operation counterbalancing long-term hostilities. The distinction between client states and allies was often blurred. Non-kinetic tools of strategy were also employed widely, from giving gifts, to tribute payments (again a distinction often difficult to make), to marriages to confirm peace treaties or cement alliances. And most cultures seem to have had some rules or code of honour with regard to the conduct of war which in many contexts imposed limits on the pursuit of strategic aims.