Search

Skip to main content Accessibility help

Only show content I have access to (0)

Chapters (1)

Over 3 years (1)

From year:

To year:

Apply

History (1)

Cambridge University Press (1)

1 results

5 - That Accursed Spanish War
- By Richard Hart Sinnreich
Edited by Williamson Murray, Ohio State University, Peter R. Mansoor, Ohio State University
Book:

Hybrid Warfare

Published online:

05 August 2012

Print publication:

09 July 2012, pp 104-150
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

This chapter examines the Peninsular War to try to decipher what makes hybrid or compound wars so difficult to prosecute and to consider what ingredients might suggest about the design and execution of future military campaigns in which regular forces must cope with multiple concurrent conventional and irregular challenges. The peninsula's physical compartmentation heavily influenced and continues even today to affect its sociopolitical character, historically imposing on both Portugal and Spain (especially the latter) a degree of regional differentiation that occasionally has verged on outright separatism. The map of Spain was a palimpsest of kingdoms, principalities and provinces, many of them with islands adrift in alien territories. In the end, it is hard not to conclude from an examination of the Peninsular War that the best approach to hybrid war is to avoid fighting one in the first place.