The First Total War

David A. Bell's 2007 argument that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815) constituted history's first 'total war' — in which ideology transformed the character of warfare from limited dynastic conflict into mass mobilization aimed at complete victory.

Demonstrates that ideological transformation precedes military transformation — Bell argues that it was the French Revolution's creation of nationalism and the revolutionary ideology of liberty that first produced total war, not industrial technology; the wars of 1792–1815 were total in ideology before they were total in armaments.