Battledress - The Uniforms of the World's Great Armies 1700 to the Present

The advantages of a standardized uniform are perhaps obvious to us in the twentieth century - easy identification of friend or foe and better discipline, to name but two - but the idea of 'uniform' only appeared with the standing army of the late seventeenth century, and the word 'uniform' did not reach Germany from France until the eighteenth century. This book traces the development of the uniforms of the great armies of the world from the Wars of European Succession to the Atomic Age; from the irregular and sometimes not very practical garb of the armies of the eighteenth century to the highly sophisticated and well-camouflaged uniforms and machinery with which we are familiar today.