Yet much of the book is a foot-dragging rearguard action which subtlely attempts to undermine the established hypothesis.
Firms that had once dominated colonial polities now found themselves fighting rearguard actions, compelled to give way on one critical issue after another.
Rather, the past two centuries have been a perpetual rearguard action against the modernising forces at the gates of both palace and temple.
The rearguard stood and fought fiercely for two days without interruption.
Aging movements, if they have made their way over time into the existing party establishment, pose the prospect of rearguard resistance to insurgency.
Their criticisms amount to a kind of cultural protectionism, the rearguard action of outmoded gatekeepers protesting the rise of new mediators.
In fact, the triumph of the dean and chapter was only achieved through a highly effective rearguard action to defeat a major threat to its authority.
It can develop in ways that are more inclusive of all workers or in ways that preserve a distinction between an economic vanguard and an economic rearguard.