Military history

Military History is the study of armies, battles and soldiers, as well as strategies, tactics, technology and logistics of warfare. It includes the history of naval and air warfare.

Military history is sometimes disparaged as non-analytical narrative in which a popular writer provides little more than a chronology of generals and battles. Analysis of one hundred of the early 21st century's best military histories reveals that current military history goes well beyond such subject matter, incorporating social, cultural, and political history. Common areas of inquiry for contemporary historians include the impact of society, culture, and politics on a country's ability to wage war; the social, cultural, and political aftereffects of war; the society and culture of military organizations; and the relationship between military organizations and the communities from which they spring. While historians continue to devote considerable attention to the conventional militaries of Europe and the United States, many also are studying small armies, irregular forces, nonstate actors, civil wars, and non-Western armed forces. Within the military realm, historians frequently tackle subjects of much greater complexity than the generals-and-battles stereotype would suggest, to include the relationship between technological and human factors, the interdependency of land and naval warfare, and the influence of political direction on the military.

New Military History

In the United States, the so-called "new military history" evolved rapidly during the 1980s. It broadened the focus and current methodology, allowing historians to formulate new problems, find new materials, and use new methods. The interest of American academic circles in this New Military History has resulted in new lines of historical research. Among the most fruitful are the historical study of military technology, the interesting debate about the "Military Revolution" in Early Modern history, and the analysis of armed conflict and the nature of combat with particular attention to strategic, logistical, and tactical problems. The most rapid growth has been in the social history of the armed forces, which analyzes such subjects as the social composition of armies, recruitment and military training, motivation, and the effects of military service. Critics complain the new military history minimizes subject of combat and downplays famous people and battles. The new military history does place less emphasis on soldiers, weapons, tactics, and operations and more on society, economics, politics, and culture.

Lynn (1997) argues academic military history faces an increasingly hostile environment because of the current fashions in the study of history. Theoretical complexity, novelty, and even the trivial are now exalted over the traditional forms of historical studies that are at the heart of military history. The "holy trinity plus one" - race, class, and gender in the workplace and popular culture - are the preferred fields of study. Many of the faculty members on the "cutting edge" have no tolerance for interests and approaches that run counter to current trends, leading to an imbalance in hiring that restricts history departments to a narrow focus. There is hope, however, that military history can survive in the hostile academic environment, but to do so it must explore subject matter and methodologies that fit well with contemporary trends. Both gender history and the "new cultural history," for example, hold promise for military historians, even in the study of combat, the essence of military history

H-War: Military History Network

H-War: Military History Network, founded in March, 1995, is a moderated email-based discussion group and bulletin board for scholars, librarians, and teachers in the field of military history. It has an international audience of 1600 subscribers and is published daily; subscriptions are free. H-War focuses particularly on research and teaching interests, new scholarship in the field, discussions of military historiography that foster critical thinking and enhance professionalism, and the sharing of knowledge and experience about the teaching of military history, including posting and discussion of course syllabi and reading lists. The discussion logs are open. H-War post announcements from scholarly societies about their journals, conferences, fellowships, and funding opportunities; encourages organizers of conferences to send calls for papers and program content and graduate students to post abstracts of their doctoral dissertations and research papers; and provides a forum for information on bibliographic and archival sources, as well as reports on new software, datasets, or Web sites relevant to military history. H-War is operated by ten editors,[2] and is sponsored by H-Net, the umbrella group formed in 1992 that publishes over 100 such groups, including H-CivWar (on U.S. Civil War), H-Minerva (on women and the military), and H-Diplo (on diplomatic history).

Regional studies

Russia

The 1990s was a decade of progress and unfulfilled promise in the field of Russian military history. Broader access to previously closed archives and widespread collaboration between Russian and foreign scholars - one of the decade's most important developments - coincided with a wave of publications in military history. Varying degrees of scholarly access to the Russian State Military-Historical Archive, the Russian State Military Archive, and the Central State Archive of the Ministry of Defense made it possible for historians to construct research on both neglected and sensitive issues. For instance, freer archival access underlay Oleg Fedotovich Suvenirov's Tragediia RKKA 1937-1938 [The tragedy of the Red Army, 1937-38] (1998), David Stone's Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 (2000), and numerous other works. The 1990s witnessed a modest revival in institutionally sponsored research, as well as a renaissance in serious scholarship on prerevolutionary Russian military history. One of the decade's more unusual developments was the exploration of hitherto taboo subjects, such as the history of military intelligence. However, only some attainments of the 1990's were genuine; others were incomplete or ephemeral. Questions also remain over fundamental issues, including problematic archival access, larger political uncertainties, and indifference toward things military.

United States

Edward M. Coffman, a military historian who taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, emphasizes the role of the individual and includes analysis of social, political, and economic ramifications as well as battles. Coffman's monographs include one on Peyton C. March, army chief of staff during World War I, one on the American military experience during World War I, and one on the Old Army during peacetime, 1784-1898. Coffman notes that historians need as much information as they can "vacuum" and need to be honest to and with their subjects. He urges careful attention be paid to the individual testimonies of soldiers, both written and oral, when doing military history and provides examples of those historians who have accomplished this.

Bibliography

• Black, Jeremy. "Determinisms and Other Issues," Journal of Military History, 68 (Oct. 2004), 1217–32.
• Chambers II, John Whiteclay. "The New Military History: Myth and Reality," Journal of Military History, 55 (July 1991), 395–406
• Charters, David A., Marc Milner, and J. Brent Wilson. eds. Military History and the Military Profession, ed. (Westport, 1992)
• Dupuy, R. Ernest and Trevor N. Dupuy. The Encyclopedia of Military History: From 3500 B.C. to the Present (1977), 1465pp; comprehensive discussion focused on wars and battles
• Grimsley, Mark. "Why Military History Sucks," Nov. 1996, War Historian.org, online at [2]
• Karsten, Peter. ed., Encyclopedia of War and American Society (3 vols., 2005).
• Karsten, Peter. "The 'New' American Military History: A Map of the Territory, Explored and Unexplored," American Quarterly, 36 #3, (1984), 389–418
• Kohn, Richard H. "The Social History of the American Soldier: A Review and Prospectus for Research," American Historical Review, 86 (June 1981), 553–67.
• Lee, Wayne E. "Mind and Matter—Cultural Analysis in American Military History: A Look at the State of the Field," Journal of American History, 93 (March 2007), 1116–42. Fulltext: History Cooperative and Ebsco
• Lynn, John A. Battle: A Cultural History of Combat and Culture (2003).
• Lynn, John A. "Rally Once Again: The Embattled Future of Academic Military History," Journal of Military History, 61 (Oct. 1997), 777–89.
• Moyar, Mark. "The Current State of Military History." Historical Journal 2007 50(1): 225-240. Issn: 0018-246x
• Paret, Peter, Gordon A. Craig, and Felix Gilbert, eds. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (1986) influential intellectual history of all the mjor military thinkers
• Paret, Peter. Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times (2007)
• Porch, Douglas. "Writing History in the "End of History" Era - Reflections on Historians and the GWOT" Journal of Military History 2006 70(4): 1065-1079. Issn: 0899-3718 Fulltext: Ebsco, on war on terror, 2001-present
• Reardon, Carol. Soldiers and Scholars: The U.S. Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865-1920. U. Press of Kansas 1990. 270 pp.
• Seager II, Robert. Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Man and His Letters (Annapolis, 1977).
• Shy, John. "The Cultural Approach to the History of War," Journal of Military History, 57 (Oct. 1993), 13–26
• Spector, Ronald H. "Teetering on the Brink of Respectability." Journal of American History 2007 93(4): 1158-1160. Issn: 0021-8723 Fulltext: History Cooperative and Ebsco
• Spiller, Roger. "Military History and its Fictions." Journal of Military History 2006 70(4): 1081-1097. Issn: 0899-3718 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (1973).

External links

• "Web Sources for Military History" by Richard Jensen guide to web sources for from ancient history to present day
• H-WAR, online discussion by experts
• H-MINERVA, discussions on womrn and the military
• H-CivWar, discussions on the U.S. Civil War

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