Abstract
Stephen Morillo with Michael F. Pavkovic, What is Military History?, New York, Polity Press, 2012; 180 pp.; £14.99 pbk; ISBN 9780745659787.
Stephen Morillo, medievalist at Wabash College, and Michael F. Pavkovic, an expert in ancient history at the US Naval War College, have written a handy volume for anyone who wants to get a quick overview of the discipline of military history. The short 165-page textbook, the first edition of which was published in 2006, is clearly structured. It addresses the topic in five main chapters which comprise: a presentation of the development of military historiography as one of the most traditional subfields of history from ancient times to the present; a discussion of the main methodological approaches; examples of current controversies; suggestions about doing military history within and outside academia; and finally, an offer of an outlook to future methodological developments.
Morillo and Pavkovic first provide the reader with a broad definition of the topic that includes all kinds of approaches and historical sub-disciplines. It would have been helpful, however, to draw distinctions between other nomenclature that are used in a related context, such as ‘war studies’, ‘security studies’ or ‘peace and conflict studies’. Unlike recent European definitions, the authors here do not focus their attention on influences of cultural history, which they consider legitimate but not a constitutive element of military history. The authors consider a classical understanding of ‘the histories of war’ to be the core of the topic.
The overview of more than 2000 years of writings on the topic is particularly helpful, as it offers a discussion of a range of analyses of warfare. Starting with Homer’s Iliad, the classical examples are mentioned briefly and put in the context of their origin. For modern times, the most important paradigm shift was the development of ‘war and society studies’, by including cultural and social history into war studies. It was the creation of this New Military History in the United States of America in the late 1970s and early 1980s that embedded the discipline into history’s mainstream academic discourse.
Morillo and Pavkovic have no reservations about any aspect of military history. Fortunately they have also taken a look outside the universities and emphasize that the field has a diverse audience that includes not just academics but also, and to a greater extent, the general public and professional military personnel. And we should not forget that due to its popularity a significant part of military history has been written by non-university authors. Two observations are remarkable in this regard: first, it is true that for a long time military history did not meet academic standards and therefore did not have the highest reputation. We can agree that such prejudice has almost disappeared, at least for academic publications. Second, if it is true that military history is massively influenced by discourses on actual wars – the Iraq war in 1990–1 generated research about revolutionary matters in military affairs, whereas Afghanistan created a rising interest in colonial wars – one may want to question the intellectual independence of scholars in the field. Then concerns from ‘academic liberals' (123), namely that military professionals and historians writing military history might be too closely affiliated, could be justified.
As examples of ‘current controversies’ (chapter 4), Michael Roberts and Geoffrey Parker debate the impact of military revolutions on modern states and summarize the discussion on ‘the Western way of war’ inspired by Victor Davis Hanson. More modern examples are the discourses on Terence Zuber’s suggestions about the ‘Schlieffen Plan’ and about the origins of the German blitzkrieg concept.
The last two examples illustrate particularly that the book is written exclusively for an English-speaking audience. In both debates, about the ‘Schlieffen plan’ and the blitzkrieg concept, major contributions have been made in German, none of which are mentioned. A book this short cannot of course address everything, but the authors should have at least briefly tackled the findings of non-English language historiography, such as the excellent French and German scholarship in the field. The Germans even have an Association for Military History that is proportionally comparable to its large US counterpart.
The concentration on the USA is somehow paradigmatic for the community interested in military history. The field is still divided by language. Although many countries do have master’s programmes, research institutes and chairs for military history, inter- and transnational links are only nascent, and knowledge transfer from one country to another is limited.
For Anglo–American students with no particular interest in foreign languages, the book is without a doubt a useful first read; for everyone else, it is a useful resource to gain insight into a US reflection on military history.