Inactive Rebunk

Tom Bruscino

Military History and the Academy

Recently, a blogger at Cliopatria who is interested in the everyday lives of people in the past wrote a post calling for some historical work on menstruation. No problem there. How people in the past have dealt with menstruation is an interesting topic that can probably tell us a great deal about gender relationships in the past. But, not to pick on the blogger David Lion Salmanson for a bit of hyperbole, the post included some thoughts on summer reading: "There are some summer reading lists for history floating around at other websites, but I'm not going to link to them because I think they are very boring, more wars, and presidents, and that kind of thing. Really, how many books on the Civil War can people read before they say, "Hey, maybe something else happened in American History?""

I responded at Big Tent (then at Cliopatria). A small discussion ensued (see the comments), one that largely turned to issues of contingency and military history. As almost always happens in such cases, all of a sudden everyone had a strong opinion on decisive battles, George Washington as a military commander, and how the Civil War turned out the way it did, etc. I know comments on a weblog are a very limited format, and obviously the debaters were writing off the cuff, so I will not get into details about the myriad problems with the views expressed in the debate. Although the commenters (commentators?) made solid points, from the perspective of an academically trained military historian the discussion was shocking for its simplicity. I'm picking on these guys a bit unfairly, they are perfectly capable and intelligent people who have the right and ability to comment on a wide variety of topics, but that discussion and where it began are representative of a larger problem in the historical profession. For other examples see historian of populism and progressivism (and a damn good one) Michael Kazin's recent piece on American exceptionalism and war. Or one that particularly grates me: the insistence of cultural and film historians to dismiss haughtily the multi-ethnic platoon in World War II movies as a cliché or propaganda or both. Try again. Even a superficial reading of the work by military historians on the World War II fighting man, or a perusal of a few memoirs from the era, would reveal that in this case, at least, Hollywood got it right.

The problem is that there simply are not enough military historians working in the American academy. Caveat: I am a military historian who will be on the job market this year, so I have just the tiniest bias. That said, the point stands. Military affairs, including wars, are a key component to the history of humankind. At some point every historian has to (or at the very least should) deal with some component of military history in their research, writing, and teaching. In teaching, especially, it is unavoidable. I suspect that is the reason why so many historians who otherwise avoid military affairs always seem to chime in with partially informed opinions when issues of war come up. Any sizable history department worth its salt should have a military historian around just to help keep his or her colleagues more informed on such a central issue.

That has not been the case. In fact, much to the horror of academic military historians, as some of the most eminent scholars in the field have retired over the last twenty-five years, some of the most eminent universities in the country have seen fit not to replace them with military historians at all. The University of Michigan has not had a permanent military historian on staff since John Shy retired. Nor did the University of Wisconsin replace Edward "Mac" Coffman when he left Madison, and it has taken a sizable contribution from Stephen Ambrose to lead to an as yet unfilled chair in military history there. More recently, the issue came up at Yale with some of its junior faculty. Temple, Kansas State, Texas A&M, North Carolina/Duke (they have a joint program), and Ohio State (the evil empire, grrrr) are notable exceptions in the profession, but too many of the top schools have no one who deals primarily with military history.

I'm going to try not to rehash the arguments already out there on this issue--like, for example, this one from Cliopatria's KC Johnson--partially because I think political bias is only part of the story. Something else is going on with military history. It is pretty clear that the success of many military history books with popular audiences has worked against academic military historians. David Salmanson's original post hinted as much. Popular reading lists and the shelves at popular book stores are filled with tomes on war. But I'll let everyone in on a little secret, some academic military historians might write some books for popular audiences (or books that become popular) but those types of works are only a tiny fraction of what academic military historians do. Take a look at this reading list from Duke and this one from Ohio State (grrrr)--not too many best sellers there. And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the specialized and obscure works that every academic military historian has to grapple with in order to master the field.

Of course in part it is our own fault. Military historians have at times been far too caught up in the traditional end of our field--discussions of battles from the perspective of generals. We have not done the best job in explaining how the importance of military affairs extends far beyond the battlefield. But the effort is underway, and has been for twenty-five years, to broaden military history to include all manner of discussions on race, class, gender, social life, cultural issues, memory, and politics. (Still, since when has the standard for fields addressing issues in the past in an academic setting been how well the practitioners of one field explain the importance of that field to all other fields? That is a pretty high standard to which to hold military historians, especially considering that it is patently obvious how important wars have been to history without even broadening the field.) But in any case, we have broadened our work, even while much of the rest of the profession has narrowed theirs. The result of this trend? A separation of historians into narrow tracks that has caused all of us to miss some of the most important aspects of American history in the last 150 years.

Think about this for a second: David Salmanson made a great case for the importance of slow change over time based on the everyday lives of people in the past, and I agree, yet it took a sociologist in Theda Skocpol to finally discuss the importance of veteran’s pensions after the Civil War. Worse, there are no, zero, published comprehensive academic studies on the G.I. Bill. (Michael Bennett is a journalist, Keith Olson's book deals with the schools, and there has been a recent dissertation on the topic at the University of Chicago but I do not know its publication status.) There are no academic studies that deal specifically with the question of the role African-American veterans of World War II and the Korean War played in the civil rights movement. No one has seen fit to explain why it was that the veterans of World War II raised the generation of whom so many opposed the Vietnam War, the results of which we face all the time. Talk about everyday lives.

We are missing a huge chunk of our past because the specific and important skill-sets of academic military historians do not have enough of a voice in the academy. It is a trend that must stop. Hire military historians (like, you know, me). Then we'll talk about where and how the United States won the Civil War.


Posted on Friday, June 25, 2004 at 11:43 AM 

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