Ronald H. Spector: Military History ... Teetering on the Brink of Respectability
Forty-five years ago, Walter Millis, a respected military analyst and historian, wrote a short treatment of military history for the American Historical Association's Service Center for Teachers of History. Of all the distinguished authors who have contributed to those guides over the years, Millis may well be the only one who advised his readers not to bother. "The study of military history" had two functions, Millis declared, "to train professional military men in the exercise of their profession and on the other hand to educate governments and peoples in the military requirements of today." The advent of nuclear weapons, however, had rendered those traditional roles irrelevant. Indeed, what soldiers charged with the command and control of nuclear weapons "might learn from the generalship of the past could well be more deleterious than effective."1
Millis's piece was the first in a succession of articles published over the following decades announcing that military history was nearing extinction. Yet it has proven to have an unusually long half-life. Ten years after Millis's obituary of the field, Allan R. Millett described the surprisingly numerous, robust, and vigorous contributions that younger scholars, mostly based in colleges and universities, were making to all aspects of American military history. The interest of the new generation of military historians, wrote Millett, was to study "America's wars and the development of its military institutions within the unique political, economic, social ideological context which shaped them." The object was not to learn lessons but to reach "a fuller understanding of America."2 During the 1980s, military historians established their own scholarly and professional society, transforming the old American Military Institute, a congenial but slightly antiquarian organization, into the academically oriented Society for Military History.
Then, in 1997, just when I had begun to feel it was safe to get out my lecture notes on the battle of the Philippine Sea, another article appeared, this one by the eminent historian John A. Lynn, with the subtitle "The Embattled Future of Academic Military History." Lynn concluded that military history still occupied a marginal position in most history departments—those in which it was taught at all—and that the handful of military historians at research universities were seldom replaced when they retired. One year before, Mark Grimsley had posted a piece on the World Wide Web with the evocative title "Why Military History Sucks." Grimsley suggested that the marginalization of military history on campus was not due to the dominance of political correctness in history departments but to the failure of military historians to develop the kind of "sophisticated conceptual tools" employed by historians of race and gender. The latest and most dour announcement comes from an article by John J. Miller in the National Review. It warned that "social history has started to infiltrate military history," subverting the traditional approach to the study of war into a category of cultural studies.3
Wayne E. Lee's masterly survey of trends and new approaches is therefore extremely timely and useful.4 It suggests that announcements of the field's imminent demise are still premature, while his emphasis on cultural analysis of war might be read as evidence that military history's infiltration of the methods and concepts of other specialties has progressed much faster than any counter-mining by the troops of race, gender, and ethnicity. Whether the number of courses and jobs in military history is increasing or decreasing, whether practitioners in the field are victims of a conspiracy of the politically correct, Lee's discussion makes it clear that military historians, "new," "old," or just confused, have largely accomplished the task outlined by Millett more than thirty-five years ago: to examine and explain the history of American military organization practices and concepts as a significant contribution to understanding the American experience....
Read entire article at Journal of American History
Millis's piece was the first in a succession of articles published over the following decades announcing that military history was nearing extinction. Yet it has proven to have an unusually long half-life. Ten years after Millis's obituary of the field, Allan R. Millett described the surprisingly numerous, robust, and vigorous contributions that younger scholars, mostly based in colleges and universities, were making to all aspects of American military history. The interest of the new generation of military historians, wrote Millett, was to study "America's wars and the development of its military institutions within the unique political, economic, social ideological context which shaped them." The object was not to learn lessons but to reach "a fuller understanding of America."2 During the 1980s, military historians established their own scholarly and professional society, transforming the old American Military Institute, a congenial but slightly antiquarian organization, into the academically oriented Society for Military History.
Then, in 1997, just when I had begun to feel it was safe to get out my lecture notes on the battle of the Philippine Sea, another article appeared, this one by the eminent historian John A. Lynn, with the subtitle "The Embattled Future of Academic Military History." Lynn concluded that military history still occupied a marginal position in most history departments—those in which it was taught at all—and that the handful of military historians at research universities were seldom replaced when they retired. One year before, Mark Grimsley had posted a piece on the World Wide Web with the evocative title "Why Military History Sucks." Grimsley suggested that the marginalization of military history on campus was not due to the dominance of political correctness in history departments but to the failure of military historians to develop the kind of "sophisticated conceptual tools" employed by historians of race and gender. The latest and most dour announcement comes from an article by John J. Miller in the National Review. It warned that "social history has started to infiltrate military history," subverting the traditional approach to the study of war into a category of cultural studies.3
Wayne E. Lee's masterly survey of trends and new approaches is therefore extremely timely and useful.4 It suggests that announcements of the field's imminent demise are still premature, while his emphasis on cultural analysis of war might be read as evidence that military history's infiltration of the methods and concepts of other specialties has progressed much faster than any counter-mining by the troops of race, gender, and ethnicity. Whether the number of courses and jobs in military history is increasing or decreasing, whether practitioners in the field are victims of a conspiracy of the politically correct, Lee's discussion makes it clear that military historians, "new," "old," or just confused, have largely accomplished the task outlined by Millett more than thirty-five years ago: to examine and explain the history of American military organization practices and concepts as a significant contribution to understanding the American experience....