Ian F. W. Beckett - A Guide to British Military History: The Subject and the Sources

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
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Copyright Ian F.W. Beckett 2016

ISBN: 9781473856646
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Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

What exactly is military history? Forty years ago this would have been a straightforward question. Just as warfare for many centuries prior to the mid-nineteenth century had been governed by the unchanging factors of the speed of man, the speed of horse and the availability of fodder, so military history had meant only battles, campaigns, great commanders, drums and trumpets. That approach arose from the way in which military history originally developed as being largely the preserve of military professionals, who studied it because they believed that it taught practical lessons for use on the battlefield. Indeed, it is probably the last form of history that is thought to be directly applicable for the learning of lessons: it is still used in military academies to draw out lessons that may inform decisions by future commanders on the battlefield, or decisions that will be taken by future commanders at the strategic level. Beyond its use by military professionals, military history was also used in the past to support national history and nationalism, as part of the heroic national story of the Deeds That Won the Empire kind.

Asking that question now is much more difficult for the study of war has been transformed by the application of new methodologies since the 1970s, not least by the development of the war and society approach to conflict, with its emphasis upon the study of the impact of war upon states, societies, institutions and individuals. In more recent years, further methodologies have begun to be applied to the study of war and armed forces, with examination of such issues as identity, memory and gender. Similarly, a traditional Euro-centric emphasis within military history has now also been extensively corrected with the growth of a more global perspective. Certainly, it is now more generally recognised by those previously hostile to military history within academe that war and conflict must be integrated into the wider narrative of historical development. To recall Trotskys nostrum, war is the locomotive of history.

This guide seeks to introduce prospective research students to the debates, issues and resources within the field of military history. While the wider European and global perspectives are not neglected, as will be apparent from the discussion of contexts in is concerned with sources for the study of British military history, though not just in Britain.

Military history is the subject of great popular interest and has been populated by non-academic historians and writers whose work often borders on what might be characterised as military pornography. Indeed, in the media, military historian is a much abused, and all too easily applied term. Popular military history is characterised by often being narrative in structure rather than analytical, and invariably follows a simply explanatory path, is often enamoured of equipment and technology, and tends to place combat centre stage. Such writing is not referenced in this volume. By contrast, academically rigorous military history is characterised by being firmly based on archival/primary source research, on having a firm line of argument or overarching interpretation, on having a wide perspective, and having some comparison with other works in the field. What follows in this volume, therefore, is the integration of the military narrative within the wider political, socio-economic and cultural context. Like any other form of academic history, there can be significant divergence of interpretations between historians, and this will also become apparent, be it the nature of the military revolution in Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the learning curve on the Western Front during the First World War, or the nature of total war.

It needs to be stated that naval history and emergent air force or air power history are the subject of other volumes in this series and, therefore, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force will not be a primary concern in this. Of course, it has also not been possible to mention every monograph, chapter, journal article or doctoral thesis on British military history since 1500, and a high degree of selectivity has had to be employed to represent the rich tapestry of academic research available.

PART I

Contexts

Chapter 1

The Historiographical Context

It is usually suggested that modern military historical writing in Europe was a product of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and of the new quest to discover underlying universal principles of war. Yet, in one other respect, they drew upon the pattern of antiquity in combining a degree of narrative with didactic military analysis. That pattern is glimpsed in the work of the very first acknowledged military historian in the western world and also one of the first recognised historians namely Thucydides, whose History of the Peloponnesian War was unfinished at his death in about 400 BC . He was an Athenian general and, until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was nearly always soldiers who wrote military history.