The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (review)

This work is an English translation of Penser la grande guerre, which was first published in 2004. It is part of the "Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare" series by Cambridge University Press, and is coauthored by Jay Winter, the general editor of the series, and Antoine Prost, who is an advisory editor for the series. The authors provide a thematic overview of historical writing on the First World War, with occasional forays into popular culture issues such as war fiction and film. Both authors are cultural historians and thus the work is overwhelmingly focused on discussions of various cultural interpretations of the conflict. The work is further limited by its narrow focus on books discussing the British and French experience in the war, with works on the German side a very distant third. Writings on the American, Russian, and Italian (among others) experiences in World War I are essentially ignored by the authors.

The work's greatest weakness is its failure adequately to discuss the military history of the First World War. The authors devote only a single chapter of the work ("Generals and Ministers") to examining the military history of the war, and make only occasional passing references to military history in other sections. Indeed, the authors exude an air of condescension towards military history, stating at one point that military historians have been "generally marginalized by the historical profession." They further claim that the arrival of cultural historians in the field of First World War studies during the past decade has caused military historians to become "overtly politicized" in their attempt to "reclaim the battlefield as an historical space on which they could speak with privileged authority." Finally, they assert that "It is clear that a purely military history of the war . . . is now a thing of the past." Thus while ostensibly this book is a survey of the literature on World War I, the nature of the works selected for inclusion and the commentary provided on them, make the book a polemic on why cultural history is the only proper approach to studying the history of the First World War. For example, in a list of twenty-one journals recommended to the reader for finding "up to date scholarly research" on World War I, the Journal of Military History is not listed.

The Great War in History provides a useful discussion of works on the cultural history of the First World War. The book will be of little value, however, to those seeking an overview of the vast literature on the military history of that conflict.