Military History and Its Fictions

The conception and practice of military history, once regarded as the foundation for any understanding of war, has responded cautiously to the momentous intellectual and contemporary developments of the past half century. While our conservative habits have encouraged a degree of professional maturity as a field, military history's intellectual authority has declined as other disciplines have taken more adventurous approaches to the study of war and assumed a more prominent role in contemporary military criticism. Yet because of military history's intellectual progress, the power of military history to range beyond its conservatism and to address contemporary military problems is greater than ever.