The Future of Military History: A Glass Half Full

Herodotus never met a tall tale he didn't like. Reflecting on the resurgence of Herodotus at the expense of the more rigorous Thucydides, one historian has suggested that "his prestige and importance have been enhanced in our generation as a result of the growing popularity of the history of culture and the gradual eclipse of the long-popular episodical military and political type of history which prevailed from Thucydides until . . . our era."¹ Yet another example, it would seem, of contemporary academia's flight from the political and military history that really matter. The problem, however, is that this is Harry Elmer Barnes describing the embattled state of military history as of 1937.

In the forum on the state of military history in the November 2009 issue of this publication I found much to agree with. The authors' descip-tions of the quality and rigor of today's scholarship, the productive interplay between academics, military practitioners, and the general public, and the range of careers possible for military historians all rang true. Most importantly, their collective command not to curl up into a fetal position but instead to do good work and build connections to a variety of audiences, inside and outside of academia, is self-evidently wise advice. We should all heed Robert Citino's call to "leave no conference unattended, no journal article unsubmitted, no ACLS Fellowship application unsent, and no opportunity to 'show the flag' within the broader profession unseized." On the other hand, however, I found much to question in laments about the poor prognosis for military history in academia. I've heard plenty of anecdotes about graduate students not getting jobs and retiring senior military historians not being replaced, but hard evidence of the field's decline is thin on the ground. Brian Linn suggests, and Dennis Showalter agrees, that military history is declining in academia, but that the growth of the field outside academia compensates for this. There are certainly burgeoning opportunities outside academia, but I deny that military history is dying within it. My central point, which fits with Roger Spiller's argument in his contribution, is that complaints about the current state of military history need to be treated as good historians treat all such claims: in context.² Put simply, things are tough all over, and the good old days weren't so good.

First, some temporal perspective—the first duty of the historian. Complaints about the state of military history often involve comparisons, explicit or implicit, to some unspecified golden age in the past. Dennis Showalter opens his essay with the claim that "military history is marginalized in today's academy" (emphasis mine). But military history has always been marginal; unfortunately, the golden age of military history never existed. The history of history is rife with pronouncements on the decrepit state and dim future of the serious study of war and military affairs. On the eve of World War I, R.M. Johnston of Harvard University remarked at the American Historical Association's annual meeting on the "disrepute" of traditional military history.³ In 1930 Robert Livingston Schuyler wrote of the "present studied neglect of military history," which "seems to be under about as dark a cloud as the great man theory." ⁴ Theodore Ropp, who as a teacher did a great deal to shape military history in the United States, complained in 1949 that "advanced research in the history of war can be done in only a few places."⁵ Sir Herbert Butterfield, famous for his Whig Interpretation of History, took the "neglect of military history" as a matter of course.⁶ A study of the historical profession in the early 1960s, well before the cultural revolution and the poisoning effects of the Vietnam War, found that only 4% of U.S. colleges offered courses in military history.⁷

An illustration from The Histories of Herodotus, trans. by Henry Cary (D. Appleton and Company, 1904).

So the glorious past of military history isn't necessarily so glorious. Knowledgeable observers have conceded this; John Lynn's essay "The Embattled...