Sunday, January 4, 2009: 9:20 AM
Nassau Suite B (Hilton New York)
I claimed in What is Military History?, an historigraphical and methodological analysis of the field of military history, that two major challenges for military history in coming years would be the integration of global perspectives and the insights of cultural history. This claim arose in part from my own experiences writing a world military history textbook, War in World History: Society, Technology and War from Ancient Times to the Present. This paper explicates some of the key issues—of historiography and the cultural contexts of military history—raised for me as I wrote that text. Several general issues stand out. First, the extant shape of military historiography in different parts of the world varies tremendously. The different levels of attention paid to military history in different cultures means that constructing a balanced survey that, when it attempts cross-cultural comparisons does so in a way that compares apples to apples, encounters significant obstacles. On the other hand, the very process of comparison highlights the divergent cultural assumptions—about the place of warfare in history, the motivations and justifications for warfare, and the importance of particular wars—that inform various regional historiographies. These general issues are examined through the lenses of particular historiographies, including “western”, Turkish and Chinese, among others, and with regard to specific episodes such as the Crusades. The examination shows that the process of comparison does not just highlight differences, but opens new areas, topical and methodological, for analysis.