Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In recent decades the historical study of armed power and its military and political uses has taken a new turn, which once again raises questions about the nature of the field and its place in the discipline of history in general. The changes that have occurred and are continuing are not absolute, but a matter of degree. They consist in an expansion of the subject and of the methodologies used in studying it – in particular, a more frequent and deliberate adaptation of concepts and techniques of the social sciences and humanities. Some historians of war have always recognized the political sources and ramifications of their subject. Interest in the social, economic, administrative, and cultural sources and effects of military organization and of warfare was never absent, but it has become more general and sustained in the past two centuries. It might seem sufficient to discuss these changes without referring to what has gone before. But an exclusive concentration on the present would be misleading. The historiography of war and of its military and civil institutions has, of course, experienced earlier innovations and shifts in scholarly emphasis. More recently, especially since World War I, some of these changes have come, faded, and reappeared in slightly different form, and it may be that this particular area of historical specialization more than most reflects methodological ... log in or subscribe to read full text