American Military History: The Need for Comparative Analysis

Abstract

I have enjoyed reading Wayne Lee's wide-ranging and stimulating discussion of the im peratives underlying the writing of much academic military history. It is perhaps worth stressing at the outset in a piece in a distinguished scholarly journal, written by academ ics for other academics, that many nonacademic historians write fine military history, and this is one of the subject's strengths. Whether they are former service personnel, civil servants, judges, or professional writers, they often write with greater facility and some times produce better books in certain areas than academics largely because of their pro fessional experience and perspective. That those works are found guilty by association with applied and popular military history within the academy, as Lee points out, is often the worst kind of academic snobbery, though, fortunately, he has not succumbed to it. Yet Lee does not answer a central question raised in his article: Why does this shadow of opprobrium persist undeservedly?1 The most distinguished of British military historians, Sir Michael Howard and Sir John Keegan, in particular, enjoy high prestige in the United States. Is Keegan an aca demic? The point is debatable. Although it can be suggested that he pioneered the form of cultural analysis that has so excited academic military historians for many years, he has been repeatedly scornful of its ramifications, especially the influence that literary criticism and the social sciences (such as international relations theory) exert on both the style of argument deployed and the texture of some of the writing.2 Reading Lee's essay confirmed for me the vague boundaries of military history, especially its academic boundaries. Although there are some points of detail in Lee's assessment with which I would quib ble, I wish to explore in my response a method that is underdeveloped in American mili tary history: the comparative approach to the subject. I have close links to the United States (with family connections), but I am not of it and do not teach in an American university. So, my aim is to attempt to take the argument a stage further, while not adopt ing the irritating habit of Niall Ferguson of assuming that Britain is the source of some unacknowledged superior wisdom. Perhaps something of value might emerge from the reflections of a scholar from across the Atlantic.