The British Way in Warfare Revisited

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In the last fifteen years military history in Britain has gained considerably in respectability, both in the country at large and in academic circles specifically. But it still has problems of identity. On the one hand, military history can at last find itself judged as part of ‘total history’. But, on the other, its origins as the staple fodder of nineteenth-century military academies have bequeathed it a strong didactic flavour which has proved hard to shed. Military history and strategic theory do not yet stand in the same relationship to each other as, say, political history and political theory. Perhaps because in Britain there is still too little independent informed analysis of defence, military history can be employed in a dual role. The ‘lessons of history’ are stronger here than in any other area. However impeccable the motives of military historians, their work is too often used as a prescription for the future rather than as a study of the past.