History Of Battle Research Articles

Narrative Matters: Wasting away and fedup-dietary battles in history.

Narrative Matters: Wasting away and fedup-dietary battles in history.

Review of A. Forrest's "Beyond the Edge of the Battlefield. The life of the military during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars"

The article analyzes the work of the English historian A. Forrest, devoted to the study of the individual experience of the military during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Forrest departs from the traditional view of the history of war as the history of battles and focuses his attention on various aspects of the daily life soldiers, such as enlistment, interaction with foreigners during foreign campaigns, captivity, demobilization and the life of veterans after the end of the war. The author pays special attention to the discrepancies between propaganda and the realities of soldier's life and casts doubt on the formation of a new type of revolutionary soldier, postulated by revolutionary propaganda. As shortcomings of the book, one can single out some ignorance by the author of data that contradicts his statement about the complete apoliticality of peasants, who formed the basis of the army of revolutionary France, and their alienation to revolutionary values. Besides the author does not always clearly distinguish the Jacobin army and the army of the Napoleonic time, attributing later features to the former, therefore important details regarding the war nature evolution may be lost. Separately, the author considers the construction of historical memory of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in France.

Strategy Implementation Of The Indirect Approach In The Battle Of Normandy And The Ukraine-Russia War

The Russia-Ukraine War is still rolling today, potential and factual threats can make the war even more late. In building a defense and security system the best can be done by studying the history of battles in the past. One of them is the Battle of Normandy which was fought by America and its allies with Germany in northern France. This article aims to gain benefits to build a better strategy for sea defense operations from the events of the Battle of Normandy and the Russia-Ukraine war. The method used is qualitative by using literature as a source of data. The results of the analysis and discussion carried out on these two events, the researcher found that both carried out the concept of implementing the Indirect Approach strategy echoed by Sir Basil Liddell Hart in which Ukraine carried out an unexpected attack on the Russian cruiser, Moskva, which caused the sinking the ship. So that the concept of the Indirect approach strategy carried out by America and its allies in the 2nd World War is still relevant to strategic maritime defense operations in the 21st century.

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History by Carolynn R. Larson

Reviewed by: The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History by Carolynn R. Larson Evan C. Rothera Larson, Carolynn R. The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2020. La Conquista del Desierto—the Conquest of the Desert—continues to polarize people. The name refers to a series of military campaigns conducted by [End Page 233] Argentine forces from 1878 to 1885 that were designed to drive indigenous people out of the pampas and Patagonia. As Carolyne R. Larson observes, "Many in Argentina today see the conquest as bringing civilization to a barbaric landscape," but other people routinely spray-paint monuments of Julio A. Roca, the commander of the conquest and later president of Argentina, with phrases such as "Roca = genocide" and "Assassin" (1). Larson, currently associate professor of history at St. Norbert College and author of Our Indigenous Ancestors: A Cultural History of Museums, Science, and Identity in Argentina, 1877–1943 (2015), has assembled a talented group of scholars who examine the events of the conquest and their specific meanings to "unpack the issues of nation, violence, memory, colonialism, and indigeneity entangled within them" (2). In addition, the chapters in this volume foreground indigenous voices to locate counternarratives that challenge long-accepted ideas and stories about the conquest. Larson opens with a detailed discussion of the official story of the conquest and analyzes the "military, state, and popular press sources that chiefly crafted the conquest's central narratives of national urgency, peaceful conquest, indigenous disappearance, and triumphant civilization" (17–18). She provides important background information, especially for readers who are not well versed in the history of these events. Julio Vezub and Mark Healey flip the official story on its head by narrating the conquest from the viewpoint of Mapuche and Tehuelche caciques, not from the perspective of Argentine soldiers and leaders. Vezub and Healey assert that "indigenous leaders were far more effective than previous scholars have recognized in coordinating actions, protecting their people, and negotiating terms of subordination to the newly powerful national state" (44). Rob Christensen contends that the Argentine army's victory was "shaped by the confluence of many forces outside creole leaders' control" (71). His focus on the environment places him among scholars who have begun to emphasize relationships among environmental factors and military campaigns. Ricardo D. Salvatore analyzes Inacayal and Foyel, indigenous caciques who were captured and sent to the Museum of La Plata. Salvatore contributes to scholarly discussions of living indigenous people in a museum by exploring how they "fed the curiosity of both scientists and the public at large" and how their presence was seen as "a culmination of the civilizing project of modernity" (120). Walter Delrio and Pila Pérez illustrate how crimes against humanity occurred during three periods of genocide in Argentina. Jennie I. Daniels investigates [End Page 234] literary representation of the Argentine desert and indigenous people. She finds that literary works often portray indigenous people as "faceless hordes rather than specific groups" (146). David M. K. Sheinin argues for an expanded understanding of the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. He notes that some military officials believed they had a historical responsibility, dating back to the conquest, to indigenous people. Thus, while some officers oversaw secret detention centers, others "were exercising a multifaceted plan to better the lives of First Peoples by improving rural education, building much-needed housing, providing better access to medical facilities, and more" (192). Ana Ramos examines the events of the conquest from the viewpoint of Mapuche memory and reveals the "value and importance that Mapuche agency has had in the regeneration of their affective and political bonds" (217). Sarah D. Warren, in the volume's final chapter, analyzes maps of Mapuche territory (Wallmapu) and illustrates how "contemporary maps of Mapuche territory include borders, boundaries, and places of historical significance related to the Conquest of the Desert in their renderings" (219). The Conquest of the Desert is a thought-provoking volume that does a great deal toward complicating scholarly understandings and revising the official story of these events. A chapter placing the Conquest of the...

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History by ed. by Carolyne R. Larson

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History by ed. by Carolyne R. Larson

The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23–July 4, 1863 by Timothy B. Smith

Reviewed by: The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23–July 4, 1863 by Timothy B. Smith Steven E. Woodworth The Siege of Vicksburg: Climax of the Campaign to Open the Mississippi River, May 23–July 4, 1863. By Timothy B. Smith. Modern War Studies. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021. Pp. xxviii, 724. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-7006-3225-1.) Timothy B. Smith, a prolific author of high-quality Civil War campaign and battle histories, has produced this massive and very impressive history of the culminating phase of the yearlong struggle for Vicksburg, Mississippi, and with it control of the Mississippi River. The book begins with a brief overview of the preceding phase of the contest for the river, including Ulysses S. Grant’s maneuver campaign through the interior of Mississippi, and his two assaults against Vicksburg’s landward-facing fortifications. After the failure of those attacks, Grant and his Army of the Tennessee settled down to the methodical process of besieging the Confederate stronghold, and so Smith’s narrative settles down for a detailed account of the six-week investment of the city. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a chronological period of two to five days, and in thirty to thirty-five pages Smith covers every aspect of the siege during that period. These include sharpshooting, artillery bombardment, the digging of saps, the lot of the Confederate soldiers within the fortifications, and the plight of the Vicksburg civilians behind them, as well as the experience of the Union soldiers in their own trenches and steadily advancing siege works. Smith deals with developments within the high command of each side. Confederate Vicksburg commander Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton and his superior in the interior of Mississippi, General Joseph E. Johnston, [End Page 153] enacted an almost farcical comedy of errors. Pemberton passively depended on Johnston for aid, while Johnston, apparently believing all hope was lost from the outset, appeared to be merely going through the motions of trying to relieve Vicksburg. On the Union side, it was Thirteenth Corps commander Major General John A. McClernand, a Democratic politician from Illinois, who provided the drama. Smith is generous in assessing McClernand’s fighting skills but notes the general’s propensity for blunders, posturing, and occasional acts of insubordination. It was a combination of these that finally brought McClernand’s downfall, when he leaked, contrary to standing orders, a grandiose account of his corps’ activities prior to the siege, worded to imply that the rest of the army had contributed very little to the success of the campaign. This move prompted Grant to relieve McClernand of command, but Smith believes that Grant had already made up his mind to do so, and that the publication of the boastful report merely provided the needed pretext. With detail and verve, Smith tells the story of how Union soldiers emplaced and detonated a massive mine under a section of the Confederate fortifications and of the prolonged and bitter struggle to try to break through the rebel lines in the gap the mine had blown. Thereafter the siege continued, until at last, on July 4, 1863, Pemberton formally surrendered the city and its garrison to Grant. Smith’s voluminous research is evident throughout the book. He has consulted a vast array of diaries, letters, and reminiscences by soldiers in both armies and of all ranks, and with those sources he tells the story from the perspective and often in the words of a cloud of witnesses from both sides of the lines, lending it life and authenticity. Those with an interest in Civil War military history will find the book easy to read and hard to put down. It is also hard to imagine that a more thorough and insightful account of the Vicksburg siege will emerge for a generation at least. Steven E. Woodworth Texas Christian University Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association

The Road to Blair Mountain: Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal

The Road to Blair Mountain: Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal

Лингвистичната шекспириада на Ранди Харис. Езиковата война за теоретичния облак на Чомски

Лингвистичната шекспириада на Ранди Харис. Езиковата война за теоретичния облак на Чомски

Larson, Carolyne R. (ed.) (2020) The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History, University of New México Press (Albuquerque, NM), 277 pp. £23.95 pbk. £98.95 hbk.

Larson, Carolyne R. (ed.) (2020) The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History, University of New México Press (Albuquerque, NM), 277 pp. £23.95 pbk. £98.95 hbk.

A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation by John Matteson

Reviewed by: A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation by John Matteson Kathleen Logothetis Thompson A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation. John Matteson. New York: W. W. Norton, 2021. ISBN: 978-0-393-24707-7. 528 pp., cloth, $35.00. When first reading the title of this work, I expected a new critical analysis and military history of the Battle of Fredericksburg and its effects on the war's military and political trajectory. What awaited me within the pages of John Matteson's book was an example of deft storytelling that draws readers into the very complex and human story of the Civil War. In A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation, Matteson weaves together the lives of five people to tell the story of Fredericksburg and the Civil War as a whole. First was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., born to a prominent family, who served as a captain in the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, was wounded several times and survived the war. He later served on the US Supreme Court, forever changed by his wartime experiences. Second was John Pelham, on the verge of graduating from West Point when called home to fight for the Confederacy. Pelham rose to fame skillfully commanding J. E. B. Stuart's Horse Artillery and died a Southern martyr at Kelly's Ford in March 1863. Third was Reverend Arthur B. Fuller, [End Page 215] who had faced constant tragedy in the years before the Civil War and longed to do something significant for his nation. Fuller went to war as a chaplain in the Sixteenth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and struggled with the physical toll campaigning took on his health. He poured his enthusiasm into the spiritual health of his soldiers, until he picked up a gun at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Fourth was Louisa May Alcott, known for her literary work before and after the war but decidedly affected physically and emotionally by her work in a Union hospital in the months surrounding Fredericksburg in the winter of 1862–63. Finally was Walt Whitman, a poet who struggled with his reputation prior to the war and whose rise to fame was built off his experiences in the Civil War. Using the stories of these five individuals and the people immediately connected to them, Matteson leads the reader through Antietam, Fredericksburg, and the aftermath of the two campaigns of late 1862. The military history of both battles, as well as others, such as Ball's Bluff and Kelly's Ford, is present, and the reader will certainly understand the broad synopsis of each engagement. However, by focusing on the story of five military and civilian figures, Matteson brings the reader from the battlefield to the aftermath. In viewing family members' efforts to find their wounded or captured soldiers, he illuminates how the events on the field of battle rippled out into the civilian communities of the North. As he introduces each of the five subjects, he analyzes the individual motivations for entering service or the world of the war. Using Whitman and Alcott's nursing work in various Union hospitals, the reader views not only the action of the field but the aftermath and its toll on the bodies and minds of both soldiers and nurses. Matteson's continuation of the story into the postwar years allows the reader to see how war experiences affected Whitman, Alcott, and Holmes and directed their very public work in their later lives. At first, the title of this work seemed misleading; it was not the targeted analysis of Fredericksburg and its consequences that I had expected. However, as the book reached its conclusion it was clear that Matteson had demonstrated how the campaigns of 1862 had changed the nation. By weaving the lives of five main subjects together, all meeting in some way at Fredericksburg, and demonstrating how the experiences affected these individual people, Matteson illustrates how the Civil War shaped the very people of the United States, deeply and profoundly. The war altered not just the path of the military campaigns...

Hitler's Greatest Gamble

Hitler's Greatest Gamble James J. Sheehan (bio) Jonathan Dimbleby, Operation Barbarossa: The History of a Cataclysm. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. xliii + 595 pp. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95. Among the greatest challenges facing the historian of modern warfare is capturing war's extraordinary scale without losing sight of its human dimension. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union that began in June 1941, was one of the greatest battles in history, engaging millions of combatants, raging across hundreds of miles, lasting six months. Behind these figures were the broken lives of individual soldiers and civilians who were caught in the battle's murderous machinery. Barbarossa set in motion four years of vicious combat in which both sides were profligate with the lives of their troops and savage in their treatment of the enemy. To cite just one statistic: of the 5.7 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans, some 3.3 million perished from hunger, disease, or mistreatment. Those who managed to survive captivity were often punished after their liberation, since the Soviet authorities regarded being captured as a form of treason. Jonathan Dimbleby's book does justice to both the battle's scale and its impact on individuals' lives. Barbarossa's is, as he shows in convincing detail, an extraordinary story that begins when 3.3 million German troops attacked along an 1800-kilometer front, stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans. During the first weeks of the campaign, things went just as the invaders hoped: badly led, equipped with inferior weapons, and pursuing poorly executed tactics, the Soviets lost massive amounts of men, weapons, and aircraft. By the first week of July, well-informed German commanders predicted a rapid and relatively easy victory. But then the momentum of the German advance began to slow. By October, the Soviet resistance had stiffened, just as the first signs of winter appeared. In early December, the Russians launched a broad counter-offensive that did not destroy the Wehrmacht but did force it to assume defensive positions. This move, in effect, brought Barbarossa to an end. Neither Moscow nor St.Petersburg was captured, the regime remained intact, and the quality of the Red Army's leadership and weaponry dramatically improved. In addition to providing a clear account of the ebb and flow of military operations, [End Page 75] Dimbleby portrays the human face of battle with a skillfully arranged set of first-hand accounts taken from diaries, letters, and official documents. About the global significance of Barbarossa there can be no question. But was it "the most decisive campaign in the Second World War"? If Hitler had won this battle would he have become, as Dimbleby argues, "the master of Europe's destiny" (p. xxxvii)? Perhaps. But it seems equally possible that even had the Germans captured Moscow at the end of 1941, the Soviet regime would have survived. As the battle moved further east, the German conquerors might have found themselves in a situation similar to their Japanese allies in China, unable to convert battlefield victories into effective control over their enemy's vast territory. Hitler's fantasy of creating a stable colonial empire stretching to the Urals was just that, a fantasy that would have, sooner or later, shattered against the hard edges of geopolitical realties. Although Dimbleby devotes most of his book to the military history of Barbarossa, he weaves two other themes into his main story. One is the murder of Europe's Jews, which is not, to be sure, a result of the Russian campaign, but was an important part of Hitler's motives for moving east and did help shape the way the campaign was conducted. Dimbleby follows the now generally accepted narrative of Germany's racial imperialism in which the army—almost all of the generals and large numbers of ordinary troops—were deeply involved in the war's greatest atrocity. Dimbleby also examines the international setting of the German invasion and its aftermath. His book begins (rather awkwardly, in my opinion) with the agreement between the Soviet Union and the German Republic signed at Rapallo in 1922, when both states tried to overcome the international...

The world's first malaria vaccine: Hope and challenge

The RTS,S/AS01 is a subunit malaria vaccine against the pre-erythrocytic stage of Plasmodium falciparum. After over 30 years of research and development and clinical trials, this vaccine has been recommended by the WHO for use among children living in highly malaria endemic areas. Although the RTS, S/AS01 vaccine suffers from problems of a low protective efficacy (about 30%), need of four doses and short duration of protective immunity, this malaria vaccine is expected to save tens of thousands of children's lives, and avoid tens of millions of malaria cases annually, because there have been tens of thousands of childhood deaths due to malaria recently. The introduction of the RTS, S/AS01 vaccine is therefore, widely accepted as a milestone in the history of battle against malaria, which brings a hope to contain malaria and even eventually eliminate malaria. Although there are still multiple challenges in the development of a satisfactory malaria vaccine, the success of the RTS, S/AS01 malaria greatly facilitates the progress towards the development of parasitic disease vaccines, and a more perfect malaria vaccine deserves expectations.

A Military History Without the History of Battles

The emergence of military-historical anthropology as an independent trend in historiography has changed the traditional image of war. In place of the history of strategic operation plans, battles, marshals and generals, and casualty counts, came the story of the everyday life of soldiers, front-line life, and the emotions of the civilians and servicemen embroiled in the conflict. The “human dimension” of the war has become a topical subject, as evidenced by the publications of Russian and international researchers on the history of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars over the last two decades. An example of this is a book by Alan Forrest, Professor Emeritus at the University of York, Napoleon's Men: The Soldiers of the Revolution and Empire, recently published in Russian. This work, like an Art Nouveau gallery in its day, is a peculiar collection of examples of new approaches and problem formulations in the field of military history. The Revolutionary and Imperial Wars are viewed as the first experience of “total war” in modern history, affecting all sections of society and serving as a catalyst for processes of national self-identification. This approach allows one to answer a number of questions which are new to military history: how perceptions of manhood, civic duty, and patriotism were formed, what role women played in these processes, what was the “war culture” in relation to prisoners of war, how attitudes to recruitment changed, what the fate of veterans was after the war, etc. As the analysis of contemporary historiography demonstrates, the turn from purely positivist approaches to constructivism, from the history of battles to presentations of personal life experiences, is accompanied by a desire to link the study of the past with the study of the collective memory of that past.

Argentina's Indigenous Peoples - The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History. Edited by Carolyne E. Larson. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, Diálogos Series, 2020. Pp. 296. 11 color illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Contributors. Index. $95.00 cloth; $29.95 paper.

Argentina's Indigenous Peoples - The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History. Edited by Carolyne E. Larson. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, Diálogos Series, 2020. Pp. 296. 11 color illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Contributors. Index. 29.95 paper. - Volume 79 Issue 1

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

ʿAyn Ǧālūt (658/1260). Re‑evaluating a So‑called Decisive Battle

The Mamluk victory at ʿAyn Ǧālūt on 25 Ramaḍān 658/3 September 1260 is certainly one of the most famous events in the history of the Mamluk‑Ilkhanid war. It has been the subject of numerous works and fueled a rich debate among scholars. Although the facts overall are fairly well‑known, there remain several grey areas and some important questions are still unanswered. By comparing Arabic, Latin, Armenian, Persian and Syriac chronicles, this article attempts to shed light on various questions concerning the battle of ʿAyn Ǧālūt and the events that led up to it. It will thus be possible to take a new look at one of the most important battles in history.

Magueyes (1962) by Rubén Gámez. Mexican experimental cinema as a violent and inexhaustible resource of memory

Los Magueyes (1962) directed by Rubén Gámez is an important Mexican experimental film. The montage shows a dialectical game that subverts the traditional cinematographic discourse from where the landscape stops being a passive element to become an inciter of violence. This filme does not have human, agaves are the only protagonists of a cruel and ruthless battle. In this short filme, war dialogues with the power of cinematographic representation. Los Magueyes (1962) transcends time limits unifying all the battles of history into one, showing the malleability and power of cinema from its audiovisual language. The cinematographic montage mixed with the Symphony no. 11 composed by Dmitri Shostakovich represents a critical, original, and symbolically profound argument that characterizes this filmes that belong to the Mexican experimental cinema of the sixties.

Центр по изучению Сталинградской битвы: вчера, сегодня, завтра

The article presents some of the results of the Center for the Study of the Battle of Stalingrad for five years of work. Information is given about published collections of documents and materials, encyclopedias and reference books prepared as a result of the interaction of scientific, educational, public organizations and cultural institutions dedicated to the history of the great battle on the Volga. The paper informs about the scientific seminars held at the Center on little-studied issues of the history of the Battle of Stalingrad. The study of genuine sources and the introduction into scientific circulation of arrays of archival documents are aimed at preventing the falsification of historical events, the formation of impartial judgments and the preservation of collective memory of the war.

Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientific and Public Discourse

The aim of the study was to examine the positions of various social groups, reflecting the controversial and contradictory aspects of the process of identity construction in post-Soviet Russia and the factor of memory politics. The article reveals the characteristics of the post-Soviet identity-building process and the related politics of memory under the century-end systemic transformation that has launched a new existential project in Russia. Collective identity is formed in a new social space: the global dichotomy of globalization and localization. Methodologically, it is a documentary research close to the analysis of discourse. The process of transition from the Soviet Union to post-Soviet space and the construction of the new state on the ruins of the socialist empire will keep the problems of a new identity and the politics of memory relevant soon. It is concluded that thirty years after the liquidation of the socialist project, the crisis of collective identity in Russia and the "battle for history" and a new Russian national unity are not over. However, persistent social atomization and conflict-triggering narratives of various socio-cultural communities and ideological groups persist.

Carolyne R. Larson (ed.), The Conquest of the Desert. Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

Des les premieres lignes de son introduction, l’historienne Carolyne R. Larson aborde la concurrence des memoires autour de la figure de Julio A. Roca, President de la Nation argentine a deux reprises (1880-1888 et 1898-1904), mais aussi Commandant de la « Conquete du Desert » (1878-1885). Sous cette formule se trouve designee une serie de campagnes militaires argentines mises en œuvre pour conquerir la Pampa et la Patagonie, et, selon l’historiographie traditionnelle formee des cette epoque,...