Science, Technology, and War ALEX ROLAND I introduced the military technology session at the Madison confer ence by noting that the history of technology and war differs in many significant ways from other fields within the history of technology.1 The papers and discussion that followed, however, suggestedjust the opposite. They demonstrated that in most ways technology and war behave much the same as technology elsewhere. Jon Sumida made that point explicitly, stressing that the history of military technology must be based on detailed examination of technical records informed by wide-ranging contextual analysis. This is surely a prescription for good history of technology in any field. Daniel Headrick echoed the point, emphasizing the need for social context. Barton C. Hacker presented a sweeping survey of the historiography of military tech nology that was both penetrating and ecumenical.2 Indeed, one point that recurred throughout the session was the need for universal his tory of the kind practiced by William H. McNeill, the scheduled com mentator for the session, whose travel to Wisconsin was arrested by the weather. Dr. Roland is professor of history at Duke University. 'This session focused primarily on technology and war, a category that many partici pants understood as subsuming science and war. Most of the observations here may be construed as applying to both topics. Separate reference is made to science and war only when it seems to differ in some significant way from technology and war. In the discussion in Wisconsin, Jon Sumida placed science in a category of culture and society, only indirectly related to his primary focus. Barton Hacker expressed interest only in applied science, i.e., science that brings about technology. In reviewing the same topic, I made an argument for a significant benchmark in the literature in the 1980s. See Alex Roland, “Technology and War: The Historiographical Revolution of the 1980s,” Technology and Culture 34 (January 1993): 117—34. Nothing in that article is inconsistent with the views expressed in Wisconsin. 2 The following papers were presented at the history of military technology session at the Conference on Critical Problems and Research Frontiers, University of Wiscon sin-Madison, Fall 1991: Jon Tetsuro Sumida, “Historical Presentations of 20thCentury Naval Invention”; Daniel R. Headrick, “The Sources ofTechnological Innova tion in the Armed Forces: The Case of the U.S. Navy, 1865-1915”; Barton C. Hacker, “On the History of Military Technology: Past Accomplishments, Present Problems, Future Directions.”© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3602-0011S01.00 S83 S84 Alex Roland The essay that follows is really stimulated by the session more than it is shaped by it. It grants the participants’ point that the history of technology and war is similar to other kinds of history of technology. It focuses, nonetheless, on the differences, for these seem to be more interesting than the similarities and more germane to the concept of having such a session in the first place. The article will conclude with some observations on the similarities and what these portend for the future of scholarship in this area. Among the distinguishing characteristics of this subheld is an aver- \sion in scholarly circles to things military. This tendency is not pecu liar to the history of technology; it is pervasive. Many scholars simply find war and its associated activities distasteful. Comparable distaste has not stopped historians of medicine from studying epidemic dis eases, nor has it stopped historians of science from studying eugenics or historians of technology from studying sewers. But it does seem \ to deter many scholars from studying war or things military. More important in this regard, perhaps, is the suspicion that those ' who study war are themselves closet Napoleons—“war lovers,” in John Hersey’s term, who vicariously experience in their scholarship the lives of the great captains. There is abundant military historiogra phy to support such an inference. The great bulk of it is still opera tional history, drum-and-trumpet narrative weak on analysis and in terpretation. So too has the history of technology and war produced its fair share of loving appreciations of the arms and armor of bygone eras. Naturally, these studies are more...